Archive for August, 2008
Filed under human interest, people, travel, trivia
It’s Robert Pershing Wadlow, from Alton, Illinois. He was 8 feet 11 inches tall when he was last measured in 1940, when he was just 22 years old. When he was nine, he was able to carry his father, who was 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighed 170 lbs, up the stairs of their family home.
To illustrate, this is how tall he is, and this is how short I am:
That’s a life-size replica of him at the Guinness World of Records Museum in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, a tourist town I visited and fell in love with last week. (That’s for another entry, though. :)) I am half his height at about the same age!
And this is how my foot compares to his:
I wear an Asian size 5 shoes by the way, which is size 4 in the US.
Filed under food trip, human interest, travel
Okay, this is not really a food “trip,” but a list of foods that caught my fancy in this land far, far away.
The day after I came in, someone in class passed around a plate full of what I thought were red twisted candles. LOL. My newfound friend, Sarah (who has a palmtop that I envy, I kept looking at it), explained that it is strawberry-flavored licorice candy. I tried it, and I liked it. It’s really long, like a candle; I just twisted it to look like a loop, as you see in the photo.
I haven’t seen this candy in our candy stores. Or am I just not exposed enough to sweets?
And here’s an oddly-shaped squash (to me, anyway) that I saw in another friend’s house, where we ate dinner last night. I thought this was some kind of American vegetable unheard of in Asia, and then he told me it was squash. The only squash I’ve seen before are the pumpkin-like ones we have back home.
Here’s another kind of squash I found in his backyard. (The man grows vegetables in his backyard and makes his beer at home!)
He said it is yellow squash. I thought it was yellow eggplant.
Afterwards, we had a sumptous dinner of grilled vegetables (which included the yellow squash in the photo), grilled beans, grilled corn, spicy chicken, and rice (yipee!) out in his patio. The vegetables were cut into slices,wrapped in foil, and then grilled. You rub some kind of Japanese paste to the corn and then grill it. Yummy!
It was my first real meal since Friday. As much as I appreciate expensive airline food, and as much as I like burgers, nothing beats having rice for a meal. Thanks a lot, Santa! 
Filed under Photohunt, people, travel
It’s midnight where I am, and I can’t go back to sleep. I’m still on Philippine time, I guess. I thought I’d better do my PhotoHunt until sleep comes upon me.
I am featuring here some paintings made by children for the Art for Heart, an exhibit set up by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey for the children who lost loved ones at the 9/11 tragedy. It was intended as a therapy for the kids. Look what they’ve come up out of their loss, and notice the raw emotion in the artworks.
Click the photos to enlarge.
The exhibit, by the way, was put up at the site of the World Trade Center. I’m not sure if the paintings are still there today, though.
Filed under human interest, travel
It wasn’t even a wish, it was more like a passing thought. I wrote in my journal at the beginning of the year that I wanted to go back, and look, it is coming true!
I’m leaving later today for Hong Kong. From there I’ll be flying to Los Angeles, and then to Dallas, Texas, and then finally to Lexington, Kentucky. Lexington is the horse capital of the world, sometimes also called “Athens of the West.”
I was given an assignment that requires me to travel to the corporate headquarters, thanks to my fairy godmother who is always watching out for me. I’d probably be pulling all my hair out doing the work, but heck, it’s still a trip and it’s a rare opportunity. Actually, I am more excited about the trip rather than the work. LOL.
I am glad I am going because I didn’t get enough of the place when I was there last year. For one, I wasn’t able to get on a horse. The best I did was feed a mint to a horse before it ran in the racetracks. And I won a dime from the race, by the way. 
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Filed under Photohunt
Those are my hands. It looks like the photo was set up, but it is candid. One of my college organizations used to meet on Monday nights outside our dormitories. We used candles at our meet-ups because we were cheap like that. I was playing with the candle one Monday night when a friend caught my hands on camera.
Photo taken by Alex Pataray, and edited by yours truly.
Filed under food trip
I’m ashamed to admit that I lived in Manila for more than four years and never heard of dampas.
A dampa, I just learned, is a wet market where you can buy fresh seafood. Near it is a string of restaurants. The catch is that, you buy seafood from the market, and then choose from among the restaurants nearby to cook the seafood for you. You decide how the food would be cooked, of course. Much like the Sutukil in Cebu, but dampas are bigger.
My friend’s friend brought us to this dampa near the Mall of Asia the other day. It was past dinnertime and I was starving, but I enjoyed checking out the large array of crabs and fishes. The fishes were so big,and some were alive. I learned that there is a gay crab, and it is supposed to be the best to buy, because it is the meatiest.
The cooking charge is quite expensive, though. Prices range from P300 up. We paid P900 for a meal of Calamares and Sweet and Sour Pork. That excludes the price we paid for buying the fish and the squid outside.
I’m wondering where they got the fresh seafood, considering that Manila is a metropolis and there are no clean water bodies to fish from nearby. They couldn’t have gotten the fishes from as far as Cavite, or am I wrong?
Anyway, pictures! Click the photos to enlarge.
Filed under people, personal
One of the unlikely places to hear about the dreams and aspirations of random strangers is at the US embassy. There’s this lounge where you wait for the visa interview. On one side of the room is a line of booths where the consuls are. The consuls decide whether you can enter the United States. People try to look their best and arm themselves with the best English they have.
When your number is called, you go to a window, and then the consul grills you on the purpose of your visit, how long you would be staying there, when are you coming back. They also ask you details about your family, your properties, your finances, even your plans for the future.
Because the place is packed, and because sometimes the consuls probe that deep, visa applicants give details of their plans 40 years into the future. One woman the other day said she would manage a restaurant when she gets there, and hopes that that would be her financial investment. Another woman, who I understand is a social studies teacher, said she will share her knowledge when about different cultures, and said some things that an ambassador or a Miss Universe contestant would say.
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Filed under Photohunt, human interest, travel
Do you see what I see?
I snapped these photo soon after taking off from the Legazpi Airport. It’s on the northern part of the Philippines, by the way, right where the world-famous cone-shaped Mayon Volcano is.
I thought the clouds looked like a bear hiding in the bushes.
Look, he is standing up and scratching his right cheek!
Filed under personal
I am half blind these days. After my left contact lens was torn last month while I was trying to remove it, a torn piece “got lost” in my eye, and the doctor told me to stop wearing contact lenses for awhile. She said it was to avoid possible infection, even though a test showed hours of poking didn’t scratch my cornea.
I’ve slept with my lenses on before, and I’ve “lost” lenses in my eye, but I had always solved that little problem on my own. I went to a doctor that one time because I couldn’t get the lost piece out after hours of trying, and I didn’t know where it was. I could only feel it whenever I blinked.
To make the long story short, I was able to remove the torn piece after the medical interns at the hospital had fun poking at my eye flipping my eyelids. They weren’t very useful. I had to pay an emergency room fee of P500 and a temperature check fee (what on earth is that?!) of P10 even though I was only there for 15 minutes.
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