19th of april 2009 | sunday
mount pinatubo
tarlac | zambales philippines
through water, through land…and dust!
breathtaking sight of the crater lake
antics
early morning meet-up in mcdo quezon ave. early morning arrival in capas, tarlac. 1.25-hour 4×4 ride. 45-min trek which we accomplished in about 30 minutes. awesome sight of the crater lake.
complete set of photos here: http://kulitjr3.multiply.com/photos/album/471/destination_mt._pinatubo
april 9 to 11, 2009
another wow trip | this time, up north!
places hit: sabangan, bontoc, banga-an rice terraces, bomod-ok falls, lemon pie house, kiltepan viewpoint, sugong, lumiang to sumaguing cave connection, lake danum, yoghurt house, calvary hills, echo valley
super memorable adventures: 24-km hike to and fro bomod-ok falls (through banga-an rice terraces). topload riding (wet and rained on, as if the cold,cold temperature in sagada wasn’t enough). 6.5 hours of death-defying spelunking. experiencing both sunrise and sunset of the same day. bonfire at the lake.
HAPPINESS!
p.s. panis ang spelunking sa sagada kung sa sumaguing cave ka lang… go for the lumiang to sumaguing cave connection adventure and prove your worth. it’s not for the faint-hearted. as a fellow adventurer in sagada puts it: sumaguing is for photo op. lumiang is for real spelunking 
i agree!
imagine scaling slimy huge, huge rocks without head gear, harness, carabines, and grips. safety officers would definitely give an “unsafe” callout. haha!
simply put, the difference between falling (and meeting a likely accident) and staying safe during the cave connection adventure is defined by this combo: trusting makeshift footholds will hold, reflexes, guide’s know-how, following instructions, God’s grace
—
photo sets related to this trip are posted here (click on the links):
i checked the map which i bought prior leaving sagada and i realized that there are still a lot of places there which i have yet to experience. hehe, i have reasons to go back!
my outputs:
from busuanga to kayangan lake:
http://kulitjr3.multiply.com/photos/album/447/from_busuanga_airport_to_kayangan_lake
banana island, palawan:
http://kulitjr3.multiply.com/photos/album/449/banana_island_palawan
bulog island, palawan:
http://kulitjr3.multiply.com/photos/album/451/bulog_island_palawan
coron sunrise and waves:
http://kulitjr3.multiply.com/photos/album/452/coron_sunrise_and_waves
finding africa in palawan:
http://kulitjr3.multiply.com/photos/album/446/finding_africa_in_palawan
north cay, coral garden, and wreck site:
http://kulitjr3.multiply.com/photos/album/453/north_cay_coral_garden_wreck_site
sunrise at mt. tapiyas and the flight from busuanga to manila:
http://kulitjr3.multiply.com/photos/album/454/sunrise_at_mt._tapiyas_the_flight_from_busuanga_to_manila
coron, palawan tour groupies:
http://kulitjr3.multiply.com/photos/album/448/coron_palawan_tour_groupies
“We all possess the thunder of pure fury
and the calm breeze of tranquility.
If it wasn’t for tomorrow,
how much would we get done today?
Whatever your purpose… embrace it completely.
Get lost in the clouds every now and then
so you never lose sight of God’s wonder.”
–Paul Vitale
yesterday, the sunset i saw over tagaytay as i walked out of the workplace was fantastic. however, i think that’s an understatement.
it was glorious! i could barely keep my eyes off the wonderful sight that i had to walk backwards just so i could continue walking over to the parking area without losing sight of the burst of warm colors as the sun went down. walking backwards is unsafe — i know — but i was feeling like a child filled with glee; i felt it safe to let my guards down. the wind was blowing nicely as well. as rays caressed my face, the wind kissed my hair.
in front of me was a a big picture of nature’s generosity and the shower of light i have always loved. behind me was mt. makiling, majestic, silent and, at that time of the day, lending the attention it usually gets to the call of the photons in not-so-distant tagaytay. if i was feeling low, how could i not feel soooo good all of a sudden? but i was feeling bouncy and i felt lighter all the more!
yesterday was not the first time that i’ve seen wonderful sunsets in this area. our parking lot is a wonderful spot to view a quiet, inspiring world from. this especially holds true for people who take time to embrace (and to be embraced by) the cool, cool breeze and enjoy a picturesque skyline — free from pollution, free also from eyesores called billboards.
i wanted to take a photo of yesterday’s sunset showcase. i fumbled with my stuff and realized i only had my camphones. i ended up wishing i had my dslr with me.
today, i brought my dslr. however, today, i missed the sunset. oh well. i’ll try again tomorrow.
note: actually, my camphones don’t disappoint. i have such good rapport with them, i’m able to take nice pictures with them — including sunsets as viewed from our parking lot. here’s a collection of photos i took with a k530i sony ericsson during one very hectic day last year: http://kulitjr3.multiply.com/photos/album/292/almost_sunset
Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.
1. i’ve been blogging since may 2004.
2. this is not the first time i gave in to this online tagging game.
3. my gizmos — camphones, dslr camera, personal digital assistant, computer, thumb drives, external hard disk drive — have names. i used to use “minion.” late last year, i decided to rename them to “steward.” hence, i have k770i steward, k530i steward, steward the dslr, ipaq steward… my 200GB external hard disk drive carries the name “kulit.” my older transcend 128MB drive which i got sometime during the first quarter of 2004 retained the “minion” label; i’m gonna convert it to another “steward” soon. my 4GB transcend thumb drive is identified as Tsteward. doing away with the “minion” tag has everything to do with the power of words.
4. i am looking forward to setting foot on coron, palawan and enjoying the sights the place has to offer this march. this explains why i’m excited that february is here already. i got my tickets for the coron trip last december. who me?! excited? 
5. it took six months before i found out that i was co-author of a scientific paper that got published in american institute of physics’ applied physics letters. hooray! ’twas my thesis. the article got published in may 2008 and i only found out about it in november 2008, when i typed “v magusara” in google’s search field. google is my other best friend… and yeah, i sometimes do THOSE searches. talk about stalking myself, haha!
6. i bought two bright yellow t-shirts last sunday. because. i. adore. yellow. and i decided that i will wear more yellow this year. yellow and apple green, pink and blue… more orange, too!
7. i have not been able to finish a book last month. i should make up for that this month — gotta finish reading at least two (2) books!
8. i miss riding bikes.
9. for this year, i intend to eat home-cooked meals at least thrice a week. this means, i am currently developing the habit of cooking my own meals at least thrice a week. the important implication of that statement is this: I AM cooking. hehe.
10. for even just once, i’d like to be part of a documentary — either as concept developer, reporter, director, or researcher. i’d like to have my mark on at least one documentary. meanwhile, i satisfy myself with documentary shows — that is if i’m not watching soap operas, haha.
11. hopefully, i’ll reach batanes this year.
12. i am pleased with my efforts at growing my savings. i want to invest on a business this year.
13. i now perfectly understand why i did not get into the semiconductor electronics industry.
14. i like eating yellow cab pizza co.’s hot wings!
15. i prefer having pens and writing markers with different colors.
16. surprise, december 2008 surprise. i joined a choir convinced that i’d be singing alto. imagine my shock when the choirmaster assigned me to first soprano.
17. my right hand is lazy. i think it’s jealous of my left.
18. magluya akong kalag kung dili ko kalaag. kindly translate that.
19. seasons of love from the musical rent remains to be one of my fave songs.
20. when i read angels and demons in 2004, i got interested in ambigrams. i ended up making one for my name. go here: http://vinokulafo.blog.friendster.com/2006/03/aint-this-cool/
21. i am mighty glad that i was able to get reunited with my TOSP family early this year. i did miss the community activities during the time i was away.
22. i collect google banners. christmas day. new year. valentine’s day. google anniversary. olympics… name it. i have a folder in my computer reserved for ‘em google banners.
23. i am thankful for people who care enough to exert some effort on pulling me back to calmness (and making me see reason) when my temper’s about to sow mayhem.
24. one of my targets this year is to further reduce my soda consumption to “once in a blue moon.” i’ve never been a soda addict but i just want to further reduce my soda intake.
25. there are rules which i break. that rule preceding number 1 of this list? i’m breaking that. see? feel free to write down 25 random things about yourself if you have the time… and if you feel motivated to do so. i am interested to know more about you. come on!
tangub city is about an hour-long roadtrip plus 15-min barge ride plus another 20-min roadtrip from iligan city. going there, getting there is not new to my family. after all, it’s my father’s hometown and, as far as i can remember, there was no year in my earth life that we didn’t have a trip to tangub.
having said that, tangub city’s lure for me goes more than its being the christmas symbols capital of the philippines. tangub city is where i get reunited with my relatives on the paternal side — grandparents, uncles, aunties, cousins, their kids and their friends.
tangub city was where i spent lots of summer days playing, walking through rice paddies, shooting birds with tirador (slingshot), experiencing mongo and peanut harvests, looking after (and eventually riding on the back of) the carabao, bamboo rafting on fishponds, whiling away the time on make-shift swings, and eating fruits fresh from their respective trees.
this is also the place where i am assured that i could eat the best lechon. my father’s eldest brother knows how to prepare and serve yummy-licious lechon. side note: the lechon my parents served during our birthdays (when my kuya and i were kids) came all the way from tangub city.
go here for the multiply album i dedicated to the making of a lechon: http://kulitjr3.multiply.com/photos/album/425/lechon_story
this year, despite heightened security alerts in the lanao-and-misamis-occidental areas that we have to go through in order to get there (and still make it back in time for the new year), our family made the trip from iligan to tangub city. the christmas lights which i wanted to see in iligan, i saw in tangub city — and i saw more!
rushed collage of the 12.29-31.08 trip
wow, tangub! | bonggacious kung mag-pasko ang mga pinoy!
during daytime, the heavily-decorated arches they put along the roads will call your attention. at night, the same arches light up the paths in so many colorful and artful ways. if you go to the city plaza, you will understand why tangub city is the christmas symbols capital of the philippines — huge, dazzling, inspiring, amazing pinoy wonderland in the heart of mindanao.
december 2008. christmastime in tangub city
it’s one place where you and your family could be entertained without spending too much (PhP50 for parking fee and that’s all we in our group of 11 spent). even their marketplace is adorned with oh-so-colorful lights that sometimes i find it difficult to believe i’m looking at their wet market.
i will be posting a separate album of the nighttime pictures i took of the oh-so-christmas-sy scenes in tangub city in my multiply account soon. i’ll let you know when i finally get to do it.
have a happy and prosperous new year!
“It’s a question of discipline,” the little prince told me later on.
“When you’ve finished washing and dressing each morning,
you must tend your planet.”
–Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
for over four months now, i’ve been taking care of two plants. i saved them from the bouquet of flowers my housemate and i brought home from our company’s inauguration. when the flowers started to wilt and were about to be thrown, i separated two leafy stalks from the flower basket and, then, assigned a recycled sola iced tea bottle filled with tap water to each. the sola iced tea bottles were the ones i saved from my yellow cab affairs. i don’t even know the real name of the plants. all i know is that they look like chinese bamboo and i had faith they would survive in water. they did! in just a matter of days, each of them sprouted confusing networks of roots. they survived typhoon frank, too.
my housemate baptised them with names we could both relate to and laugh over. they have been thriving in water — both plants have grown longer and had shown more leaves — since i started looking after them back in june. they’re living just in front of our terrace, a prime spot for getting their dose of sunlight. in more than two occasions, i planned of buying them clay pots and transferring them to good soil but i never got around to executing the plan. to compensate for that, i diligently change their water homes every week or two to save them from the competition posed by moss and lichens and to discourage mosquitos from laying eggs inside the bottles.
i thought the third plant that i would care for here in batangas would come from one of the two. i intended to cut the longer plant and, with that, add one more bottle in front of our terrace. however, before i could carry out that simple operation, calamansi came along.
last october 29, 2008 — wednesday — during a lunch-out with our boss, my housemate and i fell in love with the calamansi plant we saw being sold for 85 pesos just outside the resto. there were several of them waiting for new homes and new owners but we chose this one that stood out.
meet calamansi
what’s nice about it? at its petite stature, it already has fruits — five of them!
calamansi is my new baby. it sits on our terrace — a welcoming ornament — like a favoured plant should. soon, calamansi will have a large clay pot for a new home.
with all that said, i’d like to remind my friends of the gifts of cacti i’ve been waiting for since november-december of 2007. hmmm…
p.s. october 29, 2008 was the day before i was to celebrate my year 1 with the company i am currently affiliated with and calamansi is actually my anniversary gift to myself. c”,)
“Put your heart, mind, intellect and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.”
–Swami Sivananda
i already talked about doing the laundry in a previous article. now, i’m going to talk about cooking.
my friend, yoni, must be right. i am getting domesticated (and yeah we’re growing old. no, i mean, we’re growing up.) if before i couldn’t be made to deal with mere rice cooking, now i have the will to cook whatever my mind fancies.
i remember that one of my reasons for trying to live far away from the comforts of my own home and family was so i could push myself to take care of my own affairs especially when it comes to doing the laundry, keeping my own place neat and organized, and cooking, among other things. to put that simply: so i could push myself to do household chores. at home, i found it rather difficult to do chores because if i did try to lift a finger and did something as simple as slicing potatoes or hold a broom, people in the house would start thinking something was definitely wrong with me and they’d tease me about it. the dear heavens know i dislike being teased about such things.
when i first moved away from home and stayed in diliman, my doing the laundry was limited to washing my own underwear and socks (as we were not allowed to do the rest of our laundry in the dorm and laundromats took care of my soiled clothes). i kept my side of the dorm room relatively neat and relatively organized (take note of that word — relatively). i did not cook — i just didn’t have the will but i surely had the thought.
with my stay here in batangas, i re-wrote my own story — at least, where household chores are concerned. not only did i have the patience and will to deal with my laundry on my own, i also earned the will to try honing my cooking skills (long-been-dormant cooking skills, i’d like to insist. after all, i belong to a lineage of good, if not great, cooks! hehe.)
just recently (read: more than a week ago), i tried my luck with adobong manok. one early morning, i went to the market. i had just alighted from the company bus then and i had just finished a night shift’s worth of workload. i didn’t know what got into me but i walked my way to the market and bought half a kilo of dressed chicken, had that said half sliced and took it home.
i remember being sleepy and i should have hit the bed right away but…
i had a half a kilo of chicken to deal with. after putting away my bag, i went to the kitchen, washed my hands, and did what i had to do. i had once observed my officemate when she came to visit and cooked adobong manok for us. i somehow had the confidence that i’d be able to cook adobong manok based on that one instance of observation — with no written guide whatsoever to pull me through. i thought: “i’m gifted with good memory and, should that fail me, i could always go by with my instincts.”
i got me some garlic, onion, salt, soy sauce, paminta, and vinegar. i simply mixed all of them ingredients in a clean used-to-be ice cream container. for good measure, i mixed them with my own hands. i then turned on the rice cooker (we don’t have a stove in this house and we won’t buy one anymore), put some cooking oil inside the cooking bowl, and when all that was ready, i transferred all the pre-mixed ingredients and waited for my adobo to be ready for eating.
either i must really be bad at waiting or i must have been really tired from work or both. i fell asleep! when i woke up, the contents of the cooker was close to drying up. good thing, i woke up just in time (to the tempting smell of adobo and before the chicken and the rest of the stuff got burned, you know) and was able to save the day. whew, that was close. i simply added some water, vinegar, and soy sauce and waited some more until i felt certain all was well with my first ever adobong manok.
it smelled like adobong manok, looked like adobong manok, and tasted like adobong manok. i say, it was really an adobong manok which i was able to cook on my own.
that was more than a week ago. next time, i’ll try cooking pork adobo. when i cook, it’s usually a hit or miss. i tried cooking tinolang manok not too long ago and it ended up being a nilagang manok, pft. hopefully, when i try pork adobo, it’ll be a hit.
"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water,
or watching the clouds float across the sky,
is hardly a waste of time."
–John Lubbock
on
april 29 to may 1, 2008: from sta. rosa to calamba to los baños to
lumban-caliraya to pagsanjan-cavinti-pagsanjan to sta. cruz to bay
(read as ba-i) to los baños to san pablo city to sta. rosa.
let the pictures do the talking.
04.29-30.2008 caliraya | lumban, laguna
04.30.2008 fun in caliraya | lumban, laguna
04.30.2008 wallclimbing in caliraya | lumban, laguna
04.30.2008 caliraya outing | lumban, laguna
04.30.2008 overnight | pagsanjan, laguna
05.01.2008 boatriding | pagsanjan-cavinti, laguna
05.01.2008 boatriding rest station | pagsanjan, laguna
05.01.2008 pagsanjan falls raftride | cavinti, laguna
05.01.2008 pagsanjan falls | cavinti, laguna
05.01.2008 reminiscing tabing ilog | pagsanjan, laguna
05.01.2008 kamayan sa palaisdaan sa bay (read as ba-i) | bay, laguna
related albums:
end of april in caliraya: album #1
end of april in caliraya: album #2
aprilthirtieth: our stay in pagsanjan
mayfirst: pagsanjan, laguna
mayfirst: tabing ilog
mayfirst: bay, laguna
“Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light;
and the landscape lay as if new created
in all the freshness of childhood.”
–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
observing the sunset while on a moving vehicle
9th of april 2008 | wednesday
sta. rosa, laguna
i could have asked the driver to stop for a little while so i could take a better picture but i didn’t.
“hello…”
“…see you soon.”
the sun was a full orange circle under the clouds. the vehicle i was
riding on was heavily tinted. the SE phone did more than i expected —
the pictures are not way too blurry considering the vehicle was doing
past 70.
