I Used to Live There! – Page 5 – Bradley's Old Fashioned Weblog

Typhoon Conson Not So Bad, But Meralco Dropped the Ball

July 15, 2010 Bradley Farless1 Comment

I just finished (sort of) my first experience with typhoons, and my first typhoon in the Philippines. It has been, and is continuing to be, an interesting few days. I don’t have any interesting photos to share, because there wasn’t really anything interesting to take photos of. Honestly, this typhoon was no worse than the average hurricane I experienced in Georgia. There were branches laying around, lots of leaves that needed sweeping up and on the ridges some of the smaller trees (3 – 5 inch diameter trunks) had snapped off from the high winds. There wasn’t a lot of rain. No more than an average storm anyway. I was underwhelmed. That was my experience in the Antipolo area, which is east of Metro Manila. Being up in the mountains, it seems to be shielded from the brunt of bad weather. It didn’t flood here during Ondoy either, from what my in-laws tell me. Unfortunately, after finally having a chance today to look at the news online, it seems like other people weren’t so lucky. It’s a bit hard for me to find sympathy for the fishermen who didn’t come ashore when they knew a typhoon was coming, or for the guy that drowned while trying to save a herd of pigs in a lake, though I think I can understand his reasoning. I do feel bad for the other people that died though. I have a feeling most of them live in houses that aren’t built very well, and then there were the accidents like the carpenters that had a concrete wall collapse on top of them. So, don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not downplaying their deaths. I’m just relating my own experience during this event.

With the storm being so relatively mundane (compared to Ondoy), I can’t help but wonder why the power went out for so long!? Really, what’s going on with you guys Meralco? The night the typhoon hit the greater Manila area, the power began to flicker. I wasn’t too surprised about that, since the power lines are on poles here. I also wasn’t too surprised when the power went out entirely at around 1 AM. In fact, we were watching a zombie movie called Dead Snow on my laptop at the time. It’s supposedly one of the greatest zombie movies ever, and what better time to watch it than on a dark, stormy night?

We went to bed around 3 AM, with the sounds of the wind howling and the rain sheeting down to rock us to sleep. When morning came two and a half hours later, the sky was a little overcast, but it was clear. There was still no electricity but I was cool with that. I’d figured the work crews wouldn’t head out until morning. There was no running water. That was disappointing. So, we went back to sleep.

Later that day we got up and went to my brother-in-law’s shop to have a light lunch. Still no electricity.

We sat around all afternoon, chatting, reading, getting in some of that quality bonding time, but there was still no electricity when the sun started to go down.

When it got too dark to see, we brought out candles. By then my laptop battery was almost completely drained and I wanted to conserve the battery on my iPhone, just in case. So, there was nothing to do but sleep. We used the last of the water we’d stocked up on to wash up and then at 7:30 PM we went to bed.

Around 1 AM we got up and checked, but there was still no electricity.

At 5 AM this morning we were up again, because we had to be in Eastwood by 9 AM. Still no electricity.

By then, the fact that there was no electricity was really working my nerves. We’d found out from family and friends that the power had been off all yesterday in Pasig and in Mandaluyong as well. Why was there such a widespread outage for such a low key storm? A friend told us that even after Ondoy, the power was up and running after just 3 or 4 hours. It seems absurd that the power outage would last that long with such a relatively light storm.

The power being up 3 to 4 hours after Ondoy could be misinformation, but on our way to Eastwood we passed a news stand and one of the papers had a front page article showing a housewife trying to prepare a meal by candle light. The title said something like, “Welcome back to the Dark Ages”. Given how sarcastic the title was, I think our sentiments about the power situation were shared by quite a few people.

While in Eastwood I ran my iPhone battery all the way down while reading a book on the iBooks application. My other cell phone was almost dead too by the time we headed home. So was my wife’s phone. We’re job hunting, so that’s not a good thing. It sucked to think about heading home to a house with no electricity, no water, and nothing to do once it got dark.

So, on the way back from Eastwood we kept an eye on storefronts and house windows, to see if we could see light. Things were looking good but we were still holding our breath for what we might see in our own neighborhood, which is a little ways outside Antipolo. And… there was light! When we crested the last ridge before our neighborhood (which sits in a valley), we could see house lights everywhere and we breathed a sigh of relief. At least we could recharge our gear and have some entertainment.

Fortunately, we hadn’t restocked our fridge yet. There wasn’t much of anything in it to go bad, except for some milk. Maybe the eggs are bad now too. I don’t know. Unfortunately, I think we may have just lost a month’s profit on business related foodstuffs we had in our freezer. Things that are supposed to remain frozen don’t do too well in the Philippines heat when the power is out for 30 to 40 hours. I don’t know what time the electricity came back on today, but it wasn’t soon enough.

Meralco… you disappoint.

The Dancing Jollibee Mascot

July 12, 2010September 4, 2021 Bradley Farless4 Comments

Jollibee is a fast food chain in the Philippines that’s reminiscent of McDonald’s. It’s a burger joint, but it also serves a lot of traditional Filipino foods. I’ll go more into that later. What I wanted to show in this blog post is the mascot dancing. I don’t remember ever seeing something like this in another country, but apparently Jollibee (the mascot) likes to dance at birthday parties and do ‘dance-offs’ with other mascots. I don’t mean cheesy dancing either. Here are two examples:

I used to wonder why people seemed so excited to have their kids’ birthday parties at a Jollibee, but I guess this explains it. I bet your average Ronald McDonald can’t pull off those moves!

There are also a few Jollibee franchises in the US in California and I think New York, due to there being a lot of Filipinos in those areas. I don’t know if the Jollibee mascots there dance like this though. This might be a uniquely Filipino thing.

Religious Procession Through The Town Center

July 8, 2010 Bradley Farless8 Comments

Sometimes interesting things cross your path, in this case literally, which is why I’m glad I almost always have my camera with me!

We had just been dropped off in town by the tricycle so we could walk down the street and do a little shopping when we heard a bunch of loud bangs and then saw hordes of people with candles walking down the road we were supposed to cross. When we got closer, we could see it was a procession coming from the Antipolo Cathedral and going down the main road. I had no idea what was going on, but I figured it was a good time to take photos.

After getting my pictures I asked my wife if she knew what the procession was for. I’d seen her asking someone what was going on, but she wasn’t sure what the guy was talking about. He had said, “It’s the last procession of the month!” That doesn’t make sense though, because these photos were taken just a day or two ago, at the beginning of July. If there’s more than one procession a month, which his answer implies, then the last one wouldn’t be at the beginning of the month.

Regardless, it was an interesting sight and it was very lively with the fireworks going off just above us. They weren’t the kind that make patterns or lights, just loud noises, or I’d have taken photos of those too.

This also reminded me of a segment of the Filipino history book I’m reading. When the Spaniards first started imposing their way of life on the natives here in the Philippines, Catholic missionaries would try to lure in the more stubborn people by holding frequent festivals in the towns. The festivals and religious ceremonies and events were purposely gaudy and exciting as a way to entice Filipinos to come, enjoy and then hopefully convert, and after converting start paying tithes of course.

Since we’re talking about tithes, I also read that back then if you were a member of the church and didn’t pay your tithe, you were publicly humiliated for it during the sermon in front of all of the people from your town. My wife says this practice still occurs in some churches in the Philippines, most notably the Iglesia ni Cristos, which is a Christian sect in the Philippines.

Old Spaghetti House at Galleria

July 6, 2010 Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

Yesterday afternoon, after a day of running around trying to do job interviews and visit the GSIS office for my father-in-law, we stopped by Galleria on our way home to have dinner. I wasn’t sure what to eat, but I was in the mood for something Italian, so my wife recommended Old Spaghetti House. I’m glad we went. The food there is great! It’s not fine dining per se, but it’s well worth the money.

I went with the Vietnamese garlic spaghetti with shrimp. I’m not sure if it’s actually a popular Vietnamese dish. It tasted really good though!

My wife decided to have their puttanesca, which is translated literally as “whore’s spaghetti”. There are conflicted theories about the origins of this dish, but the more colorful one is that it was a dish that prostitutes in Italy’s state run brothels made for themselves out of the odds and ends in their larders. As a condition of working in the state run brothels, they were only allowed out one day a week, so they were often low on supplies and this light sauce made from few ingredients was the result of their attempts to get by. More information can be found in the Wikipedia article.

After dinner, I finally got the chance to introduce my wife to funnel cake. Funnel cakes are popular at fairs in the US, but they’re pretty rare in Asia. I don’t recall ever seeing a place with this on the menu in Singapore. She loved it! You can see in the photo that they don’t add quite as much powdered sugar as they do in the US, but it came with a choice of toppings which made up for it.

Speaking of Singapore… it seems like you can’t get away from it over here. I found this stuff on the menu:

I don’t care for the original Tom Yum soup, so I really don’t think I’d like the way it tastes as a pizza or spaghetti.

Lungs, Ears and Brains: Exotic Filipino Foods

July 1, 2010 Bradley Farless2 Comments

The meat on the plate is actually pig lungs, boiled and fried. My wife and her brother enjoy it and convinced me to try some. It wasn’t horrible, but I didn’t think it was all that good either. I probably won’t eat that again. The meat on the stick, however is a grilled pig ear. It was served with a brown gravy. I thought about it after some of the stuff I’ve eaten, a pig ear really isn’t that weird. I mean, I’ve eaten chicken feet and snails before, so why not an ear? It wasn’t that bad. It had a decent taste to it, though I didn’t care too much for the crunchy cartilage parts. I finished it off.

This is pork sisig. This is a short order type of dish that’s sometimes served as lunch and often served while drinking. Up until recently, I believed it was just pieces of pork. I didn’t really question it or think about it. Turns out this is made from pig brains though. Well, partly pig brains. This dish became a popular part of Filipino cuisine as a result of the US establishing an air base in Pampanga province, called Clark Air Base. Filipinos would buy the unused pig heads from the base commissary and this is the dish they developed from trying to make use of them. I’ve actually tried this. I didn’t know it was made from pig brains at the time. No one thought to tell me either. Sisig is such a common dish here, now found pre-packaged and branded in grocery stores even, that my wife and relatives likely don’t give it a second thought. Now that I know, I don’t think I’ll ever look at it the same way again. I’m still not sure if I’ll eat it again.

Filipinos are pretty creative about making sure no part of an animal goes to waste. I’m sure you’ll see that as I post about, and perhaps try, more of the unusual ‘delicacies’ found here.

Birds in my Bedroom

July 1, 2010 Bradley Farless6 Comments

Despite the fact that there are gates and unscreened windows in the house, we haven’t seen too many random animals inside, other than the occasional cat rapist. Last night, it was pouring rain outside. We opened the back door to our bedroom, which opens onto a veranda, so we could bring in the laundry before it was ruined. I saw a black shadow shoot across the ceiling and when I finally spotted it, I was surprised.

There was a bird sitting on the curtain rod…

Naturally, our cats started to go insane trying to catch the bird and as soon as I got a good photo of it we used a broom to shoo it back out the door before our bedroom was wrecked. I guess it was scared of the storm outside but it definitely wasn’t sleeping in our bedroom with us overnight. Luckily none of the cats chased him off into the neighborhood before we got the door closed!

Spring Kyushu Fair

June 30, 2010September 4, 2021 Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

These are pictures from the Spring Kyushu Fair held in late March to early April of this year in Singapore. This is what I meant about being agitated about not having a Japan blog, because I should have posted them then. This is a bit dated, but I thought it was worth sharing anyway!

The fair’s banner was hanging in the center section of the Tampines Mall. Tampines Mall is set up as round levels with an open center.

This is the view from above, from I think the third floor. The fair was set up in the middle of the mall and was jam packed with people every single day.

I was shocked at how expensive these arus melons from Miyazaki were. If you look at the blue text on the sign you can see that 49 SGD was already the marked down price from their usual 60 SGD. I think we went on the last day of the fair. I tried to do a little research on the melon but there’s little available, through Google anyway. What I did find says that the arus melon is considered “The King of Japanese Fruits” and is highly sought after as a gift for its fragrance, beautifully netted skin and great taste.

There was a booth selling selections of fine tea. I kinda wish I’d bought some now that I look at the photo.

Photos of the crowds and some of the booths.

A lot of the booths were doing cooking on the spot, like this booth, where a girl was preparing takoyaki balls.

And what Japan fair would be complete without a booth selling sake? The sake he was holding was actually really, really good and I wanted a bottle of it but he had already sold out. He didn’t mind letting me have a few shots from the sample bottle though, which was pretty cool of him. We wound up getting a sparkling rose sake for my wife, but got so busy with getting ready for our trip to the Philippines at the beginning of May that we we gave it away as a gift instead.

I’m looking forward to visiting another Japan-related Fair. Hopefully there’ll be one in Manila sometime soon!

Using Geisha Imagery To Sell Modern Products

June 29, 2010September 4, 2021 Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

The following image is of a soap that appears to be popular in the Philippines, where most women (and quite a few of them men) are obsessed with whitening their skin and maintaining a fair complexion. The image of a painted geisha face very effectively communicates the idea of a fair complexion and the purpose of the soap.

It also puts across the idea that by using the soap you will be sophisticated, artistic and elite, which are all qualities possessed by true Japanese geisha. Contrary to what most people believe, the highest class of geisha do not sell sex but are instead entertainers who sell their skills with instruments, gaming and conversation to high class clientele like politicians and wealthy businessmen.

The Manananggal Demon, A Filipino Superstition

June 29, 2010 Bradley Farless6 Comments

This morning I saw something bizarre going on up the street. The men of a family were holding machetes and were busy chopping the branches off trees in their yard and shaving them down.

My father-in-law was outside and when I asked him what was going on, he said that they thought they saw a manananggal last night. He then told me that the manananggal is a demon that comes in the form of a good looking woman with wings. When it flies, the torso separates from the legs at the abdomen, so basically it’s like a half of a woman flying around bare-chested.

Like western vampires, the manananggal avoids light and garlic. Additionally, they don’t much care for salt, daggers, vinegar, spices, or the tail of a stingray which has been fashioned into a whip. Also like vampires, the manananggal likes blood, but prefers to use a proboscis tongue to suck the heart of a fetus still in the womb. Not quite as watered down as Edward Cullen is it?

There used to be images of manananggal and aswang here, but I had to remove them because they’re apparently too shocking for Google and they were counted as Google Adsense policy violations.

I’m not sure where cutting trees down comes in, but perhaps they wanted to reduce the amount of places that the manananggal could hide, so they could better see it coming. Either way, it’s an interesting superstition with a lot of parallels to Western superstitions. It’s just odd to see people so actively taking measures against it. Most superstitions in the West are only believed by children.

Update: February 25, 2019

A screenshot of Google's policy enforcement violation list for this page. — A screenshot of Google’s policy enforcement violation list for this page.

Who knew a drawn image of a mythological creature could be a violation of Google’s Adsense policies? I wonder if the same restriction is applied to images of Sirens or Medusa?

But what’s really odd about the violation is that it suggests that someone would be sexually aroused by the upper torso of a woman with bat wings, or that the manananggal is intended to be sexually seductive when, in fact, it’s meant to be horrific and terrifying. Maybe some people are into that sort of thing, but intent has to count for more than one person’s perception or we’d never be able to say or do anything about anything.

That being said, the images were kind of shocking, which is a violation of Google’s Adsense policy apparently. But, again, it’s a mythological creature that’s supposed to be scary. How can a topic of this sort not be ok? I don’t get it. We’re not allowed to have scary stuff next to Google Ads? It’s history and it’s folklore and it has a purpose and should be talked about and depicted and remembered.

But, what are you going to do? One person has a problem and reports your page so you have to make changes. So, the images are censored heavily now. Hopefully, the censorship is heavy enough to be ok with Google’s review team.

Update: April 3, 2020

I came back and removed the images entirely. The page was reported again for “shocking content”. I can only assume that’s the images, because God forbid history and folklore should be considered too shocking to be monetized.

Rapists on the Rooves

June 29, 2010 Bradley Farless2 Comments

Not quite what you were expecting, is it?

I don’t know the name of those cats, but we call the black and white one Rapist #1 and the orange one Rapist #2. It was actually my sister-in-law that came up with those names.

There are a few female cats in the house here. Common knowledge about spaying to control breeding isn’t quite as common here as it is in other parts of the world, so none of them have been ‘fixed’. Also, the way the houses are constructed here often leaves openings where gates have been installed rather than doors, so it’s pretty easy for male cats to make their way into a house.

The first time I saw them I wasn’t sure why they were there. I had to ask if my in-laws had picked up new cats, but that’s when they told me that they’re the rapists that are always getting the house cats pregnant.

So, I’ve been trying to take measures to keep them out. I put mesh over the gates by the kitchen and I try to keep the doors closed, but since there’s a big wall in the backyard, people often leave the back gate open anyway. So, I’m constantly shooing them out. Or throwing slippers at them to get them to run.

Making things even more complicated is the fact that there’s an old female cat living here. Rapist #2 looks just like her, except for the balls. I’ve gotten to where I can tell them apart on first glance, but at first I had to double check to see if it was the rapist or Glory, the orange cat that lives here.

Eventually, I want to get the cats in this house spayed. There are even free ‘spay days’, or so I’ve heard. That’ll have to wait though. First off, I want to get a steady income before worrying about transporting these cats into the city for spaying. Second, two of them are taking care of kittens and one of them might be pregnant again.

Getting kittens adopted out is hard work…