Hey all. Just taking a break from doing some excel sheet (or shit, if you will - haha, I love that French mispronunciation of the word) work on SunPower's wastewater treatment, boiler and emission scrubber systems. The power grid is still down in all of Luzon except Quezon City, which is a part of Manila - Jacob heard from an employee that we could maybe expect power at our house again on Sunday. Bloody hell!

Today's cookies are a video clip of two small Filipino's boxing for entertainment at a mall, if that is your fetish, and a picture below of Jacob and I at our cubicle, staring pissed off at our screens:

Well, how about that? Typhoon Milenyo (international callsign 'Xangsane' - apparantly they resent Chinese names here... if a typhoon crosses into Philippine soil it had better damn well have a Filipino name) is being dubbed the worst storm to hit the country in 20 years. Skimming the news, the death toll isn't as bad as has been seen in the past: 10 fatalities directly attributed to the storm, and an incident at a Samsung manufacturing plant not too far from us left 50 hospitalized when three buildings collapsed. There hasn't been any cell phone coverage since the morning, which sucks ass since I can't even call my girl to find out if she's alright. Power is still out. Luzon has been hit by a massive blackout. Except for a few places, everything is pitch dark. Amazingly, one of the very few open businesses open at the Paseo (where they have emergency generators apparantly) is a cybercafe. Right now i'm in a room packed with Koreans playing Starcraft to pass the time, lol. I can't say I blame them. I was bored out of my fucking mind before I decided to take a walk and blog for you people.

I have video footage of the storm. This clip was taken at SunPower during the morning, when Milenyo was just getting warmed up. Absolutely shocking footage!

Ok, I was dramatizing a little. :) Enjoy the blog. I think I'll go to sleep early. Like hell I'm not going to read a book by candlelight, even though Dostojevski's Crime and Punishment is interesting (though not captivating) reading so far.

Flipside!

Update: Okaay, maybe the typhoon was taken just a liiittle lightly earlier on. One branch snapping off and landing next to a parked car is one thing. Another thing entirely is waist-high flooding on the streets outside (no bullshit - the guardhouse has now been evacuated) and multiple fallen trees in and outside the SunPower compound (Jacob: "There's a tree floating in the middle of the road!"). The Environmental, Safety and Health unit where we work is empty. People are on on full alert running across the whole facility. Power is down. We are currently running on emergency generators, which have enough fuel to last a day and a half. I was sitting at a canteen table earlier, adjacent to one where an Emergency Response Team was having a meeting, and I caught from the Tagalog I can understand that they were talking about bringing out sleeping mats for the employees. Looks like we're in for the long haul.

Mom, dad, everyone, I love you. :p Send chocolate.

Oh, here are some pics taken by my camera phone. They show fallen trees outside and how all exits are cordoned off and manned, either by ERT members or by maintenence personnel who are doing their best to stem water from coming in.

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Today's picture - for your amusement only - is of me in a bunny suit (rabbit ears optional).



Not much happening at work... there's a chance we'll be sent home though. Metro Manila and our area is about to be hit by typhoon Milenyo, which at the moment has been given a Public Storm Warning Signal 3 with maximum sustained winds of over 130 kph near the center. Storm signal 3 activates stay-home orders for all school levels up to college as well as all government institutions, but not private businesses. However, if it continues building up strength (outside our window a branch just snapped and almost hit a car - EVERYBODY PANIC!), SunPower might be forced to send its employees home. Yay! :p

Note to self: Keep updated on the news. Be suspicious if there is a power outage upon waking up. Be suspicious of lack of traffic on the way to work. Read the fucking news alerts that Globe Telecom sends to your mobile phone. And call ahead to SunPower to verify if it is indeed necessary to go to work.

I like to ride my BICYCLE/
I like to ride my BIKE!/
I like to ride my BICYCLE/
I like to ride it WHERE I LIKE!!!!

BIIIIIIIIIIIICYLE! BIIIIIICYCLE! BIIIIICYCLE!



No, laptop still not back from repairs yet. Here's a pic of my set of wheels though. Cooler than the WebstaMadzMobile? I say yea.

David out.

I'm sorry, ladies and gents, regular blogging service will be resumed as soon as I get my laptop back from repairs. Sigh. I could kick myself. You see, in the tropics sometimes massive rainfalls occur all of a sudden without warning, and I'm talking about the kind of showers where you get more rain falling in five minutes than what you see in Denmark over a month. It's that bad. Well, one day the sky decided to puke rain like that just as Jacob and I were on our way home with our bikes (yup, we bike to work). Me, thinking that my bag was waterproof, and in a hurry to make a date with this girl, decided to brave it. Jacob too.

1) The bag wasn't waterproof. In fact, it's a Speedo bag. Speedo is very good at making things (swimsuits) that, er, get wet. Dammit!

2) Neither was my laptop. Now, the thing has been through a lot with me. Shit, it's so battle-scarred it looks like it's been through hell and back. Unfortunately, this this was more than it could take.

The end result: water damage to the LCD screen, and now I'm having it replaced, for the price of something close to 3000 DKK. Witness my head thoroughly smashed and bloody from banging it on the table at the pure stupidity of what I did.

It affects my blogging because I usually do the blogs from home. At work, I use my computer for surfing the net for porn doing serious work, leaving me no time to write stuff for you guys. Right now I'm at a netcafe doing this, but I couldn't be half arsed to go here all the time.

Let's see if I can make this blog interesting and worthwhile. How about nekked ladies? :) I'd like to tell you all about my niece, who seems to have made it big here under the name of Juliana Palermo. This is her on the front cover of FHM Philippines. I almost wish we weren't related :p



That's all, folks. ;)

Now that I've strarted blogging again, I should keep updates coming regularly. Here's a pic that was taken and sent to us by Lee, a Kiwi we met in Boracay (cheers mate!).



In addition, here is a link to Lee's Philippine photo album. Excellent pictures in there of my country. Er, my other country.

That's all for now. All the best!

Has it really been three weeks since my last update?

Ugh. It’s one of those mornings recovering from a night on the town. Jacob and I hired a driver last night and tasted a slice of the Manila nightlife scene. Not really that hung over, though, just feeling extremely lethargic – more so than usual. So, quick-fried English breakfast, crappy morning TV and what else have I got planned for today? Oh, that’s right, absolutely nothing. Except maybe blog a little bit in the air-conditioned comfort of my room, with the sun bearing down heavily on the palm-tree lined scenery outside my window in what is truly a beautiful day in the Philippines. Life is good!

I’ve had a few complaints that the content of this blog has so far been mostly restricted to descriptions of shenanigans and tomfoolery of the most trivial, unserious sort. This I acknowledge! However, I will keep on at it :) But I do suppose it’s time I should write something that holds a little bit of professional interest for those who want to know about what I actually came down here for, which is an internship with Sunpower Philippines. First, I have to say Sunpower is an awesome workplace. It has a highly trained and young workforce, so going to work feels just like going to school - except people wear ID tags the entire time, Jacob and I included. It’s big, employing around a thousand people or so. It also houses an extremely high-tech solar cell fabrication process with the majority of the processes occurring inside cleanrooms where temperature, relative humidity and particle concentration are strictly controlled. The picture gives you a look inside. As you can see, they use full body PPE (Personal Protection Equipment), also known as bunny suits. I’m not at liberty to say what exactly goes on inside, but suffice to say, solar cell fabrication is complicated shit. I’m sure none of you are all that familiar with semiconductor device fabrication techniques. Neither are we, but we have had to contend with learning about stuff like plasma enhanced vapor deposition processes. The interesting part for us is that these processes use incredibly hazardous chemicals - whether toxic, pyrophoric, corrosive or otherwise nasty – and lots of it too. Our job is to figure out how to implement a systematic environmental management system that will enable the company to handle the environmentally harmful aspects of its activities. Its quite a daunting task, as we are doing this from scratch. We hope to do a good job, though… the intention is for the company to use our work as input for a strategy meeting next year, when ISO 14001 will be seriously considered.

This is the company’s product. It’s the A-300 solar cell, and it is THE most efficient solar cell in mass production in the world today. It yields efficiencies of 21%, and in addition, it has an edge over the competition because Sunpower has perfected and patented the unique construction of its cell so that there is no need for those metal gridlines on the cell’s ‘sunny side’. It’s all-black appearance and high wattage output per square meter are two things that are able to make Sunpower an industry leader. It has recently been floated on the Nasdaq and is currently the fastest growing technology company listed. Impressive stuff.

The first week at Sunpower was spent undergoing NEOP (New Employee Orientation Program) training, learning all about safety procedures, chemical handling, internal document management and statistical process control systems, among many other things. Shit, I thought I had finished my last ever lecture. Jacob and I even had to do a written exam in order to be certified for cleanroom entry. At any rate, we did the training together with batch 40, a new set of employees. The interesting and amazing thing we learned was that the people working on the shop floor here seem to be overqualified for what they do – every single worker is an engineer with at least a five year degree behind them! Although the fabrication processes are high-tech, Jacob and I are still somewhat puzzled by the need to hire full-fledged mechanical, electrical and IT engineers for loading/unloading work. The fact of the matter, however, is that labor is cheap here, there is a high unemployment rate even among engineers and there are loads of engineering graduates churned up every year. For the sake of becoming the industry leader, Sunpower is only happy to invest in the best-trained available workforce.

In the subsequent two weeks since that introductory week, we have alternated between working on our report and doing tours of the facilities and requesting data sets, which we are now beginning to receive and number-crunch. Nothing too exciting to report. I did have a funny (well not too funny) thing happen to me. I got an allergic reaction to something I ate at the Sunpower canteen and was unwell for a week, which sucked. I had just begun working out at the local gym, getting a rhythm going and then I got knocked off balance. I suspect what triggered the allergy was a delicacy here called bagoong (pronounced: bah-GOH-ong), which is salty fermented tiny shrimp. It tastes awful and I’m glad I’m allergic to it because I never willingly go near it anyway.

Let’s see, before I sign off, what can I show you guys to make this blog more exciting? Idea: Here is the various shit I have stored on my phone, bits and glimpses of my life here. Enjoy!

First up is pictures. This is Jay and I waiting for the shuttle bus on our first day at work… do NOT laugh! Hehe, actually Jacob commented that we looked like a pair of missionaries. But hey, we didn’t know everyone wore casual wear at Sunpower and didn’t know what to expect!





This is a glimpse of our hangout, the one and only Paseo de Santa Rosa. We live basically right across from it: it’s a shopping complex with a wet market that has a number of bars and restaurants. There is live band entertainment on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. We are regulars there now – all the serving staff know us by name :)





Hm. This is interesting because it shows how big some of the malls are here. What you are seeing on the picture is a roller coaster.



Me on a date.





This is remarkable. One day at Sunpower we were told that if we wanted to, we could donate blood as the Red Cross was visiting the company that day. Nifty idea, that. I didn't donate because I'm a pussy, but Jacob did.





Now, the movies. I have a clip of some hunnys dancing at the Paseo, a clip of Jacob bust-a-moving, and a clip of some fire-eating, taken at a theme park nearby called Enchanted Kingdom where I went with Anabel (see previous blogs).

See you around, kiddos!