Off To See The Wizard

Australia is one of those places that I've always wanted to visit. Cable TV came late to my hometown but when it finally did, I was so hooked on the TV channel Star Plus which showed a lot of Austalian cartoons plus those shows like Neighbors and Home & Away.  I was a little too young to understand what was going on in those TV series but what I knew for sure was that Australia is a big, beautiful country!  Add to the fact that I was into animals when I was growing, I also knew that the land down under was home to one of the world's most unique collection of fauna (quirky ones, if I may add).

Fast forward to 20 years later and I found myself holding an Australian PR visa. Hmmm...Now I needed to go to Oz on or before July 2011 otherwise my visa will be revoked.  Not wanting to take any chances, I booked for a flight in May (two months clear of my deadline).  I was able force my two good friends from the Refinery, Jake and Maimai, to join me on a trip to the southern hemisphere.  Now none of us is particularly good in planning so we decided to just wing it.

The trip was not off to a very good start.  Jake made a mistake in booking his Manila/Singapore flight (duh) and had to leave earlier than us.  I miscalculated my travel time from Batangas to NAIA by 1.5 hours (double duh) and was greeted by a closed check-in counter (oh the stress!) despite driving 140 on the expressway (bad example, I know).  I literally had to beg the Singapore Airlines staff to let me on the flight.  When they finally relented, I realized I didn't have enough money for the terminal fee (triple duh).  Good thing the ATM in the airport was working otherwise I would've spent the night hitting myself for my stupidity!  The good thing about doing a photo-finish in the airport (though I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who has low tolerance for stress and has no talent for begging) is that you zip through immigration and catch only glimpses of the ugly NAIA 1 terminal.  Ever since I began travelling extensively for work this year, I've made it a point to spend as little time as reasonably possible in NAIA 1 - though in this particular instance, I was really pushing my luck.  Which didn't run out (luckily heheh).  Since I was not able to check in my luggage, the staff allowed me to bring my not-so-small bag on board. Wow, the allowances they made for a retard like me!  Beginning that moment, I became a loyal SQ convert! By the time I plopped down my seat right next to Maimai, I was soaking wet with nervous sweat (sorry Mai).  When I had time to collect my thougths, I realized that what stressed me the most was the thought of the person waiting to pick us up in Brisbane and the additional trip she had to make to fetch me from the airport.  I would've never survived that!

Zzzzzzzzz....

When I woke up, we were already flying through the middle of Australia which was mostly desert.  Now being non-planners, Jake, Maimai and myself had a little "stressful" situation trying to decide what to put under "Address in Australia" on the immigration form.  We forgot to ask our host what her address was! (Quadruple duh).  Anyway, we just decided to wing it...again.  Thankfully, our fears were baseless as we were let through immigration without a hitch.  I had concerns for the plastic orchids that we brought along with us since I know that Australia is very strict on bringing plants into the country.  Even if they were fake, we might run into a little 'interrogation' which I was not in the mood for.

Our former Shell colleague Jourdan and his wife Jan picked us up from the airport.  The first thing I noticed was how quiet it was.  Such a large country with a small population, I shouldn't be surprised that the perpetual din of a city such as Metro Manila is non-existent in this place.  Good!  We arrived at our host's (Becky - our former boss) house just in time for lunch and spent the whole afternoon chatting.  Later on we went around the immediate neighborhood, did a little birdwatching and had a nice Chinese dinner (with Becky, there's 80 percent chance you're eating Chinese heheh).

Our first day was spent in downtown Brisbane and we had such a fun time trying to figure out bus and train lines - which really isn't hard.  We went inside museums and ate in sidewalk cafes just to experience the 'local' vibe.  Our second day in Brisbane was spent in, guess what, a zoo!  Oh yes, we had to have the token zoo day in Australia so we could see (and sometimes pet) the local wildlife.  We had our fill of kangaroos, koalas, and of course, duckbill platypuses (or platypi hahaha).  It was an animal geek's treat!

On the eve of our second day we decided to go to Sydney.  Again, no plans, just winging it.  We booked our trip via Tiger Air (not bad, I must say - it was my first time).  Sydney was colder (which I liked) than Brisbane and much bigger too.  I think Australians are generally a friendly lot so we really had no trouble getting around.  Our motto: As long as you can read, speak English and are not afraid to ask, you'll be fine.  My favorite part of our Sydney trip was hanging around the harbor area, whether taking ferry boat rides from one point to another or lounging in some cafe and people-watching.  With the bright, bright Aussie sunshine plus the famed Opera House and Harbor Bridge as a backdrop, it was just the right thing to do.

After 2 days in Sydney, we headed back to Brisbane which, by now, already had a homey feel to us. Hahah.  We then spent the next day at the famed Gold Coast.  The water was too cold for swimming (at least for us tropic people) so again, we just walked around and lounged.  In fact, I think most of our time in Australia was spent walking around, lounging and eating.  Speaking of food, whenever we had lunch or dinner, we always tried to order beef or lamb - and yes, these were more delicious in Australia than anywhere else I've tasted them (and with very good prices too).

On our last day, Becky and friends (David, Jourdan, Jan heheh) drove us to this charming little town called Montville.  This locale had a historical, colonial feel to it and is the sort of place where you have tiny shops rather than big stores.  These shops had their own specialties (woodwork, glasswork, paintings, and of course, food!), it's like mini tiangges all in line.  One of the highlights of the trip was a fantastic view of the Glass Mountains - a rather unique sight if I may say.

All in all, I enjoyed my trip to Australia.  It could have been better-planned but at the end of the day, if your're confronted with bluer skies, fresher air, brighter sunshine, quieter surroundings, and wider spaces (and colder temperature) than what you're used to, all the planning can go out the window and you just have to stop, close your eyes, breathe deeply and take it all in.

P.S. Jake bought beef and lamb and handcarried them back to Manila.  The SQ flight attendant agreed (without a trace of an argument) to store the meat in the plane's freezer.  I was so surprised at the accommodation - again.  But I could get used to it.

Travel Agency Mode

I’m finally able to freeze my high-level Europe itinerary for August (God knows how many versions I’ve made). I think the difficulty in trying to nail down which places I want to go to and which ones to cross off my list comes from the fact that I’m kinda good in geography. When I was growing up, I devoured world book encyclopedias for a hobby so the list of places that I wanted to visit when I grow up has remained vivid in my mind over the years. And I want to see everything…which is impossible unless I use a portkey, leyway, or do astral projection.

So anyway, deciding when to go was easy. There are 3 public holidays in the Philippines over a two-week period at the end of August so this bit was a no-brainer. Deciding what airline to take, not so easy. I almost succumbed to booking KLM since for the longest time it was showing good value for money (read: cheap and a direct flight) but after Holy Week this year, Singapore Airlines suddenly had a ‘roll-back’ so I was able to get a good deal. And it being SQ, it’s probably the best deal even. I tried looking at Cathay Pacific (my second choice, too complicated, cheapest option has a layover in Heathrow), Emirates (just freaking expensive) and Thai Airways (through-the-roof freaking expensive). So come August, I’ll be on a 14-hour flight to Amsterdam on board the best airline in the world. Not bad.

So now which countries to visit? My port of entry into the EU is The Netherlands since I’m meeting up with my expat (read: Euro-loaded) best friend, Jake, who’s based in Amsterdam. I don’t want to do the 8 countries/14 days type of tour since I don’t want to jog all over Europe and end up feeling more tired than before I left for my vacation. “4 countries max”, that was my rule. Being a geography junkie, I made an itinerary that made sense geographically. My first version: Netherlands (3), Germany (5), Austria (3), Czech Republic (3). This version carried on for about two months until Jake went to Rome during the Easter Holidays. “Paul you’ve got to come to Rome!”. This little statement wrecked havoc to my precious, 2-month old, geographically sound itinerary (I actually have a spreadsheet complete with train schedules, train lines, and travel times).

Now I did not want to visit Italy for just 3 days since that will be so bitin, so I had to let go of some cities – 6 days’ worth of them. Berlin was the first to go away completely (2 days), then Vienna (1 day), and lastly Amsterdam (1 day). So that gives me 4 days in Italy. Still not enough. I needed at least 6 days in Italy (Rome 3, Florence 2, Venice 1). Sadly, I had to cut off Austria completely (sniff). Now who said optimization (in whatever sense of the word) was easy? When I tried to fit the train/airplane schedules into the second version of the itinerary, I ended up losing entire days to travelling or sleeping on trains (which I had second thoughts of doing since I have trouble sleeping on board anything that moves) so in the end, I decided that the itinerary was just too stressful. After countless permutations, I decided to scrap off Italy and told myself that only a trip exclusively to Italy will do it justice (yeah yeah).

Thus, I decided to put back Austria and the 1 day in Amsterdam back on my schedule. Now Berlin, I told myself, I was not dying to see, really, so now what to do with an extra 2 days? The Answer: pass by Budapest! I didn’t know where this crazy idea came from but I think somehow at the back of my mind I knew that Hungary is just around the corner so I decided we should pay the city a visit. With 3 plane rides plus countless train rides, I was actually able to come up with an itinerary that didn’t threaten to break our backs. However, an unsettling feeling began gnawing at me a few days later. I don’t know if it was just my being Catholic or that Eat, Pray, Love has been running on HBO this month but I just couldn’t bring myself to skip Italy. Aaaaargh. The headache! So anyway, to cut to the chase, I decided to scrap Germany entirely and do just 2 days of Prague so I can have 6 days in Italy. There!

I hope I won’t be sorry for giving up Germany that easily but seeing that I have three days in Austria with one (or two) of them saved for Salzburg, I might just do a quick trip to Munich just for the heck of it. Two weeks is certainly not enough for a “see-all” trip to any of countries that I’ve mentioned but then again, a fortnight is all that I (and my boss hahah) can afford. A couple of years ago, I spent two months in the UK for work but never ventured out into continental Europe. Britain is great and all that but not going anywhere else is something that I’ve been regretting up to now.

Oh well, let’s wait and see what happens in August. :-)

Hi Majayjay!

For someone who regularly traverses the South Luzon Expressway, Laguna is just some random province that merely zips past the car windows. I do know that this place has more to offer besides the token pasalubong that is buko pie, Pansol hot springs and anything Rizal but I never found the time to discover more of it. Finally last Sunday, my friend Jake had a sudden urge to drive to Majayjay, Laguna because he read about it in the Saturday Inquirer.



Now Majayjay is one of those towns that ring a bell in my head because of a term paper I wrote in high school on Colonial Churches in the Philippines. Majayjay is supposed to have one of the most architecturally interesting religious edifices in the country, hence I wanted to see it for myself (me and my long-standing romance with old churches).

The trip was about 2 hours long. We started in Batangas City and drove to Lipa, Tanauan, Alaminos, San Pablo, Rizal, Nagcarlan, Liliw and then finally Majayjay. We made a couple of stops along the way, the first of which was the Underground Cemetery in Nagcarlan. I was a bit disappointed since I was expecting something similar to the catacombs of Paris or Rome. The "underground" section was really just a crypt measuring around 20-30 square meters.

The next stop was the town of Liliw, known for its "tsinelas". The pleasant surprise that I got while in Liliw was stumbling into a restaurant called Arabela. I guess it's the only "real" restaurant in town because it was fully packed and we had to be waitlisted. Now I don't really expect much from small-town restaurants no matter how many the patrons appear to be since Manila folks usually troop to the first place they see that has fancy ambience and airconditioning but this place is something else! I had a salad (pecan crusted chicken) and a plate of pasta (pancetta margeta) and my mind was blown away. This place had some serious fare! I didn't mind the fact that the prices were Manila-worthy and that I had some bouts with claustrophobia while inside (I swear, the place seemed to be built for hobbits, though the elbow-knocking smallness sort of adds to its charm). The food was so good that I'd say, "When in Liliw, forget the slipper-shopping and head straight to Arabella".

We reached Majayjay when dusk was about to settle in. The layout of Philippine towns is the same almost everywhere you go so it did not take us long to find the town plaza and the Catholic church. Majayjay Church, dedicated to St. Gregory and built in 1575, is one sight to behold, especially with the "enhancements" brought about by the setting sun. Too bad that I was not able to go inside as the church doors were already closed by the time we got there however, the exteriors were enough to make the trip worth it. A monument of faith, I can imagine how the sight of the Majayjay church reinforced the townspeople's belief and trust in their God in times past.








And so I ticked off another one from my list of churches to visit in the Philippines. Next could be Paete (also in Laguna) or maybe some of those located in Ilocos since I'm due for a trip north in March. This spontaneous Sunday drive was truly both food for the stomach and for the soul.

Wonder For The World

Personally, I don't know too many people who read the Tintin series when they were little. I wouldn't have read them either if not for my cousin who owns a couple of them (or maybe all 24 of them books). I vaguely remember that as a child, I would read my cousin Anthony's comic books - mostly Archie but some Tintin as well - whenever we visited their house in Cebu. I think that the globetrotting, tomb-raiding, beretta-wielding protagonist has helped spark my interest in Geography and Archaeology early on and this is the reason why I'm such a fan of Steve Berry, Matthew Reilly and the Relic Hunter series (too bad it only lasted 3 seasons). I seriously believe that my exposure as a kid to other cultures by way of literature and film (oh yes, I do remember that my late grandfather had betamax tapes of the Indiana Jones series) turned me into a somebody who could memorize capital cities, currencies and pinpoint most any country on a map. Hell, I can even rattle off the 50 states of the US in alphabetical order even if I'm obviously not an American.

Anyway, last weekend together with my friends Jake and Rico, I went to see The
Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. The screenplay is lifted from three books of the Tintin series namely The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's treasure. I must say, only now have I really appreciated the awesomeness of performance capture 3D animation! This technology could really put moviestars (some of them overpaid) out of employment! I think the movie had a "soft-ish" opening, perhaps eclisped by the melanholy-fest that is Breaking Dawn, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that the movie theater full. The movie was funny, thrilling and totally captivating. It gave me a pleasant sense of nostalgia seeing the blunders of the Thompson Twins on the wide screen and the way the vocal
prowess of the clueless Milanese nightingale Bianca Castafiore was used to execute a crime was genius as much as it was hilarious! I did some research on resonant frequency for an MBA paper on emerging technology recently, so I kinda know the science behind how an opera singer's voice is able to break glass (this is one of the advantages of going to grad school hehe!)

There's also a great line uttered by Captain Haddock in the movie - in Scottish accent if I may add. "There are plenty of others willing to call you a failure. A fool. A loser. Don’t you ever say it of yourself. You send out the wrong signal, that is what people pick up. Don’t you understand? You care about something, you fight for it. You hit a wall, you push through it. There’s something you need to know about failure, Tintin. You can never let it defeat you.” This is comfort food for my oftentimes tired soul (especially lately).

Seeing the movie has once again steeled my resolve to travel even more next year. Since I am set to visit Europe in 2012 (fingers crossed that my schedule will allow it), this is just the kind of inspiration I need in order ignore the dent the trip will make on my wallet.

I find it quite amusing that reading something like Tintin as a kid really opened my mind and gave me a wonder for the world - all the better for me to appreciate God's masterpiece.

Lessening Headaches Is Also Charity...I Think

In this world, there are professions that inherently carry with them the ability to give back to society - say for example doctors, teachers and to a certain extent, lawyers. And then there are those that don't really do anything for other human beings (except maybe give them headaches). Being an accountant is one of them.

Now I'm not really a very charitable person but every now and then, I do get these pangs of guilt that remind me that I'm not actively doing anything to help others in need. This is the reason why every time there is a chance for someone to benefit from my being a CPA, I jump at it! Now the MBA program that I'm currently in does not have basic Financial Accounting in its curriculum. However, it does have more advanced finance subjects so if one does not have a business background in college, it could be a challenge to put one's head around the subject. This is why I volunteered to do a basic accounting session with my teammates to help my group better understand basic accounting principles and apply them to our case assignments (nerdy, I know).

The result: my FinMan groupmates became my closest groupmates ever! My experience during this term further reinforced my love for teaching and my dream of becoming a college professor someday. For now, however, I need to work on finishing my master's degree.

30-Year Old Writes To The Universe

Dear Cosmos,

Now that I'm 30, I know that...

...I'll never achieve the 6-continents-before-30 dream
...I'll never be that skinny bastard that I want to become
...I'll probably never be a lawyer like I always said I would be
...I'll turn 40 before I even know it
...I'll never have the excuse of youth for being stupid
...I'll never be that "hot new thing" ever again (whatever that means)

However, I also know that

...I've been on 4 continents and that's more than most people
...I've been eating anything I want and I'm still not fat
...I've built a comfortable life for myself without having to become a lawyer
...I've grown so much in the last 10 years, I'm excited to see what I'll be in the next 10
...I've never been stupid anyway, so why care?
...I've gained enough credence to mentor the upcoming "hot new things" (whatever that means)

I thought that I'd freak out when I become 30 but looking back, I've realized how much I've seen, learned and experienced. At first thought 10 years may seem like a blur but if I really think about it, 10 years didn't exactly just fly by. In those 10 years, I went from student, to board exam reviewee, to promdi-yuppie, to miserable banker until I finally became a happy Shell man (seriously, one of the best decisions I've made ever!). The friends I've made and the fiends I've met make up the best decade of my life so far. Now that I'm 30, I'm looking forward to finally losing that last bit of insecurity that I still have, to learn to be more generous, to become more positive, to be slower to anger, to be more patient and to become someone better than who I was during my 20s.

So I want to say thank you to my parents for putting a good head on my shoulders, to my younger sis and bro who never followed my orders (gave me an early sense that I cannot always have my way in the world), to my teachers (for making me realize what I want to become when I grow old) to my friends (high school friends for letting me learn early on how to have fun and not just not hit the books, college friends for letting me find in you my kindred spirits, and Shell friends for never making me feel like an outsider despite my being one in so many ways).

And thank you God for everything - for giving me just enough smarts, just enough looks and just enough talent. And I pray that one day, I will get to use these enough to make a positive dent in this world.

Truly yours,

Paul Angelo

Northern Exposure

This year, I made a personal vow to visit the three places in the Philippines that I've always wanted to visit but have never managed to: Palawan, Boracay (unimaginable, right?) and Batanes. Of the three, Batanes seemed to be the hardest to go to because it is the remotest (and there are no promo fares on SEAIR!). However, thanks to an HR policy change that spurred my office colleagues and myself to use up our leave credits, I suddenly had a plane ticket to Basco.

I felt like I wasn't stoked enough for my trip to Batanes and this is mainly because it came three days after I arrived from my trip to Australia. The holiday down under had long been planned and cannot be pushed back so in the end, I only worked 10 or 11 days in the month of May.

I have not ridden a 32-seater since childhood (oh those PAL Sunrisers that flew from Dumaguete to Cebu!) so I was a bit nervous when I boarded the plane. Good thing I was armed with a 1,000-page book and got myself lost in 12th century England through most of the trip. I caught more than a glimpse of the Batanes landscape as we were about to land and I realized that we were in for a treat.







With narrow streets and limited lamp posts, poblacion Basco can be dealt with in an hour or so. I am quite used to the rural life having lived on an island for the better part of 20 years so this spontaneous hieing off to the northernmost tip of the country was somehow nostalgic for me - the smells of early morning smoke coming from wood-fed stoves made of earthen clay, the aroma of damp soil ridded with a mixture of chicken and cattle dung, and the unmistakable whiff of frugal fish deep-frying in oil stirred up many memories from my childhood.





We spent the next three days going around the islands of Batan and Sabtang. The tour organizer ingenuously engineered the tour to build up to a breathtaking climax, showing the sights in order of awesomeness, the next sigt even more amazing than the one before! Batanes offers such picturesque backdrops that both photoholics and camwhores will be be swooning with sensory overload.







Batanes isn't the cheapest local tourist destination in the Philippines. In fact, it may be one of the most expensive, and this explains why he have not run into the usual lot of fellow holiday-takers during the whole time we were there. However, the +20k or so that I spent was very much worth it - seeing the famed stone houses of Sabtang Island for the first time and feeling the coarse, unfinished walls made of coral and limestone, taking in the vista of 'mountains tumbling into the sea' as many a song romanticize, realizing that the Philippines is such a beautiful country, a sudden burst of national pride stirring inside you not matter how undeserved you may think it is, and of course, being gently wakened by the sound of waves quietly making their way to the shore in the early light of morning.

Shell's Big Php20.00 Blow Out

I recently had the opportunity to become a Shell Brand Ambassador...signalling my foray into the Retail business hahah! Kidding aside, part of my duties as an ambassador was to spread awareness throughout my CoB (Manufacturing) regarding Shell's Get Php20 Blowout Ka Namin promo. During the CoB briefing sessions, I emphasized that Manufacturing has a huge stake at the success of Shell's retail business in the Philippines because one of the reasons why the Refinery continues to exist is because of it a being part of an integrated supply chain that gives access to a big inland market - a market that Shell could lose if it is not careful to sustain brand loyalty.

Together with other volunteers from different departments, I headed out to my assigned Shell Station in the morning of February 15.

Being in the forecourt was an eye-opening experience and with it came newfound respect for my Sales colleagues. Overall, it was a fun experience - engaging in coversations with motorists while they gas up, informing them of Shell's new promo and thanking them for their continued patronage of the brand.

Anyway, here are the mechanics to the promo. Be sure to fill up at your favorite Shell station and take advantage of Shell's Thank You to you!


1. For every Php 1,000 purchase of Shell Fuels (V-Power, V-Power Diesel, Super Premium, Super Unleaded, Regular) you get a Php 20 discount on all Select/Shell Shop items. Discount is also applicable to Shell Lubricants.

2. Redemption can be done in all participating Shell Stations. Inter-station redemption IS allowed (not limited to where the fuel purchase was made).

3. Php 1,000 can either be a single-purchase or accumulated purchases.

4. The receipt/accumulated receipts shall be presented to the Select/Shell Shop cashier for validation.

5. Promo runs from Feb 15 - Mar 31, 2011. Thus, all ORs issued within those dates are valid for redemption.

6. Last redemption date is 60 days after promo end-date (May 30, 2011).

Bye-Bye Econ Freaks!

After three terms of MBA, I must say that I only caught the "study" bug again this term. Because of new developments at work (I'm moving to a new job, yeah!), I decided to enroll part-time and take just one subject - ECOMAN. Needless to say, I'm tempted to do it part-time all the way! Having a full load and the weekly drive from Batangas to Rockwell and back (usually every Wednesday) stressed me out.

Anyway, I love Economics and though I must admit that I need to infuse more Econ-related literature into my reading list, the subject always fascinates me. I wrote 3 papers on the following subjects: Perfect Competition, Privatization and Comparative Advantage & International Trade. Economics is a pleasing subject to research because there is no scarcity of resources - no pun intended. In fact, text and web-based data are simply overflowing that I had to make an outline each time I started to write just organize my thoughts - something which I almost never do.


My final paper - The Economics of Oil, is very timely. With my move to Shell's Supply business, writing about oil econs reinforced my knowledge. It was actually funny that during handover, I recognized terms such as "netback pricing" and actually knew what they were about and what their margin impacts to the company were. I put in a lot of effort to my final paper (mainly because I crammed) and spent a whole weekend plus three long weekday nights to finish everything. However, I am happy with all the information I got from the research - I feel like I'm ending this term a smarter guy. No matter what my final grade will be (I'm hoping for a 4.0!), this was definitely one of the best terms ever!

My Family's First Engagement

My sister got engaged! Yeah, like I never saw it coming haha! Anyway, I wasn't there when her boyfriend (now fiance) officially asked for her hand but my sister told me that my dad acted cool about it (operative word: acted) and my mom was the one who had a semi-anxiety attack. Totally uncharacteristic for both of them, I tell you.

Anyway, my sister and her boyfriend are both good-looking people, I can't wait to have good-looking pamangkins! Heheh. Di bale nang makulit, basta cute kaya kong tiisin.





The wedding is next year - and my sister got first dibs on that same chapel where I wanted to get married in (shame, oh, shame on you). This week, however, she texted me that there were major changes to her plans - that she's getting married in the Cathedral (the Catholic Church won't allow weddings in small chapels anymore). Also, her venue changed from Casa Grande in Bais to the Convention Center in Dumaguete (resultant of the change in the church).

Okay, so in 5 years or so when I decide to get married, maybe the rules will change and I can get married in Mojon Chapel. Hahah! I know it's mean for me to be excited about this, but can you blame me? It's like this little chapel was beamed from an English countryside onto the sugar plains of Negros. A little grass cutting wouldn't hurt, though...hehe.

photos grabbed from: http://multiply.com/mu/silakangnegros