The C-Spot: A Photography, Travel and Culture Journal

*Dedicated to my high school batchmates who have gone ahead to prepare for our ultimate reunion.* I've long been intending to write something about my high school classmates. I wanted to express my heartfelt thanks to them for some of the best moments of my life. I wanted to tell them how grateful I am for the gift of friendship they have given me, and how unbeknown to them they have contributed to the person I now am. For most of them, I can do that anytime I want to. I can do that whenever I meet with them in small unplanned reunions, in big organized school homecomings and yes, during coordinated and deliberate projects such as medical missions and the like. After all, they are just a phone call, an email, or a text message away. After all, they are still with me in the world of the living. But there are those who have gone ahead to the final homecoming. Some in the prime of their youth, others in the peak of their adulthood. They are those I wish to give tribute to...

Rating: ★★★★★ Category: Books Genre: Nonfiction Author: F. William Engdahl In Abraham Maslow's classic work on human psychology, The Theory of Human Motivation, he argues that in man's hierarchy of needs, food is the foremost of all human needs and must therefore be first to be satisfied. As such, it, too, is the most basic of all motivations without which all other needs are irrelevant including life itself. So when you learn that there's a careful, deliberate and strategic plan to control food supply by a group of elite individuals with the resources, the technology and the brain trust of the most brilliant individuals to actually draw-up and execute such a plan with the ultimate goal of world domination, how do you react? You'll probably think that that is not possible and may only happen in the world of Hollywood. But author and researcher F. William Engdahl says that indeed this is not just a possibility but already a reality. And as a matter of fact, it is not jus...

In 1939 Europe rumors of war was flying thick and fast. And Adolf Hitler was planning to invade Poland. But thousands of miles away, in that little known place on earth called the Far East, in a country named after a European King, war was farthest from the people's mind. Romance was in the air as the romantic pairing of two screen giants, Fernando Poe, Sr. and Mila del Sol, was being shown in the silver screen in a movie titled "Giliw Ko" in the Philippine capital city of Manila. At about the same time, a similar romantic fever was spreading wildly in the US with the release of what would prove to be one of the greatest movies of all time - "Gone With The Wind." And in a small rural town of Libmanan, in the diocese of Camarines Sur, a cute and adorable boy was born to simple folks, the couple Conching and Pabling. Their first born. Some people say that the first born is a product of pure love. Soon to be named Edgardo Salvador, this little darling was indeed ...

This is an image of typhoon tracks from 1980 to 2005 or a period of 25 years (photo from wikimedia). NOTE: Please click on the image to view large format (available only for 30 days and counting...) . If you are familiar with the southeast asian geography, you probably know that right in the densest part of the storm tracks is where the Philippine archipelago is (indistinguishable and literally obliterated from view due to the blue lines that mark the tracts of possibly hundreds of typhoons during the two and a half decade time-frame). And if you're familiar as well with Philippine geography, you'll probably know that right smack in the middle of that storm corridor is the Bicol Region and as such, it is probably the most typhoon-battered/ravaged region in the entire Philippine archipelago. So to me, a Bicolano, personal sa akin ang bagyo. But I don't mean it in a negative way. It's just that typhoons have been a part of many of the events and moments in my life, both...

Above is a photo of Pablo Irigo's class in the mining town of Paracale,  Camarines Norte, his first teaching assignment. (Pablo is that stern-looking and very serious guy seated in middle). ***There were many things I wanted to say about my father, inspite of the fact that he lived a very short life of 58 years. Shorter still was the time he and I spent with each other since after highschool, I was off to Manila for college. Save for a few instances during the summer and semestral breaks I really didn't interact much with him, concerned more as I was with my own self-indulgent habits with myself and my barkada. Yet, there's a lot to say about him. Not because I can talk a lot per sé but because there's really a  lot to tell about him, his work, his bike, his violin, his patience, his calm disposition, how he is as a father, etc. And certainly one blog would not be enough to tell all the stories. So what f...

( Please click on the image to enlarge ) Above is a tabulation of some statistics I thought would provide some additional information and put some perspective on the current rice "crisis" of sorts that our country is experiencing. These data were either based on 2006 or 2007 reports of the two cited sources. As can be gleaned, it shows that the Philippines lag behind Thailand and Vietnam in terms of riceland, irrigated rice area and over-all arable land. But it is the highest in terms of population and population growth rate. It is interesting to note that in terms of yield per hectare or volume of rice produced per hectare, the Philippines perform better than Thailand (clearly debunking the myth that Thailand produces more even if they just learned rice production from us). (NOTE: These data do not exist in a vacuum. They may be directly influenced by other socio-political factors such as policy or implementation issues, that are not readily apparent in th...