22/03/2009
My recent run in with the military has resulted in a concern from people both in Canada and here in the Philippines. Even the NGO peeps I work with that deal with this sort of situation all the time have been asking whether I’m ok, whether I was afraid. People have even gone to call me brave. Very strange.
07/03/2009
I lived here in 2001 with my family. The simple house of corregated iron, plywood, and cinderblock was by active traintracks.
I’ve been in the Philippines a few days now with the Kilusan Collective and I am lost in a sea of conflicting thoughts, much of it stemming from an inner debate as to my responsibilities as a balikbayan [returning Filipino living abroad] and my purpose in this project.
01/09/2008
Family members of the people who are thought to have been taken by government agents.
Have you ever worked in an environment where you had to worry about being followed? Of having your phone tapped? Or that maybe, during a dark and stormy night, not make it home? There was a time that thought passed through my mind—and I wasn’t necessarily overreacting. (more…)
13/08/2008
***To take a bit of a break from some of the heavier subject matter I’ve been posting, here’s an old travel story from my very first trip back to the Phils in 2001. It’s an email I wrote my friends. I was less than a month into that Asian trip, a trip that would last almost 2.5 years. I read this and I remember a younger me…
* * * * *
Monday June 11, 2001
I have come to realize that the psychological aftertaste of testicle lingers far longer than the actual physical flavour… but I am getting ahead of myself. Please let me restart from the beginning of the story. (more…)
28/01/2008
For a change of pace in terms of my blog entries lately here’s a “lighter” photo from the mountain villages near Zamboanga del Norte.
20/01/2008
A self-portrait waiting for my flight back to Toronto in Detroit In't Airport.
So I flew back on the 20th. In the past I would have called this leg the “homecoming,” these days I’m no longer so sure where ‘home’ is. (more…)
18/01/2008
This was a particularly interesting Friday. Myk and JR, Fils (and KPCer’s) from Toronto, and some foriegners that were volunteering in Manila were interested in visiting some urban poor areas to see how a vast number of their fellow Filipinos lived.
09/01/2008
![one of the countless numbers of Jesi paraded around the festival. Like last year there were a few deaths from heart attacks resulting from the crush of over two million devotees.]](http://i2.photoblog.com/photos4/46209-1201270859-4-l.jpg)
These pics are from 9 Jan 08, the Quiapo Fiesta in Manila. They are mostly family photos from my maternal side. (more…)
30/12/2007
A self-portrait: I'm off to the 7.5km artificial landmass that's the result of 16 years of dumping. The causeway is made up of toxic mine tailings (a mix that includes dangerous levels of arsenic, lead, and mercury). The causeway used to be 9kms long, the tide has been slowly eroding it into the ocean. Of course this has resulted in the death of the corals and most life in this bay. What's left are caught and eaten by fishers and their families, resulting in health problems (the father and son behind me included).
I spent my Xmas on the island of Marinduque. This is where a Canadian mining company had two “accidental” spills of toxic mine tailings into two different rivers, and purposefully dumped 200 metric tonnes of the stuff right into the bay at surface level.
24/10/2008
The Stink of Travel
Posted by alexfelipe under Balikbayan Stories, Commentary, World | Tags: backpacking, farmers, indonesia, java, peasants, semarang, travel, travellers, treeplanting, western privilege, yogyakarta |1 Comment
*** This is another old piece of writing from my big Asia wander way back in 2001-2003. I was working as an ESL school in Yogya, Indonesia at the time I wrote this. I was a kid just out of school looking for something that I couldn’t properly articulate, and thus couldn’t grasp. It was on this 2.5 year wander that I eventually picked up a camera for the first time.***
Monday 17 December, 2002
The girl who sat next to me on the bus to Semarang had the aura of one that worked in the fields of Java. It was not the way she dressed, nor anything else she carried that gave me that impression. It was her smell. (more…)