The Music Challenge

Got this from a pretty fun friend. The challenge is to find the names of bands hidden in the picture, kind of like a pictorial charades game.

Try it with the right bunch of people and this game is hilarious.

Paper #6: Touristy Primer Thingy - The Great Escape

The Great Escape

Everyone needs to get out and get away once in a while. When the workload mounts and responsibilities hound and harry you from all sides, or simply when the mind-numbing tedium of the daily grind threatens to overwhelm you, sometimes, all one has to do is get away from it all to unwind and recharge.

In my experience, the best place to do that is in my home city of Davao. Whatever you want to do is within reach of the city. Breathtaking mountains are barely an hour’s drive from the city, beaches and dive sites are only usually a twenty minute boat ride, great shopping finds are all over the city and many more can be found, and all one needs to do to get one’s desires fulfilled is to simply ask.

One of my favorite things to do is go mountain climbing. For a short jaunt, Eden Nature Park is an excellent beginners’ try-out. Just an hour’s ride away from the city center (or only half an hour with a fast driver and an adventurous spirit; but not for the faint of heart!) the park is a thousand feet up from sea level. Spread over several dozen hectares are hiking trails and for the less adventurous, the park offers car tours, hotel lodges and an excellent restaurant with a view of the entire province (try the sun-dried tomato pesto, a real crowd pleaser). For the adventure-seeker, Mt. Apo is only a few hours away. The tallest mountain in the Philippines, Mt. Apo offers several trails, from the more leisurely overnight trail to the grueling five-day Kidapawan trail.

But my personal favorite is bumming around in one of Davao’s numerous beaches. One can choose from a bustling resort with a thumping nightlife, to secluded resorts where one can have the entire beach to oneself. Water sports enthusiasts can choose to cut their teeth sea-kayaking, wakeboarding, jet skiing and surfing, to name a few. Divers have dozens of dive sites to choose from, ranging from an easy beginner’s coastal introductory dive, to reef-diving, sea-wall sites to exhilarating open-water dives at night.

Truly, Davao holds many diverse thrills, and all one needs to have one’s desires fulfilled here in this idyllic city is to simply ask.

Paper #5: Quickie Beverage Review - Champion Cha-yen! …. Cheap! Cheers!

The quest for good food on a shoestring budget is typical with the average chronically-low-on-funds college student. One of the metro’s best kept secret lies in a dingy little place on a narrow side street in Barangay Poblacion, Makati. It’s so out-of-the-way, you’d still miss it even if you knew where it was but didn’t look hard enough.

Som’s, as the establishment is called, lies on a small street parallel to Rockwell Drive, right by the Ateneo Law School. Easy enough right? Not really, because a brick and steel fence hides it from plain sight and all you might see from the road is the top of a corrugated steel sheet roughly painted “SOM’S”. You have to go up into the tight intersection beside Congo Grill on the corner of Kalayaan Ave. and Rockwell Drive. Head straight up and if you see plastic monobloc chairs and tables, you’ve found it. If you reach a Flamenco school and the *cough*-“gentleman’s club”-*cough*, you’ve passed it and you have to back up maybe twenty meters.

Som’s is a Thai restaurant crammed into the ground floor of a duplex. The term “restaurant” is used loosely here, as you have to eat on rickety plastic monobloc chairs and tables or on the two rough-hewn, rectangular tables covered in tacky vinyl canvas. To complete the carinderia ambience, there’s a videoke machine in the house next door and cats may play merry hell under your tables. One orders at a small booth outside their kitchens where the food is freshly prepared to order, stopping short of being a “turo-turo” carinderia where one picks the food out of a line of pots. Som’s is basically your good-‘ol friendly neighborhood carinderia, scaled up in class just a tad.

But don’t let appearances fool you! This quaint little nook serves the best Thai food in Makati, possibly in Metro Manila, all for rock-bottom prices! But I’ll leave off from describing the food for another time. I’ll be talking about their amazingly good Thai tea for now.

If you don’t know, Thai tea is served cold, with a lot of milk. Som’s Thai tea doesn’t deviate much from the classic version, but what makes it special is that it only costs thirty pesos (P30) and the taste easily bests the milk teas served in other extremely expensive Thai restaurants around the city. Som’s tea is supposedly prepared according to traditional Thai recipes, with steeped Thai red tea, sugar, condensed and evaporated milk, so the tea is a bit sweet and sinfully calorie rich. The tea may be diabolically addictive but diabetics and those watching their figure better stop at just one glass!

The sweetish brew’s tea taste has interesting flavor highlights that I still can’t pin down as to what they are. A friend tells me he tastes star anise in it but I can only take his word for it. The outstanding quality of the drink is that the strong tea flavor is mellowed by the creaminess of the milk. Or maybe the soft creaminess of the milk is tempered by the tea flavor. Okay, the taste still boggles my taste buds even after having had it so many times. Maybe the better description would be that the ingredients blend together in a harmonious synergistic balance that enhances all their flavors, instead of one taste drowning out the others, as what usually happens in the beverages served in other establishments.

Served with a glass of ice, the tea is presented in a small and plain mineral water bottle that looks like it’s been recycled (and probably has been!). Well, with all the pollution in the metro, we do need to learn how to recycle. The amazingly rich and flavorful tea comes in that unassuming container, another example why looks can be deceiving. See, the tea may even teach important life lessons for only thirty bucks!

Paper # 4: Interview

Interview

For this interview, I chose my mother, Delia Yee Porio, as my subject, because her example inspired me to choose my course here in the Enderun Colleges. She is fifty-two (52) years old, holds a degree in Pharmacology, the mother of six and an energetic businesswoman. Despite repeated urgings (and implored requests and begged entreaties), she has refused to retire and continues to be as active as ever. She has owned a pharmacy, a supermarket, a snack shop, a bakery and manages real estate property.

Ralph Porio: Hi mom! This is for an English paper and I’d like to ask a few questions about your businesses related to the Food Industry.

Delia Porio: Sige. Are you and your brother doing well? Don’t forget to take your vitamins, madunggan nako sa news na sige ug bagyo diha! [I hear on the news that storms come one after another there!]

RP: Er, yes mom, okay ra mi ni Kuya Ken [my brother Ken and I]. I’d like to ask why you hold a degree in Pharmacology but you manage and own businesses other than a drugstore. What interested you to become a businesswoman?

DP: Nag-start ko katung bata pa ko. Imong lolo, traditional na Chinese, dapat magtrabaho ang tanan anak sa family business. [I started as a child. Your grandfather was a traditional Chinese man, in that all the children should work in the family business.] Inuon, it became a habit and work ethic for me to help in selling sa hardware, feed-store and general supplies. I learned a lot from my years helping your lolo and that started my interest in business.

RP: Okay, that explains a lot. When did you start your businesses?

DP: I started katung 1979, paghuman nako sa board exams. Nag start ko ug maruya-an sa kanto sa lot nato sa Ulas. Gamay ra, pang-supplement para sa inyo. After naka-save ta, nagtukod ta ug pharmacy in 1980, and then we expanded to a small grocery in 1982, which became a supermarket in 1986. Then, we put up the snack house and the first bakery in 1988. [I started in 1974, after I finished my board exams (in Pharmacy) I started a small maruya (native snack, fried bananas) shack on the corner lot we would own in Ulas (Davao City). It was small, to supplement (expenses) for you (my siblings and I). After we saved up, I build the pharmacy in 1980.]

RP: How old were you then?

DP: I was 24 years old.

RP: What motivated you to start those businesses?

DP: Naminaw ba ka Ralph? [Didn’t you listen Ralph?]. It was for all of you (children).

RP: Sorry mom.

DP: Well, your dad was a doctor working for a government then. Ang salary niya kay gamay ra para sa inyo so nag start ko sa mga business. [His salary was too small for all of you so I started the businesses]. But remember when you were in grade 5, after tulo sa imong igsuon nag college ug nagstart na imong dad sa poultry ug coffee farm, gi-close nako ang pharmacy, grocery ug bakery? [after three of your siblings started college and your dad had the poultry and coffee farm, I closed down pharmacy, grocery and bakery?] I rented out the space and focused on you and Kenneth and Oliver (my other siblings and I).

RP: Haha, yeah, I remember. But after I left for college, I remember you telling us that you were too bored at home. Then you told us that you would go back to bakery. Why did you start the bakery business again?

DP: Dili ko comfortable na walay tarung na gina himo. Dili ko maka-relax, mas maka relax ko sa tarung na trabaho (laughs) [I wasn’t comfortable not doing anything that was sensible. I couldn’t relax, I can relax more when I am working on sensible things/work].

RP: Why the bakery?

DP: Because nakasanayan na nako, ug naga enjoy ko sa trabaho na to [because I got used to it, and I enjoy working like that]. Also because a bakery is a good business, food is always needed, no matter the economy and a bakery has a good demand and a fast turnover.

RP: What are the biggest challenges in a bakery?

DP: Because we target the working class market, dili kayo mahal atuang prices pero taas ang volume. [the prices aren’t expensive but the volume is high]. So the production is a problem, you have to keep the quality of the bread but keep the expenses down. Ang dako na sakit sa ulo pud kay ang personnel. [A very big headache is the personnel]. You have to train them and look for good personnel.

RP: Who or what was your biggest problem?

DP: It depends, pero [but] it usually is someone who doesn’t like something about the bread. (laughs) Barato na gani ang pan, magreklamo pa usahay. Ana man gyud na pag customer. [The bread is already cheap, but they still complain sometimes. Customers are always like that.]

RP: What do you do about it?

DP: You still have to make the customer happy, so you always have to be ready to change. Follow up on everything and be ready to change.

RP: Do you have any advice for future entrepreneurs or bakery owners?

DP: They should be keen on observation, dapat personalized ka. Ang management dapat hands-on, personal para makuha nimo dayon kung unsa ang lacking ug you should always be the quality control. [They should be keen on observation; you should be personalized (sic). The management should be hands on, personal (touch?) so you can immediately get what is lacking and you should always be the quality control.] Also, experience is the best teacher. At first, it is very hard, but work just as hard and you will succeed. In a business like this, it is very challenging, because usually baliktad ang cycle [the cycle is reversed]. When it is a holiday, ikaw ang walang holiday [you don’t have a holiday]. It usually is very busy during holidays, also before and after work (other people’s/customers working hours), so you have to work harder before and after the usual working hours. Lisud ang business na ni, pero pag naa kay passion para sa business na ni, rewarding kay na-challenge ka ug nag-provide ka ug serbisyo para sa ubang tao. [This business is hard, but if you have passion for this business, it is rewarding because you are challenged and you provide a service for other people.]

RP: Okay, that’s about it. Thank you!

DP: Okay, take care always there! I love you! Don’t forget to take your vitamins and eat your breakfast! I know you always skip breakfast! Eat more! I love you!

RP: Er, okay. Thanks mom!

End

Paper #3: Quickie Food Review [I see...Aysee's!] (August 7,2007)

I see…Aysee’s!

Does your wallet perform suicide very time lunch rolls around? Getting tired of haute cuisine that consists of a few microscopic dots of sauce splattered around a scrap of meat as small as your thumbnail? Or are you simply looking for a place where you and a few buddies can hang out, kick back and have a good laugh over a few rounds of beer?

Then try this place, Aysee’s Eatery, along St. Martin Road in Pasig, just across the road from Ultra Stadium. Aysee’s is pretty much a hole-in-the-wall, and I really mean it, so keep your expectations low but your appetites high. Inside a two-story building, it’s easy to miss from the road, so keep your eyes peeled for tables set up on the sidewalks. The building appears to have been a two-story apartment unit that’s been converted into a food establishment. The most likely sight that greets you is a tiny nook crowded with tables, each packed with groups of people huddled over anything and everything sizzling on a hotplate. The floor and walls are made of gray concrete, scrubbed clean and painted garishly. The kitchen is in the back, open for everybody to see. Stacked against the staircase and walls are cases and cases of beer, crowding an already cramped area.

The dim-lit, wooden second floor is much roomier, but be careful climbing up the creaky wood stairs! The way up is dark, narrow and rickety! What greets people emerging from the stairs is an expanse of floor planks, gleaming darkly of wax, or more possible, vaporized oil from the kitchen below. All the tables and chairs are made of roughly cobbled together wood and painted unevenly in white, complementing the tacky vinyl floor mats. All this just makes you go “Ah, just like your friendly neighborhood carinderia”, as car alarms blare intermittently along the street and an unseen but nearby voice (trying heroically but failing miserably) croons out Sinatra’s “My Way” from a videoke machine.

What really makes the place stand out is their food. The menu is not the typical carinderia fare, but is made up of “pulutan food.” Sizzling gambas, sizzling sisig, sizzling adobo, sizzling pork chop, sizzling T-bone etc., it seems they’ll sizzle ANYTHING on a hotplate. What I had was their sisig and gambas, to go with my bottle of Red Horse beer.

The sisig was good, but not exceptional. Chewy and very meaty, sitting in sauce, enlivened by the occasional unknown crunchy bit, topped with an egg, blessed with soy sauce and sanctified by calamansi, you can almost feel your cholesterol rise with each bite, bringing you ever closer to carnivore heaven. And for seventy-five pesos (P75), it’s dirt-cheap! It may not be the height of gastronomic genius, but the cheap price, hefty servings and above average taste make it a very good find.

But the real hidden treasure is the sizzling gambas. It comes on a hotplate (what else!), and it’s got six to eight shrimps, swimming in red sauce. The sauce is nothing to write about, some kind of reddish mystery liquid, slightly sweet, slightly sour (oh wait, maybe it’s recycled from leftover sweet & sour pork or maybe brown ketsap). But the shrimps are just right, not too large, so they are naturally sweet and the flesh is tender and juicy. Some expensive restaurants overcook their shrimps, rendering them rubbery and tough. But the shrimp at Aysee’s is tender and moist, practically dissolving in your mouth.

For a dingy hole-in-the-wall, Aysee’s holds hidden taste treasures that come cheap! So come on down to Aysee’s and maybe, just maybe, you’ll hear your wallet breathe easy for once, having been spared the usual lunch-time massacre of pesos.

Paper #2: Describing my Room [None] (3rd week of July)

I never passed this! Haha..

Paper #1:Any Topic [Down With Basketball!] (July 12,2007)

Down With Basketball!

Has anyone watched a PBA game recently? I did last night and whoa Nellie, half the players running around the court looked like Euro-Slavonic or African imports. I thought to myself, “Isn’t this the Philippine Basketball Association? Where did all the Filipino players go?”

The answer to that question is – everywhere else, except where it matters. At the top ranks, there are few Filipinos, but Filipino – (insert nationality)’s dominate. Fil-American, Fil-Chinese, Fil-European and Fil-Krakoszian players are everywhere. But in the streets and recreational courts, millions and millions of Filipinos swarm over basketball. Go anywhere in this country and you’ll find that we Filipinos don’t love basketball – we are fanatically obsessed over basketball.

The signs of that madness are everywhere. In our small country where space is a premium, you’ll find basketball courts in any place possible. You’ll even find courts in places where it’s NOT possible. It’s a driver’s headache to detour around streets in every barangay that turn into courts every afternoon.

Also, in thius country, the lack of classrooms is a major educational problem. Children have to go in four-hour shifts, attend class in corridors or hold them under the nearest mango tree. But as long as the school has a basketball court, it’s all okay!

And there are the TV ads that are impossible to miss. My after-dinner dose of Philippine free TV isn’t complete without either seeing a Growee or Cherifer growth supplement advertisement. In the background, the jingle goes “Tatangkad din ako, tatangkad din ako, tatangkad with growth vitamins!”, as Filipino kids (with the magic of computer generated effects) metamorphose into NBA or PBA players. Oh the dreams of little Filipino children, to magically turn into Caucasian half-breed giants!

Why these kinds of dreams? Because basketball is a sport for giants, in physical height anyway, since a player’s offensive and defensive capabilities are magnified by the player’s height advantage. Look at the champions of international competitions like the Olympics or FIBA World Cup. It’s extremely rare to find a player below six feet in height, and players with heights approaching or surpassing seven feet are getting more and more common.

In contrast, the average height for Filipino women is four feet and eleven inches and for men, five feet and four inches. No wonder most Filipino kids dream of turning into tall half-foreigners to excel in basketball.

Because of this immense obsession, other sports are totally ignored. The Philippines has not won any major international championships in basketball for decades, but still, there is overwhelming support for it. Schools, universities and corporate sponsors pump massive amounts of support and funding to basketball teams while other sports teams wither away. The Philippine teams for diving, wushu, tae kwon do, gymnastics and others limp behind our basketball teams on meager funding but consistently produce more gold and silver medals in international competitions.

So I say, give other sports a chance! We shouldn’t get stuck in a rut, forever following only one way. We should support more sports, and not just one, for our natural ingenuity and lover for diversity are innate advantages.