Aug 27, 2014

Living in Bohol 101: Boholanos

Thinking of staying in Bohol for a long time? You might be a tourist who simply wanted to travel or a volunteer who has been assigned to make a social impact. Either of them, you still need to know Boholanos, apart from being very "Hospitable"  (known Filipino attitude) there are other things you might need to know about them.

Boholanos are…

  1. Happy people. They find ways to make themselves contented to live a happy life. Regardless of the hardships.

  1. Love to sing. Anywhere you go, you'll find karaoke or videoke machines. Most families even have it in their house. Boholanos are also great singers, I must say. I also think singing is in the Filipino blood, Filipinos also love to watch singing contest on TV or live so don’t tell them that singing contest on TV are cheap cause they definitely have high standards when it comes to singing.
  2. Love to help other people. Bohol is a safe place for tourists. Ask a Boholano, and you'll know. They love it when they are able to help.

  1. Receptive to foreigners. They very much welcome foreigners because they see them as cool, handsome and wealthy people (in general), this might be a disadvantage in some cases, but mostly foreign people are able to benefit from how they are treated. :D

  1. They speak English, specifically American English. Yeah, for foreigners who don’t know, Philippines speak great English and Boholanos as well. I would like to emphasize this because I worked with a British youth when I was volunteering and he said that he didn’t expect people in Bohol to be speaking in English. So if you'll stay there for long, don’t worry, you won’t get lost cause you can ask people around.

  1. Shy people. This is when they are around foreigners, they are shy to speak in English (though they can speak well or a bit), they are shy because they are conscious with their grammar not because they don't know how to speak English.

  1. Love to dance. Attend to events and gatherings, and the most frequent talents are singing and dancing. Aside from singing, Filipinos also love to dance and most of them are not shy when you make them sing or dance.

  1. Love to eat. Fiesta is part of the culture, and the height of fiesta is from April to May. You can see banderitas (hanging colorful streamers) in a series of towns you'll pass by. And when you say fiesta it is eating a lot of food - healthy diet is not an excuse.

  1. Religious people. Bohol is known for a lot of old churches, and most of them are true-blue Roman  Catholics. Going to church is an important thing on Sundays, so if ever you are staying in a host home or Boholano family, it is a sign of respect if you agree to them taking you to church. They are not going to convert you or something, going once or twice is enough. Don't be surprised if they ask you your religion, it is  a normal thing, so be prepared to answer nicely.

  1. Clean. They are mostly concerned about cleanliness, and house keeping is done if not everyday or during weekends. They do household chores frequently. Just don’t be too messy and you'll be fine. They would also appreciate if you'll try to help, (though most of them will try to tell you you don't have to, but  insist anyway) they are glad to teach you how to do chores like  washing  clothes with your own hands or cooking in wooden fire.
  2. Taking a bath once or three times a day. Body odor is sometimes offensive, be sure to take a bath at least once everyday.

I'm sure I've got a lot of things missed. Most of them are just drawn from my volunteer experience with British people. So if someone out there would like to ask specific questions, I'd be glad to answer back in a Boholano perspective.

Aug 15, 2014

Baguio City: Chil Cheon Gak


Yes, this is when we visited Baguio. Our trip organizer gave me a chance to plan our lunch. And since I badly wanted to try Korean Food, I've decided to look for a Korean resto famous in Baguio. But I guess I didn’t research well huhuhu. A friend of mine told me that "Red Station" is better than "Chil Chun Gak". Anyway, though my colleagues resented eating in that Korean resto, because they weren't really satisfied considering also that it was their first time, all of us gave out a sigh and said that it was worth the try.  But I was glad that they didn't make me pay all of it knowing that I was the one who planned it all. Hahahaha


But since this is my first time eating all Korean food, I'm posting it though  it wasn't satisfying right after.


Yeah, we've ordered that much and those side dishes in small cups were free. I'm suppose to order samgyeopsal but they don’t serve unless you ordered two sets of it. And  I sensed that my company wouldn't want to order it wahahahaha. So I sticked to ramen instead. See that bowl with the soup, that is mine. It was even funny, we are eating in a Korean restaurant and all of them  wanted to eat Filipino food.  Hahahaha.


 We are a rice-eating country, and eating won't be  complete without rice. But honestly, the rice bowl was just small but I wasn't able to finish it, huhuhu, it didn’t go well with the ramen I ordered. :'(


But this is the most interesting part of our lunch, taking a picture of the chopsticks. Hahahaha

For documentation purposes, I took pictures of the resto as well.


 They' got a nice interior though.  And you get to choose whether you'll sit on a chair or on the floor. We decided to sat on the floor which is on the left side of the picture.


And that's the area we chose. :D


They've lots of tables to choose from if you'll go further right. This was that part.

CONCLUSION:
I seriously need to get used to the taste of Korean Food. But I was thinking it might be hard for me to do, since I so loved sweet food and, generally, the taste of Korean foods are way different. :( So maybe I'll just stick to being a fan of K-Pop, K-dramas and K-Culture yet excluding the food hahahaha. I guess I just went so bitter just because I didn't get to order the food that I wanted. Whooo.

But, I would still continue to look for great Korean restos, and order a different Korean dish, maybe I'll love some of them. Well, it takes time to get used to something you haven’t grown with.  Ajja!


Aug 2, 2014

How can signing up to websites ruin your email?

Have you tried signing up to almost all social networking sites? If you have, then you are one of those people who don't want to be left behind about anything new. That isn't a bad thing though as long as you are very much careful with all the information you have provided and that the site you are signing up to is guaranteed safe.

I'll share my experience, when I started creating an account in "friendster" (which is the most famous social site in the Phil before facebook), I've become really engrossed. And then I heard about My Space, Twitter and Facebook , Instagram - I can't stop trying out something new cause I don't want to be left behind. I just actually created an account on Facebook because of 'Farmville' and was never really fascinated with the look of my home page, that's why I don't normally post on it. I also have a Photobucket account since I love to collect pictures of my fave artist. I stopped using friendster, when it changed its interface, I can't get back to it since all of my pictures and list of friends were unrecoverable. I was really upset so I continued using Facebook which was increasing in  popularity then. But I didn't just stop there, google + plus came, and I signed up for its trial. I  also got hooked to Dropbox when I was working so I created an account. But it’s storage is really limited unless I invite some friends, so I decided to look for other cloud storage like Google Drive and Megacloud. I also started blogging, so I first signed up in Wordpress and then discovered Blogger, which offers  a lot of features I liked.  I signed up to lots of sites other than those I mentioned above and I haven't even used most of them.

What happened?

I use two emails when I sign up for something. Without realizing how many sites I signed up for, emails started flooding my email accounts. It was such a tiring job to delete all those unimportant emails and spams. So one by one, I started unsubscribing from the sites I got an account with. That was very time consuming but it freed me from having all those emails deleted. From a number of social accounts, I am now managing five (5) of them plus my two (2) email accounts. I just stick to the ones I really use often and it was much more convenient than handling more than what I can manage. :D

Try to use, only those that are relevant and useful to you, sites are meaningless unless they are used wisely. :D