The Philippines Day 3 (Part 2)

Okay, so we left off at leaving the volcano. After the Volcano we started to head back for me to go to the airport, on the way we stopped at a fast food place called Mushroom Burger, which mixes its ground meat with home grown mushrooms. I wish I could say that it was awesome, because it is a pretty unique concept (yes I know there are thousands of places that put mushrooms on their burger, but not mixed in with the meat), but it was not very good. The taste of the patty was less then to be desired and the whole burger just didn't work out. We then moved onto a site of a sky castle (a castle on the top of a high mountain), which was a castle that was never finished, so it is actually just sky ruins. This was okay, but we did stop on the side of the road at a pineapple grove where we got the farmer to go into his grove and pull a pineapple for us. If you remember, I had the best mango on the first night in Manila, this was by far the best pineapple that I have ever had. Wow it was so fresh (the guy did just pick it) and sweet and juicy…awesome. All in all, the best day of the trip what a fun trip.

Loudest Moment of Silence Ever

On Monday at 2:28pm, 1 week after the large earthquake in the Sichuan province, China had a national 3 minutes of silence to commemorate the 3 minutes that the earthquake shook the region. In typical Chinese fashion, all the people were asked to be silent and remember those lost or still buried, but the encouraged all trains, cars, boats, and other vehicles to sound their horns and they sounded all the emergency sirens throughout the cities. So the moment of silence ended up being really really loud. Now I am not an expert in Chinese culture, but I do know that point of having the noise is to help the dead in their journey in the after life or something in this realm, so while it may not make sense to have all the noise during the moment of silence, it does make sense when you put it in the context of Chinese culture.

The Philippines Day 3 (Part 1)

Day 1 and Day 2 were really cool, but my third and final day was the best day of them all. Early in the morning, we left Manila to head south to the Taal Volcano. This is a volcano that is situated in the middle of a lake. Thus the first part of the adventure is finding someone to hire to take their boat to the middle of the lake to get to the volcano. My driver, Pippo, who was the only person that kept me from getting ripped off throughout the whole day, found someone who "looked" reliable and that guy jumped into our car to take us to where his boat was. After travelling almost straight downhill in the car to get to the lake, we found his boat and we were off. The boat was basically a canoe with long bamboo sticks on each side (see the picture) with a motor in the back. It was a pretty windy day so we went up and down in the boat over the choppy waters. Pippo had never been on a boat before and is scared of the water, so needless to say he was clinging on for dear life as the boat was going up and down over the waves (and yes, the Philippines are a group of islands, so yes, Pippo who lives on an island is scared of the water…I know…but I've heard of weirder things in my life).

When we arrived, I had the option of riding a small horse up the volcano or actually trekking it myself, I decided on the latter and started walking. It was about 95degrees F outside with 80% humidity, so needless to say it was a "fun" walk up the volcano. It took about 1 hour to get to the top with the last 100 feet being steps climbing up the remaining part of the volcano…steps at the end of climbing a volcano are not a good idea if you were wondering. Around the crater of the volcano are guys who sell different drinks and food and the second that I made it to the top there was a guy popped the top of a glass bottle of Mountain Dew. Now let me tell you, I am not the biggest fan of Mountain Dew, but after climbing up hill for an hour in 95degrees, I looked over at the bottle (with sweat in my eyes), saw cold mist escaping out of the open top and saw the beads of water careening down the sides, I don't think my mind was fully functioning yet, but I just walked over to the guy, threw some money (an amount I am still not sure of to this day) and proceeded to down the Mountain Dew. I know that is not the best way to hydrate yourself, but I can honestly say, it was the best drink I have ever had in my life. Whether it was the right thing to drink or not, it hit the spot (to the point that you can even look at the picture that I took of it below).

After downing the Mountain Dew, I finally turned around to look into the crater of the volcano. The crater has a lake inside of it with another little island on it called Vulcan Point. A stupid fact that I got from Wikipedia, but thought I could share with you all is that Vulcan point "is the world's largest island within a lake on an island within a lake on an island." Wow, I'm not even sure I understand that or who actually measured it to make sure that was indeed true.
Besides the Mountain Dew, the other highlight of making it to the top of the volcano was that you can pay to shoot bullets with pistols or a semi automatic weapon into the crater. While I was able to contain myself (after having the guy present the weapons to me), there were many a Taiwanese tourist that loved taking the gun and shooting it into the crater. By the way, if you didn't get it from above, this was absolutely amazing. Taking the boat to the volcano, climbing it, having an awesome Mountain Dew, all in all it was a great experience.

More Pictures from Day 2

All here are some more pictures from Corregidor Island:

Philippines Day #2

I didn't get back to my hotel until around 10pm from the first day, but I had to get right to bed as I was going to wake up at 6am for day 2. Day 2 involved a tour of Corregidor Island. For a short history, this island, referred to as the Rock, was the site of a couple of pivotal south east pacific battles during World War 2. Basically if you took this Island you had control of the Philippines that was really positioned as the gateway into the South Pacific during World War 2. The US had to originally pull out of Manila, but MacArthur said that the US would be back, and sure enough they came back and gave the good ole beat down to the Japanese. MacArthur is a real legend in Manila for coming back and driving off the Japanese (cause, much like most other places that they occupied, the Japanese did not treat the Filipinos too great). Anyway, the island has all kinds of different barracks, gun memorials, old bombed ruins and other stuff remaining on it from the battles. I am not much of a World War 2 buff (I'll admit I didn't even know the battle took place), but it was a neat day and a really cool place to visit. I attached some pictures below for you viewing pleasure as going into more detail might get too historical for some of you.

Philippines Day #1

After weeks of delay, our computer has finally cleared customs over here so I am ready to finally give you guys a trip report of the Philippines. I was only there for 3 days, so I tried to pack in as much exploring as possible, and hopefully I can take you through a picture journal of my adventure.

I arrived at around 4am at the "international" airport. One thing that became real apparent was that this was one of the worst international airports I had ever been to. What I later found out is that they have had a brand new international terminal for the airport completely built since around 2000, but it has never opened due to corruption in the government. I actually got to see the building and it looks pretty darn nice, too bad no one is using it.

After breakfast and freshening up, my friend Erwin and I headed out for our journey through Manila. We started by going to the EDSA park area where hundreds of thousands of people gathered during the EDSA People's Power Revolution. Here is erected many religious symbols that include the Mary our Lady of EDSA and bronze plated scenes from the Bible.

Next we headed to Makati, which is seen as the financial district of Manila. We visited the Grant Thornton office there. Upon entering the office the car was inspected for bombs and we were scanned before going into the building. This overly done security became a pretty big theme throughout the trip. When I looked out of the window in the office, this part of Manila reminded me of Houston with the greenery popping up in between the sprawl of buildings, but maybe that is just me. Note that there was a fire in one of the hotels as I was taking this picture, you can probably notice the smoke if you look close enough (sorry about the window glare and my reflection).

We then moved onto the Intramuros. Just briefly, the Spanish were one of the first (of many) to colonize the Philippines. In doing so they built a city within a city, that would be the Intramuros. The Spanish built this huge compound to bring a part of Spain for its people in Manila and built a huge wall around it only allowing the Spanish to be inside the walls. This place was built in the 16th century and is full of neat buildings and a huge amount of churches. The Philippines has seen its share of battles from various different wars, so much of this place has been bombed and either had to be restored or you can still see the effects of the bombing. Anyway, it was a really neat place, with lots of history, right in the middle of Manila.

We ended our day with one of the best meals I have ever had. Basically you go and pick out your fish and your seafood that you want them to cook and they grill it up how you want it to be grilled. It was awesome. We topped the meal off with mango. I think it was the combination of the food that we had for our meal, the slightly spiciness from the meal and the heat outside that made the mangos taste so good, but it was also because they were so fresh that made them the best mangos I have ever had. No pictures from this meal so you will have to just imagine. And that about wraps up my tour through Manila.

My earthquake experience

Today a very large earthquake hit the central part of China. Reports of the magnitude are anywhere from 7.5 to 7.8 on the initial quake. While it is still early, reports are that it caused quite a lot of damage throughout different parts of China, as such, I don't want to make any light hearted comments as it appears to have been pretty big.

At around 2:30pm Monday afternoon, I was in my office in Shanghai on the 45th floor of our building reading a document. All of the sudden I felt a little naucious, reaching for my water I noticed it was swishing back and forth in the bottle. Thinking that I was just dizzy or light headed I didn't think anything of it. About 5 minutes later a couple of colleagues of mine came over and asked me if I felt something, I just told them that I felt dizzy and didn't think much of it. One of the colleagues from California said she thought it felt like the building was swaying back and forth and said it felt similar to an earthquake. Upon further investigation (looking at http://www.usgs.gov/), we found out that an approximate 7.8 earthquake hit about 500 miles away from us at around 2:30. Let me just clarify that I truly felt dizzy, I really saw my water swishing, this isn't something that I made up after people began to talk about it. It was my first, ever, experience with an earthquake and it felt weird. Not being on the ground, I can't say that I felt a shaking experience, but being on the 45th floor, the tremors (some saying in Shanghai they were as high as 5.7) definitely made me feel like I had vertigo or motion sickness...and I was just sitting at my desk reading.

So I can say now that I was in an earthquake (even if I wasn't right where it hit), but it was definitely an experience. Also, I watched Cloverfield tonight, which probably isn't the best choice of movie after swaying back and forth in a building and being that our apartment is on the 20th floor, but oh well, I can't say that I think any big monsters will attack Shanghai anytime soon. This is probably also why this blog entry seems more like a short testimony of sorts (darn Hollywood getting in my head).

The Good Ole' USofA

So for my professional development, I had to make a trip to the US in the form of going to South San Francisco, my home away from home…away from home. I was actually delayed by 2 days because my flight out of Shanghai was cancelled. So while my miles are with United, I am not hesitant to say that my flight from Shanghai was cancelled, then my flight home was delayed by 2 hours and the flight home had no video…to take note that is a 13 hour flight without any audio or video…I was able to catch up on my reading, but missed watching Jumper (a movie that I don't really want to go out of my way to see).

My time in the States was good, busy, but good. As I noted in my previous post, I was able to catch parts of the NFL Draft, Renee had ordered a bunch of stuff online that I had waiting for me at the hotel, so while I needed to do some shopping, it wasn't as much as I normally do when I am back in the States. This time around I had a hard time sleeping in fact most nights I only got 1 or 2 hours of sleep, not because I wanted to stay up, but rather because my body didn't want to go to sleep. I was definitely running on fumes my last day there, but being tired helped when I arrived because I arrived in the evening so was able to go right to sleep when I got home. Overall, not much happened, had some good Mexican food (something that is non-existent in China), had some good donuts at around 2am (also something non-existent in China), and had a really good sub (also something non-existent in China), got very little sleep, and was able to catch up on all the nuances of the US that I miss out on by being China (in just a couple of days).

My NFL Draft

I was lucky enough to be back in the States to actually be able to watch the draft. I was busy, but found the time to watch a lot of the first and second round. Again, I cannot emphasize this enough, I understand that the draft actually doesn't mean anything because the players have done nothing in the NFL, but I really enjoy the intrigue of how a team will draft to build itself up for the future. I only got to watch ESPN and I was a little disappointed with the coverage. Don't get me wrong, the 10 minutes in between picks was great, I was very happy with that, but the coverage just seemed really weak. They seemed to make it a thing to show the players answering their phone before the pick (sometimes a long time before the pick), I mean what happened to the element of surprise behind the pick. Oh well, it was still fun to watch, I just hope they tweak some of the things next year to allow me not to know every pick before it is announced.

As for the Ravens, my boys, they went with a QB in the first round, Joe Flacco. I remember back in 2003 when he was drafted, I got a phone call from my good buddy Ray. He was pretty excited that the Raven's took Kyle Boller, I tried to calm his excitement by basically saying that Boller would never be a good QB in the NFL. Needless to say, I was right about this assessment, so I only feel like it is right to make an assessment on the future with Flacco. I did not receive a call with excitement over this pick, but then again, that may have been because people thought I was in China. As for Flacco, I don't think he is the next John Elway or Peyton Manning, rather he reminds me a lot of a QB like Brad Johnson. He is the type of guy that can make a career out of being a QB in the NFL, he won't be a hall of famer, but could become a guy that ends up starting as a QB on teams that struggle at the QB position. Brad Johnson actually won a superbowl so his career wasn't terrible, but he was never seen as being a dominant quarterback like a Peyton Manning or Tom Brady (note that Johnson was drafted in the ninth round so he didn't have much pressure to actually succeed). So I think getting Flacco in the first round is a little bit of a stretch, but, more then anything, I hope I was wrong. To be honest, I am actually more excited about their second round pick, Ray Rice from Rutgers, I really think he can make an impact with the Ravens.

I'm back and...well...just back

Sorry for the long hiatus from writing on this thing, but there were some things that were taking up my time and life, nothing overly serious, just time takers.

Luckily during my time off from writing only a couple of events blog worthy went on. As I mentioned in my last post, the NFL Draft, one of the most important events in sports happened, also I did a short trip to the Phillipines and had a short trip in the US. Right now I am waiting on my new computer from my US company to clear customs, so I want to wait to blog about the Phillipines until I can upload those pictures onto my new computer. So with that being said, see my next post for my discussion on the Draft.