So here's what Ondoy did to me

(I based the time stamps on my mobile phone inbox.)

10:00 am - Rode a cab to go home

10:30 am - EDSA was no longer moving.  Cab turned right to take the road going to White Plains.

10:45 am - Cab had nowhere to go so it just parked on the side of the road.  The driver and I contemplated on what to do next.

11:45 am - I decided that I would have better luck by just walking so I paid the cab driver, and we wished each other luck as I stepped out of the cab.  My first thought was that I had to take a piss.

11:55 am - While walking back towards EDSA, I found the perfect spot to piss.  Unfortunately, it was I was in full view of all the stalled motorists.  It was almost beside the Corinthian Gardens Gate.  But who cares, right?  (True enough, after I was done, another guy got off his car and did the same thing in exactly the same spot.)

11:58 am - Continued walking.  Towards the People Power monument, there was a stretch of the street that was flooded knee-deep.

12:30 pm - Reached the first gate of Camp Aguinaldo.  By this time it was apparent why Edsa was at a standstill.  The floods reached up to half of a bus' height.

Yup, I went through that.

12:35 pm - Camp Aguinaldo authorities decided to open the small pedestrian gate near where I was so that people go inside to shelter.  In the process, I had to wade through waist-deep flood waters.  People were very helpful.

12:45 pm - I reached higher ground in Camp Aguinaldo.  There were military trucks and jeeps transporting people to the Santolan gate.  Since there were a lot of us, I let the others go first while I looked for a store to buy a cigarette.   (I know, I know, I haven't smoked in ages.  But I just had to.)

1:30 pm - Finally got to maneuver myself into a military jeep.  Reached the Santolan gate a few minutes later and texted a thousand people on how my day was going before proceeding.

1:40 pm - Started walking again.  Destination: Gateway Mall.

2:30 pm - I learned from Nadj that RDOT is cancelled.  By that time, I somehow reached Gateway Mall and found myself ordering a Steak Burrito Supreme, a Crunchy Taco Supreme, a cup of Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes, and a refillable drink from Taco Bell.

2:35 pm - Dining/Texting/Wi-Fi'ing in Taco Bell while my wet clothes, jacket, umbrella and shoes were leaving a puddle at my feet.  (Thanks for understanding Taco Bell employees.)

4:00 pm - After eating, I resolved to try to get a cab.  For some reason, I began to uncontrollably shiver once I stepped outside of the mall, so I quickly proceeded to my favorite "tindahan" in the vicinity and bought a steaming-hot 3-in-1 cup of coffee and a stick of cigarette.

4:25 pm - Shivers gone, I started walking towards East Avenue when no cab driver was willing to take me in.  Walked along EDSA and managed to avoid a knee-deep flood at the EDSA entrance of Kamias Road by walking underneath the flyover.

5:25 pm - Reached Eunilane in U.P. Village by this time.  Attempted to walk through side streets to avoid the flooded Quezon Memorial Circle and reach Philcoa.

5:45 pm - Discovered that the exit to Philcoa via Masaya Street was blocked by waist-high, garbage-strewn flood.  Decided to wade through it anyway.  I kept to the side of the road to avoid the much deeper part in the middle.  Other people took my lead.  I saw a dead rat float right past me.

5:55 pm - Reached Philcoa and texted friends to give and get updates.  It was already dark by this time.

6:10 pm - After using the pay rest room (P3.00), I rode one of less-crowded buses when I noticed that it was at least crawling at a steady pace.

7:00 pm - Reached home.  (Thank you, Lord.)

On dogs, pets and the possibility of stepping on too many of my friends' toes

OKAY, so apparently a dog died in a Cebu Pacific flight and I read about it in this blog.  You can read it first before proceeding further.

Now, I'd like to make it clear that what Cebu Pacific did was downright wrong and should be condemned, but I'd also add that the owner of that dog is not getting any sympathy from me.  I'm more inclined to feel sorry for the dog itself. But if it ever had a soul, then it's probably in a better place now so I won't bother anymore.

The blog's a tearjerker, for sure.  And we'd all love to crucify Cebu Pacific whose mishandling of the dog effectively caused its death.  But I'm blaming the dog owner too.  Let me explain:

I don't travel a lot, and my last plane ride was in 1997.  But even I am aware of Cebu Pacific's atrocious reputation as an airline.  For people who seem to be well-traveled, the dog owner and her companion seem to disregard this in their haste to get the dog transported.

Much of the blog was also spent discussing the emotional closeness of the owner with the dog.  (They tend to call this "love".)  Now, if the pet owner really loved her pet, then she would not have brought her along that Cebu Pacific flight, especially when she claimed to have some some sort of prescient misapprehensions about leaving the dog in the cargo area. 

(You see, anybody who can afford to pamper a pet and transport it from abroad with full documentation can surely afford to lose a Philippine domestic airline seat if he/she is not confident about how the pet will be treated.  But no, she had to take the flight.  That's love for you.)

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For me, what all this is a symptom of modern society's seeming confusion on how to treat animals especially pets, and especially dogs.  We're all so caught up in animal rights, yet we've made it possible to breed dogs that have become so dependent on us humans that they would not be able to function on their own. 

Take the pug, for example.  I could think of no worse victim of man's attempts at genetic engineering than this pathetic breed.  It's snout is nonexistent, the legs too short and it's body too rounded, and it's only slightly bigger than the average house cat.  It doesn't run very fast, it can't hunt (not with a snout like that) and its bark is more annoying than threatening. Apparently its only reason for existence is because some people find it cute.

"Personally, I think I prefer natural selection."

Whereas before, humanity has amply fulfilled its role as nature's steward by harnessing the dog's natural capabilities (i.e. hunting), throughout the centuries we decided to play petty-God and forcibly bred and crossbred dogs until we came to the point of turning the descendant of the magnificent Canis Lupus into nothing more than furry playthings.  The pug being a case in point.

So here we are humans fighting for what we believe are animal rights not realizing that at least part of what we are really fighting for is the convenience of treating animals as property that we can tug along anywhere.  For example, we've lobbied for business establishments to be "pet friendly".  But have we asked ourselves why the hell would a dog want to go to a mall, a salon or travel by airplane?  No, it's us who want to go to those places, and we delude ourselves into thinking that our pets want to go there too.

In a larger sense, here's what's going on:  We keep our pets alive just because they please or amuse us, and not out of a genuine sense of love for living things.  We try to confine their existence to our personal space and try to snuff out whatever ember that remains of their true nature. We then set unrealistic expectations that everybody else should make allowances for us just because we think this way.

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I have pets too.  I happen to own a number of cats.  Well, that's not true.  I feed them and take care of them if I can, but cats pretty much go their own way so I can't really say that I "own" them.  And this is perhaps the reason why I prefer taking care of cats.  It's so much easier to allow them to retain their natural ways.  With the exception of pigeons, cats can go to places and naturally interact with members of their own species in a way that no other domesticated animals can.  The average house cat is still very much capable of looking for it's own food, so it's no big deal if I don't feed them 3 or 4 out of 7 days in the week.

I like dogs too.  But until I'm in a position to be able to adequately take care of one, I would not even dream of owning one.  In the world today, there are hundreds of thousands of first-time pet owners who have an astonishingly limited idea of exactly what their pets are and what it entails to take care of them.  Before purchasing pets and screaming for animal rights, I wish that we spent more time treating them as living things belonging to a particular species, than treating them merely as movable property.

08/30/09 - Butterflies

I've done fishes so I might as well do butterflies. Not quite epic fail, but I was kind of hoping I'd do better here than in the Oceanarium because of the ambient daylight.

The little buggers were hard to focus (even with the AF-Servo mode on) because they didn't seem to stay in one place for long. Those wings are either too flimsy or flutter too fast for an autofocus point to zero-in on. As a consequence, the nine AF points kept hitting other things if I'm shooting from a distance.

These photos were taken during a jogging trip to the Rainforest Park in Pasig City.

08/16/09 - Ateneo vs. La Salle

Final Score: Ateneo 81 - La Salle 65

It was the perfect opportunity to road test my "new" 55-250mm Canon IS lens. I was seated in the General Admission section of the Araneta Coliseum.

Some photos were surprisingly sharp, but most shots were blurred and had to be deleted due to the slow shutter speed.

05/26/09 - Pataasan

Malunggay wins!

(I couldn't choose which one's the best, so I'm putting the best 12 here.)

Overheard in a construction site...

TWO construction workers were joking around:

CW1:  Ikaw na ang magbuhat niyan.  Lalaki ang katawan mo parang si Schwarzenegger!

CW2:  Uy, si Schwarzenegger?  Idol ko yun!

CW1:  Talaga?  Spell "Schwarzenegger"!

CW2:  Ay, Jet Li na lang.

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You'd get jokes like this in text messages or emails, but I swear, I heard it this morning.  hahaha!  People apparently joke about it in real-life situations.

Random Discovery # 6

Remember that old unfinished building beside the MRT-Magallanes station?  The one across Mantrade?  The one that has been abandoned and unoccupied for more than 20 years?  The eyesore that greets people from the south upon entering Makati?

Well, it's apparently finished now.  And it's definitely no longer an eyesore.

I couldn't find an actual photo, but I came across a promotional artist's sketch.  Check it out.



I actually came across the "new" building when I was traveling by EDSA a week ago.  The sketch is a pretty accurate representation.

Never thought I'd see the day that this building would be completed.  In a bittersweet way, it was one of those visual icons of growing up in Metro Manila.  On one hand there's the nice places like Rizal Park, Manila Zoo, UP-Diliman, Fort Santiago, etc.  On the other hand, there's also the not-so-nice places like the Pasig River, the Payatas dump site, the sleazy ACT Theater in Cubao, and of course that gray concrete monstrosity right across Mantrade in Makati.

I heard that a staggering P1.2 billion was spent just buying the property from the old owners, and another P1.2 billion was borrowed just to finally complete and develop the building for use.  Well, to the investors, thank you and good luck.  You did Makati a favor, I hope you profit from the effort. 




photo credit: http://www.epropertyph.com/epro2x/item/1608