Why vampires in the Philippines are women? (How to kill em) 1

I wonder why fetus-eating vampires or manananggals  in Philippine myth are mostly women. They are portrayed as beautiful women that split their bodies in half , the lower and the upper part. Before the transformation...errr...rather, their mutilation, they go to banana patches to hide their lower extremities after which the upper body, propelled by bat wings, flies off in search of victims especially fetuses and defenseless children and once in a while adult women and men. It is difficult or almost impossible to kill manananggals in flight because, well, they are airborne and bamboo spears and bolos are useless against them unless they are caught off guard feeding which is almost impossible because they have bat sense of some sort that warn them of danger. Maybe a 50 caliber or 88 mm flak canon could kill them in the air ; but , then again, these are mythical creatures and they are way beyond science and technology.

This is the picture that caused a panic in Pozorrubio, Pangasinan. The folks there formed an anti manananggal-posse armed with bamboo spears, bolos and garlic. They roam around  at night to defend the village against the manananggal. One unlucky dog spotted under a truck, which I figured was a cross between an askal and a golden retriver hence it's size,  was thought to be a weredog and was almost killed by the men. The police had to intervene lest the suspicion turned on to people and who knows what could happen next. Irrational fear could make these people do irrational things like killing a neighbor suspected of being a mananggal or burning down the house of someone accused of being a shape-shifting aswang. Hmmm...I suggest the government educate rural villages about photoshop or photo editing to inform the folks that pictures can be manipulated.

Manananggals have one known weakness, their defenseless lower body. To kill them, it is necessary to find the lower body which according to folk myth are usually hidden in banana patches or in a forested area  (for urban manananggal, in a closet) well away from people. Once the lower part is found, it is killed by pouring holy water or putting salt, garlic, or much better would be to combine them all in a cocktail or soup of some sort (well, according to myth, anyone of these things could do the trick but one has to be on the side of caution, it is better to safe than sorry) pour it on the exposed innards and then hide and prepare to defend yourself because the manananggals would come back to check their lower body to find out why they're having phantom stomach ache.

Destroying the lower body of manananggals do not kill them instantly it only kills half of them, so, the other half, the torso with the arms and the head still survive for a period of time; the upper will eventually die either of hunger, infection, constipation, no bowel movement, full bladder....things that happen when one loses the small intestine, the urinary something and the anus. Once the lower body is destroyed,  best thing to do is to hide and wait for the upper to die naturally or to wait for sunlight to kill it. It would be futile to fight it out with raving-mad-angry manananggal who found out that her lower body was dead. Manananggals  are allergic to sunlight, like most night vermins and it naturally kills them.

Well, anyway...this getting too long. Haven't answered the question...another post.

Who am I?

I read my nephews post asking this question: who am I?  A question I have asked myself to which I identify with my nephew.

While reading, I hear in my mind's ear the song now being sung during drinking sessions "Who am I?" (sounds like Creed to me) by casting Crowns. Lately, I have been hearing these "Christian" and Hellsong errr...I mean Hillsong praise and worship music being sung during drinking sessions and this gives me that strange feeling, a cross between shouting blasphemy while saying praise God for the bums and the alcoholics are being reached out! But depends on which side of the planet one is on, as for me, who cares! 

Maybe this and maybe that, but I don't know if the Holy Spirit of God can work side by side with the spririt and spiritum of San Miguel Beer and Gin to bring about repentance and salvation. But just the same, maybe in their hour of hang overs, head aches, expiration (of the alcohol and what have you's effect) and flash backs these people may come to the realization of the lyrics that they were singing and in that hour of vulnerability the Holy Ghost could do his works...who knows. 

But they may simply be singing because they like the melody and the guitar riffs, the basslines, and the drum rolls and none of that spiritual blah, blah,blah...

                                                            Who am I? (Casting Crowns)

                            

      When I first heard this song, I thought this was a Creed song. Good song and I understood why it became popular: the lyrics and the style.

How many times have I heard, the most popular of which was Rick Warren's "Purpose Driven Life", that who we are is that we are God's children and that our purpose is to worship, serve, surrender--our existence is grounded upon God, the ground of our being  (Tillich), the fact from which all facts arises (from CS Lewis and I don't like the way it sounds) and that our existence is not an accident, blah, blah, blah...words that could inspire confidence and to some may prove the final answer to the question of existence: the Bible drama, so to speak.

But it would be dishonest to say that this is not the case for many who asks about the existential-ontological question and for some this answer maybe or is worse than saying our existence is an accident because the God-answer smacks of determinism and helplessness in the face of planned existence as opposed to the existentialist's understanding of an absurd but free existence: we are who we want to be (or something like that) as Sartre expressed it. God: Purposed but Determined; Accident: Absurd but Free. The existentialist believes that the latter is the brave choice to which I agree, to some extent.

I don't know, up to now I still ask this question and if one really delved into this kind of thinking or asking, the mind would go into a loop an endless loop which may prove unhealthy in the long run. Our existence is determined, as can be seen by the laws of nature that governs our existence, but this is not the whole reality because there is also an element of indeterminism at the sub-atomic level of our existence, so, there are two seemingly opposing realities within and without us both working harmoniously. 

Anyway, the problem is not really the question, it's really how we think. Our mind has been programmed to thinking in an either or manner that we cannot accept or it has become counter intuitive to think of possibilities existing at the same time. 

Who am I? To quote God: "I am who I am." 

Doesn't matter...watch the movie The Nines starring Ryan Reynolds and be entertained how the question of existence was tackled.

I don't think life would be fun if we all know the answer...

Cowboys and Aliens, American Idol Tra-la-la

One may be confused by my last post, but be not: I saw Battleship and Cowboys and Aliens (bootleg and downloaded of course) and I fused them into one sort of a criticism to save bytes. Battleship was one visually good movie but the story was starchy-corny while Cowboys and Aliens was one veerrryyy long movie about alien gold prospectors--2 hours for that crap....the movie gave me sore eyes. Why did Harrison Ford...really...two hours for that story! Really its more like Twilight Zone episode that was stretched too long. For what? Indulgence...

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I could be wrong and I want to be wrong! Jessica Sanchez made it into the top 5, and the guy that I thought teen-age girls would vote to be this year's American Idol, the guy with the weird hair, Colton Something was eliminated. I think the judges' drama (of course my gut kept telling me it was a staged drama or something) paid off: the climbing into the stage and saving Jessica made the voters realize that the search was about talent and not about hmmm...face value. (It's so hot today that my butt was sweating.) 

But...butt...my man is Joshua Ledet. I have nothing against Jessica, I mean she's Filipino and whether a person or any creature has 100% Filipino blood or .000000001% Filipino blood, Filipinos are supposed to root for them. I mean, this is our way of showing our love for our country and our race and our nationalism and our hopelessness. Just look at our national football team. Anyway...Jessica's style is too diva and too predictable: heard one, heard em all.

But there's something about black musicians and singers; They have this hmmmm....unexplainable something, pain, or persecution, or this primal energy or emotions of some sort that wants to come out. Listen to Joshua sing a Percy Sledge song "When a man loves a woman." (This song is not a Michael Bolton song!) so you may have an idea what I'm talking about.

I was disappointed to find out that Elise Testone was eliminated. 

Elise's performance of Led Zep's "Whollata Lovin" was the best rock performance. I mean, she rocked!

Here she performed a Jimi Hendrix classic "Bold as Love. I have to say that Hendrix' songs were not meant to be contest pieces for American Idol or any of that cheezy-corny talent stuff. Hendrix's songs were meant to be performed with the guitar and most of them told something of a confused-hallucegenic-melancholic emotions, but Elise's impressive vocalizations of Hendrix' power (which was for vocally challenged Hendrix expressed through his guitar playing) drove home the point (whatever that is). Anyway, she's too rough or too rock for AI. I was hoping that Dave Mathews clone Phillip Phillips would be eliminated because he was not that good vocally and performance wise. 

__________________________

I am giving Showtime till the end of the quarter. The hosts are starting to sound like broken records.

Anyway...am supposed to prepare a sermon for tomorrow. Ciao!

Battleship

Saw Battleship the movie on the bus en route to Baguio. Judging from the quality of the sound and the video, the DVD was obviously pirated (or bootleg DVD if you're a native English speaker). Anyway, the movie was interesting but though the writer/s tried to put emphasis on the story of the protagonist Alex Hopper played by Taylor Kirtsch, the movie was really about the retired battleship USS Missouri and some old retired US Navy personnel who went back to active service to man the old-vacuum tube-analog battleship in its campaign against the aliens. Of course, the movie was also about a group of stupid scientists who sent signals into an earthlike planet not thinking that there maybe some hostile lizard-like aliens with superior technology and superior insecurity living out there bent on mining gold and fighting cowboys and destroying the earth by  kidnapping Indians and cowgirls  and terraforming the planet by venting out farts.

The signals sent by the scientists were received by the aliens, but since they could not speak English nor did they know binary machine language, they thought they were being threatened by cowboys. They sent ships to recon the planet. The aliens had superior technology and what was worse was that they were also hostile. So, the aliens attacked and tried to destroy humanity but one old vacuum tube-analog ship manned by retired Korean War veterans, some cowboys and a few Japanese, the USS Missouri, was able to destroy the alien mothership using its big guns. Incidentally there's some sort of historical play in the movie like including Japanese characters among the crew of the ship. The Missouri was the ship were the Japanese signed their surrender to the US.

Anyway, the movie was entertaining enough. The special effects, even through the bootleg disc, was good. Well, about the sound, I could barely hear the movie...What the? Why am I talking a bootleg DVD? Not fair...this is illegal!

Missouri was ordered in 1940 and commissioned in June 1944. In the Pacific Theater of World War II she fought in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and shelled the Japanese home islands, and she fought in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. She was decommissioned in 1955 into the United States Navy reserve fleets (the "Mothball Fleet"), but reactivated and modernized in 1984 as part of the 600-ship Navy plan, and provided fire support during Operation Desert Storm in January/February 1991. (Wikipedia)

The movie had a touch of Japanese something in it. I didn't know if it's only me but the movie was reminiscent of the seminal  old Japanese anime called "Space Battleship Yamato" or its English version "Starblazers."

Yamato, lead ship of a class of two 65,000-ton (over 72,800-tons at full load) battleships, was built at Kure, Japan. She and her sister, Musashi were by far the largest battleships ever built, even exceeding in size and gun caliber (though not in weight of broadside) the U.S. Navy's abortive Montana class. Their nine 460mm (18.1-inch) main battery guns, which fired 1460kg (3200 pound) armor piercing shells, were the largest battleship guns ever to go to sea, and the two ships' scale of armor protection was also unsurpassed.

Anyway, just thought about Yamato when I saw USS Missouri fighting it out with an alien ship. Anyway, Harrison Ford's and David Craig did a very gooey job in the movie. Why did Liam Neeson agreed to play a cowboy in the first place? He's better off playing an admiral or something....

Princess and I, Jessica

I saw the premiere telecast of the much hyped and promoted channel 2's new teledrama Princess and I. The plot was about err...if you read Snow White errr...I mean Cinderella... you got the plot. Anyway, the series was set in Bhutan and its understandable, for authenticity, that Filipino actors playing the Bhutanese characters to speak Bhutanese but  ...hmmm...it felt weird seeing Filipino actors speaking foreign tongue being subtitled in Filipino. Anyway, I hated Gretchen Barreto; she's evil, only meant she's a good actor because she was able to make me hate her character in the series.

My gut tells me that Jessica Sanchez, half Filipino half Mexican who tells the world that she is a Mexican and not a Filipino but the Filipinos, for the sake of being Filipino, claims that Jessica is a Filipino and not a Mexican...anyway, my prediction is that she will not make it. Ninety-nine percent of the people that vote for American Idol wannabes are teenage girls. Teenage girls vote cute guys. Of course, being a patriotic and nationalisitc Filipino, I am praying and hoping and wishing that this Mexican-American girl wins the crown.

Transgenders and Khomeini

One hot momma and papa...

So a transgender is now allowed to compete in the Miss Universe contest. Big issue may I say to many human beings especially for those who cannot accept the fact that it is now possible for a man to be more beautiful, sexier and more seductive than a woman. There are those who objected saying that the Miss Universe beauty pageant is for natural woman..err...I mean look at the real female contestants because they don't look natural to me with all the cosmetic procedures they have to go through. There are those who are for it saying that sex or being a woman is really in the inside of the person and that transgenders are really women in the first place, i.e. they have the psyche, spirit, soul, software or whatever of a woman inside that are just trapped in a man's body. So, I leave at that...whatever...but I have to admit that the guy...err...the gal is really beauty queen stuff.

How do doctors do it? How do they transform a man into a woman?

Preliminary to the sex reassignment operation, the candidates are bombarded with batteries of psychological tests to determine whether they are crazy, mildly crazy or simply confused and that thay understand what they are doing and that once the male organ is cut-off, that's it.

• Surgeons cut off everything. Whoossshhhh...everything goes. It's called castration. Doctors cut everything off! Whhooossshhh, whooossshhhh...goes the blade and falls the balls and the hotdog.
• They then construct a vagina by cutting a hole between the legs. There's a fancy medical term for this but, really, for an ordinary human being with limited vocabulary like me, it is cutting a hole adjacent to the anus.So, after the operation the recovering patients have to careful with their diet lest they eat too much and their solid waste product become dense and big which may rip the thin membrane separating the anus from the artificial vagina when they poop thus resulting in a very big anus or a very big artificial vagina.
• They enlarge the breast by injecting stuffs into the chest, chemicals, fats, oil, air...whatever.
• They bombard the system with chemicals and hormones and other stuff to make the skin lighter, remove hairs, soften the features, give the voice a higher pitch to make it sound like a lady's voice.
• Then after all the trouble, the patients libido drops to about 40%.

I don't know what religious people would say but I expect they would throw holy books at this issue saying, "well...hhmmmm...this is not God's will....this is not God's design for humanity..." I don't know of any religion that could accommodate this transgender issue but from what I read from Wikipedia  the fundamentalist Islamic state Iran once endorsed sexual reassignment or transgender operation as a solution to the problem of homosexuality which is very, very much against their belief. I guess when Ayatollah Khomeini was given  the figure and the the list of homosexuals to be executed, he figured out that Iran would be decimated, so, he endorsed sex reassignment procedures thus avoiding the decimation of Iran and at the same time managing population growth. It only follows that Iran performed the  most number of transgender operation next only to Thailand. If the Ayatollah Khomeini was not against it, I mean...

 What is my stand on this issue as a man of a church (I supposed)?

My Reply: Who cares! If the Ayatollah Khomeini could take it, who am I!?


  

How to remove sunburned skin

I had too much sun last holiday and as a result my back was sunburned badly. My back was peeling. Now I have problems with the burned skin because it sticks to my clothes.So, I was thinking of how I could remove the dead skin effectively from my back and an idea hit me.

I had my wife stick a transparent tape on my sunburned back.

She then pressed that tape firmly on my skin adding pressure to make sure that the tape was stuck evenly.

My wife then slowly and carefully removed the tape with the dead skin  sticking on it. Very effective may I say, but the problem was my back or the area errr...was...after a few days was itching badly. I think its the reaction from the adhesive in the tape. Effective but unsanitary and dangerous method may I say....hehehehe. My wife thought I was crazy, and my daughter thought it was cool.

Aquarium stuff...

Hmmmm...One of the things that do whenever I am near waters like on a beach, or rivers, or lakes, is that I look around for stuff. I keep aquariums for a hobby and once in a while I like to change the set up by putting driftwood, shell, rocks or pebbles etc. things that I find near waters.

I found this driftwood on the beach in Gumaca Quezon. Hardwood  are the best driftwood because of their density they do not float and they do not discolor the aquarium. Roots also make good driftwood for the aquarium. Another thing, for aesthetics, it must be gnarled, or has holes, or has many branches or something for the fish to hide. Don't forget to disinfect  it first by submerging it in water and bleach solution before putting the driftwood in the aquarium. An aquarium is a controlled ecology and the fish in there are cultured so they may not have the immunity to fight off microorganisms found in the driftwood. Driftwood costs around two-three hundred pesos in petshops.

Here I disinfected the driftwood and the pebbles in a bleach solution for three or more hours. Of course, care must also be taken in rinsing the bleach off them. Care must be taken in rinsing off the chemical bleach off the wood and the pebbles; does no good to kill the microorganisms only to kill the fish by chemical poisoning. Rinse by submerging them in water for the same period of time and this time add anti chlorine solution to the water then rinse with running water for a few minutes.

Have fun with with the variety of colors. A kilo of pebbles costs from twenty to thirty pesos  in petshops.

Here's how the driftwood look like in the aquarium. (Hmmm...beter do something with the electrical wiring.) Anyway,  I loke aquarium because they are relaxing and the negative ions released by water is...hmmm...I don;t know if this is true...so nevermind... but the moisture released by the aquariums help to humidify the air inside the house. Also no allergens and no poop to clean, requires  minimal maintenance and the fish feed is very affordable.

But the best thing about aquariums is that they are relaxing to look at..

Blah, blah, back home and back to work

Maybe the reason why I hate paperwork is that  I am simply a lazy and disorganized human being. Reported to work greeted by my grade leader (a very nice human being who I have nothing against with) with lots of forms to fill up: SALN, Clearances, Mean Profile Results. I am lucky I have no advisory class becuase otherwise, I would be neck deep in paperwork.

Back home after a three-day vacation in the province. Although I went home with a little cough and shortness of breathing, a premonition of an asthma attack, maybe because of the stress of travel and lack of sleep, I mean, my in-law’s house could not accommodate all of us, so, mostly it was the kids who slept well because of exhaustion from the swimming, but for an asthmatic like who could not sleep without an electric fans, I had no choice but to sleep on a sofa in the porch so that I could have ventilation. But despite the lack of sleep, I love going to the province because I really enjoy being with family and I really enjoy the place.

Next year, it was planned that the reunion would be held in Cainta to the violent and vehement protests of the children. Personally, I would rather have it held in the province forever. But well see…

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Reported back to work a little evasive of the boss. Anyway, I am always evasive of the boss. I have never outgrown my fear of principals even now that I am already a teacher; I think I have grown more afraid of principals since becoming one. So, I sneaked into the office to log my time and there she was standing. I smiled an uneasy smile and greeted her good morning. She smiled back and told me I missed the fun of the school team building. Yea, I was a little afraid that she would give me the pulpit for not participating in the team building, but I had valid reason that I have informed my grade leader about—the reunion, remember. 

Anyway, she did not sermonize or anything; she was nice to me today. I mean, she was nice always, but sometimes administrative duties could be so stressful that I understood why sometimes bosses had to be a little rough or something.

____________________

My grade leader handed me forms and I was shocked to find out (busy with graduation, remember)  that I had not accomplished the mean profile report for the 4^th grading period for MSEP. Now, I was looking for the MSEP teachers for their reports so that I could consolidate it; I could not find them.  It's summer you …fill in the blank...

I mean, really, this paper work thing is not in me …

I’m waiting for the reports to come but I think it would not come…

Oh, yes...it arrived.

I was handed my SALN (Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Network). I was tempted to tear the whole thing a la Andres Bonifacio to protest the seemingly insulting form handed to us poor teachers knowing that most of us have no assets and net worth to speak of; we are always in debt you...go after the justices, senators, congressmen etc.


Blah, blah, blah, blah....

Kalamay Story

We were about to go home when my older brother-in-law decided that we spend another day in Quezon so that we could eat Kalamay. Kalamay is a native cake made from ground sticky rice, sugar, butter, pandan and  (liters of sweat) cooked in coconut milk.

Now, all I know about Kalamay is the ten peso slice that I buy from bilao carrying vendors that sells them. I have eaten a couple of slice but I have never seen how it was made. Well, I have seen glimpses how it was made by my in-laws, but I have never paid that much attention to it until now.

 I know how sumans are made because my late grandmother sold them for living. My mother also cooked bico, but bico is whole grain sticky rice cooked in coconut milk it also requires a lot of stirring but unlike the Kalamay, it is not ground and not as sticky as Kalamay. 

Anyway...here are pictures of how Kalamay is cooked:

My bilas Arman (my wife's sister's husband) was cooking brown sugar in coconut milk. On the left were ground sticky rice made into balls by my mother-in-law. I thought they were making humungous kariokas, but she explained that that was how Kalamay was made. They were shaped into balls to better absorb the caramel-coconut milk mixture...whatever. On the right was my brother in law's prominent belly--obviously from the thousand of beer bottles and other liquors drank. Ramil, my brother-in-law, is an very nice guy.

Nanay Norma, my mother -in-law, putting the sticky rice balls into the boiling caramel-coconut milk mixture.

Here was the fun part: the stirring and the mixing. The stuff was so sticky that it took  my brother-in-law Ramil and bilas Arman, two "muscled" men, with paddles made from coconut stem to mix it to the desired consistency. 

My mother-in-law and my sister-in-law Melda had to hold the talyasi so that it would not tip over. I was not able to help because of the smoke coming from the fire would trigger my asthma.

My mother-in-law pouring oil into the bana leaves so that the Kalamay would not stick. Traditionally bilao was used but since we could not find any bilao, my mother-in-law used an aluminum basin covered with banana leaves. Banana leaves added flavor to it.

                                             

Having fun with the paddles.

We were not able to eat the Kalamay because it was still hot and we were scheduled to leave at two in the afternoon. It was decided that we would just bring it along with us and we would divide it per family once we reach Calamba, Laguna where my other sister-in-law lived. But we were so tired that we forgot about the Kalamay until we were near Calamba, Looking for it, we found out it was under the luggage and was stepped on many times by the children that we thought it was already sticking on the van's floor. Fortunately the Kalamay survived the trip to Calamba and then to Cainta and we were able to enjoy it long after we were home.

Mudskippers and a little railroad Bridge

Sunset at the pantalan.

My family and I spent our Holy Week in Inaclagan, Gumaca, a coastal barangay in Quezon Province. We attended her family's annual reunion. The place was not a Boracay nor a Palawan but the place had its own beauty, rural, provincial, simple and sad to say it was also a poor community; not unlike the place where I live, if I may say so.

To enjoy the beach, I had to walk a few hundred meters away from the community because the beach along the barangay was filled with trash. This was sad but if the people in the community would just come to their senses and start cleaning up their beach, the place could attract tourist especially summer vacationers. But...

My favorite spot. This is a little secluded place found a few meters from my in law's house, a railroad bridge that spans over a river that flows into the sea. Sitting down here and listening to my Mp3 player was so serene that I already missed the place. Of course I had to be alert because the train here had no regular schedule that the folks knew of. If ever a train arrived, I would have had no choice but to jump into the water. I didn't know how to swim but it seemed the water was not that deep to drown me. Anyway, Looking at the calm water, I saw a lot of ripples on the surface. Curious, I went down to investigate.

When I sat down, there was panic on the water's surface. I thought they were shrimps frightened when I stepped in the water.   . I sat down motionless for a while so that I could take a closer look, but they were not shrimps. I was surprised to find two little bulging eyes staring at me just a little above the water's surface. My little knowledge of biology (thanks to David Attenborough's " Life on Earth") identified the creatures as mudskipper fish.

I was looking ta the mudskipper fish, and they were also looking at me curiously, as if we were both trying to figure each other out. Just a little movement and  I imagined even a threatening smile would make them scamper away. (Wikipedia photo)

There are many ways to enjoy a vacation. I found out that I enjoy mine by looking  at little things and exploring, imagining I am a little boy again discovering my surroundings, looking for nothing but looking for something that could stir up my curiosity. There are a lot of places to explore my brother in law told me that there also water falls in the mountain, but I didn't have the energy and the courage to get that far away. 

Five Classifications of Aswangs

A couple of days ago I went to National Bookstore to look for some interesting titles in their below 100 pesos sale display. I found out that many books in there were usually non-fictions and academic references and researches.   I am posting the classifications of Aswang by Ramos. 

1. Vampires: a blood-sucking creature, often in a guise of a beautiful young woman, who marries an unsuspecting youth so that she can have regular sips of blood at his expense. Sometimes such creature prefer to attack people in distant villages and may thus express intervillage hostility. This concept is probably derived from a European source but certain adaptations reflect its Philippine environment.

2.Viscera-Suckers (Mananangal): a creature who appears as a beautiful woman by day but discards the lower part of her body at night, hiding it under the sheets, in a closet, or in a patch of banana trees. The upper part then takes to air, propelled by by its long hair or by some magical process. Sometimes the creature takes the form of a black bird, bat or an unusual insect. In this new form the creature flies in search of human internal organs, fetuses, infants, or the phlegm and exuviae of the sick. It gains access to its victims by projecting its long tongue through crevices in the roof or between bamboo slats of the floor.

3. Weredogs: creatures who are often associated with men, and who are capable of transforming themselves into ferocious beasts in the form of outsized black dogs, pigs, or cats. They are believed to waylay solitary travelers, tearing their flesh savagely. Weredogs are also attracted by the smell of the sick.

4. Ghouls (tiyanaks et al): creature who share many of the viscera suckers food preferences but who seldom take on any definite visible shape, preferring instead to remain invisible. The smell of death attracts them irresistibly and they hover around houses where wakes are being held, waiting for suitable opportunities to devour the corpse. Ghouls often start their meals even before the dead are buried, at times substituting the real corpse with a banana tree. While thought to inhabit areas surrounding villages, their preferences is for cemeteries.

5. Witches: These are men or women, sometimes actually living within the community, who in  their very being possess supernatural powers. They are assumed to be malicious and vindictive creatures who cause illness with or without provocation. They are generally regarded as anti-social. Witches are often carefully distinguished from sorcerers: the altter, beside having knowledge and contact with supernatural powers, are otherwise normal people. One may use the services of sorcerers as healers or to cause harm to ones enemies. Witches, on the otherhand, are thought to be too unreliable, unpredictable and inherently dangerous to engage ion social relationships. Often witches are said to possess peculiar traits--the reflection in their pupils is an inverted image--indicating their non-human nature. 

Witches may, however., start life as an ordinary humans but at some stage undergo a sudden and total transformation that henceforth separate them from common humanity. In contrast, sorcerers generally gain their powers through a long and difficult period of apprenticeship involving acquisition of esoteric knowledge that only gradually enables them to exercise their craft. The training of a sorcerer is distinguished form the transformation of a witch by the presence of rite of passages for the former and the absence of such rites for the latter. Thus, the transformation of a person into a sorcerer involves a process of culture whereas a witch not only represents anti-culture but also constitutes an aberration of nature.

Northern Exposure

For a long trip, I always wear malong. It fits in my pocket and I prefer it to a jacket. Though it cannot be avoided that some passengers look at me with that strange look, but it is better than bringing a blanket. 

I went on a little trip to the North this weekend to attend to a "speaking" engagement to a Christian School in  Aalaminos, Pangasinan. I left Friday and arrived at three in the morning. After delivering the commencement message, I then proceeded to Baguio City to pay a visit to my mother, siblings and my nephew Ycoi. I spent a couple of hours there and then went on my way home. I was pretty tired because the travel back from Baguio to Cubao took nine long hours  because of the fog and the road constructions along the way. So, I spent more time sitting on a bus than with my mother and my siblings. Anyway, I will be coming to Baguio in a couple of days for to bring my daughter there for a scheduled vacation. Boy did my butt and back hurt.

While passing through Pangasinan, I saw this gate. My daughter was a Daniel Padilla  fan  so I took a picture and asked my daughter if Daniel Padilla was from Pangsinan. She didn't know. Anyway, this was odd, why would anyone put his name on a gate. Maybe to attract fans, paparazzi or kindappers or, maybe, its just a namesake. either way, this was dangerous.

Baguio by night: I arrived at around eleven in the evening last Saturday  and I was surprised to find that the road in front of Jones Park, a major thorough fare, was converted into a night market.  Usually night markets is held on streets and sidewalks. The Ukay-ukay capital of the Philippines.

Baguio fog. Reminded me of Stephen King's novel "The Mist". I have been regularly to Baguio but this was the only time I saw fog this thick in summer.

Pissing off my nephew Ycoi.

My mother who is always busy with the laundry. Visited her and had a chat with her. She begged me to lose some weight because blah, blah,blah, she was worried I'll have a heart attack or something. That's what mothers do, worry about their children even though they are already adults.

Our bus drivers will make good battle tank drivers. How they maneuver that bus as if  it's just a bicycle never ceases to amaze me. They evade buses, taxis, pedestrians effortlessly. They have the essential skills for battle tank operations.