Saturday, June 24, 2006

More stock photos. From top to bottom: 1) Another pic of the Roxas kids in the water 2) Early morning market activity at Batangas pier right we left the place 3) What passes for entertainment at a Philippine ferry: Karaoke. If you could even call it that. See the guy sitting on the chair holding a mic? He was attempting to sing, giving no effort to attempt to follow the song's melody, but was loud enough so that sleep was somewhat difficult. He sucked.





The on-off raining doesn't seem to be letting up today, which means another trip to the internet cafe for me. And guess what, I have more stock pictures for you. These are from London Heathrow, showing Jacob, John and My pretty self. And then one of the two others together. I tried the oreo cookie milkshake at TGI Friday's at the airport, by the way, and I didn't give a damn that I went up to the bar and asked for a milkshake while others had their alchoholic beverages. Oreo cookie milkshake = goodness. Definately recommendable. So, here are the pics.









PS - Marie! Alle billeder fra huset og så opefter er nogle jeg har uploaded på selve blog'ens server, så det kan også godt lade sig gøre at gøre det på den måde. Det er oven i købet mega-nemt at sætte dem i. Jeg har reduceret dem i størrelse så det fylder ca. 50 kb hver, men jeg ikke hvor stor grænsen er for uploads. Og ha' en fed tur til Barcelona!
And here's a heart-warming pic of a bunch of Roxas kids who decided to jump in the water and shout 'Hello' at the foreigners (there were a couple of Irishmen on the ferry as well). Talk to y'all later!

This is the view of Roxas beach from the departing ferry, and a pic of Jacob at an intersection right near the pier:



While I'm at it, might as well show some pictures from our trip. This is from the seedy motel I talked about earlier. I had a suspicious feeling when I lay down on my bed, and had a peek underneath. What I saw is on the second pic... those aren't used candy wrappers, people.



Master comfort room and shower. These are the last of the house pics.



Master bedroom:



Upstairs hallway, upstairs 'comfort room' (toilet):





View from the stairs, and a look from the stairs up at the upstairs hallway:



Here is the downstairs living/dining room area:



Hi all. Currently in Boracay after choosing the following land-sea route:

Alabang-Batangas (bus)
Batangas-Calapan (fast ferry)
Calapan-Roxas (van)
Roxas-Caticlan (roll-on, roll-off ferry)
Caticlan-Boracay (small boat)

As always, when in doubt about a place name, Wiki it!

Now, why go through all that hassle you ask, when there is a direct route to Caticlan from Manila airport? The total price was about half the plane ticket, and that includes an overnight stay at the harbor city of Batangas (heh, at the seediest of seedy motels where 'Guest Relation Officer' companionship was offered. More about that in a later post :p). Weather here in Boracay was great when we arrived, but we had a first taste of the wet season that has just begun today. Why else am I cooped up in an internet cafe? :)

Here are some more pics of our place. First up, a look at the kitchen area from two vantage points:



Thursday, June 22, 2006




I'm having a little idle time at the hotel before I check out. Here is The pic of me from before. Also, here's a pic from the London-Hong Kong flight, with John looking dazed beside me.


Testing this function, and it seems to work. Sweet! These pics take a lot of time to upload to the university server, so I won't be showing all the pics of our new house here. However here is one I took of the outside view today. I'll have more pics for you later. Peace!
Note: Will work on putting up pictures ASAP!

Making progress on the time adjustment front. Second night in the Philippines is coming up fast, and I’m feeling appropriately sleepy this close to midnight. Active day today. As was mentioned earlier, today was house-hunting day and, well… we saw houses all right! Right next to the Technopark, there are a number of subdivisions where you find houses at different price classes. We started with the high-end housing at what are called the Santa Rosa Estates I and II, where the prices range from between around 25,000 Philippine Pesos to the highest at 60,000, which is an exception - a house with an indoor swimming pool (see how much this is in your own currency Here). Not that it’s needed. The estates are closed off areas with excellent secutiry, and have a number of amenities – the standard tennis and basketball courts and swimming pool. Second-tier housing is to be found at the San Jose Village (Villages? I think there were two of them as well). Rental fees here range from just under 20,000 to 30,000 max. There are no public, shared amenities here, and the quality of housing here varies considerably. We passed by a couple of condemned houses even, cordoned off with yellow ‘Caution’ tape. They are not too keen on transients in both housing areas, which is to say people who are staying less than a year, but there were still quite a handful of places to look at. The Philippines IS a capital-starved country always on the lookout for a potential customer or two, and the real estate business is no different.

We started off early after a sleepless night and took a heavy breakfast at the hotel buffet - combined Philippine/European style where cereal, toast and omelets were on offer as well as Philippine breakfast specialties such as sweet-marinated pork with rice, and a noodle dish with vegetables and chicken. Tropical fruits of the season were also available. At 9 AM, we met up with a Vidian Centenos at the hotel lobby (not too sure about the spelling at all! But notice the Spanish-influenced names, which are quite common here although no one really speaks Spanish), who was the person our Sunpower contact arranged for us to have a look at houses. And off we went. Following along with us was a broker, a girl named Monet who apparently takes a 1/12 commission on any deal we make, although she was extremely valuable and I don’t think we could have seen the wide range of houses we saw without her. Pleasant to talk to as well.

House-hunting was made over two legs – from 9AM to 11 and from 2 PM to about 3 or 4ish. In between, there was a much needed nap and lunch break. This shit is energy-draining stuff! What really surprised me was how much I perspired like a pig in the heat while we were looking at homes. Seriously, I find this extremely odd – back when I used to live in the tropics as a kid the heat was not a problem at all, but now I’m sweating more than Jacob. Not acceptable, must take measures to acclimatize! I’m not dehydrating, however, I’m feeling quite healthy and the signs are good. My leg is fine too, btw. At any rate, as for the houses, all of them were two-storey units, almost all of them well over 100 square meters in living area. Some would include furnishing in the price, some wouldn’t.

Well, we settled on a house. Tomorrow we’re set to have a look at it one last time and then we can finalize matters. I’ll say more about it next time I blog and hopefully show you the pictures. It’s a house in the Santa Rosa Estate I and there will be plenty of space for a guest or two! Hint, hint!

House-hunting took its toll on the both of us and we dozed off in the hotel room for hours afterward until we couldn’t hold off the hunger anymore and needed fooding. This was about 8 PM. We were supposed to meet with our main Sunpower contact sometime late in the afternoon but he never came. He did show up on our way out, however, by coincidence. A note on who he is: Telesforo Alfelor, or ‘Boy’, is the Manufacturing Manager at Sunpower who is an old friend of the family and quite superhuman in his working ability, seriously. He was delayed because a family emergency suddenly popped up but despite that and the fact that he had been doing a 12-hour working day, he took that time to have a chat with Jacob and I and dealt with practical matters about our housing and vacation planning incredibly. I’m entirely at ease with Boy and I’m sure the traineeship will be great with him keeping an eye on us.

We have our short-term vacation plans settled. Tomorrow, after finalizing the housing, we check out of our hotel and head straight to the Boracay tourist resort via a bus down to Batangas (Wiki it!) and then a 10-hour ferry trip to the island where Boracay is at. Beaches, cervezas, sports and fun... Fuckin’-A! We’ll be brought to the bus by Boy’s son, a guy called Antonio (nickname ‘Nugget’) who is my age and went a class under mine in my 7 years in Indonesia during my childhood (this is where Boy’s family and mine go back, by the way). Looking forward to seeing him again!

The day was rounded off by Jacob and I eating out again. We had Filipino food this time, the local version of one of my favorite dishes that my mom sometimes makes – Pork Adobo, a traditional Philippine dish. It’s essentially pieces of pork cooked in a sauce that includes a lot of garlic, soy sauce and vinegar among other things, and eaten with rice. It was nice, but nothing beats momma’s cookin’!!!

We downed a handful of San Miguels at the same Mexican bar/restaurant we went to yesterday, a place called El Simon. The bare midriff girl is named Claudette, she’s 23 years old and very, very sweet. She expects gifts from us once we get back from Boracay, and I don’t suppose we’ll disappoint her ;)

Lights out. Catch you all on the flipside!

PS – Ma, I need the contact info for Jojo – he lives close to Boracay right? Thinking of dropping by. Also, the telephone number down to the family in Davao… could you perhaps call in advance and tell them I’ll be coming to visit sometime in July? Or should I do it? Love ya, catch ya later!

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Alright, so this next update is being written at 3 AM local time (jetlagged, can’t sleep, don’t ask), Thursday at a hotel so there have been a few developments since flying over Mongolia. We touched down about 15 hours ago. I didn’t manage to write anymore during the trip itself but trips are boring anyways. So, I’ve arrived safe and sound on Philippine soil and we have already been around seeing a lot of stuff here in this (hot and humid!) place. Let me skip what has happened since I touched down, however – I’d like to spend a moment to tell you that the most absolutely insane thing has happened to me here before I’ve even spent 24 hours in this place. I fell into an open manhole cover! For real. Shit like that only happens in cartoons, right? Nope. Take a developing country where they don’t bother to put up warning signs for stuff like that on the sidewalk, and there you go. One second I’m walking side by side with Jacob and talking, on our way to check out the shopping area close to our hotel, and the next second I’m suddenly below ground level from the shoulders down in a manhole, not really registering or believing what is happening to me. Right now my leg hurts. I slammed my shin into one of the ladder rungs when I fell in and I’m not quite too keen on running in this state. It could have been a LOT worse though. Imagine if my arms didn’t save me from falling all the way in! Jacob remarked that there was a long way down. Fuckfuckfuck, too scary to contemplate.

Well, there’s nothing quite better than something like that to bitchslap you into understanding that, yes, you are now in the Philippines. Welcome! In all honesty I feel more personally insulted than anything else, though. Stuff like this should happen to other people, not me, and now I’m not really in shape to do kitesurfing or any of the other things Jacob and I were thinking of looking into. No, I’m making it worse than it sounds, I walk with a limp but it’ll go away soon. I’m still psyched about doing shit here for a month and a half before our traineeship begins on August 1st.

What else happened, since we landed? We got picked up at the airport by a former classmate of my mom’s who is working at a research unit of the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources. So it’s real neat, we had a lot to talk about and she’s a friendly lady who had no problems taking us under her arm. A short note on her work – she’s currently doing research on the impact of GMO crops on biodiversity, and doing environmental assessments of the development of the Boracay tourist area. Sweet stuff – the GMO thing surprised me especially as I only originally thought that was something that worried us over at the EU. At any rate, she showed us this house that she had lined up for us as a possible place for Jacob and I to rent. Two-storeys, and with swimming pool, basketball and tennis facilities nearby. Not. Too. Bad. At. All.

Tomorrow we’re having a look at some more houses before we make a final decision. After we saw the house I just mentioned, we drove over to the Laguna Technopark Hotel, at the Laguna Technopark itself (an industrial estate) where Sunpower is located. Here we met our main contact at Sunpower and he gave us a tour of the area, pointing out all the good places. It seems Sunpower is a heavyweight in the Technopark. Area-wise, it occupies one of the largest plots of land. It employs around 1000 people and it is expanding production. 100% of their solar cell production goes to export sales, in markets like Germany. I’ll tell you more about Sunpower as I learn more about it, and if I feel I’m allowed to divulge the information ;)

To round off the day, Jacob and I had a couple of beers (try the Philippine local cerveza, amigos – San Miguel!) and went to the local shopping area where we had dinner for two for around 50 DKK, and that was on the expensive side so I’ve heard. Fuck… I’d better watch my weight while I’m here! Oh, funny thing about the Philippines is their aggressive marketing, hehe… outside where the bars and restaurants are lined up, fiiiiine-looking Filipina ladies have this thing where they all wave to you and call out, inviting you to come over and have your meal or drink at the establishment they work for. They sometimes work in groups, Jacob and I found out, surrounding you and showing you to your table whether you like it or not. I must confess, I suggested a Mexican restaurant after being charmed by a cute thing with a bare midriff I couldn’t take my eyes off.

Er, on that note, I guess I’ll stop it here. Stay tuned to this channel. My blogging will not be very regular as Jacob and I fuck around in this country to do some traveling, but I’ll keep you guys updated as much as I can. Talk to ya!!!
Yoyoyoyo, what’s cracking, people?! So this is my first blog entry, written on June 20th (21st? I’m not sure anymore), somewhere above Mongolian airspace at 11125 meters above ground level, rocketing ahead at 579 km/h. At least that’s what the display screen in front of my seat says – might I just spare a word here for giving kudos to Cathay Pacific, the niftiest airline ever(!) with its in-flight entertainment and information system that makes the whole journey somewhat bearable. I won’t be able to send this out until we touch down in our final destination, unfortunately, so what you’ll be getting is a collection of the miscellaneous ramblings I will have accumulated along the journey. Might make for a fun read. Maybe. I take no responsibility for whatever the hell it is that pops into my head to write down.

The time is presently 7:54 Greenwich Mean Time, which is the only timeframe that even marginally makes sense I think. It means nothing to me. My body is confused. Airplanes have a way of lulling your senses and fucking them up, and I’m both wired and fatigued at the same time. Which is kind of weird, actually. You really want to be active and do something but not only do the physical limits of a metal cylinder with wings packed with people stop yourself from doing that- you also seem unable to get your lazy ass off your uncomfortable seat. I swear, they must be putting something in the recycled air.

While I’m typing away, I might as well introduce myself before I forget, for the benefit of the first-time readers out there who don’t really know me all that well, why the hell it is I’m doing a blog, and what is up with me going to the Philippines, my final destination. First off that’s me on this Pic during our stopover at London Heathrow. Quick run-down of my stats – I’m David Christensen, height 1.7 meters, 74 kilos, a Malay/Caucasian ethnic mix, also termed a Mestizo (need to set that straight for some guys out there who keep calling me a fucking Chinaman. I’m not Chinese! Okay???!!! Dudes, it’s like me calling you Frenchies frogs. Hurts my feelings, man :) ). I hail from Aalborg, Denmark, until quite recently – happen to study there, in fact. I just finished my fourth year of the Master of Science program in Environmental Management (see the Website). Why is that even marginally interesting? It’s the reason I’m headed off to da Phillies, besides me wanting to do the revisit my roots thing. As an integrated part of the study program, there is a semester set aside for a traineeship, and in that connection I’ll be undergoing training at Sunpowercorp in Biñan, Laguna, outside Manila (see the Website). Here I’ll be doing work implementing the ISO 14001 Environmental Management System. Some day I’ll tell you guys ALL about what it’s all about. But, ladies and gents, sorry to disappoint you but it won’t be here. I’m not bored enough to do THAT yet.

I travel with Jacob Rasmussen, sitting to my left watching American Idol on the in-flight system (WTF? He’s losing street cred with me). Tell you more about him later. He’s the guy I’ll be doing the traineeship with in the Phillies. To my right sits my big bro, John, currently playing a video game on his system, and sucking ass at it. John is traveling with us as far as Hong Kong, where he will be resuming his own traineeship in a toy company. He’ll be blessing us with his affable and pleasant presence until then.

Urgh. Laptop off. I’ll continue this later.