Finally, Harley Palangchao Made it to Boingboing!

From boingboing.net, the most Technoratied blog

Wooden bikes

Posted by David Pescovitz, June 2, 2008 9:29 AM | permalink

Over at Street Use, Kevin Kelly surveys the use of handmade wooden bicycles around the world. (Photo from Harry Palangchao's Flickr stream.) Link

Previously on BB:
• Wooden motorcycle Link
• Africa: building bikes from bamboo Link

Privatizing Burnham and Banaue

Here's from gmanews.tv

An influential business group wants the government to privatize a handful of the country's major tourist spots, a move that they said will ensure the preservation of the areas. Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry president and appointed tourism private sector chief Samie Lim said the Philippine Tourism Authority should sell some of its major assets which have the potential to become even more attractive to both foreign and local visitors. Among those spots that should be privatized are the Banaue Rice Terraces, Picnic Grove and Palace in the Sky in Tagaytay City, and Burnham Park in Baguio City.

All Cordillera NBA Finals: Burnham Lakers vs the Bontoc Celtics

Time to resurrect the old joke. Here's the real (fantasy) Bontoc Celtics.
This BTW is a photo of the Mexico-RP Olympics basketball match in 1936. Look at the net, the shorts, the open court, the no-box out rebound and the greasy hair.

The Dogs of Comiles

The dogs of Comiles. So obedient and bred for suicide. This is a joke, friends. PETA, peace.

Bontoc

Just came from Bontoc. Stayed in a new hotel in Samoki. Most of the new hotels are now in this part of the town. So you stay beside the rice terraces, kamote patches and pigpens. Not to be fastidious but these had been here for centuries. The hotels seem to be the intrusions here.

On Being a Bearer of Shocking News

Last Sunday, I had to break two tragic news to people who should have known of the incidents before I did. At about 2 pm, I called up Mountain Province Gov. Maximo Dalog to get his reaction about the amush of Paracelis Mayor Cesar Rafael. Then later, I had to convey to Abra Gov. Kit Bersamin that the house of Cong. Luna was bombed. Dalog was shocked. I can imagine him raising his eyebrow. My introduction to hiim was, "Merry Xmas, Gob. Did you hear about the news..." Silence. The cellphone meter was ticking. "I didn't know that, ah. Why wasn't I informed?" he said. Then he has to be my legman for the story. With Bersamin, he was at the airport, seeing off his children and apos back to the U.S. With Kit, it was silence and more silence. Then, "I'm here in Manila. Tell me what happened."
These situations are hard for journalists because you would be catching your sources in an awkward moment. They would be in a situation when they can't give you the soundbites you need. Most of those you see on TV are orchestrated. The cumbersome setting-up of the crew and lighting and sounds and the introduction would erase the novelty.
Unless you are like that guy who went to the scene of the collapse of a building in Cabanatuan during the earthquake and then was confronted by a victim trapped between concrete slabs. All the poor TV guy can ask was, "How does it feel?"
Surprising sources about shocking news would only say that they are not in any way connected with the tragedy. And we are not even sure about that either. Maybe you can write, "the governor was shocked upon hearing the news" but we're not really certain. The interview was done on phone and you can only imagine the reaction.
I think the best thing to do is to call again.

Atayo Tayaw

Rachel Atayo dancing the tayaw with a certain Joseph Zambrano (he,he,he) in Benguet last Friday. So now the supertyphoon has been pulled towards the Cordillera.

Jonas

From Ed M:

The Writer's Sagada

Chi once told me that when she was a PETA writer, they were all hauled to Sagada to write. The Sagada of the mind conjures an image of tranquility and simple living. The view of the pine mountains swathed by fog or the rice terraces at night with multitudes of fireflies will make you grab your pen or open your laptop. In other words, the PETA people did not accomplish anything. My NGO friends in Manila in the 1990s would also go to Sagada for "de-stressing" and come back stressed at the thought of coming back with more work backlog and office intrigues. There was a time when I was always in Sagada because I was researching. I like the peace and tranquility and talking with the people and the tourists. I, too, can not write much while in Sagada but I was able to mentally map my stories. Maybe a habit of the mountains would come to me so I can just write about tawdry and seemingly trivial things like Wm. Henry Scott. I visited his library and there are so many typewritten notes there unpublished about Sagada. How prolific! It seems that the rhythm of the place and the season would allow you to include writing in your daily life. No meetings. No presscons. No shopping. No drinking all night because they have a self-imposed curfew here at 9 pm. Today is the market day in Sagada. That is when the residents buy their stuff and meet their friends. When was the last time there was a market day in the real sense in your place? Not Market! Market! but market lang? The malls destroyed all that. "The trouble with us is that we want instant things -- instant noodles, instant messages, instant babies," wrote one high school student in her feature story. She was, I think, from Sagada and I asked them to write about teenage pregnancy. It was a lead I did not expect. We all want instant things including instant Sagada to spur our creative spirit. Like all things, Sagada is a patient place. You allow yourself to live here longer incognito and a little resigned and then Sagada will come knocking like a shy neighbor.

Sagada

Again, I have to go to Sagada to teach elemantary and high school children how to write a feature story. I don't know if they can grasp everything but at least get a hold of something. As I always tell them, let your teachers get the shakes while you enjoy your press conference (it should be press competition) and meet other young writers. I also tell them that I will not call them budding or would-be writers because they already are. Unless they join the financially-rewarding movie beat where being a bading writer helps. Or in High Times where budding journalists are at the head. If you didn't get the last joke, that's fine.
But allow me to tell you that only last week, a children's newspaper called "Children's First" came out with a very small newspaper indeed.

Slide

Seems like deja vu all over again. Again encountered a slide on the same site where I encountered a rockslide 17 years ago,near the border of Bauko and Benguet. It wasn't a big slide like the last time but it would be harder to clear. Last night, a beer truck passed by a sharp curve and fell off the soft shoulder. Boulders fell on the truck. Only a few bottles can be seen from the ravine as we were passing by the mound. Soem fo the residents tried to rescue but only cam e up with few bottles of Red Horse. Tomorrow, Bontoc will be holding its festival. Seems it has to be a dry festivity. Not Super Dry but no beer talaga. I feel sad for the driver still crushed underneath.

Benguet Paradise

In 1898, Benguet was pristine. The forest was endless and the villages full of warriors and care-free women. Or so we think. Here is Wm Henry Scott's part of Igorot Ethnography 1898 from his "Discovery of Igorots."

The lower Agno Valley had a generally miserable appearance. The forests were thinned out or the hillsides actually denuded by swidden-farming techniques, and erosion was extreme. The tiny villages of reed huts shifted their locations regularly over an area of several square kilometers while keeping the same names. So, too, the people were smaller and less muscular than those further North – 106 Igorots measured altogether averaged 5’1” or 5’2”. Lutab and Kabayan were obviously more prosperous, with stone-walled irrigated rice fields, houses of solid pine boards surrounded by low stone walls which either kept pigs or kept them out, and herds of fat-bellied carabaos, European-type cattle, and small horses pastured nearby for their meat. But the settlements themselves numbered only ten or twenty houses, with large towns running to no more than 40 or 50, and in no place did Dr. (Hans) Meyer encounter a population of no more than 250. (Official Benguet census figures of the period estimated a population of 20,000 divided into 144 villages – or an average of 153 each). If the German scientist’s observations of public health are accurate, this population must have been literal survivors by natural selection, for he found tuberculosis, asthma, varicose veins, skin eruptions, mange, coughs, common colds, and eye infections common everywhere, and saw few old folks in Benguet who were not covered with deep pockmarks. At that, Benguet have been better off than Lepanto, for “in every place where Spanish military posts stand or have stood, one encounters syphilis, and, moreover, in its most loathsome forms; gonorrhea and leucorrhea are likewise found, and in low-lying districts one can add dysentery and diseases of the liver.” From Igorot Ethnography, 1898 WH Scott

Kalumpunay

I was surprised about this new Diesel ad because of the pink flowers above the model. Those are angel's trumpet. Kalumpunay more popularly known as angel's trumpet is an ubiquitous plant in the Cordillera. Only a few knew that it is a very powerful drug. The chemical active substances are scopolamine and hyoscyamine. The dried sheets and blooms are smoked or taken orally as tea. A half-hour after ingestion it comes to visions and illusions, which can change into hallucinations. These hallucinogenic effects can persist, depending upon dose, between 3 hours and 3 days. Overdosing can lead to symptoms of intoxication (swallowing difficulties, hoarseness, dryness of the mucous membranes, urine barrier, heart lawn) up to deaths by heartbeat disturbances and ventricular fibrillations. Three famous boys in Sagada ingested kalumpunay tea and were in coma for three days. One of them, a journalist, told me that he dreamt he was running oh so slowly throughout that time. Another was found on their roof. But these three are lucky because they came out well. I know some who didn't cross back.