Joepster Blog Goodness

First of all, Happy Holidays to everyone. I know it’s a tad bit late to make this blog and greet the world, but hey, New Year is till coming, so I’m still in the season and it’s still the holidays for most folks (unlike myself where it’s over and I’m going back to work tonight… can I say bahumbug? ) But I can’t complain, I got Christmas off so I shall just watch the fireworks over Metro Manila when I am in the office for New Years. (can I still say bahumbug? )

Seriously though I can’t say bahumbug for my Christmas experience. It was a lovely time with family. It started last Thursday on Dec 24 when I headed over to Cebu with Dad and younger sis Kitoy. When we got to Cebu we were picked up by my uncle Wency and a very sexy 2 kilos of Lechon Cebu (http://anthony-bourdain-blog.travelchannel.com/read/hierarchy-of-pork)! Aaaaaah! Meal #1! We stopped over to buy more ice (our freezer at grandma’s house was already full of Chicken Relleno and Bangus Relleno) so ice was a luxury and did another stop over to buy tickets for Avatar (I watched it again with family and close family friends) for that afternoon. As we stopped I was soooo hungry that I couldn’t help but reach into the bag of lechon to have a pinch of the crunchy skin of the roasted delight – wrong move as it made my fingers oily and increased my appetite and hunger all the more! As we got home, mum and Gabby were already there with Ima (grandma likes to be called “Mom” too in the local dialect of Pampanga) and we quickly laid the table with our first feast! It was a small gathering (missing just my older sister who was arriving day after Christmas) but it was fun, and I was happy with the thought of being home in Cebu, with the “best pig ever” and family.

After that feast we headed off in the afternoon to watch Avatar and bring along as the movie “snack” the ever so famous Steamed Rice (the sauce and toppings that go along with it make it to crave for!) I cant believe I brought rice into the theater! LOL!!! Now mind you I also came from shift and had already been awake for 24 hours — I actually snoozed through some bits of the movie! Oh well. Good thing I already saw it the day before and good thing my family enjoyed it so much they didn’t catch me sleeping except for Kitoy who was beside me and kept nudging me to wake up from my snoring. In hindsight, it was a good thing she did!

That night it was Christmas eve and was of course a feast! I wanted to whack my auntie in the head though for not waking up to join in the fun and making her daughter miss out on Christmas eve! What sort of holiday spirit was that? Well bahumbug to her. They both missed out! She is the first I have ever encountered in the family to have missed out on Noche Buena. How can you do that? Oh well, at least my family was up and about and enjoying the Relleno and the Majestic Ham! It was glorous! So after the Christmas wishes and hugs it was time to sleep. Meal #2 right there!

Christmas day we headed out for lunch as my poor mum has been slaving in the kitchen for days so I thought it would be nice to head out for lunch. We had japanese food and boy was it much! Jason Mraz can sing “Too Much Food On My Plate” over and over again! But it was a great time as well. Meal #3, friends and it was GOOOD.

After that we went to my grandpa’s cousin’s house: Uncle Oking – or Uncle Roque and his wife Auntie Rosita. He was 86. She was 83. They are quite a pair and I have never seen a more entertaining old couple in my life! He was claiming to have been faithful all his life to his wife and we were all “testigos” (even if we weren’t born yet), but Rosita does not believe him and still says he had an affair with his sexy-tary “Shirley Dompol” My cousin was shaking her head because apparently they really do fight over it in their old age! His fault though. He keeps teasing her to the point that she believes him. He even has a story that he had an affair with Princess Di. I loved every minute of that visit! (Together with the home made apple pie and panatonne!) It was great to meet family that we’ve never met before. I really enjoyed that afternoon. They’re both so dear. I will definitely say hello to them again the next time I go to Cebu.

On the 26th my sister Celine arrived from Manila early in the morning and we met up with them in Mactan Island to go to Nalusuan Island Resort for the day. We took a boat a little before 8am and got to the island exactly at 8:30 am (I could hear my alarm go off – I don’t remember why I set it at 8:30am though.) So Meal #4 was going to be lunch. I told myself I was going to have a heavy breakfast, do two dives and not snack in between so I can enjoy lunch and so I waited… and you shall wait for the food details too as I talk about diving first.

Family Fun

So two things on why I did this dive even though I don’t remember this dive site to be fantastic (the last time I was here was in 2008 with dive buddy Steve.) I went because I wanted to take daddy on his 3rd intro dive because I gave him fins and a good dive mask for Christmas – so might as well add an intro dive as a present and two I was already on my 3rd week without diving (all previous weekends were weddings and parties) I HAD to get myself submerged. So I brought my dive gear with me (1700 PHP excess, Merry Christmas Cebu Pacific) and got ready for my dive. I love how friends and family get so curious about your dive gear and ask you so many questions about it. I tried to answer them as simply as I could (there was a point my siblings and mother just said stop – uhmm we can’t follow anymore.) I just love sharing the experience with them and wish I could just take them all diving! But of course my mother would never do it So one family member at a time I guess… anyway. The resort itself looked good and seemed like a very good place to hang out in. There were hammocks around the place and looks like the rooms are comfy and very romantic too (with all of them being over clear waters and a beautiful view!) The staff were friendly and their welcoming committee: Bruce and Honey were the warmest greetings anyone could give on that little island: Bruce is a dark and handsome black labrador and Honey is a sweet little honey colored dappled dachshund.

So off I go with daddy to dive. Now I have quite some disappointing reviews for their dive operator:
1) You have to walk a loooooong way to get to the end from the dive shop so you can get to your dive boat. Good thing you don’t have to carry your gear.
2) In the end, there is no place to shower. So if you have trouble putting on your wet suit dry like I do – it’s not fun. I had to get in the water to get my wet suit adjusted to fit the right areas (I hate it when it’s all bunched up in the wrong places!)
3) Their tanks’ knobs are a little weird and need to be jerked to shut off completely.
4) Their equipment does not look like it gets serviced properly – I had equipment issues but it wasn’t too cumbersome. I should have stuck with my own gear and had him change the tank first! Long story short: my wing kept inflating and I was dumping air the entire time causing me to lose air and shortened my dive time to 30 min on the second dive.
5) Dive Master was not too keen on showing things or guiding you and seems to be overly complacent upon seeing your Advanced License.
Lesson learned: Go with Adventure Bound’s Cebu Dive Operator next time. At lease I can be assured of these guys’ diving experience. I’d rather have that more than a local DM who knows the place but doesn’t seem to care about his customers. Good thing he was able to take care of my dad but I saw my dad go up and down a couple of feet in that dive. I think he was experiencing the inflating issue that I did. What I hated the most was he blamed my equipment first before checking his own. I don’t like an uptight and strict DM but this guy was too careless for his own good.
Needless to say, I ended with just two dives instead of four and a bad headache. Only highlights were: daddy was happy, I saw a new Nudibranch (although it seemed like it was in the throes of death) and the 3 sting rays in a row.

So by the end of all this, I was HUNGRY. When I got back — THEY WERE ALL DONE EATING! Good thing there was so much food that there was plenty left for me! Meal #4 here I come! Of course there was lechon (thank you Ate Mara!), seafood (shrimp, squid – absolutely soft and delish), fish) and inihaw na liempo and fresh fruits (mangoes, bananas and pineapples) ooooh lala! It was a feast. I didn’t eat the fish though because I saw it caught and being cleaned in their salt water pond… it was fresh, but I couldn’t eat it. Oh and seeing that was also interesting. So in that huge pond they had all sorts of fish in it. Tanguigue, Bat Fish, Lapu-Lapu (cods) and other fish. The cod in there was pretty big and you can spot it right away. While the cooks were cleaning the caught tanguigue, daddy and I saw the cod turn toward the direction of the men and it started swimming towards them stealthily (if you can imagine fish on stealth/hunt mode.) I seriously thought it was going to attack the men! But I guess it got attracted to the fish blood in the water. So this thought was in my head while I was diving and while eating lunch. So no fish for me that time. I waited until dinner for Meal 4.5 at Mama Belle’s house – they served Kinilaw (which was made with me in mind, thank you mama Belle!) and calamari – all of which were to die for! Oh yummm! Thus ended Dec 26. We all went home busog (full) sunkissed and happy. I cleaned my dive gear with daddy and did as much moving and carrying as I could so I could at least burn a little more calories.

Dec 27 was spend watching Shake Rattle and Roll – one of the Year End Manila Film Festival entries. It is now going to be tradition I think for the Paloma sisterettes to watch this every year. It’s stupid fun and we all laughed by the end of the movie (but Gabby, my youngest sister) was getting stressed and 2/3 into the movie declared she was ready to leave. Lol. She’s too cute. Then I had dinner with Ate Celine while the two younger ones stayed home with mum and dad. Mother wasn’t feeling too good with all the cooking and cleaning she’s been doing the past few days. She’s ok now, I was glad to stay out of her hair and make her relax. During dinner we met a traveling couple who just came from Apo reef and were relaxing in Cebu before they head up to Sagada (they should be there by now.) It was nice to have played tour guide for them for a bit and they were pretty glad to have received local information. I hope they find time to hit Anilao before they head back home. My last stop was to meet my BBF yes not BFF — BBF – Best Bakla Friend: Alexis (aka Bok) we stayed for Vodka and some white rum alco-pop which is giving me a headache up to now. (ugh – rum I think is now part of my no-no list) It was great seeing him though. One funny thing though, we were at his restaurant and it was closed for their staff Christmas party (which we sorta crashed I guess) but we were there at the end of shift. His sister had the wifi on and all of a sudden we were all checking facebook and holiday photos – then we all look up at each other from our devices and realize how shameful our behavior was! So we were all guilty of the whole “FB makes you anti-social” crime. We decided to break it and at least share the fun and photos of common friends and recent happenings (weddings and events and such.) Whew. Saved from being anti-social!

So that just about wraps up my Christmas Holiday. I’ll probably blog again post new year’s with the whole 2010 plan and what not. But we’ll see.

Happy Holidays everyone. Hope you got to spend time with people you love and celebrate the holidays for what it is really about: LOVE and all it’s meanings: Love is family. Love is friendship. Love yields much sharing. Love is what was born in a manger a long long time ago…

Happy Christmas!

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Taken from this Posterous Blog:
http://nicoledeb.posterous.com/edges-of-your-patience-will-be-pushed#

Putting it on my own blog so I can remember it and share with the rest of you folks…

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A CHANGE AGENT

You will always be in the process of development.
You will find yourself often being alone and feeling marginal.
You will find yourself experiencing higher and higher levels of resistance.
You will get more and more in touch with what it means to move in and move out.
You will need to be caring and confrontive; guiding and directive.
You will keep trying to see situations with different eyes.
Edges of your patience will be pushed (nothing moves fast enough).
You will know rejection intimately.
You will constantly be revisiting your own values.
You will live with the tension between blending and differentiating with the client.
You will struggle between doing what the client needs and what you need.
Your honesty with yourself will enable you to relate to others.
You will truly be yourself only when you know yourself.
Your greatest joy will be what you can do for others, so they can do for themselves.
You will come to understand that we must care for ourselves, because
no one else really can.
(c) David W. Jamieson

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Image by catface3 via Flickr

Facebook email:

Hi Joeps! how are you? I saw your pics and they're absolutely amazing. I really need to learn from u. I have a quick question though, if I wanna take pictures of the Vegas strip at night, i mean regular pictures with people on it but still have that "SLR" artistic touch? I need a setting that doesnt require a tripod (dynamic) coz well be moving a lot. Any suggestions?
– Toti

Joepi's Reply:
Hey Toti!

I started to write it as a reply in Facebook but realized my email was getting long and I wanted to blog it instead so, in your famous line…"I give to you" my humble learnings:

So, when you say "SLR touch" do you mean night shots without the flash?
Here are the key things in taking night shots without flash usage:
1) Get your ISO up to the highest level possible. This will make your photos grainier (you'll see pixels) BUT it allows you to capture more light.

2) Get your aperture at the lowest setting. I use a 50mm lens that allows me to photograph up to f1.8. What lens are you using? If you only have your stock lens with you, get yourself to the lowest setting possible. This way the aperture is at it's biggest and as open as it can be, allowing more light to get into your camera. Photographing at night without flash  may be a challenge with the stock lens, but pegging it at it's lowest f-stop will help you.

3) Play with your shutter speed. Depending on the effect you want, this is how you can play with light. Adjusting it to the quickest shutter speed (1/4000 for example- but this may not be the setting you will be using ok? Sample lang :-p) will just allow little light to come in. But with the two settings up there, you will be able to capture the scene as it is… hopefully you do. I say that because night shots are tricky. But considering it's Vegas, you will get TONS of light sources, so you should be ok. Just don't go photographing dark corners. :-p Now, making the shutter speed slow and allowing it to be open a little longer or the longest will allow you to capture "moving lights" – this is how you get the effect of the streaks of moving cars, or capturing the movement of water (if you want to capture a lit fountain for example and get a little bit of the water movement) you can just set your shutter speed to what you want to capture.

4) Check your white balance – depending on what your light source is – adjust that accordingly. If you're moving, put it on auto WB if you don't want to be bothered by adjusting it everytime.

I have given you the basics of my informal education on photography passed on from a photographer friend (http://site.rockportrait.com.au/) and here's a source that you can read: http://www.photographybb.com/magazine/
This is an online photography magazine and I love reading it. Check out issue #12.

Have fun in Vegas, Mr. Boado. Oh and you can use flash – but I still have to figure out a way to make it look natural.

Cheers!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joepiclicks/

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Image via Wikipedia

I am not one to speak about politics, and this is a very rare blog topic for me, but if you haven't heard of this particular forum Harapan: The ANC Presidential Forum last Wednesday, Dec. 2, at the University of Santo Tomas (UST), here are some quotable quotes which hopefully will allow you to choose your candidate wisely as well as some of my thoughts on the upcoming election.

The line-up:

Senators Noynoy Aquino (leading candidate) and Sen. Dick Gordon.
Former Defense Secretary Gilbert "Gibo" Teodoro (The Admin candidate)
Bro. Eddie Villanueva,  Angeles City councilor JC De los Reyes, and independent candidate environmentalist Nicanor Perlas… and Former President Joseph Estrada (why, why, why?!)

In my opinion, only two of them performed (politics after all is still a show) very well and bodes for a very promising future for the Philippines should they be elected.

1) You have the crowd favorite, son of former President Cory Aquino (who just passed away) Sen. Noynoy Aquino saying that running for President is a chance for him to change the system and he ran to meet the challenge and not for personal gain – this is his chance to do it right for his country.
 
2) And on the other hand, you have former Defense Secretary Gibo Teodoro who said this to the mediator, anchorman Ted Failon when he hinted on Gibo's ties to current president GMA: "Ted, kung presidente ka na, gawin mo na ang tama" (Ted, you're already president, might as well do things the right way."

These were the only two who spoke well and actually answered the questions with intelligence and sense. Others were too righteous, obviously lied, ran in circles, too emotional, and unable to win the crowd. It was just wrong – but it was very entertaining. Of course, the entertainment was led by no one else but the actor: former President Joseph "Erap" Estrada.

Here are his Oscar Winning lines:

1) "Because you know, a hungry Stomach knows no rule" was used by Erap as he reckons Food Security would be his first priority once elected as President.

2) Student: "Mr. President, if you had one vice that you can't live without, what would it be?
Erap looks at Gibo: "Vice … ha ano? (what?) Life?"
Student: "No, VICE, Mr. President." (repeat this line and line before 3 times)
Student: "No, LUHO (tagalog word for vice)"
Erap: "Ah! Alam mo naman ako, ang tanging luho ko lang ay ang maglingkod sa mahirap" (Ah well, you know me, my only vice is to serve the poor.) (Joepi chokes on her coffee as she watches this.)

3) Erap finishes his answer before his 2 minute time limit is up. After all the other candidates speak, he sees that all of them finished their 2 minutes, he goes: "Sandali lang, yung 40 seconds ko uubusin ko, tumigil yung 'Time Clock'" (Wait, I want my 40 seconds back because the "Time Clock" stopped.) (Joepi cracks up)

4) The best line of all:

“Example, pari ako. May anak akong gusto mag-pari. Bawal ba ‘yon? (For example, I’m a priest. I have a child who wants to be a priest. Is that not allowed?)” he said and I almost died laughing.

The host immediately said in mid-smirk that Catholic priests are not allowed to have children, and suggested maybe the former president meant, a sibling – to which Erap quickly agreed as well.

I cannot believe I was able to witness an "Eraption" moment. I had thought these were all made up stories to further discredit him… and I cannot believe he is running again, had the gall to say "I have the most experience" and that he even teased himself when he spoke in English ("O, English yun ha! [that was in english mind you])!!!

Oh Erap, you said so yourself, you are in your "Twilight" years (effort to appeal to the young Twi-fans?) you should take a step back or consider going back to showbiz. Your antics are going to be wasted for politics. (read more:http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/12/02/09/erap-wants-spend-twilight-years-president)

I definitely enjoyed the forum and would like to hear more from the top two candidates and from Villar who was not present in this forum.

If you are voting in the coming elections, please choose your candidate wisely. It's not about who makes the best policies or laws. It’s about electing someone who can properly execute the already laid out laws (which happen to be one of the best in the world), someone who will not be blinded by temptations and someone who has a conscience.

Signing out…

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I didn't even think about it until I was with Leslie, Jean and Alex W over the weekend. It has been two years since Leslie and I did our Open Water Check out dive in Arthur's Rock at Crystal Blue Resort in Anilao with our Dive Instructor Alex F and Dave. I remember how all I could think about was just to breathe and keep from floating to the surface, heck I couldn't even put my fins on by myself in the water! And spotting things? No chance! All I remember was blue water and looking at my instructor and at Leslie and Dave and keeping them at "grabbing reach" LOL!

Two years later I find myself on my third consecutive weekend diving, in a place we've never been to before, carrying, cleaning, setting up our own gear, and diving the house reef by ourselves. Talk about a BIG difference from where I was two years ago. I also loved the fact that we all just did our thing and photographed to our heart's content while graciously showing each other things to photograph and take turns photographing or spotting things.

Major learnings in two years of diving:
1) Take care of your gear – have them serviced regularly and, wash them carefully. Also, submerge them once in two weeks in a tub if you're not going to dive to keep them from going brittle with non-use. I have found creepy crawlies in my gear and my booties go white and cracked and my regulator's gasket busted. So take care of your gear – your life underwater depends on it.

2) Currents can be scary but you just have to be smart about riding them. If you hit a down current, try to swim OUT of it so you don't get sucked down. JET FINS rock and have proven to be saviors in fighting current. Learn to stay calm in a current and not kick too much that you zoom ahead of the group too. This is one of the things that I still run into myself, but I just keep telling myself: Steady Horsey! Just ride!

3) Buoyancy is not the easiest to master, but when you do, it's just like flying (in my head, that's how I imagine it to be!) The best way to learn it is to start heavy then inflate if you have to. Drop a few pounds in your next dives until you feel comfortable. Keep taking note of how much weight you used so you can keep track. I started diving with 14 pounds! Now I can dive with 8lbs. (and hurrah for Halcyon Steel Backplates I don't need a weight belt and just add a block attached to my tank!)

4) Never be afraid to say you don't feel good or something is wrong underwater. The last thing you want is to be cursed to your grave for ruining everyone's dive experience by dying (knock on driftwood.) If the agreement is to surface by half tank, forget the machismo and tell everyone you're at half tank even if everyone else is only 1/4 into their air. Better to talk about air management on the surface than having to bring up a dead body, right? BUT on the other hand, learn how to dive well and practice your skills so you know how to prevent bad situations from happening. You want to be safe, but you also don't want to be branded as the boy who cried wolf or a sissy – you catch my drift.

5) Try to be healthy and void of cough/colds/slight fever/headaches on your dives: One thing that I learned in this weekend's dive: Managing a cough and a cold on a dive weekend. Here's the thing: it is very manageable BUT at 20-30 feet where the atmospheric pressure has the biggest change, my forehead felt like it was being squeezed by my mask. Good thing I was able to equalize slowly, but not without a little worry and anxiety about not being able to. If that happened, I would have aborted of course. So I was able to dive comfortably at 40feet max 90 feet without feeling any discomfort at all (except when my throat felt dry and itchy and I had to cough out some icky stuff.) Other than that, it was fine, BUT it wasn't the best feeling in the world. The decongestants helped, but you know it and you'd feel it underwater that all that phlegm are in your head. Gross, BUT I wanted to dive… Also, working in a call center has made me go on dive weekends with very minimal sleep or none at all. Try to squeeze in an hour or two of sleep if you can. Diving "puyat" is not the best feeling in the world and can lead you to fall asleep in boring dive sites :-p Just kidding. Keep yourself hydrated!

6) Bring food and water on the boat during surface intervals. A rumbling tummy scares the fish away

7) Pee if you have to underwater – it relieves you and can keep you warm (eewww? I'm sure 95% of dvers pee in their wet suit) just be sure to wash your wet suit well. Although, a magazine had once published that if there are certain dive sites that a lot of divers go to, if hundreds of divers pee in the same spot for a certain period, the corals CAN die. So – if you gotta go, you gotta go, but if in a popular dive site and you can hold it – do so until you're out of the dive sites :-p Or do like my anthropologist friend did: look for an outhouse in Anilao (with a proper toilet seat) and pray that nothing grabs you when you go.

Snapshot of Joepi's Diving Adventures:
Year one: Anilao, Boracay, Phuket, Ticao, Galera, Cebu and Bohol
Year two: Anilao, Kota Kinabalu, Sipadan and Tubbataha
Year three… PALAU HERE WE COME!!!

Joepi Paloma | Manila, PH

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