Looking back at my first entry for this blog, it feels like I'm getting old already. It's been 6 years since I wrote my first post "My Humble Beginning in PNG" and I must admit that I barely noticed how fast the years had gone by. I came here in 2008, went back home after a few months and came back again in 2011. And today, is my 9th year in this country that I consider my second home.
I only started blogging about Papua New Guinea in 2014, and I wish I could have done earlier. But I have no regrets anyway. I think I've given my fair share of contributions to the blogosphere. Also, I'm under the notion that blogs are increasingly getting less popular than vlogs nowadays. And judging from the number of hits that this humble blog gets every now and then, I suppose that blogging, particularly my blogging, has seen its golden days.
But I'm also a firm believer of this one verse in the Bible that says "That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away." It basically implies that some things which have seen glories in the past might find their seats again in the arena of the future, especially, if those "things" had been of something great in the past.
I guess if I were to predict which of the things from the past could make a comeback, I would say it was Blogging.
By the way, two days from now, the People of Papua New Guinea will be celebrating their motherland's 45th year of independence. I hope that we, despite the hardship and the current marginal lifestyle with which all of us are going through right now due to the COVID-19 pandemic, can still find a way to smile and celebrate this once-in-a-year chance to cherish the birth of this nation in our own style.
In what appeared as a rather unforeseen decision made by the higher-ups, one by one we were informed of our new venue for the managers’ party this year. Sunset Village Resort in Lea Lea was the selected venue and for those who had not been in Lea Lea Beach before, the announcement did not fall short of expectations, but it quite invoked a few curious reactions from the old-timers.
A typical hypothetical reaction was, “Is it true? But it took us forever to go there the last time.”
Okay, that wasn’t purely hypothetical. I actually raised that question. Cheers! Anyway, if you guys will just browse backwards throughout my posts, you will see that I had an entry about Lea Lea Beach that I entitled “My Unforgettable Trip To Lea Lea Beach” in 2014. While the part of my brain responsible for recycling neurons has already purged a plethora of memoirs from that trip, it retained some vague recollections of a few things worthy of remembering. Back then, I remember that because of rough roads and potholes, we had to slow down every once in a while. It is for that reason that our trip had taken more than an hour to complete. It was a bit exhausting, but it wasn’t an off-putting experience though.
In 2017 however, things have changed dramatically. Any old timer who may want to revisit the place can get a surprise of how remarkably the roads have gotten better in time. So without further ado, let’s have a look at what we have seen in our trip which all happened just last Sunday.
Like all excursions in general, they are not as exciting as without the complementary foods to accompany them. Here’s ate Des, James and nanay Ada all in one place. James has now learned the art of making pansit from the good ol’ guidance ofnanay Ada.
AteDes was assigned a task to come up with crispy pata. Within those boiling oil are a bunch of crispy pata slowly crisping their way to crispiness. She’s been cooking this food ever since I arrived in 2011 and I think everyone knows that’s her specialty now. I wonder how she would respond to the situation if someone would actually call her Pata Queen?
I hereby warn you that thou shall think twice.
The first group of managers, who are off-duty that day, have gone to Sunset Village two hours ahead of us. The rest of us had to wait for our duties to end yet before we could go as well. In this photo, I just sat in the car and waited patiently for the other managers to emerge from the shop’s gate.
My ride for that day is an earlier model of Honda CRV, but has an automatic transmission. In Papua New Guinea, all of the vehicles are set to right-hand drive, so the driver is seated on the right side, which is the total opposite of what I’ve gotten used to in the Philippines. If one is keen on asking, I started driving in the Philippines at around the age of 15 and got my first Driver’s License at 18.
Learning how to handle a right-hand drive car isn’t a rocket science. A seasoned driver can get the hang of it in just a few tries.
The initial waypoint going to Lea Lea can be anywhere, but the easiest to remember is from the area around Stop and Shop Harbour Side. From that shop, just drive on the road going up to Boroko where just halfway to the climb, you can turn left. You’ll end up going to this area that has a sign board pointing to Napanapa road if you go straight and Tokarara Waigani if you turn right.
Go straight to Napanapa Road.
The roads going to Lea Lea Beach have received a significant amount of improvement since the last time we took a visit. My estimate is that 70% of the roads are now upgraded to cement, 29% to asphalt and only 1% of which still needs an enhancement.
I’m pretty conservative with my estimates but those are pretty commendable improvements that happened in just a year or two.
Here’s our convoy of three cars. I always like to be driving at the end of the convoy because that way, I won’t have to carry the pressure of setting up the pace. The underdeveloped 1% part of the road that I’ve mentioned earlier is this. With the current progress in the road development, I guess we will no longer encounter this on our next visit.
This photo will soon be a relic of the past that photo-collectors will be searching after.
More than halfway through the trip, you’ll come across the LNG Project properties on the left side of the road. It’s a huge property and they actually have several gates that they simply name Gate 1, Gate 2 and so on. You’re only a few minutes away to Sunset Village once you went past these gates.
After the LNG Properties, you’ll come across a village with stilt houses that are elevated a few feet off the ground. One of the peculiarities in Papua New Guinea is this type of house, of which design derives its concept from the idea of keeping seawater from flooding the house during high tide. The open space below the house often serves as a shade to a shiny car or a perfect place to spend a hot afternoon.
Finally, here’s the Sunset Village Resort. We arrived here after an approximately 45 minutes to an hour of relaxed driving.
Here’s the iconic footbridge in Sunset Village Resort that everyone has come to know and recognized. At the end of which are newly added poles that will support a roofed structure in the future.
I can’t help but to feel a bit nostalgic.
And here are the same mangrove trees that I have taken a photo of back in 2014. There isn’t much of a noticeable change but they seem to have grown bigger than the last time.
The first group who arrived earlier have already chosen a nice spot for us and they’ve begun grilling foods for all of us. Thanks guys.
The eggs are purposely bought for one person alone, Jagajit, a guy from Nepal who adhered strictly to a vegetarian diet. He only eats egg meat and will run away from you if you mention pork meat to him.
Kidding.
There was a copious amount of lamb meat getting a good grilling. Judging from the ratio of lamb meat versus the other foods present in the party, I think it best to call this party a Lamb Party instead.
I’m not of a lamb meat person. Not all person will come to like lamb meat, but not all will also come to like chicken. But thankfully, they also prepared chicken meat, sausages and a special beef called Wagyu Beef.
The Wagyu Beef that we had for party came from Australia, and my boss’ husband brought it from there. She said it was a Ranger’s Valley wagyu and it was a premium stuff. It has had its place in the Top 10 Beef in the world. I only knew this when I asked her later that night where to buy that excellent beef only to be told nicely that we could not get here in Papua New Guinea.
Too bad I didn’t have a picture of it though.
Here are the other managers having a small chat while consuming their part of the loot. One thing that I notice in all of our company parties is that people of the senior age, whose habits in life are similar to one another, tend to cluster in together, forming a yet another sub-group that sets them apart from the rest.
Sometimes, this social phenomenon does escalate to the point where it progresses to talking about other people’s lives, of which I am not a fan.
Here’s Harold, Cristina and me. I am not a hat person but I forgot to buy a sunblock beforehand so I bought this hat of Japanese origin instead.
After eating our foods, I decided to walk around to loosen up a bit. Here’s an old boat that was intentionally capsized. My guess is that it was put down that way so it won’t float away in high tide.
Here’s all of us. We took this photo just before we started our beach games.
Here’s me again. It’s frantically irresistible to take a photo of yourself in a relaxing place like this.
Frantically irresistible? I always love to exaggerate.
We played a couple of games under the sweltering heat of the sun. Here’s a limbo game with both gender getting involved. The rule of the game is simple; all of the participants must go under the cloth held by two people with their backs facing toward the ground. A player is eliminated if he/she touches the cloth or falls down. The challenging part is that the players must bend backwards when making a pass underneath.
This is one of those heterosexual games in which anyone who does not have a calcium-deprived bone structure is allowed to join.
I'm not sure if it's okay for the bosses to have their photos publicly shared in my post so I blurred their faces instead. Better to err on the side of caution. The man in the middle is Mark Anthony, our new bakery manager. He just arrived only recently. Surprisingly, he won the Limbo Rock game, beating all the odds.
Some men have more flexible body than women and this winner is a living proof to it.
Here’s a game of throwing sacks that are partially filled with sand. The idea is to find out who among the guys have the strongest throwing power. The person who can throw the sack to the farthest distance is the winner. The person in a blue hat, who appeared to be swinging the sack, is our boss. The sack he threw up the air actually landed the farthest but that was not counted since he’s the boss.
Just like in video games, a boss in real life can also be the strongest.
The next person who threw the sack the farthest is Raffy. He was awarded a pseudo certificate of “The Strongest Male Manager” award. I also joined in the game but I lost happily.
The women were also invited to play the game. That woman who threw the sack on the air was Alice. Each of the sacks weighs 5 Kilos. With remarkable results, the women could also throw them at a reasonable distance.
I guess that all the years of carrying a lady-shoulder bag full of beauty kits have paid off.
Ate Des won in the “Strongest Female Manager” category. In a test of strength between two female, does having bigger arm over the other competitor offers an advantage to the bearer?
I think so.
After the games, we were all allowed to walkabout the place. We ended up watching this band playing music together to entertain the people. The person wearing a pink shirt is happily dancing to the tune of the music, totally oblivious to our presence.
At the end of the band’s set, we asked them if we could use their musical instruments. They asked us if we’re a band too, to which we politely said “no” because we’re not really a band. Harold, who is holding a guitar at the left, used to play guitars occasionally in college. The girl seated behind the drums is Cristina and she’s had the experience playing in a band. The person in the white shirt is quite good in singing and has a nice voice. His name is Ryan and he had actually joined in a singing contest on the TV Show called Tawag Ng Tanghalan. The guy with an orange band on his shirt is Jay-ar and he’s our bakery manager.
And that’s me on the right, wearing a Japanese hat and shades. I picked up the bass guitar because I just liked it.
Here’s a clip of what we’ve played on the stage. We have not played a single song together before that and because this is just for fun, we expected less from each other. We played two songs actually. When we played the first song Ang Huling El Bimbo, the intro was good but chaos ensued afterwards.
In the next song that we played, I used the keyboard. The title of the song is Next in Line and it seemed to go well somehow. Cheers!
That’s all for this week. Advance Merry Christmas everyone!
Up until now since God has created everything including us, humankind, all of existing evidences that are circumstantial in nature are by far leading up to one point that seem to suggest that His intervention is a continuous event even in the aftermath of the creation.
If you think about it, it’s very hard not to cogitate a notion that someone out there is keeping the whole universe in natural order. Someone who has the capacity to provide us with a billion-year assurance that everything we need to remain in existence in our lifetime like sunlight, rain and food for example are being equally provided to us all no matter how good or bad we may have behaved in the last Christmas.
In Koki Fish Market, one can learn from looking at the fishes being sold there about how impressive God’s entities can be. If you observe them closely, you may probably notice that all fishes are like diversities of cloned creatures. While majorities of the fish in the market are moderate in sizes, some are really enormous and may require several people to reel out of the water. Yet they all share a common trait that makes them a mouth-watering delicacy, and that is the idea that aside from being a healthy treat, they are yummy.
But one can be forgiven for oversimplifying that fishes are just foods in general; perhaps it is due to how widely they are viewed as part of most culinary practices.
In Papua New Guinea, it’s a common thing to see Tunas of various fin colours being ended as goods in fish markets. Tuna is my favourite fish to buy because of how it looks. They always have a solid appearance that make them look good when grilled over.
I’ve been meaning to grill one but I haven’t got around to that yet.
If you can imagine a world without fish, do you think that we could substitute rats for the fish? My mental picture-processing unit is refusing to visualize a dead rat being grilled at the moment. Luckily, we haven’t arrived to that point yet. Fishes have an astonishing reproductive strategy in that some of them lay eggs in thousands, which externally fertilise leaving more room for the parents to party around without giving much attention to the surviving hatchlings.
I don’t think we can out-eat their ability to reproduce yet.
Speaking of party, our parties in Papua New Guinea are held mostly in the house and may involve a round of a few drinks.
How much does a typical bundle of fish cost in Port Moresby? At the time of this writing, it’s about K20 to K30 a bundle and that still depends on the kind of fish.
A typical strategy that one can use for rating out a fish’s freshness is by scrutinizing the fishes’ gills. Fresh fishes have red gills and don’t have a red and cloudy eyes. Our friend Jay-ar here is gingerly inspecting a bundle of fish for any sign of being stale.
The seas of Papua New Guinea account for the major source of the fishes sold in the market, the other sources include tropical rivers and man-made lakes. In the open seas, there is always a bigger fish capable of eating other smaller fishes. It’s an uncomfortable truth but that’s how life is going on in the seas.
In one occasion, we have chanced upon a group of either Japanese or Korean nationals doing a documentary of something. There’s our friend Ryan on the left trying to have a conversation with one of the camera person on the right.
I’m not a fan of octopus but at one point in time, I bought one or two just to try it out.
My culinary skills haven’t evolved to chef level yet and I don’t know if it will ever be, but I have a never-ending fascination to learn from observing other people's work. These octopi are rather getting a good boiling from Raffy. Raffy is another IT manager in the company that I’m working with and one of the things that we have in common is an unwavering interest in cooking.
These green-looking bags are an interesting sight to see in Koki and are usually placed at the entrance of the market. They contain big clams in them and are sold for K10 to K15 each bag at the time of this writing.
If you like to try and increase the amount of iodine in your body naturally, try cooking out these clams. It’s a known source of iron and iodine, which is good for our thyroid health. Every once in a while, it is available at Koki Fish Market. Clams are known to ingest dirt in them so it is best to have them submerged in the water first for a whole day.
Crabs are also found in both Port Moresby and in Daru Island but the latter has more of it. These decapod crusaceans in Papua New Guinea are capable of reaching to the size of a regular table plate. They can grow that much that even four people can share a piece among themselves. I took this in Daru Island when I went there sometime around September this year.
Here’s me way back in 2011 with a really big crab that was sent to me by my cousin Marlon from Daru Island. Three of us had shared this crab on that day. You can see that the pincers are almost as big as my hands.
And here are the crabs that I brought from Daru last September, 2017. I gave them away to my co-managers as pasalubong. I don’t fully understand the whole meaning of that word but it probably has something to do with an old phrase, “Share your blessings.”
Tropical fishes raised in captivity for commercial purposes are also abundant in Papua New Guinea. Here’s me frying Tilapia with my hand fully enclosed in a custom-built boiling oil deflector shield.
You see, no matter how difficult life gets, there is always a clear indication that God’s grace is working in silence. All that one needs to do is act on it. The fishes are all swimming freely somewhere out there and one just needs to try and catch them.
After three years of working straight from Papua New Guinea, I finally found the time to rest in the heart of my hometown. But the word “rest” was kind of a misnomer, because I didn’t spend much of the time resting on a bed. I was instead, constantly on the move, trying to cover as much land that I had kind of missed going into.
This house that is currently under construction belongs to my cousin kuya Jun. He is also working in Papua New Guinea and has been an OFW for over 8 years. I went to visit this house to see how things are going so far and to check if the proportions are in the right places. You see, my cousin is 6’2” and for him, having a house with a low ceiling is kind of disheartening. So for him to have some close-to-reality kind of measurement, I had to go there and actually measured the distance between the floor and the ceiling using my height as the primeval tool of choice.
I’m kind of a tall-person myself, but not as tall as kuya Jun. But I guess that my findings will be equally indispensable.
This photo is next to the front view of his house, and from where I was taking this photo is exactly where I was playing when I was just 6 years old. When I was at that age, I would collect as much fallen leaves that you could see here and used them to build a small makeshift house where I could sit the whole time daydreaming.
Here’s a panoramic view of an open field next to our old house. Our house is no longer there and an aunt had used the lot for their house instead. During our childhood, me and my friends would spend the entire day playing around this area until my father would call us over with his unique whistling ability. Such whistling comes with an unquestionable authority and the only tolerable response is an absolute obedience.
Those are the days when parents are allowed to scare their kids off with sticks.
On the left is my cousin Embong, whose parents have taken the responsibility of adopting me. In the middle is Robert, my classmate in College and who I considered to be my best friend. And that is me on the right. We usually spend most of the nights sitting under this kubo (hut) discussing the complexities of life and the intricacies of relationships in general.
Embong was kind enough to let me use their motorcycle (the white one) while I was there. The black one on the left side belongs to Robert. Robert and I have many similarities in life and among the things we share in common is the dislike to go out in daytime. So we usually go around at night, spending time in some lugawan (porridge houses).
Here’s a typical porridge house in Palayan City. That’s Robert over there. The way you buy things here is simple, you just look at the menu on the board and say your order aloud. It’s not considered rude unless one is already shouting on top of his lungs. The philosophical view behind is that saying your orders out loud cuts the waiter some slacks.
There is more time for the waiter to catch a quick nap.
Nowadays, it’s very hard to keep those computers occupied even with an existing promotional discounts.
And here’s Ivan, my niece. He’s in charge of running this computer shop. That mammoth PC is his work of art. He had personally built it piece by piece with pieces that were hard to come by. While at work, he likes to play an online game with his friends and he would usually wear a headset with a mouthpiece so he could communicate with them.
I kind of imagine him like the SCV character in the Starcraft game.
This is Robert’s brother’s house and it’s a bit close to that computer shop. Sometimes, before we proceed to play in that shop, we would stay here in the afternoon. The house is not finished yet but by some standards, it’s already livable.
In Palayan City, there is no McDonald’s or Jollibee yet. But people eating in barbecue houses is a thriving scene since the big bang theory. Here’s Robert and I trying out a sweet-pork meal.
Are we excited to eat it? Please refer to Robert’s face for that.
This is the house where I grew up into. It belongs to Embong’s parents. These laptops are of Ivy’s, and she’s Embong’s sister. I think I was checking for viruses and was trying to make the mouse work on the Vaio. I’m not usually a fan of Vaio or Mac but I find them nice and sturdy.
Ivy gave me a pair of new shoes which she bought from SM in Manila. It’s nice and light and I’m actually wearing it at the office every day.
Thanks Ivy.
These are pork meat and fried chicken. One thing I like in tita Sunny’s (Embong’s mom) house is that there’s always something edible on the table to eat. Sometimes there’s not much, but most of the time, one can find something delicious over there.
Now, who wants to go with me over tita’s house?
One of the perks of staying in tita Sunny’s house is a free access to an enormous source of information from the cluster of encyclopedias sitting near the dining area. They have the Britannica, the Britannica Junior and the New Standard Encyclopedia. They also have the Funk and Wagnalls version of Encyclopedia and a complete volume of How Things work.
During those years that I lived with them, I could not count the times that I had read these books in my free time.
Here’s another cousin, kuya Alvin, who came to visit us on All
Saint’s Day. We spent some time reading some of the books together while we’re
waiting for the rain to stop. For the record, he’s my smartest cousin around.
Off the record, he’s the one who taught me how to smoke. But luckily, I already
quit smoking in 1998 and has since ignored the occasional pleas to try.
While on vacation, problems would arise sometimes in the workplace in Papua New Guinea. This is the Bread Booking Entry module in CinchPro Payroll System that I created. I was told that they couldn’t make an entry to the module so I tried and connected to a computer in the workplace with Teamviewer.
My iPad mini was a quintessential tool that I had to have by my side every time.
These are the books that I like to read nowadays. I bought these from National Bookstore. The things that I am into now that I’m 40 years old, includes arming myself with the knowledge in financial literacy. This is the part where I think has the least of my attention when I was younger. But it’s been almost a year now since I started learning about saving and investing. In a future blog post, I will try to write and share some of my strategies with you.
Hopefully, I can impart some knowledge that can put someone on the right track.
And these are the sweets that I thought I really missed so much. It’s called merengue in our place. These are actually icing that have cooled down to harden. When I was in my high school days, I used to consume a lot of these. Nowadays, I don’t find these enticing to eat anymore. I only ate two and laid the rest on the table.
My vacation went well and although it was brief, I could truly say that it was a holiday well spent. Until next time.
