As promised
Having promised to friends who probably don't know I even have a blog that (their idea) I would blog my Philippines trip, I warned that I'd only have dull stories of my cousins and me playing Monopoly. Jasun requested to know who would be the shoe and who the hat, so I'm fulfilling my promise here. We haven't played, but since the other day Gica found a dusty box of the game (missing the Boardwalk card), I'm reminded of my duty.
Dusty boxes mingle with refinished furniture, bright new decor, barefoot busy workers, and my aunt, brainstorming, deciding, delegating, preparing this newly built house for living and for tomorrow's housewarming. I've been mostly useless.
What else can I report on besides my uselessness?
First excursion, with Mangahas cousins Fabian and Gica: dove Anilao--highly recommended! Nudibranchs, giant clams, a sea turtle, beautiful corals. My seven dives included a night dive, a 121-ft dive, and a dive with current the divemasters considered low-moderate but I considered scary. Happy to find that all the divemasters and most of the visiting divers were Filipino, unlike my experience in Thailand where all but one diver was Western, and all but him and my friend and I were white. I'd happily return to Raymond, Carlos, Gordos, and Dennsyo at Planet Dive; my only reservation is their common practice of feeding bread to the fish, which seems to me as ecologically healthy as distributing lollipops to people in need of protien, but shamefully I was too shy to say anything, feeling a student among teachers.
Second excursion, with Buensalido cousins: on a black-sand beach in Batangas we sang on the coin-operated videoke machines at 5 pesos/song, after some swimming. The next day on a lark we hiked to the top of Taal volcano in flip-flops (tsinelas) having not enough cash to hire horses for everyone. Nonetheless locals with their horses sought our business along the trail, and we gave in twice: for my two ten-year-old nieces (who cried to get off their horse anyway after a few strides, more scared of falling over than tired of the trail) and for my overweight cousin, who rode to the top like a princess. At the crater overlook we drank buko juice from fresh-cracked coconuts. Steam rose from hot rocks at some points on the path, and the little girls collected red and orange rocks.
What a herd we were: my dad, sister, and I, four cousins plus the two little neices: nine of us plus the driver packed into a van. My dad was excited to go on the trip to this region because he had such a romantic time there a long time ago with my mom. Three decades later at the same place with their two children plus six others from her family: something about his enthusiasm's so genuinely sweet it makes me marvel.
Back with the Mangahases I caught the last two rounds of my cousin's debate tournament (Asian University Debating Championship, AUDC pronounced Oddyssey) and was impressed by Asian parliamentary style debate. Aziz, if you ever read this, this is something I wonder if you've seen. During the debate, the audience pounds on the tables and yells "hear hear!" or "shame!" depending on their feelings for the arguments presented. As one person speaks, members of the opposing team can hop up with a "point of information" which the speaker can choose to recognize or ignore with a firm "sit down!"
I'm proud of my sixteen-year-old cousin Gica. She caught me pretending to read geometry and I took the occasion to mention two different perspectives: rigid and squishy. More comfortable with the latter, I brought up coffeecup-donut equivalence, and she got the idea and added needles to that group, saw that dishes and drinking glasses would be a different group, and eyeglass frames without the lenses, another. She found it conceivable that such distinctions might be worth noticing, and even explained the idea to her friends (we were all there to watch the tourney).
To her cogent questions "where do you go with this?" and "what does this have to do with anything?" I hope my answers were even half-adequate. For the first, I convinced her that one might be curious about holes in things in arbitrary dimensions. For the second, I steered the idea of holes into the idea of loops, did a handwavy point to the world of knots which at least landed me at DNA, and the last connection she found satisfying being avid for chemistry these days--she'd actually heard of the world of knots from her chem book.
Back at the house, I'm still being useless. Haven't done any of my self-imposed homework, but have started to read a novel, one of the many books all over the place (finished a slim one earlier), poked around a pool-player's guide, and tried the "ghost ball" technique with my uncle, a billiards fan, on his pool table upstairs. With the books, the pool table, free meals, air conditioning, and my own mathy reading waiting for me, I could just hang out here all day every day. But as always I have to fight my natural inclination towards sloth. Am not very good in battle.
Dusty boxes mingle with refinished furniture, bright new decor, barefoot busy workers, and my aunt, brainstorming, deciding, delegating, preparing this newly built house for living and for tomorrow's housewarming. I've been mostly useless.
What else can I report on besides my uselessness?
First excursion, with Mangahas cousins Fabian and Gica: dove Anilao--highly recommended! Nudibranchs, giant clams, a sea turtle, beautiful corals. My seven dives included a night dive, a 121-ft dive, and a dive with current the divemasters considered low-moderate but I considered scary. Happy to find that all the divemasters and most of the visiting divers were Filipino, unlike my experience in Thailand where all but one diver was Western, and all but him and my friend and I were white. I'd happily return to Raymond, Carlos, Gordos, and Dennsyo at Planet Dive; my only reservation is their common practice of feeding bread to the fish, which seems to me as ecologically healthy as distributing lollipops to people in need of protien, but shamefully I was too shy to say anything, feeling a student among teachers.
Second excursion, with Buensalido cousins: on a black-sand beach in Batangas we sang on the coin-operated videoke machines at 5 pesos/song, after some swimming. The next day on a lark we hiked to the top of Taal volcano in flip-flops (tsinelas) having not enough cash to hire horses for everyone. Nonetheless locals with their horses sought our business along the trail, and we gave in twice: for my two ten-year-old nieces (who cried to get off their horse anyway after a few strides, more scared of falling over than tired of the trail) and for my overweight cousin, who rode to the top like a princess. At the crater overlook we drank buko juice from fresh-cracked coconuts. Steam rose from hot rocks at some points on the path, and the little girls collected red and orange rocks.
What a herd we were: my dad, sister, and I, four cousins plus the two little neices: nine of us plus the driver packed into a van. My dad was excited to go on the trip to this region because he had such a romantic time there a long time ago with my mom. Three decades later at the same place with their two children plus six others from her family: something about his enthusiasm's so genuinely sweet it makes me marvel.
Back with the Mangahases I caught the last two rounds of my cousin's debate tournament (Asian University Debating Championship, AUDC pronounced Oddyssey) and was impressed by Asian parliamentary style debate. Aziz, if you ever read this, this is something I wonder if you've seen. During the debate, the audience pounds on the tables and yells "hear hear!" or "shame!" depending on their feelings for the arguments presented. As one person speaks, members of the opposing team can hop up with a "point of information" which the speaker can choose to recognize or ignore with a firm "sit down!"
I'm proud of my sixteen-year-old cousin Gica. She caught me pretending to read geometry and I took the occasion to mention two different perspectives: rigid and squishy. More comfortable with the latter, I brought up coffeecup-donut equivalence, and she got the idea and added needles to that group, saw that dishes and drinking glasses would be a different group, and eyeglass frames without the lenses, another. She found it conceivable that such distinctions might be worth noticing, and even explained the idea to her friends (we were all there to watch the tourney).
To her cogent questions "where do you go with this?" and "what does this have to do with anything?" I hope my answers were even half-adequate. For the first, I convinced her that one might be curious about holes in things in arbitrary dimensions. For the second, I steered the idea of holes into the idea of loops, did a handwavy point to the world of knots which at least landed me at DNA, and the last connection she found satisfying being avid for chemistry these days--she'd actually heard of the world of knots from her chem book.
Back at the house, I'm still being useless. Haven't done any of my self-imposed homework, but have started to read a novel, one of the many books all over the place (finished a slim one earlier), poked around a pool-player's guide, and tried the "ghost ball" technique with my uncle, a billiards fan, on his pool table upstairs. With the books, the pool table, free meals, air conditioning, and my own mathy reading waiting for me, I could just hang out here all day every day. But as always I have to fight my natural inclination towards sloth. Am not very good in battle.
posted by fragments of angry candy at 5:48 AM
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