from when we lived in Tukwila WA, 20Dec2013 - the Green River was a 10 minute walk from our house....

My plan was to walk over to the Handyman Store at Robinsons and get some Liquid Nails yesterday morning, and then go to a computer store about 15 minutes away for a cable. A short excursion. After Handyman, I remembered the letter I had in my backpack, so I went up to the 3rd floor to a PO outlet and sent it off to Colorado. Regular mail, not registered: p71, which = $1.21. On my way back downstairs I noticed the shop called Digi something that I had never gone into before, and voila! they had the cable I wanted! I then walked over the flyover (pedestrian overpass) to the bank to get some pesos and went back to our complex. I walked next door to take care of some miscellaneous bills etc, and then I decided to check out a recently opened pool and patio thing on their 17th floor. That all added up to a 2.32mile walk supposedly, lasting 1hr and 14 minutes in my MapMyWalk app. What is fun about this walk is the images I pulled up just now - a whole bunch of squiggles here and there and everywhere, all within a 1 block radius.

Inday walked with me on this route yesterday. 2.16 miles in 40 min or so one way, first to the Ayala Mall, and then over to Landers, our local Costco wannabe. Actually, we cheated. We ended up shopping at Ayala too, so we took a taxi for the short ride to Landers from there. And after Landers, we were really loaded up!, and we took another taxi home.

A little shout out here to algorithms...those goblin-like characters who are watching what we type, search etc. Some people say "oh no! They're watching me. What about my Privacy? etc" We had a recent event in the US that will remain un-named here, and things related to it pop up on my FB page very seldom now!! I mostly click on things like photography, art, etc, and Mr/Ms Algorithm has given me a helping hand.

I walked around 4.32 miles on Saturday, roundtrip. That includes some wandering around the Ayala Terraces Mall. Once again, I walked from the Fuentes Osmeña Circle to the Ayala area. It took me 42 minutes one way, but that includes wandering around the Mall, trying to find the place where I was going to meet a friend. I always get lost there. Their directional signs aren‘t very helpful. I think their strategy is to make you go by all the different shops, stores and restaurants while you search for the store you’re looking for. That place is huge! I’m guessing just under a million or so... haha. I forgot to turn on my Walking app for the return walk. The red line would have ended up making a rectangular shape box (sort of), beginning and ending with the green dot in this photo.

Seattle's Pike Place Market 14Dec2015

A few thoughts on "walking" here. They don't. There are some walkers, even a few joggers. But with the warm climate, the abundance of Jeepneys, buses and taxis, etc., walking like I do is not the first choice for many people. Once, 3 or 4 years ago, I got confused about where I was and I asked a Security Guard at one of the big buildings in a downtown area "which way to Fuente Osmena Circle?" He replied "04L", the Jeepney number, and I gestured with my fingers that I'm walking and pointed which direction? I told him I'm walking again, and he replied again "04L". This crazy foreigner was walking?! Also, this is not meant as a whining rant, but there are far too many cars for this old city. I could be wrong, but when you get to a certain income level, and there being some very reasonable financing options, I guess it's a status symbol of sorts to have your own car. When I just googled my route from this morning (I'm guessing the traffic is a little less right now), it shows by car = 13 min; Jeepney/bus = 25 min; and Walking = 33 min. Even with the Jeepney stops this morning, I doubt the car time is that much faster than the Jeepneys. I was gaining on cars stopped in traffic or at intersections many times during my walk. But what do I know? I do know that it's cooler to walk in the mornings, or the early evenings. ps - I also realize that there are many people, for all kinds of different reasons, who have benefitted greatly from their car ownership. As Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say on SNL, "never mind"... :)

VAF #5:

Airbnb rentals: I decided to do my exercise walk inside the building the other day, going up and down the stairs, exploring the different business floors, etc. Post Covid, there has been a surge in Airbnb rentals throughout Cebu, and in this building as well. I do understand the incentives and benefits of renting out one's place, but it's been an adjustment for some us owners who actually live here. I should note that we also rented out our place, for 6 months earlier this year. One and done. When we returned in November, there was a separate counter set up in the lobby specifically for Airbnb guests. Back to my walk, I walked down our hallway and past the elevators towards the other end of the building, passing 4 or 5 people before reaching the stairs door at the other end. I said "good morning" to a few people, and they said "good morning" back to me. People were still streaming out of the room they had rented, 12 or 13 in total. Please note - I still love this place... Going down the stairs, I stopped on the 9th floor, one of several floors designated as "Entry door" floors. It was shut and locked. I walked down to the 8th floor, which had a "No Entry" sign, and I went through it. Evidently, in pre-Covid time, they had a bunch of offices and businesses operating on that floor, there were public restrooms, etc...a nice area. I meandered through the hallways until I reached what I thought was one of the hotel next door elevators, and pushed G thinking it was their lobby. We're all part of a larger complex. When the elevator opened, I found myself in the lobby area next to our own apt lobby. I had ridden that elevator only once before, when we saw the singer Vina Morales in the Casino during last January's Sinulog festivities. I walked around the second and lobby floors downstairs, walked by the singing Santa Claus, through the glass door going past the in-house mini-market and over to the hotel next door. I walked through the hotel lobby, out onto the sidewalk and over to our building's front door. ps - It's fun to look at the MapMyWalk maps after my walks, and when they're over a relatively short distance like this one, all the squiggly lines are interesting. I recognized the "Sky Experience Adventure" ride thing on top of the Crown Regency (Typhoon Odette did a number on that in 2021), but the "Consulate General of Japan"?, and the "Cleverlearn English Lang. Institute" with the green dot? I'll have to put on my detective google hat...

One of my favorite photos of the little ladies. You always check to see what they're doing when it gets quiet, yes? Click! They were figuring out how to click and un-click their booster chair straps. I have shared this a few times :)

Being 79 now, pfffft...where did the time go? I was just thinking about Eric Hoffer, the "longshoreman philosopher". He worked on the San Francisco waterfront for over 20 years, and became famous when he published his first? book in 1951. Being a Union person/worker, retired, I've always been fascinated by the man. - https://keep.google.com/#NOTE/1I3cMyfRQhy75NeJ_WW5XeSBgC8X5DuCv7fc3LfOttclI2JtQVgIWS3KOkWUEm0g - the last sentence: - "Scholars of Hoffer (generally conservatives themselves) inevitably note his working-class bonafides, but they don’t mention or analyze the irony of his membership in the leftist ILWU. In that way, they’re similar to all those, Hoffer included, who forgot that the labor movement brought us the weekend and much more."

Airbnb rentals - Pt 1: I decided to do my exercise walk inside the building yesterday, going up and down the stairs, exploring the different business floors, etc. Post Covid, there has been a surge in Airbnb rentals throughout Cebu, and in this building as well. I do understand the incentives and benefits of renting out one's place, but it's been an adjustment for some us owners who actually live here. I should note that we also rented out our place, for 6 months earlier this year. One and done. When we returned in November, there was a separate counter set up in the lobby specifically for Airbnb guests. Back to my walk, I walked down our hallway and past the elevators towards the other end of the building, passing 4 or 5 people before reaching the stairs door at the other end. I said "good morning" to a few people, and they said "good morning" back to me. People were still streaming out of the room they had rented, 12 or 13 in total. Please note - I still love this place... Going down the stairs, I stopped on the 9th floor, one of several floors designated as "Entry door" floors. It was shut and locked. I walked down to the 8th floor, which had a "No Entry" sign, and I went through it. Evidently, in pre-Covid time, they had a bunch of offices and businesses operating on that floor, there were public restrooms, etc...a nice area. I meandered through the hallways until I reached what I thought was one of the hotel elevators, and pushed G thinking it was their lobby. We're all part of a larger complex. When the elevator opened, I found myself in the lobby area next to our apt lobby. I had ridden that elevator only once before, when we saw the singer Vina Morales at the Casino during last January's Sinulog festivities. I walked around the second and lobby floors downstairs, walked by the singing Santa Claus, through the glass door going past the in-house mini-market and over to the hotel next door. I walked through the hotel lobby, out onto the sidewalk and over to our building's front door. To be continued:

VAF #4:

Prey or Predator? I'm not sure what I am, but I watch a lot of Nature things on YouTube when I'm tiring in the evening. Being a day-dreamer, I thought about this last week when I was waiting for a ride to the Arts Fair. I was standing down on the roadside where the Jeepneys, buses and taxis flow by, and me being a foreigner, I was getting a lot of quiet honks, headlight blinks etc from the taxis. I was focusing on the "Modern Jeepneys": they're cheaper, larger than the regular Filipino Jeepneys, and you can even stand up in one of them when they're crowded. I eventually got on one of them, and went as far as the Ayala Mall area, where I hailed a taxi for my second leg to the Oakridge Business Park venue. Later, after eating at "Big Toms Charbroiled Burger" (I got a Hawaiian Burger with fries and a coke), I got a taxi for my return trip home. It being a Sunday, the traffic was less, and the taxi driver was fun to talk to - p150 I think it was. That's $2.54 in US. A little bit of a splurge, but after 5 hours or so of perusing Art, talking with Artists and Craftspersons, I was tired,...and happy. These are my people. Going back to my first sentence, after what seemed like 10 different taxis slowing down and saying "take me...", I thought about the nature shows I watch in the evenings :)

VAF #3:

This obelisk is in the center of a small park bordering Carbon Market. Cebu City "was under Spanish rule for three centuries. It has the country's oldest university..., and the oldest street, Colon Street, built by the Spaniards." The couple in the last photo waved me over to take their photo. That happens often here, and for someone like me who's a little shy about taking people pictures, it's a godsend.

Welcome to my blog...For anyone who checks on my FB page, this doesn't have all of the things that I click on because I Like them when I'm meandering through FB. Thank you For our morning walk today, we walked down to the Carbon Market, where my wife did some shopping for vegetables etc while I did my first real photo walk. It felt good, walking around with my SLR, and just shooting like when I was doing the car shows back in Bothell WA this past summer. I'll do some editing later today and share them if I got some "keepers".

VAF (Visayas Art Fair) #2 - my plan is to post these in an arbitrary way, sort of like how I meandered through the venue. Credits to the artists... I will post these in between my other FB posts. Also, I looked at my Instagram page the other day. Pffft! Nothing there. I can't even remember the last time I looked at it. I will to try revive it with my "art" and "crafts" soon...

This year's xmas tree lighting, scheduled for last night, did not happen. They cancelled it. When I went to meet up with my wife, a torrential and windy downpour of rain had started. By the time we got back to our place, not far away, we were soaking wet :) Our umbrellas were useless. This was followed by one hell of a thunder and lightning show that I tried to photograph from our place, until I was told to close the shades because it was too scary! To be continued... If I knew what the hell I was doing, I could have just copied the video from my post from last year. I haven't seen any updates yet, but maybe they'll try again tonight. If you go to my FB page, you can see it there :)

FB Memories: On this day, 9 years ago, 1Dec2015 "Visited Mom today. She said "It's so nice to have my children visit me. Some residents only get visitors on holidays..." I told her she's lucky because she had 8 children. "8 children!? (pause) Really!?"she said. "Yes, I'm the oldest, and then there's..." We went down the list. Several times... ps - depending on schedules, it would be different combinations of bros. This one is with me and Mike.

I'm slowly increasing my walking goals now. This morning I decided to Walk to the Holiday Sale at Landers SuperStore over by Ayala. Landers is one of the two Costco like stores here in Cebu City. I figured if I left at 8:30am and kept a steady pace, maybe I could get there in time for the 9am opening. Two diversions delayed my goal arrival time: waiting at a crosswalk, a guy asked me "where are you from?" and I told him "US". We talked and walked together for a few blocks. You can see a little diversion squiggle in the second photo where we visited for a short time in front of his language school, and then went into the patio area in front of the school for more chatting...Chinese, a tour guide in Europe for mainland Chinese, who wants to get better at English for his work. He's more fluent in French than English. Anyway, when I resumed my walk, I was using my GPS and following the Directions it was giving me. It's funny how they do Not walk here!, for different reasons - it's warm, there are lots of Jeepneys and Taxis, etc. I clicked on Walking, and I wasn't taking shortcuts like I normally would when I walk. I finally figured out that the Walk portions in the Directions Map only pertained to the short change-overs between different Jeepneys. I zoomed in and instead of a little person emoji, I was a little Red Car. Haha... My MapMyWalk stats: I walked 3.03 miles, but with my socializing, and getting disoriented as the little Red Car, it took me 1 hr and 28 minutes to get there. I then did my shopping and took a taxi back home. If I had less to carry, I would have walked back home :)

Holy Moly! A shout-out and a big Thank You! to our niece here in Cebu for lending me this monitor. My eyes, my right eye in particular with it's WMD, will be working with less stress now while I'm waiting for my own monitor. I'm excited to edit and share more photos from the Arts Festival later...ps - I slide the blue folder sitting my laptop keyboard to block that screen now because the little screen is distracting. Haha

I worked in the "sub-basement" of the Suzzallo Library back in the mid 70s. Suzzallo Library is the main library on the University of Washington campus in Seattle. I was the "PL 480 Clerk". "Public Law 480, also known as the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954, is a US law that allows the president to send surplus food to other countries". In exchange for the US dollar, one of the ways those countries would repay the US was to send us back books of a “scholarly nature". That's where I came in. We had a huge collection of books from India, Pakistan, Tibet, and one other country I can't remember the name of (Nepal?), and my job was unpacking the boxes that came in every? day/week, sorting through them and recording them into a catalog of sorts. I also had a simple book loan system for students, professors, and mostly if I remember right, spouses of current students who were studying at UW. The PL 480 Clerk position was eliminated a few years later, after I left to pursue my dream of being a wood-worker. They had assigned a real Librarian to the program and moved the collection upstairs. I just thought of other memories from those years, which I will share later, but I want mention a good friend to this day whom I met when she came down to the sub-basement to help me with the PL480 program. Sujatha, thank you. Sujatha and her husband Mahinda have been friends of ours for over 50 years? To be continued... ps - Wow! I just googled Suzzallo to pull up this image, and they changed the name to "Suzzallo and Allen Libraries". Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft with Bill Gates, was the son of Kenneth Allen, the Head of UW Libraries. Paul Allen was 8 years younger than me, and I know, in hindsight, I must have seen a 9 or 10yo kid wandering around Suzzallo when I worked there.

The VAF (Visayas Art Fair) was last weekend, and it's already Friday, 5 days later. I just now took the SD card out of my camera, and I loaded 215 photos into my PC. Just another day at an Art Show (2 days actually), or a Classic Car Show, or going Island Hopping... I'm excited to look through them, but my editing will be limited until I get my new monitor. That monitor is more of a world traveler than I am. I just clicked on the "Tracking". It's here in the city next to Cebu, and still "scheduled to arrive" in 4 days. That's ok. Anyway, it's itinerary with Amazon has been the following: EINDHOVEN, NB, NL (Netherland)-ROISSY CHARLES DE GAULLE CEDEX (France)-DUBAI WORLD CENTRAL (DWC), DU, AE (Dubai)-GUANGZHOU, China (next to Hong Kong)-and Voila!: MANDAUE CITY, PH (next to Cebu). I'm pumped! I just did a "walk-through" of the 215 photos, and I think I got a bunch of "keepers". I'll probably be posting these photos for awhile, mixed in with my other posts. My main first impressions: a LOT of Excellent Artists and Craftspersons! Really good work! A lot of Mixed media, which I like, and more mixed media pieces with original photographs as their foundation/starting point. Here are a few arbitrary shots, from outside the venue and into the show. ps - I got mixed up - the above travels are not for my monitor. They're for a photo book I ordered. Oh well. Patience is a good thing.