once, as all leaves were, it began as a bud on a branch. heeding the call of relentless evolution, it began to grow; cells differentiating, specializing. till, at some stage, it had unfurled there; a minor miracle on a twig connected to some branch that in itself was connected to the trunk and thence the roots in the earth.
and from those roots came the water and trace minerals, up, in defiance of gravity by capilliary action; to the leaf where by chlorophyll's might light was converted, combined with the water, carbon dioxide split - and from that chemical reaction the food came to being, that food that the tree would grow with.
one wonders at the events without that the leaf, indeed the tree, would be a mute, deaf, blind witness to. it may be said that the leaf would be naturally attuned to the light, that source of power for the chemical reaction within. but there were also the other forces, some of nature: rain, wind, earthquake, fire...
of fiestas and marching bands, of incessant honking and the diesel rumble of jeepneys and trucks, of conversations between myriad humans, of the twittering of the birds; the nigh-microscopic pattering of insects and the like - of these the leaf might only have trembled, perhaps aware at some cellular level...
and if, by some stroke of random chance it was not bent into service as a webbed home for a colony of ants, nor for a colony of spiders, the leaf spent its life alone among it's brethren in the sun...
...there would be a time when by some clock of chance design its workings would begin to falter, and the flow of water and nutrients from the twig would begin to wane...
and there it would be, still attached by cellular bonds; but those were now brittle with the onset of decay.
and then, a gust of wind, and that bond was broken. now the brittle thing gave in to the force of ever present gravity, physcially held aloft by the impact of millions of atoms of gas in the atmosphere rushing along in that selfsame gust; leaf spiralling ever downward, but not to the earth, no, not at this time.
it fell, and came to rest at the junction of metal and glass, at the point where a car's hood met the windshield.
the driver got in, early morning. car started and began to move. of the little brown papery thing no attention was paid; there, lying just before the wipers.
and then it caught the driver's eye. as the car got onto the highway and began to speed up, somehow the leaf did not blow away. there was a pocket of still air there, at the junction of the hood and windshield just before the wipers.
somehow this little observation made the driver smile. wonder how long the leaf will stay there? all the way to the office, perhaps.
but then, circumstances demanded an abrupt lane change, and of a sudden the leaf was gone.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
some accidental mornings
i'm not sure i mentioned this before, but ever since i got the deed of sale for the car, it seems to me that nearly everything else on the wild streets has a propensity for hurling it/themselves in front of me.
...either that or i'm not paying adequate attention.
take yesterday, for example. my commute from makati to alabang requires that i use the south superhighway cloverleaf interchange at edsa. to that end, i take a few turns in the innner streets till i get to a point just shy of the onramp of the bridge. now, this being a place where drivers operate on the notion that giving way is an alien concept, getting on the onramp can be an exciting thing indeed between the cars rushing for the side road to take them to edsa and the vehicles committed to getting on the bridge with all speed unabated.
so: i get car in position, look left for a reasonable opening that won't require me to gun the engine to get into the traffic flow...
just as i get the car moving, and swing my head to the right so that i can see where i'm going, there's a guy on a bicycle directly in front of the car.
gaaah!
good thing i didn't jam on the gas. but that left my nerves queasy the entire drive to work.
must remember to look both ways all the time.
...
and today, on the corner of our street and evangelista, there was an accident between a 1992-era lancer and the previous generation cr-v. based on the geometry, the cr-v was crossing evangelista, and the lancer was in either no mood or condition to give way, resulting in the mitsubishi mashing its front against the left front quarter of the honda. the impact must have been significant, as the car's front had crumpled to the front wheels.
on reflection, perhaps the lancer was overtaking one of the jeepneys that habitually clog that portion of evangelista that choose not to get in line and then crawl along, picking up passengers. if that was the case, it then becomes no surprise that the cr-v and lancer had their "meeting". if not, and it was the result of the no-give-way mentality, then that's all the more unfortunate.
either way, for all you drivers out there: look both ways, and drive defensively...
...either that or i'm not paying adequate attention.
take yesterday, for example. my commute from makati to alabang requires that i use the south superhighway cloverleaf interchange at edsa. to that end, i take a few turns in the innner streets till i get to a point just shy of the onramp of the bridge. now, this being a place where drivers operate on the notion that giving way is an alien concept, getting on the onramp can be an exciting thing indeed between the cars rushing for the side road to take them to edsa and the vehicles committed to getting on the bridge with all speed unabated.
so: i get car in position, look left for a reasonable opening that won't require me to gun the engine to get into the traffic flow...
just as i get the car moving, and swing my head to the right so that i can see where i'm going, there's a guy on a bicycle directly in front of the car.
gaaah!
good thing i didn't jam on the gas. but that left my nerves queasy the entire drive to work.
must remember to look both ways all the time.
...
and today, on the corner of our street and evangelista, there was an accident between a 1992-era lancer and the previous generation cr-v. based on the geometry, the cr-v was crossing evangelista, and the lancer was in either no mood or condition to give way, resulting in the mitsubishi mashing its front against the left front quarter of the honda. the impact must have been significant, as the car's front had crumpled to the front wheels.
on reflection, perhaps the lancer was overtaking one of the jeepneys that habitually clog that portion of evangelista that choose not to get in line and then crawl along, picking up passengers. if that was the case, it then becomes no surprise that the cr-v and lancer had their "meeting". if not, and it was the result of the no-give-way mentality, then that's all the more unfortunate.
either way, for all you drivers out there: look both ways, and drive defensively...
Saturday, October 13, 2007
perhaps not wise...
...to continue eating at a place we call charcoal
it's a burger joint near the office, and i'd say the burgers are decent enough; the rest of the menu i really can't speak much of - other than to say, perhaps, that if you're hungry, it will do.
at the very least it's a bit different from the daily fare at the other eateries on the street.
now, this is not the first time that elements of an insect-like persuasion have been in or near food in charcoal: once before, there was a tiny roach in someone's coffee...
but this was a sort of eye-opener, as if the roach-coffee wasn't enough.
just had lunch there, and my technical co-worker's order arrived first, a roast beef burger. as he's eating, i notice another small roach on a walkabout, antennae twitching as it obviously smelled the food. now, there's a bit of tilework on charcoal's interior, and to this my eye was drawn.
first, one, then two and then more pairs of antennae began popping out of the bottom of the tile band on the wall. i stopped counting at 8 pairs and we then moved to another table.
...apparently, a regimen of regular insecticide application may not be part of the place's operational must-do's...
but that's just an assumption on my part given the evidence this day.
so it's either mcdo or hotshots or brothers for a burger fix from now on...
it's a burger joint near the office, and i'd say the burgers are decent enough; the rest of the menu i really can't speak much of - other than to say, perhaps, that if you're hungry, it will do.
at the very least it's a bit different from the daily fare at the other eateries on the street.
now, this is not the first time that elements of an insect-like persuasion have been in or near food in charcoal: once before, there was a tiny roach in someone's coffee...
but this was a sort of eye-opener, as if the roach-coffee wasn't enough.
just had lunch there, and my technical co-worker's order arrived first, a roast beef burger. as he's eating, i notice another small roach on a walkabout, antennae twitching as it obviously smelled the food. now, there's a bit of tilework on charcoal's interior, and to this my eye was drawn.
first, one, then two and then more pairs of antennae began popping out of the bottom of the tile band on the wall. i stopped counting at 8 pairs and we then moved to another table.
...apparently, a regimen of regular insecticide application may not be part of the place's operational must-do's...
but that's just an assumption on my part given the evidence this day.
so it's either mcdo or hotshots or brothers for a burger fix from now on...
Saturday, September 22, 2007
car.want.attention.NOW
the car is, for want of a better word, good.
i suppose one could say that it's been quite good to me (in addition to being good for me, in the sense that mobility is a good thing, mostly).
...never mind the gas cost and maintenance and registration and stuff that's part of the car-owning world...
...and speaking of maintenance, the car has only had two events of that nature in my limited ownership experience of it. the first time was on santolan coming home from a visit to the mum. the clutch went to the floor and stayed there. some pumping of the pedal got it unstuck, and the car was drivable long enough to get to makati and finally became immobile as i parked in front of the apartment there.
long story short, had it towed to the casa, incidentally near santolan, clutch master cylinder replaced, and working well to this day (knock on wood).
today, as i turned into the street where our office is, shifted to first, rpms to 2000, let clutch take up, and then back into the clutch to slow for the one and only hump on the street.
rpms maintained at 2000. hmm. prod the gas pedal. engine immediately dies.
um. start car. rev to 2000, let gas go. rpms sink to 1500.
okaaay. we've got a problem. get to office, unload bag, get back in car, and proceed to auto repair joints next to alabang town center.
on the way there, tried not to think too much of the sound of the car "idling" at 2000 rpm.
so, repair joint is open, good. describe the symptoms, and go and have breakfast.
coming back, they say the car is fixed - they jigged about with something called a "co"? and vacuum, and lubricated something or other.
while we were there, i remembered something that another corolla-owning officemate had recounted, something about the engine supports and a feedback vibration loop in clutch actuation.
well, since i was there already, might as well have it checked. bingo, one of the four supports was broken, and visibly so. no option there, replace.
and the morning goes by waiting for the part to come in.
i'd also had the aircon looked at, but the quotation is kinda steep, so i'm holding that off till i have a reasonable fund buffer.
going back, i still have some juddering in the clutch when engaging first on slight uphills. its either me or the clutch, but might as well add a clutch checkup to the list of repairs for the next time.
later we'll see if the fix to the carb holds...
i suppose one could say that it's been quite good to me (in addition to being good for me, in the sense that mobility is a good thing, mostly).
...never mind the gas cost and maintenance and registration and stuff that's part of the car-owning world...
...and speaking of maintenance, the car has only had two events of that nature in my limited ownership experience of it. the first time was on santolan coming home from a visit to the mum. the clutch went to the floor and stayed there. some pumping of the pedal got it unstuck, and the car was drivable long enough to get to makati and finally became immobile as i parked in front of the apartment there.
long story short, had it towed to the casa, incidentally near santolan, clutch master cylinder replaced, and working well to this day (knock on wood).
today, as i turned into the street where our office is, shifted to first, rpms to 2000, let clutch take up, and then back into the clutch to slow for the one and only hump on the street.
rpms maintained at 2000. hmm. prod the gas pedal. engine immediately dies.
um. start car. rev to 2000, let gas go. rpms sink to 1500.
okaaay. we've got a problem. get to office, unload bag, get back in car, and proceed to auto repair joints next to alabang town center.
on the way there, tried not to think too much of the sound of the car "idling" at 2000 rpm.
so, repair joint is open, good. describe the symptoms, and go and have breakfast.
coming back, they say the car is fixed - they jigged about with something called a "co"? and vacuum, and lubricated something or other.
while we were there, i remembered something that another corolla-owning officemate had recounted, something about the engine supports and a feedback vibration loop in clutch actuation.
well, since i was there already, might as well have it checked. bingo, one of the four supports was broken, and visibly so. no option there, replace.
and the morning goes by waiting for the part to come in.
i'd also had the aircon looked at, but the quotation is kinda steep, so i'm holding that off till i have a reasonable fund buffer.
going back, i still have some juddering in the clutch when engaging first on slight uphills. its either me or the clutch, but might as well add a clutch checkup to the list of repairs for the next time.
later we'll see if the fix to the carb holds...
Friday, September 07, 2007
on the fifth day
...of the 10-Month Project.
backtrack. on day 3, my mind was mush.
today, as 9 am rolled in, i heard the sound of a stream of fluid onto a soft surface. turned to look, and there was a thin line(?) of water coming from the edge of an aircon access panel overhead, and it was pattering onto a corner of the sofa/bed that i have behind me.
get sofa/bed out of the way, call downstairs to locate utility man; who grabs a pail from the last (unused) row and places it under the leak.
now, this aircon has been running since the start of the week. used to be that i generally would turn it off when i go home, but lately, as eleven rolls around i am in too much haste to be away that i've neglected this little ritual. so it seems that leaving the aircon on 24/5 (so far), means some sort of drainage problem for condensation in the unit.
so: before leaving, turn off aircon.
other than that, the only news to report is the success of a little personal programming project that i hatched up over the past three days - automating a potentially tedious task (which involves typing essential information that is to be overlaid on rendered animation .avi files - for director's benefit when viewing projects).
i now have a mongrel script that takes the information from a text file and composites it onto the .avi in question, at the same time scaling the output and encoding it into quicktime (for a better fit with the mac editing station and software).
...and there we are. day five, and i await further stuff for edit...
backtrack. on day 3, my mind was mush.
today, as 9 am rolled in, i heard the sound of a stream of fluid onto a soft surface. turned to look, and there was a thin line(?) of water coming from the edge of an aircon access panel overhead, and it was pattering onto a corner of the sofa/bed that i have behind me.
get sofa/bed out of the way, call downstairs to locate utility man; who grabs a pail from the last (unused) row and places it under the leak.
now, this aircon has been running since the start of the week. used to be that i generally would turn it off when i go home, but lately, as eleven rolls around i am in too much haste to be away that i've neglected this little ritual. so it seems that leaving the aircon on 24/5 (so far), means some sort of drainage problem for condensation in the unit.
so: before leaving, turn off aircon.
other than that, the only news to report is the success of a little personal programming project that i hatched up over the past three days - automating a potentially tedious task (which involves typing essential information that is to be overlaid on rendered animation .avi files - for director's benefit when viewing projects).
i now have a mongrel script that takes the information from a text file and composites it onto the .avi in question, at the same time scaling the output and encoding it into quicktime (for a better fit with the mac editing station and software).
...and there we are. day five, and i await further stuff for edit...
Monday, September 03, 2007
pressure
...so to speak, is on.
and now, the work/blog equation shifts firmly into the "work" side; although at present, as the edit-person in this enterprise my main inputs are at the beginning and mostly end of project arcs, i still await the pieces of the puzzles that i need to put together to begin the storyreels.
in the meantime: i have migrated the workstations on our floor to the latest version of the render management software (a sunday implementation - best done when no one else is working, naturally); the extant 12 render farm units have had some tweaking done to some aspect of their operating systems.
also, i have gotten some traction out of a tricky bid to prove a concept workable for a business i seem to be a part of building. yay for me. it involved apache/php/perl -- which meant a whole lot of online searching for code snippets to accomplish what it was that needed proving -- and appparently it was proved enough for the powers that be. now it is for the programmers in the other divisions to expound on the concept (though i do hope they consult back to us to make sure that they're not barking up the wrong tree -- the barking/wrong tree part is frightfully easy to do, and i've seen how that works first hand, in the old company. didn't help that the lead programmer in that effort was so intractable about his code over the needs of the user.).
anyway, onward!
and now, the work/blog equation shifts firmly into the "work" side; although at present, as the edit-person in this enterprise my main inputs are at the beginning and mostly end of project arcs, i still await the pieces of the puzzles that i need to put together to begin the storyreels.
in the meantime: i have migrated the workstations on our floor to the latest version of the render management software (a sunday implementation - best done when no one else is working, naturally); the extant 12 render farm units have had some tweaking done to some aspect of their operating systems.
also, i have gotten some traction out of a tricky bid to prove a concept workable for a business i seem to be a part of building. yay for me. it involved apache/php/perl -- which meant a whole lot of online searching for code snippets to accomplish what it was that needed proving -- and appparently it was proved enough for the powers that be. now it is for the programmers in the other divisions to expound on the concept (though i do hope they consult back to us to make sure that they're not barking up the wrong tree -- the barking/wrong tree part is frightfully easy to do, and i've seen how that works first hand, in the old company. didn't help that the lead programmer in that effort was so intractable about his code over the needs of the user.).
anyway, onward!
Saturday, August 18, 2007
rain rain
that's the house on the corner of palosapis, and its reflection in the floodwaters...
its been raining like i've never remembered it these past few weeks. and the weatherpeople were on the cusp of declaring a drought. but that was before a couple of supertyphoons skirted the "philippine area of responsibility" typhoon tracking zone.
based on the tracks of the storms i've seen (two, so far), the storms coalesced, then began their westward journeys, and then bounced somehow, ending up in a more northward track heading to taiwan and/or japan's southernmost tip.
this, in some senses, is a good thing, seeing as the southern part of luzon has yet to recover from one of the storms of late last year - and these howlers are even more powerful than last typhoon seasons.
skirting or no, they seemed to have enough power to "intensify" a periodic weather phenomenon called the southwest monsoon which is active this time of year.
end result, rain. lots of it.
on a positive note, the dams that provide hydroelectric power to the luzon grid are now mostly over their critical levels, one dam in fact posting a water level rise of 14 meters over these past two weeks of monsoon rain.
...heck of a lot of rain, that.
amazing weather, truly. global warming? hard to ignore the signs.
...such as a flooded street (the incessant downpours are also hard to miss).
Monday, August 13, 2007
atmospheric astronomica
this is about something called the annual perseid meteor shower.
it was scheduled (well, as schedule-friendly as these things can be) to peak the night of august 12-13, although supposedly, it could also be seen early morning on the 12th.
the mechanics are, on the surface, simple enough. the earth, in its yearly sojourn around the sun, runs into the dust left behind by periodic comet temple-tuttle.
now, imagine that. the earth in its relative hugeness, running into a trail left behind by a dirty snowball a few meters wide, and this has been happening for years beyond count (well, years before someone noticed that the shower of seemed to originate in the constellation perseus -- hence perseid meteors).
not sure about the orbital mechanics preventing the earth from running into the comet temple-tuttle itself, but that may be fodder for another post, somewhere if ever down the line...
anyway, set the alarm for 3am sunday, take a hell of a long time to get up, decide to push through with the plan (having earlier informed others by text of the probabilities of the show come 4am). drag long-suffering makati housemate along, and drive to the sucat interchange and cross to the eastern service road, parking by a road next to the commercial outpost i refer to by the presence of a figaro's on its topmost deck.
the eastern sky is dark and cloudfree, and i can't make out where to look for the constellation even with my handy-dandy sky chart. also, the place gives me the creeps, as the road down to an unknown village is unlit except by reflected floodlight from the commercial establishment's parking lot.
failure of nerve, and decide to drive on to the office where, by the light of the other buildings finally discover a means to identify the constellation of choice.
sum total, see no meteors; though glenn did see a satellite of some sort, and this area being where it is as part of the airport's holding pattern, several airplanes going to a fro.
get back home as the sun rises, and check the web. yahoo informs that the main peak should be 9-sunrise sunday night.
now, if it's a good enough shower, it should be visible even in light-polluted makati...
...i recall when living in mandaluyong that there was the beginning of an excellent meteor shower (though don't recall the month) with an intriguing effect: almost as soon as the shower began in earnest, all of a sudden, the sky clouded over.
sunday night, the sky was completely cloudy -- i went outside periodically to check.
there was a strange effect, though. don't know for sure if the meteors had anything to do with it, but even in the absence of thunderstorms in the vicinity, cable reception got scrambled several times.
i do know that one way to track (and count) meteor activity, is to listen to the radio emissions they make as they get pulverized by the friction of their passage in the lower atmosphere. perhaps that emission during a storm is enough to scramble the digital signals from the cable company link satellites or something...
anyway, so much for that.
there's supposed to be another shower sometime in september -- have to look that up, and we'll see how that works out.
it was scheduled (well, as schedule-friendly as these things can be) to peak the night of august 12-13, although supposedly, it could also be seen early morning on the 12th.
the mechanics are, on the surface, simple enough. the earth, in its yearly sojourn around the sun, runs into the dust left behind by periodic comet temple-tuttle.
now, imagine that. the earth in its relative hugeness, running into a trail left behind by a dirty snowball a few meters wide, and this has been happening for years beyond count (well, years before someone noticed that the shower of seemed to originate in the constellation perseus -- hence perseid meteors).
not sure about the orbital mechanics preventing the earth from running into the comet temple-tuttle itself, but that may be fodder for another post, somewhere if ever down the line...
anyway, set the alarm for 3am sunday, take a hell of a long time to get up, decide to push through with the plan (having earlier informed others by text of the probabilities of the show come 4am). drag long-suffering makati housemate along, and drive to the sucat interchange and cross to the eastern service road, parking by a road next to the commercial outpost i refer to by the presence of a figaro's on its topmost deck.
the eastern sky is dark and cloudfree, and i can't make out where to look for the constellation even with my handy-dandy sky chart. also, the place gives me the creeps, as the road down to an unknown village is unlit except by reflected floodlight from the commercial establishment's parking lot.
failure of nerve, and decide to drive on to the office where, by the light of the other buildings finally discover a means to identify the constellation of choice.
sum total, see no meteors; though glenn did see a satellite of some sort, and this area being where it is as part of the airport's holding pattern, several airplanes going to a fro.
get back home as the sun rises, and check the web. yahoo informs that the main peak should be 9-sunrise sunday night.
now, if it's a good enough shower, it should be visible even in light-polluted makati...
...i recall when living in mandaluyong that there was the beginning of an excellent meteor shower (though don't recall the month) with an intriguing effect: almost as soon as the shower began in earnest, all of a sudden, the sky clouded over.
sunday night, the sky was completely cloudy -- i went outside periodically to check.
there was a strange effect, though. don't know for sure if the meteors had anything to do with it, but even in the absence of thunderstorms in the vicinity, cable reception got scrambled several times.
i do know that one way to track (and count) meteor activity, is to listen to the radio emissions they make as they get pulverized by the friction of their passage in the lower atmosphere. perhaps that emission during a storm is enough to scramble the digital signals from the cable company link satellites or something...
anyway, so much for that.
there's supposed to be another shower sometime in september -- have to look that up, and we'll see how that works out.
Monday, August 06, 2007
3:30am, saturday and sometime thereafter
...the doorbell goes off. well, it's a buzzer, actually. and it's situated next to the light for the "backyard" area, and therefore directly under my window.
jump off my sofa/bed; lights, get a shirt on, fumble for keys. make it to the door, but none of the keys seem to work in the deadbolt. geez. upstairs again, get my car keys (which for sure has the front door key too), fumble that into the deadbolt and get out.
all the while, the buzzer stays on.
in this haze, i'm wondering what the hell this could be all about. heck, green car of unit "d" isn't even in, and i've parked on the street so that i don't have to be woken to let the green car park next to their unit.
make it to the gate...
...there's someone there, and he's managed to open the pedestrian gate. he grabs (rather unsteadily), a styro cup of take-out coffee from the ground and then does a double-take as he sees me standing there looking at him.
then he makes a sign with his free hand, index and middle finger up, but crossed one behind the other? as he makes his unsteady way past me, there's a whiff of a smell i associate with someone having drunk quite a bit of alcoholic beverages...
he goes to the door of unit "b," gets keys from somewhere on his person, and lets himself in.
...what the heck was the doorbell all about, then?
anyway, just to be sure, go into the street to check on the car.
get back into the apartment, have difficulty going to sleep.
...
fast forward to today. from makati, headed first to pilar to get a change of pants (there was a hole in a, shall we say, strategic, location on the pair i'd had on -- needed to exchange it for one that was less, um, hole-y). :-)
get into apartment, and pump motor goes on. eh? knock on doors, no sign of occupancy. got changed, and began to check the cr's out, to see if there's anything amiss with the plumbing. downstairs cr, check. upstairs, check. master bedroom cr -- the faucet in the sink is running; a minor stream, but more than a trickle. hmm. wonder how long it's been left this way. likely whole weekend. oh well.
leave apartment, locking up, just in time to see a strangely familiar figure leave unit "b". hmm.
by the time i get the car out to mercury, he's midway down the street and a tricycle has just ignored his hail.
stop the car and wait. as he passes, i ask if he's on his way out and he needs a lift.
thinking back, this must have been so strange; but we get past the oddness of it when i ask if he's from our street, and he mistakes me for the guy from unit "d", but i say i'm from unit "c" and off we go.
turns out that the 3:30am buzzer was his brother, louie (and he was plastered). this guy's name is rex, and they're all siblings in unit "b," which is really his sister's, but their mother doesn't want her all alone out here, hence the brotherly companionship.
rex does apologize for the early saturday rousing, and we're at the pilar exit to alabang zapote, and off he goes to wherever he works (which is in pasig, didn't ask specifically where).
and thus begins another day at work.
jump off my sofa/bed; lights, get a shirt on, fumble for keys. make it to the door, but none of the keys seem to work in the deadbolt. geez. upstairs again, get my car keys (which for sure has the front door key too), fumble that into the deadbolt and get out.
all the while, the buzzer stays on.
in this haze, i'm wondering what the hell this could be all about. heck, green car of unit "d" isn't even in, and i've parked on the street so that i don't have to be woken to let the green car park next to their unit.
make it to the gate...
...there's someone there, and he's managed to open the pedestrian gate. he grabs (rather unsteadily), a styro cup of take-out coffee from the ground and then does a double-take as he sees me standing there looking at him.
then he makes a sign with his free hand, index and middle finger up, but crossed one behind the other? as he makes his unsteady way past me, there's a whiff of a smell i associate with someone having drunk quite a bit of alcoholic beverages...
he goes to the door of unit "b," gets keys from somewhere on his person, and lets himself in.
...what the heck was the doorbell all about, then?
anyway, just to be sure, go into the street to check on the car.
get back into the apartment, have difficulty going to sleep.
...
fast forward to today. from makati, headed first to pilar to get a change of pants (there was a hole in a, shall we say, strategic, location on the pair i'd had on -- needed to exchange it for one that was less, um, hole-y). :-)
get into apartment, and pump motor goes on. eh? knock on doors, no sign of occupancy. got changed, and began to check the cr's out, to see if there's anything amiss with the plumbing. downstairs cr, check. upstairs, check. master bedroom cr -- the faucet in the sink is running; a minor stream, but more than a trickle. hmm. wonder how long it's been left this way. likely whole weekend. oh well.
leave apartment, locking up, just in time to see a strangely familiar figure leave unit "b". hmm.
by the time i get the car out to mercury, he's midway down the street and a tricycle has just ignored his hail.
stop the car and wait. as he passes, i ask if he's on his way out and he needs a lift.
thinking back, this must have been so strange; but we get past the oddness of it when i ask if he's from our street, and he mistakes me for the guy from unit "d", but i say i'm from unit "c" and off we go.
turns out that the 3:30am buzzer was his brother, louie (and he was plastered). this guy's name is rex, and they're all siblings in unit "b," which is really his sister's, but their mother doesn't want her all alone out here, hence the brotherly companionship.
rex does apologize for the early saturday rousing, and we're at the pilar exit to alabang zapote, and off he goes to wherever he works (which is in pasig, didn't ask specifically where).
and thus begins another day at work.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
electrotomfoolery
the pilar apartment is kinda shy a few electrical outlets. this was they way its always been, ever since we moved in.
case in point: the ground floor has provisions for about seven power outlets, but only two of them were installed with the appropriate receptacles (one in the kitchen, the other beside the front door).
now, having gotten my hands on a tv and dvd player (courtesy of makati roomie glenn), it behooved me to attempt to make use of the other blank outlets. so i got a bunch of receptacles just like the ones already installed (at a reasonable cost, seemingly).
one day, went home a little earlier than normal to maximize the sunlight (have to turn off the power mains before working on electricals, after all). get tools ready, open one of the packages...
...hmm... ...no screws...
after a while, it occurred to me that these units were designed to take solid wire -- you just had to plug the end into the provided holes (and hoped that the mechanism inside would grasp the wire firmly).
okay. opened one of the outlet blanks, and looking at the coiled wires within -- and my resolve left me. best leave this to the (semi) professionals. off to unit "a," and the landlords then. this time, no beer (thankfully!) as the brothers were on their way out to pick up a childhood friend who'd appeared out of the blue after 20 years...
electrician was not available on such short notice, but their "multi-talented" handyman was about (he could open car doors without the key...).
hmm...
anyway, lets see how he does. by this time, though, the sun had gone down, so it would be an electrical job by flashlight.
i showed him the power outlet in question, and the destined receptacle.
he pulled the wires out of the cavity, and with a pair of pliers, cut off two lengths of wire from the coils within. i know the pliers had insulated handles, but still...
turns out the house uses stranded wire. he stripped the insulation off the ends of the wires he had liberated from the wall, and used these to bridge the connections between the two sockets in the receptacle. at this time, he asked for the power mains to be shut, so i did that.
working by the light of my handy-dandy ledlenser flashlight (very useful thing indeed, many thanks to jo who made the purchase possible - by being on hand to loan me the cash. hehehe), the handyman proceeded to install the receptacle. he cut off more lengths of the wire, and essentially spliced the receptacle into the wiring circuit: power going into one plug, across the bridging wires, and out the other plug (so to speak). then he pushed the entire assemblage into the cavity.
power mains back on, and test.
right socket, fan runs fine.
left socket, i think i hear the muted sound of sparks, and the compressor of the ref behind me begins to make a chugging sound. i hastily unplug the ref, and thank the handyman for his work...
and away he goes.
okay, working quickly -- power mains: off. remove cover plate, unscrew receptacle...
i said before that the receptacle is designed for solid wire...
what he'd done was to take the stranded wire ends and twisted it, and then plugged that into the requisite holes in the backs of the plug assemblies.
however it happened, as soon as i got the receptacle freed, one of the "out" connections had come free...
oh boy...
(to be continued)
case in point: the ground floor has provisions for about seven power outlets, but only two of them were installed with the appropriate receptacles (one in the kitchen, the other beside the front door).
now, having gotten my hands on a tv and dvd player (courtesy of makati roomie glenn), it behooved me to attempt to make use of the other blank outlets. so i got a bunch of receptacles just like the ones already installed (at a reasonable cost, seemingly).
one day, went home a little earlier than normal to maximize the sunlight (have to turn off the power mains before working on electricals, after all). get tools ready, open one of the packages...
...hmm... ...no screws...
after a while, it occurred to me that these units were designed to take solid wire -- you just had to plug the end into the provided holes (and hoped that the mechanism inside would grasp the wire firmly).
okay. opened one of the outlet blanks, and looking at the coiled wires within -- and my resolve left me. best leave this to the (semi) professionals. off to unit "a," and the landlords then. this time, no beer (thankfully!) as the brothers were on their way out to pick up a childhood friend who'd appeared out of the blue after 20 years...
electrician was not available on such short notice, but their "multi-talented" handyman was about (he could open car doors without the key...).
hmm...
anyway, lets see how he does. by this time, though, the sun had gone down, so it would be an electrical job by flashlight.
i showed him the power outlet in question, and the destined receptacle.
he pulled the wires out of the cavity, and with a pair of pliers, cut off two lengths of wire from the coils within. i know the pliers had insulated handles, but still...
turns out the house uses stranded wire. he stripped the insulation off the ends of the wires he had liberated from the wall, and used these to bridge the connections between the two sockets in the receptacle. at this time, he asked for the power mains to be shut, so i did that.
working by the light of my handy-dandy ledlenser flashlight (very useful thing indeed, many thanks to jo who made the purchase possible - by being on hand to loan me the cash. hehehe), the handyman proceeded to install the receptacle. he cut off more lengths of the wire, and essentially spliced the receptacle into the wiring circuit: power going into one plug, across the bridging wires, and out the other plug (so to speak). then he pushed the entire assemblage into the cavity.
power mains back on, and test.
right socket, fan runs fine.
left socket, i think i hear the muted sound of sparks, and the compressor of the ref behind me begins to make a chugging sound. i hastily unplug the ref, and thank the handyman for his work...
and away he goes.
okay, working quickly -- power mains: off. remove cover plate, unscrew receptacle...
i said before that the receptacle is designed for solid wire...
what he'd done was to take the stranded wire ends and twisted it, and then plugged that into the requisite holes in the backs of the plug assemblies.
however it happened, as soon as i got the receptacle freed, one of the "out" connections had come free...
oh boy...
(to be continued)
Friday, July 13, 2007
car (un)economy
perhaps its a survival mechanism (or just old age, hehehe), but i do have a tendency to literally not think too hard on many matters (although i do get tripped up every now and again and edge into semi-obsessiveness).
case in point: car's fuel economy.
have had the car for a while now, but i never (up to a few weeks ago, at least) tried to figure out just how many kilometers per liter of gasoline the thing actually consumes.
the concept is simple: at an opportunity to fill the fuel tank, zero out the trip odometer; and then at the next full tank, note the number of liters put in, and divide the present odometer reading by that amount. hey, presto! kilometers traveled per liter.
now, the first time i seriously tried this, it came to a point where i needed to partially load gasoline (else the tank would run dry) before i could afford a full load. so what i did was to sum up all the fuel amounts (two partial fills, and a full tank), and divide the distance traveled by that figure.
the number that came back was low. very low.
this led me to question the approach, but for the life of me i couldn't shake the notion that there was some error in the logic of the sum of partial and full loads to divide distance by.
so, next pay period, take the car to 1/4th tank, then fill.
take distance, divide by fill amount. um.
the previous figure: 7.4Km/L. this time: 7.5Km/L.
so, either approach works (depending on available cash), but either way, the car guzzles gas.
there are a bunch of options available (when spare cash is available, of course): a new carb (from really cheap to breath-takingly expensive), that "xaos super turbocharger" fuel-saving gizmo, or a full on engine change (about as much as the hyper-expensive extra-special model-specific carb).
or: drive less.
hmm...
case in point: car's fuel economy.
have had the car for a while now, but i never (up to a few weeks ago, at least) tried to figure out just how many kilometers per liter of gasoline the thing actually consumes.
the concept is simple: at an opportunity to fill the fuel tank, zero out the trip odometer; and then at the next full tank, note the number of liters put in, and divide the present odometer reading by that amount. hey, presto! kilometers traveled per liter.
now, the first time i seriously tried this, it came to a point where i needed to partially load gasoline (else the tank would run dry) before i could afford a full load. so what i did was to sum up all the fuel amounts (two partial fills, and a full tank), and divide the distance traveled by that figure.
the number that came back was low. very low.
this led me to question the approach, but for the life of me i couldn't shake the notion that there was some error in the logic of the sum of partial and full loads to divide distance by.
so, next pay period, take the car to 1/4th tank, then fill.
take distance, divide by fill amount. um.
the previous figure: 7.4Km/L. this time: 7.5Km/L.
so, either approach works (depending on available cash), but either way, the car guzzles gas.
there are a bunch of options available (when spare cash is available, of course): a new carb (from really cheap to breath-takingly expensive), that "xaos super turbocharger" fuel-saving gizmo, or a full on engine change (about as much as the hyper-expensive extra-special model-specific carb).
or: drive less.
hmm...
Thursday, July 12, 2007
g-live and the k310i
this is quite irritating.
"g-live" is a free globe service that pops news and public service announcements on the phone (but doesn't save them in the phone memory -- supposed to be a "good" thing).
i'd never heard of it before (though web research indicates that's its been in existence since last year).
first indication that something was afoot was yesterday, when the phone popped up two "message sent" screens though i'd not typed anything up, nor had i anything in my outbox.
next thing i know, these info things start arriving; news, and stuff. several times a minute.
nothing on the globe web site mentions g-live and how to get rid of it, though g-live itself seems to give hints.
catch being this: you're supposed to go to the globe services menu, select g-live and select activate or somesuch.
well, the k310i, for something that globe sold, has no globe services menu.
i'd just charged the phone early yesterday, and now the phone's down to a third of battery capacity; all because the phone lights up (naturally) with the damned multiple messages per minute.
bloody hell.
"g-live" is a free globe service that pops news and public service announcements on the phone (but doesn't save them in the phone memory -- supposed to be a "good" thing).
i'd never heard of it before (though web research indicates that's its been in existence since last year).
first indication that something was afoot was yesterday, when the phone popped up two "message sent" screens though i'd not typed anything up, nor had i anything in my outbox.
next thing i know, these info things start arriving; news, and stuff. several times a minute.
nothing on the globe web site mentions g-live and how to get rid of it, though g-live itself seems to give hints.
catch being this: you're supposed to go to the globe services menu, select g-live and select activate or somesuch.
well, the k310i, for something that globe sold, has no globe services menu.
i'd just charged the phone early yesterday, and now the phone's down to a third of battery capacity; all because the phone lights up (naturally) with the damned multiple messages per minute.
bloody hell.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
beer fueled rent payment conversations
charlie the landlord wasn't home the day before, so the payment of rent had to wait a day. inasmuch as that day would be a wednesday (day before coding day), i elected to go home early (better to sleep early and all that).
park car, enter compound, their door is open. okay, charlie's in. requisite greetings, and invitation to have a seat while receipt is made. someone who i've seen before (turns out to be charlie's nephew) comes in and...
...beer.
this time, i politely managed to nurse just one beer until way after it had gone flat; whereas they (the nephew who had instigated the early beer consumption had drunk two and had left - to be replaced by julius) had upwards of three or so apiece.
jose had dropped by the apartment for some stuff, and had gone back to the office; and i was still nursing my beer.
haze of conversations half-remembered, except one story that's just too scary to commit to these cyberspace pages. on other fronts, charlie'd been to south africa in the times of apartheid, seen the "big pit" at kimberly... nephew asked what i do for a living and drew a complete blank when i described my line(s) of work...
ten o'clock, and i made my exit...
strangely enough, sleep did not come easily last night.
had to drag myself out of bed, got to work, slept, had breakfast - and now the headache is coming on.
...must find a better way to deal with visits to unit "a" (just say no?) or, as jose suggests, bring my libation of choice handy when i do go drop by...
park car, enter compound, their door is open. okay, charlie's in. requisite greetings, and invitation to have a seat while receipt is made. someone who i've seen before (turns out to be charlie's nephew) comes in and...
...beer.
this time, i politely managed to nurse just one beer until way after it had gone flat; whereas they (the nephew who had instigated the early beer consumption had drunk two and had left - to be replaced by julius) had upwards of three or so apiece.
jose had dropped by the apartment for some stuff, and had gone back to the office; and i was still nursing my beer.
haze of conversations half-remembered, except one story that's just too scary to commit to these cyberspace pages. on other fronts, charlie'd been to south africa in the times of apartheid, seen the "big pit" at kimberly... nephew asked what i do for a living and drew a complete blank when i described my line(s) of work...
ten o'clock, and i made my exit...
strangely enough, sleep did not come easily last night.
had to drag myself out of bed, got to work, slept, had breakfast - and now the headache is coming on.
...must find a better way to deal with visits to unit "a" (just say no?) or, as jose suggests, bring my libation of choice handy when i do go drop by...
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
first encounter
...with william gibson's neuromancer.
it was the late eighties, i can't be any more certain than that. at that time, i was hanging out at a little "computer store" in b.f. homes paranaque that sold (nudge nudge, wink wink) computer games. this was also the near the opening of the p.c. age, but at this time it was already the p.c.-xt that was becoming the must-have. 8 or 16 megahertz, as i recall (and where are we now? gigahertz). the 5 1/4" floppy was still the medium of choice (360Kb capacity), the 3.5" microfloppy at 1.2Mb still rather rare.
at that time, the games were still very much MS-DOS based, and one of them in particular caught my fancy. oh, there were the lord british ultima things, and the leisure suit / space quest stuff, but this game was different.
the game was neuromancer, and it was published by interplay.
i'd always been interested in computers ever since i saw the texas instruments ti-99/4a way back in '83 (third year high school), and i'd used a commodore 64 while working as an encoder for a pastor at a local church; but their games were more reflex-based (and my reflexes in that regard suck. hehehe).
this game was different. it was more cerebral, in a way (although it did have its arcade-like moments - especially when dealing with a.i.'s). kinda like a mystery (though no dead bodies), with a computer hacker as a protagonist. this concept clicked with me and while the graphics were clunky (EGA resolution at best), the challenge of upgrading "your" hacking skills while uncovering the mystery both inside and outside the "matrix" certainly gelled with my nerdish and science fiction inclinations.
all i can say in hindsight is that it certainly took a good chunk of my time getting to the end of the game...
funny side note: computers in those times had a "turbo" button. this was one of those games where activating that function actually sped up gameplay. not fun when dealing with a.i.'s out to "flatline" you.
they never did a sequel, though.
for me, the sequel to the story was to happen many years later - i found the novel on which the game was based on.
and that's another story.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
.75 over
sunday afternoon was devoted almost exclusively to rearranging the ground floor furniture (and the dirt underneath said items) to finally set up (partially) a home entertainment system that was obtained from a barkada gone stateside.
to that end, a huge, semi-heirloom buffet table was set up next to the ground floor windows to take the full weight of the 29-inch tv - and all the other furniture in the room had to be relocated elsewhere to accommodate.
that effort ended at a late hour, and after that i had some data wrangling to do: moving gigabytes of data from and to my usb hard disk (semi-reference material for a project of ours).
read: slept late.
monday's dawn, and early-ish to work. spent most of the day figuring out why my dvd burns of an esteemed gentleman's data kept dying on verification. turns out that the media he'd purchased would fail if the data exceeded 4GB in size... ...funny for something marked 4.7GB capacity, but you get what you pay for.
now, there was this late movement afoot to watch the (likely temporary) re-release of "meet the robinsons," but i was feeling the siren calls of the land of nod and hence decided to go home at dismissal time to get a sleep on.
...the best laid plans of mice...
no sooner had i closed the apartment gate behind me and passed the door of unit "a," than the screen door opens. it's charlie, one of the landlord brothers. in the course of the pleasantry exchange, i decide that now would be a good time to discuss a cable connection for the 21-inch tv displaced by the events described earlier. he invites me in and we continue the conversation - and he sets an opened beer before me.
i've been invited to their little drinking sessions before (often when they see me pass by their door on my way in), but i've almost always found a way to beg off, bar once before: they were commemorating their late father's birthday, and i could find no way to excuse myself. that time, they served vodka with lime, and between the three of us (two brothers and me), we polished off a whole bottle of absolut.
okaay...
i do warn him that one beer and i'm a goner...
anyway, his brother julius arrives, and their drinking begins in earnest. me, i manage to nurse a beer, and 3/4ths of the next after that.
wide ranging conversation. salient points: their ancestry is of pre-world war european aristocracy - genealogy was purportedly traced back to even napoleon bonaparte. charlie is 62, julius is 50 (and youngest of the brood). i'm still not sure what charlie does for a living, but he certainly does travel a lot. julius is a purser at an airline where the ownership adheres to a particular accounting precept of not releasing money on mondays...
ten o'clock rolls around (my, how time flies), and i make my semi-staggering exit. at this point, i've gone over my previous one-bottle-instant-sleep limit.
i drink two glasses of water before turning in, and sleep comes easily.
but the headache on waking up, oh man. gonna be a loong day. hmm. i forget if we came to an agreement about the cable connection. oh well...
Thursday, June 21, 2007
little things: update
...on the topic of recharging:
i generally charged my nokia phones without much consideration (in the days before lithium-ion batteries, it was supposedly fearfully important to fully discharge the battery before recharging lest the dreaded "memory effect" rendered the battery functionally useless - which it did, in time, regardless: it was just how much time you could keep the battery alive before replacing it).
the k310i is different. recently, i noticed that even if i kept the phone plugged to the charger overnight, it would never give the "battery charged" indication text. the battery icon in the top right corner would just have this "lightning" zigzag graphic overlaid on it - and it wouldn't go away so long as the charger was connected.
now, not having read the manual thoroughly (my eyes tend to glaze over while doing this), i decided to test a notion that popped in my head. what if charging the phone was similar to charging a cybershot battery in-camera?
so: turn phone off, plug charger, connect to phone.
in about two hours, the screen lit up with the the battery charged text.
...hmmm. i wonder if this is going to be a boon or a bane...
i generally charged my nokia phones without much consideration (in the days before lithium-ion batteries, it was supposedly fearfully important to fully discharge the battery before recharging lest the dreaded "memory effect" rendered the battery functionally useless - which it did, in time, regardless: it was just how much time you could keep the battery alive before replacing it).
the k310i is different. recently, i noticed that even if i kept the phone plugged to the charger overnight, it would never give the "battery charged" indication text. the battery icon in the top right corner would just have this "lightning" zigzag graphic overlaid on it - and it wouldn't go away so long as the charger was connected.
now, not having read the manual thoroughly (my eyes tend to glaze over while doing this), i decided to test a notion that popped in my head. what if charging the phone was similar to charging a cybershot battery in-camera?
so: turn phone off, plug charger, connect to phone.
in about two hours, the screen lit up with the the battery charged text.
...hmmm. i wonder if this is going to be a boon or a bane...
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
road trip 20070611 part III
after the unlikely castle, we went on. still the same twisty road, but after a while, it began to straighten out. it was at this point in time that i noticed that together with a seeming lack of habitation on both sides of the road, there was also a singular lack of gasoline stations on this particular road. so: good road for daytime driving - not good for running out of gas or night driving (or running out of gas while driving there at night).
the night driving bit? there's something about the aiming mechanism of the right-hand headlamp - the beam is aimed down; i'd had it adjusted, but the thing is busted because before long, the beam was back to its droop. so i'm not too confident about driving in non-illuminated countryside roads with half of the car's illumination capability devoted to a distance about a couple of car lengths in front of me.
at any rate, once the road straightened out, we got to a t-junction which offered the choice: left - lemery/taal, right - calaca.
left it was. and then the signs: shell, petron, caltex some distance ahead. and jollibee, too.
there was a time i was using petron to fuel the car (i'd tried shell, but my unscientific impression was that i either got bad mileage, or somehow the stuff evaporated too quickly in the tropical climes of this country). petron lasted longer by the same impression, but the car would run roughly, especially cold. then, vaguely intrigued by the promises of a tv commercial, i tried caltex at last. hmm. car runs better. then there was the tune up. car ran even better.
hmm. can anything be said about all this fuel tomfoolery? perhaps i'd have to run some sort of benchmarks, but that'll take some doing (and i'd have to stick to a repeatable schedule in terms of driving). some other time, perhaps...
so, caltex it was, and it was also the last station before the arch proclaiming entry into lemery. put in 500 pesos of gas, and decided to take a leak as well. hint to future travelers: if you happen to use this gas station's cr, either put on insect repelling lotion beforehand, or bring a can of bug spray and blast the place before entry. mosquitoes, huge, and lots of them. peeing while surrounded by whole bunches of those things is... ...interesting... ...to say the least.
lemery then. from the standpoint of the main road, its not much to look at. similar in effect to what i think of as "strip towns" that seem to build along a main (provincial) highway where most everything flanks said artery. not much by way of striking anything.
side note - asking for directions. we stopped at a hardware place and glenn asked how to get to taal (just to be sure). we were told that all we had to do was turn left after the bridge. seemed simple enough... no, we didn't get lost, but we did pass a bridge. and there was an unmarked road leading left. could that have been it? the uncertainty kept me driving forward. perhaps we'd see a sign... ...which we did, at the very end of the road, just past another bridge. the thing about instructions is that there always seem to be assumptions about familiarity with local landmarks - an assumption that are likely wrong, else why ask for directions in the first place?
at any rate, we took the left turn, and hit paydirt. it felt like a time warp, as the houses flanking the road displayed their ancestral origins: primarily bahay-na-bato architecture, stonework lower stories surmounted by a wooden upper floor, some windows of which were still what looked like capiz shells in gridwork wooden frames. they were also quite notably brightly painted ones...
...not sure if that was the practice way back when, but it certainly livened up the place.
streets, though, were thoroughly modern, if narrow. well paved concrete, two lanes; and no sidewalk to speak of.
i was itching to take pictures, but there was no visible place to park the car to do so.
one right, one left, and suddenly that was it. the old town had fallen away, and modern bungalows (with signs advertising balisongs for sale) on either side.
okay, u-turn, back. i stopped just before the final turn back out, next to a park. glenn got out to ask the tambays where we could get to the church... turns out i was parked just before the ramp to the basilica (i wasn't sure if it was an entry or exit - it wasn't clearly marked which). good thing the car has a fairly tight turning radius, and i lumbered up the ramp in 1st gear.
and there it was, the taal basilica.
the night driving bit? there's something about the aiming mechanism of the right-hand headlamp - the beam is aimed down; i'd had it adjusted, but the thing is busted because before long, the beam was back to its droop. so i'm not too confident about driving in non-illuminated countryside roads with half of the car's illumination capability devoted to a distance about a couple of car lengths in front of me.
at any rate, once the road straightened out, we got to a t-junction which offered the choice: left - lemery/taal, right - calaca.
left it was. and then the signs: shell, petron, caltex some distance ahead. and jollibee, too.
there was a time i was using petron to fuel the car (i'd tried shell, but my unscientific impression was that i either got bad mileage, or somehow the stuff evaporated too quickly in the tropical climes of this country). petron lasted longer by the same impression, but the car would run roughly, especially cold. then, vaguely intrigued by the promises of a tv commercial, i tried caltex at last. hmm. car runs better. then there was the tune up. car ran even better.
hmm. can anything be said about all this fuel tomfoolery? perhaps i'd have to run some sort of benchmarks, but that'll take some doing (and i'd have to stick to a repeatable schedule in terms of driving). some other time, perhaps...
so, caltex it was, and it was also the last station before the arch proclaiming entry into lemery. put in 500 pesos of gas, and decided to take a leak as well. hint to future travelers: if you happen to use this gas station's cr, either put on insect repelling lotion beforehand, or bring a can of bug spray and blast the place before entry. mosquitoes, huge, and lots of them. peeing while surrounded by whole bunches of those things is... ...interesting... ...to say the least.
lemery then. from the standpoint of the main road, its not much to look at. similar in effect to what i think of as "strip towns" that seem to build along a main (provincial) highway where most everything flanks said artery. not much by way of striking anything.
side note - asking for directions. we stopped at a hardware place and glenn asked how to get to taal (just to be sure). we were told that all we had to do was turn left after the bridge. seemed simple enough... no, we didn't get lost, but we did pass a bridge. and there was an unmarked road leading left. could that have been it? the uncertainty kept me driving forward. perhaps we'd see a sign... ...which we did, at the very end of the road, just past another bridge. the thing about instructions is that there always seem to be assumptions about familiarity with local landmarks - an assumption that are likely wrong, else why ask for directions in the first place?
at any rate, we took the left turn, and hit paydirt. it felt like a time warp, as the houses flanking the road displayed their ancestral origins: primarily bahay-na-bato architecture, stonework lower stories surmounted by a wooden upper floor, some windows of which were still what looked like capiz shells in gridwork wooden frames. they were also quite notably brightly painted ones...
...not sure if that was the practice way back when, but it certainly livened up the place.
streets, though, were thoroughly modern, if narrow. well paved concrete, two lanes; and no sidewalk to speak of.
i was itching to take pictures, but there was no visible place to park the car to do so.
one right, one left, and suddenly that was it. the old town had fallen away, and modern bungalows (with signs advertising balisongs for sale) on either side.
okay, u-turn, back. i stopped just before the final turn back out, next to a park. glenn got out to ask the tambays where we could get to the church... turns out i was parked just before the ramp to the basilica (i wasn't sure if it was an entry or exit - it wasn't clearly marked which). good thing the car has a fairly tight turning radius, and i lumbered up the ramp in 1st gear.
and there it was, the taal basilica.
Monday, June 18, 2007
signs and portents
i don't remember precisely where we saw it, but somewhere near the beginning of the calaca/taal diversion trip, there was a sign by the side of the road:
jollibee 32km. (or something like that, a rather huge number)
wow. imagine what kind of effort that would be just to go to a jollibee in these parts...
jollibee 32km. (or something like that, a rather huge number)
wow. imagine what kind of effort that would be just to go to a jollibee in these parts...
road trip 20070611 part II
after what seemed like a short while, we were soon passing a structure that most people refer to as the "radar." i've always found it curious - why would there be a need for a static-antenna radar installation on the tagaytay ridge? there was a sign, but again i was paying more attention to the road - glenn read it out as we passed. to wit: it was definitely a military installation, but instead of a radar, it was the home base(?) of a radio communications regiment or something.
and as we passed, the "special device" picked up a burst of communication. hmm...
before long, we were faced with a choice: calaca or nasugbu? we'd actually gone a bit past the calaca fork, but something about the nasugbu road gave me pause. it was under an arch, and beyond that was a lowered-pole arrangement (similar to railroad crossing barriers) that blocked onward progress. okay, calaca it is. also, at that point the notion of a goal destination finally crystallized: the calaca fork was off to the left (southwards). we might be able to get to the storied taal town itself if we went that way. now we'd find out if the signs to direct us that way existed...
now, just as we got on the road to calaca, on the other side was a sight that could, for all intents and purposes, be a harbinger of things to come: there was a 10-wheeler dump truck that was half off the road in a small ditch of some sort. it seemed to be "fresh," as there was no crowd of curious bystanders around it - or it may have been the fact that the truck had also broken an electric utility pole by the roadside, and the upper fragment thereof now lay on the top edges of the truck bed.
however, i quickly put "portents of doom" out of mind, and proceeded onward.
a long and winding road... :-)
two lanes of asphalt, twisting and turning through a sparsely populated, thickly greened area. it may have been anywhere from 15 to 20 kilometers long, with no turnoffs that i noticed, i was just having too much fun driving. not that quickly, though. with the ups and downs and twists, i rarely got past 3rd gear, and i don't remember the engine even making it to 3000rpm, so the average speed must have been in the high 40's (kph).
the low-ish speed was good, of course, given the number of turns and fairly blind ones at that.
all in all, i don't remember a better drive. most of my driving is actually long straight highway stuff, so this twisty stuff was a refreshing change.
and somewhere in the middle of it, the areas on either side of the road opened up, and there on the left was a castle perched on a hill some distance away. that was so remarkable that i slowed down and parked just off the road on a little level area of grass.
glenn got out and crossed the road to take pictures; i stayed in the car just then, thinking that i could take pictures with the borrowed-cam(tm) on the way back.
after a while, glenn came back and showed me the pictures he'd taken. interesting, and also for what was not visible (from this side of the road anyway).
there be a dragon here.
and off we went again.
and as we passed, the "special device" picked up a burst of communication. hmm...
before long, we were faced with a choice: calaca or nasugbu? we'd actually gone a bit past the calaca fork, but something about the nasugbu road gave me pause. it was under an arch, and beyond that was a lowered-pole arrangement (similar to railroad crossing barriers) that blocked onward progress. okay, calaca it is. also, at that point the notion of a goal destination finally crystallized: the calaca fork was off to the left (southwards). we might be able to get to the storied taal town itself if we went that way. now we'd find out if the signs to direct us that way existed...
now, just as we got on the road to calaca, on the other side was a sight that could, for all intents and purposes, be a harbinger of things to come: there was a 10-wheeler dump truck that was half off the road in a small ditch of some sort. it seemed to be "fresh," as there was no crowd of curious bystanders around it - or it may have been the fact that the truck had also broken an electric utility pole by the roadside, and the upper fragment thereof now lay on the top edges of the truck bed.
however, i quickly put "portents of doom" out of mind, and proceeded onward.
a long and winding road... :-)
two lanes of asphalt, twisting and turning through a sparsely populated, thickly greened area. it may have been anywhere from 15 to 20 kilometers long, with no turnoffs that i noticed, i was just having too much fun driving. not that quickly, though. with the ups and downs and twists, i rarely got past 3rd gear, and i don't remember the engine even making it to 3000rpm, so the average speed must have been in the high 40's (kph).
the low-ish speed was good, of course, given the number of turns and fairly blind ones at that.
all in all, i don't remember a better drive. most of my driving is actually long straight highway stuff, so this twisty stuff was a refreshing change.
and somewhere in the middle of it, the areas on either side of the road opened up, and there on the left was a castle perched on a hill some distance away. that was so remarkable that i slowed down and parked just off the road on a little level area of grass.
glenn got out and crossed the road to take pictures; i stayed in the car just then, thinking that i could take pictures with the borrowed-cam(tm) on the way back.
after a while, glenn came back and showed me the pictures he'd taken. interesting, and also for what was not visible (from this side of the road anyway).
there be a dragon here.
and off we went again.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
road trip 20070611
i've never given the practice much thought, but just the same, i was expecting something of the kind to happen; and it did: the holiday aspect of independence day was moved to the 11th (a monday), from the 12th (a tuesday, the actual commemoration of the event). so that made a three-day weekend (well, for the rest of the working populace that don't have a half-day saturday at work).
given the prevailing heat in the metro - notwithstanding the official start of the rainy season had been announced a couple of weeks past - i'd felt that it'd be nice to have lunch in tagaytay on sunday and thereafter while away the afternoon taking pictures at various photo-ops. however, something about a late saturday night leading into a late sunday wake-up put paid to that.
instead glenn (makati housemate) and i decided that a look-see of the new ayala mall right next to sm city (north edsa?) was achievable. in the spirit of killing two birds with one stone, we decided to go to sm city first, park there, pay a bill or two, and then walk over to the "trinoma."
suffice to say, it's kinda bewildering (but then again, any new place would be); kinda large, kinda curvy within. right now, my impressions of the place can still be mutable. let's see what the next visit or two will bring...
monday dawns, bright and early. i'd intended to leave at 9, but glenn has some work-related emails to churn out; so i do some pre-flight checks on the car: tire pressures, windshield fluid reservoir, radiator and catchment bottle (?); attempted another unblocking of the left-hand side windshield washer nozzle...
10am, and we are off. ...to the local caltex station. add about 700 pesos worth of gas (takes the gauge about a needle-width above halfway). should be good enough. so, a few turns later, are on the cloverleaf and heading south on the slex. the car is fairly quiet at speed (average 80kph, or about 2500rpm in 5th). there is little by way of traffic, the only slowdowns are where the lanes divert to one side or the other around areas where the slex is being resurfaced. in fact, i took one such diversion and managed to miss the shell megaplexreststop thing on the right. but no matter, we were making good time. the only bit of uneasiness was with the exit. i've never driven enough to tagaytay to constantly remember which exit to take (santa rosa, as it turns out), or even how many exits past alabang it is (didn't manage to count this time, either), or what the exit immediately before is (just to get ready to make the lane change).
santa rosa exit, past two stoplights, and the two-lane road to tagaytay beckons. with some mobile chicanes (trucks, tricycles). nevertheless, an hour and ten minutes from setting out, we were at the bag of beans. made good time, indeed. the expected congestion was nowhere to be seen - which is good: i haven't quite gotten the hang of clutchwork in heavy traffic.
bag of beans is an interesting place; how best to describe it? hmm. i really ought to make notes and take more pictures with the borrowed-cam(tm).
to find the place, coming from the santa rosa road, you can find the place past the main rotonda and then a main junction and then a "reverse fork" in that two roads merge into one. past that fork (and keep the fork in mind when going the other way), on the right, there'll be a stretch of gravel between the road and a highway fence (metal rail on concrete posts, to keep cars from falling down the slope). that stretch of gravel affords the parking for bag of beans. typically, you'll see the cars parked before you see the sign itself. the sign itself is beside the shop that is practically the place's only presence on the road. flanking the shop, though, are two gates by which you descend into the establishment proper.
one could call it a restaurant in a garden. there are two main dining areas that are enclosed by screens, and a couple of other roofed though open air "huts." first thing you see coming down the left-hand stair is a large bird cage... ...and my memory fails me for the other details. i will endeavor to provide a more detailed account next time i happen to swing by there.
on to the food. the sign says "bag of beans" and "english pies and bread." that would be their specialties, then. i'd tried their apple pie before, quite nice. this time, though, being very hungry - skipped breakfast - i ordered the first thing on the menu that caught my eye. grilled salmon. glenn had porkchops and something called "mushroom clear soup."
being ravenous, once the food arrived, i dug in immediately (although i did have time to fiddle with the camera's macro mode while waiting, subject being a lone flower in a bud vase on the table). no pictures of the food, though. food was good.
off on a tangent: as a result of the tune up and oil change episode, the car was running quite well. wikipedia has it that the car's engine has 97bhp. now, i have no idea how that compares to other cars in terms of response, but once or twice when called for on the way up, the car did appreciably move with alacrity when i got on the gas pedal more than usual. (i rarely venture past 2000-2500rpm on the tachometer - this time, overtaking, i managed 3000-4000rpm, and it didn't take a long time for the needle to get there.)
anyway, lunch done, and we got back in the car. pulling out of the parking, i wondered aloud what was there on the right. see, last time we went to tagaytay, there was the mother of all traffic jams i've ever remembered on the ridge. i did recall that there was an unbroken line of cars heading to and away from the road to the right.
interesting prospect. so, instead of heading back to the junction and rotonda, i decided to follow the road wherever it led...
...more next time.
given the prevailing heat in the metro - notwithstanding the official start of the rainy season had been announced a couple of weeks past - i'd felt that it'd be nice to have lunch in tagaytay on sunday and thereafter while away the afternoon taking pictures at various photo-ops. however, something about a late saturday night leading into a late sunday wake-up put paid to that.
instead glenn (makati housemate) and i decided that a look-see of the new ayala mall right next to sm city (north edsa?) was achievable. in the spirit of killing two birds with one stone, we decided to go to sm city first, park there, pay a bill or two, and then walk over to the "trinoma."
suffice to say, it's kinda bewildering (but then again, any new place would be); kinda large, kinda curvy within. right now, my impressions of the place can still be mutable. let's see what the next visit or two will bring...
monday dawns, bright and early. i'd intended to leave at 9, but glenn has some work-related emails to churn out; so i do some pre-flight checks on the car: tire pressures, windshield fluid reservoir, radiator and catchment bottle (?); attempted another unblocking of the left-hand side windshield washer nozzle...
10am, and we are off. ...to the local caltex station. add about 700 pesos worth of gas (takes the gauge about a needle-width above halfway). should be good enough. so, a few turns later, are on the cloverleaf and heading south on the slex. the car is fairly quiet at speed (average 80kph, or about 2500rpm in 5th). there is little by way of traffic, the only slowdowns are where the lanes divert to one side or the other around areas where the slex is being resurfaced. in fact, i took one such diversion and managed to miss the shell megaplexreststop thing on the right. but no matter, we were making good time. the only bit of uneasiness was with the exit. i've never driven enough to tagaytay to constantly remember which exit to take (santa rosa, as it turns out), or even how many exits past alabang it is (didn't manage to count this time, either), or what the exit immediately before is (just to get ready to make the lane change).
santa rosa exit, past two stoplights, and the two-lane road to tagaytay beckons. with some mobile chicanes (trucks, tricycles). nevertheless, an hour and ten minutes from setting out, we were at the bag of beans. made good time, indeed. the expected congestion was nowhere to be seen - which is good: i haven't quite gotten the hang of clutchwork in heavy traffic.
bag of beans is an interesting place; how best to describe it? hmm. i really ought to make notes and take more pictures with the borrowed-cam(tm).
to find the place, coming from the santa rosa road, you can find the place past the main rotonda and then a main junction and then a "reverse fork" in that two roads merge into one. past that fork (and keep the fork in mind when going the other way), on the right, there'll be a stretch of gravel between the road and a highway fence (metal rail on concrete posts, to keep cars from falling down the slope). that stretch of gravel affords the parking for bag of beans. typically, you'll see the cars parked before you see the sign itself. the sign itself is beside the shop that is practically the place's only presence on the road. flanking the shop, though, are two gates by which you descend into the establishment proper.
one could call it a restaurant in a garden. there are two main dining areas that are enclosed by screens, and a couple of other roofed though open air "huts." first thing you see coming down the left-hand stair is a large bird cage... ...and my memory fails me for the other details. i will endeavor to provide a more detailed account next time i happen to swing by there.
on to the food. the sign says "bag of beans" and "english pies and bread." that would be their specialties, then. i'd tried their apple pie before, quite nice. this time, though, being very hungry - skipped breakfast - i ordered the first thing on the menu that caught my eye. grilled salmon. glenn had porkchops and something called "mushroom clear soup."
being ravenous, once the food arrived, i dug in immediately (although i did have time to fiddle with the camera's macro mode while waiting, subject being a lone flower in a bud vase on the table). no pictures of the food, though. food was good.
off on a tangent: as a result of the tune up and oil change episode, the car was running quite well. wikipedia has it that the car's engine has 97bhp. now, i have no idea how that compares to other cars in terms of response, but once or twice when called for on the way up, the car did appreciably move with alacrity when i got on the gas pedal more than usual. (i rarely venture past 2000-2500rpm on the tachometer - this time, overtaking, i managed 3000-4000rpm, and it didn't take a long time for the needle to get there.)
anyway, lunch done, and we got back in the car. pulling out of the parking, i wondered aloud what was there on the right. see, last time we went to tagaytay, there was the mother of all traffic jams i've ever remembered on the ridge. i did recall that there was an unbroken line of cars heading to and away from the road to the right.
interesting prospect. so, instead of heading back to the junction and rotonda, i decided to follow the road wherever it led...
...more next time.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
reunion
that's a new dessert from starbucks (new to me, anyway. i generally used to go for either the chocolate eclair or waffle with cream and strawberry or a clone of italianni's tartufo).
they call it a strawberry cheescake, but its more a fusion of cheescake (the lowest two levels) and a strawberry mousse on sponge cake (the upper two layers) glued together by strawberry jam.
suffice to say that i like it.
but that's not what this post is actually about.
anyway, she is one of those souls who were on the good ship 557 nueve de pebrero which at one point was sailing towards a date with some kind of destiny that was not to be -- courtesy of some ex-disney icebergs.
interestingly enough, she was the p.a. to the first director of the outfit; and then departing to come back as a liason to the animation council something-or-other.
either way, but more often in her latter role, we would have coffee breaks near the pantry - i'd have coffee, she'd have coffee and her smokes...
shooting the breeze with her was a particularly pleasant way to while away the time...
she departed for good; quite a whiles later the good ship foundered on the rocks of, oh, good intentions perhaps, but most likely sterling incompetence on the part of the captains thereof.
we've been in text contact on and off these past few years, and have met at least once in the intervening period. in the interim, she's had the recent expression of a genetic disorder that was (and probably remains) life-threatening; but is now under some sort of control by medication.
turns out that (and isn't this sometimes the case) it could have been worse; but as it stands, life can be good.
chance had it that she was going to the town center one fine day; and so we had a lunch meet - and i had that dessert during the time we spent.
...and it was a three-hour lunch, so to speak.
a pleasant reunion to be sure.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
third molar
...is out.
about two and a half years ago, had a molar pulled from my upper left jaw. since i elected (budget considerations) not to fill the void resulting from the extraction, it meant that the second and third molar were now free to move forward into the gap.
didn't think too much on this fact (bad idea, ultimately) until at some time in the past (don't remember precisely when), i was eating some lapid's chicharon (cracklings?) and bit down hard on a chunk thereof...
...and felt a cracking as a piece of the stuff got wedged in the gap between the 2nd and 3rd molar. ouch.
since then, it's been giving me grief on and off, which i duly numb into submission by judicious doses of mefenamic acid...
but earlier this week, me and a couple of friends were dining (hah!) al fresco at the local donut joint and i espied across the street the unusually-named 1770 dental clinic. granted, i pass by it everyday going to work, but it doesn't really register. hmm. so, while waiting for my order to arrive, i risked a quick visit and inquiry, and before i knew it, i was scheduled for an extraction today.
again, the local anesthetic prior to the three-prick syringe-delivered anesthetic. inasmuch as the tooth was already loose, there wasn't too much of the sense that the dentist was wrenching too hard - she was just twisting the, what, pliers(?) one way and the other, and then the tooth was out.
not bad at all.
interestingly enough, the molar had only one root. she noted that 3rd molars are typically problematic, and the one root effect may simply be that the two roots had fused.
another interesting fact: her birthday is right after mine.
hmm...
about two and a half years ago, had a molar pulled from my upper left jaw. since i elected (budget considerations) not to fill the void resulting from the extraction, it meant that the second and third molar were now free to move forward into the gap.
didn't think too much on this fact (bad idea, ultimately) until at some time in the past (don't remember precisely when), i was eating some lapid's chicharon (cracklings?) and bit down hard on a chunk thereof...
...and felt a cracking as a piece of the stuff got wedged in the gap between the 2nd and 3rd molar. ouch.
since then, it's been giving me grief on and off, which i duly numb into submission by judicious doses of mefenamic acid...
but earlier this week, me and a couple of friends were dining (hah!) al fresco at the local donut joint and i espied across the street the unusually-named 1770 dental clinic. granted, i pass by it everyday going to work, but it doesn't really register. hmm. so, while waiting for my order to arrive, i risked a quick visit and inquiry, and before i knew it, i was scheduled for an extraction today.
again, the local anesthetic prior to the three-prick syringe-delivered anesthetic. inasmuch as the tooth was already loose, there wasn't too much of the sense that the dentist was wrenching too hard - she was just twisting the, what, pliers(?) one way and the other, and then the tooth was out.
not bad at all.
interestingly enough, the molar had only one root. she noted that 3rd molars are typically problematic, and the one root effect may simply be that the two roots had fused.
another interesting fact: her birthday is right after mine.
hmm...
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
fully synthetic (snake?) oil
earlier today, 7:30am saw me around the alabang town center area. hmm. the day before, i got the name of a local auto shop that an officemate recommended for their tune-up services.
threading my way through the parking around the church beside the town center, i drove slowly from one end of the auto shops that lined the edge of the parking lot until i saw the name of the shop under the awnings. "mac-r," though the banner above the awning read "mc clain" something or other.
strangely, they were open at this early hour. well, am here, might as well go for the long-delayed tune up and change oil (the last time i did that was january 13 of this year).
add to that the fact that the car had been idling poorly ever since a late night visit to someone called gorgeous lady to pick up some "contraband" for distribution to interested parties... this lady happens to live in a place called, aptly enough, moonwalk. after that trip, something happened to the carburetor's state of being such that the idle with the aircon on was about 500rpm, a far cry from the previous 1K rpm or such. rough, to say the least.
as a matter of fact, the saturday of the photo trek ii, after the fuel visit to the gas station (that had no mechanics present that day), i took screwdriver in hand and fiddled with a, well, screw on the assembly - and got the car to idle at about 700rpm with the aircon on (but 1200rpm without - oh well).
so, time to hand the car over to the professionals. i opted for replacing the air filter, fuel filter, oil filter, sparkplugs... ...and went for the fully synthetic mobil 1 oil.
needless to say, this spiked the estimate considerably, but the pitch was too good to let pass: 10,000km or one year before the next change, whichever comes first.
hmm.
indeed we shall see. the car runs so much better now, with a considerable increase in response to the gas pedal's prodding.
let's see if this is all just psychosomatic... tune in for further details.
threading my way through the parking around the church beside the town center, i drove slowly from one end of the auto shops that lined the edge of the parking lot until i saw the name of the shop under the awnings. "mac-r," though the banner above the awning read "mc clain" something or other.
strangely, they were open at this early hour. well, am here, might as well go for the long-delayed tune up and change oil (the last time i did that was january 13 of this year).
add to that the fact that the car had been idling poorly ever since a late night visit to someone called gorgeous lady to pick up some "contraband" for distribution to interested parties... this lady happens to live in a place called, aptly enough, moonwalk. after that trip, something happened to the carburetor's state of being such that the idle with the aircon on was about 500rpm, a far cry from the previous 1K rpm or such. rough, to say the least.
as a matter of fact, the saturday of the photo trek ii, after the fuel visit to the gas station (that had no mechanics present that day), i took screwdriver in hand and fiddled with a, well, screw on the assembly - and got the car to idle at about 700rpm with the aircon on (but 1200rpm without - oh well).
so, time to hand the car over to the professionals. i opted for replacing the air filter, fuel filter, oil filter, sparkplugs... ...and went for the fully synthetic mobil 1 oil.
needless to say, this spiked the estimate considerably, but the pitch was too good to let pass: 10,000km or one year before the next change, whichever comes first.
hmm.
indeed we shall see. the car runs so much better now, with a considerable increase in response to the gas pedal's prodding.
let's see if this is all just psychosomatic... tune in for further details.
Monday, June 04, 2007
interesting side effect
sunday afternoon: threaded my way through the oddly shaped parking lot of the "centennial terminal (2)" of the ninoy aquino international airport. i was going to call it oddly "arranged," but a quick google earth look-see reveals the, well, bigger picture.
the airport itself is laid out in as a parallelogram, with one of the sides in line with the main runway. in the rough center of the layout is the v-shaped terminal building: two wings/arms; south wing for domestic and north wing for international services of philippine airlines.
between the arms of the vee, the various parking zones surrounding a circular area containing the air traffic control tower and a lower building that seems dedicated to massive cooler/evaporator airconditioning units. public parking is essentially to the west of the atc circle.
entrance to the parking is at the west sharp tip of the parallelogram, with various arrows painted on the access road hugging the perimeter indicating traffic flow. the "oddness" of it is that the parking rows cut straight "vertically" north/south across the parallelogram's long east/west axis.
which means that turning into a parking row necessitates a more than 90 degree turn, close on 120 or so, i guess. minor quibble, i suppose - but the car is small. i wonder what it's like for the bigger denizens of the streets (american suv's, for example).
i was there rather early - hopefully to watch a few planes taking off or landing - and also to escape the oppressive heat in the makati apartment. i was planning on spending a few hours in the car, engine and aircon running, listening to some music courtesy of a teeny mp3 player attached to the car radio via a cassette interface with wire and earphone jack. (the car's radio is a hit and miss; sometimes it works, most times it doesn't - hence the investment in the cassette interface.)
okay. park car, insert cassette, power on. i attached the mp3 player and was working my way through stellastarr*'s harmonies for the haunted album and fiddling with the volume control when there was a slight burst of static, and then a voice.
what the hell?
a woman spoke, saying something to the effect: "cebu pacific (number) please expedite your approach, incoming traffic 24-a."
i'd heard jargon like that before, seeing as i visit a certain website full of aviation videos, some videos of which include air traffic control chatter.
amazing! somehow or other, the car radio was picking up the atc communications. in my excitement, i texted a friend about it. i then disconnected the mp3 player. still the voices came. sometimes, i could even hear a few planes' communications with the tower, mostly asking for "pushback."
as a test, i ejected the cassette. a radio station came on, but poorly (not surprising, seeing as i almost never tune to any stations at all). the atc voices were stilled. popped the cassette back in, and they resumed.
interesting. wonder what it is that's making it work.
anyway, at that time i decided that i might as well see what action there was out there for a while. securing the car, i made my way to the end of the domestic wing and saw a cathay 777-300 and a singapore 777-200 take off in succession. there were also a bevy of philippine airlines a320's taking off.
and then a philippine airlines a330 landed.
that was most likely the flight from bangkok. so i made my way to the arrival area of the international wing...
anyway, an interesting afternoon, to say the least. and a bit of trivia, too. or maybe it was just that shift, but all the atc controllers i heard that afternoon were female...
the airport itself is laid out in as a parallelogram, with one of the sides in line with the main runway. in the rough center of the layout is the v-shaped terminal building: two wings/arms; south wing for domestic and north wing for international services of philippine airlines.
between the arms of the vee, the various parking zones surrounding a circular area containing the air traffic control tower and a lower building that seems dedicated to massive cooler/evaporator airconditioning units. public parking is essentially to the west of the atc circle.
entrance to the parking is at the west sharp tip of the parallelogram, with various arrows painted on the access road hugging the perimeter indicating traffic flow. the "oddness" of it is that the parking rows cut straight "vertically" north/south across the parallelogram's long east/west axis.
which means that turning into a parking row necessitates a more than 90 degree turn, close on 120 or so, i guess. minor quibble, i suppose - but the car is small. i wonder what it's like for the bigger denizens of the streets (american suv's, for example).
i was there rather early - hopefully to watch a few planes taking off or landing - and also to escape the oppressive heat in the makati apartment. i was planning on spending a few hours in the car, engine and aircon running, listening to some music courtesy of a teeny mp3 player attached to the car radio via a cassette interface with wire and earphone jack. (the car's radio is a hit and miss; sometimes it works, most times it doesn't - hence the investment in the cassette interface.)
okay. park car, insert cassette, power on. i attached the mp3 player and was working my way through stellastarr*'s harmonies for the haunted album and fiddling with the volume control when there was a slight burst of static, and then a voice.
what the hell?
a woman spoke, saying something to the effect: "cebu pacific (number) please expedite your approach, incoming traffic 24-a."
i'd heard jargon like that before, seeing as i visit a certain website full of aviation videos, some videos of which include air traffic control chatter.
amazing! somehow or other, the car radio was picking up the atc communications. in my excitement, i texted a friend about it. i then disconnected the mp3 player. still the voices came. sometimes, i could even hear a few planes' communications with the tower, mostly asking for "pushback."
as a test, i ejected the cassette. a radio station came on, but poorly (not surprising, seeing as i almost never tune to any stations at all). the atc voices were stilled. popped the cassette back in, and they resumed.
interesting. wonder what it is that's making it work.
anyway, at that time i decided that i might as well see what action there was out there for a while. securing the car, i made my way to the end of the domestic wing and saw a cathay 777-300 and a singapore 777-200 take off in succession. there were also a bevy of philippine airlines a320's taking off.
and then a philippine airlines a330 landed.
that was most likely the flight from bangkok. so i made my way to the arrival area of the international wing...
anyway, an interesting afternoon, to say the least. and a bit of trivia, too. or maybe it was just that shift, but all the atc controllers i heard that afternoon were female...
photo trek ii: the evidence
that's a bird, not dirt on the lens...
it's me (my shadow, anyway)
look! airyplanes!
same plane, a second or two later. it's likely an airbus a330-300
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