Outing

Five years ago.

The guys (barkadas) and the families are going on a two-day summer outing in Batangas tomorrow. It's been five years since we had a get together and this is long overdue. Though we are neighbors, we don't get the chance to get together because of work, busyness, schedules, blah, blah.

This will be fun and there'll be a lot of reminiscing and maybe even a few (with the help of beer or rum) tears shed.

What's nice and what's bad about bonsai? Part 2

Bonsai hunting

What's bad about bonsai?

1. Damages the environment and contributes to global Warming.

This has been the concern of many bonsai artist/hobbyist and some even go to the extent of boycotting events that allow participants who do not practice sustainable bonsai, that's what I saw on a Lindsay Farr video about Philippine bonsai.

Anyway...

One case is what happened to the Japanese wild junipers. Wild junipers were almost wiped out because of uncontrolled yamadori hunting by bonsai practitioners that the Japanese government had to step in to replenish junipers in the wild. The specie was never threatened but their presence in their wild natural habitat was. This is happening to the Bantigue, the Philippines premiere bonsai material. It is being hunted to the point where it forced some local government units to pass ordinances banning bantigue hunting within their area of jurisdiction. 

It can be argued that the environmental damage cause by bonsai hunting is minimal compared to the destruction caused by illegal and legal logging, mining, residential and industrial land conversion etc. Bonsai hunters are also selective in their collecting compared to the wholesale destruction caused by the industries mentioned above. Another argument for is that the trees are not really killed instead they are just being replanted despite the fact that they are dwarfed hence lessening their capacity to process carbon dioxide in the air.

Another is the area where the uprooted trees were once planted and now uprooted creates "ecological vacuum" and disturbs the soil which results to soil erosion. and collectively, if you add up all these "little hunting activities" it would still amount to a significant contribution to climate change (or global warming).

The bonsai trade is growing and so is the demand for hunted materials. I for one would be hypocritical if i say that I did not buy hunted material. I did and maybe I will in the future. What needs to be done is to make the hobby environment friendly and sustainable. (Another post on this topic, I guess).

2. Bonsai Addiction

How could anyone get addicted to this hobby. 

Here's my story.

My materials.

I started with one, a ficus microcarpa cutting. Then I got impatient looking at it, I  got another one thinking that while I'm waiting for my first material to develop, I would be working on the next one. Then after the second I got my third tree, a bucida spinoza so on.... the cycle continued until I ended up with almost a hundred bonsai materials and it would have continued until I came to the realization that I am running out of space and I am spending money and too much time for the hobby, which is becoming un-healthy.

I think I have gotten over my addiction and I am now focusing on developing what I have. But there are those who couldn't stop buying on credit and they ended in heavy debt because of overbuying bonsai materials.  This happened to a few members of the online bonsai group that I belonged to. This is embarrassing for the buyer and a financial loss to the bonsai/material hunter-seller.

3. Incompetent Exhibition Judges

Not mine

 I have no experience with exhibitions. My trees are still in their material-training phase and I guess wit would take more years of training to achieve exhibit quality i.e. if they posses the qualities. Anyway, my trees are for personal enjoyment and an exhibition is somewhere out there in a distant galaxy:  

Only experienced bonsai exhibitors can comment on #3 but in my experience with many competitions from basketball to piko this "incompetence" line is always invoked by the losers.

4. Fake Friends

I have only "friends". Fake friends are not real friends so how can they be friends. But I know what they mean: Fake friends are people who uses a friend to gain something at his own advantage and at the disadvantage of his/her friend. Most of my bonsai friends are online so... 

5. Jealous Wives

Well, I have not experienced this yet. An advice: talk to your wife first before you talk to your bonsai.

There you go...

What's nice and what's bad about bonsai? Part 1

What's nice and what's bad about bonsai?

This is an interesting question posted on Pinoy Tropical Bonsai Group's FB wall. I collated the answers and presented them here. By the way, all pictures of bonsais here are not mine. I'm three years into the hobby and most of my bonsais are still in their material-training stages, some even do not have leaves yet.

Good about bonsai:

1. It is relaxing and therapeutic. Bonsais are orginally used as meditation tool by Buddhist monks. By focusing on a bonsai tree the monks could achieve a state of closeness with nature and its spirits--a harmonious unity of humanity with nature and with the universe. 

This is achieved by repudiating the self (ego) through meditation by focusing on the representation of nature, which is the bonsai. And blah, blah, blah...

Of course most contemporary bonsai-ist now are not Buddhist monks and do not know an iota of a difference between yin, yang, and yung, yong, or they even know or care about meditation and all that eastern philosophy. But even in the absence of these esoteric eastern  stuffs, the hobbyist only has to look at bonsai to feel their calming effect and to achieve the aura of being close to nature...blah,blah,blah. 

Another thing is because bonsai comes in different sizes  you can put many trees in a small garden or even within the confines of the home, office, or even inside a car. Yes, I have seen picture of cars with live bonsai (as opposed to artificial) on the dash board. I 

Personally this is one of the reasons why I engaged in the hobby.   

2. You learn a lot about the diversity of trees in the Philippines.

Before I started the hobby I knew very little about our native tree species. I could name some fruit trees, some hardwood and a few medicinal trees. But since engaging in the hobby I have expanded my taxonomy of Philippine trees and can even identify some them by just looking at their leaves. 

Aside from taxonomy, there's also horticulture: How to take proper care of the trees, their behavior,  propagation, diseases and cures, pests and control, etc.

Training techniques like wiring, clip and grow, reduction, branching etc. stuffs that I am still trying to figure out.

3. Saving Trees from destruction.

 Many areas in our country are being developed into residential and industrial areas and many trees are felled to clear spaces.  This is the best bonsai hunting site because these tree are being saved from destruction. 

Many of my materials acquired are charred, indications that they are victims of slash and burn farming.

4. Investment

Bonsai is an artwork and just like any works of art, it has monetary value. I don't know much about bonsai market and how they are priced. I guess it will depend on the buyers capacity to pay. it could go to millions to a few hundred pesos.

I am into the hobby as a catharsis--a fancy word for artistic outlet. And most of my bonsai materials do not have the potential for financial returns, in fact they are practically worthless to a trained eye, but if I measure the amount of water, the time I spent training, trimming, pulling weeds plus the emotional investments I poured into them, I would say they are priceless.

There is a bonsai market out there many people are engaged in the bonsai trade and are making something out of it.  I guess each to his own: some engage in it for they get something spiritual or emotional out of bonsai and some engage in it for for financial or business reasons and it maybe that it could be for both reasons.

5. Recognition/Awards/Prizes

This is what most bonsai-ist aim for. I don't know how much the prizes for these exhibitions are, but I saw a documentary about bonsai exhibition on TV and one bonsai owner told the host that the cash prices are a few thousand pesos, not even enough to cover for the water and the fertilizers spent for his tree. I guessed its not about the money but its about the recognition and the affirmation of the artist. (The owners are sometimes not the artist and the artists sometime are not the owners.Many owners do not even touch their trees, they employ people to do artistic works.)

6.Lots of online Friends.

Since joining bonsai FB groups, I have accumulated good friends. I learn a lot from them, share photos and experiences with them, ,joke with them, etc. I was also able to purchase materials.

There you are. I slept the whole afternoon and I have nothing to do so I blogged about this. Tomorrow, If I'm in the mood, I might blog about the bad side of bonsai.

It's the Chinese!

Chinese consumer goods have been flooding the Philippine market for decades now. They are selling fast because they are colorful and cheap because most of these products are disposable and consumables like plastic pails, basin, slippers, kitchen utensils, cd's  etc.

What is troubling are the products for children's use and consumption like toys and school supplies; products that are always in contact with children through their skin and through their mouth and through the air they breathe. 

 According to environmental groups most of these products, even branded ones and are sold in reputable malls, contain dangerous levels of six dangerous heavy metals--antimony, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead and mercury. All known toxic elements that can cause serious harm to humans especially children.

This is old. Worse is coming: there's almost
the certainty that her father could be the next
president of the Philippines!This is a spoof, or is it?

These heavy metals destroy body organs. But in small and controlled doses the  poison would not be felt until later in life and the accumulation of these toxins among pregnant women could produce offspring with developmental problems. This is specially true in the Philippines where most of Chinese products that goes into the market do not pass through proper testing and quality assurance. Its only later that NGO's have randomly checked the level of toxicity of these products and the result of their tests confirm that our children are slowly being poisoned.  

Think! 

The Filipinos have been buying Chinese products for decades now. Filipino children have been exposed to these heavy metals from their pacifiers to slippers to bags etc. and the accumulation of the toxins and its effect to the intellectual development of our children must be significant and exponential. Is there a government research about this? I don't think so.

Let me get to the point: The Philippines has been gaining recognition as one of the most stupidest (the double superlative  is for emphasis) country in the world. I am not saying this is true in fact I am offended by this claim but to say that there is no truth in this would be playing possum to the reality that the quality of the  our country's leaders especially our senators are going down south--getting worse. 

I remember hearing former Senator Rene Sagisag saying that when he was elected into the senate he considered himself a dwarf, an inferior compared to the former senators Pepe Diokno, Claro Recto etc. And that was Rene Sagisag yet how many of our senator could say other wise? Many of them got elected into the senate because they were famous actors, sports figure etc., and to quote Sen Santiago, they have the epidermis of a pachyderm.

AFP Modernization: Philippine Air Force bought
21 Huey Helicptres. Instead of UH-1H which is an old
helicopter, what was delivered were UH-1D an even
older helicopter.

I think this is part of the Chinese plan to take the Spratlys Island. The CIA or the Chinese Intelligence Agency has been executing this overt-covert operations from decades ago and now they are reaping its rewards: Poison the Filipino electorate with heavy metals toxins at dosages that do not kill them but enough to retard their intellectual development. Then the next phase would be easy and automatic--nincompoop Filipino politicians get elected: taking Spratly Islands is now easy. 

See! How could our National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA our country's CIA) not know about this? 

Hmmm...How could NICA do its job when it has meager budget. 

Anyway..I'm sleepy.

Good Friday and Death, Ressurection etc....

This is one of those days.

Boredom is a good thing for it makes me think about boring things: death and resurrection. 

Since this is Good Friday, and the music playing in the barangay's PA system is a soundtrack from the cenakulo, lots of horns, timpani, etc. kinda put me in the frame of mind because this is what is lent all about: death and resurrection.

I am already in my middle age and the idea or the reality of death is already in the peripherals of my mind. It's creeping in and there are times that I have dreams about death, not nightmares but more of a feeling of disassociation or flying and fleeing from reality, like a ghost. There's nothing scary about being extinguished in death, what is scary is the idea of the consciousness surviving into the unknown.

I remember having nightmares about death. Hell has been so hammered in my mind that it left me with an morbid fear of death, or  going to hell. But death is a reality that will come upon everyone; it is the great equalizer. The idea that there's a place out there where the good would be rewarded and the veil would be punished is comforting but as to their reality...I guess that's beyond proof.

We don't know what happens after death. No scientific instruments have been able to probe into the afterlife and no one has been able come back from the afterlife to life and describe what is after after death. Sure there are many reports about near death experience (NDE) but there are many explanations for the NDE's out of body experiences, hallucinations from the anesthesia is one of them. Or people coming back from death but it's never been scientifically proven that these people really died. 

The fear of death is really the fear of the unknown. One way people have dealt with death is by looking at it spiritually. Death is the crossing from the physical reality to the spiritual realm.  I think most religion have this feature in their belief system: life after death. 

Not only is life after death all about existing into another realm of reality, it is also predicated on the idea of rewards and punishment: morality. Remove the idea of heaven and hell from religions and they will die quickly and permanently. Religions exists because they play and prey on the believers hope for immortality in heaven or nirvana or its equivalent. This is the real foundation of religion: fear. 

Remove the object of fear and you remove the fear. of course the act of removing this fear is difficult because the fear of death and hell has been deeply ingrained in the psyche. But there are those who have overcome this fear and have lived an exemplary moral life, in fact it could be said that they lives a life holier than than that of the believers. The idea that the deletion of the idea (or reality) of heaven and hell would lead to an amoral and chaotic society is unfounded.

Death is real. Do we think about it? It cannot be helped...

Resurrection?

Immortality is something to think about and it is quite tempting. I am not going to ask whether it is true or not, I don't want to offend my fundamentalist friends. 

The question is: what is special about it?

There's eternal repetitions. Going back to the same experience again and again and imagine this happening to you in eternity.

What gives meaning to life is its temporal limit.

Anyway...there are a lot of things to think about life and death but as it is, we are existing in this world without our choice. Our circumstances are but product of accidents (or designed by God if you're a religious). Whether we believe in life after death , resurrection, eternal damnation, or annihilation, doesn't matter for now.What is important is that we live, we go about our lives. What we do with our existence would provide meaning for it.

Or...life is absurd, which fine with me too. Causality is just a mental construct.

Interstellar the Movie

I saw "Interstellar" on Putlocker a couple of days ago. Although the slow internet and the quality of the video was stressful for me (made me want to throw the keyboards out the door), the story did manage to hook me despite of everything.

1. 1. 
      
   2. In Earth's future, a global crop blight and second Dust Bowl are 
   3. slowly rendering the planet uninhabitable. Professor Brand
   4. (Michael Caine), a brilliant NASA physicist, is working on plans
   5. to save mankind by transporting Earth's population to a 
   6. new home via a wormhole. But first, Brand must send former 
   7. NASA pilot Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) and a team of 
   8. researchers through the wormhole and across the galaxy to find
   9.  out which of three planets could be mankind's new home.

The movie is slow and more of thinking movie than a techno-action sci-fi.

1. Time Dilation 

There are many movies that featured Einstein theory of relativity, but this film did great in showing the effects of time dilation. When Cooper, Doyle, Amelia and robots TARS and CASE landed on Miller's planet, a water planet, to investigate if it could support life, they were caught off guard by giant waves that killed Doyle and marooned the shuttle for an hour or so and when they returned to their ship Endurance 23 years had already passed..

The time dilation was due to the strong gravitational pull of the black hole Gargantua. The stronger the gravitational pull, the slower time ticks. And according to Einstein's theory, inertial and gravitational mass are the same. That's why when an astronaut is in a speeding vehicle like say a rocket nearing light speed, his time slows down compared to the people on earth. Speed increases mass, and mass is relative to gravity: the larger the mass the greater the gravity. black holes have massive mass and gravity that light could not escape from it. That's why they are called black holes, by the way. Hmmm...obvious enough.

Bending time and space.

2. Wormholes.

Distance is the main problem with interstellar travel. Even if a ship that could travel as fast as light, it would still take years to visit the nearest star and hundreds and even millions of years to explore our galaxy.

So, instead of inventing an engine that could move a vehicle or a spaceship from point A to point B at great speed, scientists have this idea of bending time and space. It's like driving a car from Taytay to Cebu but instead of the vehicle moving, the whole of the Philippines was bent allowing the car to get to Cebu without leaving its position, its the roads under the car that moved! Of course,this will take massive amount of energy and according to a physicist about the power of a star.

In the movie, a wormhole appeared near Saturn (or Jupiter) and NASA sent probes and later astronauts to search for habitable planets for the emigration of the survivors or the genes of the survivors on Earth.

3. Fifth Dimension

We live in a three dimensional world. 

3 Dimensions: L,W and H.
spatial dmension

2 deimensions: L and W

Easy to understand think of movies. 2 D movies have length and width or lines: plane. One Dimension is line and the other is plane. Now with 3D movies, depth is added: space. The third dimension is space. these are spatial dimensions. This is how we are able to coordinate location .

4 Dimensions 3 spatial dimensions+Temporal
Dimensions.

Fourth dimension is time. In three dimension we could place location but with the addition of time as fourth dimension, it is now possible to locate "events". Think 3D movie again, but since we are outside the 3d movie, we could go to and fro through time in the movie.

In the movie, Cooper  sacrificed himself so that Endurance and Amelia could survive. He was sucked into the black hole and later found himself floating behind his daughter's multi-level bookcase. with each level, he could see events in the past. He was later able to manipulate objects to send messages to her daughter in the past. In the  present, Murphy, Copper's daughter, realized that it was her father who has been talking to him in codes from the past. She discovered that the data on gravity was being transmitted by her father in morse code through his watch which was given to her before Cooper left for space.

The tesseract (3 dimensional representation of time-space) collapsed and Cooper was sucked into the future rescued by a NASA space station travelling towards Edmund's planet. Cooper was reunited with his daughter Murphy who was 120 years old then.

There will come a time when humanity will
surpassed the limitations of biological bodies
brain and move on to the next level: the Singularity

What's the fifth dimension then? Cooper was outside space and time. Sapce-Time was represented in 3 dimensions where Cooper was able to move about inside looking out at temporal locations. This is the fifth dimension.

4. They.

Humanity was saved by entities called they.  They created the wormhole that enabled NASA to travel interstellar and they, according to Cooper, also allowed him to go into the fifth dimension. Who are they? They are us from the future.

Lent: Healing, Spirits,Amulets and the weirdness of it all...

I was watching TV. 

Well, I was watching TV passively since I was engaged on the computer FB-ing, surfing and looking at some bonsai pictures for ideas on how to developed my bonsai materials when my attention was caught by a TV news feature about a man who allegedly can heal people's sickness through the power of a spirit that possessed him.

This has started a series of crazy thoughts.

Of course the Church is quick to announce a caveat about the phenomenon saying that people should be careful about the healing and they should discern whether the spirit is from God or from the enemy, Satan (by the way "Satan" means the enemy).

Holy week is a special day for spiritist/faith healers in the Philippines. Good Friday and Black Saturday is the most potent day for their rituals and prayers. They believe that they have access to powers and spirits in the belief that God is dead during this period. 

As to they do prayers and rituals during periods when they believe that God is dead is itself a telltale sign that they are dealing with different spirits other than the Christian Holy Spirit.

This belief in the multitudes of spirits is inherent among the Filipinos who were originally animists; they believed in multitudes and hierarchy of nature spirits. This animistic worldview has changed very little even with the introduction of Christianity to the islands in the 1500's. 

Many Christian traditions and holidays are infused with indigenous animistic elements while many indigenous animistic beliefs are infused with Christian elements hence there is no polarization between two different world views. in fact they co-exist harmoniously in the Filipino's belief system. Instead of delivering the Filipinos from animism and converting them into Christianity, what resulted was the fusion of both faiths into one belief system that resulted in Folk Christianity, which is very different from the theological and philosophical Christianity of the west.

But what do I have to say about this?

Well, this primitive belief in the spirits and amulets only show the psychology behind it: primitive, unschooled, heretical...etc. No one should believe that there are power in amulets, incantations, trees, spirits, ghosts, mountains. Hell, all these beliefs are alike to believing in Santa Claus, St. Valentines, The Greek Mythology...

The true faith is this: God, the father in Heaven, created humanity. But humanity sinned against God, the father. God the father loves humanity so much that he gave his Spirit, who is God the father himself but not God the father himself, to a virgin woman so that he could go down on earth as a man, God the son himself but also God the father but different from God the son but the same as God the Father but different: God the Father is God the son Himself but they are two but one.  To offer his death as a propitiation to God the Father, who is God the son himself, for humanity's sin and transgression against  God, who is himself  God the son, so that humanity will be saved from the punishment of God the father, who is also God the son. 

Hmmm. Theology sucks.

On second thought...the weirdness of it all. Santa Claus seems more comprehensible. Anyway, we are just human beings seeking trying to understand powers and realities that are beyond us. 

So...let's eat.

Lent meanderings etc.

Photo not mine: torture porn?

I heard snare drums and shouts. I looked out and saw a group of children and teenagers dressed in first century Roman and Jewish clothing re-enacting passion of the Christ through our narrow eskenitas.

This is a yearly tradition that I used to join when I was a child, when were still Roman Catholics. But now that our family has been converted to the Southern Baptist tradition, we now believed that the humiliation and the sufferings that Jesus Christ went through was a one time event that happened tow thousand years ago and was meant to give saving grace to humanity: Christ has done it so that anyone would not have to go through the sacrifice again and again.

Old ladies singing the pasyon the traditional way.

Being a Baptist, there's this negative attitude towards how Filipinos observe lent: the pabasa, prusisyon, penitensya, bisita iglesya etc. I believe,as taught by pastors, that all these activities and traditions were unbiblical and hence are un-Christian. But as the Catholics would argue, the Roman Catholic Church has existed for almost four hundred years without the Bible (as we know it now) and has done well using traditions as its guide, which is really a good argument for their doctrine that tradition is an equal authority along with the Bible on church matters.

I cannot imagine lent without the pabasa and the senakulo. The pabasa is getting rarer now, at least in our neighborhood. I missed the off key and and atonal harmonization singing of the passion of the Christ. Lately, they have been adapting modern tunes though there's nothing wrong with it and it is even encouraged by some to promote the pabasa to the younger generations, I missed the old tunes and the vibrato that goes along with the singing.

Bonsai overload. Why would anyone commit fraud because of bonsai?

I have five bougainvilleas. I starved them until their leaves fell 

off and then watered them with a 1:1 urine-water mixture. Of
 course, the stink permeated inside the house. My daughter 
and wife complained but there's nothing I could do
 about it but to let the stink pass.

Ok. I admit it. I'm starting to have problems with bonsai. It started out as a simple hobby but it got to a point where it is starting to get out of hand and unless I stopped now, I may end up with too many trees for me to handle. Hiring help is out and my wife and daughter are not into the hobby; they just like looking at it.

      

I accumulated around a hundred bonsai materials and almost every nook and cranny of our lot is filled with them in varying stages of training and development.

What happened?

Materials: bluebells and tugas, waiting for signs of life.

Before, I used to go to CP Garcia in Diliman Quezon City to buy materials. The travel and the effort of carrying trees from Quezon City to Taytay limited my purchases to once a month. But since I discovered online bonsai groups, it was only a matter of time before I got into online buying. The affordability as well as the convenience of door to door delivery plus the freebies given by the sellers made online purchasing irresistible.  

My Root-on-rock bonsais. I did not buy these trees. They were
Red Ficuses that I collected from the adobe walls of
St. Joseph Parish Church in Taytay, Rizal and Ficus Microcarpa
cuttings from the school garden.

Aside from the convenience of online purchasing, I was also able to acquire species that are not available here in Rizal Province. I now have Tugas from Mindanao and Blue Bells from Ilocos Norte. The transaction is simple, just surf the posts and if a photo of a materials catches your fancy, just pm the seller then give your address and the mode of payment, the items will be delivered at your doorstep. 

But lately, there are hobbyist who gave in to buying impulsively: they have made purchases beyond their means to pay. It's the hunter-seller that lost here since many of the purchases were done on credit.

Of course I also understand the seemingly irresistible urge to buy because bonsai materials are not identical. Once a photo catches the attention, the idea of not buying that particular item could keep one awake at night. I too, experienced this. I guess everyone does if an item (whatever it is) catches their fancy. It's just matter of controlling the urge. Anyway, this is classic shopping disorder that I thought only ladies  suffer from but I found that bonsai hobbyist do too.

Addiction.

Keep in mind that these materials were once healthy trees pulled out from their habitat and then sold to the bonsai market.

Well, time to stop. I have enough trees to keep me occupied till old age.