Commuting in the Philippines

Navigating the Philippines' potholed, polluted streets can be a challenge. Learning the ropes about our public land transport system can be even more puzzingly frustrating. Speeding drivers, road rage, miscalculated change, the loss of personal space, sweat and smell and even cuckling chickens and the occasional robbery/holdup - that's part and parcel of public transport every commuting Filipino has accepted as the norm. (once in a few years there's also a bus or train blast - just like what recently happened to an airconditioned passenger bus this month). But commuting has its little joys and pleasures too (saying, squeezing tight beside a cute guy! haha) Decades of riding tricycles, jeeps, buses, and trains can reveal more about the Metro (and the rest of the country too) than riding in comfortable, sterilized private cars will do.

photo from pinoypandesal.blogspot.com

Want to know the trick to commuting in the Philippines? Read more about it here.

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Cardillo Heaven

I just managed to recreate my favorite aunt's fish cardillo recipe... and it was just heaven! Takes me back 15 years ago when I would eagerly watch and wait while Auntie Ellen cooks and serves the steaming hot dish to me and my famished cousins (well, not so famished really, more like hungry after 5 hours straight of playing outside ;p)

(photo taken right after making cardillo...yum yum yum!)

Cardillo is one of my favorite dishes because it is tasty, healthy, and very easy to prepare. Plus it has lots tomatoes and eggs in it... two of my favorite foods ever :) You can read my five-step guide to making sumptuous fish cardillo here.

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Beauty and the Breast

I'm currently doing some (geeky paper/research/statistical study) work on common societal perceptions to the female breast. In other words, how do people in different culture perceive and value the aesthetics of the female mammary glands? It seems like there is quite a disparity between female breast perceptions across the Atlantic - while going topless is quite commonplace in a lot of European countries there are still a lot of taboos associated with exposing your breast in the American public.

(Photo credit)

I've compiled some stuff that I've posted online - it's about the factors that affect breast size and shape. You can read it here. I don't want to go into value judgments on the breast yet, as it's quite complicated with so many factors to consider (culture, religious belief, exposure to mass media, etc.) :-p

Anyway, what's interesting is that apparently wearing a bra can actually weaken breast support by making the supporting ligaments atrophy. These ligaments weaken through disuse until they eventually lose function. Of course, doing strenuous exercise or sports without a bra is equally damaging (and painful - ouch!) to your breast support structure. The solution? Wear decent bra support when exercising or doing sports, or when your breasts are heavy with milk during pregnancy and childbirth - but go au naturel on your chest the rest of the time.

(Photo credit)

Wearing tight, ill-fitting bras, on the other hand, can cause serious damage to your circulation as it cuts off lymphatic channels. It can even crush your chest area abnormally, too.

To be honest, rt's actually quite liberating - physically and in a way, culturally - to go around the house not wearing a bra. For someone who grew up in a relatively conservative, Catholic country like me, it will however take some serious guts to go out of the house bra-less. *sigh*

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The Cost of University Education Around the World

All night long news has been blaring on CNN and BBC about the massive student protest going on near the Parliament in London with university students protesting the 300% hike in their tuition fees. I know I'm supposed to be doing research (which I am, actually, chapter by chapter) right now, but I'm verily tempted to look at how much a university education actually costs in other parts of the world.


(all calculations are for undergraduate tuition fees alone and does not cover other expenses; calculated for one year)


The Annual Cost of University Tuition in the Philippines: 

between PhP 700 (Polytechnic University of the Philippines) to PhP200,000 (University of Asia and the Pacific) per year...that's between $16 to $1,032  /year

University Tuition Fee in the United States:

from $876/year (Berea College in Berea, Kentucky) to $45,800/year (Landmark College in Putney, Vermont)

University Tuition Fee in the United Kingdom:

up to £3,290/year or $5,218/year

University Tuition in Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Greece, Brazil, Libya, Sri Lanka, Cuba and Venezuela:

Free! (libre!)

Of course, these are straight comparisons of numbers. Other factors like cost of living, annual income, and subsidies have to be considered...but I have to go back to my "real" research now. Lol.

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Getting This Blog Indexed...At Least Initially

I've noticed there's a couple of posts here already, so I guess this blog's decent (or, at least has some content) enough to merit being indexed in a search engine. No, I'm not talking about page rank and SEO and what have you...at least not yet. I'm talking about getting your blog indexed in the major search engines so that their creepy crawlers can start to trawl this site for content.

Submitting the Blog to Google
Okay...so there are actually 2 ways you can submit your blog to Google. First is through the "submit your site" option. This is how the page looks here:

It's pretty straightforward, actually. Just add the URL of your blog's home page and you're good to go.

The second way is through Blog Search, a blog-only version of the standard Google search engine on its beta stage. You can read more about Google Blogs here. Anyway, the submission page is just as easy peasy as the first one:

I'm supposed to add this blog to Yahoo and Bing too, but I do have to go back to reading the 368-page research proposals I have to mine valuable data from... (yeah, I'm procrastinating from procrastinating, duh).

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Made It to the Factoidz Article Spotlight!

An article I recently just made it to the Article Spotlight feature of the Factoidz site!

The article is about the different endangered species and subspecies of bears in the world. You can read the entire article here.

I'm meaning to write a decent writeup/review of Factoidz. I'll post one as soon as I reach the one-month-old mark at the site :-)

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How to Boost Your Cell Phone Signal - Quick and Easy

I used to live in an apartment where the cell phone signal was just horrible. I missed a lot of calls, didn't get important texts, and had to go out to the other side of the street to get a signal. It got to the point where some friends thought that I was ignoring their texts on purpose. The problem got solved when a more tech-savvy (okay, and yeah, rich) neighbor got a repeater for their unit - and voila! signal problem fixed. Not everyone has the same luck though, so here's something you might want to try:

5 Quick Ways to Boost Cellphone Signal Reception

No, I'm not in any way related or connected to the person who wrote this piece. I just found it really really useful and worth blog-bookmarking (yeah that's what I'm doing right now) in case I'll need it later :-)

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