Beautiful & Colourful fish at the Gasan fish market

I don't have the faintest idea what species the fish are, but they looked cool! The colours are natural, as they came off the camera ..

Mogpog (Sunrise)

a lovely view on the road to Mogpog .. very early to get the fast ferry to Lucena on time ..




islands in the bay near Mogpog





one of the ancient ferries that does the Mogpog (Balanacan Port) to Lucena (Dalahican Port) trips .. if you look carefully there are japanese names painted over beneath the newly painted filipino names .. i'd guess these ferries were scrapped in Japan a while ago ..





can't say the view isn't wonderful though!



our favourite power outage generator ..



and the friendly National Power guys who put their slogans on trashcans!
I think in the meaning of 'excellence' here is used VERY flexibly ..

Panoramic shots taken in Quatiz (Barangay Masiga, Gasan - Marinduque)

These are some panoramic shots I took near my construction site in Masiga, Gasan. They were taken as multiple shots and then stitched together, the one at the back of the house is over 360 degrees! They are mapped in a cylindrical projection, click the images for versions with much higher resolution (and still a lot lower than the resolution of the original panoramics .. the big one is over 18,000 pixels wide!)

Marinduque electrical power .... aaaarrrrrghhhhh!!!!

This week powercuts have been continuous, I think on average 8 hours a day there's no power. The news trickling through is that out of 4 generators in Marinduque's floating power-house, only 2 actually work, and powercuts are being scheduled in sequence through the towns in order to reduce the overall power load .. your luck depends on where you live .. areas like the capitol have less powercuts, and unlucky areas like Buenavista get to enjoy the clear and dark night skies (actually this week wasn't even good for stargazing .. a full moon ruins that!)

It doesn't make sense that an island that can run on just a few megawatts of power (I think the average full load consumption is around 6 or 7 MW) is being crippled this way .. The three major issues that keep Marinduque from joining the rest of the world in the 21st century are availability of internet, abysmal healthcare and daily powercuts ..

I really wonder what the powers that be here are doing about the situation - tourists who visit are definitely not prepared for daily outages and candlelit nights - and anyone trying to improve tourist facilities and resorts must be having a really hard time! I'm pretty sure the locals get annoyed too, and it's quite obvious that solving the power problem will give Marinduque a large economic boost that it really needs. The local government needs to be doing a lot more in this respect.

addendum: as if by magic, power went out just as I finished typing this article .. 10.45am .. the generator is low on petrol too - so i'll go buy some petrol - come back - post this .. and go enjoy the great outside!

Marinduque construction update - Roof trusses (33rd day)

I haven't posted any photos of the construction site in a while - mostly because the memory card in my camera decided to corrupt itself while I was transferring the files to my computer ..

This is the kitchen area, with a filipino-style bench in place, the pipes to the left are where the main distribution board will be fitted (we're even having an ELCB .. something of a first for a house in Marinduque ..). The walls are being plastered, and the mesh of steel bars on the floor is read for the screed to be laid .. the steel bars are there since the floor is resting on embankment/rubble, and will prevent buckling/cracking if the embankment had to subside.



a slight change of plans here - the sea-facing window in the kitchen will now be a bay window, with angled sides ..



roof trusses are going up too, in preparation for the roofing which will probably be done next week.



a better view of what the roof is going to look like ..



and this is our famous gravity-defying architect himself .. a drumroll please and an applause .. for Mr. Francis-Allen Mandita!

Fishy isn't it!

While visiting our construction site to check on the progress of works, a woman came round with a couple of interesting fish for sale .. just caught!

First one up .. a 2kg tanigue (spanish mackarel)


and another very cool looking fish that I don't know the name of!



The tanigue joined us for supper .. for 300 pesos .. it was a very pleasant evening, I cooked spaghetti marinara (got mussels, some octopus, and dorado from the Gasan market) and the tanigue was barbequeued .. very nice!!

Essential Gadgets for the Geek seeking to live in Marinduque

Marinduque isn't exactly 'geek-friendly' .. internet access is generally considered an unnecessary luxury, good coffee can't be had for love nor money, and many services the average geek would take for given (eg. electrical power) are very much hit and miss .. After living here for a couple of months, here is my list of what is the bare minimum gadget-wise ..

Item 1. Generator Set

With lengthy powercuts on average 4 times a week, a generator set isn't really an option! The one I have is has a 2 stroke petrol engine, so it's noisy and rather inefficient, however it powers my computers, fans, fridge and a lightbulb when the powers that be fail to provide! I think patchy power-supply is one of the greatest killjoys of living in Marinduque! Funnily enough, it proved impossible to buy a generator in Marinduque .. I was expecting them to be wildly popular, but no, after touring the whole of Boac I found one shop that was meant to have them in stock 'next week', and 2 weeks later, I had to ask a friend to buy me one from Lucena .. such is life!

Item 2. ADSL or wireless internet



If you live in the central Boac area, you are within the ADSL coverage area - the service is expensivish (1000 pesos a month) and not very fast (512 kbits/s) - still it's the best you can have in Marinduque, so take time to relish it. Anywhere else, the only possibility for internet is via one of the 'over mobile network' connection - these are provided by Globe and Smart, however after testing the Globe service I found it totally unuseable. I borrowed a Smart setup (USB modem with built in SIM) and it's a lot more useable. It's still terminally slow! In Gasan, where I need mine, there is only 2G mobile service, so speed is limited to around 50kbits/s - it's like being on a timetravel trip to 1995 and dialup modems, with the only difference being that the internet is still firmly in 2009, and pages take ages to load! Streaming video/youtube etc. are of course totally off the menu!

Item 3. Bialetti Mukka Express + Supply of Coffee
(or at least a Bialetti Mocha espresso)


Good coffee is an essential part of the day - not to the average marinduqueno though! If you want good coffee here, you need to make it yourself. Otherwise, forget it! With amazing forethought, I bought myself a Mukka Express prior to moving to Marinduque. Even in 'modern' Manila, this was no mean feat - it seems that filipino culture doesn't generally include coffee!! A *lot* of digging through the internet (and ebay.ph in particular) revealed that there is actually a Bialetti agent in WakWak village, Manila - Bialetti are Italy's (and hence the world's) number one manufacturer of espresso percolators - same guys also supplied me with a kilo of top notch Saquella ground coffee - and combined with fresh milk in 250ml tetrapaks, i'm a happy camper! For some reason, fresh 'fresh' milk is not available here.

Item 4. Nokia N810



A nokia n810 is not a mobile phone - it's Nokia's not-so-popular 'Internet Tablet', basically a small computer, running a linux-based OS (Maemo) that can do most things a geek would normally want to do, and fit in a pocket at the same time. The n810 has a couple of features that make it really but REALLY useful here in Marinduque - it has a lovely high resolution screen (800x480), extreme battery life (over 7 hours on a charge!) and good built in PDF support. These days my N810 is mainly my ebook device. There are no bookshops of any interest in Marinduque, so if you need something to read, the internet is your friend! A surprising amount of material can be found in PDF format, and this is perfectly comfortable on the N810 since it's so small and compact, and pages can be flipped using the touchscreen. The long battery life comes in handy during the not-infrequent powercuts, and I always have a good supply of reading material at hand on my Nokia!

Item 5. a decent laptop!


I this this one is a bit obvious - something powerful enough to run photoshop and the normal browser stuff is needed - i'm running a Dell Vostro 1310 which I bought from UK which is quite cute, but has terrible battery life (which can be a problem considering the power cuts!)

A prospective geek should also remember to bring enough plug adapters to run the gear! The plug sockets here are in the american style, with no provision for earthing, but running at 240v/60Hz (!) (when there is power, of course!) .. a bit of a safety warning - ELCB's are not common (actually, they are positively rare, i haven't seen one yet!) - and electricity is treated with a very 'if I can't see it, it can't hurt me' attitude in this place. This is the type of plug you can expect here :


cheers!

Moved to Gasan!

Living in Tabi was getting really tiresome - I had rented the flat initially as an office, and the combination of noise (from cars and tricycles passing by at all hours), very poor design and hygiene (from one place it's possible to look through a hole in the ceiling into a toilet on the level above!) was becoming a bit too much to live with. An 'incident' with a large cockroach was the final straw, and we decided to move .. with a bit of help from our friend Francis, we found this place in Gasan - called FYPS - that's really nice! and that we're renting for practically the same price as the place in Tabi ..



this is the facade, the bit we're living in is to the left, you can see our door and window - the place is very small - just a kitchen/living room, one bedroom, and a bathroom, but it's clean, nicely tiled, the bathroom has a proper flushing toilet and shower (unlike Tabi!) .. and the lawn is a great plus!


the view across the lawn in the evening is wonderful, there is even a hummock between the palmtrees, very very comfy!





wonderful sunsets are included at no extra cost!






there are some downsides - there is no ADSL service in Gasan (according to PLDT 'maybe in 1 year') and although I now have a SmartBRO USB modem, there is no 3G in Gasan, so browsing is restricted to about 50kbits at max, and by today's standards, that is *slow* .. still, compared to Globe service, which is unuseable, with Smart, if you wait at least you get what your websites, so I think it's worth it.

Construction update

I've been sick these last 2 weeks - had a cold, but a bad one, so there are less photos than usual, and they were taken over a number of days..




here the walls and most of the upper beams are ready..


this photo was taken on the 24th, Friday of the fourth week of construction - it's the first time i'm stepping into the house! This is the view from the living area into the central landing - the small room ahead will be a WC, left and right are the main and 2nd bedroom respectively.



this is the view from the main bedroom - the 'window' to the left connects the bedroom and the living room, and will be built of glass blocks. The tall window ahead is between the bedroom and the narrow (5ft wide) part of the terrace that wraps round, and affords the bedroom seaviews and light.

this is the view looking from the kitchen over the living room and terrace - the beam above is where the living room ends and the terrace starts, and there will be the main door (left) and a large sliding door under it.



the view from within the kitchen - most of the seaview is obscured by the lean-to which the workers built to store cement under ..



a view of the sea-side facade that's starting to make sense - on the left at the back is the main bedroom, the terrace starts near the main bedroom and wraps round to the kitchen on the right, and the living room is in the middle.



and this is the cesspit being built, the inner tank is for sedimentation, the other one for water ..