Pajareo sin fronteras

The divine flame of thought is inextinguishable in the Filipino people, and somehow or other it will shine forth and compel recognition. It is impossible to brutalize the inhabitants of the Philippines! - José Rizal How about another sunrise picture to open up my blog entry? This one from my apartment in Quezon City For some reason, it's always been easy for me to adjust to new places. It doesn't matter how unfamiliar or "foreign" they are to me, but after a few days to a week in one place, it starts to almost feel like home. Maybe it's from having moved around almost constantly over the past six years or so, or maybe my subconscious just has the memory of a goldfish when it comes to living places. So it's officially been two weeks that I've been living here in the Philippines. Logically that's nothing, and in all honesty I still know very little about my new home country. And yet here I am, and somehow it feels like I've been here fo...

"Skyscrapers pierce the hazy sky, mushrooming from the grinding poverty of expansive shantytowns, while gleaming malls foreshadow Manila's brave new air-conditioned world. The congested roads snarl with traffic, but, like the overworked arteries of a sweating giant, they are what keep this modern metropolis alive." - The Lonely Planet guide to the Philippines on Manila Sunrise from my hotel building in Makati Whenever I get off the plane in a new country, the first thing I notice is the smell. In the US, airports tend to feel incredibly sanitized and removed from the rest of the city, but in the developing world the atmosphere of the country hits you all at once as soon as you step outside. In Manila, it's a mix of sweat, gasoline, rotten fruit, and cooking oil. I love it. It's the smell that really drives home to me the realization that I'm very, very far away from home and won't be going back any time soon. Of course, it took me longer th...