Foot and Fire

Red Tide: A tragedy waiting to happen to humans by feeding the whale sharks* In Oslob, Cebu, Philippines, the sun rises where the sky and the sea meet. Meanwhile, along with the sun, tourists and fisherfolks-turned-tourist-boatmen rise early too to have their meet-and-greet with the whale sharks and have underwater selfies with them. In this otherwise quiet town, the whale sharks, locally called butanding, pass by every morning, and their arrival causes the chaos mix of business opportunity and holiday pleasure. The typical day starts with tourists lining up for registration and waiting for the short orientation on the do’s and don’ts like no touching of the whale shark as it is locally penalized and no use of sunblock. Then this is followed by the business pitch of unlimited taking of photos under the sea for the group. On top of the rent for the underwater camera, one can pay for the picture only or bring home everything in the memory card. The bragging right of having ...

I churned out an article for Asian Scientist Writing Prize in two nights of September 2019 and upon checking out the article today after I decided to put it on my blog, I realized that I blundered big time by messing up the geography (I won't elaborate! I'm so embarrassed big time). Of course, minus that, I am proud of what I did because the prize awaken the need for me to put the topic into writing. Though I can't join the ceremony on 4 December 2019 (I have an invitation!), I am happy to support the efforts of Asian Scientist Magazine by publishing the article I sent to Prize in my blog. The birth of the magazine is in itself a remarkable journey for the editor/publisher Juliana Chan. So this is my way of sending her my admiration and super boost. Here's the link to my paper.

  Last week, I had the opportunity to experience the Technolympics, an olympic involving technical and vocational skills such as bread and pastry, flower arrangement, table napkin folding, food preservation and food processing among others. I was invited to act as judge in the Bread and Pastry wherein five schools participated to make dinner rolls, swiss rolls and petit fours in three hours, including cleaning up of their stations as well as packaging and plating of their outputs.    This year's theme is "Authentic Filipino talents and skills breaking the barriers for inclusive education." My take on this theme is that, all kinds of learning should be embraced because life is not all about technology or inventions or literature or research or singing and dancing alone but also about perfecting the skills necessary for everyday living like cooking, mixing drinks, welding, automotive and everything under the sun. War is always placed in the books as the hist...

  Gordon Ramsay's Playing with Fire Harper and Collins 2007 hardbound, 296 pages I followed the earlier seasons of Masterchef US and there I got to know the hyper and fast-mouth Gordon Ramsay. Though he swears (Swearing is a turn-off for me), I seem to agree with him in his reactions over food mishaps in the kitchen. Though his sentences are peppered with swearing in the adult contest, he is adorable in the Masterchef Junior. He's endearing actually but I'm sure he's an obsessive personality when it comes to his craft. So when I saw his first autobio called Humble Pie , I grabbed it. There, I understood him, his history, his motivation and I came to appreciate him in traversing his journey in life as a chef, as a son, as a brother.