Baker Bids Adieu......

....but not to you, folks. The Baker is simply bidding Adieu to the Blogger platform.

The Baker has finally found a new template for his blog. However, the move to a new template also meant that the Baker will also be moving to a new blogging platform. Moving forward, please update my blog address on your links so that they now point to this new bakeshop address.

There are still some kinks I need to iron out while I make the transition to my new bakery courtesy of Wordpress. One of which is that I still have to find a way to migrate your comments on my two most recent posts "Someday" and "Pictures and Thoughts From a Break" to the new blog. Any inputs on how to sort this problem from the Wordpress veterans among you will be deeply appreciated.

Although this will be my last entry on this platform, I will keep it open for the foreseeable future. I will also be downloading all my posts and your comments so as not to lose them just in case Google decides to zap this little site out of the blogosphere someday.

I hope that this switch to Wordpress will work for the long-term. Thanks and I hope to see you all again in my new neighborhood.

Merry Christmas to Everyone!

Pictures and Thoughts from a Break

During my last stay in Manila, a break I desperately needed, I took some photos of the area around the hotel I stayed in. Ever since childhood, I've always looked out the window whenever I needed to do some serious thinking. Somehow, the sight of all the life that goes on around me helps stimulate my mind. Although I'm going to present the photos I took, I'm not really going to talk much about the places shown on them. Instead, I'll write some of the thoughts and memories that came to mind as I cast my eyes on them.


The photo above shows the northern portion of Makati Avenue. This was the view from my hotel window. On the left is the Millenium Plaza Hotel. It looks spanking new but when the SO and I did some research about it on the internet, the hotel got some pretty bad reviews for customer service, safety, and in-house dining.

On the right side of the street, one will see a small white building with a maroonish-colored roofing and where the top three floors are all glass. That building houses the Great Eastern Hotel and the only reason I mention it here is that its first two floors also house the Aberdeen Court restaurant. This restaurant was a popular place for wedding receptions back in the 1970s. An aunt and a couple of cousins had their wedding receptions there at the time.

Back to the left side of Makati Avenue above, you probably won't see it but there's also a branch of the Barrio Fiesta restaurant where the SO and I had lunch one day. The kare-kare was still very good, exactly how I remembered it to be. We also enjoyed tall glasses of sago't gulaman.


Above photo shows the southern part of Makati Avenue. The SO used to work in one of the buildings shown, one where she got her start in the industry she's currently in. Yours truly used to work on Dela Rosa Street, right off of Makati Avenue. The building I used to work in is no longer around for it was demolished several years ago to make way for a high-rise condominium.

I absolutely love the area I stayed in. There was an abundance of 24-hour restaurants and fastfood places to pick from for a jet-lagged guy like me. So many changes have taken place in this town ever since I left years ago. No doubt that there will be more changes in the coming years for such is the way of Life.


I took the photo above to document, in my own small way, the passing of an old Makati landmark, the GilArmi Apartments. GilArmi was said to be one of the first serviced apartments and/or condotels (condominium-hotels) in Makati and in Asia. It was built in 1962 and was owned by the late Filipino millionaire businessman Virgilio Hilario and his wife, Armi Kuusela, who gained worldwide fame back in 1952 when as Miss Finland, she was crowned as the first Miss Universe.

Please accept my apologies but due to rather severe technical limitations, my camera wasn't able to zoom in enough to provide you with a much closer view of the building. It is the smallest building you will see in the middle of the picture, specifically the one immediately to the right of Rustan's, the one with a construction crane on it. You won't miss it while driving on Ayala Avenue because its demolition is in full swing. I believe that a high-rise hotel and condominium will soon rise on its site.


The photo above shows the stretch of Kalayaan ("Freedom") Avenue that lies west of Makati Avenue. Immediately to the left of Kalayaan Avenue, one will see the roofs of houses in an area that's part of the Bel-Air Subdivision. The vacant lots one sees to the right of the avenue mark the spots where the old International School of Manila used to stand. Kalayaan Avenue in Makati City ultimately leads one to the old Pasig Line in the neighboring Santa Ana district of Manila.

"Pasig Line" referred to a tram (tranvia) line that used to run on the entire stretch of what is now Kalayaan Avenue during the early part of the 20th century. The "Pasig Line" tranvia route began its operations in 1908 and commenced from Paco Station in Manila and ran all the way to Pasig. The destruction wrought by World War 2 permanently ended the line's operations. But as recently as the early 1990s, sections of that old tranvia line were still present on that stretch of Kalayaan Avenue that lies east of Makati Avenue and leading to what is now the Rockwell Center.

Going back to the picture above, a lot of the land around Kalayaan Avenue, specifically the sites of Bel-Air and the old International School of Manila (which opened its Makati campus in 1960) were developed in the latter part of the 1950s. Our family has had a presence in Makati since the 1930s back in the day when Makati was still part of Rizal Province. I was told by my uncles that prior to their development, a lot of the land surrounding Kalayaan Avenue consisted of wet fields of kangkong (water spinach) and rice fields.

It was a story related to me tinged with quite a bit of regret because some time during the late 1940s, way before the above land was to be developed into what is to become the Makati we all know today, some parties had approached my grandmother offering to sell some of the land for 10 centavos per square meter. My grandmother turned them down by remarking, "Ano ang gagawin ko sa kangkungan?" ("What am I going to do with a kangkong field?") Looking at the photo above, apparently a lot.

It was a lesson learned. For us, my grandmother's words have come to symbolize an opportunity lost and the need for foresight in planning out our lives. Thus, growing up, my father taught me to not only look at things the way they are, but to also consider the possibilities and opportunities that could arise out of them.


Above is one of the sights that greet me whenever I looked out my hotel window. Upon seeing it, I immediately thought to myself that here's another man's dream rudely interrupted. Except that I didn't realize until later how grand the dream was.

The property is now surrounded by GI sheets used as temporary fencing and on one of those sheets, hangs a sign that said "Eaton". Once I got back to the States, I did some research and found out that this was planned to be a 64-storey building and envisioned to be the tallest structure in Makati. 28 floors would have been allocated for a Holiday Inn Hotel and the rest would have been for office spaces, amenties, serviced apartments and residential suites.

I feel a certain sadness when I see projects such as this come to a standstill. Not only do I feel bad for the people who dreamt about it and planned for it but I also feel bad for the people who are desperately in need of jobs who could have found gainful employment in such a place. I hope for everyone's sake that the dream that fired this project up has not flamed out permanently.


Above is a shot of the northeastern view from my hotel. In the foreground it shows Makati City with the high-rise condos of Rockwell Center surrounded by homes. On the other side of the Pasig River is Mandaluyong City with its now impressive skyline. Took this photo mainly because my sister works in one of the buildings shown. The hills in the distance are the foothills of the Sierra Madre mountains. It is in one of those foothills where the school I spent my elementary and high school years is located.


This photo of the Touch of Hands Clinic & Spa was also another sight that greeted me whenever I looked out the window. Given its proximity to Makati and Kalayaan Avenues and to lively Burgos Street, this place must be doing very good business. A Korean restaurant on its ground floor called Gela caters to the Korean community in the area. Although smaller when compared to other Korean restaurants in its immediate vicinity, it also attracts a fair amount of customers judging from the number of cars I always saw parked in front of it whether day or night.

Tucked in one corner of this property is a Money Changer. There seems to be a lot more of them all over the metropolis these days. It's a good sign really because of the convenience such businesses provide. It allows one to exchange one's dollars to pesos in a legal, arms length transaction and a lot of them stay open 24 hours a day. This money changer was my favorite because I noticed that its rates were often better than the others in the area. Plus, it always advertised its conversion rate for the day through a sign it hangs prominently on its front window.


Finally, a shot of someone who left his bakeshop for a few days for some much needed R&R.

Someday

I was still in college when the following song from the Canadian band Glass Tiger hit the airwaves:

It was 1986 when this song came out. Funny but it always reminds me of a particular college classmate. I first heard this song from him. He was softly singing it in the classroom one afternoon while we sat waiting for our professor to come in. I asked him what song it was and he said that it was called "Someday" by a group called the Glass Tiger.

He was an amusing and very interesting character to say the least. He was a year older than I am but I always had interesting conversations with him. He was the type of person one can have endless conversations with about any topic under the sun. Like a number of people I know, he was outwardly geeky and a bit obese. In class, he would often just look around, silently observing the goings on around him. Thus, the average person might ignore him or assume that he's just like any other nerdy guy. But he certainly wasn't.

Highly intelligent and possessing a bit of a wild streak, he was also an amateur palm reader. He had a wacky and irreverent sense of humor. He came up with a list one day of sexual positions that obese couples can engage in. Some of them, he himself came up with. When he was in the mood, he could let loose with four-letter words and indulge in dirty jokes just for the heck of it. No subject was taboo.

My day's coming to an end. I'm feeling quite drained, both physically and emotionally. Unfortunately for me, this day was not unlike many that came before it. I hope this song will make me feel better because of memories of a happy friendship that it brings to me everytime I listen to it. I haven't had much contact with him ever since we graduated from college. But knowing him and his family, I'm sure he's doing quite well.

When I come home you telephone
To say you're waiting for me
I ask you why - I hear you cry,
But you're still waiting for me

Someday you'll be shedding your tears
To cry over me
Someday I'll be losing this fear

Now I'm alone, you telephone
To tell me you don't need me
I ask you why, you tell me lies
And say the truth would hurt me

Someday you'll be shedding your tears
To cry over me
Someday I'll be losing this fear

Oh, Oh . . . someday

Down in the street where lovers meet
That's where I'm waiting for you
In the streets where lovers meet
I'm still waiting for you

Someday you'll be shedding your tears
And then you'll cry over me [cry over me]
Someday I'll be losing this fear

Someday you'll be shedding your tears
And then you'll cry over me [cry over me]
Someday I'll be losing this fear

In Search Of A New Template

I've had this template for a few months now and although I love it and have managed to keep it looking neat and tidy, I'm now seriously thinking about replacing it.

It's now beset with technical problems. Although my blog posts and pictures show up fine, I can't say the same thing for the various stuff that I want displayed on the right column. I noticed over the last few months that this template only works well when viewed using Internet Explorer. When I try to access it using Firefox, I run into some technical problems.

For example, except for my profile on the right, everything else gets pushed way, way down on the screen. My blogroll and all the other links are only displayed after my last blog entry on the page.

In addition, its code is written in Spanish. I've found it hard to make some tweaks and adjustments to its overall appearance due to the simple fact that any tweaks I do will have to be done on a "trial and error" basis and thus could be quite time consuming.

My search for a new blog template has gone through fits and starts, mostly a result of a rather busy yearend work schedule. I haven't really had the time to sit down and focus on searching for a new template yet. I need to focus on it more one of these days.

Sick As a Baker's Dog

After struggling with headaches and an upset stomach all week, I was hoping that I'd be spending this weekend recovering. Well, I guess I had hoped for too much. Although both my headaches and stomach irritation are now gone, they were both promptly replaced with a head cold and chest congestion. And this duo was converted into a horrible trifecta by an irritating sore throat. Just my luck. It truly sucks to have to spend the weekend this way.

I had planned to do quite a lot of things around the house this weekend. I even brought some work home because there were some annual staff appraisals I needed to work on. But instead, I'm feeling so lethargic that the only things I was able to achieve all day today were my "Must Do's" namely, stop by the supermarket for some food shopping; make a quick run to the bank to get some cash for the week ahead; and drop by McDonald's to get myself some lunch. On top of all of that, I had to battle the cold for it was -2 degrees Celsius (about 29 degrees Fahrenheit) this morning when I went out for my errands.

Once I got home, I immediately put the grocery stuff I away, had my lunch and quickly went back to bed. I hope I'll feel much better when I wake up later today or tomorrow. I hate being sick and I hope that this bout with the colds doesn't worsen to a flu. I hate having to use up vacation days for an illness. It's just a total waste of a day off from work.

And to make matters worse, I am missing you terribly.

That Familiar Lonely Feeling

This is something I've always felt whenever I leave Manila. Call it strange or weird but whenever I fly out of Manila, the worst stopover for me emotionally speaking is always the first one.

A lot of my countrymen board the plane with me in Manila. As one checks in for one's flight or while one waits in the transit lounge, one hears all the friendly chatter and jokes. I would even strike up a conversation or two with some fellow travelers to while away the wait time. These talks tend to continue onto and throughout the flight.

But once we get to our stopover, (be it Hongkong, Tokyo, or Beijing or wherever else it may be) where we all start going our separate ways to different connecting flights that would take us to our respective destinations around the globe, that's when a feeling of sadness and loneliness comes over me.

Most of them stay together bound for destinations either in the Middle East or in some other Asian country. Very few, if at all, remain to continue their flights towards the United States. Thus, as the sound and presence of my kababayans (countrymen) both fade, I find myself feeling increasingly alone.

It is at such stopovers where I get to see right in front of me how we, as a people, physically part with each other to fulfill our own dreams in our own little corners of the world. It is sad and yet it is a reality that a lot of us deal with. I know a lot of us wish that things were a lot different but since fate dealt us all a different hand, we have no other choice but to make the best of what's available to us.

Having lived away from the country for many years, I thought that such lonely feeling would go away because America is now a place I call home. Or if the feeling hadn't gone away, I had at least expected that its intensity would have been reduced by the passage of time. But my last few trips showed me that I still feel the same way after all these years. The feeling is still there, still intense after all these years. I no longer think that it'll ever change. America is what I call my legal home now because of what I need to do with my life. But that familiar lonely feeling I get at that first stopover is proof positive that a part of me still longs for my old home.

A Stopover at Beijing Airport

After close to a week and a half of being away from this blog, I'm back. After a 23 hour-long trip, my plane landed in New York at around 5:30 p.m. last night (Sunday night, 6:30 a.m. in Manila). It was a long and exhausting trip. It would have been a much shorter trip were it not for my five-hour stopover in Beijing.

I took a Philippine Airlines (PAL) flight out of Manila for Beijing early Sunday morning. It wasn't a full flight. At the most, the flight was only 40% full which made me wonder if the Manila-to-Beijing route was a profitable one for PAL. The stop at Beijing involved a transfer to an American airline. Once my plane landed at Beijing Airport, I was surprised to find that even though I was only there for a stopover, I was still required by Chinese immigration law to fill out immigration admission and departure forms. I asked the lady at the immigration desk why this was so but she barely spoke English. It was mainly through hand gestures that she was able to partly answer my questions.

As they say, one can't fight city hall so I decided to comply, albeit reluctantly. I also had to watch my behavior for being in a strict communist state, I knew that the authorities there have a very low tolerance for dissent. The last thing I needed was to spend months in a dirty, cold and crowded Beijing jail simply because I questioned the wisdom behind some of their immigration laws.

Beijing's airport was quite huge and it was made so in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. However, in my humble opinion, the place didn't really offer much in terms of entertainment or shopping. I didn't see a lot of souvenir shops. Most of the ones I saw sold cigarettes, liquor and perfume. Pretty much just the basic stuff. The signages on the shops were not pleasing to look at either. Most of the shops' names were simply painted over an awning above a shop's entrance. Televisions all over the airport lounge I was in only showed programs in Chinese without the benefit of English subtitles. In short, the place was big but boring. I'm just glad that I brought a good book with me to help while away the hours.

Except for the immigration officers and people who manned the airline desks, communication in English was definitely a problem. At one point, I needed to go to a restroom and had to approach one of the airport workers to see where I could find the nearest restroom. Our brief conversation went this way:

Baker: Excuse me, could you point me to the nearest restroom?
Airport worker: No. (Shakes his head while responding.)

Thinking that I might have been misunderstood, I immediately rephrased the question to see if I could get a different answer out of him.
Baker: Is there a comfort room around here?
Airport worker: No. (Shakes his head again.)

I searched my mental dictionary for another word he might be able to understand.
Baker: Is there a toilet around here?
Airport worker: No. (Shakes his head again and smiles this time. The "smile" was probably his way of confessing that after all this time, he didn't really understand a word I was saying.)

The only option left to me at this pont was to use some hand or bodily gestures to show what I needed to do but again, this was Beijing. I have to admit that since it was my first time in a Communist country, I was a bit paranoid and didn't want to do anything that would offend the "authorities". Thus, by resorting to gestures, I ran the risk of being misinterpreted in a big way and it will probably land me again in a dirty, cold and crowded Beijing jail. So, I just kept walking until I eventually came across a picture symbol for a restroom. Good.

Walking into the men's room, I was greeted by a male attendant who, in contrast to the airport worker I dealt with a few minutes earlier, proved to be a shining example of extreme helpfulness. With a smile, this attendant courteously directed me to one of the available urinals. (As if I needed to be shown where they were. Hehehe) Once I was done, he immediately walked over to one of the sinks and proceeded to turn the faucet on for me. I appreciated the service and put my hands under the faucet. As I began to wash my hands, he immediately proceeded to turn the liquid soap dispenser (which was immediately to the right of the faucet) on for my use. With that, I completed washing my hands.

However, the gentleman wasn't done with his service. As soon as he saw that I was done washing my hands, he immediately swiped two paper towels out of the paper towel holder on the wall and handed them to me so I could dry my hands with them. I wasn't sure if he was expecting a tip from all of that great service he provided but I sure appreciated his help. He smiled and respectfully nodded his head at me as I thanked him while walking out of the restroom.

Finally, no Baker activity would be complete without a visit to a cafe or restaurant. Midway through the five-hour wait, I got hungry and decided to have an afternoon snack at an airport coffee shop called "The Lei Cafe". I ordered a couple of hotdog sandwiches (Did I say that I was VERY hungry at this point? Hehe) and a can of Coke.

As I was waiting for my order, I came across the following sign that was posted by the coffee shop's main entrance. It attempts to explain the rationale as to why The Lei Cafe was named the way it was. Word for word and down to the exact spelling of each word, here is what the sign said:

"Lei are used to signify Peace, Friendship and Love. It also should be a welcomed, parting, thankful or congratulant celebration of one person, is affection to another."

I couldn't have said it better myself. :D

I'm slowly easing my way back into work mode after having been away for 10 days. It doesn't help that I'm dealing with a severe case of jet lag and to a lesser degree, an upset stomach. But I should be ok within a few days. I hope.