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.

It was gray and a little misty this morning, so I did the stairs up and down in our building and one loop around the block. My Walk app tells me that I still got in 1.3 miles in a 27 minute walk. We're on the 16th Floor, and floors 10 up have 15' ceilings (they have lofts). That means 4 flights of 8 steps each from the 10th floor up to 26 or something where the P and LP floors are. I've never been up there, and I tell myself that's where the rich people live :) Floors 9 down are 2 flights of 12 steps each. When I get down to the 2nd floor, I usually walk loops around the Floor #2 and Lobby areas, and then maybe outside depending on the weather. Outside I went today. The misty rain was nothing for a Northwesterner like me, and it felt good on my arms. And of course, it was cooler.

28Nov2024 Thu 7:12am - We just returned from our morning walk, and I'm sitting here with my 2nd cup of coffee, and some small slices of thick coconut meat...And some cold coconut water that we refrigerated. Inday is a "regular" now with one of the vendors who brings his cart by here every morning.

I’m going to try something new here. I’m going to dictate my walk this morning with the Mic thing. And post it the same day/morning. Inday and I will be doing solo walks like this occasionally. It was a good walk - 3.14 miles and 51 minutes according to my MapMyWalk app. Anyway, I walked up Jones from our place, turned Left down Rodriguez all the way over to the road that goes up to Guadalupe. I went the other way, towards downtown. I’m gonna have to look at my app later and see what the name of that road is. I walked all the way down to the first major intersection where I could turn left (or East??) - I have to get a compass! Looking on the phone when I’m wanting to walk without stopping is a pain. I walked over towards Jones and I finally figured out where I was when I saw the ACT building which is down sort of near the Carbon Market area. I then turned Left on Jones Avenue. The City Central Elementary School is at that intersection. I passed the police station that we go by on our 30 minute loop walks from our place. All in all, a wonderful walk! I keep telling myself that I might live longer if I keep walking like this… ps - tomorrow I’ll share some of the many images I saw with internal eyes camera 😄 I keep telling myself that “I will resume my photo walks tomorrow"...

I took this photo of Cebu City from the SM Seaside Mall during our last stay here in Cebu. I posted photos of both this mall, and the SM City Mall 5 days ago. I love the clouds here, and many other things...

The copper orange colors here seem a little bit exaggerated?, but on some days with the low angle of a Winter morning sun, they're real. These shots show the road leading from our house in Tukwila and over to the Green River Trail by the Community Center - 25Nov2018

**from 10 years ago, 24Nov2014: "I went out back yesterday to photograph our bridge, which was uprooted the night before. The power of nature and water. I got distracted by the water patterns in the creek..." **Today - One thing I loved about our little house in Tukwila WA was the little creek that ran through our back yard. We moved into that house one week before Nathan was born, and Nate is 28 years old now. We moved to Bothell to be closer to our daughter Andrea and her identical twin granddaughters when they were toddlers, and Nate was long gone to live in Japan. He left for Japan not long after he graduated from college, and the twins are 7yo now, so that means how many years?...I've never been good at Math :)

25Nov2024 Mon 8:13am - I forgot to open my MapMyWalk app this morning, and my goal of doing a little spreadsheet with route maps etc will now have some empty spaces. Oh well. We walked up Jones (Osmena Blvd) towards the Capitol, crossed there, and walked up the road bordering the Capitol buildings on the left side (West? side - I have to open my compass app and finally get my bearings) We cut Right along a quiet road behind the Capitol and meandered through a neighborhood until we started climbing a hill. We were at the half hour mark at that point and decided to turn back. The highlight for me was the 6 or 7 roosters tethered outside along the roadway along that hill. They were doing their rooster Cock A Doodle Doos or whatever, and full throated with gusto! I'm not sure if they were competing with each other, saying good morning, or what. I Liked it! Our walk ended up lasting 55 minutes, and I have no idea about the distance, steps and all that stuff because I forgot to turn on my MapMyWalk app :)

Here are a few images from the Visayas Art Fair (VAF) 2024 yesterday. I finally gave up on my old large monitor (it won, I lost), so I edited these with my 13" laptop screen. My bad right eye limits these sessions, but I remain a happy camper. Life is good, and I'm going to be back at the VAF when it opens at 9am tomorrow. The first painting was a collaboration of 4 different artists including the original photograph over which other artists worked the piece. A young man walked over and told he did the clouds, which led to a discussion about his other paintings on display. The last two photos were done by an artist using puzzle pieces. ps - I'm always pleased when I see a large red dot next to the piece's nameplate in a gallery or show. The 2nd painting. Sold! All artists and crafts persons like to see Art being sold.

I'm looking forward to the new monitor I ordered from Amazon. Yes, Amazon, shipped to the Philippines, and with Free Shipping because the exact one I wanted included Free Shipping! The only problem is that it takes longer to get here. Duh... But you know what they say here, or some people do - "why hurry?" Andrea told me they say "Tico Time" for the same thing in Costa Rica. Right now, I have my 13" laptop open and I look back and forth between the larger Old monitor and my laptop screen when the monitor gets tired and starts blacking out. I feel like a bobble head.

We went to the first day of the "Visayas Art Fair 2024" today. The Fair goes through Sunday, and I will return tomorrow or Sunday. It seemed like there were more artists and crafts persons than the fair I attended in 2021, more from Manila and even other SE Asian countries. Overall, there was a lot of wonderful, good Art, and I loved talking with the artists, many young, and even some older ones like me. There was a British guy I hope to see again who's home base is in Cebu. He does these amazing pieces with large prints on special paper of his own photographs. He then works with water colors, etc over the original and makes them even more alive. I'll take a photo or two when I go back, and share it here. I took a bunch of photos today, but I haven't looked through them yet. The following is the FB page of one of the artists:

A little show'n tell: re my post about our Mall excursion, I've been looking forward to visiting one of the Kultura Filipina stores here since our arrival. They always have a variety of shapes and sizes of plates and trays made out of Monkeypod (Acacia) wood: cured, sealed with whatever so they're safe for serving food, etc. And perfect for me and my xacto knives and carving tools. My supply was dwindling in Bothell when I was carving the 4 pieces from fragments left over from larger pieces. I like to carve wood when my eyes get tired from other activities. Not the best photos, but the large round piece (12") was from last year I think, and the rectangle tray was something I started just before leaving Bothell. The three plates I purchased yesterday are 10" in diameter, and they were p349 (pesos) each, $5.92 each in US. A little pricey I guess, but nice grains and perfect for what I want to do right now. "Visit Kultura Filipino stores across the Philippines and immerse yourself in the beauty of Filipino culture." I'm hoping to network over time and find some other sources.

It's been 2 weeks now, and we went on our 1st big mall excursion today. The Malls here are special because of what malls offer everywhere, but being in a tropical country, the AC is a big draw! We went across the city to SM City Mall, which is the oldest large Mall in Cebu City proper. Opening in 1993, it has around 2,906,256 sq feet (270,000 sq meters) with over 500 shops and stores. It's the 8th largest mall in the Philippines. Compare that to the Westfield Southcenter Mall in Tukwila WA with it's 1,682,961 sq ft (156,352.2 m). The newer (2015) SM Seaside City Mall, by the seashore SW of the city proper, has 470,486 sq m, a whopping 5,064,269 sf! Seaside is the 4th largest mall in the Philippines. A lot of numbers I know, but I wanted to illustrate how big these places are. We always get lost when we're trying to find a specific store or shop. You have to have a game plan, take photos with your phone, and take notes like "it was near the huge xmas tree by the such and such store where you turn left and..."

I wrote about our morning walk to the Carbon Market on Saturday and how it reminded me of the Pike Place Market in Seattle. These images were in my FB Memories this morning, from an early morning, foggy walk 7 years ago, 19Nov2017:

My MapMyWalk app tells me that we walked a little under 2 1/2 miles this morning, in 58 minutes, but that included some short stops at local Carinderias. "A carinderia is a common type of eatery in the Philippines that serves affordable and locally-inspired dishes." They have freshly made, home cooked mostly, pots of Good food...at a price a lot less than what you would pay at a traditional restaurant. We also stopped to take photos of shops we hadn't seen before. We try to vary our different walking routes. Like I wrote recently - a feast for the eyes... The highlight today for me was finding ourselves walking through a labyrinth of meandering walkways and paths at one point. It reminded me of a film with the Filipino actress Cherry Pie Picache we saw at a film festival in Seattle, at the little Harvard Exit theatre. Back in the late 90s or early 2000s. ps - I just remembered. We met Ms Picache's sister there. She was living in Seattle then. It was fun visiting with her a little after the movie showing.

I saw my first moonset the other morning. Cebu City has been shrouded in a haze recently, and morning clouds have been hiding it. The paper said the haze "may have come from the continued degassing of nearby Mt. Kanlaon in Negros Island". I clicked off a few photos with my cell phone when I first noticed the white/orange orb. The pipes and wires in the 2nd photo are on top of the bank next door. It sort of reminds me of the rigging on a ship, but it's a telecommunications pole that was mangled by Typhoon Odette 3 years ago. While the clouds didn't give me much of a moon shot, the pinkish orange light from the later sunrise was nice.

Our walk Saturday morning took us to the Carbon Market (pronounced car-bone) down by the waterfront. It took over 30 minutes to get there. That's our average RT walk time, but what a treat! The colors, the people, the smells, the fruits and vegetables, everything...we got some fresh coconut, some small sweet potatoes, 3 guava, some papaya, and several other things. A full backpack and several bags later, we hopped on one of the Jeepneys going through the market and headed back up to our place. That was my first regular Jeepney ride since our return, and I only bumped my head once as I did my crouched duck walk in to sit down :) Carbon Market is old, but not as old as Cebu. It reminds me of Seattle's Pike Place Market. They're both over 100 years old. Cebu City is the oldest city in the Philippines. Magellan, the Spanish explorer, is credited with discovering the Philippines in March, 1521. That was one month before he was killed by Mactan Island warriors led by their chief Lapulapu. Mactan Island is the island next to Cebu , and it's where the airport and a bunch of resorts, etc are located.

"It's like those little cars in the circus. This tiny red car comes out, hardly big enough for a midget, and it putters around, and suddenly its doors open and out come a thousand clowns, whooping and hollering and raising hell." I thought of this line from Herb Gardner's "A Thousand Clowns" when I read the paper this morning - more announcements of prospective Cabinet nominees...

a Fall walk in Kirkland WA, 5 years ago on this date, 14Nov2019, after some overnight winds...

It's cooler in the mornings when we go on our walk, 80° today. Yep, it's warm/hot, but my body likes it. They talk about how it used to be a Dry Season, and a Wet Season here, but now it's sort of mix of everything throughout the year? March-April-May are still nice though, and the best times for island hopping, etc... It's around 5pm in Seattle right now, and 51°. I do Not miss my early mornings walks in Bothell in 40° dark.

17Jun2018...there was a line of these trees along the Green River near our place in Tukwila WA. I loved the subtle changes in color during the Fall months.