Photos from Vigan work trip

Me, Macel, a potter, Gigi, a GRC member and Milin, head of the Pamulinawen GRC at the UNP Ceramics Training Center.

Macel and I, along with the local Governor and some local women at a regional meeting hall where gender materials are on display.

posted by batik billy @ 9:32 am

Work Trip up Northern Luzon

On Wednesday, Macel and I took a 9 hour bus ride up to the north of Luzon to undertake an informal monitoring visit with the Gender Resource Centres in Region 1. Gender Resource Centres are a mechanism developed by NCRFW to advocate and undertake gender mainstreaming at the regional and local level. There are 6 GRCs throughout the Philippines based in academic institutions and it is one of my primary responsibilities at NCRFW to assist in strengthening their capacities and to expand the GRC model to other areas in the Philippines. Since arriving at NCRFW I’ve done a lot of reading about GRCs, their limitations, problems and needs to be more effective. But this was the first opportunity that I had to talk to the GRC members in person.

We arrived in Vigan at about 7.30 at night and went to the University of the Northern Philippines where we were treated to a nice Illocano dinner of bangus (a common Pilipino fish), vegetables and rice. We were accommodated in the University guest house and I pretty much crashed out soon after dinner. The next morning we took a short tour of the university, visited their pottery school and then met up with other GRC members. I was predominately responsible for running the meeting with the GRC members which was basically a meeting to find out how the GRC was going, what kind of activities they were undertaking, problems their were facing, and what kind of vision they had for the future of their GRC – essentially for their sustainability. The discussion was to help Macel and I in helping to strategise in further supporting GRCs throughout the Philippines as their role is pretty important in assisting Local Government Units in integrating gender concerns in their local programs and activities. And of course, some GRCs have been more successful in this than others! It was a pretty successful meeting except for the fact that as an AusAID sponsored volunteer they thought I was going to able to bring some money to their operations – I think they also wanted some pretty concrete solutions to help them in their limitations. I tried to emphasise that they know the local situation, and had some pretty good solutions themselves, I just hope that it got through to them ok!

After some lunch we headed out to some local Barangays for a field visit. Most of the work that the GRC in Vigan is undertaking is research work on the role of women in various industries. First we went to a local meeting hall where women from various organisations were able to meet and discuss their activities, and where the GRC is able to share information on gender. We then went to some local pottery communities (Vigan is fairly well known for clay floor tiles and pottery products). The GRC was undertaking research on the role, income and division of labour in the pottery production industry. These were really poor households where women were undertaking highly labour intensive activities, fulfilling multiple roles and receiving low income for their productive work (about $20 a week). The GRC members talked to them about their business relationships, whether they were members of a co-operative (they weren’t – usually members of cooperatives in the area are able to share more in the profits of the sale of their products) and how much capital they had etc. It was pretty interesting.

Afterwards we headed back into Vigan town proper and visited Villa Angela – the ancestral home of the NCRFW Executive Director. It is an old Spanish colonial home. We then went to eat empanada – a local delicacy – like a deep fried spring roll type thing that looked like a pastie, but was filled with vegetables, egg and longganisa (Illocano sausage). We then hopped on another bus to head 4 hours south to San Fernando, La Union.

The next say in San Fernando I observed Macel give a workshop to local tourism workers on gender. It was an all day seminar aimed at increading their awareness of gender issues both in the workplace (like undertaking equal employment opportunities, being aware of gender divisions of labour in operation, and sexual harassment and predujices) and in the broader tourism industry (like issues of prostitution, portrayal of women in tourism marketing, people trafficking and how tourism may affect women more generally in the local community).

Once the workshop finished at about 4 we caught another bus (this time only 2 hours) to Bagio to start our time off for the weekend! Bagio post to come with pictures!

posted by batik billy @ 1:25 pm

Chinese cemetary

Last weekend Neil and I headed town to Binondo – Chinatown. Manila has quite a strong history of Chinese involvement, Chinese make up a high proportion of the city’s business elite and our apartment complex for example has a lot of Chinese residents. We had a great lunch at a large Chinese restaurant called President Restaurant which was delicious.




After lunch we went to Binondo Church which is one of the older structures in Manila dating back to 1596 and then had a walk around Chinatown, which isn’t too big itself, but is generally pretty clean and pretty interesting. There are quite a lot of old European churches around Manila. Most of the really old ones were bombed to the ground during World War II, only a couple survived the war, many more were rebuilt out of the ashes.

We made it over to the MRT train station and headed north to check out the Chinese cemetery. The Chinese cemetery is filled with mausoleums with crystal chandeliers, air-conditioning, hot and hold water, kitchens and flushing toilets for the mourning families. Most of the mausoleums were nicer than many of the surrounding Philippino houses in the area. It was pretty amazing.

posted by batik billy @ 9:06 am

Children of the Philippines - guest post and photos by Mairin

I've never seen anything as gorgeous and innocent as the children in the Philippines, they’re absolutely lovely! During my travels here I’ve been fortunate enough to take some incredibly beautiful photos of them.


Some of them are so poor, yet they always have a big smile on their faces and are always willing to entertain you. Some are shy, others extremely outgoing for their age... but all outwardly happy. There is widespread illegal child labour here, consisting of child beggars who just simply follow you around saying “ma’am food hungry” and there are others who sell low-priced objects such as flower necklaces. Personally, I try not to give them money because I know that if I do it will just go straight to the adult who is co-ordinating it all. Instead I try to give them food or water, amazingly though they often refuse to take this even though they are probably starving! I know it’s not as bad as other countries, such as India where begging truly is a way of life, but it is definitely confronting. One of the photos below depicts this typical situation - It shows a young boy with his faced pressed up against the cab window begging for money.


This is a fairly common occurrence here, especially if you’re a foreigner. Whenever I’m in a taxi and stop at an intersection I am guaranteed that I will be propositioned by a child, some unfortunate individual that has a disability or a street vender selling his goods… there all after the same thing, money to sustained their livelihoods.

The Philippines is full of inconsistencies…. There is a lot of wealth in this country but the dispersion of this wealth is disproportioned. I’ve never seen anything like the traffic here; there are ten times more cars here then in the city of New York so the traffic is always horrendous! More people own mobile phones here then anywhere else in the world. It is not an unusual occurrence if an individual has two or three mobile phones so that they can go with different providers depending on the deals that they are currently promoting! All the middle/upper class families have yayas (which are nannies that look after the children 24-7) so there is essentially a generation of Filipinos that are being primarily raised by their nannies where there interaction with their own parents is minimal because they are working long hours – trying to get ahead.


Then there is a population of people that are struggling to put food on the table let alone send their children to school or even dream of having someone to assist in the caring duties of their child….


It really does get you thinking… at the end of the day it really is the children that suffer the most. Although they are not totally aware of this, you have to wonder what future they have to look forward too, I mean look at them they are so beautiful and innocent!...

posted by batik billy @ 2:12 pm

Another Week, Another Post

Another week, another post for the blog. Time is absolutely flying – we are in the middle of August already? I can’t believe it. Just so people don’t forget – its my mommy’s birthday on the 22nd and Lyn’s on the 21st. I’ve bought you both presents (mom- yours might be a bit small so I’m not sure whether to send it or not – I forgot that one size fits all in the Philippines is one size fits all children under the age of 14 in Australia!!). But buying presents isn’t really the most difficult thing – sending them may be a challenge and commitment to your birthdays. . . finding a post office for one, and the bureaucracy here is pretty amazing for everyday things. I went to pay my water bill in the admin part of the building where we live and they wanted a check. The total bill was about $10.00 for the month and it costs about $1 to get a bank check, let along finding a bank open outside of working hours to get a bank check written up. Basically anything involving public services and banks are just a big pain in the butt here really. I really miss Bpay!!

As you can tell we haven’t been doing anything too exciting here – its turned hot again and awfully humid – I’m sick of sweating at 7.30 in the morning – and I’m remembering the one weekend where we headed to the beach and it poured and blew a gale the whole weekend! Oh well. We stayed in Manila last weekend. Neil bought a DVD player and a friend of his from work lent him about 30 burned CDs that we’ve been slowly getting through. On Saturday we went to a going away dinner for an AYAD who is getting ready to finish her time here in the Philippines. We had pre-drinks at our house with our new blender, had an Indian dinner and bar hopped a bit in Malate. It was a pretty big night and Saturday I was pretty hungover the whole day. Must have been those tequila shots – what was I thinking!?! I’m getting old – I just can’t do it anymore!!




Mairin, Jarrah, Me and Natalie at a bar in Malate. We are all AYADs - Mairin and Natalie share an appartment in the same complex as Neil and I, Jarrah is from the intake before us and only has a month or two left to go.





We were going to head out of Manila this weekend as well, but Neil is pretty keen on going to a punk night at a local music club. Natalie’s (AYAD) boyfriend (also an AYAD based in Bangkok) is coming over this week so we’ll be heading out again with the AYAD crew. Neil’s invited some workmates to come along as well so hopefully it will be pretty fun (punk? I dunno . . .). I’ll try to find an interesting picture to accompany this post. Here we go -

This is Leharne and Neil at Indian dinner on Sunday night. It was Leharne's going away. She's been based in Los Banos at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

posted by batik billy @ 4:36 pm

Some everyday stuff

I don’t know how interesting this post will be for people, but since I kind of want to use my blog to remember my time in the Philippines after I return home, I thought I would just do a post on some everyday stuff.

Cooking – we haven’t been doing a lot of cooking here. It’s hot in our kitchen, we don’t have many pots and pans, and we hardly ever go grocery shopping – it’s pretty hard without a car. We have to end up taking a taxi home, but more to the point, we have to find time to actually go out and get groceries. Neil sometimes grabs some stuff on his way home from work as he passes through the closest main shopping mall to our house every night. But also, the food here is slightly different to that in Australia, which makes the Indian curries taste a little funky and the Chicken Kiev’s a little non-existent. So were are basically living on a pretty consistent weekly dinner diet of pasta, stirfry and the occasional other meal like noodles or stew. We eat out fairly often as we find it pretty cheap, but again our meals consists mainly of Italian food, pizza or pasta, from Cibo or Italiannis if Neil is feeling generous, or of Japanese from Teriyaki Boy all at Araneta Centre in Cubao (that shopping mall I mentioned earlier).

Laundry - We don’t have a washer let alone a dryer so we take our laundry down on a weekly basis to the local laundromat. Except that they do it all for you which is great, but sometimes they have so many orders to do that we have to wait 2 or 3 days for our clothes. This wouldn’t be so bad except for the fact that we only brought a limited number of clothes, and don’t have too many reserves. We’ve been trying to buy clothes, but again, sizes are very different which is great for me and shoes, (I have the typical Filipino-sized foot) but not for pants (I guess I have the typical Western thighs and butt). Actually, talking about my thighs and butt, I have lost weight here. I think this is mainly due to the 40 minutes of walking I do each work day (20 mins to and from work) and the smaller, but more regular meals (I eat an average of about 5 times a day – and this is pretty typically Filipino). But for me, the size and amount of food matters! It’s amazing all that money I spent on my gym membership when all I needed to do is eat more often – but importantly eat smaller servings . . .

Other physical activity - I’ve started playing badminton once a week at a course near our house. I’ve been going with our AYAD neighbors who live in the building next door. It’s fun and we’re noticeably getting better each week. To make an otherwise fun event a little annoying is the fact that the guy who works at the gym where we rent the court has a crush on poor Natalie and keeps asking if he can play with us, and generally is a real pain in the butt. But hopefully we’ll bring Neil along this week to play doubles and he can give this guy a stare-down or two. . . I doubt it!!

Other extra-curricular activities - The only other constant after-work weekly event is Monday Filipino language classes. Our teacher is a teacher of English to Korean students here in Manila and while she is fairly nice, she is a bit strange. She talks about her period, how she gets flushed and hot right before she gets it, and even about her bowel movements (this one was fortunately not to us, but to another AYAD who has her for language classes!). But this is pretty typically Filipino. It makes me wonder what it is that I do that grosses my workmates out, or that they may consider ‘rude’. I guess discussing bodily functions should not be such of a faux-pau in Australia – but it takes some getting used to!! Particularly when nice workmates pull a huge loud burp after eating, are happy to talk about how they are currently suffering from constipation before heading into the toilet, but seem to go out of the office if they have to blow their nose . . . I love it really, it makes me laugh! J

Blood? - I’ve been asked twice this week what my blood type is because a couple of people have been sick (one with dengue, the other is having a kidney transfusion thingy) and the hospitals/blood banks don’t seem to carry enough blood here for these types of medical emergencies. I guess this is the kind of place where donating blood could really be useful (or is it useful everywhere . . ?) I wonder if concerns with blood donation and AIDS etc are ok here – I am sure they are due to the huge AIDS education and awareness campaigns that have been undertaken internationally . . . but it would have to carefully considered if I go ahead and start donating here.

What else? At work they place music all day and today we ran out of computers for the number of people who wanted to use them. It’s finally cooling down here but I have a really sore ankle and need to buy some new shoes. Mikey-in-law if you are reading this, I may have to come see you for a professional visit when I get back to OZ, I suspect I may need some orthopedic things to stop rolling out on my left foot when I walk. We finally found a nice pasta sauce to cook with, and a new restaurant opened at Araneta on the weekend, which is always an exciting event. Its called Peking Duck. We might try it tonight so I’ll have to report on it tomorrow. Oh and they are planning to open a Pancake House there too – I hope it’s good!!

That will just about do I reckon. Before I sign off, thanks everyone for the comments – please leave more, especially what I should write about – what do you want to know about the Philippines?? And I also wanted to finally share some ridiculously long, real Filipino words in an article about the origins of the Filipino word ‘Jologs’ – a word that I quite like (it’s like the word ‘lame’ in English):
· Pinanlalampaso (16 letters)
· Nangangahulugan (16 letters)
· Ipinagmamalaki (16 letters) – something about ‘big’?
· Kapangyarihang (16 letters)
· Ipinangangalandakan (20 letters)
If I have any Filipinos reading this (I?!) can you please translate what on earth these mean!! J

And sorry if this post has been so .. . . jologs!




This is Neil at the local market - there is some great fruit here and it's so cheap! 50c for a kilo ove huge, delicious avocados!

posted by batik billy @ 4:48 pm

Verde Island

On Friday afternoon, Neil and I met to catch the bus down to Batangas for a relaxing weekend away. It didn’t start too well – I left work early to get a taxi – but there were no free taxis. So I arranged to meet Neil down at the bus stop by catching the train. On the way down there was a huge downpour – and when I say a downpour – it was a monsoon-like storm! Of course Neil, who was meant to leave work at 4.30 couldn’t get a taxi and ended up having to get the train too – an hour and a half later!! Needless to say I was a little tired of waiting for him to arrive, even if it wasn’t his fault for being late . . .exactly. Anyway, I won’t continue because I was a little pissed that he took so long to get there, and he got angry that I was angry, but we eventually got the bus down to Batangas and arrived at our hotel at about 9.30.

Saturday morning we got up early to catch a boat over to Verde Island where we had booked our nice relaxing weekend away. Unfortunately the rain hadn’t really subsided much – it was still really stormy and not the best weather for a weekend on the beach! The rough trip over to Verde Island took about an hour and a half and a few people in the boat got pretty sick. Of course when we arrived at our destination it was too windy and rough to dock the boat, so we had to boat around to the other side of the island while the weather calmed down a bit. Finally we went back and were able to dock the boat and walk down the pier while getting totally wet from the rain and the high, rough sea which crashed against the pier throwing water all over us. But by 1pm we had finally arrived and were ready to eat lunch/breakfast and relax.



Verde Island Resort is made up of separate cabins overlooking the sea at the base of a tall hill. There isn’t much to do here besides relax and go snorkeling or diving when the weather is nice. Unfortunately for us it continued to rain and despite the ocean water being really warm, there was no way we were able to go swimming or snorkeling – it was just too rough. Instead we had a buffet lunch, an afternoon snooze and a brief walk around the surrounding area. I even went for a swim in the very picturesque pool. That evening we had dinner and a few drinks before retiring to bed.

Sadly we had to leave extra early the next day (7am!) during low tide to ensure that we were able to leave at all. Despite being a very nice, quiet place, our time spent on Verde Island was way too short for the 5-hours or so travelling time, and the money spent on our relaxing weekend away. It was also the first weekend where it has rained and been overcast the whole time – typical! But it was still nice to get out of Manila and to be in a nice environment with fresh air, no traffic and a beautiful view of the ocean.

posted by batik billy @ 9:59 am

Verde Island pictures

posted by batik billy @ 9:12 am