notes

Losing someone close to us is painful. That's why the idea of ghosts-- of being able to communicate with the dead, is more comforting than scary for me. Ghosts bring back the life and the love we had and make us feel that these still go on, that we are still with our loved one.

Elena Desserich passed away two years ago yet she is very much alive in her family's heart. No, her ghost isn't haunting them, but her presence is still felt in their house. She found another way to extend her love. Before she gave in to cancer, she hid little notes all over the place containing messages for everyone close to her, including her great-aunt's dog.

"We started to collect them and they would all say 'I love you Mom, Dad and Grace.' We kept finding them, and still to this day, we keep finding them," Keith Desserich told WLWT television in their hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. “We were finding them in our briefcases, we were finding them in our books, we were finding them in our dresser drawers, we started finding them in Christmas ornament bags.” Elena hid a lot of notes, and so far her parents were able to fill three containers with them.

"Finding them felt like a little hug from her, like she was telling us that she was looking over us even though she wasn’t with us.”, said her mom, Brooke.

Aside from the hidden notes, Elena also gave each of her parents a sealed one, which they do not plan to open.

“That’s our one insurance policy, that we’ll have that one note from her,” Brooke told Meredith Vieira from TODAY. “I know there’s something very special in that note — but there’s some sort of comfort that it will never come to an end.”

from Elena

Sources:
http://www.notesleftbehind.com/
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/33505351/ns/today-today_books/?gt1=43001

connections

Here's a picture I took of our pets taking a nap after a big lunch (check out that belly). We've always been curious why these dogs never fought with the cat.

our pets

They bark at other cats but not this one, they always got along. How does one being connect with another? Here are other pairings that show how friends can come in all forms and sizes.


Suryia and Roscoe

suryiaandroscoe.com

"Roscoe looked really thin and a little lost so we fed him and took care of him. He followed us through the gate and ran over and found Suryia. As soon as he saw Roscoe, Suryia ran over to him and they started playing. It was unusual because dogs are usually scared of primates but they took to each other straight away. We made a few calls to see if he belonged to anyone and when no-one came forward, Roscoe ended up staying.", says Dr. Bhagavan Antle, founder of The Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (TIGERS).



Owen and Mzee

owenandmzee.com

 “It is incredible! A less-than-a-year-old hippo has adopted a male tortoise, about a century old, and the tortoise seems to be very happy with being a ‘mother’,” ecologist Paula Kahumbu, who is in charge of Lafarge Park, told AFP. “After it was swept away and lost its mother, the hippo was traumatized. It had to look for something to be a surrogate mother. Fortunately, it landed on the tortoise and established a strong bond. They swim, eat and sleep together. The hippo follows the tortoise exactly the way it follows its mother. If somebody approaches the tortoise, the hippo becomes aggressive, as if protecting its biological mother,” Kahumbu added.  


Tarra and Bella

elephants.com

"When it's time to eat they both eat together. They drink together. They sleep together. They play together," says Carol Buckley, co-founder of the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennesee. Bella, the dog even lets Tarra pet her tummy. When she suffered a spinal cord injury, Tarra visited and just stood outside the sanctuary office for days until she was able to walk. "She just stood outside the balcony - just stood there and waited," says Buckley.

 I noticed that most of these connections started when they were either very young or have experienced loss.  I guess some special bonds are formed when one is at his weakest and the other willingly gives time to be his companion.  There's no big secret, nothing spectacular needed in order to connect-- you don't even have to be from same species. You simply have to be there.

Sources: 
http://www.suryiaandroscoe.com/their_story.asp 
http://www.floristone.com/hippopotamus-tortoise.html http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/02/assignment_america/main4696340.shtml

snack time!

The other day, I used a spoon that had some cheese spread on it to slice out a small portion of ube (purple yam). I was so surprised to discover that it tasted good. I almost ate the whole thing.

I call this the Cezurple!

So, I went online and researched how other snacks came to be..

A dinner guest at Moon Lake Lodge (Saratoga, NY) kept complaining about the fried potatoes. He sent them back several times, saying they were too thick and soggy. The chef, George Crum, got so fed up with him, he decided to slice the potatos so thin they couldn't even be eaten with a fork. His plan backfired-- the guest loved it. Soon, it became a regular item in the menu, under the name "Saratoga chips". Today, it is more popularly known as the potato chip.

Another interesting snack genesis is about how, in San Francisco 1905, a kid forgot that he had left some soda drink out on their porch. It was a cold night, so the drink froze to the stir stick. That day, Frank Epperson's Epsicle, now known as the Popsicle, was born.

I tried looking for the origins of some of my favorite Pinoy delicacies. I wasn't able to find any :(. A lot of them seem to have come from other countries. The Chinese gave us siomai and siopao, as well as the balut. Empanada came from the Spaniards. But what about Halo-halo? Kropek? Otap? Belekoy? Sinukmane? Sapin-sapin? Each province in the Philippines boasts of their locally made products yet there are no records of where these delicacies originated.

I'm still searching for a legit origin of a Pinoy delicacy. I know I'll find one soon, and I'll be writing about it here. For now, I'm happy discovering (and eating!) a different treat for every island I visit.

Sources:
http://www.ideafinder.com
http://www.wikipedia.org

solitude

It's Sunday evening and I'm alone, churning out another blog post. They say writing is one of the loneliest work there is. Not really. It is a solitary activity--physically, but here, imagination's your only limit. You can travel anywhere, go back in time, be anyone you want.

There's one place I can think of where a writer will be very productive. Prison. You're confined, there's tons of material, minimal distractions and plenty of time to think. Anybody familiar with Misery? Yep. There's even a literary genre called Prison Literature which, as the name implies, are works written when the author was in prison or under house arrest. Someone even made a list of top ten books written in prison.

Two great books under this genre are, "Don Quixote" and "A journey around my room". It's interesting that in Don Quixote, the author escapes to Spain with his knight, going on adventures and fighting windmills; but in A journey around my room, the author relishes his confinement. He was in house arrest for six weeks and during that time, he wrote about the furniture, paintings and decorations in his room. He related these to his life, and in doing so, his memories and reflections surface.

Aside from writing, here's another thing you can do in prison:


When we're alone, what we have is that very limited and very precious commodity, time. We don't realize it at first, so we kill time: games, tv, etc. Eventually, we get bored. So we think, we imagine and soon, we look around and work at something. We're standing on fertile ground. In solitude begins Creation.

Treasure Trove: anglo-saxon gold hoard

http://news.nationalgeographic.com

the Find
About 1,500 pieces of gold & silver ornaments and other military artifacts, some are even decorated with precious stones. These treasures are of Anglo-Saxon origin and it dates back to 675 - 725AD, about the same time period as the poem "Beowulf". Experts believe that these belonged to a defeated king or a warlord and were collected during wars in the kingdoms of Northumbria and East Anglia. Some of the objects were bent and twisted, and others appear to have been deliberately removed from where they were used to be attached.

The hoard has officially been declared a treasure and will be up for sale to a museum in Britain. According to Leslie Webster, former keeper at the British Museum’s Department of Prehistory and Europe, ‘This will change our understanding of the dates of early Christian manuscripts, our perceptions of seventh-century people and where power lay,’.

the Lucky
Terry Herbert, a 55-year old former coffin factory worker, previously unemployed, now a millionaire. The proceeds of the sale will be divided in half between him and the unidentified landowner. They could be in line for a "seven-figure sum."

the Place and the Time
Authorities wanted to keep the location secret to ward off looters but I was able to find a few articles that state exact location and the name of the landowner. It's an english farmland :). Herbert and the owner are friends and he signed a written contract to split anything that he will find 50-50. He found the first of the items on July 5 2009 and then spent the next five days looking all over the place for other pieces.

How in the world!?
By an 18-year old metal detector bought for £2.50. Herbert says, "I have this phrase that I say sometimes – “spirits of yesteryear take me where the coins appear” – but on that day I changed coins to gold. I don’t know why I said it that day, but I think somebody was listening and directed me to it. Maybe it was meant to be, maybe the gold had my name on it all along. I was going to bed and in my sleep I was seeing gold items.’

Terry is a metal detector enthusiast and is used to his hobby being mocked. ‘I’ve had people go past and go “beep beep, he’s after pennies”, he said. ‘Well no, we are out there to find this kind of stuff – and it is out there.’


Sources:
The field of gold: How jobless treasure hunter unearthed greatest ever haul of Saxon artefacts with £2.50 metal detector [dailymail.co.uk]
Huge hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure uncovered in UK [news.yahoo.com]
Highlights of Anglo-Saxon hoard [www.independent.co.uk]

concrete alternatives

Aside from shipping containers, people are continually finding other eco-friendly alternatives in building houses.  With all that has been happening-- extreme changes in the weather, earthquakes, tsunamis, oil shortage, I think there's an increased awareness in everyone about the dismal state of our planet.

Ever seen the movie Back to the Future?  There's a scene where Doc arrives in his DeLorean and he's running low on fuel, but instead of filling it up with gas, he fills it with trash.  A car running on garbage-- that's pure genius.  Well, we may not have that yet (this looks bogus) but people are looking into using garbage for building houses.  The use of plastic as an aggregate for cement is one of the alternatives for concrete.  One of the cities here in the Manila have bought a pulverizing machine to try this out.  Another company in Massachusetts, Conigliaro Industries, already have several projects made with their Plas-Crete.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="250" caption="salt building, http://www.conigliaro.com"][/caption]Aside from plastic, other waste products can be used as fillers.  GigaCrete™, the brainchild of British architect Andrew Dennis, uses waste paper, recycled cardboard, recycled polystyrene, agricultural waste fibers, and paper sludge as fillers.  About 80% (by volume) of GigaCrete™ products can be composed of these waste materials.

Bitublock, from Dr. John Forth of the University of Leeds, is not yet market ready but it has potential. It's also made from waste products like recycled glass, metal slag, sewage sludge and incinerator ash.  These are mixed with bitumen, a sticky binder used in road paving. The end result, is a "high-performance product that is about six times stronger than the traditional concrete block".

There's a lot of promise in all these efforts.  One thing though, from some of the comments I've read, there are still some people that would rather spend their money on something that's been proven to last-- and proven to be safe.  They may think it's great that we're doing all these for the environment, but there's still some hesitation on using these products.  I hate to end this negatively but I've been trying to search for a high-profile project that uses these materials and I wasn't able to find any.  I don't know, I guess it's all relatively new and it may take some time to catch on.


Sources:
http://www.americanrecycler.com/07used02.html
http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/11/15/bitublock-concrete-will-be-obsolete/
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/06/gigacrete_an_al.php
http://www.conigliaro.com
http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/09/21/plastic-concrete-repurposes-landfill-waste-into-building-bricks/#

container houses

As everyone knows, a huge flood happened here in Manila about a week ago (and there's another storm up north this week). There were several municipalities hit by typhoon Ketsana: Marikina, Rizal, Pasig and Laguna.  I'm not sure how accurate this is but I heard that people living in those places are now moving out and selling their PhP 15 million houses for only PhP 5 million. It's a big discount but I don't know if anyone's buying.  Most people are now going for real estate situated on higher ground.

Here's an idea, how about getting one of those houses made out of shipping containers? If you want to move, you can simply have your house transported to another lot. It's durable-- designed to withstand tough conditions, as well as cheap and environment friendly.

port-a-bach.com

You need to have it insulated though and I'm not sure what will happen if lightning strikes.  Also, you should bolt it down so it doesn't get stolen or displaced when a big flood comes, like what happened here:

shipping container displaced by the flood, stuck on road divider
from PinoyExchange.com - '40 ft. shipping container as a house'
posted by KuyaDanny

For those interested to learn more about this topic, you can visit http://www.shipping-container-housing.com/.  It contains tips, links to companies that build container houses, background info on the industry and even a history of shipping containers.   According to them, "shipping container housing can represent a real solution to social and ecological problems".  I agree.  Who knew that inside that cold hard steel lies a warm cozy crib?

Sources:
http://www.pinoyexchange.com

a diamond in the rough

lifegem.com

Did you know that a part of us can be physically transformed into a diamond? Diamonds are created from Carbon and about 18% of our mass is made up of that stuff. It can be extracted from a lock of our hair or from a deceased person's ashes. Once extracted, it needs to be subjected to extreme heat and pressure, the same process that authentic diamonds go through. This will convert the Carbon into diamond crystals. The crystals can then be cut and designed and the resulting gem is set in a ring or a necklace or whatever piece you'd like.

It's amazing to realize that we can produce something so beautiful. Last week, I was having lunch with some people and I accidentally drooled on myself. The saliva spilled out of my mouth and sort of yo-yo'd down my shirt. One of them saw it, pointed and laughed at me. It would've been easier if everybody laughed but they didn't. So I just looked down on my shirt and wiped it off, and then I remained quiet the whole time. I just get so disgusted with myself sometimes.

I'm sure I'm not the only one with this kind of experience. It's hilarious when it happens to other people but when it's us, sometimes it's hard to get over the embarassment. Sure it will be funny when we look back on it, but when you're in that moment, you just want to die. It just makes your self-hatred turn up a notch.

There's no way around it, these things just happen out of the blue. There are even people who laugh at us even if we didn't do anything embarassing. One thing I hate about myself is I make people laugh at me to get them to like me. I humiliate myself and clown around. It's a habit I'm trying to break-- and I'm still working on loving myself enough to stop it. I know it will take a long time, building your self-respect and coming to terms with yourself, learning, getting back up, reflecting and improving.

However painful, I think these things that we're ashamed of are part of the whole process of becoming better, some sort of baptism by fire. We'll just have to suck it up and cope with the pressure as well as we can-- without letting it harden us. Hopefully, we'll come out of it wiser and radiant, beautiful like diamonds.

di5vwkgcx6

Sources:
http://www.lifegem.com