Zoobic Tiger Safari and Ocean Adventure

We drove to Subic yesterday over the occasionally-potholed Gapan-Olongapo highway. I noticed a disturbing vibration in the car's steering at speeds close to 100 km/h while on the NLEX. It's just like the old car! I suspect that either one (or both) of the front wheels are slightly oblong due to being under-pressurized for a long time, or the 16-inch rims have gotten dented due to hitting one too many potholes. Bad news, that.

Anyway, we left Manila around 7:00 a.m. and arrived at the Tiger Safari around 10:30 a.m. This was after getting lost. I had my Canon EOS 350D with it's middling 18-55mm kit lens, and an old 1960's technology 200mm Pentax Screw mount, manual-focus lens with an EOS adapter.

At the Tiger Safari: we didn't go for the chicken (to feed the tigers) so they basically ignored our ride. This photo was taken with the 200mm, and the bokeh is kind of messy because I had to take the photo from behind the protective grille on the safari ride.



And as close as we could get: the 200mm is just a bit too long for this kind of thing (and madly spinning the manual-focus ring got old real fast):



Tiger cub, this one taken with the kit lens at 55mm:



Meh! baby goat getting milk, 200mm. Nice bokeh, but again a little too tight. The 200mm M42 lens has a close-focusing distance of 2.7 meters, which is quite far.



More "head shots" with the 200mm -- an ostrich, and a camel. Manual-focusing basically sucks, the camel shot isn't too sharp even after application of sharpening.





A white-headed eagle, again with the 200mm.



A politician in his natural habitat. Look at that underbite! I also used the 200mm here, it's not safe to approach politicians.



We also visited Ocean Adventure, which has a dog and pony show (I mean, a whale and dolphin show) and a sea lion show. The sea lions at Ocean Adventure actually have a larger bag of tricks than those at the Singapore Zoo.

The aquarium is relatively small, and not very well-lit. But the presentation is fantastic. I took all of the photos here with the 18-55mm kit lens, ISO 1600, and flash sometimes (when I couldn't get a high-enough shutter speed). When using the flash however I had to put the camera lens right up against the glass to avoid reflections.

This is a baby hawksbill turtle which was rescued after a recent typhoon:



A small triggerfish:



This is a Deadly Stonefish, which is almost as dangerous as a politician. Highly-toxic venom on its fin spines can kill a person in a few hours.



A hitherto-unknown species of underwater cockroach:



Fish hiding behind a pipe:



and congregating around the fluke of an old boat anchor. One of the fishes has what looks like two horns and is particularly ugly:



The photo is somewhat grainy due to use of ISO 1600 and post-processing. I thought flash would spoil the image so didn't use it.

Lastly, we watched the whale and dolphin show, which is supposed to be the highlight of Ocean Adventure.

Before the show, I wandered around with the 200mm manual-focus (ick) lens and managed to take a few interesting photos. Both of these were taken at f/8 (several steps down from wide-open) and pre-focused. Since the lens was significantly stopped down, contrast is higher and everything is sharper due to the more forgiving depth of field.



This dolphin was just playing, there were no trainers in sight.



And, the whale and dolphin show. Again, I used the 18-55mm kit lens, at a fixed f/7.1 (to get the lens into its sweet spot) at focal lengths between 35mm and 55mm.

The amazing flying dolphins!





55mm is too short. And 200mm is too long. Around 100mm would have been just right, if I had that focal length.

Tonka the one-ton false killer whale broaching:



This man has a very dangerous occupation: being hurled twenty feet in the air by Tonka the one-ton whale. It's like being "gently" thrown by a car!



The EOS 350D performed admirably, focusing quite fast. I actually took some shots "blind" because I was reviewing some photo and the whales decided to do something interesting. But, the 18-55mm lens has its limits.

I've decided that, instead of a 17-40/4 L (26,800 pesos online, but 33,250 pesos from the Canon store, much more expensive, but with a local warranty and with the option of installment payments), I should get a 70-200/4 L which is the cheapest white lens and the lens I've been drooling about since 2002.

The 17-40mm is basically a replacement for the kit lens, it does everything the kit lens does, but better. The 70-200/4 L does things which the kit lens cannot do, basically add reach. I would suspect the most-used focal lengths would be the 70-135mm range.

And my experiences at the Zoo have shown me that a short telephoto is ideal. Maybe I should get the 100/2 prime instead, for half the price. But it's hard to get the ideal focal length when doing this sort of photography if you only have a prime lens.

Actually the 24-105/4 L IS would probably do very well here too, but it's $1,000 versus around $550 for the 70-200/4 L. Or, I could settle for the recently-discontinued 28-105/3.5-4.5 USM, which is not an L lens, but it is middle-class and has a ring USM motor. At half the price of the cheapest L lens.

Oh well..

Fixing the Mazda 626

Had a few fixes to the old car the past couple weeks. The photo at the left is a "stock" photo of the GE-body Mazda 626, our car looks much worse.

Put in a new 2SM battery, to fix the hard starting issues (the old battery was a 1SM and was almost two years old).

Discovered a fuel leak at the tank which was causing the gasoline smell that made me dizzy some months back when I drove the car. So had that repaired at the local shop (couldn't do it myself as I don't have access to a lift and the fuel tank had to be removed). Turns out it was a loose hose clamp and a rubber hose that had almost disintegrated from age.

I realized that the plummeting fuel economy (down to 5.5 km/L last time we used the car for any period of time) could be due to the fuel leak.

Had the oil changed and replaced the oil filter as well, after a year. Not much mileage though because we've been using the Mazda3 exclusively.

Replaced the wiper blades (cheap Chinese imitations) with genuine Bosch parts. Actually Bosch also makes an "aerodynamic" wiper blade very similar to the stock wiper blades on the local Ford Focus (all-rubber, no metal struts) but they cost thrice as much ($25 each) as the ordinary Bosch ones. So I just went with the ordinary ones.

Next step.. have a full interior detail done, have the carpet and headliner shampooed. And a good car wash and wax job.

For the future.. new springs and shocks. New suspension parts. I want the 626 to feel as "tight" and composed as the Mazda3. Don't know if that's possible, though.

Mall of Asia by Night

We went to Mall of Asia today. Only the third time I've been there, and the first time we walked along the "San Miguel by the Bay" development. Took a few photos with our trusty three-year old Canon IXUS 700. It's still a decent camera even today. And even with the lack of full-manual control I was able to take some cool long exposures. The image quality is still up there, although it is noisy at ISO 400. Same as all point-and-shoots.



I particularly like this one. It has a nice "mood" to it, albeit somewhat noisy due to the three-second exposure time, ISO 400, and tiny sensor:



Would this look better in black and white?

Front/Rear Weight Distribution

Yesterday I was driving home by myself from SM. Lalai stayed behind to buy some additional stuff, I was going to come back for her.

What made this particular drive different was that the fuel tank of the Mazda3 (which is under the rear seat) was full. And, the (small) trunk was completely crammed full of groceries. Since I was alone in the car, this shifted the weight distribution to the rear.

And boy was it fun! I'm not an enthusiast driver by any measure, I drive at 60 km/h on C-5 going to work every morning and even underpowered L300 panel vans overtake us. But the change in the car's behavior was very evident, even to me.

Makes me wonder how a perfectly balanced car with a rear-wheel drive would feel like to drive..

AstraZeneca Makes Money Again

First it was the asthma.. now it's Nexium Proton Pump Inhibitor. Which took in $5.7 Billion in 2005! I think it's AstraZeneca's biggest profit-maker!


The flight back from Jakarta last Thursday (December 20) was a real trial. Which I was expecting. The lowered air pressure as the plane climbed worked hideous wonders on my stomach. I was burping (silently) almost continuously. And had horrible stomach pains.

Anyhow, the Singapore-Manila leg was the worst because it was very long. I could almost not eat anything (normally I'm the kind of guy who never met food he didn't like). Lalai drove me to Makati Med and we got there around midnight. A beacon of (somewhat shabby) hope! (I mean MMC doesn't look as shiny as Medical City, but compared to PGH and compared to those doubtful-looking hospitals in Jakarta, it was definitely a beacon of hope!)

The ER docs put a hep-lock in my hand (ouch! the plastic tube turns out to be more than an inch long! and when it came out it was covered with blood... my blood!) and gave me a puke-suppressor and something to quell my stomach acid.

It was gastroenteritis. Not typhoid.

The Nexium is kind of a long-term (two-week regime) stomach acid suppressor to get my stomach back in shape. But the IV acid suppressor worked wonders. In ten minutes, my stomach pains started subsiding. Praise Del Monte!

The doctor at Makati Med thinks what did me in was bad salad dressing. Because if prepared for a buffet or something and left lying around for even an hour, it becomes a veritable Eden for noxious bacteria. Oh well..

I'm still on a restricted diet (been stealing a mouthful of Coke here, another mouthful of Coke there..) and I'm on medication for the next two weeks. But my quality of life has vastly improved. I can enjoy the Christmas season after all.

Montezuma's Revenge

The past couple days have been very trying for me.

I came down with something -- travelers' diarrhea, gastroenteritis, or worse, typhoid fever. This has resulted in numerous, barely-scheduled bathroom breaks (around two per hour). Getting through yesterday's workshop was a real trial. And today, I again barely got through our meeting with a client.

I've been experiencing cold sweats, chills, and a 39-degree Celsius fever. I also feel as feeble as a 70-year old man. Just carrying my notebook bag is exhausting.

I can't help but think the damn roast duck or the chili crab is at fault. Or, if it's just travelers' diarrhea, it could be anything since the onset of that is days. At least if it's TD, the mean recovery time is 3.6 days, so I'm halfway through hell.

I "dismissed" my class early yesterday -- around 3:00 p.m. -- then holed up in the hotel and tried to get past the pain. That didn't work too well. So I called the hotel doctor, a middle-aged woman with a veil.

She prescribed Bactrim (for the infection), an antipyretic, an antispasmodic for the stomach cramps, and attapulgite. The latter of which doesn't seem to work because I still need twice-an-hour bathroom breaks. I read somewhere that most bacteria is now resistant to Bactrim, so maybe when I get back to Manila I should try azithromycin or clarithromycin. Or something.

Definitely I need a more comprehensive checkup than a blood-pressure test, taking my temperature, and listening to the rumblings of my stomach with a stethoscope.

I hardly had any sleep last night because I had to get up every hour or so for a bathroom break.

Thank heavens all the WC's I've seen here (and I have seen many...) have bidets. It's very convenient. Next hurdle.. how do I get through the five-hour plane trip back to Manila.

Incidentally, yesterday marked my first year at Oracle. But I totally forgot due to my hellacious tummy.

Photos from Jakarta

Hotel Mulia Senayan on the left, and the Jakarta landmark Televisi Republik Indonesia transmission tower in the middle. Took the photo from the 9th-floor offices of Oracle Indonesia.



I'm not exactly sure what building this is, but it's quite impressive by night!



View from my hotel window. The large building at the top of the photo along the avenue is Sentral Senayan 1, which is where Oracle's offices are located.



Inside Plaza Senayan, a swanky shopping mall attached to Sentral Senayan 1.



The restaurant in the middle of the second photo is The Spaghetti House (they lost the "old").



And on the floor above it, the Singapore favorite, Crystal Jade Restaurant.



Scary duck meat, with some roasted duck skin in lumpia wrapper in front. I ordered the half Peking duck (bebek Peking in Malay -- compare to bibe in Tagalog) and they served the fatty skin in the usual way. But the rest of the meat.. was sauteed in onions (bawang -- garlic is bawang putih) and then served. Doesn't taste like anything. I mean tasteless! I think all the savour of duck is in the skin.

Anyway the half bebek Peking was 99,000 IDR or 438 pesos. Not bad! cheaper than Quan Jude in Beijing. But not as good either. Which is to be expected from a Singaporean fast food dropped in the middle of Java.

Not the programming language.



Crystal Jade's rendition of Singaporean chili crab. Good enough. But not as good as No Signboard or even the Newton Square hawkers. 84,000 IDR or 326 pesos.

Incidentally, my taxi fare from Plaza Senayan back to the hotel was 8,500 IDR or 37 pesos. I ended up paying the guy 20,000 IDR (more than twice what was on the meter, but still only 88 pesos).

Indonesian cabbies must be some of the most patient (or abused) cabbies in the world. Why is it that Golden Bird, Blue Bird, and Silver Bird (they are all the same company) can have very well-maintained cars, most of them relatively new, with a flag-down of 5,000 IDR (22 pesos)? does the government subsidize fuel costs?

But even so, the standard of living in Indonesia is about the same as back home. So how come cabs in Manila are in general a rattletrap, rustbucket collection, with a 40-peso (9,000 IDR!) flag-down, and still the Pinoy cab drivers act like they're so thoroughly put-upon, can barely make a living, so you are practically obligated to pay them a good deal more than what's on the meter?

Jakarta Again

I arrived in Jakarta today on the 7:20 a.m. Philippine Airlines flight from Manila. It was the only flight I could take because PAL is fully-booked tomorrow, and Singapore Air is also completely filled up.

What's now happened is that I have to spend my entire weekend here, when I only ought to be here from Monday till Wednesday for some training and partner enablement stuff. Have had to leave Lalai by herself for too many days..

When I got to Soekarno-Hatta, I was once again confronted with a situation that's very common to me -- I had no money. Sounds like last Friday all over again..

Last time I was here, I had to do a cash advance on my Citibank MasterCard because there were no ATM's in the airport that take American Express. Well, same thing happened again. Still no ATM's which take my corporate card. And, I had forgotten my cash advance PIN on my personal card. Which is just as well..

Luckily the famous Golden Bird taxi company takes American Express. The fare was a somewhat eye-popping 360,000 IDR, or $38 or about 1,600 pesos. It's kind of strange to have the peso at 41 to the dollar.. but it's good because duty-free shopping is 25% cheaper! a substantial savings.

Anyway so I paid Golden Bird and expected to ride back to the hotel in the usual Toyota Vios or Kijang Innova, but unexpectedly this Mercedes Benz C200K Kompressor pulled up. Yippee! I've always wanted to ride in one of these, but all those times in Singapore and Hong Kong I invariably ended up in some huge old Toyota Crown.

Leaving Soekarno-Hatta..



First time I've ever ridden in a modern Mercedes, at that (old W124's don't count). The car did not live up to my expectations of Teutonic engineering. Sure it had (count 'em) six airbags (and "SRS Airbag" decals all over the doors and cabin roof) and multiple zone climate control.

And yes, the door linings and seats were stitched leather. The roof was cloth. But the airconditioning vents were inexplicably broken (well it was a taxi) and the interior.. was not as high-rent as I imagined. The fit and finish of the interior door panels (like the ashtray) was loose! in many ways the Mazda3 is better put-together, although the materials are definitely inferior.

The C200K is kind of equivalent to a mid-range Japanese car and not the sort of conveyance fit for a Kaiser or a Fuhrer.

The C-class is the entry-level Mercedes, certainly, and is only classed as "near-luxury." But in spite of the heavy door thunk, it is not substantially quieter than other cars I've driven or ridden in. In fact the highway noise spec is 72 dBA at 70 miles/hour -- a noise figure identical to the Mazda3 and significantly worse than the Mazda CX7. I will admit it was better-damped over road bumps than the Mazda3. But not more-than-three-times-the-price better.

Mental note: remove C-class Mercedes from my list of future cars. I hope the 3-series BMW lives up to my expectations! but where can I test-drive one without getting laughed at? I've never seen a BMW taxi in my life.

Side Note: as of now, these are current (Philippines) prices:

• 2.5M pesos for the BMW 320i
• 2.5M pesos for the Mercedes C180 Kompressor
• 2.0M for the Volvo S40 2.4i (the Mazda3-derived one)
  

Looks like the Swedes are the winner! punchier engine for much less cost. Same platform as the Mazda3 and Ford Focus. But these cars are well above my pay grade. If I were in the market for another car, it would almost certainly be a 2.0-liter CR-V or a Hyundai Santa Fe. Maybe in a few years, unless I inexplicably win the lotto (real hard, since I don't buy lotto tickets).

Anyway I'm back in Hotel Mulia. The food in Shangri-La is better but Shangri-La is too far from our offices here. Besides I'm a creature of habit.



Since I'm too chickenshit to go outside and look for a mall, I've decided to hole up in my room till Monday morning and abuse the room service. Thank heavens for internet access.

I do have a princely 60,000 IDR (from my previous trip) which ought to be enough to pay for my taxi fare to the office on Monday.

Me and my Mozcom Buddies

Arnold Castro, Paul Pongco, my royal highness the dirty ice cream eater, Mike Blancas, Jambie Dumas. Thing is, only Mike is still at Mozcom. Maybe this should be "me and my ex-Mozcom buddies."

Lalai took this photo at Arnold and Cris' daughter's first birthday a couple weeks ago, on November 30.

Big Berts

I went to Big Bert's today, after many years of e-mailing David Tong and speculating on the Tsikot.com message boards. My visit was for the long-overdue (six months overdue) Paint Protection Program for the car.

To my somewhat-annoyance, I discovered that Big Bert's does not accept credit cards. Everything is on cash basis. I had been thinking of availing of their premium "OptiGuard" service at 4,000 pesos but I didn't have 4,000 pesos in my pocket! What I had was 1,000 pesos. And I could not extract more money from the ATM because I had already hit my withdrawal limit for the day.

So I decided to just get the "New Car Paint Protection Program" for 1,000 pesos. Wandered around the area looking for a place that accepted credit cards so I could have lunch. I literally had no other money anyplace on my anatomy.

When the paint protection thing was done (took four hours), I had to flee precipitously because I didn't have any money to give as a tip to the poor guy who had a hard time scraping off all the hardened wax from my DIY wax job.

Oh well.. it should be time for another Paint Protection bout in three months. I'll make sure to tip them double next time.

Third World Health Care

I visited the Philippine General Hospital yesterday, because one of my mom's cousins is confined there and I was tasked to pay a visit. PGH is supposed to be the country's best public tertiary hospital. I was born there.

The last time I was at PGH was over ten years ago. I was still in school back then. Coming back was.. a Dickensian experience.

And here I was thinking that Makati Medical Center was old and rundown! PGH is, no joke, even seedier than the HMO that I visit for my asthma checkups. And my HMO lives in a repurposed bank along Gil Puyat Avenue.

The ground floor of PGH was swarming with indigent-looking folk, all with gloomy expressions that are not out of place considering that they are associated with seriously ill (and seriously wallet-draining) people. I was afraid to take deep breaths because of my slightly immuno-compromised lungs. Thank the steroids for that.

The architecture of PGH is very much like the old buildings in UP Diliman like the Engineering Building where I spent more than five years of my life. In a word.. post-colonial American. Add on, old and rotting.

Like many government buildings, PGH has elevator operators. But unlike typical government buildings where the elevator operator is a useless appendage who was employed as a political favor, the operators in PGH are actually useful.

They pull the elevator doors open and shut because the motors aren't working.

I went to the pay ward, which was so run-down, it had old newspapers covering the windows to prevent heat from getting in and overwhelming the poor airconditioning. And the room was extremely dingy, with six or eight beds in it and dirty-looking sheets. That was the pay ward, I can hardly imagine what sort of charnel house the charity ward looks like.

Makati Med, old as it is, looks positively palatial. PGH looks like something out of Prison Break, or an insane asylum for the damned.

And Medical City would be on a distant moon by comparison. It's really scary to imagine that I might end up in PGH if my HMO coverage and health insurance ran out. It would be like slow death in there.

Neverwinter Nights 2 Slowdown

I'm getting about 15 - 20 fps outdoors, and a dismal <10 fps indoors. Headache-inducing! I was reading someone else's review, he was getting around 15 - 17 fps with a GeForce 7600GS, and a 2.0GHz Athlon64. Virtually same CPU, measurably better graphics hardware. So the figure I'm getting is quite expected.

The Radeon 9600 Pro was actually a far more competent video card than the one I have now (GeForce 7300GS). Which isn't surprising -- the Radeon cost 3,200 pesos last year (and 2,800 pesos now) while I get the GeForce for 1,800. They both have 256MB of RAM, but the GeForce only has a 64-bit wide memory bus, and probably a far feebler GPU.

The rest of the computer.. is fast. What can I expect from a 1.8GHz dual-core Intel. I feel no need to overclock at the moment. Not even a bit curious (maybe I will to benchmark TimesTen performance at some time..)

Somewhat-Good Computer

I was able to sell my Radeon 9600 Pro video card (still a very competent one, but unusable due to its AGP slot) today. Tomorrow some other guy is picking up the 1GB of SDRAM.

I finally bit the bullet and bought some decent parts: Intel E2160 Dual-Core, ECS motherboard, GeForce 7300GS (64-bit, alas..) PCI-Express video, and 1GB of 667MHz DDR2 RAM. Cost me more than I bargained for, as I had been planning to buy one of those GeForce 6100 motherboards and an Athlon 64 X2.

But none of the shops in Park Square 1 have any AM2 processor less feeble than the Sempron 3400. So it was either come in $20 under budget and have an entry-level, single-core processor and integrated graphics; or go $50 over budget and have dual (highly-overclockable!) cores, albeit still entry-level, and discrete graphics.

Thankfully, Lalai was not overly concerned about my budget overrun. For which I am quite grateful. :-)

I Give Up!

Last night I was able to play Neverwinter Nights 2 on my Frankenstein PC for six hours or so. Playable, I could live with it.

Then the machine locked up. And since then, I have been unable to stabilize it. It sometimes reboots during POST; other times it makes it into Windows before powering down; and other times it lets me play for a few minutes (and not save) before giving up the ghost.

And now the guy on TipidPC who sold it to me last Monday is not responding to my e-mails. It's very likely I will have to swallow the loss. Which annoys me but it's not worth the effort to track the bum down for 1,200 pesos.

Anyway I've decided to sell off all of my computer stuff. I have accumulated quite a bit over the years and I already have buyers for my precious 1GB of SDRAM and my Radeon 9600 Pro video card. Of course I lose a great deal (I'm selling the video card for half the price I bought it early this year).

Hopefully if all the parts get sold, I can buy a new computer and put this whole waste of time behind me. Actually I could buy a Core 2 Quad PC right now, but it's the principle of the thing.