meaning in the moving design

Most of the time, I don't quite mind being a total shit talker. I find my shit talking kind of endearing, honestly, and I dare say others do too. (Zis is true, yes... You simply cannot resist zee charm of my sweet sweet sheet-laden words, mwahaha....)
But there are times when I get totally fed up with myself, feel shamed by my own impotence to action, feel the need to rise from the slovenly pile of utter laziness and, well, fucking DO SOMETHING.
... And then I notice my shoelace is undone or something and the thought passes and I go on with my life.
Sigh.
I'm sitting here, beating my head to the floor, because I remember a great idea that I had, oh, a year ago, that I haven't acted on. Thanks to the fine, edumacated folks at The Phrontistery, I hold in my possession a giant list of manias, and a headful of ideas on how to visually or aurally reproduce them.

The idea was to spread the list far and wide, and get different painters, writers, photographers, musicians, filmmakers, mimers, interpretive dancers, balloon animal..ists, and competitive Scrabble champions to freely interpret a mania of their choosing in a work of art.

Here are a few choice examples:

phytomania obsession with collecting plants

hagiomania mania for sainthood

micromania pathological self-deprecation or belief that one is very small

thanatomania belief that one has been affected by death magic, and resulting illness

Now, you can see how this has the potential to be really funny, poetic, serious, interesting, and above all, just fun. But alas, I am but a lazy sap... and unfortunately, the 5 other people I sent the list to were also lazy saps, and so the Mania! Mania! Mania! Project just fizzled out. Well, actually, of the aforementioned saps, there were only 4 saps. I have one friend that laughs down laziness with a lumberjack's roar, and upon emailing him my idea, I got an mp3 of a fully finished original Mania! song in 3 days. Godd Bless you, Simon!

So this is a humble bow n kowtow to the unlazy among us. It aims to inspire.
Now, go forth and do stuff! ANYTHING! (but if it happens to be mania-related, do get in touch)

zoomania - insane fondness for animals

entirecities.ca

After almost 11 hours in transit*, I expected more from El Nido. More... or less, actually. With the end-to-end line of beachfront cottages and seaside restaurants, the barrage of signs advertising tours, and the string of Internet cafes every 100m, Nido is a lot more developed than I'd expected. I felt like I was on Any-Island, Thailand; time and that every persistant promise of profit had turned Jacques Cousteau's Last Frontier into just another backpacker haunt. After I had walked one length of town, I was almost ready to hop on the next bus and go right back to Sabang... but the draw of the beach and the islands won out.

There are at least a dozen tour operators in town, the biggest of which is the Art Cafe, which initially, I'm told, held a bit of a monopoly on tours, though business is beginning to fan out through the island. Unfortunately, everyone in town has followed the Art Cafe's lead and adopted the same utterly unimaginative names: Tour A, B, or C. Each tour consists of a group of islands, and while the list varies from operator to operator, there is a lot of overlap. So, travellers are forced into these assanine conversations about their daily activities, like
"What did you do today?"
"I went on Tour A..."
and so forth.

This is the cynical traveller in me, though, because when you get right down to it, northern Palawan is beautiful. The charm of Nido lies outside Nido, amongst the outlying islands that make up the Bacuit Archipelago. On a clear day, it's pure eye candy- turquoise water spotted with towering limestone cliffs jutting up from remote junglified islands... it's where the bush meets the ocean. The beaches and lagoons up here are incredible, and if you paddle far enough away, you can even feel a bit of that lost Brooke Shields magic... So yes, it's a bit of regimented fun, but in the end, it's just fun. So I stuffed my internal cynic under the bed, took a deep breath and just... enjoyed it. Tour A, B, and Ced it. Kayaked out to a deserted beach. Rented a motorbike for a day and outran a storm. Didn't think- just enjoyed.

Almost every morning, I ate breakfast at the small roadside canteen next to the police station, run by a sweet toothless lady named Lucy. Cheap and tasty (the food, not Lucy). My favourite was her eggy eggplant- a long skinny eggplant cut lengthwise and dipped in egg- ingeniously simple and oh so yummy! (Lucy will even shoot whiskey with you at 9 in the morning, if you're into that sort of thing.) You could easily save loads of money eating from these canteens, which are about a third of the price of the restaurants along the beach.

If you are going to splurge, go to The Alternative. The food can be hit and miss (their banana leaf curry and desserts are reeeaally good, though) but the atmosphere rocks. By far the best seats in the house are the pods that jut out over the ocean, cushioned with bean bags and designed for putting your feet up- for a long time.
As I was eating, a mini posse of boys gathered beneath my pod, all armed with fishing lines wrapped around a Pert Plus bottle in one hand, and a handful of bread in the other. First they threw the bread out, and as the fish swarmed around, they flung they fishing lines out, hoping to drag their hook along the water and magically ensnare a fish. There was lots of excitable discussion about this, presumably criticisms on Boy A's throwing technique, or Boy B's angling and what not, but the boys seemed quite jovial and brotherly in their collective confusion. No one caught any damn fish, in any case.
Amidst all this excitement, one boy climbed up the leg of my pod, poked his head through a slat and said "hello." I smiled and 'hello"ed him back. Seemingly satisfied with this response, he climbed back down and rejoined the fishing experiment. After a short while, a waitress came over and shut off my TV by shooing the boys away.

If you are going to Nido and have company, here's what I'd suggest:
Strand yourself on a deserted island, Robinson Crusoe/Tom Hanks style.
It's what I'd hoped to do, only I was rained out on the two days I'd set aside for such an adventure. The boys at Sea Slugs, however, offered me a killer deal- P350 for boat transfer, cooking gear.. and a cook. That's right, they'll stay the night with you, if you want. Or not. Oh, and incidentally, P350 is cheaper than most accommodations in Nido. Except, instead of bad Western food and a crappy room, you get a deserted island, a campfire, a seafood dinner, and a night under the stars. Pretty sweet, no? Yeah.. it would've been.

But... onwards.

I didn't spend much time in Puerto, but here's my two cents anyway:

I'll be going back to the Philippines for one last trip in April, this time for the full 21 days of the visa. No time limit, wee! My co-workers here in Taiwan totally don't understand me. They keep saying "Philippines again??" Fact is, the thousands of islands of the Philippines are so spread out, and each island so distinct in culture, that I could easily come back dozens of times and still not get the feel of the country. But I guess I could say that about a lot of countries I've been to...

*Boring transit details- I took the bus from Sabang to Salvacion, where I had to wait another 2.5 hours for the Nido bus. The bus is a real bus and the road is fine- don't listen to the wingy English travelers that tell you otherwise. I chose not to take the boat because 8 hours on the road is much more manageable than 8 hours on a boat, in my opinion. Plus, the bus was 1/4 the price.

Other Useful Bits
El Nido
Room: P400 Single (El Nido Plaza Inn- don't stay here unless you can lull yourself to sleep with the sound of cocks crowing from 3am till morning), P300 Shared (Tandikan Cottages)
Food: P50-P250
Island-hopping: P600-P700 (includes massive lunch)
Survivor styles: P350 (tent, cooking gear, boat transport and optional guy; food separate)
Bus to PP: P350

Puerto Princessa
San Jose Terminal to town: P40-50
Room: P500, single (Amelia Pensione)
Food: a splurageous amount, Ka Lui (pretty damn good... but all the restaurants in that are looked good, so take your pick)

Has anyone else had a "metatech" moment? Basically, situations where you are interfacing with one type of technology in order to interface with another one? I've had 2 such moments in the past month or two... And maybe it's because I'm a Luddite and refuse to get on Facebook, but these moments are really novel and amusing to me.

In one, I was on video Skype with a friend, and she received a cell phone call from her sister, who is also a close friend. So my friend answers the phone, puts it on speaker and says "I'm Skyping with Anita!" and thrusts the phone towards the screen. So now I'm staring at a cell phone and talking to my friend VIA Skype VIA a cell phone. Weirdo meta-technologimacal moment that is...*

The second incident was hilarious to experience, but possibly a "you had to be there" kinda moment. My friend and I had arranged a phone date and he, being all Skype superior, wanted to do it through Google Talk. So... this is the chat of us figuring out our Internet VOIP phone call.


It was especially hilarious to me because we were using chat to communicate about not being able to communicate. Which I suppose beats dead silence. But oh, the world we live in.

So, is it just me, or does this kind of thing happen to everyone? Or does it happen so often that we don't even notice? Or was this already a topic on Facebook and sooo last year?** I'm really curious to know if other people experience this... like we've evolved from walkmans to ipods, and from mirror illusions to meta-interfacing. There's something about it that really reminds me of a Beckett play. Maybe "metatech" isn't even the word I'm looking for, maybe it's "Becketttech"

Anyway, if you've got a story, do share.

*The only thing funnier would've been if it was a video phone, and I could see my friend VIA Skype VIA a cell phone. Or if, say, in the background of this video phone, there was a screen... with another friend on video Skype.... and so forth. Guffah, that'd be cool.

**Sorry, been getting more Facebook taunting lately. Listen, I'll join when everyone stops telling me to join, now fuck off. Final answer.

Jacques Cousteau once called Palawan, "The Last Refuge," a pristine island of lush rainforest, towering green-tinged limestone cliffs, and countless deserted islands and undiscovered beaches. And while Palawan does indeed have all of the above, Cousteau's vision of a remote and unspoiled island off the beaten track is well, so 10 years ago.

It started promisingly enough. My first stop was Sabang. After a strenuous week of deadlines and mad overtime, I left Taipei on a Saturday, but still had to endure two transit days (one night in Manila and one full day getting to the West coast of Palawan) before there was any fun to be had. After the bustle of planes, taxis, more planes, and one rollicking jeepney ride that left me looking the colour of dust, arriving in Sabang felt a lot like coming out of a banging club and witnessing the eerie silence of morning.

Sabang is a small, coastal town fringed with mountains and rainforest, and a famous nearby river that runs emerald green. It's literally the end of the road, and totally feels like it. Despite quite a bit of evidence of tourism (most notably felt in the price of food), the town has managed to stay pretty low key, endearingly awkward with a pinch rustic charm.

I stayed at the far end of the beach (left, if facing the water) at a place called Alpuerto Escapade. If there were an invisible set of train tracks dividing Sabang, I would say I was on "the wrong side of town." To the right lay uniform huts on manicured grounds and resort attendants busily attending to tourists. To the left, town- where the people of Sabang lived. In the center sat a cluster of restaurants, the Sabang visitor center and the town pier. Sabang reminded me of other places I had visited in Asia that were just beginning to recognize the draw of tourism and trying to perfect the formula, the one that's turned Thailand into something of a McDonald's version of backpacking. The way Sabang is laid out, I'd say they're about halfway there...

It wasn't that I chose or didn't choose to stay where I stayed. I was actually looking for a room at Blue Bamboo, but they were full (or at least that's what I was told) so I was shooed off to the place next door. I ended up with a cute little seaside nipa hut on stilts. And by seaside, I mean that when the tide came up, I was a little nervous. Interestingly, the sea-facing side of the hut was... how shall we say.. "open concept." There was no wall, per say. Just a few wooden slats going across, and no shutters or windows to keep anything out. The nice part was that I didn't need a fan, the ocean breeze kept the room extremely cool through the night. The downside was that it rained, so the ocean breeze became a bit of an ocean gale. I thought the shower curtain in the room was there as a safe refuge from peeping toms, but apparently it had more practical uses. Nothing like a little ocean spray in your sleep to keep you young! It was pretty amusing, actually.

The next morning, I took to the trail, towards Sabang's famed Underground River. If you go to the river (and chances are, you are only in Sabang because you plan to go) DO NOT miss the trails. The peace of the rainforest, the wild monkeys, and the sound of birds and cicadas made the hike one of the highlights of my trip.

I paired up with a Finnish girl, and we did the Jungle Trail there and the Monkey Trail back. Both trails consisted of wooden or stone blocks framed by a confused tangle of vines and roots, with a few short sections up and down proper wooden staircases. The Jungle Trail (going towards the river) was a super gentle hike, capped off with a brief uphill scramble up a rocky forested hill. I really liked doing this trail to get to the river, but the downside is that the Monkey Trail can be a little difficult coming back. Come high tide, the beach disappears, so we were forced to do some innovative rock climbing. At an incredibly chill pace with plenty of stops for pictures and monkey watching, it took about 2 hours each way. If you are going to cheat, I would recommend taking the Jungle Trail there and catching the boat back. But don't cheat, it's beautiful both ways. Both trails were very well marked and blissfully empty. In fact, we didn't see anyone until we got to the Underground River and encountered the hoards of people waiting for the boat to take them back.

I was almost going to conclude this post without saying anything about the Underground River. Here's my two-cents: Yeah, it was cool.

Here are a few pics.





My only regret about Sabang is that I didn't stay longer. The rainforest in the area and the mountains nearby would've made for an incredible trek. The river falls under the auspice of St. Paul's Subterranean River National Park, and I'm sure guides are available to take you out to some of the more unexplored terrain in the area. Don't do what I did and rush out to El Nido. Trust me, Nido can wait.

The Useful Bits
Room: Alpuerto Escapade, P300
Food: Avg P150 (Go to Dab Dab's for their Fish Curry mmmmm!!)
Jeepney from Puerto: P150
Underground River: P200, more for boat transport; trails are free

*Apologies for writing like I actually have a captive audience... just thought it might sound better.