Sick at Last
Yep, I’ve just had two days off work – it hasn’t been the on-the-toilet type of sickness I was expecting to get, instead it’s been the ‘I feel really hung-over but I haven’t drunk anything’, and ‘I feel fine as long as I am in a horizontal position’ type of thing.
Yes, I took this photo in Manila - and it's true!
Mid morning I fell back asleep and had one of those dreams where you wake up and you can’t open your eyes. They are always vivid for me and I feel like I start to panic a bit. – I’ve had these dreams fairly regularly in my life (since I’ve had my night and day contacts??) and I’ve been able to instill more of a sense of “don’t worry, it’s just a dream” type of sensation into them. But with this one, I tried to ply my eyes open with my hands, walk to the bathroom and put eyedrops in (did my contacts stick to my eyeballs and to my eyelids?) and I even ducked under the covers to try and open my eyes (was the daylight just too bright for them?). Then thankfully the doorbell rang , it was 11am and I opened my eyes straight away.
I’m not sure if the doorbell was a blessing or more of a added burden to my dreams, the fact I felt really ill either sitting or standing and my pretty constant headache – it was the pest control guy who proceeded to spray pest control stuff throughout our bathrooms. I am sure this is pretty unhealthy – it stank like chemicals and was stronger than any other bug stray stuff I had smelt before. I don’t think it did much good anyway.
On Thursday I felt like my body could do some food so I cooked up some pasta and tomato sauce – it made me feel a little better, but I ended up going straight back to bed. I wanted to do some Tagalog practice, but my brain couldn’t function particularly well with a gurgling stomach and still a sore head. So I just laid there – and it was nice – I usually feel guilty just laying around – I don’t know why – it’s like I’m just wasting time or something. But today it’s all I felt like doing and it was probably just the best thing for me at the moment.
By Friday afternoon I felt a little better and read a little – something light; and I even watched Oprah.
What I’m reading:
- The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs – I’ve only read the first couple of chapters, but it’s really good so far – a little academic.
- There’s no Toilet Paper on the Road Less Travelled edited by Doug Lansky (leant to me by I at work) – Bill Bryson’s inclusions are definitely the funniest. And I haven’t even read much of Bill Bryson!
- The Filipino Saga by Cortes, Boncan and Jose – a social history of the Philippines, initially leant to me by Macel at work.
I’ve recently finished:
- Tree by F Sionil Jose – a pretty famous Filipino author
- Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story from Hell on Earth – leant to me by Sally and Natalie – one of those books you can read over the course of a weekend and really made me think about a future job with the US. I’m of course more interested in development work rather than war and post-war conflict situations, but good nonetheless.
Melissa and Tagaytay
On Thursday night Neil and I made a trip down to the airport to pick up Melissa, my sister who arrived in Manila from visiting my dad in China. Unfortunately her trip turned out to be only a short one, but it was still great to see her! On Friday I took the day off work and we headed down to Greenhills for breakfast at Pancake House and some shopping. We bought a few things but the highlight of the morning was Liss’s, “that’s a tall Filipino woman” and my response, “that’s not a woman!” After we got tired of shopping and all the “Yes maam you like?” comments, we dropped our stuff off at the house and caught a taxi to Intramuros. We had a quick look around but it was raining a bit so we stopped off for some lunch while it passed. As one of the main tourist attractions of Manila, Melissa seemed pretty unimpressed with Intramuros. Perhaps coming from China where she showed pictures us of the Forbidden City, Summer Palace, the Great Wall, Temple of Heaven Park, and Tianammen Square I should have known! We walked through Rizal Park and then over to the bay, but by this time the weather had turned really hot and the sky was pretty overcast and muggy, so we instead decided to go home for a rest before going out for dinner.
After a rest we headed into Makati where we had a quick look around the mall before eating some yummy sushi and Asian food in Greenbelt. We then headed down to Max Somethingerather's which specialises in chocolate. We both ordered chocolate drinks but it wasn't as yummy as we thought - especially for non-chocolate lovers, but the idea was pretty novel. By that stage we were full and tired so we caught a taxi home.
The next day we headed down to Tagaytay, a pretty touristy area where we were immediately accosted with comments like, "boat ride", "where are you going", "do you need a tricycle". From that moment we should have known what it would be like in this highly touristy town. We spent a long time looking around for a decent place to spend the night – a first here in the Philippines for Neil and I. Usually we are able to find decent, affordable places pretty soon after arriving in a new town. So it was a bit of a pain, and most annoyingly, we were taken advantage of by a couple of local drivers. This only equated to a couple of Australian dollars, but it’s still annoying. After getting a better layout of the town, we took Jeepneys – they are a standard price and a decent ride. We finally found a decent place to stay, but the room wasn’t available until after 8, so we headed back up the hill to eat a Josephine’s. Josephine’s ended up being a yummy and picturesque restaurant which overlooked Taal Volcano and its lake. It served Filipino food and was pretty decent. At least finding a decent restaurant and decent place to stay meant that the day ended fairly well.
The next day we left the hotel and had breakfast at a little place up the road. It turned out to be a good choice with decent breakfast and Seinfeld on tv. Hee hee. We then waited about 30 minutes in a jeepney before it took the 20 minute trip down to Talisay where you catch the boat across to Taal Volcano (some jeepneys won’t leave until they are full of passengers).
It was a nice boat ride across the lake to the volcano – we got a little wet, but it was nice to be on water. Once we arrived we were then accosted with offers of guides and horses to take us up the mountain. The Lonely Planet noted that you don’t need a guide, that the path is just one way up the hill and we were kind of happy to walk rather than take a horse up. For the first 10 minutes or so we were followed by people trying to offer services as guides. One even tried to make us pay him $200 pesos entrance fee for the municipal police. I told him to take us to the Municipal Police Office and we’ll pay it there and kept walking. This weekend was really the first time in the Philippines we’ve been hassled like this!! The walk wasn’t the nicest as we had to hike up a dusty track with lots of horse poo everywhere, but it kind of got nicer as we got further up the hill. We stopped and let Melissa try some buko (young coconut) while we rested a little. Then it wasn’t too much further before we reached the summit. After a disturbing incident with a kitten – we were kind of over the whole thing (which was a bit of a shame because the inner crater was quite impressive) and hiked back down. We got caught in the rain but Melissa and I had umbrellas so we only got a little wet.
The next day we were back in Manila and went to do some final shopping at Megamall in Ortigas. We had cinnamon rolls for breakfast and bought some clothes and some new shoes. We met Neil for lunch and then it was time to go home so Liss could head off to the airport to head home – boooo hooo – the trip was way way too short!
3 Months in
Well, I’ve reached three months. The time has definitely gone quickly and it’s a little hard to believe really! But I’m finding it interesting to reflect on what’s been and what’s to come. I have today (Monday) off as it’s been declared a public holiday. Pangulo Gloria is giving her State of the Nation Address (SONA) today at 3pm and it’s been a rocky 3 months for her as well. I’ve been wanting to write a post about it, but partly I don’t want this blog to bee too po.itical and partly I feel a little underqualified as I am still learning the ins and outs of the political system, what actually happened with her and Mr Garci, and the implications of what will happen if she is removed from office (there is no real viable alternative). But my overall impressions are that this country could do with an overhaul of their political system. Whether that means a move to federalism, more drastic moves towards a parliamentary system or a range of radical reforms I can only contemplate. But power is strongly and systematically concentrated in the elite classes in this country and most of the poorer population of this potentially rich country are sadly missing out.
3 months in and I’ve managed to dodge the Maynila bug – or so I’d thought. It’s been an up and down week. Thursday I lost my appetite for most of the day and felt a little under the weather. Friday I seemed to recover a little until an evening of Indian food and cocktails (what was I thinking??) resulted in the development of a closer relationship between be and the toilet – yes, both ends. By Saturday afternoon I felt ready to eat, but my stomach was still very tender and still is. So it hasn’t quite hit me (apart from the 12 hours or so on Fri night – Sat morning) and I’m hoping my relatively strong stomach will fight those evil bugs.
Being here for 3 months has also made me reflect a lot on what I want to do in the future and where I want to go after my time here. We keep saying to ourselves that we don’t have to think about it yet, there’s still 9 months to go – but I’ve always enjoyed considering the future, where I want to be, what I want to be doing. I definitely enjoy development work and would love to spend more time overseas. Philippines is great, the people are wonderful, but I feel like I’ve been cheating a bit in a country where everyone speaks English, my counterparts are highly skilled and intelligent and where I’m living in a high-rise, a bit away from the rest of the community and isolated from the real culture. I get a bit of it at work and I keep saying I should stop using English so much – so why don’t I?
OK lang! Makikita ako sa Pilipino at subukan harder. Sige?
Maynila has become a city we are currently battling with a little. It’s still hot and muggy and dirty and busy and Filipinos walk really, really (talega?) yes really slow, especially when you are in a hurry (like it’s raining – don’t you want to rush to get out of the rain you crazy people? Do you have soy sauce in your brain!! – I like that Pilipino saying!!). Plus our fridge, stove, spare toilet and sink are all broken and the phone still hasn’t been connected. But for the most part we are staying positive. We’ve hired some people to come and clean for us twice a week – Neil doubled the amount they were going to charge as it was ridiculously low. And it’s been great coming home to a nice clean and tidy house. The woman (Joy) is even arranging for things to be fixed and is on the case with our phone connection – so she is worth every penny (or centavo I should say). So she is really making life a little easier for us. So there definitely remain some positives – great people at work – cheap shopping – the promise of more travel out to the provinces and best of all, we’re not in cold Canberra!! But hopefully we’ll be able to expand our knowledge and appreciation of this diverse country over the next 3 to 9 months – I’m sure the time will fly!
Adiyos kaibigan!
EMEM (My Pilipino nickname!)
Pics courtesy of Mairin
I think this is a great picture in the bus that we took from San Fernando, La Union to Vigan.
More Photos courtesy of Mairin from our trip to Vigan
These pics are from the weaving place that we went to.
Cinemalaya
On Tuesday evening I caught a taxi after work to head down to the Cultural Center of the Philippines (itself an interesting building that reminded me of some of the Canberra cultural buildings:
http://www.culturalcenter.gov.ph/index.html) to meet up with some of the other AYADs and watch an Italian movie. When we arrived, there was no Italian movie showing as it had been cancelled for the opening night of Cinemalaya, an Independent Pilipino film festival.
As part of the opening ceremony, we were treated to free wine and a performance by a local artist, Grace Nono, and some dancing. After some introductory speeches to open the festival, we then moved into the main screening area to watch 6 short films that were made by new film artists. Most of them were great and showed interesting aspects of Pilipino life and culture. Full length features will also be shown throughout the next couple of weeks culminating in a closing ceremony where winners of the short and full length films will be announced. Here are the short films we watched:
- MANSYON by: Joel Ruiz Short Film CategoryDolores, a housemaid, and her husband Ambo, a gardener, are hired to take care of a large house while its owners are away on a long vacation. Weeks of tedium go by until a small accident sparks a series of discoveries within both Dolores and Ambo.
- KULTADO by: Lawrence Fajardo Short Film Category
Set in a chaotic market place in a small province, a young vegetable vendor seeks vengeance against a meat vendor, who is also the leader of a gang of butcher's collecting "bribes" from other vendors in the market, bullying him as well as his brother and father. He got beaten by the leader several times. He picks fights with this butcher hoping to be able to beat him up someday. When this butcher then resorts to also hurting his younger brother, he then practices hard for the fight he's preparing for against this butcher. The task at hand may be more difficult than he imagined but he is willing to kill and be killed in this fight. - PANAGINIPAN by: Anna Isabelle J. Matutina Short Film Category Two young, deeply disturbed women meet and discover a different kind of bond despite their contrasting personalities. MONA, despite her seemingly calm and controlled facade, has already reached a point in her life wherein she can no longer hope that life will ever get better. SARA, on the other hand, wishes to escape the constant and pointless pain of her uncontrollable need to fall in love. Both women have already attempted several times to kill themselves, seeing that death is their only escape from this repetitive suffering of the human soul. After exhausting all means of suicide, they discover a foolproof way to end it all – that is, to consciously decide to stop breathing.
- BLOOD BANK by: Pamela Miras Short Film Category
Des is a woman suffering from aplastic anemia who receives weekly blood transfusions. This is administered in a blood bank where Emma works as a medical technician.
One night, Des is mugged by Cleto. Going through her things, he discovers Des' diary and so learns more about her person. He becomes drawn to her. He stalks her, and is lead to the blood bank where he learns of her predicament. He decides to sell his blood. With this act Cleto feels a sense of redemption, his way of making up for the crime he has done to her and to others before her. At the blood bank, he also develops a friendship with Emma. - BABAE by: Sigrid Andrea Bernardo Short Film Category BABAE (WOMAN) is a coming of age story of two women who grew up together in the city slum community beside railroad tracks. They become best friends during childhood, shared dreams during teenage years and eventually started a family during adulthood when a child accidentally entered their lives. Real Stories of Women and a Man were added to give this color to this black and white film. A mixture of Drama, Comedy, Musical and Fantasy that will surely touch the Pinoy Heart in You.
- ALIMUOM by: Milo TolentinoShort Film Category
In a darkened room a man commits murder- a bullet through the head. An act of madness that left him emotionally crippled with guilt and paranoia. He sits there weeping, splattered with blood, haunted by the echoes and images of his violence. Beside him a dead body lies face down on the bed, blood staining the white bed sheet. In this canvass where the smell of incense mixes with scent of blood and a crucifix peers accusingly out of a half-drawn drawer, the man struggle to hide his crime and cleanse himself with water. But it seems the dead body has its own agenda. Haunting him again and again, taunting him. A cycle of guilt, paranoia, shame and fear cut through the man's senses, driving him closer and closer to grieving madness. In that maggot infested sanctuary, where shards of broken glass and a dead fish lies eerily on a blood-smeared floor, a man struggles, hopelessly to atone himself of sin of violence to no avail.
Sabang, Puerto Galera - 9 – 10 May
After a busy week I was really looking forward to getting out of Manila for the weekend. It was getting harder to get up in the mornings, and the pollution, people and traffic were all starting to get to me. A trip to the beach was just what I needed! I got up early on Saturday morning and along with Sally and Natalie, we caught a taxi to the bus station to meet Kate and catch the bus down to the Batangas pier at about 7am. After the 3 hour bus trip, we hopped on a ferry to head over to Sabang, Puerto Galera on the island of Mindoro. It was nice weather and with the fresh air, and beautiful ocean views, it was almost an immediate cleansing! About an hour on the boat we arrived in the little town of Sabang, where we checked into our modest inn and headed out for some food. We also met up with Mairin who had arrived the night before with a bunch of friends from Perth who are over in the Philippines doing some prac. work for their uni courses. They headed out for a small tour of the surrounding island while the other four of us changed into our bathers and walked over to a nearby beach for some swimming and snorkeling. The snorkeling wasn’t so great as there were a lot of people and boats around which seemed to have destroyed some of the coral, but we were able to see some nice colourful fish. We relaxed on the beach for a while and met some ‘colourful’ characters – some really young looking women who worked in some of the local bars. There were many ex-pats around the place – mainly men and you can only guess what Sabang used to be quite well known for. It’s been cleaned up a little and the diving has become the main attraction, but none of us were divers and there was still some interesting remnants of the other side of Sabang around. We all met up for dinner and watched the Australia vs. Springboks rugby game at a local pub. The next day we had a relaxing breakfast by the beach and then I went for a walk around to the look out point. We had to catch the ferry back at 1pm so it was a short sojourn to the beach, but a relaxing one.
Work picture
My Week from 27 June - 1 July
I though I would document my week. Looking back, it's not really indicative of my previous weeks here at NCRFW as I have been really busy. Usually I try to fit in some vocab learning each day at work on the slow times of the day, but I've just been too busy this week. Perhaps it's because I'm finally feeling a little more knowledgeable about the work of the division and therefore more confident in my ability to help out , or maybe it's just been a busy week. Only time will tell! So here we go - I've included food too because it's lunch that I've really been able to be exposed to the real Pilipino food. . .
Lunes (Monday) - AM: We had a 9am General Assembly to discuss the rationalisation plan of the Government of the Philippines. All government agencies must submit a rationalisation plan on how they are going to streamline their agency and provide administered savings. It went for a long time, most of the morning.
LUNCH: I had pork chop steak in a nice sauce with gata kalabasa (one of my favourites for lunch - pumpkin in a light coconut sauce) and rice. This was followed by left over merienda from last week - avocado, icecream and coke (Only the avocado and icecream was combined).
PM: We had another agency-wide meeting with just the technical staff to present section feedback on the Agency's draft operational framework to 2010.
Martes (Tuesday) AM: last night I was informed that I was to have a meeting with the Executive Director, so in the morning I did of preparation for this. We were then advised mid-morning that a meeting with the NCRFW Board, and a meeting with the Social Development Committee (SDC – a Committee with the head of Government Agencies) hosted by NEDA (National Economic Development Authority – the central planning agency) would be held later in the week where Local Sectoral Representation (LSR – one of my tasks) would be discussed. So I asked I if she needed any help. We agreed that I would revise the PowerPoint presentation for the NCFRW Board. So I worked on that until lunch.
LUNCH: I had torta talong (an eggplant omelet type thing - was good), ginisang sitaw (sauteed green beans) and rice.
PM: I worked on the powerpoint presentation then met with the Executive Director at 3. The meeting went for a while but it was a good opportunity to talk with her and Anna (my formal supervisor).
Miyerkoles (Wednesday)
AM: After saying to myself that I would sleep in, I still got to work at my normal time. But only Aleth was yet in the office. So I quickly jumped on the computer to check emails. The AYAD in country manager is coming for a monitoring visit next week so I had to check the details. Once everyone else arrived it was time to eat morning merienda - mais (corn) from the street vendor. I just had coffee (instant coffee with a little sugar and creamer - no milk). We chatted for a while and then Macel and I talked about our planned trio tomorrow to meet with local government officials to provide technical assistance in their GAD planning and budgeting.
LUNCH: I had lumpia shanghai (my favourite! - homemade spring rolls) along with monggo (cooked mung beans) with rice
PM - I worked on providing comments for the Office of the Press Secretary's GAD Accomplishment Report and GAD Plan and Budget. NCRFW has to endorse all the GAD Plans and Budgets of all Government Agencies. Mine was only a 1 pager - I hope my comments are in line with the division thinking . . . we'll see.
busy at work at the office
Huwebes (Thursday) AM: I arrived at about 9am where I quickly finalised my comments on the OPS GAD Plan and Budget for Anna. Macel and I then went to LEARN for the trip down to Los Banos. At about 10 we drove down to Los Banos to meet with local women’s NGOs and local government officials to present information on engendering the local planning and budgeting process. My role was really just to observe, while Macel presented to the group. She did a really great job – I don’t think I would have been able to have presented for an hour as well as she did! It was interesting to see the dynamics at the local government unit and many of their issues were very different to those at the national level. So even though I was absolutely exhausted by the end of the day, it was another good insight into government planning and budgeting process.
LUNCH: We had either an adobo type dish with vegetables. For merienda we had pancit (noodles) and a rice cake type thing - I can't remember what it's called!
Biyernes (Friday) AM: Everyone was really busy when I arrived - they had to present something at the Board meeting. SO I busied myself in reviewing the presentation that I had prepared for the SDC meeting and after coffee and some cassava pie from Los Banos (buko pie is much better I think!) I asked I about my Pilipino homework (she gave me some context on the prepositions we are supposed to learn for Monday's lesson) and then hopped on one of the computers to finish some 'mapping' of NCRFW's allies to target them for some LSR advocacy.
LUNCH:
PM: Friday afternoon I went with I to NEDA to the Social Development Committee meeting held monthly between with heads of Departments and Agencies. NCRFW presented a number of agenda items including a report back on the 49th Session on the Commission of the Status of Women in New York (which the NCFRW Executive Director attended
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/Review/english/49sess.htm, an update on passage of a bill on Reproductive Health rights for women and families and on the Local Sector Representation. By the time the LSR was presented, there wasn’t much time and there wasn’t much time for discussion. So it was a bit of a disappointment for I especially. We ended up going for a drink afterwards and met Neil for a great chat.
Yes, I took this photo in Manila - and it's true!
