Distorted Theater

A Happy New Year!

Wed, 2 Jan 2008 12:50:24 +0900

Here in the Philippines Christmas holiday season were finally over, but none of my co-workers nor boss came to the office so far... Okay, that's life in the Philippines.

Anyway, I wish you a prosperous new year! Here's a new year greeting card for you.

Bomb blast in Manila

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 00:26:09 +0900

You might already hear the news about a bomb blast in a shopping mall in Makati City. Although that mall is very near to our dormitory and the one where we JOCVs often visit, all of us are confirmed to be safe now.

Tonkatsu (pork cutlet)

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 20:34:58 +0900

Sorry for not updating this blog for quite a long time... but it's a good indication that I have lots of things to do here in the Philippines.

Anyway, somehow, I decided to cook tonkatsu (pork cutlet) today. Since it's a little hassle to buy sliced pork here (even though it's possible if you can wait for 15 minutes to be prepared), I used sliced bacon instead. It was okay. It tasted like real "tonkatsu", or might be even better.

One more news. I was told that we'll have a succeeding volunteer coming January. Hope he can also enjoy his stay here.

Laundry soap

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 10:19:02 +0900

Recentry I noticed that people around me are using laundry soap when they wash dishes or plates. I don't think it's harmful, but fragrance of laundry soap seems to be too strong for utensils.

I should ask them why, but I suppose that they just don't care about those things. Soap is soap. That's enough.

Fungi...

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 09:52:42 +0900

What got moldy recently:

Top plate of the fridge
Chopping board
Banboo ear pick
Wrist watch
Mosquito coil

My pillow also smelled extremely bad. I kicked it into the washing machine.

Typhoon is coming

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 12:31:44 +0900

A new typhoon is coming toward us. Even though wind is not strong yet, it has been raining for five days. It's frustrating...

I checked the weather forcast website.

Oh, look at the trees...

Kalbo ako

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 15:02:33 +0900

I had my hair cut. Period.

"Kalbo ako" means "I'm bald-headed" in Tagalog.

One day trip to a fishing port

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 23:25:42 +0900

To welcome one of the former volunteers visiting us, another JOCV in Kalinga (the next province to mine) and I went to a fishing port to buy fresh fish.

After a four-hour bus ride to St. Ana, which is at the North-east tip of the Luzon Island, we took a tricycle and finally reached the fishing port of San Vicente. It was a small but beautiful port. We could buy some lobsters, raw sea urchin and fish. They said the fish was not fresh enough for Sashimi, but they assured it was the best fish for Inihaw (grill).

Through lots of things, we had to ask a Filipino family to cook them. They kindly welcomed us, and we could share great seafood dinner with them. I really appreciate this kind of Filipino hospitality.

To be honest, we were afraid that sea urchin might cause food poisoning. But it was so delicious, and fortunately, we were safe.

Please have a look at pictures of the trip.

Mangos have gone - what's for breakfast?

Sun, 3 Sep 2006 10:48:56 +0900

Mangos are one of my favorite breakfast menus here in the Philippines. However, its season has already gone. I can't find them recently here in Tuguegarao. They might be expensive even if I could.

So I decided to try others. This time I bought some cereals and skim milk. Eating with some bananas, it looks quite good for breakfast.

By the way, it's quite difficult to buy fresh milk in this country. Self-sufficiency rate of milk is only about 2%, and most of milk consumption is as canned or skimmed milk. That's one of the reason why many veterinarian JOCVs are assigned, in order to improve milk production.

SM Megamall

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 13:27:31 +0900

Now I'm staying in Manila. I had to join the editing work of JOCV magazine and will have a vaccination here.

We spent a day off going to the second largest shopping mall in the Philippines, SM Megamall.

It was so huge. We couldn't see the other end of the story...

We walked around the mall, which seemed to be nearly 1km in length. There are huge super market, department store, hundreds of speciality shops. It was amazing that there are also PC shops, Macintosh shops, second-hand PC shops, as well as an electric parts shop! Manila is a city that we could buy anything if we had money (but it's also a city that most residents don't have enough to do so).

They had a Korean food promotion there. We could see ute costumes dancing.

FYI, the largest shopping mall in the Philippines is SM Mall of Asia. It's also the largest shopping mall in the world, in terms of gross floor size (according to Wikipedia).