gloomy sunday

and that's because my cam phone was stolen. with 1,700+ photos stored. :'( man. and getting a new phone was one of my birthday wishes last year too. *sigh*

b&w photo taken last year, 22 july 2009 on one side of the pasig river, arroceros park (manila). it's been 2 months and 1 day since i went gaga with sepia. ;p

sige lang nang sige.

manila sights in sepia

the fotos featured in this video are the remaining photographs in my current sepia collection (all taken in one day). of course the number will grow should i take more fotos in sepia mode in the future. haha. but for now, i do hope you'll enjoy these. :)

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

note: fotos are taken with my fone cam, an SEw810i. all are in raw form, including the ones i featured on my previous posts (beautiful mess 1 and 2). too lazy to tweak pics. hrhrhr.

pasig river ferry sights

previously, i've ridden the ferry at night time so there wasn't much to be seen, save from the well-lighted malacanang palace and the bridges (jones bridge, macarthur/sta.cruz bridge, quezon bridge, ayala bridge, etc.). as for the rest of the trip (from escolta to guadalupe)... it's dark save for the occasional twinkle of lights from factories and some shanties that dot both banks of the pasig river.

a few weeks ago though, i was able to ride the ferry again, this time during the day. this time around, i did not inconvenience myself. and i made sure i got off at the right station. lol.

here are some of the pics my bro took from a point-and-shoot camera (from inside the ferry).

quezon bridge

at some point during the ride (where there are shanties such as this one), we suddenly heard something hit the right-side window of the ferry hard. we looked back and saw a group of kids trying to throw rocks at the ferry. one got a direct hit, which resulted in a dent at the window. i kid you not. so if you see a dent in the right-side window towards the back of the ferry, then that's what i rode. seriously though, something has to be done in order to protect the ferries from being damaged.

i'm the king of the pasig river!!!

passengers alighting from an outrigger boat.

makati mahalin natin... atin ito!

old oil depot at rockwell

looks like people at first glance

so that's it for my first daytime pasig river ferry ride. though there isn't much to see, i kind of liked it. better during the day than at night, though riding at night does have its charms, especially when the bridges are lighted up. then again, more work needs to be done in cleaning up the river and its banks in order to prevent damages. if the person who threw the rock at the ferry was bigger and stronger, the rock might have cracked the window or worse, broke it.

some intramuros views

here are some pics i took while walking along the walls of intramuros. or at least, while walking along a part of it.

1861 or 1981?

smack at the center is the manila city hall and on your left is... sm manila. at the foreground is a part of the golf course just outside the walls of intramuros. it used to be a moat during the spanish colonial times, but when the americans came, they turned it into a golf course so that they could play golf all they want... not! lol seriously, the americans filled up the moat in order to curb the mosquito-borne diseases. but if you think about it, they're really hitting two birds with one stone--improving the health of the filipinos during that time and at the same time improving their golf scores. LOL

fill in the blank: manila city hall is _________ away from intramuros. (hehe. you'll know what i mean if you have also joined the old manila walking tours. :-D)

tunnel to puerta real, which is one of the entry gates to intramuros. at present, puerta real is one of the favorite places to hold weddings. in fact, one of my titos got married here. (in the garden, not in the tunnel. hehe.)

the inscription on the gate of puerta real.

wednesday wramblings part 1

yesterday afternoon brought me once more to the manila area when my friend heidz texted me if i could come with her to Philippine Normal University (PNU) as she was planning to apply for their 18 unit teaching course. well, who am i to say no, especially when i've always wanted to go there? it was an uneventful bus ride to PNU from robinson's galleria which cost us P20.50. i don't know, but the prospect of going to PNU got me really excited. maybe because it was of the really old structures which i longingly stared at every time i pass it going to intramuros, maybe because of the fact that my lola studied there in the late 1930's, or maybe both. either way, i was like some giggly teenage girl silently freaking out (in a good way) when heidz and i entered the main building. and so while heidz was agonizing over the computations in her transcript, i amused myself by going around the campus--erm, i mean just around the main building, and just as far as the culture and arts building. going around wasn't any problem at all as i could easily pass for a student (naks!). from the looks of the campus grounds, there was a cultural festival courtesy of the PNU Lopez, Quezon campus although there's no program at the time except for a band practicing the philippine national anthem. inside the auditorium in the main building, however, a contest called battle of the chem masters was going on. chemistry. hrrmmph. aside from that, the whole atmosphere in the school was quite relaxing if you ask me.

PNU fast facts:

- it is the university that specializes in teacher education. it opened on september 1, 1901 as Philippine Normal School (PNS) by the americans.

- PNS was converted to Philippine Normal College (PNC) in 1949 and along with it came the introduction of new four-year courses such as bs elementary education, bse with specialization in elementary education and bse major in home economics.

- the graduate school was established in 1953.

- the school was elevated into university status on december 26, 1991, 90 years after it first opened.

- it celebrated its centennial year on september 1, 2001.

- there are four other PNU campuses around the country--in agusan, cadiz city, isabela and quezon.

(source: PNU website)

more ramblings to come later. it has been a loooong day yesterday... ;-)

manila, manila... i keep coming back to manila

it seems that i will be going back to my beloved manila sooner than i expected. i'm excited to go back to manila, yet at the same time i know i'm going to miss all the new experiences i've had here in the US. every time i come here, there's always new places to go, things to do, and each is an unforgettable experience worth putting down on paper (or in this case, chronicling in this here blog. ü).

oh well. at any rate i will still be "chronicling" each experience even when i'm back in the philippines so it will still feel like i'm still living it. until then, there would be more writeups until i'm done, and then there would be new things to discover, more things to write about. hah-ha! =)

i'm coming home to stayyy... ;-)