tatay

this is my maternal grandfather. this photo was taken last year in june.

instead of calling him grandfather or lolo (grandfather in tagalog) i call him tatay (tah-tie). it means father in tagalog but in my family even the grandkids call him that.

yesterday my uncle called and left me a message that tatay passed away. he didn't. it was miscommunication. i'm glad auntie called just right before i was going to post about it letting the world know how sad i was. so... yay! he's alive!

one of my favorite memories of my tatay goes like this....

i was young gal in my single digits. maybe 8 or so years old. he had just moved to the U.S. from the philippines.

tatay: "neleh, can you whistle and brush your teeth at the same time?"

me: "no tatay. you can't do that."

tatay: "yes. wanna see?"

we go to the bathroom. he takes his dentures out of his mouth and starts brushing them while whistling.

the man cracks me up til this day.

pickled papaya & milkfish

here is one of my favorite front page newspaper images i saw when i was in the philippines last summer.

that same day i went with my parents to the local school of fishery. dad wanted to get the homemade atsara (pickled papaya pronounced ah-cha-rah) canned so it could be brought back to VA.



the atsara was placed in small plastic bags and then manual seamed into steel cans.

while that was going on, i was scoping out the room and learned more about deboning bangus (milkfish pronounced bawng-oos). dad tells me the bones have to be removed using tweezers. such a tedious task but so worth the taste.



the secret to a profitable bangus business was posted on the wall. $toring is where it's at!


the principal of the school asked one of the grounds keepers to give us a tour so i could take pictures.






MISSION: To develop positive work values and provide quality Basic Secondary and Technical Vocational Education and Skills Training.

VISION: To become among the region's Center of Excellence and leading Training Center for Fishery Technology and Entrepreneurship.

positive messages were posted on the beams.

make it a betterway to have fun while learning or joining sch. organization.


if there is purity in the heart, there will be righteousness in the character


our tour guide wanted to show us where they dry the fish out in the open sun to make tuyo. it was by the shoreline. he pointed to this really narrow path that i would have to walk on to get there. it had water on both sides. i didn't feel risky that day so i admired the view from afar.





break time.


the gate to the fishery school.


surroundings on the way to the school.




stay tuned for more sporadic blog posts about my adventures in the archipelago.

this is the day

a somber day.


a day of confronting ghosts from the past.

a day of healing.

rice

here are some images i took of rice farmers doing there thing in Bataan, Philippines rain or shine.


i had flashbacks of Jet Li in Huo Yuan Jia. remember to enjoy the breeze when it comes your way for it's part of the journey.



palay [pah-lie] is unpolished rice. this palay was being dried out in the sun on the super roman highway near where my parents live.

sampayan

while i was in the Philippines, i spent a lot of traveling on the road. my parents live on a main highway in Bataan and it would take anywhere from 1.5 to 2 hours to get to our destinations. we went out almost every other day and i started finding things i wanted to take photos of off the highway. since there wasn't time to stop for me to take pictures, i memorized landmarks so i would be ready to capture the next time we'd go out. with a fast shutter button finger, i shot from inside a moving van rolling down my window at just the right time.

of the many things i saw out of that van window, i was fascinated by all the clotheslines of laundry hanging out to dry. my auntie asked me why i wanted to take pictures of them. i explained how i liked the different compositions of lines and colors and how resourceful people were in finding places to construct them. next thing you know, everyone in the car started to help me spot them.

here is my "sampayan" collection: