Think Out Loud

Mirror-like Lake Pukaki. It's just one of NZ's many pristine lakes.

I did wine tasting. I didn't want to waste the money I paid for so I made sure I drank every last drop of it (12 glasses in total). It was the first time I felt what tipsy meant.

I dragged my jaw all the way to the train tracks when I saw Dunedin's train station. It's like a castle!

If you've watched Prince Caspian of the Narnia series, this place would look familiar to you.

We went to the northernmost tip of New Zealand where you'll find Cape Reinga. This is a sacred place for the Maoris because they believe this is where the spirits of their dead go.

The iconic Auckland City Tower taken during New Years Eve.

Traffic jam. They are so cute!

And of course, the skyline of Auckland City where I lived for 2 years.

Road trip + sceneries + DLSR camera = perfect way to start September!

It was a sudden trip to Nueva Ecija. My two companions were sent there to receive an award for the organization while I was sent there to cover it. I have been to Nueva Ecija before and I wasn't really that impressed with its landscapes. From what I remembered, it was just a province full of rice farms.

But we didn't realize that the place we were going to was the last town of the province and it sits almost in the boundary of Nueva Ecija and Aurora Province (and Aurora holds a special place in my heart). So it was a really big surprise for me to see mountains in plain-covered Nueva Ecija!

Hidden Valley

Amigas

You have been looking forward for this trip in months. You have arranged your schedule, finished what you had to finish, and prepared yourself physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. And then, just a couple of weeks before the anticipated trip, they suddenly broke out the news to you:

You've been cut off from the trip.

Suddenly, you're pre-arranged schedule becomes useless, your sleepless nights becomes meaningless, and the preparations you made on yourself becomes pointless. In the end, all you were left with is a crashing wave of disappointment.

It happened just a few weeks ago. Til now, I'm reeling in fool's paradise. Yes, it was terribly upsetting because it was unexpected (and for some reason a bit unfair), but more than that, I had great hopes for this trip because it lands on my birthday. I thought I was finally going to have a different birthday this year. Unfortunately, it was not how things worked out.

So the pre-birthday festive mood I usually feel a week before my big day has drained out completely. I'm even starting to dread the day of my birthday because it's only going to remind me of of what I should be doing and where I should be. I honestly don't feel like spending my birthday with anyone because I know I wouldn't be okay. So, I just want to spend it like any other day. I know it may look like I'm wallowing in pain and self-pity but there are times when you just feel like being a masochist because things brought a deep pang in your heart.

But don't get me wrong. I still force myself to find something positive from this really disappointing situation. I learned that if God doesn't want you to go somewhere, you really wouldn't be able to go no matter how many ties you have and how many strings you pull.

Here's part 2 of my earlier post, Juggling Media. I mentioned back then that I was able to do 3 of my top To Do favorites last month: travel, write and take pictures. I have shared my Valenzuela experience so now, I will take you somewhere farther north: Pangasinan.

Believe it or not, I have never been to Pangasinan. Passed by it, yes, but not really stayed long or went around. Anyway, I covered our CT medical mission there and just like any other mission, it's different from the rest.

First off, I was able to minister to a couple of mothers. Nothing beats travelling than taking the opportunity to minister to the locals and share God's Word and love to them. It makes my work purposeful and relevant. Plus, there's this sense of fulfillment because you were able to touch a life in your lifetime. I encouraged the children to dream big dreams and always lift in up their prayers to God. Dreaming was one of the things that made me desire to achieve great things in life.

Second, I had a really great time with the volunteers. They were all funny and craz-eh. The ride back home was the craziest ever. I learned never to place ladies together in a van after they have eaten dinner and if they have a pack of ice breaker questions. If not, you'll be bound to have a crazy 4 hour road trip! But it was really fun.

Plus! I was able to have a picture with a 92 year old woman. How cool is that?!

Whoa. A whole month with no blog entry? No wonder my few loyal followers started demanding new entries on my FB wall. (Yes, demanding by using excessive exclamation points and letters to prove a point.)

I know, I know. Here's the part where I explain my lack of posts. Well, aside from the fact that August is my least favorite month of the year (coz it's the birth month of my least favorite person in the world - i know, immature), August has been pretty busy. Not the kind of busy that you'd particularly enjoy, but just the kind of busy that would keep your mind reeling and preoccupied. Now that I think about it, boredom did become a rather rare thing...

Anyway, I did have a number of great higlights during that month (in fairness to August), I was able to do 3 of my top favorite things right now: travel, write and take pictures.

Though it's not really that far in terms of transportation and geography, I had quite an adventure in Valenzuela. No, not the country (how I wish). Just the one in NCR. But believe it or not I haven't been to that city. I'm usually the 'south' person, spending my days and time in the southern part of the metro. I covered a story there. What made the trip adventure-like was that we spent the whole day in what was said to be a former dumpsite. Yeah right, former. The place looked anything but former. It is still a dumpsite whether anyone accepts it or not.

Anyway, covering the mission was overwhelmingly nerve-wracking. I haven't written for a medical mission in 2 years! So I charged into battle with a rusty mental pen and turtle-like writer's intuition. It was a bit depressing, really, but when you're in the midst of the chaos and action, there's no time to be depressed. I just did what I do best: prayed and pulled out my resourcefulness card. Thank God He helped me piece together a story from practically out of nothing.

And aside from coming as the official writer, I was also the unofficial photographer (yes, Nikon and I were finally reunited after 3 months). Our official photographer was Leeane Padernal and though it was only her first time to join us, she was able to produce great photos. She was really cool (as a person and as a photographer) and she taught me some photography stuff (for free. Lol!). Because of her, I learned how to operate the camera using manual settings and that's a HUGE achievement!

BUT, the tasks didn't stop there. Our radio program, Sa Totoo Lang, patched the medical mission LIVE from the field. And because of that, I had to gather all necessary information needed for Doc Yvonne's brief interview (she started warning the doctors never to come near me because people who do usually end up having sudden air times in radios or tvs). I also had to grab a patient who could handle an interview. Thankfully, I was able to find one.

The Valenzuela Mission was like juggling 3 media in one hand: print, radio, and camera (when you're a photographer, the camera is your 'media'). But it felt great to roll back into action. I felt refreshed, sharpened, and ready to take on more!

This should have been posted last week ^_^

It's been almost a week since my 2-week getaway/adventure in Antique and Aklan. Until now, I'm still floating in the air with the memories of the good times and the hard times we all conquered. It's not easy to decide where to begin. Living in those 2 weeks felt like 2 years. But now that's over, I feel that the experience ended too fast and I wanted more.

The memories are still fresh, the feeling of nostalgia still very vivid. Such a remarkable experience.

So before the euphoria dies down, here's my top 15 photos that would best describe my Antique-Aklan experience:

I lived the dream! I went as a writer and I was the first one to use our brand new Nikon 5100 DSLR. There's nothing more exciting than going on field armed with a camera and a pen. In fact, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I was overwhelmed with so many firsts. But this one tops it all. Because of this experience, I'm starting to consider doing freelance travel writing when the right time comes.

I met my two mentors: one in photography and one in writing. I learned how to tinker the camera, shoot with the right angle, and ask the right questions to the right people in order to put substance in my story. One thing that made these mentoring sessions even better was that I was able to apply the things I learned right away. Talk about practical exam!

I sailed the rough seas of Aklan aboard this small, humble fisherman's boat. Thankfully, the waters were not as rough as it was the following day. We sailed late afternoon (this was part of our visit to one of our livelihood beneficiaries 3 years ago. It's a success story that I'm gonna right about soon). With this once in a lifetime experience, I can say that I was able to live a fisherman's life for at most 30 minutes, even though we didn't really do any catching or fishing.

If you think 9pm is early, then the province life is not for you. In Antique, all shops are closed by 8pm. So if you take a nap, don't allow yourself to sleep in after 7pm or else you won't find any place for dinner. And we learned it the hard way. Thankfully, the caretaker of the guest house and his friend knew a restaurant about 20 minutes away that is open until 12 midnight.


Welcome to THE Guest House, the place we considered home for more than a week. This was where we slept, ate, worked, and feverishly assembled the wheelchairs. This used to be a safe house for families caught in the middle of Antique's political wars. And it so happened that Paul's family, the caretaker, used to one of those. One night  (while I was doing my laundry) he suddenly said that he never thought he would be back to this place. It is now bearing very little marks of what his family went through when he was still a small boy. Wearing my investigative journalist's hat, I found out that his father used to be a political player in the barangay level and was caught in the political mayhem. If I remember it right, that was prior to the Martial Law up to the transition of power to the late Cory Aquino's government. The late Evilio Javier, an avid Aquino supporter who was assassinated during the snap elections, was one of the people who took care of his family.

NOW, if you're wondering if we encountered half bodies flying around or small monsters running in circles around this fairly huge guest house (after all, this is Antique), sorry to disappoint you but we didn't. And it's not as if such weirdness was welcomed. The only annoying creatures we dealt with were dozens of jumping frogs and hundreds of flying gamo-gamo.

And FYI, we were the first ones to use this freshly-renovated guest house.

Stingy with the overloading law? Well, this is how they do it in Antique. As long as you can fit in and the tricycle can run, feel free to hitch. With pay, of course. This happened to us when we went home from Gaisano Mall. They fit all 8 of us in one tricycle. How that happened? I'll leave it to your creative imagination.

1. We have a radio partner now in Antique,
2. It's fun to build rapport with radio hosts, and
3. I can now scratch and scribble an OB script in 2 minutes 

I hope I can do the third part for our TWR scripts.


I got inked! Thanks to Mark, he pressured me into getting a henna at Boracay. I guess that's what they call peer pressure. But I didn't go off without a fight. I bribed him to pay half of the charge or else I wouldn't get a henna with him. Ha! Worked like a charm.

Last February, I prayed for a road trip vacation. But I didn't expect it would be in this form - and it was waaaay better than what I expected! A road trip it was, all right. We went back and forth to Antique (which, FYI, is a four hour drive) and then, the adventures in this mini-elf! The team started telling me to be careful with my prayers because God is answering them in extraordinary ways and it's getting them involved too. HAHA. But I know you had fun, guys. Don't deny it. So I'll pray some more! ^_^

The best and the highlight of this whole trip was that we were able to minister to people who were in desperate need of Christ. We were able to talk to them, encourage them, pray for them, touch their hands, and simply pat their shoulders. Oftentimes, these simple actions bring loads of comfort to people who are on the verge of giving up. It was a great opportunity to extend the love and care of Jesus. This made the whole trip a million times fulfilling.

I can't wait for my next adventures! Stay tuned!