newton

i went to newton with lito today. bike shop. very nice bike shop. it has a lots of stuff that i like but cannot afford. ha! they sell colnagos. dura-ace downtube shifters and tools.

but no track stuff. the kind lady at the counter showed me the shimano 2008 catalog and its not there. but i did see plenty of goodies. so now, i have to do some research on the shimano part numbers of the track specific stuff that i may ask them to get for me. unless i can ask javaman to do it. 8D

there's also a very nice cannondale frame that's at 50% off:


because:

its off by 50%.

har har.

i have a lot to save up for. i'm not sure if that is bad. or good.

soccer field

ust soccer field. one sunday night. i think the guy's playing with his cell.

sunsets

this is along roxas boulevard. we (robin, cherry and i) were walking and robin was on his bike. pinoys like sunsets.

saint michael

saint michael the archangel, san miguel, manila

i'm not sure if you see the serpent's head but its there in front of him.

new old house

it always surprises and amazes me how moving to another house can alter the day to day rhythm of life. we recently moved to another house although i did live here several years ago when i was lonely and single. but this time around i have a family.

these days, i wake up a bit earlier than usual but i still try to sleep by 10:30. there is more to do because we don't have any help. there's more to clean. ugh. there's lesser plants around but we have started greening up the place -- a couple of young palm trees; several white angel plants - potted by us and placed along the window lines; a handful of celias (hanging plants) in the windows; a garlic vine; a red leafy, grassy 'thing' -- well, its growing like crazy; along the stairs there's a trio of potted san franciscos with strange colors, certainly not the usual colors; a dama de noche in a really large pot and i just planted a handful of climbing ivy along the base of the walls behind the house.

its a bit tough on the finances and more hard work than usual but all in all, we are, i am, happy.

pictures later.

hare hare

we went out to walk around the town a bit. the first stop was the park near the lake. with sampaloc lake and mount banahaw as a backdrop, i saw these hare krishna folks chanting/singing and dancing about. its been a while since i saw one or two.

kikay

my bike of more than 10 years. made of columbus tubing. framed by ave maldea (i only knew of this fact a few days ago). campy dropouts. a sprinkling of dura ace and ultegra parts but started life with 105s. do you remember the biopace? i had one but i had it replaced with what you see here.

the wheelset is new except for the hubs. vetta sl saddle with ti rails. she still has 7 speeds. oldie, i know. i'll be replacing that with 10-speed components if/when i get the extra money. the components that need to be replaced would be the read derailleur and hub, the brake levers and downtube shifters. the rear dropout spacing is already 130mm so i don't need to cold set the frame. thank god for small mercies. i do not have any immediate plans of replacing the cinelli stem and handlebar. in the meantime, she's riding pretty well so i have no real complaints.

she has patiently brought me up to tagaytay and back. we've been to a pretty fast paceline at qc circle at one time but got dropped just as quickly. not her fault.we've been in baguio just to bike around but the thin air and my lungs just went as far as two kilometers. i even got lost going back to the hotel. no. i didn't climb up to baguio. we rode a van going to and from. i've ridden her to work from españa/makati for a couple of years also. and once in a while we just hung around picc or cartimar.

lately, we've been trying to tackle some hills and we've slowly improved. she's still willing and able to go up those hills but my thighs and knees are, at times, simply not up to it.

i want to give her a new coat of paint though. have the old coats stripped to metal but i'd still choose black. that's the way she started and that's the way she's going to be. but maybe some chrome in some parts. that would be nice.

next purchase would probably be a new speedometer. a simple one. i basically just want to know how far we've ridden. let's see within the next few months.

cartimar

i got to visit cartimar today to look at some bike shops. cartimar, located in pasay city, is a known haven of sorts to the cyclist. there are lots of cycling shops there carrying a wide variety of brands at relatively low prices.

i was able to visit ballistic to say hello. that's where i got most of the components in my bike but that was years and years ago. i was able to visit the bike room and beng was in her lively self. lots of kwento. and lastly, i visited the ever popular christie's bike shop.

christy was there and in a good mood. i was told that she can give you nice discounts if she's in a good mood but unfortunately my wallet wasn't in a good mood. so i just looked at items in my list of bike needs. i'll eventually get them soon but i'm giving priority to the helmet and the cyclo computer. someone over at pinoy roadies recommended getting a wireless speedometer and i found a cat eye vectra that goes for pesos 1450. good enough for my purposes.

one surprise was i found out that jun (my old bike mech) is now working for christy. he was the one who convinced me to get a custom frame made and he had some nice columbus tubing to go with it. i got to ask him who was the framemaker and it turned out to be ave maldea. this means that ave has been at it for more than 10 years.

my custom bike is still in pretty good shape and it still rides pretty well. steel rules baby!

i'll try to take good pictures of kikay when i get to san pablo this weekend and post them here or on flickr.

photo of cartimar from staff1

escolta 10.2006

my girlfriend and i went to escolta yesterday. sorry no pictures yet. i was there more than 9 years ago and things are a bit different today. the place looks generally cleaner. there are sweepers at almost every corner keeping things tidy. there's a school — city college of manila — where the philippine national bank used to be so college students in uniform lend a "young" attitude to the street. there are two or three empty lots turned into parking spaces where buildings used to stand. there's less traffic now which i think is a good thing. people can walk. the street still has a lot of its character eventhough some people think or say that its time has passed.

there's a nice coffee shop near the end of escolta where you can have some brewed coffee and hopia among other things. polland is its name. its a good place to rest after a walk in escolta.

a museum for san pablo

san pablo city is pushing for their/our own museum and preparations are on the way. as a start, a member of the cultural society of san pablo put up a blog about the museum.

take a look. i think i have a picture somewhere there.

city stars

i was in san pablo last night. san pablo is a small city about 87 kilometers south of manila. my hometown.

it amazes me how many stars i can see there in the province. back here in manila, i can only see a handful of them. there are so many lights in manila that they drown out the stars.

i find it ironic that to see more stars, people have to turn their lights off. or that they see less with the lights on.

i want to go to the beach

i want to go to the beach. its been a while.

i don't want to go to boracay anymore. i've been there so many times before. the place holds so many memories for me. the first time i went there, the island didn't have electricity and that little inconvenience greatly added to the romance of the place.

its different now. there's so many people there. there's so many people wanting to go there. although the beach is still fantastic, its a bit too developed for me.

other places i can think of is bantayan island just north of cebu. or maybe camiguin but that's a bit far already.

i want to go to the beach.

holy week break

cherry, robin and i went on a holy week break of sorts. we went out of manila to san pablo city, 87 kilometers south of manila to visit my folks.

it was definitely cooler there since there's an abundance of trees and we're about five minutes walk from the city's biggest lake — sampaloc lake.

we also went to visita iglesya or church visit. we went to the underground cemetary in nagcarlan, laguna (there's a chapel there that used to be the town's church)

and to liliw, laguna.

in liliw, my girlfriend treated me to a lunch in this nice and very cosy restaurant called arabela. the food was great and the place is full of character. you guys should visit if you're in the area.

where i grew up

san pablo city is the place where i grew up. its a nice small town about 85 kilometers south of manila known for its seven lakes. the city of seven lakes as it is often called. i like the city because it is a lot more quiet than manila, there are more trees so the air is definitely cleaner. and most of the time i find comfort just by being in it.

my brother, gerry, made a video about san pablo city and, with his permission, posting it here.

lake yambo, san pablo city

lake yambo is the twin of lake pandin. they call them twins because of they are very, very close to each other as you can see from the google sat photo.

the raft was taken to a point where its was nearest lake yambo. after a steep and slippery climb and a very short hike, a glimpse of yambo. the locals made a trail going down to lake yambo already through the thick foliage.








once through the foliage you'll see lake yambo. there are bamboo rafts there already. there is no road around the lakes so these rafts are used to go around.

i have more photos over at my photostream if you're interested.

time at lake pandin

life takes its time at pandin. the people living around the area use horses and carabaos to transport coconuts and other produce from the mountains to the roadside where they are picked up to be sold at the local market.

the women cooked lunch and delivered it via this bamboo raft. these were the same women who cooked our lunch for us when we visited last year. this time, lunch was served and taken by the visitors on another raft. floating lunch. yum!

on one side of the lake there's a sheer wall overgrown with plants. ferns adorn the lower part of the wall near the water. the locals would sometimes pick snails there to be cooked with coconut milk.

lake pandin, san pablo city

i visited lake pandin last christmas. i wasn't able to take photos though so i borrowed some of the photos my girlfriend took when she and her friends visited last week.

pandin is one of the twin lakes, yambo being the other. in the picture is architect jojo mata, a restoration architect and a professor in up diliman, architect nonoy ozaeta, a professor in architectural history also from up diliman, and architect lex luague, a student assistant from up diliman.

the bamboo raft behind is being readied to take them around the lake. yes, its safe for 10 people.

seven lakes in one city

san pablo city, the city of seven lakes. i don't think any other city in the planet can say that.


i was born there and lived there for around 15 years. the city proper is on the lower left hand corner of the picture covered with clouds.

what i heard about the lakes is that around 600 years ago the area was simply flatlands. hills started to bulge out like pimples and eventually erupted. craters left behind by the eruptions got filled up with rain and ground water forming the lakes.

there are legends attributed to each lake and maybe i'll get to post some of them as soon as i dig them out.

the names of the lakes are sampaloc (the largest), palakpakin, bunot, kalibato, mohicap, yambo and pandin (the twin lakes).

san pablo fiesta

we drove to san pablo city over the weekend to sample the fiesta there. we arrived early evening and i heard we just missed the buko pie parade. 1,700+ buko pies, around 700 meters in length. i heard it was a dry run for something bigger (and longer) next year. after the event they gave the buko pies to the people celebrating the fiesta.

we went out the next day to look around. we couldn't go near the street dancing because there we sooo many people but by night time...

here's robin enjoying the grilled hotdog.


he really likes the hotdog. take my word for it.


possessed by the hotdog spirit


i wasn't able to take good photos of the fiesta but here are some of them taken saturday night. tables were lined along the streets and stalls selling food and snacks and trinkets.


and this goes on for a good 200 meters on both sides of the road.


it was a fun visit.