Chasing the Valencia Waterfalls

I had the chance to tag along with my college friends and their workmates' Valencia tour a few weeks ago. For one, I didn't know about any tour (all I knew was that we were going straight to Pulang Bato). And second, I didn't know this trip was going to take HOURS. And because I am that person who doesn't prepare for trips, I ended up swimming in my underwear under that freezing water because I didn't have extra clothes. Those slippery rocks also played a trick on me and that eventually led to the painful demise of a precious toenail. (RIP toe)

Casaroro Falls. My ultimate goal was to count the exact number of steps going to Casaroro. I failed big time because I slipped and slid a lot of times. It's pretty surprising I only got a dead toe nail. 

Throwback Thursday: Batch Probers

Once my high school Research teacher finds out that I had all the time in the world to make this blog entry instead of sending a reply to her Facebook message, all hell will break loose. However, there is a very slim chance she knows about this whole world called Blogger. Sorry Ma'am F! 

Anyhoo, there is a reason why I suddenly unearthed these photos from the old and dusty baul. The annual homecoming is happening in a few days and my friends and I are going to pull off a no-show. So here's a letter from my friends/batchmates and I:

Dear teachers and fellow alumni, 

      We won't be able to participate in this year's events. So in behalf of my beautiful and handsome

      batchmates, can I interest you in a set of throwback photos? Hehe

Here's an Octave original: a hilarious caricature of all her classmates! Haha. We belong to the Bato section or as we'd like to call it, the ROCKers. You can find me in there somewhere but I won't give any clues. ;) 

The iconic Episode shoot with the Bebz! (minus Raruy, Riza and mommy). There's no photoshoot ever more epic than the P180 package from Episode! 6 wallet sized copies. Two 4Rs. One blowout picture. Thank you Episode for all your services. You are missed. 

Korean and Kapehan Night

Am I witty yet with this post title? Hahah. 

So one steady Saturday night was spent in dedication to Koreans and Kape. Hahahah. (Waley) Pearl Restaurant has recently opened in Dumaguete and we had to take a visit and experience this latest trend we see on our news feed. 

Overall, we loved it. Because we ordered a lot. Food is yummy. And yummy food solves everything!

Our next stop was this quaint little cafe a few blocks downtown. They named it Ersh Cafe and my gay heart leapt with joy! This coffee syphone (or syphoned coffee?) is interesting 'coz you have to brew the coffee yourself. 

Sweet Siquijor Weekend

Disclaimer: This is the first installment of my Siquijor trip with my barkada. Since this trip was 80% amazing and 20% frustrating, I have decided to create a two-part post, this being the "amazing" one. 

We stayed in Salagdoong Beach, Maria, Siquijor for the weekend. The resort was quite secluded so there's pretty much nothing else you can do but savor the place, eat and of course do a lot of swimming. And a lot of eating and swimming we did!

We decided to visit Msgr Catubig whom we fondly call "Monsi" who happens to be the town's parish priest. He and Ruben turned out to be our blessings in disguise since we weren't very prepared with our things and we lacked a lot of cooking materials and other 'survival' stuff.

Korean Night with the Bebzies

In honor of our friend Bebz Cheenee who is about to tie the knot in a few days and will fly off to Korea right after the wedding, we decided to have a random Korean night with the girls.

First time in Soban and will surely be back for more!

The Disaster That Was Pablo

It's no secret what Typhoon Pablo has done to the Philippines last week. That was probably the most terrifying thing that ever happened in my 20+ years of existence.  I have never felt so scared my whole life!!! To say that Pablo brought disaster is in fact an understatement. I've seen the news and our brothers in Mindanao have been hit tremendously. Seeing those pictures and videos of the areas make me really tear up. 

While our province wasn't affected as badly as in Mindanao, the typhoon has left several damages to infrastructures and residences alike. It was one of the strongest typhoons that hit metro Dumaguete and these are just some of the photos that prove it.

The surprising thing tho is that there were no human casualties recorded in the province. I guess that's the rainbow after the storm rain. There's still always something to be thankful for. 

All photos by Jon Rey Abada

How To Survive a PNP Checkpoint

If you happen to live within Metro Dumaguete, you’d notice how often checkpoints occur at any given time. Normally, if you are the law-abiding type of person and you have your driving license, vehicle registration and side mirrors all in tact, then you have nothing to worry about. But if you’re someone like Sinta who’s got all the excuses in the world not to renew his license for over a year now, then that’s where your problem starts. So how do you get away with it? Most often, you just try to avoid the highways and make friends with all the alternate routes. They eat up your fuel alright, but you certainly have no choice.

But what if you fell into the trap a little too late for you to notice?

Last night after our “tocino high” with some of our old friends (who got reunited…it’s complicated), I had a very heated argument with Sinta on our way home. In the middle of all the rebuttals and rants to make an interruption, we came across a PNP checkpoint – something Sinta has been avoiding for the last year or two. Imagine the horror on my face when I realized that it was too late for us to turn around and escape! Those policemen were just only five meters away from us and Sinta was roughly 3 seconds away from being held hostage! Oh noooo! We’re doomed for life I wanna die that minute!!! Okay, that was an exaggeration.

So what’s a guy like Sinta did? Well, you know what they say. Guys got to do what they’ve got to do! ACT EVERYTHING OUT. To sum it all up in three letters, LIE. LOL. Okay, so this is going to be longer than I imagined, but probably doing this list would be best for my readers who share the same problem. This might not be perfect, but damn it they’re good and slightly effective!

Earthquake Hits Negros (020712)

One fine day downtown, I bumped into Pat (a high-school classmate) so we decided to catch up and sit down with some fries and coke floats at McDo. It was an easy and naturally long conversation that we didn't notice the time flying by. The only thing we noticed? ONLY THE TABLES AND CHAIRS SWINGING DOWN THE FLOOR TREMBLING for about 30 seconds which felt like forever! McDo is normally full during lunch time and yes, you could only imagine different types of people with all those types of reaction!

If I remember correctly, I was able to notice (in retrospect) three different kinds of people according to their reactions. 

• First one? We have the types of people who are exceptionally calm and quite all throughout the event. It's as if someone from up above sent them a txt message a day ahead and made them sure that everything's going to be okay so there's no reason not to finish their chicken sandwich. Yes, they were very cool people who only managed to pause for a moment while the earth was shaking and with considerable poise, grabbed back their sandwich and munched on them! 

• The second kind of people are the panicky ones. These are the guys and girls who shout all of their lungs out and run like hell! They make the exit gates more congested because of their useless aggression and more importantly their sweaty underarms, which in turn would piss all the others off.

• The last kind is more of my kindred. It's basically a mixture of the previous two. These are the people who take some time to digest what is going on and then later on decide what to do.  It took me around 20 seconds (which is almost the whole length of the first earthquake) to figure out that it was something odd and then Pat and I ran outside the building. We stayed at the street for a couple of minutes more just to wait for everyone else to calm down.

Downtown Dumaguete Photo by Pipoy Equipado

Okay. This isn't exactly where we were located during that time but we were very close. Apparently, not a single one knew yet that a magnitude 7 hit the area. 

Downtown Dumaguete Photo by Pipoy Equipado

Turns out that I, together will all the others, didn't do it the right way. I later found out that the most dangerous places are the exterior walls of buildings, near sinkholes and electrical posts! Experts say that if you are inside, stay inside and if you're outside then yes, stay outside too! So I could've really died right then and there either of an electric shock or a stab from a broken glass! Or a heart attack! But that's just too morbid. (Just so you know, I didn't do any earthquake drill back in grade or high school. I think i may have skipped class or something. I only remember fire drills for some reason.)

Minutes later, news from Guihulngan (thru Sinta) came. I have a handful of family members from the town and we later found out that my Aunt's place has been wrecked, among others. Was browsing through some Facebook pics and to my horror, this is what I saw...

Exhibit for a Cause

It's one of those days when you just want to lay on your bed and sleep the whole day. Ugh. Weekend hangover!!! I'm all sniffing and cursing at the weather today so when Sinta asked to go out on a Monday night, I was anything but excited. But since today is an important day for him and the rest of his photographer friends, I half-willingly agreed to go. Plus the Giga Fries BBQ flavor (which is my favorite btw) was a good bribe too! Hahah.

Anyway, it's 1 in the morning and I should be sleeping right now. However, I feel like I had to write something today. So many things happened and all I have is a bunch of mixed emotions. First  of, I mentioned about cursing at the terrible weather. The sun was excruciatingly painful today. Second, we received a sad news in the neighborhood. Our neighbor's newborn baby just passed away. He was only four days old. :-( (I think I will write about it in a different post) But my day wasn't all negative vibes of course. 

I also had my simple joys today. For the first time, Sinta's group One Photo organized a fund-raising event for the Sendong victims. They are selling their photos at a certain price to collect a considerable amount of money to donate to all the victims of the typhoon. 

 Sinta submitted some of his works so I went there to see them all. 

Sendong Victims Relief Operations

I had the chance to join the DYWC (local radio station)  team do their 3rd leg of relief operations to the Sendong victims yesterday. They have been all around the affected areas the past few weeks and this time, their next destination was Valencia. Now infrastructure-and-property-wise, the said town had the largest damage in the whole of Negros Oriental. You will see why in my next pictures (I hope they do justice though)

At the DYWC station getting all the goods to the truck

On our way

So I made this very amateur map (thanks to Google Map btw) just to let everyone check out our route. The pink one is the original road you take going to Palinpinon to Caidiocan to Malaunay and so on and so forth. Since typhoon Sendong hit the area, the roads aren't passable until now and that's why we needed to take the alternate road via San Antonio, Sibulan (the one in blue). It's not very accurate though, but you get the idea right? It's a whole different route from another side of the map. 

It was my first time to see how it looked like a month after the horrible typhoon so I was a little bit excited (and a little bit worried too) to see how the place is now.

And so we arrived to Brgy. Caidiocan... 

Caidiocan Brgy Hall

This is where some of the affected families are staying.

This was supposedly some sort of a covered court. This is what was left.

Still full of soil piled up from the heavy rain. They were still getting some of it out when we arrived.

Continue Reading...

TAMBONG 2011

High School reunions have always been fun. I graduated high school 7 years ago and I have always loved spending time with my HS friends at least once a year. This year, oh I mean last year was a whole lot different. Tambong was a once in a lifetime alumni homecoming (or maybe a first of the many) for all DuScians (read: gorgeous geeks) all over the world.

Date: December 29, 2011

Venue: Negros Oriental Convention Center

venue

Stage Setup

Twenty-one school years have passed since RTPM-DSHS was founded...

I belong to the Probers Batch 2005 (The ROCKERS!!)

   

The night was full of presentations, games, testimonials from different alumni, food and of course photo ops! Hahah. Only a third of our batch attended so we just scrunched ourselves into two tables.

Photo Op with former teachers!

Probers with Maam Gina Anqui. Former Calculus teacher. Now principal of Junob HS.

Probers with Maam Lee (Physics), Oira (Research) and Jatico (PE). Still in Sci Hi.

With Maam Haide Duran (Algebra teacher)

Probers with Binibining Avanceña. (Filipino teacher)

Probers with Sir Suasin (Chemistry), Patrimonio (Geometry)
and Jauculan (Computer major in MIRC!)

The Boys with the Sirs!

The Girls! Hahah.

T-shirt souvenirs. It says "The Heart of a True Champion is Pink!" 

And of course, high school reunions wouldn't be complete without some teasing of former flames! Hahah.

Batch 2005 Salutatorian (Krista) and Valedictorian (Marvin) who were once an ITEM.

Group shots!

So yes it was a fun night obviously. Aside from spending time with my co-rockers, i got to see some familiar faces from way back...kuyas and ates during our earlier years and little brothers and sisters too. It was a great night to celebrate the DuScian spirit (whatever that means.hahah). 

And I am and will always be proud of being a DuScian. 

:-)