archive for the “Baguio City” category
I walked down to Baguio Gold to see the family and take the girls back uphill so that we could get a jeepney ride to Baguio City. On Thursday, the sisters had expressed in riding tricycles in Burnham Park, so I said that I’d take them today.
Quezon City police stopped Enrique Panlaque in a Mitsubishi L300 cargo van about 10 p.m. on Sunday. In the van were 75 dogs, including 67 sick ones, that Mr. Panlaque intended to sell to butchers for 600 pesos ($12.24) each. His employees had been observed buying unwanted dogs and snatching stray dogs to sell to meat markets although Panlaque has been arrested six times previously in seven years for selling dog meat. Apparently he wasn’t convicted and punished enough to dissuade him from resuming snatching and selling sick dogs to butchers in Northern Luzon. Demand and supply… »→
Today Mack walked upstairs to Mail And More in SM City Baguio to retrieve a copy of his birth certificate that was mailed from National Statistics Office. We ate lunch in Vizco’s beside Session Road then walked downhill to a UnionBank branch to open a EON Cyber Account for Mack.
Afterward I paid a PLDT bill then tried to find a parcel sent via registered mail from Quezon City on Monday or Tuesday. PhilPost advised me that it may arrive tomorrow. I’ll be riding a bus toward Sagada tomorrow morning, so I suppose that I’ll see the package on Monday.
I hate PhilPost. I had thought that the U.S. Postal Service in Bay County, Florida was lackadaisical. Philippine Postal Service makes U.S.P.S. in Cedar Grove look like FedEx. I’ve heard that Filipinos prefer courier services to PhilPost. But Mail And More/Air 21 hadn’t wanted to deliver to Mack, and 2Go, a U.P.S. contractor, didn’t want to deliver a parcel to my home!
Well, one small step in the intended direction: one of the two sidewalk vendors in Baguio City whom I had recruited to sell The Jeepney magazine has sold her initial, free allotment and has bought additional copies to sell in evenings after selling men’s, women’s and children’s hosiery in daytime. Our other vendor-partner, Jeffrey, hasn’t been heard from. Perhaps he tired of trying to sell a new, relatively unknown magazine to passersby on Baguio City’s sidewalks. The corner vendors of newspapers and magazines haven’t asked me for additional inventory, and I’ve seen the first three issues awaiting buyers on their newspaper/magazine racks. The only thing they’ve asked me for is another magazine title, something that people are familiar with, such as OK! or T3 or Maxim or Star Studio.
I have been waiting one week for Mack to gather certain things so that we could go to a UnionBank branch office to open an EON account for him. But he’s been sick and then dragging his heels. I haven’t heard from him for a week. I tried several times to get N.S.O. to send another copy of his birth certificate, because I’d paid P315 for one, but N.S.O. was uncooperative. When it did send a copy, Air21 courier service was uncooperative and would not deliver it. I asked numerous times for Air21 to just leave it at Mail And More, an Air21 franchisee in the local mall, for Mack to retrieve. Either Mail And More wouldn’t telephone Mack to advise him to pick-up, or Mack is dragging his heels, as he did in May. »→
I feel as if I’m covered with a layer of fine dust after hiking four-and-a-half hours then riding a jeepney back to Baguio City downtown. I’d really like to take a shower, but while I’m in the big city, I thought that I’d use an Internet café to check my e-mail and my weblog.
Late this morning I took recyclables to the mall (‘trash to cash’), then trudged downhill to Vizco’s for a beverage and a scan of the national newspapers. After slaking my thirst, I began walking without aim toward Burnham Park. I had no destination nor photographic subjects in mind. I just wanted to walk in the glorious autumn weather, and if I tired of walking, I’d take lunch and resume reading a book about spiritual healing. »→
Yesterday Mack and I went to a new member briefing at Benguet Electrical Cooperative as a prelude for getting a new BENECO membership and an electrical connection to the shack that his family resides in. Afterward, I had a horrible headache, as if I’d been shot in the head. So we went to a pharmacy, and I bought ibuprofen. One has to take ibuprofen with food or milk, so we took tea and a snack in Vizco’s restaurant beside Session Road. »→
I got sunburned last week and this week while walking miles on the streets of Baguio City and La Trinidad with a neighbor, The Jeepney magazine staffers, missionaries from U.S.A. and Pastor Roberto. My neighbor has been helpful in talking with poor people on the sidewalks, overpasses and parks of Baguio City, as he speaks Tagalog and Ilocano, and I don’t. »→
We haven’t had internet access in home for two days until now. We still don’t have a working home phone. PLDT is horrible.
Yesterday upon return from Baguio City, where I didn’t visit an internet café, I took down to Baguio Gold some grocery odds and ends, student supplies and money. Today Mack came up to this apartment, then he and I went into the city for lunch, a ten-minute visit to an internet café and grocery shopping. We returned home before rainfall. Dominic took Nick and Dennis into the city for a meal and haircuts. Tomorrow Dom will meet with Mack after school to take him to a dentist.
Charlotte, Rose and I walked more than a mile uphill from Baguio Gold to Tuding Road so that we could await a ‘Tuding Express’ jeepney ride to the big city. We wanted to go to Holy Mass in the cathedral, eat lunch, then ride tricycles in Burnham Park. »→
$4.09 per gallon for diesel fuel
$4.229 per gallon for Caltex Silver unleaded gasoline
$4.289 per gallon for Caltex Gold unleaded gasoline
$4.08 for Caltex Regular unleaded gasoline
$4.369 for kerosene »→
Today Nick (12) brought his sisters, Charlotte (8) and Rose (6) to the apartment, and after I ate breakfast and drank a cup of tea while they watched cartoons, we headed to Baguio City. I expected that we’d ride a jeepney, as is customary. But every jeepney that passed us as we stood beside Tuding Road was full. Rural residents like to go to the big city for shopping, churchgoing or selling their wares (handicrafts), produce and livestock. So we couldn’t get a jeepney to stop for us. We boarded one of the several taxis that were going toward the city without passenger. »→
Yesterday I paid UFC Taekwondo, in the Porta Vaga Building of Baguio City, for another month of taekwondo training for Nick. This morning he came to the apartment to get money for jeepney fare so that he could go to into the city for taekwondo training. Dominic, Mack and I went to downtown Baguio City so that Dom and Mack could get haircuts and we could eat lunch. »→
Don’t buy anything expensive in a Gigahertz Computer Systems store unless you want to be stuck with defective merchandise that you’ll have to argue at length to return for a refund. Buyer beware. You might buy something cheap like a mouse or muffin fan or USB cable, but don’t buy something that’s expensive. »→
Yesterday, in Baguio City, I bought nine educational posters for P 10 each from a sidewalk vendor at the corner of Session Road and Mabini Street. This evening, Nick came to this apartment to do homework, and he used two of the posters: land forms in the Philippines and types of bodies of water.
So that was convenient for Nick and for me. The usual play is this: Mack or Nick comes here and asks to go to the city to buy a poster to use for a homework assignment or extra-credit project, then we spend an hour (or more) going to the city, shopping, perhaps buying dinner then returning to Tuding.
As I write this, two chickens are doing a loud mating dance 26 feet away, in the wooded lot on the other side of the chain-link fence. Sometimes this place is quiet, and sometimes it’s noisily bothersome. I awoke to the barks and yelps of several dogs, which is what I heard when I lay my head to rest last night. Obviously no dog owners upstairs and across the street care one whit about the incessant cacophony that their dogs raise! No one trains their dogs. Dogs aren’t cherished pets here. Dogs are just urinating, defecating noisemakers kept outside homes to ward off intruders. »→
Today is Charlotte’s eighth birthday, and her family is too poor to do anything to celebrate. I doubt that they’ve ever celebrated birthdays ‘American-style.’ I walked down to Baguio Gold and went in their shack to blow up balloons while the kids were in school. I carried a bag of inexpensive gifts that I’d bought when I shopped for Nick’s and Rose’s birthdays. »→
Nick and his younger sisters came uphill from their humble home in Baguio Gold neighborhood hours ahead of the 4:30 Mass time at Turning Point/Fatima Hill. I think that they wanted the opportunity to watch cartoons on TV or DVD for a while before we departed for Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church. »→
