Rain In Port Moresby

Before my journey in Papua New Guinea has even begun, I had already looked its geographical location up on a globe as part of self-mind conditioning approach to leaving home for another country. It is located in an area just below the equator at around half the longitudinal line. 

Google says its exact coordinates are 6.1360° S, 143.9555° E.

If you take a ruler and measure out the distance between Port Moresby and the Equator, and use the same measurement to outline the space between the Equator and the Philippines, you will end up in areas around the Northern Mindanao. As a child, I have lived a couple of years in Cagayan De Oro. At around May to July, that place will receive a lot of rain throughout those times.

 Not quite so in Port Moresby. 

In Papua New Guinea, rain comes around to wash the place from December to January.  Sometimes it extends its showers up to March. But unlike the Philippines, our friendly rain here doesn’t come too often. But when it does come, I would usually expect a heavy downpour.

Apparently, our friend Zay Moe in the photo wasn’t expecting it.

When it rains here, it doesn’t usually last long. But it’s enough for our local friend Graham, to bath the truck that he used to drive around.

And himself too. 

I’m not much of a cook, but if there’s one thing that I’d like to eat while it was raining, it should be Lucky Me Pancit Canton. Yes, they do have it here so you can relax now.

If you’re somewhat wondering how I was able to take photos in the rain, my left hand was actually carrying an open umbrella while I did the shooting with my right hand. I must admit it has  taken some time to get used to but I'm now getting the hang of it.

When it rains, we hang our clothes close to our rooms. It is easy for us to gather them afterwards and it avoids getting mixed up with someone else’s clothes. We have not thought of coming up with a more modern way to dry our clothes but I guess such modernization is going to upset our electricity bill.

Including our financial manager.

This is Yoki. He would usually sit under this makeshift hut after the rain. If you’re wondering what he's doing, he was actually slicing off the husk from a young coconut.  Although I knew the answer beforehand, I still asked him, “What’s that, Yoki?”

It’s all part of breaking the ice and striking up a conversation.

If there’s one thing I’d like to do when it was raining, it would be reading a novel until I fell asleep.  I’ve had these few Michael Chricton collection which includes the Jurassic Park novel. Now, I’m not sure where these have all gone to.

 After a long but intermittent rain during the night, it’s nice to see how everything is damp. It brings out the vivid colours from everything. Here’s the bus shuttle that I usually drive every afternoon. It’s got a manual transmission and a bit heavy to drive, but I already got used to it. A PNG license must have a class number 4 or 6 before its carrier is allowed to drive this behemoth bus. I have upgraded mine to Class 6 a couple of years ago.

Soon enough after a heavy downpour, our sun, which prefers not to get its feet wet comes out of hiding to play. I guess Papua New Guinea is where it likes to shine and stay when someplace else is cold and rainy.

Life Goes On At POM

“And when darkness dawns upon us all, fear not and stand tall, because only in darkness that light may appear bright and noticeable.” Said I.

And while I was composing this, I hastily asked my staff these through the LAN Messenger, “Dispela tupela kakaruk na rais, em hamas?” 
(Translation: This two-piece chicken and rice, how much?)

To which he responded, “Lo Kaibar ah?” 
(Translation: In Kaibar eh?)

And then I said “Nogat, em blo big roostah.” 
(Translation: No, in Big Rooster.)

There was a delay then he replied “Mi no save.” 
(Translation: I don’t know.)

I happily replied “Last taim, em hamas?” 
(Translation: Last time, how much was it?)

“Mi save tasol lo KFC, big roostah mi no save.” Said him. 
(Translation: I know about KMC, but in Big Rooster, I don’t know.)

I quickly responded with “Ah, na lo kmc, hamas?”
(Translation: Ah, and in KMC, how much?)

His reply was quick as well, “Original combo em K16 samtin.” 
(Translation: Original combo is K16 something.)

This time, I have run out of tok pisin. I replied, “What’s inside the combo?”

His last reply before I kindly sent him to buy for the two of us were “Bikpla chicken pieces na chips + free drink.” 
(Translation: Big chicken pieces and chips + free drink.)

  

This kind of conversation doesn’t find its way much to regularity and with all the formulated measures having considered and taken into place, the possibility of this happening is far from being repetitive and has largely been due to conditions being met.

The contributing factors that led to satisfying a predetermined condition, as I think about it thereafter, can be linked to unusual actions perpetrated by me. Sleeping off too late at night comes on top as the main reason and the result of which is not being able to wake up early. And while I race against the undefeated time, few things are bound to get sacrificed and packing up lunch is among the first casualties.

But the chicken and chips from KMC tastes good, so I’m somewhat bewildered if it is what fuels my motivation to sleep very late at night knowing that if I fail to prepare food for lunch, I will just retreat to the convenience of eating fast food.  

Here’s me, Ben and kuya Levi. Remember Ben from this post? Back then, I've been meaning to learn his art of buro-making but haven't got around to that yet up to now. I'm considering to give up the idea. Apart from ate Des, he was the only man in this place who could come up with a nice buro. So now, I don’t think he’ll get mad if I call him The Buro King.

Right, Ben?

The view from the first photo is what I took from the balcony of  this new restaurant called Savannah Cafe, which is built just across Vision City. In Port Moresby, the temperature is a bit humid and warm and it is sometimes wise to dine indoors under the protective sheath of airconditioners to cool down a bit.

 In Savannah Cafe, you don’t have to call audibly for the waiters to come and attend to your requests. They have these little wrought-iron sculptures which have buttons installed at the base. When you press this button,  a fairly loud bell is heard throughout the hall and your table number goes out to an LED display.

It’s nice to visit places like this every once in a while to slow down and unwind from our busy lives. Having to eat a nice dinner on a shared expense other than what our meagre cooking skill can present is everyone's privilege but at times considered a  luxurious attempt to cover up for a lazy afternoon. It's good enough if done infrequently because the weight of the cost is too much to bear and it is impractical to do so in the long run.

But I must admit that one of the few reasons why this young blogger is attracted to this place is because of their Choco-Lava. This thing is soft on the outside and when you slice it open, a hot liquefied chocolate will ooze out like a molten lava. I guess that’s probably where it got its name from.

A couple of months ago, I and some other managers were invited on a little picnic in this place. We don’t have a swimming pool in our accommodation so we treat this kind of event as something special.

With me on that day are Emerson, Malou, Ben, kuya Lito and kuya Arnold. All of whom are managers in the company that I am working with except for Malou who has just moved in to another company. In this photo, it looks as though we will leave the place in a mess but on the contrary, we have kept our end of the bargain and cleaned the place up like how it was before we arrived.

We went on from happy managers to happy cleaners afterwards.

And who does not want a happy selfie on this nice pool? Probably not me.

Here’s nanay Ada on a wheelchair being assisted by Pyi Soe, our branch manager. Since I came here, I had not as much as seen her got bothered by sickness. But one day, we were all alarmed when she complained about having a terrible back pain and not being able to walk.

One Burmese manager named Thuya brought her to Paradise Private Hospital on the decision made by the management. Most of us followed her at the hospital on the night after work. You can see some Filipinos lining up on the couch. We were all concerned about what she might have to go through this but I guess the doctors must have pointed out the need to rest it off because that's what she did.

At the time of this writing, she’s back to her old self and was busy once again in the premises of our kitchen.

Here’s a picture of the illusive rat that I’ve been trying to trap for a couple of days now. I’ve experimented enough with different kind of bait just to get it captured. First, I used a fried chicken which was my left over from lunch and he didn’t bite it. Then we used pork bones and it still ignored it. Lastly,  I used an overripe banana and this was what I saw the next day.

It doesn't look so happy though. Oh, Rat, what should I do with you then?

That’s it for today. Happy weekend everyone!

Faber Castell 48 Classic Colour Pencils + 2B Pencil & Sharpener

When I was three decades younger, I used to fill the backmost pages of my notebooks with sketches of just about anything I could draw.  I usually sketch in school and mostly during classes.  I know it wasn’t a good idea to begin with, but if you had a last name that began in letter "V" you'd end up being asked to sit at the back along with other children whose surnames started with y, u or z. Far from the teachers prying eyes, it was not long until I found myself filling up my notebooks with crayon sketches.

Fast forward to today’s era,  I notice a big leap in the development of art tools. Back then, I was fine with crayons and watercolors and they were an indispensable kiddie art tools. Now, we have oil-based and wax-based color pencils which can really color drawings more vividly and lively.

Despite my love for art, I am extremely new to color pencil. From reviews, I’ve read that the best two brands around are Faber Castell Polychromos and Prismacolors.  It’s unfortunate that in Papua New Guinea, these two are non-existent.  About a month ago, however, Star Office Works in RH Gordon Branch started selling the Faber Castell Classic Colour Pencils in 12’s, 24’s 36’s and 48’s.

The 48 pieces in suitcase-like plastic container is what I bought.  It costs around K40 to K50. The color pencils are safely tucked within the coves to hold them firmly in place. The red handle is designed to slightly elevate the case on a flat surface at a fixed angle when shifted downwards. I’m not sure how can this be of any help to me but a kid might find a use for it, like a mini-table perhaps?

Hey, now look at that. It also comes with one graphite pencil and a sharpener! 

I have a low grade 12-pieces color pencils before which I bought mainly out of curiosity and in comparison to it; Faber Castell Classic Colour Pencils have bigger lead in diameter.

I was a bit excited to try and draw anything and this is the first drawing that I made with it on a 165g sketch pad. The colors are vibrant and it’s a bit softer compared to my Faber castell water color pencils. It’s easy to blend too.  I haven’t tried the polychromos or prismacolor before so I can’t really say if this is good or not.  

Looking closely though, we can see that this is not quite an artist-grade tool but we can surely draw whatever we want with it.  

Here's my second attempt to sketch a color pencil portrait with Miss Destiny Nickelsen as the reference person. I noticed that I spent the black faster as opposed to any other color despite the only areas I used it up with are the hair, the dark undershirt and the eyes. 

I'm thinking that if I do another portrait, i'd consume another 25% of that remaining black. If I use another media as a replacement for black, I might prolong its life. The classic color is also available in 12 sets which is relatively cheaper so I guess I'd just have to buy the 12's to replenish the black.

I think it's a good idea and money-wise to begin with this type of color pencil when leaning how to use it and then shift to a more expensive and artist-grade tools like Polychromos later when I feel like I'm ready for it.



Update: (07 June 2016)

I must take back what I said when I mentioned in this blog that FBCC was not an artist grade. Now I believe that it is not the tool that sets the standard for a good art but rather it's the talent of the artist itself. This is Iya Eugenio's art. She used Faber Castell Classic Colour Pencils to color this portrait sketch and the secret to that smooth skin tone as she said was perseverance. 

Pretty talented girl I must say.


Update: (02 February 2017)

I've been following miss Iya Eugenio's artworks, particularly her sketch of Avril Lavigne. Last year around June, I had brushed upon one of her works (this) which was then a work-in-progress and I was amazed by the fact that it was drawn with Faber Castell color pencils.  

If you wish to see her other artworks, you may want to visit an FB Group, Guhit Pinas, of which she is a member. A remarkable member I'd say. 

She also has her own page to showcase her artworks. If you like getting astonished by color pencil arts, it's a high time that you visit her page, Isiya's Art. If you find her work inspiring, please feel free to leave a comment or click the Like button to show appreciation. 

Have fun!


Update: (27 July 2019)

I haven't been drawing anything with color pencil for like two years now and I have lost track of what's going on in the art groups that I am a part of. Anyway, just today, I was able to come to my blog and check the comments. One of the comments is for this post and I kind of wonder what has happened to Iya's Avril Lavigne color pencil artwork. 

Unfortunately, the FB links that I've posted here no longer work. But I managed to search for her new FB account (I guess) and have found this public post of her. So without permission from her, I just grab this wonderful artwork and posted it here. Iya, if you're reading this, I hope you won't get mad. Thank you for completing this lovely artwork. I truly like this. 

Papua New Guinea Trivia #1

Did you know that Cuscus is commonly found in Papua New Guinea?

Cuscus is a cute animal resembling that of either a monkey-like or possum in appearance. They vary in color but the most common I see in Port Moresby has a mixture of white, brown and orange fur. It is a marsupial and is a sub specie of possum but is considered distantly related to other species such as koalas, kangaroos and squirrels.

I'm not sure if they bite but I see some people carrying them around like tamed. Although a number are captured for trade, their species are not endangered at the moment. In fact, they are endemic in Papua New Guinea and the vastness of untapped jungles within offer refuge to quite a lot.

Cuscus feeds on fruits and leaves but they sometimes get their protein supplements from raiding egg nests and preying on small mammals. They are usually nocturnal and are slow-moving animals like sloth.

Saying Goodbyes

In every three years or so, the managers being in this company will either grow or shrink in numbers. While it has not evolved into a consistent trend yet, I believe that this phenomenal marvel will stay as an observable matter for a few years to come.

To offer a simple explanation as to why such a thing happens uncontrollably, I have devised a list from my lightly expressed yet debatable opinions under the guise of deliberately euphemised statements on a descending scale as follows:

3. The employee is not happy.

An employee may lose all the motivation to work in the absence of happiness. The effect is usually easily reversed by any attempt of an employer to find the source of sorrow and by doing something about it.

2. The employer is not happy.

When an employer becomes unhappy with an employee, it’s quite difficult to win the faith back.

Very little option can be done to reverse the effect and this usually ends with the cessation of contract. But there is still hope.

1. Both the employer and the employee are not happy.

Paper contracts are ripped apart and digital copies are purged. There is no point of finding a fix to mend the broken pieces.

But not all of which actions have ended into separating ways are from the list above. There are other obvious reasons that may spark an interest to switch jobs. Say for example, my friend Malou has decided to move to another company. While it is true that her decision was partly due to her continual pursuit of a greener pasture, quite a few mitigating factors also involved having a fresh start to everything.

Here are my fellow managers preparing foods for Malou’s celebration. We Filipinos have traditions that are jovial and yet quite confusing at times. We prepare foods and invite everyone when an occasion is worth celebrating, say a birthday celebration for an instance. But when someone that has become an acquaintance for quite a time is departing for good, we find such thing worthy of celebration too.  

I guess the fun fact there is that Filipinos welcome any excuse for a celebration even when it's ambiguous to everyone around.

The menu for that night included homemade siomai and some stew. In the Philippines, the elders of long ago have coined a term “Bayanihan” to name an instance when everyone is in voluntary mode while helping each other at times like this. Even in a far away place like Papua New Guinea, bayanihan can be observed among Filipino communities.

My voluntary contribution for that night is to assume quality control by tasting and sampling the cooked meals.

While there was no cooked food to sample yet, I must also assume the role of the photographer which was quite an easy job for the night.

My favorite food to sample is from a fellow manager’s specialty, the cassava cake. She has chosen not to be named but I can say that her cassava cake is unique as the toppings that she uses are from her own recipes.

And here are all the managers joining the celebration that night. The rests are seated on the side not captured by my camera.

This celebration is for Malou and Hernan’s last day on the company premises. Unfortunately, Hernan wasn’t able to join us that night because his plane was set to leave a couple of hours earlier. 

While I’m in no position to know what the future holds for these two perky colleagues, I believe that it is going to be brighter.  I wish you two good luck in your new endeavors. 

Interesting Places around Port Moresby

Whenever I’m driving, my focus is only about three things: the road, the car that I’m driving and the people who may try a sprint across the road.  The places I pass by have less of my attention. Both eloquent and meaningless conversation carried out by passengers in the car are deliberately ignored, regardless. A passenger told me once that with my traits, I can be a locomotive driver. Seems to me like I have reached a milestone with my career in driving until a close friend of mine had said, “Hey, a train driver is usually alone in a driver’s compartment.”

Hi! My name is Glen Villar.

And this is Rodney. He has been under my supervision since the beginning of my employment in the company that I work with.  He has, at first, started as an encoder for our purchases and has since progressed into performing more challenging duties.

While having preceded this post with this photo may appear irrelevant with regards to the title of this post, the idea behind is to show that even a narrow passageway that is  crammed with a delegate of oversized airconditioners has become a place of interest for both Rodney and I.

I’m thinking that the reason for such is somehow connected to my theory upon which I believe that if someone has been on the same place for a long period of time, his brain may start freeing memories inhabited by his experiences of having been in another places. When he is moved to somewhere else, during which a new scenery is introduced, despite having been there before, his brain will attempt to bring back the freed memories.

But since the brain is known to have a great devotion to its host and its protection, it then decides to stop wasting time trying to bring back what is supposed to be a purged memory to begin with.  Because for the brain, there are other more important things at hand like maintaining a DEFCON 2 alertness for any danger. Such a phenomenon lets you experience any common place as new and interesting.

The guy in the left is Noel and on the right is Rodney. I have both trained these two guys in different areas, with Noel concentrating on dealing with Quotation and Invoices and Rodney in both encoding and hardware troubleshooting.  Some people may not enjoy what these two are doing, but for Rodney, deciphering the mysteries of colour coded wires while seated on a monoblock is as interesting as to what Noel, who is on a cozy office chair, was doing on a computer.

I have taught Rodney about the different configurations of UTP cable.  Like anyone else unfamiliar with networking, he has found it confusing at first. Now Rodney knows how to crimp for a 10-baseT and 100-baseT connection and cross-cable connection with ease.

In search for a greener pasture, Noel has already resigned from this company.

Patience and perseverance is the key to finding the problem in something faulty. Most of the time, a computer may emit beeping sounds in response to its self-integrity checking mechanism triggered off by errors.  But in the absence of these little  telltale  noises, a technician’s job becomes relatively challenging. We can think of the whole picture as a jigzaw puzzle with dozens of tessellating pieces.

Each piece of puzzle is like an individual troubleshooting experience from which the technician draws its solution and deal with the problem at hand in a trial and error fashion. Rodney is now good at this. Nearly as good as me.

Ha!

This is our little make-shift half-court basketball setup in our front yard. The guy on the left wearing a red short is responsible for coming up with this ingenuity. The hoop is made up of an old and rusty steering wheel which is then mounted on some kind of fixture where a pulley is purposely installed.

Playing basketball is fun for the first 100 times, but thereafter its amusement factor declines if you keep on playing with familiar faces every now and then.

This is me on an early Sunday morning at Pacific Adventist University (PAU). Settled behind me are the numerous stall owners selling different kinds of vegetables and foods with beverages. Being one of the few in our company who were allowed to drive the company’s car, I’m getting all sort of requests from fellow managers to bring them to places where I would not normally have a reason to go.

But going to PAU on a Sunday morning is more productive than sleeping it off in my bed. You can spend 1 Kina for each pile of vegetable which I find relatively affordable. And because the vegetables in the picture are hard to come by, I did not think twice about buying them. A few years ago, I learned how to cook Ginisang Munggo by reading about it at Panlasang Pinoy blog and the bitter gourd leaves in my hand is a crucial recipe.

While varying proportions of the PNU campus are divided to school buildings, housing and an open air market, the larger partition of its land is converted to plantation. The picture above shows a vast area where the corn crops and papaya are planted. 

This place is the PNG Gardener. Once in a while, I come here for a visit. There is always something in an aquarium shop that makes me visit it. Although it’s not clear yet, I guess it has something to do with being an aquarium enthusiast myself.

Here’s a shop assistant attempting to scoop out a pair of rainbow fish. Rainbow fish is an ornamental fish naturally found in the habitats of Papua New Guinea. I’ve read somewhere before that it’s quite hard to keep. Luckily though, the pair that I bought are still in good shape after introducing them to a community of Sogeri Kois and swordtails.

This area is near the Centrepoint which is next to our place of work.  Noel and I were aiming to snap a photo of an Australian-duo who were performing before the crowd. They are quite visible if you try and zoom in.

This is what the old Rita Flynn Netball Complex looks like before its renovation. Nowadays, the complex is far better. The players wearing the lighter shade of blue are employees from the company that I’m working with. I know the players by their individual names but as a group, we refer to them simply as The Netball Girls. 

Netball has a striking resemblance to basketball. Like the latter, the mechanics of the game mandate that players from opposing team must try and and outscore each other by bringing the ball into the hoop. A few noticeable differences between the two games are:

• The ball itself. It seems like they’re using a ball the size of a soccer or volleyball instead of the official basketball.
• Dribbling.  There is not much dribbling involved throughout the entire game. However, good movement of the ball through passing among team mates is the key to much of the winning.
• The hoop doesn’t have a backboard like a basketball court does.
• It seems that netball is more commonly played by girls.

Here’s ate Des and a couple of our co-managers exhibiting some form of moral support by being present in the game and shouting cheers amidst the other cheering crowd. 

That's it for this week. Until next time!

Foods to Eat at POM

What can be a more rhythmic question than asking what is there to eat? It’s possible that while there may be a lot of people like me who don’t bother much about coming up with this question in mind, our kind has only a miniscule part of the entirety to which all human beings are represented.

A little vague, isn’t it? Generally, my thoughts can become aimless and without sense when I’m hungry. As such, I notice that my grammar becomes a bit weird and my statements hold a tendency to digress from my main point.

But going back to my topic, if you have somehow, wondered about the foods we eat here in Port Moresby, here is a photo-list that I prepared for everyone.  I did my best and tried to remember each occurrence in its chronological order as possible. 

In Brumby’s, which is a bakery and a cafeteria at once, one has a freedom to experiment on “pairing up” upon which a brewed coffee of your preference is combined with the bread of your choice. The pair above is a tandem of croissants and a cup of cappuccino which I ordered.

You can find Brumby’s inside the Vision City.

If your taste is accustomed to oriental foods and at some point in your life, it got slightly changed by the introduction of western delicacies, you might want to go and try the restaurant at the Edgewood Hotel.  My friends and I have been here in quite a number of occasions. Our modus operandi for this recurring indulgence is to split the bill among ourselves in varying proportions. 

There is no better place for a bunch of hungry managers to eat and talk freely about the intricacies of politics in the workplace than a geographically well placed hotel-resto.

The Ela Beach Hotel along the Ela Beach is a classy restaurant which is frequented by both expats and locals. Here’s Malou, I and kuya Levi. I’ve only been here for like, twice or so. I like it for the big hamburgers and pizza on its menu.

If you’re in for customized bread, try the Love Bytes Bakery. They can accept custom-made bread to any form and size that fits any occasion. The bread in the photo above is just one fine example.  Its faecal resemblance is done with a sense of purpose and has nothing to do with how it smell.

Mmmmm. Yummy!

Shakers is another bakeshop and cafeteria located at the second floor in Vision City. Although I cannot exactly remember when, we have once dined in here. We just ordered coffee and a few slices of cakes.  

If there is something noteworthy of being mentioned, it is the Claypot in Plaza Inn restaurant which is by far, the greatest-ever kind of claypot that I have ever tasted in my life. Here’s a photo of which the variety of ingredients speak for themselves.  My friends and I have been trying to imitate this recipe but our failures prove that it’s not quite an easy task. Perhaps there is a secret recipe to it.

I wonder what it can be?

Another place where we can buy and eat a really nice cake is in Boroko Foodworld near Gordons. The cake above was what I ordered before. Like everyone else, I seem to have developed a habit of taking a photo of something I’m about to eat… or have partially eaten in this case.

Here’s me in my uniform and this shelf is in RH Hypermart at Vision City.

I love chocolates as much as pregnant women love unripe mangoes. But then not all pregnant women love an unripe mango so I guess the more appropriate analogy would be, “I love chocolates as much as some pregnant mango-loving-women love unripe mangoes.”

Next post, I'll try and write something about a couple of interesting place that I've been in POM. Enjoy your weekend everyone!