... Aaah.

A morning dose of Starbucks rocket fuel and a nicotine fix, and the sun rises on another workweek. Blogging feels about right for some warm-up excercise before returning to the other window I have open - the thing I was working on last friday that I hastily aborted as soon as the clock showed 4.30 pm. It seems I was writing about cornucopian environmental discourse. Fuck no, not going to get into that on a monday morning!

Last week was interesting, though, work-wise. An Environmental, Safety and Health committee has now been formed from members in all relevant departments at SunPower, and an inaugural meeting was held. Top priority for the committee this quarter is to focus on ISO 14001 preparation, and in particular assist Jacob and I in the work that we're doing. That's just neat as hell. Oh, here is the Action Register for the upcoming ESH committee meeting this week. You'll notice my name on it.

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Item No.	Particular	Who	When
1	Provide training on the fundamentals of ISO 14001 for all the committee members	David	Ww 43
2	Create a folder on the common drive so each member can open EHS files i.e. meeting/training presentation and other pertinent docs.	Ranel	Ww 43

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That's right folks. I've been given an hour and a half to provide an ISO 14001 crash course for the ESH commitee members, none of which have had previous training in the field (except for the guys from the ESH unit itself, and Jacob). I'll be teaching middle aged guys who have entire careers behind them. I'll be doing the same thing as the lecturers at my university but within a shorter time-span. And I'm not nervous... I'm looking forward to it! It's funny - I've always said to myself, fuck no I'm not going to go into a job that entails teaching. Sure as hell not as a university lecturer - it's the downside about taking a Ph.D., which has played in my mind at some point. As a Ph.D. student, you have to teach. I hate the thought of standing in front of a group of disinterested students with their mocking, hateful looks while I do a monologue. Shit, who's ever heard of a small 170 cm Asian punkass kid in hiphop gear (which I'm sometimes prone to wear) teach students up to a decade or more older? Who's going to take me seriously? Who's ever heard of anything more ridiculous? Funny thing is, I've posed the question to former group members during the past year. You know, whether they could see me as a lecturer and all that - totally half-joking. The answer I got was silence, a kind of funny look straight at me, and a 'yes'. My 'fuck you, get outta here' response was always my knee-jerk reaction but I always thought 'WTF? Sweeeeet!' in my head.

I've never thought of myself as a good with oratory skill. I have seen guys poorer at it than myself though. But I suppose after four years training in exactly that sort of thing at Aalborg University, I've found a recipe that works. Or I've begun to find myself comfortable with it. I've progressed to the point where I can improvise or do some straight-up bullshitting that even professors will buy in exam situations, hehehehehehe. I think I can do this ISO 14001 training quite comfortably. My aim will be to keep the committee engaged and get a laugh or two, because ISO 14001 is incredibly dull stuff for a layman!

Enough of the work talk and the disturbing insights into my head. Time for the weekend report. On Saturday Jacob and I hired a car and went off to Manila again, and did some sightseeing. First up was the American World War II memorial. The one in Manila is the largest of it's kind in the world, laying over 17,000 soldiers to rest and dwarfing even the one dedicated to those who fell at Normandy. Now, World War II holds a curious, special place in me. Most people see it as something that happened long ago and distance themselves from it. However, while two generations have usually lapsed between the average person my age and those who lived through the war, I have one. When you have a dad who can tell stories about remembering how they hid a Danish resistance fighter at the farm, or about the time he spat on a Kraut while driving past one on a bike and escaped with his life... or if a friend of your family is Jewish and was on one of the fishing boats that evacuated the Danish Jews to neutral Sweden the night before the Nazis rounded them up... some of that raw emotion rubs off on you. I could go on about how this peculiar bond with history has formed some likewise peculiar positions in me regarding the current world situation, but I promised no more disturbing insights into my head :)

Denmark and the Philippines were both occupied, by the Germans and Japanese respectively, and in turn liberated by Allied forces. I kind of wish I wrote my name down on the guest book at the memorial and wrote the words 'Thank You'. Here are the pics.













Next stop, the original walled city that the Spaniards built - the Intramuros. These are from Fort Santiago, the bastion of that colonial power which is located on the mouth of the Pasig river. The typhoon did some damage do the area as you can see.









Me with my buddy, Jose Rizal. Jose was a dude who sparked Philippine nationalism and resistance to the Spanish. An enlightened intellectual and patriot, he studied in Europe, spoke seven languages and for his troubles, got apprehended by the Spaniards and was executed by firing squad. Ay Caramba.



Some of the goofier pics. Here is Jacob showing some sensitivy and appreciation of local religion.



Me helping out a Spanish guard with a light.



Those damn guards, falling asleep on their watch!



We again showed disregard for all things religious and stole a snapshot of a wedding at the old Manila Cathedral.



Inside the Intramuros, there is a myriad of... shall we say, architectural styles. Well-kept buildings and cobblestone streets and four-storey slum dwellings can be found no more than a block from each other.





Later that night, the highlight of the day... ladies and gentlemen, WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) SMACKDOWN SURVIVOR SERIES TOUR (TM) paid a visit to Manila! Don't you guys just love wrestling?! Waaahahahahaha, it's the best show on earth. It's a throwback to the old days in the Philippines growing up, when we went to the local store every now and then to grab hold of the latest wrestling entertainment action on betamax. They recently started showing wrestling on Danish satellite TV, so I was able to rekindle my interest in the sport. Yes, it's a sport! Kind of. :)

... And hey, how cool was it that I had the chance to see some wrestling action live while in the Phillies?! The Araneta Coliseum in Manila, which originally housed the "Thrilla in Manila" bout between Ali and Frazier, warms up to receive the WWE superstars and shown below.



And the action begins. Lotsa pushing and shoving and taunting and cussing. And of course, the delictable vixen in the background.





This guy wrestled in a dress! ROFLMAO!



Another piece of showmanship. This guy spent a full 10 minutes writhing in pain because of some leg injury. He was helped onto his feet by match officials and was on his way to be helped out of the ring when he suddenly lunged forward and caught his opponent, who was opening the ropes for him to come through, with a cheap shot kick. The opponent ended up landing somewhere outside the ring.







Chavo Guerrero vs. Chris Benoit ("The Wolverine").



THE ONE.... THE ONLY.... THE UUUUUUUUUUNDERTAAAAKER!!!!





Mr. Kennedy has The Undertaker in a figure-four leglock. My brother and I used to play at wrestling as kids (and still do as adults, but don't tell anyone hehe) and those figure-four leglocks hurt like a sonofabitch.



Undertaker goes old school and performs a Tombstone Piledriver at the request of the crowd! (Undertaker is getting old these days and sometimes walks around with stiff legs. Too many Tombstone Piledrivers in his career have taken their toll on the Deadman's knees)





All hail King Booker!



Meet Batista aka "The Animal". Batista is 6 foot 5, weighs in at 290 pounds and is from the Philippines. Yes, we can get that big. Fine, fine, he's half Greek, but we still claim him.



Batista lays the SMACKDOWN on King Booker.



The match developed into something of a farce. Batista was challenging for the World Heavyweight Championship but the was disqualified when he accidently knocked out the referee with a clothesline. In the ensuing chaos, other wrestlers entered the ring and proceeded to beat the crap out of Batista. However, The Undertaker then intervened on Batista's behalf and they both beat the shit out of everyone. I say again, don't you just LOVE wrestling??? :)



After wrestling, Jacob and I went for a meal and a beer in Baywalk , right by the water in Manila Bay, which was a festive place with live band after live band. We then went to check out a shooting that was going on down the road.

Not THAT kind of shooting, stupid. Some sort of action movie was being filmed and a crowd was gathering so we wanted to see what the fuss was all about. As it turns out, there was nothing to fuss about. Movie-making is incredibly boring to watch.

At any rate, the highlight of the story comes as we walk along on the way home and decide to piss on a tree. As it turns out, we pissed right in front of a mobile police station. As it also turns out, there is a city ordnance against pissing in public places with a fine of 1,500 pesos. So we wasted like half an hour detained by the police. The victory of the day was Jacob and I leaving that place without having to pay a fine, and even better yet, without having to pay the bribe that the police were so obviously looking for (Stern-looking police captain: "So... What is your solution?").

That was it, folks. Jacob's birthday is coming up this weekend and we're returning to La Union where we surfed a couple of months back... I'll be back with plenty of bloggy goodness from that trip. Oh yes. We will. We Will. Rock you.

No posts the past few week or so because It's been something of a busy period for us. Work-wise, this week has seen a number of key events. Around the time the typhoon hit up until last week, Jacob and I really weren't doing much else besides quietly working on our project report. That's fine and all, seeing as we're supposed to submit a report for handing in on January 5th anyway. But while we're here we really want to acquire as much practical experience with ISO 14001 implementation as possible, so Jacob and I pushed for that during a meeting with the ESH section head early this week, and that got the ball rolling again.

What we got out of that meeting was quite nifty, actually. As a Nasdaq-listed, American company, SunPower operates on a quarterly basis, refreshing strategic objectives and also specific targets for each department every three months. These targets then transform into performance targets for department employees, using a grading system so each employee can be evaluated at the end of each quarter. Well, what we got was this - preparation for ISO 14001 implementation is now officially part of the targets for the ESH unit. More than that, the two ESH engineers in the unit have performance targets directly related to it, and to our work. This means that these guys are putting their heads on the block for us. What we do affects their performance. If they miss out, it means the ESH unit misses out on one of their strategic objectives, causing a ripple effect that will make the ESH unit look bad. This makes us important, which is cool. It's also good for the internship as more man-hours have suddenly been freed up for the ESH engineers to offer us direct day-to-day support.

Later this week we had another key meeting in the ESH unit, one of several coming up over the next few weeks. Now, after establishing the objectives and targets for this quarter, serious measures are being put in place to prepare for ISO 14001 implementation. One of the fun things we did during the meeting late this week was design an organization within the company for dealing with ISO 14001 directly, identifying key personnel that we'd need. This falls under the clause in the standard that requires Roles and Responsibilities for an Environmental Management System to be clearly defined. Until the end of our traineeship, we will be attending meetings with this newly formed EMS action group to assist them in their work. For instance, on the basis of our Significant Impact Aspect Analysis, the group will have to form Objectives and Targets to deal with the Significant environmental Impacts, and form environmental programs for dealing with them. I'm looking forward to getting some dirt under my fingernails.

At any rate, just wanted to inform y'all on some of the professional aspects of our work. Let's see, what else did we do this week... on Wednesday Jacob and I did a few errands in Manila that should have taken no longer that a couple of hours - if only there was no such thing as traffic. We ended up spending 12 hours in a car, roughly 80% of the time in transit. FUCKING HELL! We went to Manila to collect my repaired laptop (which they wanted me to pay for in cash, the motherfuckers), re-book our Cathay Pacific tickets from the 1st of December to the 15th (because we just WUV it here in the Philippines so much!), do some shit at the Danish consular office and pick up some material for our project from an NGO called Philippine Business for the Environment.

Before leaving Manila we stopped by a Danish restaurant and ordered some food to remind us a little of home. We had dark rye bread that didn't taste like rye bread, liver paste that didn't taste like liver paste, pickled herring that didn't taste like picked herring and Danish meatballs that didn't taste like the real stuff either. Oh, and beef tartar which really isn't Danish at all. Besides all that, though, it was all good. :)

And then on to the WEEKEND! Last weekend we took a long trip together with a colleague from work, one of the ESH engineers called Ranilio or Ranel for short. We visited the waterfalls of Pagsanjan, which entailed an hour's canoe ride or so along a river at the bottom of a jungle canyon - spectacular stuff. Wet, too! We then went to visit Ranel's family at a tiny provincial town called Luisiana, which was great fun... we got to sample Lambanog, which is very strong spirits distilled from coconut nectar. Well, we did more than sample, actually - we downed a good-sized bottle of the stuff. Thus warmed up, we were then ready to hit the town plaza where a fiesta was going on (this happens like once a year in that place so our timing was lucky) just a stone's throw away from the town's 16th century Spanish church with its blue neon-lighted cross :) It was a great setting for a memorable night. We enjoyed the show, the bands, the female dance troupes in their skimpy gear, and a backstage chat with two Philippine celebrities who were nice eye candy. On the way home the next day, suffering from hangovers, we saw some more falls at Majayjay (pronounced 'My High') where the water was frigid but crystal clear. And where I slipped on a wet rock and fell into a ditch. Go me!

Here are the pics. :)

Pagsanjan falls boat trip.







At the falls.





At Ranel's place. Me hanging with his kid.



Post-Lambanog drinking. Enjoying the show at the town square.













... Under the watchful eye of the Philippine National Police (A semi-military outfit).



Oh, Jacob got called on stage where he made a fool of himself :p









This is backstage. We met the two Filipina celebrities Myles Hernandez and Kristine Jaca by just, you know, charming our way through. Myles and Kristine are models who also do some acting work. They can be found regularly on FHM Philippines and are both FHM Viva Hot Babes.







These are some of the photo shoots they have made. One with Myles, one with Kristine and one where they both feature.







Right, back to the fiesta. Just some goofy pics. The small one taken by me while headbanging. Uh, don't really know why.







The morning after. A pair of hung over tourists, and some pics of the Spanish church.







Lastly, pics from Majayjay falls.