Thai spice and everything nice

Having recently moved to Thailand, I've realized how much training my taste buds need to acclimate to the culture, particularly through the food!

There is the chili for one thing--and the mixture of tastes all at once bursting on your tongue. Take my current object of fixation--pad thai. Thai style fried noodles, which I think I have had at the cafeteria and different other places more than thrice since being in the country.

There are the tofu and shrimp bits on the side. The leeks and corriander sprinkled liberally. The hints of lime juice, a tinge of tamarind, and the bite and crunch of the peanuts mixed in linguini-sized rice noodles. And then, the chili--on the side. And if you prefer, some brown sugar--to taste.

Practically having pad thai is in a way my little way to remind myself how I really have to be open to the food and culture how strange it is. Although I am surrounded by different nationalities--and in fact have found my group mainly though from China--the discovery of the country I am in still calls out.

Being away from Bangkok (which they call "town" from here in Pathumthani), the urban jungle seems a surreal dream that has melted away. Towards the end of the day, you can even hear the crickets, the voices hollering in different languages (and the cricket bats of the Pakistanis, Indians and any others who play nearby). And in the mornings--there is the tinge of the rain and earth from the night before.

A Cleaner, Greener Business Model this World Environment Day!

It's World Environment Day today!

Happy W.E.D friends:)

Posting a picture of the savannahs of Transvaal in South Africa--since last year's W.E.D was themed "Don't Desert the Drylands." This year, climate change and global warming affects even more people in other communities.

One way to think of W.E.D. is the spirit of idealism to remember we are one world environment.

In the business world, environment is usually seen as a necessary input of production, with necessary waste--hence oceans, atmosphere, urban streets are the catchbins that renew itself everyday.

But when we manage the inefficiencies we generate, any kind of waste, and channel them back into productive processes, we realize we are only mimicking this cyclic effort of renewal.

Green productivity, clean production, pollution prevention are names for this. A kind of vigilante attempt of engineers, process advocates and creative thinkers to make waste work and make money, instead of being a drain on the wallets of business communities and carrying capacity of nature in the form of penalties, emission taxes, waste removal costs and of course the impact on the overall ecosystem.

I remember, I was floored by the idea of simplifying processes. Trim the fat, get back to the basics, recycle what can be channeled back into the loop, make it last and sustainable by being efficient, creating value.

Yeah!

If like me you think this is a great value proposition--then check out this event below for anyone interested in better, smarter ways of doing business--the greener, cleaner, more productive way.

It's not called GREEN PRODUCTIVITY for nothing!

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Check out the 11th Annual Philippine Pollution Prevention Roundtable Presents
INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO SANITATION

Venue: 25th Floor RCBC Tower, Makati City
27 June 2007 (Wednesday)

8:00 AM –12:00 NOON

The objective of this roundtable is to present sanitation policies and their implementation, which will facilitate objective discussions among industries, NGOs, POs and policy makers to evaluate the useful applications of innovative sanitation technologies to municipalities, small cities and highly urban areas.

Speakers for the event include Dir. Ramon Alikpala of NWRB, Sanitation Specialist Mr. Gerardo Parco, Mr. Antonio Aquino, President of Manila Water Co. and Hon. Mayor German Sarana of Bayawan City.

Participation and Registration:

General Participations are invited for a general forum fee of Php 500.00 only.

NGOs and government agencies are invited to partake of the 20 free slots, subject to screening for proper allocation, as well as 10 free slots for students, as determined by screening.

P3R is a member of the Asia Pacific Roundtable for Sustainable Consumption and Production.

P3R is partners with the Board of Investments – Department of Trade and Industry: Environmental Management Bureau – Department of Environment and Natural Resources; Committee on Ecology, House of Representatives; Clean and Green Foundation Inc.; Biotechnology Coalition of the Philippines; Philippine Institute of Industrial Engineers; United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP); Infinite Progressions Corporation

For inquiries contact Liezel Viernes at 02-536-0260

Melting Ice, Sinking Villages This World Env't Day

Who would have thought that the theme of this year's coming World Environment Day on June 5th was eerily relevant to the spotlight climate change has been thrust in? The most potent manifestation is the melting polar ice, but also the change in life for a lot of families and towns in those regions. A story in the recent International Herald Tribune shows how the melting ice had already affected the towns in Alaska. The ground beneath the town is sinking.

Entitled, "Alaskan town seeks lifeline amid climate change," by William Yardley, IHT, writes: "The earth beneath much of Alaska is not what it used to be. The permanently frozen subsoil, known as permafrost, upon which Newtok and so many other Native Alaskan villages rest, is melting, yielding to warming air temperatures and a warming ocean. Sea ice that would normally protect coastal villages is forming later in the year, allowing fall storms to pound away at the shoreline. Erosion has made Newtok an island, caught between the ever-widening Ninglick River and a slough to the north. The village is below sea level, and sinking."

And in the wake of this slow death is the recent assertion of the U.S. that it finds E.U. targets for mitigating climate change unacceptable, makes you wonder.

Cathy Collage via Imagini's VisualDNA

Tripping at the Bacolod IYAS Workshop

The past week in Bacolod was a blast--especially with oysters, beer, lit-talk about writing in dialect among fellows and panelists at the IYAS workshop.

Among the works in English, Filipino, Hiligaynon and Kinaray-a served up during the workshop was the heady combination of food, nature-tripping, visits to haunted homes from the turn of the century and of course, the steady stream of libation---coffee, milo, beer, atbp!

The fellows roster below in alphabetical order:

Bryan Argos (Poetry in Hiligaynon)
Lawrence Bernabe (Poetry in Hiligaynon, Kinaray-a)
Nina Calleja (Poetry in Filipino)
Catherine Candano (Poetry in English)
Douglas Candano (Fiction in English)
Igor Dela Pena (Poetry in English)
Nino Manaog (Poetry in English)
Marcel Milliam (Poetry in Hiligaynon)
Bernadette Neri (Fiction in Filipino)
Nikka Osorio (Poetry in Filipino)
Ned Parfan (Poetry in English)
Joshua So (Fiction in English)
Christian Tabalzon (Fiction in Filipino)
Ana Maria Villanueva (Fiction in English)

For the fellows, remember these lines:

"My kinaray-a is not a pig."

"If I were Anna Karenina and I met this character, instead of killing myself, I would push him off the train platform myself!"

"Of course, from the pen name, I think we already know who Gyudon Devourer is."

Bacolod Bound--IYAS Natl Writers' Workshop

Ana kulit-meister is the reason why I actually got off my butt and sent in an application for a Fellowship in English Poetry at the IYAS National Writers Workshop. One of the few opportunities for a free writing vacation/inuman/bonding over everything written down in our country.

Ana and I met in 2005 at as roomies and co-fellows at the UP Writers Workshop. And once again, because of her constant encouragment/nagging, I'm packing my bags to go to Bacolod for the DLSU IYAS Workshop. Once again her fiction and my poetry are going to get the microscopic treatment of some really cool writers. More re-birthing pains than anything.

Funny thing is, Douglas, my brother also got it. We got the calls that we got into the workshop the same day. Since the application process requires us to submit un-marked works with a pseudonym, the organizers and judges only really found out who we were after they matched the pseudonym on the submissions to the sealed enveloped with our contact details inside.

So yes, there's me, Anna and my brother, for a week with writers in Bacolod:)

Thanks Anna, for bugging me with love:) Even if Sir Cirilo Bautista won't be there this year:( WAHH...

Weekend Book Hunt--She Scores!

Being a Sunday after a lot of dizzying changes--drastic ones that I've been unable to wrap both head and arms around--it wasn't far from my thoughts to spend the weekend to decompress with a lot of old hats like the Rolling Stones, the Doors, the Cream and other rockers of by-gone eras for company.

To compliment the time travel, been meaning to get my hands on and finally get started on my Maxine Hong-Kingston book, "Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book," a 1960's take on trippy San Fransisco based Chinese-American who's own life bears ties with the Monkey King of Chinese ancient Buddhist fables in "Journey to the West."

Prixie's influence at the English Department, and her extended loan of Hong-Kingston's "Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts," a collection of short talk-stories (whose return I had continuously deferred having read and re-read the darned book) are to blame.

Her writing was a sympathetic and unapologetic take on the ABC (American Born Chinese) life.

Even before multi-cultural literature became hot stuff, she was already one of the few women writers who took a stab at the largely syncretic and very confusing life of nth-generation Chinese youth on paper. Charlson and Danton had been right to recommend it in early 2005--but I had no idea how right they were then.

A visit to a second-hand bookstore after a heart-to-heart father-daughter dinner revealed gems hiding among the troves written by fiercely honest female writers.

"Wilderness Tips: Stories" by Margaret Atwood and "Raisin in the Sun" a play by Lorraine Hansberry were both steals at under a hundred pesos, peaking through the tons of pulp-fiction paperbacks, gorgeous dream-like eureka moments enough to make a book-lover giddy.