Maasin is a bustling little town - or city, as the inhabitants of Maasin will insist - with quite a bit of sophistication, or at least more than I had expected from a place that on the map seemed a million miles remote from civilization. Although the major modes of transportation are your usual jeepneys and motorcabs, there are also plenty of privately owned vehicles. There are two local colleges in town. One is St. Joseph College which is associated with the Catholic Church and the other is the College of Maasin which is associated with the United Church of Christ [View Full Entry]

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Christmas Day in the Philippines. It's hot, humid, and busy. People are running around singing Chritsmas carrolls in every corner of every street in every town of every province in the Philippines. I have never seen such a joyous celebration of Christmas anywhere in the world. In the United States and other Western countries Christmas has been diluted by other factions and interests such that you really can't celebrate Christmas without having to acknowledge Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Sodom and Gommorah (joke people), and other psuedo-holidays so that everybody's happy. But it's really nothing more th [View Full Entry]

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The Pool Bar It's five o'clock in the afternoon in Cebu and I've been sleeping, on and off, for the last eight hours. My body tells me it's after midnight back in the Bay Area and so I struggle to get up and take a shower. I drag myself to the bathroom, looked at myself in the mirror, and felt discouraged by what I see. The effect of jet lag is evident in that ugly look in my face and I can't do anything about it. So I brush, shave, and take a shower. I felt a little better after the [View Full Entry]

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As the sun rises above the horizon, the sun’s rays are filtered through a yellow haze from the smog. I have never seen such pollution in my life. I find it hard to believe that people could endure such filth. I could only imagine people walking around with a surgical mask over their mouths and noses as they walk around the streets of Manila to filter out the harmful particulates from entering their lungs. Why people would want to live here, I’ll never understand. It is now six thirty in the morning, still a few hours away from boarding. I see [View Full Entry]

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I feel a little sense of trepidation as we approach the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA). This was a fourteen-hour flight with a one-hour stopover in Guam, for refueling. I slept for no more than one hour, at most, throughout the whole flight. It’s difficult to get any kind of sleep in an airplane, even in Business or First Class, at least for me. Not with the continuous drone of the engine which keeps buzzing in my ears, not when the temperature is never comfortably warm, and not with these seats which are nothing more than miniature Lazy Boys. It’s not [View Full Entry]

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Friday, Frisco International Airport It's 2:30 pm and I am sitting, waiting, at the International Terminal, waiting for the Philippine Airlines check-in counter to open. Meanwhile I am watching a herd of people being checked-in by KLM, a Dutch Airliner, for a flight to Amsterdam, Europe's City of Sin. I heard from fellow travelers that the Amsterdam flight is cheaper than a flight to London's Heathrow International because of some ridiculous tax levied for that destination. In any case I don't care since I have no plans to visit either cities anytime in the near future. I just want [View Full Entry]

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I always find it impossible to sleep well on the first day of travel, especially if I'm in an unfamiliar surrounding, like a hotel or a stranger's house. I have to get used to the bed regardless of how comfortable it is. The pillow too, needs a little wear and tear before I can be comfortable with it, not to mention the blankets, the comforters, the hum of the air conditioners, the background noise and the ambient temperature. I probably got no more than three hours of sleep that first night in my hotel in Castle Rock, Colorado. I was lying [View Full Entry]

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Amoeba Music, at 1855 Haight Street, is probably the most comprehensive music store in the whole wide world. They’ve got everything from old vinyl records to the latest rap-hip-hop-along Cassidy tweedle doodoo lala music. I didn’t think anyone used turntables anymore but apparently some people still dig’m, especially old schoolers and nostalgia grabbers. You can see these people poring over old vinyl LPs of Joan Baez, the Bee Gees, Kris Kristofferson, Mac Davis, Leo Sayer, Dan Fogelberg, the Gibson Brothers, Crosby Stills & Nash, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Neil Young of the [View Full Entry]

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A Blogging Son of a Sailor's Whore The Straight Times and Today are the governments two vehicle of mass media propaganda. You won't read anything critical of government policies in either of these two publications. " Never Question Authority" is what every living, breathing Singaporean is brought up to think. The minute you start to think critically, and make those criticism publicly known or worse yet, broadcast them in the mainstream media, which is to say government controlled television, radio, and the two soft dailies, you get shut down fast, swiftly, coldly, like [View Full Entry]

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It is two in the afternoon and school kids are hopping in and out of the train. It is very busy and crowded near the downtown area. I am at the Bugis MRT station and this place is a total zoo. Tons of people, from school kids to office workers, local shoppers and tourists looking for a bargain, rush in and out of the train. There was no room to wiggle around and get comfortable. I gave my seat to an elderly lady even though my legs were aching a bit. The next stop is Lavender, then Kallang, and the crowd [View Full Entry]

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