Top 5 Things To Do in Kabankalan City

Here is my list of the top 5 things to do in Kabankalan City (from a visitor's point of view):

1. Take part in the Sinulog Festival (held every third Sunday of January)
2. Swimming, hiking and a picnic at Mag-aso Falls
3. Public plaza
4. Public market (just so you see what the locals do)
5. Visit the new City Hall

More Mag-aso Falls Pictures

Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra Performs

When someone discovers something awesome, one doesn’t keep it to one’s self, but instead, shares it with everyone. Recently, I discovered something rather surprising. The Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra performed recently at the Ted Talks Conference. They are the product of Venezuela’s El Sistema, where the most talented youth go on to be part of a real orchestra and go on to making great music. At the conference, where the founder accepted the TED Prize, they played Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 (2nd movement) and Arturo Marquez’ Dance Song No. 2 (wait or forward to that second number, it’s great!). The conductor is Gustavo Dudamel, also a product of El Sistema, and who is the new Musical Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.

I saw one of L.A. Philharmonic's performances but unfortunately Gustavo Dudamel wasn't part of the performance that weekend. I guess I should have reserved another ticket for a performance in which he was conducting.

Exotic Food

Filipinos in other countries must be really home sick, for Anthony Bourdain's post on the Philippines episode for the No Reservations show got 407 comments. Who gets 407 comments on one post? While going through the latest tweets tonight (or this morning, or whatever), I hopped on several links and ended up at his blog. It's crazy and the conversation even extends to Colin Devroe's review of the show. I guess it was expected, what with all the lechon, sisig, kare-kare, adobo, fishballs and other food that all reminds us of home. These are the food that our grandmothers cooked for us, our mothers served us, our comfort food. Maybe even fiesta food.

Some friends once described how kare-kare is cooked to an American friend, and they had a hard time describing the dish. It's ox tail cooked in a sort of soup with peanut butter and local vegetables, and then it's eaten with bagoong (fish sauce?). So imagine describing that to someone who grew up in the U.S., someone who cannot imagine an ox tail being cooked, let alone with peanut butter. Let's just say, they were hooting with laughter that ended with the friend describing it in the end as (forgive my "French") "peanut butter and ass".

The show could have featured many other dishes. I haven't seen the Philippine episode of No Reservations yet, but since the show is about exotic food, there are a few dishes that they might have also liked to try like ox tongue (cooked all over the country), diwal (I don't know if they have it also in Luzon but I saw this in the Visayas; it's a "longish" shellfish that is usually baked or boiled with just salt, red pepper and green onion leaves to top it off), and maybe some roasted goat.

Space Food

It's always interesting to learn about space travel and the intricacies of preparing for one. A couple of years ago, I read a lot of books on the lives of astronauts, for I also wanted to be one. Then I thought of becoming a pilot because I noticed that astronauts are usually former pilots, either from the Air Force or as test pilots. As in a lot of our dreams, we dream new dreams and we end up in other pursuits.

Space travel is a lot more advanced these days. But there is always one interesting topic about it all - space food. How do they plan for it?

In the video below, Professor Joseph Marcy of Virgina Tech described the challenge of planning for how to feed astronauts on a nearly three-year-long mission to Mars.

Long Weekends in 2009 (Philippines)

There a lot of long weekends in the Philippines in 2009. As you may all be eager to plan your weekends and vacations, here's a list of those 10 long weekends:

• April 4 - 6 (Araw ng Kagitingan on April 9 was moved to the nearest Monday, April 6)
• April 9 - 12 (Holy Week)
• May 1 - 3 (Labor Day weekend)
• June 12 - 14 (Independence Day)
• August 21 - 23 (Ninoy Aquino Day)
• August 29 - 31 (National Heroes Day)
• October 31 - November 2 (All Saints Day/All Souls Day)
• November 28 - 30 (Bonifacio Day)
• December 24 - 27 (Christmas holidays)
• December 30 - January 3, 2010 (Rizal Day & New Year)

When I heard this news, I had to sit down for an hour and mark my calendar on these dates. Also, the christmas holidays in 2009 will be a long one again, as only December 28 and 29 are not official holidays.

Also, Air Asia is giving away free seats. Yes, free! Check out the site now as a lot of people in Asia are interested in this too. But yes, their airport in the Philippines is at Clark.

We better start planning already!

Google Earth Underwater and Mag-aso Falls

As of this writing, Google just launched "Ocean Google Earth", or Google Earth underwater. Amazing, isn't it? At first, one might think that it would only be useful for those in the scientific and research community. But on second thought, the applications are only limited by our imaginations. In fact, it can be a sort of travel experience from home, straight from your desktop or laptop, specially with the sometimes high cost of travel, specially in this economy and, in some places, in these kinds of weather.

I've been waiting to post my pics of Mag-aso Falls for sometime now and I've finally done it. Mas-aso Falls has only been recently developed by Kabankalan City in Negros Occidental. The main falls is that pic on the left, and to get there, you have to go down some 100 steps or so (I stopped counting). The water is clear and there are not that many people, except when we went there, which was on January 1. I didn't know that it is a tradition to go to the beach or somewhere with water on New Year's Day. The people of Central and Southern Negros, though, take it up a notch. You see them all in fully loaded tricycles, pick-up trucks and hauler trucks.

So anyway, when you go back up the steps to the main falls, they have a swimming pool back at the top, and just a few steps near that are the small "falls" up the river. My cousin said that is one of the best places to bathe in because you're the first one to bathe in the water. :)


If you click on the picture, it will take you to my Flickr page where you'll find a few more pictures of Mag-aso Falls.

Food - Just Like Travel

Whenever I can’t find the time, or the opportunity, to travel I take comfort in food, which can transport us to other places just as well. One of my best memories from being in other places is from having all that wonderful food. Food is such a basic necessity that sometimes we tend to overlook it, settling on the first fast food joint that we find. Not that they’re all bad, we had fun savoring all the dips at an El Pollo Loco in L.A.

Remember “laswa”? It always reminds me of Negros and home. Green Indian mangoes take me back to trips to Lian, Batangas and the eat-all-you-can Indian mangoes near the beach. After snorkeling, it’s the desert after all that grilled fish. Or how about those seaweeds that sort of look like little beads, which are a good reminder for Cagayan de Oro. Sometimes, something very simple can also take you home. For me, that would be grilled cheese sandwiches made on the stove. It’s a bit of a weird method, but it works for me.

Sometimes, food also takes you international. Take grilled chicken, which reminds me of nights grilling fresh chicken breasts and beef steaks in my hotel room a couple of years ago (crazy I know, but we figured out a way to manage the smoke detector!). I associate Mexican food not only to Mexico but to Los Angeles as well – tacos and nachos at Tito’s Tacos near Sepulveda Boulevard, etc. etc. Burritos transport me to Baja Fresh in Nashville, TN with the cool lunch crowd that always fills up the place. Some of the best steaks I’ve had were from team dinners in the American South, so when having steak (or even just a bit of beef that kind of tastes like such) I always think of Birmingham, Alabama and the Capitol Grill in Atlanta. Churros and the matching chocolate can take you to Spain. Mozart chocolates and “kanabanosi” (those European beef jerky sticks) takes me to Austria. Or chicken adobo, which reminds me of Atlanta and the endless experiments I made trying to make adobo in my little kitchen there, or at least something that resembles adobo.

This is making me hungry again so I need to think of something else now. Well, we will always find something to enjoy about food, and besides the delectable tastes, we will always find a place to associate it with. Bon appétit!

A Great Year to All

First post for 2009... and although it's already February, belated happy Chinese new year to all! Haven't been able to write in here for some time now, you know how it is during busy season. It's, well, beeezy.

Let's start with great good news:

• Cebu Pac continues to wow us all with low-fare promos, including free tax and insurance fares. The site's advise is to book flights on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the best low-fare flights. Just keep searching and you'll eventually find a long weekend and promo fare match that will fit your schedule.
• PAL is offering the half-miles promo for Mabuhay Miles members, where you can book flights (including international ones) using your miles but at half the miles. You can reserve up to February 5, 2009.

While surfing the net recently, I also came upon this picture taken at Quezon City, Philippines that was featured in National Geographic's Intelligent Travel Blog. It's beautiful and colorful and brings back great memories of markets and Wednesday market days. It's time we appreciate local color. Wish you all a great year ahead!

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I am always on the lookout for great travel pictures that convey a sense of local life and color. What other sites do you know that feature similar styles as the IT blog referred to above? Or is the site that you're running has features like these? Please ping me if you do.

Bring No Luggage

Just wanted to share a little tip out there, although it's not exactly a tip as everyone is supposed to know about this already. Yes, bring no check-in luggage with you when you can.

When I traveled a few days ago, I didn't want to bring check-in luggage with me, so I brought only carry-on luggage. In the rush for the Christmas holidays, there were long lines at NAIA III and I was quite anxious to get through check-in, specially as I didn't get proper sleep the night before (another side-effect of traveling). Why do I have to fall in line with all the other passengers that have a month's worth of luggage with them, right? Good enough I talked to a friend a few steps behind me on the line, for I suddenly saw the Express Check-in Counter of Cebu Pacific. Whew! There was only one person there, whereas I was in a line with 6 people before me with several carts (yes, carts) of luggage with them. From the time I arrived at the airport, it only took me 20 minutes to get through to the security gates. More time to explore and find a spot in which to park myself. :)

Cebu Pacific Air can be reached through their website at www.cebupacificair.com

Blog Action Day: Look at the Positive

Here's my 2 cents worth to Blog Action Day 2008.

All we see are sugarcane everywhere. We are in Negros, sugarcane country, and we are driving along a two-lane highway, one lane going north, the other going south. I'm hitching a ride with an uncle and his wife and we're heading to my grandmothers' wake. We had a pleasant ride for some twenty minutes or so when my uncle suddenly calls my aunt's attention.

"Look at that, oh."
"Yeah. That's why I want to bring the kids here again."

I squirm in my seat, uncomfortable that I get to be the witness of this conversation. I look ahead and see what they see, "karga-tapas" guys or sugarcane field workers cutting and cleaning the sugarcane and loading them in batches on a waiting truck. This part of harvesting sugarcane is a very labor-intensive process and there could be several people working on a portion of a field at one time. Here, in front of us, are several people on each side of the , highway, working the field and clearing out patches in a (I'm sure) systematic manner here and there.

"You see, Rizza, sometimes we forget." My aunt tells me.

Maybe... Sometimes we forget what other people's lives are like, we forget what we're working for.

At another time, while traveling on the same stretch of highway, this same aunt tells me that she likes Filipino houses. Specifically, the houses and huts of the ordinary people. She says "they're just simple, from simple and native materials, but they have a certain grace to them." I wanted to grin so wide at that point, if I just could.

The story does not always have to be so grim and it doesn't always have to be about blaming someone. There are those who might live in poverty or in the edges of poverty, yet who still have a certain grace in the way they live. In our travels, let's invite everyone to look at the positive side of things.

Cebu Pacific Sale

Just wanted to share something that I came across recently when I had nothing to do but surf the net looking for cheap airfare, hoping to get a good deal on an adventure trip one of these weekends. Cebu Pacific Air just recently released its promo fares which start at Php 1 (plus taxes and surcharges), including Php 288 all-in fares for domestic flights. I have been searching for good deals for the November 29 to December 1 weekend and found a Manila to Iloilo flight for Php 2800 (roundtrip). Good enough, considering how much it used to be and how much the other carriers charge for this. But then, in all my OC-ness and, uhm, frugality, I might end up staying home because I can't decide where to go. Whew.

If you want to go abroad or around Asia, the flight fares are also reasonable. You can go to Hong Kong (roundtrip) for Php8000+. But you need to research carefully and plan the timing so that you get good fares, and sometimes, the earlier you buy, the better. Yes, it's time. It's time to get those hands pitter-pattering on the keyboard and clicking on all kinds of flight combinations to get that deal. After all, a great bargain can make you feel like the queen of the world.

Choosing the Travel Destination

All too often, we choose our travel destinations because it's the most popular travel destination of the month, or it's what everyone's talking about or it will add plus-points to our social status. We do this, in spite of the fact that you want to go somewhere else much more simple, more mundane probably, or less glamorous. I saw a video blog recently which encouraged everyone to “be who you are” as “you are your DNA”. Your likes and dislikes define who you are. Your travel choices makes you who you are, it doesn’t matter what everyone else thinks if you think this place is more romantic or that it offers a more authentic experience of the place and its history. What matters is what you think.

Real travel changes you and keeps you in touch with the real you. This is because the sense of place that you get from a locale and the authentic history and knowledge that you learn forges you into a better you. In the same manner, staying home, or working, or going to the other local attractions keeps you in touch with the real you.

There is a song that says it well, “be true to your heart”.

Alpine Experience in Helen, Georgia

Nestled in the mountains of Georgia, the town of Helen is a must-see for all Georgia visitors and those who head to the Southeast US. Being in Helen is like entering a totally different city, almost like being in Europe, except that you're in Helen, Georgia.

The architecture is European, creating an alpine look and feel that can make Oktoberfest a richer experience. When we went to Helen, it was more of a "tour" of the place so we didn't get to participate in the Oktoberfest festivities. I know what you might be thinking, but yes, we didn't even get to taste the sausages and the pretzels. We did get to go to a Wendy's, which still had the alpine-European architecture.

A few miles outside the town center, we stopped by the Habersham Winery. They hold free wine tastings and they have pretty good wines. My friends thought it was an opportunity, considering that they thought they missed the beer at Oktoberfest, so we all flashed our IDs and went swirling and sloshing and spitting our way through the collection.

Near Helen is also a great place to unwind, the active kind that is. You can hike your way through the really walker-friendly hiking trail to Ruby Falls. It's a great hike after a week of hard work, with all the greens and the little streams every now and then. Our friends from Kansas who were with us thought it was really cool (they thought they didn't have something like that in Kansas).

Below is a picture of a tree I found that I think grew up on rock.


There are many other experiences in store for everyone at Helen and in the surrounding areas. You can do mini-golf, kart racing, river rafting or floating on one of those tubes, hiking, swimming, and a lot of other things to do. Happy travels.

Landscapes: Westwood Village

Westwood Village in Los Angeles, California as seen from the J. Paul Getty Museum. Home to entertainment and technology industry companies, University of California - Los Angeles, budding filmmakers, Fox Theater at Westwood, Diddy Reese (cookies!), Noodle Planet and a lot of other restaurants and shops.

SMX Convention Center Pictures

Pictures at the SMX Convention Center taken recently during the Firm's anniversary dinner.

To Live Inside a Mall

When I found out that I was to stay at a hotel that is connected to a 200-plus-store mall, I was dumb-struck. No way. Er,sure!

Two and a half years ago, I was assigned to work at a client located in Birmingham/Hoover, Alabama. I was kind of excited to find out where I will be staying as I was to be there for several weeks. So when I found out that I was to virtually stay in a mall, the first word that came to mind was "dangerous".

I am actually not that into shopping. I am probably what might be called a "bursty shopper". I shop only when I feel like it and when I absolutely have to. But when I do shop, I really shop. :)

So there we were, we made our reservations to the Wynfrey Hotel at the Riverchase Galleria Mall. It's a 15-story hotel with around 330 rooms. It's literally attached to the Riverchase Galleria Mall and it's also one of the state's most popular tourist destinations.

During that first week in Birmingham, we faced a lot of work so I never really got to do some serious shopping. On the two days that I did go around the mall, I suddenly had this weird feeling that everything was expensive and ended up only buying a couple of DVDs. I got Batteries Not Included, a Syvester Stallone sports movies collection... stuff. My kuripot side prevailed.

Why is there so much hype on shopping malls, I wonder? It has become a park and a tourist attraction. Which is also good, in a way. The urban planners and the marketing people have gotten really good at this. It's not that they're bad, but there could be so much more places and activities to do out there. I guess it is the generation of the shoppaholic and the maller.

One associate went out running in the woods of Birmingham every night. So he discovered all these great running trails in the area. Birmingham is like that, it's urbanized, yet it has these pockets of woods here and there. He liked the urban-nature interplay of the city so much that when a career work-life balance issue came up, he eventually moved there.

The week after we came to Birmingham, we moved to another hotel 19 miles from the Galleria Mall. So after work, I had to do a little bit of driving to get to the hotel. That's when I started discovering places off-the-beaten track. For example, I discovered this park with a garden, a hiking trail and a running path that winds through woods and trees and a few inclines here and there for a little bit of challenge. There was also this scenic drive that I can't remember where anymore because I just happened to pass by there because I got lost.

After wandering around, I finally discovered where the rest of the young and hip crowd of Birmingham hang out - at The Summit, a huge mall complex, strip mall style, and has almost everything that you would ever need or want. Fun. That is where the real shopping began. That though, is another story for another day.

Why would anyone do that?

What to write... what to write? I haven't traveled or been somewhere in the past few months so I have no exciting breaking news to write. Then I came across this picture and remembered the afternoon I took this picture. This was taken around three years ago actually. With three other friends, we went around town trying to discover interesting places. Right across the CNN Center, we discovered this park, the Centennial Olympic Park, with this fountain on the ground shaped like the Olympic rings.

When I saw it, I thought it was really just a normal fountain. But these kids made it just a bit more interesting. They were out there in their bathing suits, playing around the fountain. What's weird though was their reactions. They would go to the middle of one of those rings, stand there and wait for the fountain to come blasting out of the ground. Then when all this water will splash around, they will scream at the top of their lungs, while still in the middle of the ring, mind you, then run across the splashing fountain to get out of the ring. Like, duh... I must be getting old.

Have you ever seen a child put a finger on a hot kettle just to know if what everyone is saying (that the kettle is hot) is true? Or the adventurous traveler try white water rafting to know what it would feel like if the raft tossed you high up in the air, or worse, capsized? Well, one of my friends went to Colorado and tried white water rafting. The raft capsized. :D Fortunately, they were all just fine.

Like a Spark

Great travel ideas come to us like a spark. Usually, they're not a result of so much planning and careful thought. They appear out of nowhere, like a bright spark in the middle of a dark sky and suddenly spread out like fireworks - bright, colorful and exciting. They call you to just go, not next month or next year, but tomorrow. It's a call at the back of your head telling you to start packing now.

This reminds me of an English guy who said he doesn't normally think so much about his upcoming trips. He just packs his things and goes to wherever it is he needs, or wants, to go. His favorite website? You guessed it -- Lastminute.com it is. :)

This is not a call to all of you to leave your jobs and pack your bags, like, now na. It's reminder that we don't need to "engineer" our trips so much, and even the way we live our lives. That where to go will come to you when you least expect it. That sometimes, places off the beaten track can actually define a trip.

Colored Jellyfish

Jellyfish inside color lighted tanks in a dark room at Ocean Park Hongkong.