Archive for August, 2008
Filed under food trip, travel
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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