Another Offering of Sketchy Wiring

Today I’m sharing photographs of some particularly sketchy wiring found in Manila. The first photograph features a temporary wiring scheme inside an apartment building under remodel. If you look closely, you can see exposed connection points and bare bussing feeding the various circuit breakers, everything open to the touch.

This is entirely “ungood.” We are talking live 220-volt current here, the kind that you likely negotiate with only once.

The following two photographs are drive-by captures Desiree’s daughter provided me. She calls them “post overload.” In the photos, you’ll notice a pair of ladders extended into a rat’s nest of cables and wires, a dense, sometimes looping tangle that continues to grow.

Temporary Wiring

Post Overload

Post Overload

—Mitchell Hegman

My Encounter with the Filipino Medical System

For the last half-dozen years, I’ve battled recurring ear infections, unwelcome little visitors that know my address too well. The last time one showed up, about eight months ago, it brought along something extra: what is essentially athlete’s foot (a fungal infection) in my left ear. 

Welp, it appears that same fungal squatter has returned, setting up house in my left ear a few days ago. I had no choice but to seek out professional help, not something I wished to do while vacationing in a foreign land.

The Filipino health system is not like ours. It largely operates on a cash basis, a kind of pay-as-you-go arrangement where, in the case of more serious medical issues, the burden is often shared across an entire family.

Access, however, depends on where you are. Venture out into the provinces, and finding a doctor or meaningful care can become difficult, sometimes even unlikely. But here in Metro Manila, help is close at hand. In my case, it was as simple as dropping by a clinic tucked inside the mall at Market! Market!, alongside a game arcade and fast-food eateries.

The visit itself required about a half-hour wait and cost 1,000 pesos, roughly $16.66.

The prescription, which included an antibiotic, a painkiller, and anti-itch medication, came to 1,530.50 pesos, or about $25.50.

All told, the experience was efficient, accessible, and surprisingly affordable. I’m going to say that, in this instance, I’m deeply impressed.

My Filipino Prescriptions

—Mitchell Hegman

The Sketchy Side of Manila

The Philippines is still, as a whole, a developing country. And while the area where we are staying (Fort Bonifacio) is quite modern, affluent, and safe, a short drive through the city will deposit you in more dangerous places in Manila proper. You know, places tourists are told to avoid.

Naturally, we went there. Specifically, we went to Divisoria.

In Divisoria, history and commerce tangle together in a kind of permanent motion. The district began in the Spanish colonial era as a literal boundary, a “division” separating the walled city of Intramuros from the communities beyond, where Chinese merchants and local traders built thriving markets. Fed first by river trade and later by the rail lines converging at Tutuban Railway Station, Divisoria grew into a vast commercial engine, one that today draws immense crowds into its narrow streets and packed malls. Within that crush, the variety borders on the absurd: wedding gowns beside plastic pails, toys spilling into walkways, bolts of fabric stacked next to kitchenware and electronics. It is crowded, chaotic, and often overwhelming, yet beneath the noise runs a kind of rough efficiency, a place where bulk deals are struck, small businesses take root, and nearly anything imaginable can be found if you are willing to press into the tide.

Is it really dangerous?

Yes.

Desiree’s oldest daughter, Bianca (Bea), has been working near there for some time. One of her coworkers witnessed the kidnapping of two young girls there (a third escaped). Three other people she knows have had their cell phones snatched.

We went to Divisoria to buy curtains for our bay window. Before going, we stripped off all jewelry. I did not even take my smartphone. As a tourist-looking sort, I might be a target. All I had on my person was my requisite wad of toilet paper (another story). Additionally, Desiree, her daughter Bea, along with her cousin and aunt, made sure someone was always in front of me and behind me any time we had to thread our way through crowded streets and vendor stalls.

Thankfully, nothing extraordinary happened, and I actually enjoyed the adventure. I am sharing a few photographs provided by Desiree and Bea.

A Bustling Street in Divisoria

Fabric and Clothing Vendors

Burning Something Along the Street

 —Mitchell Hegman

Graduation Day

Education in the Philippines does not swing to the same schedule as that in the U.S. In the Philippines, basic education is divided into three main stages under what’s often called the K–12 system. Students first complete Grade School (Elementary), which runs from Kindergarten through Grade 6. This ends with a formal graduation, marking the transition into secondary education.

Next comes Junior High School, covering Grades 7 through 10. This is roughly equivalent to what Americans would consider the sophomore year of high school. At the end of Grade 10, students graduate again, closing out their foundational secondary education.

Finally, students move into Senior High School, which includes Grades 11 and 12. This stage is a bit more specialized, with students choosing tracks such as academic, technical-vocational, or arts-focused paths. After completing Grade 12, they have their final graduation, which is comparable to a traditional high school diploma in the U.S.

Shanaia, Desiree’s youngest daughter, graduated from Guadalupe Catholic School at the junior level yesterday. Guadalupe is a small but highly regarded private school known for its academic rigor. She graduated with honors, of course. 

Graduates Standing

Graduates Gathered for a Class Photograph

Desiree and Her Girls (Left to Right: Heart, Shanaia, Bianca, Desiree)

—Mitchell Hegman

The Blind Band

Market! Market! sits just a few minutes away by Grab from where we are staying, a sprawling mall that seems to contain every kind of store imaginable. Just outside it, under a vast canopy, is an adjacent stretch claimed by small vendors, each one adding a note to the low, steady hum of the place.

Concerts and other festivities find their way here as well, the space doubling as a kind of open-air stage.

This is also where you’ll come across the blind band, a group of musicians who play throughout the day, their instruments working on your attention until you realize you’ve stopped to listen.

It’s good stuff. Desiree has a maxim for people like those in the blind band, people doing everything they can to help themselves. She says they are “stretching their bones.”

On a recent visit, I stood in front of them for a while, taking it all in. I had Desiree pass me a few peso bills, which I slipped into the collection box.

There’s a lot here worth admiring.

The Blind Band

—Mitchell Hegman

Follow the Cats

We have two options for trash disposal at the rooms where we are staying in Manila. One option is to catch the tower employee sent to the floor each evening for room-by-room collection. The other option is to drop down to level B5 in the elevator and find the trash bins for yourself.

B5, it turns out, is an amazing place.

Before we drop down to B5, though, let’s talk about the street cats in Manila. The city is filled with them. They are all skinny, sometimes a little battered, and living by their wits along the busy boulevards and side streets.

I bring up the cats because the first time Heart, Desiree’s daughter, and I tried to find the trash bins in the B5 basement, we got lost. It is a vast, mind-bogglingly bright and spotless parking garage, one of the cleanest places I have seen anywhere in this island country. After failing to locate the bins, we took the elevator back up to our room, trash still in hand. On a subsequent elevator ride to the ground floor, I bumped into a pair of tower employees who told me about the far corner of B5 where we could find the elusive bins. At the end of the conversation, one of them quipped, “Just follow the cats.”

I’m sharing photographs from our second, successful venture to B5, along with a typical street cat.

Lost in the B5 Parking Garage

The B5 Parking Garage

A B5 Basement Cat Near the Bins

A Typical Street Cat

—Mitchell Hegman

See-Through Money

One of the small curiosities I’ve encountered here in the Philippines is the money, which is valued in terms of the Filipino peso. At present, our U.S. dollar is worth something near 60 pesos. The curious thing is the manner in which some of the peso bills are produced: they are partially see-through.

The first time I noticed it, I thought it was a trick of the light. I could plainly see my fingers through the bill. You turn the bill slightly in your hand, expecting the effect to disappear, but there it is: a clear window built right into the note.

These bills are not paper in the way I’ve always understood paper money. They are made from a thin polymer, a kind of flexible plastic that gives them a slightly slick, almost waxy feel. They don’t crumple quite the same way. They don’t seem to mind a bit of moisture— a practical approach in a place where sudden rain showers appear out of nowhere and humidity hangs permanently in the air.

The transparent window, it turns out, is not merely a novelty. It is a defense. It can hold detailed designs and security features that are difficult to reproduce, making counterfeiting far more challenging.

There are other advantages as well. These polymer notes last longer than traditional paper bills. They resist dirt and wear, and they don’t absorb whatever happens to be on your hands at the moment you pass them along. Given how many hands a single bill might travel through a wet market in a day, this too feels like a thoughtful adjustment.

A 1000 Peso Bill

—Mitchell Hegman

First Bluebird

Some things should not change. Clocks must find their way back to 12:00. Birthdays insist upon recognition. And certain small but important rituals ask to be kept.

I moved into my prairie home the week of Thanksgiving in 1991. Each spring since, I’ve marked in my journals (and now my blog) the arrival of the first bluebird of the year, returning to my swatch of Montana ground after wintering somewhere to the south. It is a modest observance, but a steady one, usually unfolding in mid-March.

This year, in my conspicuous absence, my brother-in-law Terry kept the tradition alive. On Sunday, March 22, he spotted the first bluebird. He even managed a photograph of a male inspecting the bluebird box along my back fence, which I’m sharing today.

Welcome to spring!

A Bluebird at the Box on My Fence (Photo: Terry Lopuch)

—Mitchell Hegman

Lost in Translation

Desiree purchased a small bamboo cutting board for use in the kitchen in the place where we are staying in Manila. The board, of Chinese manufacture, looks to be well made, but something has been lost in the English translation of the printed information that came with it.

The English text is filled with misspellings and does not exactly make sense to me. The text reads exactly as follows: “High quality bamboo, spccial artwork, natural green, envirenmental protection and sanitation penple need bamboo ror inhabiatancy under the circumstance eating without meat.”

I gave this sentence to AI and asked for a possible translation. This was the answer:

“This sentence reads like it went through a linguistic blender on ‘optimistic mode.’ Let’s decode the intention hiding inside it.

Original:

‘High quality bamboo, spccial artwork, natural green, envirenmental protection and sanitation penple need bamboo ror inhabiatancy under the circumstance eating without meat’

What they’re trying to say (cleaned up):

‘Made from high-quality bamboo with special craftsmanship. Natural, eco-friendly, and hygienic. Bamboo products are ideal for a healthy, sustainable lifestyle, especially for people who prefer a plant-based diet.’”

Apparently, the original message took the scenic route through the English language on the way to me, but it got where it needed to go eventually, with a nudge from other sources.

A Photo of the Cutting Board

—Mitchell Hegman

My Buddy Ashwin

Today, I’m sharing a photograph of Ashwin, also known as Win-Win. Ashwin is the provincial Filipino version of a 15-year-old boy. He is also Desiree’s nephew. I’ve been hanging out with Ashwin for the last two weeks, but yesterday he flew back home to his province.

I’m going to miss him. He’s a bit goofy at times, but Ashwin’s a really good kid. He’s respectful, pretty good with English, and not afraid to laugh at himself. You can’t ask for much more than that if you’re an old guy from Montana visiting the islands and looking for pleasant company.

I hope to see you again soon, buddy!

Hanging Out with Win-Win

—Mitchell Hegman

The Wet Market

At the top of my list for adventure when I’m in the Philippines (any Asian country, really) is wandering through a wet market. The inputs feeding into you there can be overwhelming at first.

First and foremost, the great discordance of sound created by the market as a whole feels less like something heard and more like something encountered, closer to a wall than anything else. Once you step inside, everything arrives in a rush: hundreds of voices talking at once, knives and cleavers thwacking cutting boards, cubed ice pouring into bins, the bustle of traffic still reaching in from the streets.

Visually, it’s no gentler. Displays rise vertically and stretch horizontally, each one asking for your attention. I’m drawn to the fruits and vegetables, bright and varied, many of them unfamiliar to those of us confined to the Rocky Mountains. The fish and meat section can be more challenging for anyone accustomed to thinking of chickens, fish, and four-legged animals as things that begin and end in tidy packaging. Here, their parts hang in displays like trinkets on a macabre charm bracelet. Fish are stacked into shining heaps. Everything is being reduced, piece by piece, as you watch.

And the scents refuse to settle. They shift and layer as you move along, never letting you land on any one thing for long. Fruits and vegetables offer sweetness and earth, while the meat and fish press in with something heavier. You are reminded of damp stone, of overturned soil.

Given all of this, I love the wet markets. This is honest stuff. Life without the courtesy of packaging.

Vegetables

Fish on Display

Fish Up Close

—Mitchell Hegman

A Post for Alan

This post is for my friend Alan Bouchard. Having worked on the communication/data side of the electrical industry, I suspect he’ll take a particular interest in the street wiring photographs I’m sharing today. As it happens, these feature some of the more orderly examples here in Metro Manila.

These pictures are what I’ve come to call “drive-by shootings,” quick attempts to catch a moment through the window of a moving car as we slip from one part of the city to another in a Grab ride. The results are not always perfectly framed, but they tend to be authentic.

In time, I’ll try to share a few captures of what I consider the more… improvisational work in the outlying neighborhoods as the opportunities present themselves.

Street Wiring

Street Wiring

—Mitchell Hegman

The Durian Thing

If you glance at the first photograph I’ve posted today, you’ll see, in the foreground, some large spiky-looking fruit. That’s durian. If you are unfamiliar, durian is the train-wreck of fruit in the tropics. This is due to the horrendous, off-putting scent emitted from the fruit once it is sliced open.

Travel and food writer Richard Sterling states that "its odor is best described as pig-excrement, turpentine, and onions, garnished with a gym sock."

Interestingly enough, the smell is only the opening act, a kind of olfactory toll you must pay before marching in for a taste. Once cut open, the flesh inside is soft and custard-like, with a flavor that seems to argue with itself: sweet, savory, faintly nutty, and somehow reminiscent of things that ought not belong in fruit at all. Some swear by it, speaking of durian with something near unwavering loyalty. Others recoil at first encounter and never quite recover. Here in the Philippines, though, it is treated not as a novelty but as a matter of fact—another offering from the tropics, equal parts challenge and reward, waiting patiently for you to decide which side of the argument you fall on. 

I tried durian while in Vietnam in 2009 and tried it again here in the Philippines recently. I would describe the flavor as sweet at the start, with a weird, chemical, industrial-cleaning-agent finish. The smell is such that many establishments in Vietnam would not allow you to bring it inside. I don’t wholly object to durian, but it is not a favorite by any measure.

Durian on Display (and Desiree)

Open Durian Fruit (Wikipedia)

—Mitchell Hegman

Metro Manila

We have settled onto the 43rd floor of a tower in the Uptown Parksuites in Taguig, Metro Manila. Three bedrooms, a full kitchen, a living room and dining area, and balcony views stretch out over modern Manila below.

This is the highest floor I’ve ever occupied. Standing out on either of our two balconies can be a bit dizzying, but I don’t let that stop me.

Naturally, I’m sharing a few balcony photographs here today.

The City Below

A Corner Room

On the Balcony

The Expanse at Night

—Mitchell Hegman

Apple and Star Apples

One of the servers at the resort tiki bar was a diminutive girl of perhaps twenty named Apple. I love the name. It’s a simple twist on a common word, but for some reason it stays with me. Unfortunately, I did not get a photograph of her to share.

But I will be sharing a couple of photographs of another kind of apple: the star apple. It is a rather softish fruit I had not encountered before coming to the Philippines, known locally as caimito. From the outside, it does not look particularly remarkable, usually a smooth purple or green sphere about the size of a small apple. But when it is sliced across the middle, the seeds inside form a small, natural star, which explains its name.

The flesh is soft and slightly jelly-like, with a gentle sweetness that reminds me a bit of grape and custard combined. It is typically eaten chilled and scooped from the rind with a spoon, as the skin itself is not eaten. It’s one of those simple tropical treats that seems perfectly suited to a warm afternoon, when something cool, mildly sweet, and refreshing feels exactly right.

Star Apples and Tangerines

Star Apple Ready to Eat

—Mitchell Hegman

Goodbye to Mövenpick Resort

Today I am sharing a few parting photographs from the beautiful Mövenpick Resort. Our time here has come to a close, and the next several days will find us in the Manila area.

Our Private Beach

Waves Rolling In

At the Pool

—Mitchell Hegman

In the Water

One of the first things I did before we embarked on our series of water adventures here in the Philippines was give an underwater sports camera we’d purchased in the U.S. to Desiree’s youngest daughter, Ina (Shanaia). She’s a water bug and will get plenty of use from it.

Yesterday, while swimming at the coral gardens off the shores of Boracay, Ash, Desiree’s brother, grabbed the camera and managed to get a few photographs of me snorkeling with huge schools of tropical fish.

Good stuff, this!

Lots of Fish

Me Snorkeling

Fish Under Me

Feeding the Fish

—Mitchell Hegman

Snorkeling Day

Yesterday (though by no official reckoning but our own) was snorkeling day. We chartered a boat out to two “coral gardens” just offshore from Boracay. Though the wind made for some choppy waters, we were treated to plentiful small and colorful reef fish. We also stopped for lunch at a fairly quiet private beach.

Posted are a few photographs from the day:

Walking out on the Floating Pier to Our Boat

Me Snorkeling

Our Boat Landed for a Lunch Break

Feb on the Beach at Boracay

—Mitchell Hegman

Boracay

In the central Philippines, in the province of Aklan, lies a small island that has fully embraced all that makes tropical destinations warm to the soul. Boracay sits just off the northwest coast of Panay, a sliver of land surrounded by clear, seemingly jeweled waters. Its shoreline is famous for powder-fine white sand that feels almost like sifted flour underfoot, while turquoise waves shuffle in and out without particular hurry.

Boracay has long been a favorite destination for tourists from the Philippines. In recent years, travelers from all corners of the world have discovered its charms as well. 

Morning Calm

Desiree at the Ocean’s Door

Desiree and Her Girls

A Storm Brewing on the Other Island

At the Grotto

—Mitchell Hegman

Mövenpick Resort, Boracay

Yesterday, after a jump from one island to another by plane and then a boat ride from there, we landed on Boracay Island. A short drive by van then deposited Desiree, me, and a good chunk of her family at the beautiful Mövenpick Resort.

I will be sharing more on Boracay later. For now, here are a few pictures from the resort.

Boarding the Boat

The Whole Family on the Boat

The Pool at Movenpick

Everyone at Dinner

Desiree with a Coconut Drink

—Mitchell Hegman