old Notes From a Small Island

CIA Not Very Intelligent

2010-11-01T02:23:00.000-07:00

The suicide bomber who killed eight people inside a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan a few weeksago was a Jordanian doctor recruited by Jordanian intelligence, a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a foreign government official confirmed Monday.

The bombing killed seven CIA employees - four officers and three contracted security guards - and a Jordanian intelligence officer, Ali bin Zaid, according to a second former U.S. intelligence official. Ali bin Ziad introduced the good doctor to the gulled CIA officers, and that was that. He wasn't even frisked as he entered FOB Chapman.

They said the bomber was Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year old doctor from Zarqa, Jordan.

(If you remember, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Al Qaeda scourge of Iraq, came from the same town and country). It is an Army barracks town, with some grim industry, and the usual industrial blight.

For more information see: The Black Iris of Jordan /

Land Crabs

2010-09-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

We have several quite different land crabs around here. They're true crabs that have taken to living on land, or at least halfway between land and sea.

They have all managed the transition between water and air breathing, although often in quite different ways. This is a fairly momentous step for a mere crustacean.

Kayabang (Cardisoma hirtipes) live back in the coastal coconut groves, digging large holes, that, like earthworm casts, help circulate and aerate the soil.

Once a month, at full moon, dozens of kayabang come out of the coconuts, and head straight to the beach to mate and lay their eggs. They march purposefully in an almost straight line, often through the town. At the last full moon, one came straight through a group of us sitting outside Lourdes' Food House, only to be trapped by Big Marty's foot. He told me it made a good part of his breakfast. The local people go to the beach at full moon with flaming torches made from dried coconut leaves, and pick them up by the dozen.

Their claws are roughly equal size, but still just as vicious, and they are fiercely defencive.

This is one who came through the house, and finally ended up defending my dish rack.

Kayangjan (Cardisoma armatum) live near creeks and mangroves, and don't have the same mass mating system.

One claw is much bigger than the other. The right hand claw is usually the bigger. This is similar to humans, whose right hand is usually the stronger.

Because of their bright colours, they are known as rainbow crabs in other areas, and are very common all over the Pacific.

kayabang

2010-09-24T02:51:00.000-07:00

Andreas the Asshole - Again

2010-09-22T22:52:00.000-07:00

My wonderful next door neighbour has done it again - first he stole the copy from my website and pretended he'd written it himself. Now he's copied a map that I spent a lot of time making (from naval charts, etc). So I'm going to sue him. Not that it will do much good - his wife (Elizabeth) is closely related to the Surigao City legal mafia.

I try to get people to avoid Patrick's On The Beach, because they will certainly be screwed. Firstly, he charges extra VAT (that is not paid to anybody), and the Service Charges go to him; not to his staff.

If I attempt to swim from the public beach in front of his place, he harasses me; I cannot use the public right of way which leads from my place to the beach, since he fenced it off.

He is still running his orphanage scam, but he is now into direct pimping:
'Many Visitors have come to Siargao and to Patrick’s on Cloud9 and found their life time partner. One of the greatest positive points of filipina-pinay, is the fact that in the Philippines, your age difference is usually NOT a problem! In fact, to most ladies in the Philippines, and to their families, the belief and hope is that if you are an older gentleman, that you are much less likely to be a "playboy", and also that you will take much better care of your fiancée. The oldest guest we had was 75 years old and he found his 21 year old sweet heart on Siargao Island.

The Filipina girls or Filipina women are world known for there stunning beauty. Filipinas are not only beautiful women but a delight to be around because of the famous Filipina disposition and personality. Many of our visitors who have married these Filipina beauties, swear they make the best wives in the world, not only beautiful, but loyal, loving and faithful past death. Andreas the owner of Patrick’s on Cloud9 is married to Elizabeth one of those beautiful Siargao Ladies. You will sense their wonderful and harmonious marriage when you visit Patrick’s on Cloud9.

Smoked Eel

2010-09-22T16:32:00.000-07:00

You might not think that this is a very appetising looking fish. I can assure you it is, and very much sought after.

This English site sells roughly 100gm portions of vacuum packed smoked eel for £6.45 (that's P450/$10/100gm, or P4500/$100 per kilo)

Viktor (phone (+63 920 287 2450) sells exactly the same self-smoked stuff without all the fancy packaging for P401/$7/kilo. It's the same species as American or European eels (or at least one of the two - you have to count their vertebrae to tell the difference, so good luck to you).

The eels come from the small river that leads up from the mangrove swamps at Pilar, to Maasin in the middle of the island, and they are caught there when they migrate upstream to breed; with fish baskets, and then thumped on the head with a bolo, as you can see.

Eels are becoming very rare in Europe, because of pollution of the major rivers, which is why they are expensive. These local ones are a lot cheaper, but still as delicious.

RIP Herbert

2010-09-21T22:18:00.000-07:00

Herbert died last night, just before his scheduled release into the wild (well, my garden). I don't know why he expired so suddenly; I fed him on coconuts, and he seemed very active. There are plenty enough coconuts in my garden to have sustained him.

These crabs never go through a seafood stage; they graduate to a wholly terrestrial lifestyle after only a month's infancy in the sea. The young ones are very common indeed; they are virtually every terrestrial hermit crab you might come across here, and they all have a characteristic large left claw, which closes off their shelter shell..

Piglet Feast

2010-09-21T20:04:00.001-07:00

My piglets are now 6 weeks old, so I am going to sacrifice 2 of them as lechon de leche - genuine suckling pigs, and invite a few friends to try them.

Filipinos call anything grill/roasted a Lechon (even a chicken - Litson Manok) so this is just a personal gesture against misunderstood Spanish words.

We're having smoked chicken and various strange pickles as well. Will tell you how they go.

I will be making a stunning pork pate with the heads and feet, plus the livers and hearts. It will be sealed with a mixture of butter and pork fat, and will probably last me a couple of years lke the last one.

Crowd 9

2010-09-20T19:58:00.000-07:00

Cloud 9 - The best surf break in the Philippines is not doing very much in this photo, which is why there are so many aspiring surfers trying their stuff.

Too many.

When the break is really pumping, and the rollers are coming in huge from some passing typhoon, none but the brave and foolhardy will even try to surf it.

Very Junior Coconut Crab

2010-09-20T11:23:00.000-07:00

This is a very junior Coconut Crab (Birgus latro), and almost completely land-adapted, except for about a month in the sea in its extreme youth.

This particular one has been visiting my house regularly over the past few years, but I didn't recognise its species.

This very crab has woken me up at night by scrabbling up my book-cases, and falling off.

It has been using the very same Fox Shell (Pleuroploca trapezium) for all this time, but it's getting a bit battered, mainly because I got fed up with it, and used to kick it into the middle distance every time it turned up on my front doorstep.

These, to the right, are part of a harvest of shell-bearing crabs from my garden, collected by my neighbour's little boy. You can probably recognise the fox shell shown above at the top centre. I can't be sure, because I didn't recognise them at the time, but I would bet that most of them are Birgus latro wannabes.

In which case, most of them have very little chance of ever making it to monster size. There are simply not enough large shells on land, or washed up to the top of the beach, to give them ways to grow.

Probably many of these shells will be used over and over again, in a crab's vain hopes of growing up. There is a lot of competition for new houses.

Some may well turn into monster terror crabs, if they get a lot more chances, but I think most will have run out of large shells to inhabit in the meantime.

Because of the offshore reef in GL we get very few wavy storms within the lagoon, so very few larger shells get washed up. Most that do end up on land have been harvested by local fishermen. Certain of those, like baler shells, helmet shells, and conchs, are plenty large enough, but have strangely shaped apertures that can't accomodate a crab comfortably. They like a circular aperture that they can easily plug with their major claw and one leg.

About the only local shell that a large Birgus latro can use is a Triton, but these are becoming very rare. If one is seen walking around, the crab is casually sacrificed so the shell can be sold.

Tatos the Terror Crab

2010-08-31T22:58:00.000-07:00

Tatos is the local name, but we know it better as Coconut or Robber Crab (Birgus latro). It is reputed to be able to rip apart a whole coconut with its formidable claws; (they are very strong indeed, and the only way to get them to let go, is to tickle its belly, I'm told).

Its only real enemy here is human; this one was the first I've seen in 12 years on this island, and my first thought was to eat it.
This was brought to me a few days ago, and the next day, another smaller one.

This is a juvenile; its tail has not yet acquired its armour, and its two claws are not yet 'straight'. It betrays its youth, which was spent as a hermit crab, in a shell.

At first I kept them in an improvised cage made from two thicknessess of coiled chicken wire with a closure of a single thickness over each end. Hearing a noise later in the evening, I found the big crab halfway out of a hole it had cut in one end of the cage, so I up-ended the cage, and put a pastry board and a couple of heavy books on top of the hole.

That night at about 1:30am, hearing a scraping noise in one corner of the bedroom, I saw the big crab trying to climb the bedroom wall. I got it off the wall with the help of my large cooking spoon, and it faced me off about a foot away, so I whacked it on the head with my spoon. It ran, with astonishing speed, backwards under my bed. No way was I going to crawl under there in the dark, so it stayed there until 7:30 the next morning, when I'd accumulated enough courage to tackle it. (Or rather, I'd told Ron to pick it up).

An here's Uncle Dick breathlessly explaining the Coconut Crab.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2_YYQrYTAg&NR=1

Bread

2010-08-25T03:12:00.000-07:00

I've started out making my own bread (Or rather, Tata does the basic mixing, and I finish it off)

Bread is one of my very basic foods, and I haven't yet got it quite right, but I'm getting there slowly. It's as much a question of cosmetics as anything else.

I can get a beautiful semi baguette (like this one) or a total collapsed mess, and I don't understand yet why the same starter dough produces such different results

Start Out Yet Again

2010-08-24T12:28:00.000-07:00

I'm starting out yet again on my 'Paradise Island' blog; about life in a small tropical paradise.

It's a great place, but with one major problem; Food.

Filipino cooking is terrible. It is almost worse than Nigerian food.

So the next few posts will be about what you can do with simple Filipino ingredients

Sipadan

2010-04-25T22:44:00.000-07:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/724875.stm
http://www.cdnn.info/special-report/sipadan/sipadan_timeline.html
http://abs-cbnnews.com/nation/03/31/09/abu-sayyaf-atrocities
http://www.malaya.com.ph/may21/metro1.htm

Wotta Dirty Old Man

2010-02-01T03:24:00.000-08:00

Life on a paradise island does have its moments. This was one of them, taken in Nine Bar, a hundred metres from me.

It was a good evening.

Playing for Peace

2010-01-15T03:06:00.000-08:00

This is a cooperative musical movement for peace, worldwide, well worth watching, and listening to.

Predator - Hunter - Killer But-Not-Very-Fu**ing-Accurate Dragonfly

2010-01-06T16:23:00.000-08:00

Can you imagine how you might feel, when this 21st century robot dragonfly is hovering over your town or village, and may be about to unleash Hellfire Missiles?

Of the 44 Predator strikes carried out by US drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan over the past 12 months, only five were able to hit their actual targets, killing five key Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, but at the cost of over 700 innocent civilians.

This is not only immoral, but involves incompetence and carelessness at a gross level.

According to the statistics compiled by Pakistani authorities, the Afghanistan-based US drones killed 708 people in 44 Predator attacks targeting the tribal areas between January 1 and December 31, 2009.

For each Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist killed by US drones, 140 innocent Pakistanis also had to die. Over 90 per cent of those killed in the deadly missile strikes were civilians, claim authorities.

The success percentage for the drone hits during 2009 was hardly 11 per cent. On average, 58 civilians were killed in these attacks every month, 12 persons every week and almost two people every day. Most of the attacks were carried out on the basis of human intelligence, reportedly provided by the Pakistani and Afghan tribesmen, who are spying for the US-led allied forces in Afghanistan. (ie people who are waiting their rewards for being snouts).

The drones themselves are based close to their targets (such as at Bandari Air Base, Pakistan), but are controlled by video games players elsewhere

These wallies are sitting comfortably in their 70s style office chairs, looking at a scene maybe 5000 miles away, and using their judgement alone to apply instant death.

Downhill Decade

2010-01-01T02:52:00.000-08:00

The Noughties (zero = nought in English English) were fairly traumatic, but especially for America, which is showing definite signs of its final decline as a global empire.

I have essentially ignored my own country, Britain, which behaved, under the governorship of America, exactly like a colony, throughout 10 years. So this is biassed towards America.

Here are 12 events that, I think, defined the decade:

1. Millenium Terror. Known plots to attack Los Angeles International Airport, the Amman Radisson Hotel in Jordan, several religious sites in Israel and the USS The Sullivan Brothers at dock in Yemen; all prevented during the last year of Bill Clinton's presidency

2. Bush election 2000. 'Won' against an opponent who gained a 420,000 majority of popular votes, by shenanigans in Florida, and his father's Supreme Court's final decision.

3. "9/11" I watched this event for 24 hours after seeing views of the first burning tower, and the poor BBC girl who didn't even notice as the second plane.slammed into the South Tower. It was shocking, and it was to define the decade. At the same time GW Bush was sitting, dumbly, in a Florida school, and, later in the day, criss-crossing the country in fear. (Although the Secret Service did absolutely nothing to protect him in the first few moments after the initial news - I wonder why?). In the very first hours, the media were blaming 'Al Qaida' and Osama bin Laden for it, and Dick Cheney was planning attacks on Iraq.

4. Invasion Afghanistan 2001- Bush immediately adopted the cowboy attitude: "Anyone who is not with us is against us". He even suggested he might be a "Crusader". America, and a handful of 'Coalition Allies' invaded, and with the help of massive bombing, and the Uzbek/Tajik 'Northern Alliance' of Afghan warlords, ousted the Taliban government within weeks. America is still fighting this war 8 years later, and losing.

5. Patriot Act 2001- Surprisingly, this draconian Act, with its over-riding widespread restrictions on many American civil rights laws, was already fully prepared for voting and signing, within 6 weeks of the attack, and voted into law, overnight, by traumatised representatives. There was no prolonged discussion in Congress or the Senate.

5. Iraq 2003 - The Bush Bunch set its eyes on Iraq from the beginning, America having already imposed, for a decade, stringent sanctions that killed half a million Iraqi children. The decison was made a year before the initial attack, and a major campaign of lies and half truths mounted to justify it. It was to be a 'cakewalk' with 'Iraqis greeting American liberators with bunches of flowers'. It wasn't. The first weeks between the staged overthrow of the evil dictator's statue and 'Mission Accomplished' announced by flyboy Bush, went OK, but then it went seriously wrong when L. Paul Bremer, a highly over-educated bureaucrat, was put in charge, and de-'Baathised' Iraq, dissolving the Army and sacking most competent government officials.

This led to rapid deteroration, and we have all seen the story of what happened since.The Americans are still there, six years later (but promise, honestly, to leave fairly soon)

6. Abu Ghraib 2004 - The actual photos of American torture at Saddam's former hell-hole prison were a shock to the gullible world, who may have still still believed that Americans could do no wrong. That was only the tip of the iceberg. Much worse things were going on.

7. Election 2004 - With unverifiable and hackable electronic voting machines brought in to replace 'hanging chads' it was a foregone conclusion that George W Bush would win. He did.

8. Katrina 2005 - the major American city of New Orleans was hit by a bit-more-than-regular typhoon, but its levee defences had been neglected for years, and it was inundated. GWB did precisely nothing, except congratulate his man,Michael D. Brown, head of FEMA, for a "Heck of a job"

"In February 2006, documented deaths were tallied at 1,300, with another 2,300 reported missing." These victims of negligence out-numbered the 9/11 dead, by 20%.

The people displaced by the floods were generally neglected, and still are. But then, they are only niggers.

9. Bubble Bursts 2008 - In 2008, the financial shit finally hit the fan; events which anyone with a brain might have foreseen, in view of the obvious bubbles created, and ignored, during the Nineties and the Noughties. Banks collapsed overnight. Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers went first, followed closely by Washington Mutual. Merrill Lynch (the famous 'Thundering Herd') was forcibly sold to Bank of America. TARP was quickly organised, in cahoots with the banksters, at gunpoint, and handed over oodles of money ($700 billion dollars) to the remaining banks, to persuade them to ease credit restrictions on real businesses.
Of course, they didn't do this; they kept the money for their gambling pots and splurged out again on new financial 'products', to the benefit of no-one but themselves. The year 2009 brought them rich pickings.

10. First American Black President 2008 - The election of Barack Obama caused instant euphoria, but gradually, over the following year, we've seen him retaining the personnel (Bernanke, Gates, Geithner) and the policies (torture, rendition, domestic spying, bankster bailouts, etc) as used by the Bush Bunch.

11. Hannukah Massacre 2008-9. With exquisite timing, the Israelis launched a devastating and criminal attack on its prisoner population of 1.5 million in Gaza. It was timed almost exactly between Christmas and the inauguration of the new, hopeful, US president. Obama said nothing relevant during the attack, and has since worked against the Goldstone Report on Israel war crimes and crimes against humanity.

12. Decline of America 2009. I'm not absolutely sure that 2009 was a tipping-point in America's precipitous decline as a world empire, but there are certainly suggestions:
- Treasury Secretary Geithner goes to China, cap in hand, to plead that they won't drop buying US bonds.
- China buys a pipeline from Central Asia completely by-passing US war zones.. They didn't go to war. Oil supplies (and the war in Afghanistan) are major objectives of the Bush/Obama strategies.so this was a set-back.
- China buys a copper mine in Afghanistan, without fighting for it.

-

McChrystal

2009-12-29T05:15:00.000-08:00

This is General Stan McChrystal, the Man of the Moment, so sparse and Spartan, so scornful of eating, drinking and sleeping that he looks like an Egyptian mummy.

He's in charge of the totally useless and unwinnable Aghan War.

He gamed Obama royally on the Afghan War, by disloyally leaking his deliberately grim report on the situation to Bob Woodward, of WaPo.

McChrystal is an ex-terrorist (he ran Dick Cheney's private assassination and torture squad in Iraq), so he's ideal to run this operation, which will kill thousands, if not millions, of innocents, who have already just about survived 30 years of war.

When you have men of this ilk in the military, thinking of nothing more than personal glory, then your Empire aspirations are in deep shit.

Anniversary - Gaza Hanukkah Massacre

2009-12-27T02:26:00.000-08:00

Today is my birthday, and also the first anniversary of the beginning of the Hanukkah Massacre that started a year ago, with the deliberate targetting of a civil police graduation ceremony, where more than 40 aspiring civil policemen were killed, outright.

You have probably heard of many of the horrors perpetrated in that campaign by the Israelis, but maybe you haven't heard of the efforts they made to keep it all quiet:

"On Tuesday [30 Dec 08] , the Free Gaza Movement reported that its vessel, the Dignity, which it was using to transport medical supplies by sea to the besieged territory, was rammed and turned back by Israeli naval ships. The Dignity sustained heavy damage, the group reported, although no one was hurt. "When attacked, the Dignity was clearly in international waters, 90 miles off the coast of Gaza," a press release stated, describing Israel's actions as "wilful and criminal."

Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said, "The fact that the ship was carrying journalists, including a CNN crew that has already broadcasted live three times, proves that this was a provocation on the part of the media."

The administration's nervousness at the presence of journalists is conditioned by the scale of the devastation it has already wreaked, and the even worse atrocities it is preparing

Brownouts

2009-12-26T00:33:00.000-08:00

In the Philippines, they call power cuts 'brownouts', which seems strange, because it's definitely a 'blackout'. The lights are on, or they are off.

Last week, we had four 'brownouts' in four days.

The first came early on Monday, and was due to a collapsing cable in Bucas Grande, the island between Siargao and the 'mainland' of Mindanao. There is a 26km stretch which has to be inspected every time something, not diagnosed beforehand, happens like this.

Anything can cut the line; broken or wet insulators, landslides or tree collapses

There is a small town (Socorro) at one end, and nothing much at the other. It's a long trek, and the guys from SIARELCO didn't get the power going until 3am the next morning.

They have a very difficult job to try and maintain an electrical distribution system that has no real money to invest in new equipment.

Then, next morning, there was another 'brownout' for most of the morning, but I was so enraged that I didn't call my contact at SIARELCO to find out what was happening. So I don't know what caused this.

Then, later that day, the National Power Corporation decided to cut the power between 5 and 8pm because of overall short capacity, without notice.

On Thursday, there was another blackout, due to a cable problem between my town and the feeder town, Dapa. This was fixed within an hour thanks to the hard-working guys from SIARELCO.

SIARELCO is a feeder cooperative, taking electrical supplies from the mainland, and sending them around the island, but they don't appear to be investing much in repairing or renewing the feeder network.

As they have cut off my electricity supply (with a pair of pliers) just a few days after I received my bill, but was absent at the time I think they should do better than this.

I suspect (but I have no evidence or proof) that the Standard Operating Practice is obtaining, and someone in SIARELCO is siphoning off funds.

Ube cake photo

2009-12-24T19:41:00.000-08:00

Purple Yams

2009-12-24T13:12:00.000-08:00

These yams (Dioscorea alata) are known locally as ube. Their flesh is bright purple, and they are delicious.

Eaten like this, roasted (actually whacked into a microwave oven for 3-4 minutes) and slathered with butter, salt, and pepper, they easily beat a roast potato.

I haven't quite worked out yams; they are very similar to Camote or Colibri (Ipomaea batatas) sweet potatoes, and I sometimes suspect that Lindo, who sells them in town from his tiny shop, mixes them up. Some varieties may not be purple at all.

Ube has very thick skin, so I eat it like an avocado, scooping out the purple flesh. It's a very coarse flesh, and very chewy, but I like it that way.

It also makes a wonderful and colourful flavouring for ice cream and cakes. It's one of the most popular flavours here, and goes well with orange mango ice cream when it's slapped into a cone by the local vendor.

Sceptical?

2009-12-23T18:11:00.000-08:00

These sceptical Afghans are being addressed by US Special Forces, dressed like Martians, accompanied by Afghan interpreters, dressed like tourists. Together, they make a comedy turn for the villagers they meet.

Petraeus and McChrystal expect to win hearts and minds in this war?

There is NO WAY to WIN this war, even if the Americans knew who they are trying to fight

How to Make Large Profits from American Wars

2009-12-22T03:24:00.000-08:00

OK, so President Obama intends to send another 30,000 troops to get bogged down in Afghanistan; and some of his '43 NATO allies' will also augment their meagre contributions.

But what he didn't say was that the unsupervised personnel contributions from contractors and other mercenaries, paid from US funds, has already risen hugely. It's cash dumped into a trough into which many snouts have already greedily snuffled.

Jeremy Scahill, scourge of American military contractors, has these facts to report:

- America now has 189,000 paid personnel on the ground in Afghanistan. (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). -That's a bit more than 7 times the estimated 25,000 fighting strength of the Taliban)

- From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan. During the same period, the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000.

- And less oversight: “The increase in Afghanistan contracts has not seen a corresponding increase in contract management and oversight,” according to McCaskill’s briefing paper. “In May 2009, DCMA [Defense Contract Management Agency] Director Charlie Williams told the Commission on Wartime Contracting that as many as 362 positions for Contracting Officer’s Representatives (CORs) in Afghanistan were currently vacant.”

- According to one USAID official, the agency is “sending too much money, too fast with too few people looking over how it is spent.” As a result, the agency does not “know … where the money is going.”

- As for waste and abuse, the subcommittee says that the Defense Contract Audit Agency identified more than $950 million in questioned and unsupported costs submitted by Defense Department contracts for work in Afghanistan. That’s 16% of the total contract dollars reviewed.

So, millions upon millions of dollars are leaking out of the hole at the bottom of the trough.

Hey, you there, now unemployed in NYC, LA, Florida, or Michigan, or in Britain; contact the employers of the moment:
Dyncorp
KBR
USAID

I can't find much about other less well-known companies, but I found this set of advising rules.

If you take the job, you'll find yourself in a country where most of the population hates you, or what your represent, and you may be blown apart by a roadside bomb at any time.

Maradjaw na Pasko

2009-12-21T20:33:00.000-08:00

Maradjaw na Pasko!

That's Happy Christmas in Surigaonon, the local language.

The silly buggers get Christmas and Easter mixed up, but then they are Catholics. (or very seriously under-converted heathens - the local swear words, such as they are, all refer to pre-Christian gods, except one - Sus Mari Yusip, (Jesus, Mary, Joseph) which is not really a swear word at all, but a mild expression of surprise).

Off to Meet Family in Spain

2009-12-20T18:08:00.000-08:00

In February, I will be going to Majorca in Spain to help my mother celebrate her 90th birthday. It will be a great opportunity to meet my two sisters, whom I haven't seen in years, together with my son, and his two children whom I haven't seen at all.

From 2001 until 2006, I visited Majorca for 6 months of every year, setting up my stall in various local markets to sell bead necklaces that my team of ladies made in my backroom here every 'winter'.

You can see the sort of stuff I was selling, to the right, in the Sunday market in Pollensa, a very old and charming town. I think its name might be translated from the original Latin as 'Chickenville'.

I bought the materials in Cebu, in a small street entirely taken up with small shops selling beads and other artefacts. I always enjoyed the experience. It was the only place where I've ever appreciated a karaoke bar, because genuine friends were singing (as was I) and I always spent too much.

Business went well until 2006, when the bottom suddenly dropped out of the market, and nobody, but nobody, especially men, wanted 'ethnic beads' any more.It was a sudden sweep, unannounced, that saw a 40% drop in 'ethnic' bead sales, coupled with increasing competition for junk jewellery from China.

Well, the fashion biz is fickle. In 2004, wide jeans belts were very popular. Everybody had them for sale, except me. So I designed and my ladies made a lot for the next year. I sold precisely 6 of the 300 I made.

But my trip to Spain won't be a doddle. I will be staying there for two weeks; but the visit will take nearly a whole month, including travel time. My itinerary is as follows:

Saturday morning - 4 Hour ferry trip to Surigao City. I will set off early in case there is bad weather, or some other insurmountable obstacle, and because there is no ferry to Cebu on Mondays.
Sunday night - Ferry to Cebu
Tuesday night - Flight via Hong Kong and Doha to Gatwick, England.
Wednesday afternoon - flight from Gatwick to Palma, Majorca

The best part of the trip will be the layovers at Hong Kong, Doha, and Gatwick, each of which is exotic, expensive, and redolent of romantic travel. I have spent enough time in each to love them all.

Papaya Leaf

2009-12-18T09:50:00.000-08:00

This is a papaya leaf (or rather kapaja, in the local dialect, Surigaonon).

I just included it here because it has a wonderful sculptural quality.

I use the leaves for tenderising meat.

Israel Controls US Government Appointments

2009-12-16T01:28:00.000-08:00

Stephen Walt and Ha'aretz both tell a story that many of us have known for a decade or three.

Israel actually has the power to influence US political appointees.

Ha'aretz: Every appointee to the American government must endure a thorough background check by the American Jewish community.

This is disgusting. For a 'piddling little Levantine country' to have this veto over the world's strongest power is quite ridiculous.

The Jews are a small tribe amongst many in the Levant. Lebanon has 17 different recognized religious parties and factions, and while it has an artificial bias towards Christians, doesn't now discriminate against any of them. (Although it took an 18 year civil war to come to terms).

Muslim 59.7% (Shia, Sunni, Druze, Isma'ilite, Alawite or Nusayri), Christian 39% (Maronite Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Melkite Catholic, Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Catholic, Armenian Catholic, Syrian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Chaldean, Assyrian, Copt, Protestant), other 1.3%
note: 17 religious sects recognized

View From A Window

2009-12-15T20:40:00.000-08:00

This puts the picture in perspective. It's a view through an imaginary window at three different scenes, as envisaged
from the Occupied Territories.
1 - Pastoral (perhaps Galilee?)
2 - Tel Aviv (beyond reach)
3 - The brutal Separation Wall

Thanks to Richard Silverstein for this image.
A few brave Israelis, and very few others
(and certainly not in the US or Britain), remembered the 60th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, with an exhibition of posters.

Which gives me some hope.

Manny Pacquiao - People's Champ

2009-12-15T19:32:00.000-08:00

Manny Pacquiao (PacMan), the boxer, is, deservedly, the Philippines' greatest hero. When he has a match, people crowd around TV sets, cheering him on.

He is the first boxer to win seven world titles in seven different weight divisions.In addition, he is the only boxer to win the lineal championship ("the man who beat the man") in four different weight classes. Aside from being a boxer, Pacquiao has participated in politics, acting, filmmaking, and music recording (in which he hasn't yet achieved superstar status).

He is, most certainly, a plucky little bugger.

Pacquiao has reportedly agreed to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. on March 13, 2010, for a split of $50 million up front, at a United States venue yet to be decided.

Watch.it, and don't forget to cheer him on. Loudly.

Amblypigid - whip spider, tailless whip scorpion

2009-12-14T09:41:00.000-08:00

I stepped on this thing as I plodded, barefoot, into the kitchen late one night. It looked as if it might do something terrible to me, but it didn't, and its horrible appearance was only a phony. No venom.

Another name for it is vinegarroon. It is a lovely word, but I can't for the life of me imagine why it's applied to this creature.
It has extraordinarily long second and fourth legs, that act as sensors to find its food in the dark. Its jaws can grab anything.

Creepy, indeed.

Ralph Peters: Remaking the Middle East

2009-12-14T00:56:00.000-08:00

Ralph Peters invented the 'New Middle East' map a few years ago, but I've only just found it.

It's imaginative, but, almost by definition, is a neocon colonialists' answer to 'Middle East Problems'.

Split 'em up.

He managed to piss off everybody:
- Saudi Arabia: split off between an expanded Yemen, Iraqi Shia State, and Jordan, plus an Islamic Sacred State roughly corresponding to the old Hejaz. (Mind you, I don't mind too much if those nasty Najdis get confined to Riyadh and a large expanse of sand).

- Turkey, Syria and Iran separated by a new Kurdish entity. (Which I would favour)

- Pakistan reduced by a new state of Baluchistan, and an expanded Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is a failed state by anyone's criteria. So why make it bigger? It is remarkably facile to show Afghanistan taking over northern Pakistan and Kashmir on this map

Well, I suppose it is to get the Pashtun/Pathans into one state, not Pakistan, which is mostly Punjabi.

But the Pashtun will be fighting the Tajiks, Hazara and Uzbeks in the north for evermore. Just as they are doing now, as the 'Taliban', while the 'NATO forces' blunder about like wallies, or quietly declare Victory and withdraw.

And Baluchistan? No-one knows much about it, except that it one of dryest, hottest and most mountainous places anywhere on earth. It's already the source of the CIA-funded attacks by the Jundullah, a Sunni adversary of Iran's Shi'a majority in Iran's south-east. Baluchistan is reported to be the target of the next US drone attacks on Pakistan.

Quite how they will separate out the 'Quetta Shura' of Taliban leaders from the rest of the over half a million inhabitants of the city, is a different matter. I don't suppose they care very much..

No American politician can be bothered to pick up a phone to stem the poisoning of the Gaza Ghetto

2009-12-12T03:38:00.000-08:00

The Gaza Concentration Camp is suffering from hugely over-exploited aquifers and lack of waste-water treatment (that means, to you and me, that the crap and chemicals go straight back into the aquifer or into the sea).

From Victoria Brittain. Read that, and you'll understand what I'm talking about.

There are two planned UN water treatment facilities awaiting approvals of imports of building materials from the Israeli Ministry of Defence.

One intervention, long ago, from Sen. John Kerry, allowed pasta to be imported into Gaza. Another US politician, with guts, needs to make a single phone call to Israel to get the building materials moving, and this horrendous situation sorted out.

And the American President needs to spend some of his rhetorical skill on lifting the blockade of Gaza.

Just pick up the phone.

Israelis: Not Only Anti-Muslim, but Anti-Christian

2009-12-11T02:57:00.000-08:00

Maariv: Israel-Vatican crisis over Jerusalem holy site
December 11, 2009 Didi Remez

A dispute over David’s Tomb or the Room of the Last Supper, just outside the Old City of Jerusalem is at the heart of the crisis. Kikar Hashabat, an ultra-orthodox news portal attributes “the great victory” to the two current Chief Rabbis, “who one year ago published an announcement that it was prohibited to transfer Jewish property to Christians.”

The Mount Zion Foundation, which maintains the site, has more information on the “property” at stake. Whose website offers a “rare opportunity” to acquire “an extraordinary array of spiritual artifacts from King David’s Royal Tomb Complex.” These range from “a metal clad door” to “to the window frames of transforming light.” Prices are not mentioned, but Rabbi G. Goldstein’s e-mail is availible for “the discerning collector.” The website also offers online shoppers a choice of purchases from the adjacent Chamber of the Holocaust. A range of “naming dedications” is available for every budget starting with an “Honorary Member” for $180, through the “Biblical garden” for $1,000,000, all the way to $8,000,000 for the entire chamber’s “People’s Memorial.”
The holy sites crisis - Yossi Bar, Maariv, December 11 2009

Israeli and Vatican delegations, which yesterday discussed the financial and legal status of Israel’s Christian holy sites, reached a dead end. According to Vatican sources, relations between the two countries are on the verge of crisis, and these same sources are also threatening to sever diplomatic ties with Israel.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a quite hilarious argument. The Tomb of David is in the ground-floor living room, and the Room of the Last Supper on the first floor above. It's a standard stop on 'The Tour of Jerusalem', and I've been there. Quite how they both got preserved, for about 2900 yrs and 2000 yrs respectively, inside a relatively modern house, is never explained.

I don't have any loyalty to Zionist Jews or to the Roman Catholic Church, and if they want to squabble about two very, very dubious sites, I couldn't give a sh*t.

But if these two Jewish Rabbis have managed to upset the Roman Catholics enough for them to consider severing diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Israel, then they've achieved something new, and not too good for Israel.

You can find out all about the Room of the Last Supper at:
http://www.biblewalks.com/Sites/LastSupper.html

As for the adjacent Chamber of the Holocaust, well, what do you do? Take it like the totally fucking phony it is, or give $8,000,000 to these shysters to buy it?

Supsend your belief for a minute - how can it possibly be that a 'Chamber of the Holocaust' suddenly pops up right next to a building sacred to Jesus and David?

Obamacon's Peace Prize 2

2009-12-10T20:35:00.000-08:00

Well, Obama's got his Peace Prize, although he's done absolutely nothing to deserve it.

But he has got a nice smile.

"Having been nominated for the peace prize after only ten days in office; having spent the previous three weeks as a president-elect who silently monitored the slaughter in Gaza; and having just assumed the role of commander-in-chief in two wars, for Barack Obama to then craft a credible way to accept an accolade as this year’s most celebrated man of peace, was always going to demand some rhetorical creativity.

Still, this surely ranks as a first: to use the peace prize ceremony as an opportunity to justify war.
Speaking in Oslo last night, Obama said: “the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace.”

Only within a nation that has largely managed to insulate itself from the effects of war could such a statement be made.

Sixty-four years earlier, in the shadow of two world wars, Americans had a much greater interest in condemning war than in presenting arguments for its justification.

“… our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy,” wrote Supreme Court Justice Robert H Jackson, on August 12, 1945, when laying out the foundation for the Nuremberg Trials.

http://warincontext.org/2009/12/10/how-america-won-the-nobel-peace-prize/#comment-6875

How times have changed.

Obama pissed off Norway by refusing the usual invitations to a post-Nobel concert and lunch with the king, which duties more worthy prize winners have gladly undertaken. It's almost as if he snuck in, took the prize, and ran.

This photo, showing the most powerful man in the world, sitting smugly like a school prizewinner, says it all.

Obamacon's Peace Prize

2009-12-10T01:23:00.000-08:00

Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896, after inventing, and profiting hugely, from dynamite, endowed a series of international prizes, mostly handled by Swedes. But in the case of the Peace Prize, a Norwegian committee administers it.

They awarded Obamacon the 2009 prize after he had been seriously in the running for only a few days. The deadline for nominations was February 1. At that point, Obama had been president for 11 days. If this wasn't hasty Obamaphilia, then nothing was.

The award, finally announced in October 2009, cited Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.":

Now, it happens that Obama is going to Oslo to collect his prize in somewhat less time than 11 days after sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

This is the second surge he has made into Afghanistan.

This situation is so bizarre that I really cannot comment properly. Those dumb Norwegians fell for the 'Obamacon' like so many others.

I will comment again after I've heard his acceptance speech. I have no doubt it will include soaring rhetoric, but nothing else of substantive value.

Turner Prize - Britain's Best Art

2009-12-08T05:07:00.000-08:00

"Site-specific painter whose understated yet radical works are rooted in fine-art tradition wins judges' vote"

The yellow bits are gold leaf. That is the sole connection to 'fine art tradition'. The composition is only a quadruple mirror image of some abstract shape.

There must be a good technological trick to getting the gold leaf to stick to certain areas.

Yes, there is; it's called 'pounce' and static electricity, discovered, and used, by Giotto, etc, in the fourteenth century

What you do is make a sketch, then pin prick holes in the parts you want to separate. Then you rub chalk dust over the sketch, which goes through the holes, and forms areas you can't paint on. That's basically it, but of course, there are complications.

As Wright's paintings are frescos, applied directly to walls, there is no way he can sell the painting to someone who wants to take it home.

But can you imagine the number of wealthy sheikhs or Russian Mafiosi who would like something like this on their bathroom wall? He's got it made.

Wish I'd thought of the idea.

Morphing POTUS

2009-12-04T03:41:00.000-08:00

Well it didn't take long for the new US president (or POTUS, which, if you say it out loud, sounds more appropriate) to morph from being everyone's darling to George Bush III.
His speech on Tuesday night at West Point, outlining 'Obama Surge 2' in Afghanistan (he's already sent 21000 extra squaddies) might have been taken, word for word, straight from GWB.

Who will be the Last Man to Die in Obama's Afghan War?

2009-12-04T00:11:00.000-08:00

Who will be the last man to die for Obama's senseless war in Afghanistan?

Almost everyone knows that the war is unwinnable in any conventional sense, and that it's going to get worse, not better.

This photo shows just how much Obama has been cowed by his generals.If I had cropped the picture to show only the army officer, it would have been very easy to depict him as a Nazi.

Obama's visiting Arlington Cemetery on Veterans' Day, 11 November 2009.

Just under 3 weeks later, he announced a 'surge' in Afghanistan; 30,000 extra troops from the USA, and several thousand from other fragments of NATO.

No, don't ask me what the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is doing fighting local insurgents some few thousand miles from Europe and America

Something very strange happened here. I saw a related photo somewhere else very recently, and wanted to use it for this post. I searched for it on Yahoo but found that on almost all the sites mentioned, the photos had been taken down.

Maybe it shouldn't be shown in advance of Obama's trip to collect the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.

'Conus magus' ventrum 10-23mm

2009-12-02T05:40:00.001-08:00

'Conus magus' ventrum 10-23mm

While the world is falling apart a long way away from me, I prefer to spend my time on more interesting things.

This is a series of shells I collected around here on Siargao Island. They're interesting because they are almost all half the usual adult size of this species, and very brightly coloured.

Nos 1-5 are plain pink with a narrow, fuzzy band of white around the middle. No 6 though, changes colours dramatically about halfway around the last whorl, and the rest of the series follows suit.

A certain Mr L A Reeve named this as Conus fucatus in 1849, but now it's generally credited as a juvenile of Conus magus which is normally about 50 cm (2") long.

Now, an interesting thing about shell collecting is that you don't often find juveniles. Shells appear to grow, wham! into their adult size in a single season. To get a series of youngsters like this is quite unusual.

So, why all these colourful shells around here?

US Soldier in Afghanistan

2009-12-02T05:01:00.001-08:00

US soldier in Afghanistan
Originally uploaded by smallislander

This man's face says it all; the utter hopelessness and vacant stupidity of America's wars.

He probably doesn't really know where he is, let alone what he's supposed to be doing there. Meanwhile, he has to wear that ridiculous hat.

Not a single Afghan has attacked America (although one Afghan-American is under indictment for thinking about blowing up the New York subway).

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091202/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan
gives you all the bullshit you need to know.

Continuing the Weblog

2009-11-03T19:17:00.000-08:00

My resolution on 17th October, to have a disciplined approach to posting, did not last long, as I predicted.

I felt it was becoming too obsessed with my own obsession with Israeli bad behaviour, which wasn't my intention at all. There are plenty of other blogs that can do that much better than I.

This is supposed to be a blog about a quiet life on a tropical island (although I do give myself room for the occasional rant).

Child of Gaza

2009-10-18T04:42:00.001-07:00

Child of Gaza, originally uploaded by smallislander.

I published this photo on Flickr on January 4th 2009, after a few days of the Hanukkah Massacre, Since then, it's had over 2000 views, which is quite something for a photo-sharing club.

The original photo is by Fady Adwan of Getty Images. I added only a title.

Goldstone 2

2009-10-18T04:09:00.000-07:00

On Friday October 16th, 2009 in Geneva, the UN Human Rights Council finally endorsed the Goldstone Report, after an earlier Keystone Cops deliberation failed to do so. The panel investigated war crimes during the Gaza war earlier this year. Oddly though, the Council refused to include in its endorsement any reference to possible crimes of the Palestinians during that conflict, singling out only Israel for fault. Such one-sidedness provided Israel with further ammunition to claim the Council (and by extension, the Report) is one-sided and prejudiced against it. That caused Richard Goldstone to criticize the Council.
(Plagiarised from: http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2009/10/16/un-human-rights-council-endorses-goldstone-report/)

Don't forget that Goldstone is Jewish and a Zionist. As a professional judge, he put that aside, and reported on the facts.

This means that Goldstone's report may be taken seriously by many members of the UN. (Not, of course, by the US, which will veto any further progress or action, but by the 2nd and 3rd world nations, most of whom have got fed up with the US bossing them about, and actually don't give much of a chickenshit about Israel/Palestine ).

Israel is losing credibility by the day.

If the grinning snake who 'leads' Israel tries a bit harder; (and he doesn't' need to do too much
to roll over his senior financial (but junior political) partner, the US, on this and the Iran 'problem'), then he could very well over-step.

Goldstone 1

2009-10-17T17:36:00.000-07:00

The report from Richard Goldstone's group (15-09-09) on the Hanukkah Massacre of Gaza in Dec-Jan 2009 was absolutely devastating to Israel's claim that it has the 'most moral army in the world'.

The report details, in straightforward international legal terms, more than 30+ war crimes, or crimes against humanity. (Those are internationally accepted legal terms, not mine)

Goldstone's report reinforced a number of reports after January 2009 that detailed, graphically, what devastation the 'most moral army in the world' wreaked on an essentially defenceless population, hemmed in, and not allowed to escape.

The full report is available at:

http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/docs/UNFFMGC_Report.pdf

There are several facts about Goldstone himself that are worth noting:
- He is Jewish, and and a Zionist, and serves on the board of the Hebrew University. Hardly someone to accuse of 'anti-Semitism'.
- He has had a distinguished career as an international jurist, adjudicating in South Africa, plus war crimes in the Balkans, and Ruanda. He knows the difference between a war crime and a crime against humanity, which you and I may not.
- He himself insisted that his brief include investigations of Palestinian 'war crimes' as well. However, they turned out to be so minor that they pale into insignificance against Israel's premeditated attack on 1.5 million trapped civilians.

Read: http://ingaza.wordpress.com/ by Eva Bartlett, who was in Gaza throughout the 'war' and has been there in the aftermath, and is still struggling to do her good work 9 months later.

If you thought that invasion finished in January 2009, and that peace reigns, you're very much mistaken.

If you can. please donate some cash to keep her doing her good work.

Reset

2009-10-17T17:11:00.000-07:00

I decided, just yesterday, at last, to revive this weblog. It's about time to stop being a passive recipient of news and blog reports, and become a bit more active.

I propose to start to write a new blog entry at 10am every morning (Taipei time). This, like most New Year resolutions, will probably die very quickly, but is part of a personal reset that might reintroduce some discipline into my life.

I read certain (mostly "political") private and newspaper reports and weblogs every morning to get a sense of the world's situation, and most of them don't reinforce any optimism about our future.

So, I will take a daily theme, and run on it. And try to be positive.

If I can't find a daily theme, I will talk about local life, nature, or whatever, on the small island of Siargao, on the far right hand side of the Philippines

Public 'Services'

2009-06-13T02:39:00.001-07:00

Public 'Services'
Originally uploaded by smallislander

Our mayor cleaned out the karaoke bars along the boulevard, because their customers p*****d behind them, in the school yard.

Now, he's finished off the public loo building.

The local average wage here is P200 = $4 per day.

So exactly who is going to spend even 2.5% of his income on a s*** when he can go to the beach and do it for free?

And exactly what are 'other purposes'?

First Butterfly To Sit Still - Convergent Evolution?

2009-04-28T05:35:00.001-07:00

First Butterfly To Sit Still - Convergent Evolution?
Originally uploaded by smallislander

This is almost the first butterfly I've been able to photo in my garden.

It's not very big, or very showy, but it is quite extraordinary in that i it seems to be trying very hard to resemble an Atlas Moth, with snakes head wing tips and wing edges looking like a particularly nasty caterpillar.

See:

Threat

2009-03-04T20:28:00.000-08:00

I am desperately trying to think of a way of making some kind of income from a small island.

Journalism just might work, and sensational, nutty journalism even better, so I'm sending this picture around, to the usual suspects, with two quite different messages:

1) AL QAIDA MAY ATTACK US EAST COAST WITH GLIDERS

2) PENTAGON CONTRACTOR'S SUPER-FIGHTER BOONDOGGLE OVERSHOOTS BUDGET

Which will sell better?

Pole Dancer

2009-03-03T20:22:00.000-08:00

Nemia Thinking She's a Pole Dancer, originally uploaded by smallislander.

Nemia, nicknamed Agha, is very typical of young girls from the Philippines provinces.

Yes, she is beautiful, and she works in Nine Bar, just down the road from me. And no, she is not for overnight rent , and Nine Bar is not a prostitution joint, thanks to Peter, Pontus, and Frida, who set it up as the most popular bar in GL.

Old Age and Rare Plants

2009-03-03T20:13:00.000-08:00

Montane Forest XPDC, Cameron Highlands, originally uploaded by Prof KMS.

Prof KMS put this photo of a very rare Malaysian orchid up in Flickr recently.

It is actually a flower (Goniothalamus montanus (Annonaceae)), but it unfortunately reminded me of my age.

Start All Over Again

2009-01-22T01:57:00.000-08:00

I've shamefully neglected my weblog (Notes From a Small Island) for the past few months, partly because someone got Google to put up a notice that I had objectionable content on the site.

True, I did post a photo of my odious neighbour (self-taken) stopping just north of his pubes, but the only obscene aspect of it must have been his physique. But then I cut it out, only to find that Google did nothing in return. I've found no way of contacting Google to have this notice removed.

So, I`m starting anew with Notes From a Small Island 2

After the Rain - Ta-Ta's Umbrella

2008-09-20T05:56:00.000-07:00

After the Rain - Ta-Ta's Umbrella, originally uploaded by smallislander.

Sometimes it rains here - well, more or less, all of the time, it rains here.

Household Altar

2008-09-18T05:25:00.000-07:00

I'm into religion, suddenly. I've got so fed up with widely published trash and propaganda about Muslims that I've decided to fight back.

Muslims do not allow images of God, or idolatry in any form (except for the Ka'aba).

Certain Christians like to have a series of images of their gods and goddesses around the house, just like the Romans used to do.

Jesus takes the place of Apollo, and the Virgin Mary takes over from whatever ancient female god you ever thought of (Astarte, Aphrodite, Venus, etc).

Kayabasa pumpkin flower early morning

2008-09-07T23:43:00.000-07:00

Kayabasa pumpkin flower early morning xP1010006, originally uploaded by smallislander.

Out of the 100 or so pumpkin seeds I sowed earlier this year, only one has survived, but it has survived with a vengeance. Every other morning I go down to the end of the garden and redirect its trail in the opposite direction, so now it's looking like a plate of vegetable spaghetti.

It flowers in the early morning, before the sun shrivels it up. Not a sign of a pumpkin fruit yet.

I was imagining lots of pumpkin curries, but all I've got is these goddamned flowers, and sweet little tendrils.

Kayabaso (pumpkin bud) P1010011, originally uploaded by smallislander.

Mushrooms on way to CR

2008-09-05T23:22:00.000-07:00

Taken on a midnight visit to the CR. These mushrooms are called barogong here, and are edible, just. They have virtually no taste at all.

I do miss the big fat wild mushrooms of Europe at this time of year.
I think these are a Cuprinus sp

CR stands for 'Comfort Room' in the Philippines. They're usually anything but, and mine is no exception.

Poikilospermum sp. This can't be jungle broccoli, can it ? Yes

2008-09-05T00:13:00.000-07:00

We found this strange set of flowers in the local forest (or, at least, Ron did, and it turns out to be even more strange than I ever thought.

1) Either the leaves or the flowers are eaten by people in Sabah, Borneo, so my silly comment about jungle broccoli just might be right.

A species of climber called binatong (Poikilospermum sp.) found in abundance in both Sabah and Sarawak is also collected and cooked as vegetable.www.arbec.com.my/pdf/art3janmar03.pdf

2) It has a wonderful relationship with ants, who actually plant this liana's seeds at the entrances to their nests.

However, they (ants) maintain a very close relationship to another plant, the hemi-epiphyte Poikilospermum cordifolium. Most entrances of these ants on tree trunks have some seedlings of this Poikilospermum, obviously planted by the ants that act like gardeners. Some of the plants grow very large and send roots down the trunk into the soil. As the ant colonies around those large hemi-epiphytes are currently still active, this suggests that such colonies may live for many years at the same spot, and that the association between Crematogaster (ant) and Camponotus (ant) is a very stable one. This relationship between the two ants in a common nest is termed parabiosis.....http://www.insect-plant-interactions.biozentrum.uni-%20wuerzburg.de/

And what's more, the two ant species live together in total harmony, which is fairly amazing.

The two species are a big one, and a small one, but they live together quite happily. Wish our politicians could do the same.

Thanks for the new shirt darling

2008-09-04T23:25:00.000-07:00

The Bolanons (gypsy traders) are in town, running ukay-ukay (second-hand clothes stalls), in advance of the fiesta, so I gave up and reluctantly gave some cash to Shedney to shop and buy a new bed-sheet and a few other bits.

She bought me this (it doesn't even button on the right side!). But it is light and cool, so maybe I'll make a real effort to try hard and wear it in public, for loyalty's sake.

It cost $1.50, which makes it expensive around here.

Bridge to Cloud 9

2008-09-02T23:37:00.000-07:00

I haven't been to Cloud 9 , the famous Siargao surfing spot, for some time: (the famous wave is that little white streak on the right of the picture, which was taken at low tide) so I was disturbed to find the destruction going on around it.

This used to be the main entrance to the Cloud 9 wave, flanked and shaded by coconut trees. It's bordered by two private resorts, either side, but the owners of this land have left it undeveloped.
I met up with our new mayor, one Felipe Espejon, who was supervising this stuff, complained about the destruction, and was warned, very explicitly, that I should 'behave myself' if I wanted to keep on living here.

Heaven from hell

2008-08-31T01:52:00.000-07:00

I used to travel a lot to the Middle East and Africa, but I always felt a certain relief when I arrived home.

This little piece (from Anwar Ali of the New York Times) describes exactly the opposite feeling:

"It was only my second time out of Iraq traveling to a foreign country. It was night and from above Turkey we could see lights, like millions of colorful diamonds scattered around. When we were flying over Iraq, below we could see only a dust cloud and darkness.

Our flight to Turkey was six hours late and arrived at 3.30 a.m.
I was very worried because the word “late” in Iraq means you expect to be shot. Not by terrorists, but by the Iraqi army or the Americans, unless you have a good excuse or are very lucky.
When we arrived to Istanbul, my wariness vanished as I found an entirely different world there. The airport was so fancy, the Turkish people were so nice; the streets were all surrounded by red and blue and different colors of flowers.

And although it was late we could see cars in the streets and people walking nearby, and when entering the neighborhood where we were staying, I thought it was only sunset as I saw many, many people walking around and sitting in restaurants.

Returning to Iraq, our flight was also late, by four hours. I was so worried since our arrival to Baghdad was at 10.30 p.m. and that was not safe.

The streets in Baghdad after 9 p.m. are very dangerous and full of army, police and American checkpoints. Sometimes they can’t understand why you are out late and shoot, and sometimes they understand".

Saddam Hussein was a shit - we all know that, but did we really have to visit this horror on his country?

Kayabang Crabs

2008-08-30T04:52:00.000-07:00

The local kayabang crabs come out of their burrows among the near-shore coconut trees every full moon, and set out on a determined march to the beach, where they get up to ... well, I really don't know what.

On the way, they go straight through anything passable, including of course, houses.

I found this one yesterday, sitting amongst my pots and pans.

They're not particularly friendly, because the local people go out with coconut frond torches, to catch them as they cross the beach.

They're quite delicious, cooked in coconut milk, as ginaatan. This is a very well-known soup in the Philippines, and the base can be used for almost anything.

Here's the base, stolen from Filipino Vegetarian Recipes - actually their recipe is for cooking saba bananas, but it's the same as used by every Filipina the length and breadth of the islands.

1 tsp salt
1/4 c oil (can cut down on this)
2 c coconut milk
3-5 cloves of garlic (to your taste), chopped finely
1 small onion, finely sliced
2 fresh chillis, sliced (optional)
2 tsp dried shrimp, soaking in 2 tsp hot water
1/2 c sili leaves (or other greens that might go with this, like spinach, for example)

(If you don't understand US recipe cups and teaspoons as measures, then just use your common sense, get it right the second time, and go on from there).

The result's delicious, and when you've just caught the crab in the pan he's going to be cooked in, somehow even more so.

Habal-Habal

2008-08-28T02:40:00.000-07:00

A habal-habal is the usual form of transport around here. We all rely on them.

Habal-habal actually means what pigs enjoy when they are copulating. (I don't want to give a photo of that, but probably you can imagine it).

Lining up on the back of a single motorcycle is about the same.

It's very, very intimate.

I've seen up to 10 people riding on one motorcycle, but never had my camera ready.

This habal driver has made a rain shade over his machine.

Confused Octopus

2008-08-26T20:15:00.000-07:00

Tamaya, octopus are one of the favourite foods here, but in my opinion, Filipinos don't do the best by them.

The first one I ever tasted was in Cyprus, where an octopus attached itself to my bare white heel , as I was preparing to dive. My companion picked it off, bashed it on the rocks where we were sitting (to tenderise it), and told me how to cook it in slowly in red wine for a very long time (with the usual extras).

Octopus cooking is a very delicate art; it's one of my long-term projects to learn exactly how.

Blanch, raw, slow cook, rapid boil, or what?*

Somewhere along that gradient, there's a point where the meat will come out fresh, tender and tasty. That's the moment when the real cook will know he's got it just right.

I'll keep trying.

Meanwhile, consider these poor octopi, who are extremely good at doing camouflage, but have been wholly confused by being put out to expire on a chequered background.

Update 1: The answer to this is to get the first cooked point just exactly right, or stew the damned things for hours to get back to it.

Tsunami Notice

2008-08-26T05:55:00.000-07:00

Strange thing, you know; since the Big Tsunami in the Indian Ocean on December 27 2006 (my birthday, as it happened) everyone has got all concerned.

It's fairly obvious that, on an island like Siargao, where most of the flat ground is only 1 or 2 metres above high-tide mark, that, if a tsunami happened, we'd all be done for.

A tsunami's not something you can plan ahead for.

We're only a few miles from the Philippine Deep (some 10km down), and if, say, a huge submarine landslide or something similar happened there, we wouldn't have much time to run.

So there's not much point in putting up notices like this, especially when it's distinctly ambiguous about whether you have to run 14 kilometres or just a mile.

So, it may happen at any time, and since I can't run much any more, I'll just plod along, and pray (even though I'm an atheist).

Tridacna - Giant Clams

2008-08-25T05:01:00.000-07:00

Tridacna clams belong to the family that is supposed to grab your foot if you're a careless diver, and hold you trapped until whatever, which is rubbish.

There are some truly enormous ones, Tridacna gigas, which might actually do that after a bad night out on the town, but the more usual species in the Philippines, and around the Indo-Pacific, is Tridacna squamosa, the Fluted Clam.

It's usually quite large, and full of good meat, which I don't really understand. I've never come across a Tridacna teenager, or any other juvenile, although, of course, there are small(-ish) ones, that perhaps I ignore.

The ones shown in the above photo come from Surigao City market, where they are sold in the 'cheap corner'. (That's why there's some seaweed on offer at the front).

But de-shelled, the reasons for eating this shellfish become very, very obvious.

It's nutritious, of course, but I suspect it's visual qualities have a lot in common with full frontals published by the likes of Larry Flynt.

You wouldn't find this shell in ancient shell middens, because it's too damned heavy to carry back home.

All you need is something to cut the joint muscle between the two halves of the shell. That could be any old bit of stone or wood that you can pick up.
Then you take home the meat, and leave the shell behind.

Siargao Zingiber Project 2 - Etlingera fimbriobracteata

2008-08-22T08:06:00.000-07:00

iuRon was the first to find one of these local ginger plants, and I wrote about them here.

I didn't realise at that time quite what a very strange plant this is.

If you look closely, you'll see a nascent bud to the left, a bud with about six yellow and red flowers open in the middle, and, to the right, what is presumably the next stage, a sort of mini-pineapple with the petals withered, and pink fruit developing.
Now, we haven't been watching these plants closely enough. (I've transplanted a few to my garden, where we can keep a eye on them).

Suddenly, at the next stage, they produce fruit, about 3 metres up, on long stems.

What's going on? How, exactly, does that mini-pineapple transform itself into a ten-foot fruit-bearer?

The only answer is to camp out next to one of the mini-pineapples, and photograph it, every hour, through the night.

Ron - get your sleeping-mat ready!

Update: 24/8/08. I was completely wrong on all of this. The small pineapple does NOT suddenly transform into fruit 10 feet above it, Instead, it's a different, but related plant that happened to grow in the same place, called Alpinia haenki (or macassarensis), which is even more rare.

Coconut Harvest

2008-08-19T22:07:00.000-07:00

This is the usual three-monthly coconut harvest from the sixteen trees in my garden. The usual haul is 5 sacks, each of about 25 kilos kopras meat (about 100 pieces per sack).

It's a wonderful, bountiful tree - see: Coco Loco

It does everything you can think of, except, possibly, marriage guidance, but it's almost certainly got a secret chemical that will help with that kind of problem.

One brave fellow climbs the trees and trims off the ripe coconuts, and they come crashing down like small bombs.
Then they chop the whole nuts in half, and scoop out the meat with a specially-shaped knife, a lugit.

The meat is now kopras, but it has to be dried first, in a tapahan, which is really a bodged-up smokehouse, like this. The smouldering coconut husks are used for fuel, and the process takes most of a day.

I've often wondered why the operators of the tapahan don't also use the process to cold smoke a few fish or sides of pork, but perhaps they've never thought of it

Fidelity - Female Fruit Flies Only Fuck on the First Date

2008-08-18T05:39:00.000-07:00

I'm not a lot interested in fruit flies, as such, but they (Drosophila) have been a great deal helpful to science in general and especially in the genetics corner.

It seems that female fruit flies are fussy. After the first time they have intercourse, they don't want to do it again.

Someone has discovered (or thinks he has) how.

Now this is how you find out the the details of the complicated and devious mind of the female fruit fly.

You feed them. With yeast that contains lots of heavy nitrogen. That isotope labels all of the female proteins.

Then you look at them after they've fucked. Anything that didn't have the heavy nitrogen was given by males. The researchers discovered some sixty-three proteins from fruit fly semen, which may suggest that the male fruit fly lacks confidence in his wife's fidelity, and is over-doing it a bit.

(Sorry to anyone who's offended by the fffour-letter word - the alliteration was just too good to resist).

Curacha Dancing Crabs

2008-08-17T03:10:00.000-07:00

Curacha dancing crabs are a speciality of Zamboanga, at the extreme right hand bottom of the Philippines.

The first time I ate them, there, I found myself sitting at the next table to Nur Misuari, the politician then in charge of the Muslim provinces (ARMM) of Mindanao, and they were delicious (no, not the politician and his cronies, but the crabs).

Since then, of course, Muslims have gone very much out of fashion.

Nur Misuari's done a bit of jail time since, but then so should anyone who sets out to be a politician; a little bit of waterboarding wouldn't go amiss.

But we also have curachas here, in Siargao, where they are known as kanduyon or ladan.

They are good to eat, because almost all the useful stuff is in the main shell, so you don't need to fuss about too much.

They're called dancing crabs, because they sit upright in the water, on their back legs, and ponce about, like a bunch of poofs at a party.

Notice their claws; they're not a lot of use, being angled in the wrong way, quite against heavy usage. they merely use them for posing.

If these things were created, then the Great Creator made more than a few design mistakes. Thank God, He won't be held accountable.

But Thank God, He made them tasty. You can find some better photos than mine here.

Siargao Zingiber Project - Sidelining

2008-08-15T22:22:00.000-07:00

For the first time, I got up off my bum, and went myself with my crew (Ron & Shedney), to find some new and exotic ginger plants reasonably nearby.
We went to Victor's Flying Fox Bar, built, like only a total crazy could do, out in the boonies, opposite a perfect jungle mountain, where the flying foxes do a grand fly-past every evening, dead on time at 2.5 minutes past dusk.

We walked along the edge of the mountain, and we did find a couple of new ginger plants (which I'm waiting to have identified).
But, more than that, we found some other strange plants that I don't have much of a clue about:

This is wild ubi, a purple yam, that, domesticated, is a great favourite here in the Philippines. It's even a top flavour for ice cream. Purple ice cream? It's delicious. Only in the Philippines.

And we found these, abandoned: Puso banana buds, but only the stripped skins, the buds taken off to make into a fabulous salad.

And then this one, known locally as padjaw. It's an aroid, but I don't know much more about it, and I don't know why it grows 'pretend peppers'.

Siargao Zingiber Project - 1

2008-08-15T20:48:00.000-07:00

Following on from my Pano'on 1 and Pano'on 2 posts, I've got all enthused about ginger plants.

It seems, according to John Mood, a 20-year expert on ginger (Zingiber) plant taxonomy, that we may just have a new species on our hands.

Here, it's called kayaskason, and it's very common. John asked me to preserve the leaves and inflorescence (a la herbarium, pressed between newspaper sheets). This is a bit difficult, because we don't get newspapers hereabouts, and the big fruits don't really press very well.
However, I'll do my best.

I proposed, very strongly, based on the first specimens that Ron brought to me, that the damned plant didn't have flowers.

But it does.

Here's a picture of one, a bud popped into a vase of water at 5pm and open and greedy at 7pm.

I'm not a botanist, so I really didn't know that my photo was upside down.

It looked extraordinarily like the face of one of the local horseshoe bats. Even down to the two very small 'eyes' either side of its 'nose'.

Now, if I was a bat, I'd visit this flower, and land on the strong stem just behind it. Then I'd bend over, and find I was facing the thing upside down. I would be doing 69 face to face with a friend from another biological kingdom.

Probably, I'd lap up all the ants crawling around the nectar, and then lap up some of the delectable stuff for myself.

Morning Bakery

2008-08-14T22:01:00.000-07:00

Every morning at 5am, as the sun rises, reluctantly, Bebot's wife makes bread rolls, and they're wonderful.

They're not the usual Philippines pan-de-sal, that are altogether too sweet and mushy. These are almost genuine, unsugared, bread rolls.

I buy them for breakfast (for dunking in coffee or Milo) or even, sometimes, as a special 'English' treat (sliced hot with plenty of butter and a bit of Marmite).

The oven is very high-tech. It's a galvanised iron box, with a folded corrugated-iron roof folding over. This one even has a heat shield at the front. It's fired by a pile of smouldering coconut husks on top. Bebot's wife manipulates the bread rolls with something like a bugsay (paddle), with which she whips them around like a flock of sheep.

But the main problem is that no-one in the Philippines has ever learned to make bread properly. They use soft flour; they don't mature their yeast, etc. There is nothing here remotely resembling the fresh early morning French baguette; they learned bread-making from the Spanish, who haven't a clue.

And that's a big disappointment; I would love to eat a fresh hot baguette every morning. Maybe I'll get out there one morning and start preaching. I love fresh morning-cooked bread.

Rabuls - Fighting Spider

2008-08-14T03:02:00.000-07:00

The kids here find these spiders around the place. Then they set pairs of spiders to fight along a piece of silhig (that piece of the centre of a coconut leaf, that are normally used to make brooms here).

This is a huge thing amongst the local children (who haven't got many shop-bought toys, so they have to use their imagination in ways that spoiled Western brats could never do).

They keep their champions jealously, in empty match boxes, and even trade them amongst their friends. One good spider can be worth seven pieces of candy.

Then I think back to my own youth; we used to have conkers (horse-chestnuts) that we collected in the local woods. You strung the conker and slung it against your opponent's. If that broke, you won.

Coconut Bubble

2008-08-12T20:28:00.000-07:00

This is a coconut in the process of sprouting. It's sent out a small shoot through one of the three 'eyes' at the top of the coconut shell, and soon it will send out some roots through another one.

The roots will go down, while the shoot stays up, so the shell will remain on the ground but keel over, as the roots take hold.

The bubble, buwa, is the conversion of the water and flesh inside the coconut shell into an embryo of the future coconut tree. Amazing how alike this process is to mammal reproduction, where the womb holds and feeds the embryo.

This one is well on the way, so the bubble has almost filled the hard shell, while the roots haven't got going just yet. Much of the coconut flesh is still there. Give it time.

Now, if you can catch a coconut that hasn't quite reached this stage (where the bubble gets a little bit spongy) then you get this, and it's delicious.

It tastes like a sort of coconut marshmallow, juicy, fresh and sweet.

Rejected Artists & Transparent Trousers

2008-08-12T08:05:00.000-07:00

Ever since I first visited Paris, at the age of sixteen, I've had the ambition to be a Rejected Artist. I wanted to live in a garret in Paris or Soho, paint works of genius like Vincent Van Gogh, then come back from Heaven to see what nice things people said about my stuff long after I'd gone.

Well, here's a rejected artist; Percy Wyndham-Lewis, standing outside the Royal Academy in London, in 1938.

Note:
- the cigar
- the well-made suit (but the awful faux-pas of leaving all three buttons done up)
- the silk scarf
- the patent leather shoes
- and worst of all, the spats on those shoes

And here's the reason for his rejection (only from the RA Summer Exhibition) - his portrait of T S Eliot, one of the most boring and inconsequential poets of all time.

The painting is good:
- the top half plagiarises a few clues from Gauguin (or some Vorticists)
- the middle part is a good portrait, in spite of a useless lot of effort to be Cubist.

But the bottom part? Well, it takes a lot of artistry to paint a famous poet with transparent trousers.

Is this an iconographic signal? Were Wyndham-Lewis and Eliot a little bit more than male friends?

Yes.

Now here is what Wyndham-Lewis was trying to emulate: something like this Juan Gris cubist portrait of Pablo Picasso, painted 30 years before.

Take a very close look at this. Cubism was supposed to be a new way of looking at things; putting three dimensions, and the different facets of them, into two.

And here's why; my own 'cubist' portrait of Percy Wyndham-Lewis (complete with arrogant cigar) executed in about 10 minutes, using the Paint.Net program.

You won't recognise Wyndham-Lewis, but then you won't recognise the young Pablo Picasso in John Grey's portrait, either.

That's not the point. This is Art.

Venus in Blue Jeans

2008-08-10T05:31:00.000-07:00

I've been having a lot of idle fun in the past few days, playing with the Paint.Net program. It's fun, it's free, and (I think) it does most of what you might want.

This is John Everett Millais' 'Venus Verticordia' (Venus will turn your heart vertical). It's a winsome, bee-stung lipped nonsense, with slight symptoms of thyroid trouble in her neck.

Here, on the other hand, by Hans Memling, is an old lady who's seen it all.

She ain't going to take shit from nobody.

But this is the best, the Rokeby Venus, by Diego Velázquez.

Truly, Venus in Blue Jeans, and one of the best bums ever painted.

Pano'on - Local Candy - Bromeliad or What? - Part II

2008-08-09T17:00:00.000-07:00

I first wrote about pano'on just a week ago, and things have developed rapidly. First I contacted Brandon McHenry, who identified my Dischidia or talikubo for me. He, in turn, suggested that pano'on was not a bromeliad at all, nor a relative of maize, but a relative of ginger, which was a total surprise to me.

Brandon also introduced me to John Mood, a world authority on ginger taxonomy, who confirmed the plant was probably Hornstedtia conoidea, which also grows in Borneo.

Well, I hadn't seen much more of the plant than a few ripening buds and a few leaves, which had made me think it was this: Zingiber mioga - Japanese Wild Ginger, which is commercially-grown in Japan (and now in New Zealand) for its young buds, which are a great delicacy.

The buds are shown here:
(Click photo to go to 'the scent of green bananas blog for recipes)

Well, this really got me thinking. If New Zealand farmers are canny enough to grow this stuff for export to Japan, why shouldn't we do the same here in Siargao? Looked easy to me; it's a perennial, so you plonk it in the ground, and pick a bit idly from time to time.

But if you look at the botanical drawing, you'll see that mioga has a white flower, whereas our pano'on's flowers turn out to have a brilliant deep red flower (top right). And the local people don't eat the buds, although they do eat the unripe berry pods (and so do rats and other forest rodents - we didn't find a single young bud on the specimens Ron brought back, from his second expedition on Thursday).

Ron also mentioned another ginger relative, locally known as kayaskason, which also has edible berries, growing at the top of a long stem, so I asked him to get some of those as well, plus anything else he could find. He came up trumps. Kayaskason turns out to be a species of Alpinia, or even a natural hybrid, and extremely rare. It seems strange that it is common enough here for the local people to give it a name.

Well, that's exciting enough, but this photo shows only the unripe seed pods. We've planted it in the garden, but I don't think I can wait for the flowers to come out, so I guess we'll have to go and get some, to finally find out what it is.

But the third wild ginger that Ron brought back turns out to be a little honey. You can see in this photo the yellow flowers and pink fruit. Here's another photo of the pink fruit.

This one, apparently, is an Etlingera fimbriobracteata.

Now that I know these marvels are to be found in the forests around here, I'll be looking out for them.

Pool Swimmer

2008-08-09T00:53:00.000-07:00

People keep on writing to me about why I've lived in the Philippines for all of 12 years and still like it.

Look at the photo above - 'nuff said.

Marang Fruit

2008-08-08T00:37:00.000-07:00

Marang - Artocarpus odoratissimus

This fruit is about halfway between jackfruit and breadfruit, and a member of the same family. It grows on large trees (larger usually than jackfruit) and smells wonderful. That, of course is why someone called it 'odoratissimus'.

The skin is made of countless tiny tubules or spines, and you simply cut through it and twist it off, to reveal the individual fruit (actually arils, about the size of a grape). Each one of these has a large seed inside (which you can also eat, after boiling or roasting).

There's not a lot of taste to a marang, but it does smell good.

These are some I photographed in the Surigao City fruit market, going nicely yellow as they ripen.

Actually, there's a superb photograph at MVI~'s photostream at Flickr, which I can't compete with.
You'll also find more information at the ever-indispensable Wikipedia.

Shedney loves them; I am ordered, indeed commanded, to bring some whenever I do a bank run to Surigao City.

(There don't seem to be many exotic local fruit available here on Siargao Island. If people have a tree like this in their garden, it tends to go to the family, and no-one else).

Santol Fruit

2008-08-07T02:05:00.000-07:00

I can't do better than to quote The Daley News, an Australian tree nursery, on this fruit:

Fruit Tree of the Month
Santol - Sandoricum koetjape

Native to Asia the Santol is a large fast growing and attractive tree. In their native setting they can grow to around 45 m with a large buttressed trunk and branches low to the ground.
In cultivation they are more commonly seen as a 15 m specimen tree. In Asia the santol is valued not only for its fruits but it is also grown as a timber and shade tree, although the timber is not of high quality it does polish well.

The fruits are large, round and rough on the outside with a thick textured yellowish skin. The flesh is segmented around the 3-5 seeds, they are called lolly fruits as the flesh sticks firmly to the seeds and it is best removed and enjoyed by sucking the seeds clean. Do not be tempted to swallow the seeds.

I find these fruit (or at least the 'lolly' part) to be as insipid as so many other South East Asian fruit, a sort of jellified sweet flesh with a flavour so goddam subtle that I have difficulty describing it. And the flesh sticks to the seeds like slimy cotton wool. However,the orange skin is marvellous; very tart, and solid.

I've used it to make some very, very acceptable chutney, the kind that nearly substitutes for Branston Pickle, the essential ingredient for a genuine cheese-and-pickle sandwich.

Nukos Tinola

2008-08-05T21:15:00.000-07:00

This delicious Filipino soup is the kind of thing that Shedney used to make for me when she was trying to impress me.

I won't bother to give an ingredients list, because it doesn't matter very much. This is a dish made at the moment from whatever you have available.

Take the usual onions, garlic, ginger, and so on, plus any spices you particularly like, give them a quick fry, and then throw in some fresh squid (nukos) , and whatever bits of vegetables you have around (this lot included mange-tout (snowpeas - a recently introduced vegetable, but nice, all the same), local cucumber, tomatoes, and some unidentifiable green leaves, probably kangkong (swamp lettuce) - the oval white things are cucumber seeds from the local cucumber; sikwa).

Don't cook it too much. You want the squid tasty and tender, not like bits of boiled rubber.

Then add water. Easy, isn't it? And delicious.

Gecko Corner

2008-08-05T01:01:00.000-07:00

This is Gecko Corner, just above the righthand side of my Siargao Island 'home office' at about 7 pm. All of the extended family are out there, and they're patrolling the best bits for tasty insect nibbles.

Actually, there are half a dozen more, to the left side, but they all maintain very careful territories. Sometimes, there's a little bit of a flurry, with a gecko growl and a scuffle; they are quarrelling about sex or territory rights, both of which seem to be prevalent problems amongst most animal groups.

Geckos have evolved amazing abilities for holding onto vertical and even sub-horizontal surfaces. They can stick to anything...sometimes. See: Gecko's amazing sticky feet

and when that doesn't work, they can turn around, mid-air, to make sure they land properly:

See:
Tail 'key' for gecko acrobatics

They are all around my house; and are fairly ambitious.

Sometimes they fall off the ceiling.

When they land, stunned for a moment, you can see the thought, in their eyes 'Where the f*** am I now?'

This one plopped onto my computer keyboard.

Other stuff drops into my evening drink occasionally.

Some mornings I find some poor soused gecko in the glass I left on the table.

This little fellow is trying to eat a moth more than half his body size (excluding head and tail).

He can't bite the insect in half; he'll just have to do the best he can to swallow it whole.

Very occasionally, the geckos stop fighting each other, and have some fun.

I'm going to be very careful about this, because Google might put me on the pornography blacklist if I publish this photo.

But look at their eyes; neither look exactly ecstatic; much like humans, really.

My apologies for the f***ed up layout of this post (and others). Google's Blogger has been giving me much angst today.

Lato Seaweed Salad

2008-08-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

I do love this stuff.

Koi-Koi, my neighbour, brings me some from time to time, often together with some tajum, sea urchin roe, and they go well together.

They taste like salty little grapes, bursting in the mouth in the same way as caviare, but they're a lot cheaper.

This kind is my favourite. The branches are like little green Walt Disney toadstools.

To eat them, all you do is collect them straight from the sea. If you haven't got fresh sea water to rinse them in, use a little vinegar. But make sure you do wash them; a lot of tiny crabs and shrimp live in the bunches, and you don't want to chomp those as well.

I also featured another kind of lato at: Seaweeds as Food

The Grinning Bitch

2008-08-03T03:25:00.000-07:00

You'll probably recognise this lady, in spite of what I've tried to do to disguise her. In fact, where she's currently exhibited, behind bulletproof glass, she doesn't look a lot different than this. That is, if you can see over the crowd of that day's share of the 6 million gawkers who look at the original every year.

This picture makes her look like a BIG masterpiece. She ain't one of those.
She looks as if she's living in a smallish living-room aquarium, 30" in high by 20 7/8" wide (77cm by 53 cm). That's why I've given her a couple of goldfish swimming past, and a plastic rock to the right.

I've thought about her sometimes over the forty years since I first saw her at her current French residence. I was, at the time, trying to do a 'Five Minute Louvre', in emulation of the late and very lamented Art Buchwald, who never tried it himself , but apparently met a very serious Swede who had actually accomplished: Entry to the Louvre, sight of the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Victory of Samothrace, in turn, and was out of the back door in five minutes flat.

Anyway, what I'm on about today are the anomalies of that famous icon of womanhood. Look at this picture, and ask yourself just why:

the landscapes at left and right are completely different; climates, horizon, colours and all. It's just as if Leonardo cut-and-pasted a couple of his apprentices' efforts into his final production. We can all do this now, thanks to Photoshop, but Leonardo had to use very much more basic means.
the famous smile; it's ambiguous, because Leonardo used an old painter's trick; perhaps he invented it himself. Smudge the ends of the lips, and you really can't tell what she's thinking.
But look again at the image on this post. Just because I've put a plastic rock right next to her smile, her smile's got a reference point that shows she's definitely smirking.
the lazy come-to-bed eyes. Well they're part of the whole, but look again.
The right eye (from your perspective) is a bit higher than the left one. A few millimetres down and she'd look like any dumb peasant woman. And the eyes are looking in different directions. They're slightly away from looking directly at you. They are but they aren't. Another old painter's trick.
the veil - she's wearing a very, very light veil. It's just visible over her head, and, by inference, over her body. This is is a guarnello, typically used by Italian women of that time, while pregnant or just after giving birth.
(That's a symptom of the long tradition in many cultures about the uncleanness or untouchable sacredness of women at menstruation or birth - I'll deal with this story another time).
her bosom is quite ridiculous. No woman has a perfectly straight neck, and no woman's chest flows smoothly, and roundly, down to a pair of hidden milk-and-honey breasts. This part of the picture is pure fiction.
below the tits, and before her arms, there's a big area of ambiguous shadow. But this shows up Leonardo's deliberate manipulation of normal human anatomy.
Look at the right hand side. Her veil covers her arms, but is light enough not to stick to them. Her real arms, shown below the veil, are much to short to fit the grand portrait L de V planned for the conventional head-n-shoulders portrait applicable at the time. He should have chopped it off 2/3 of the way down.
and the arm of the chair she's sitting in; from what little you can see, it's probably something like what we call a captain's chair (without all the swivels and stuff), with horizontal curved arms.
But that little obscure detail contributes a huge amount to the distance she preserves from you, the observer.

Leonardo was a wonderful painter-trickster. When I've learned a bit more about how to de-re-construct his paintings, I'll show you a bit more of why.

Pano'on - Local Candy - Bromeliad or What?

2008-08-02T04:20:00.000-07:00

Pano'on was, so far as I knew, a bromeliad that grows in the local forests. I'd never actually seen one in the wild, so I couldn't say much more about it.

It anyone reading this can identify it for me, please do so.

If I was right, then this was a close relative of the pineapple. If I was wrong, then it's more likely a close relative of corn. Either way, bromeliad or corn, it probably came from South America, so I couldn't work out why it was growing (only) wild here.

It's sought after for its tiny fruit, lined up like a corncob. They taste both tart and sweet, and are very much liked, around here, as sweet snacks.

The pod grows with many arils (?) each of which has a bunch of berries, shaped like a miniature corn cob.
This one is unripe, but it shows the 'arils', and the arrangement of seeds. The part of the 'bud' above the seed pods is full of watery 'nectar'.

So I asked my 'major domo', Ron, to go out to the jungle and find some pano'on growing naturally, as they are wont to do. And he came back with some wild plants, now in my garden, and some strange photos.

It seems that the buds grow almost straight out of the ground, and are then followed by very tall growths of lily-like leaves.

The last photo here is of a bunch of Pano'on plants trying to survive in my garden.

Perhaps you can tell that I don't have green fingers.

Pako Fern - Lunchtime Salad

2008-08-01T23:00:00.000-07:00

This is pako fern; it grows naturally in the forests around here, and is gathered by women for sale in the local markets.

It doesn't rank very high on local food-value scales.

But it tastes wonderful, as a fresh salad, with the usual oil and vinegar dressing. It's crispy and tasty.

Here, it's thought of as an occasional delicacy, but otherwise as a famine food, the only thing you can find to eat after a typhoon or earthquake.

Last year, when exceptional rains, floods and landslides cut Lanuza (opposite my island on the 'mainland' of Mindanao) off from the outside world, this was all they had left to eat.

If the local people could somehow find a way to get this salad into Western supermarkets, they'd have a winner.
It's very cultivable.

Incidentally, when I talk about the 'usual oil and vinegar dressing', I'm not referring to all those fancy Mediterranean virgin olive oils and balsamic vinegars, that cost a fortune. I'm referring to our very own cold-pressed virgin coconut oil, and the vinegar that results from not drinking all the coconut sap tuba wine in time.

No sooner had I first written the draft of this, than I wanted to find more about this wonderful salad. Here is a photo of pako fern being served in a Vancouver restaurant, from vacationtime at Flickr. It looks as if these are the very top fiddlehead buds, braised lightly.

This is not so good; it's like the French, who braise lettuce, for god's sake. The Frogs don't know nuffink about cooking.

Here is the fern, growing wild, locally.

And, finally, here's a recipe for Kerabu pucuk pakis from a feast, everyday, who seem to come from Malaya, and are obviously interested in food, because they call themselves thedroolteam.

Pakis kerabu
2 cups pakis soft tips, washed and cut into 2" length
1 tablespoon dried prawns, washed and soaked

Dressing
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoon lime juice
1-2 bird's eye chillies, chopped
sugar, to taste

Blanch the pakis in boiling water for 2-3 minutes; rinse in cold water and drain.
Drain the dried prawns and chop or pound coarsely; fry in a dry pan without oil over medium heat until fragrant and golden.
Sprinkle a pinch of sugar on the dried prawn to caramelise and off the heat.
Mix together the dressing, adjust to suit your taste (our palates lean heavily to the sourish side); toss in well with the pakis and chill. Mix in the dried prawns to serve.

Malay foods seem to be a lot more subtle and interesting, than Filipino foods, and that puzzles me. Perhaps the Malays have a longer and more 'civilised' culture history than my neighbours on this small island?

Clovisses or Punau as We Know Them Here

2008-07-27T22:20:00.000-07:00

These are clovisses, or Tapes decussatus. In French T. decussatus is "clovisse" and T. decussatus form fusca "palourde", or Manila Clam, Japonaise, Alemeja. The local name in Siargao is punau.

They're delicious, so here's a simple, and very good recipe, thanks to Sophie:

Ingredients
24 clovisses or palourdes
(steam for a moment or so to open them)
125 g butter
25 g shallot
5 g garlic
10 g parsley
10 g almond powder
Method (from
This recipe is rather easy to do! Put the full halves of the palourdes on a dish. Mince parsley, garlic and shallot separately. Put Shallots with a little part of the butter in a small pan, and heat gently until the shallots are transparent. Add parsley, garlic and all the butter. Heat till the butter is foamy. Then add it on each palourde and dust them with the almond powder. Put the dish in a hot oven for 5 minutes, not more and eat immediately !

These shellfish normally grow in lagoons, or other very quiet waters. They are lazy, and don't like to be disturbed by currents and weather

The recipe give by Sophie is not very sophisticated, (it is after all, French) but you could do a lot more with these shellfish, See other posts about how shellfish can be made into divine meat.

Guyam Island From Mabua Creek

2008-07-26T23:26:00.000-07:00

This is the view (or used to be) from just down the bridge across Mabua creek, as you go into General Luna town itself from Cloud Nine, to the north-east.

Or, at least, it was. The two large coconut trees have now disappeared, due to changing shoreline patterns brought about by changing tide and creek patterns

The tide currents go in different directions here; one coming in, and the other going out. I don't know why this should be so, but it is.

Mabua village, to the left of this photo, is also called Barangay Alingit - 'Angry Village' because the family arguments can be heard all over town.

I used to be scared stiff of it, because they are 'a bunch of squatters and thieves' but now I know some of the families there, and they're a good bunch (well, some of them are).

Heading out to Ma'arib

2008-07-25T06:01:00.000-07:00

I set out to Google Earth over Yemen, from Sana'a north to Ma'rib, the city of the Queen of Sheba.

And what did I find? This crap :

This is a small village that has some water underneath it.

Some asshole has come in and sold them rotary irrigators.

The guy who has the land at the top right seems to be doing ok for now.

The first suckers, with the dead land at the bottom left hand side, are as usual, f***ed.

You can dump a lot of water on a desert, and you'll see a miraculous flowering. But that's it. If there's nothing but sand for nourishment, don't hope too much.

Strange Fig Tree

2008-07-24T23:57:00.000-07:00

This is a strange fig tree that grows in my garden. The fruit grow directly on the trunk of the tree, in bunches, quite unlike other figs, and the fruit come along every three or four months.

Sometimes birds do try and eat them, but there is not enough surface for them to perch and peck. So I left the coconut frond that fell down to give them some purchase. On a closer look, I found that the yellow figs are unripe. They go dark red as they ripen, and the birds certainly go for those.

I'm interested to see if this fig has a life style dependent on insects, as so many figs do.

Tomorrow (or maybe the next day, life being a little bit lazy) I'll get one of the figs and dissect it.

If there is a story at all, I'll post it here.

[Day 2 Well, it's now tomorrow, and here is a picture of the fruit. The yellow one is unripe, and the red one was very ripe and sticky. I couldn't see any insects in either (some figs have friendly relations with tiny wasps).

Anyway, I ate it, and I'm not dead yet.

By the way, the two wires crossing the photo above are my electricity supply; great bit of junction wiring to the left.

[Day 3] I've now realised that the rest of the world gets up in the morning a lot earlier than I do, so this morning I got up and watched that bloody fig tree.

They're all there, from the sunbirds, to that-bright-yellow-bird-I-don't-the name-of, to the imported European sparrows (who chat with a Spanish, not a Cockney accent).

Wonderful sight, even through the haze of a normal morning hangover.

DH Lawrence wrote this about figs:

The proper way to eat a fig, in society,
Is to split it in four, holding it by the stump,
And open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist,
honied, heavy-petalled four-petalled flower.
Then you throw away the skin
Which is just like a four-sepalled calyx,
After you have taken off the blossom with your lips.
But the vulgar way
Is just to put your mouth to the crack, and take out the flesh in one bite.
Every fruit has its secret.
The fig is a very secretive fruit.

As you see it standing growing, you feel at once it is symbolic:
And it seems male.
But when you come to know it better, you agree with the Romans, it is female.
The Italians vulgarly say, it stands for the female part; the fig-fruit:
The fissure, the yoni,
The wonderful moist conductivity towards the centre.
Involved,
Inturned,
The flowering all inward and womb-fibrilled;
And but one orifice.
The fig, the horse-shoe, the squash-blossom.
Symbols.
There was a flower that flowered inward, womb-ward;
Now there is a fruit like a ripe womb.
It was always a secret.
That's how it should be, the female should always be secret.
There never was any standing aloft and unfolded on a bough
Like other flowers, in a revelation of petals;
Silver-pink peach, venetian green glass of medlars and sorb-apples,
Shallow wine-cups on short, bulging stems
Openly pledging heaven:
Here's to the thorn in flower! Here is to Utterance!
The brave, adventurous rosaceæ

I'm sorry, I can't go on with this. It's the plea of a Northern Englishman to a fruit he probably only tasted once in his life. It's nice stuff, but isn't he over-doing it a bit?
Rest of it at http://www.kalliope.org/digt.pl?longdid=lawrence2001061702

Sam City

2008-07-24T23:40:00.000-07:00

This is Sam City - Sana'a, Yemen, from the air. Sana'a must be one of the oldest continually-inhabited cities on earth, and one of the very few that still looks old and timeless.

It was reputedly founded by Shem, the son of Noah (hence Sam City).

Click on the pic for a better view.

When I first went there, in 1986, to try and sell them some airport kitchen equipment, I stayed at the Indian-run Taj hotel (roughly where the red arrow points) on Sana'a's High Street (the buildings to the left of it are palatial Government establishments of some sort).

Across the road, you could walk casually from the 20th to the 15th century.

You can see the old city on this aerial photo; roughly, all the big round bit in the middle. But, from this aerial photo, you can also make out the very, very ancient core of the city (Blob 1).

Nobody's ever been allowed to dig there, but, if they could, what they might find could put Catalhuyuk or Ebla to shame.

The streets of Sana'a are very, very private; a bit like the streets of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, or of many Spanish towns; tall multi-storey buildings fronting directly on the road, and hiding wonders behind.I never found the mosque in a pool (just south of Blob 1) or the ancient fortress (Blob 2) or the large gardens at ten o'clock from Blob 1.

My own photos of Sana'a have long rotted in my son's attic, so I'll have to refer you to Google Images:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanâaâ

http://i.pbase.com/u48/bmcmorrow/upload/40669638.yemen1050.JPG

http://members.aol.com/yalnet/sanaaa1.jpg

http://www.galenfrysinger.com/Photos/sana02.jpg

This is a city still going through more history than we can imagine.

Look at:

http://www.worditude.com/ebooks/unescopdf/sana_eng.pdf

Tomorrow, I'm going to do a bit of wandering on Google Earth -out to Ma'arib on the edge of the desert, where the Queen o' Sheba put that goddam' big dam. (And where the charming Italian lady I was discussing this stuff with, in the Taj bar, was kidnapped the next day).

STOP PRESS!! Grand-Daughter Arrives!!!

2008-07-24T18:09:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know that all new-born babies look alike, and that all parents (even going back to the immediate ancestors thereof) go positively ga-ga when they arrive.

So just let me indulge myself, and congratulate my son, Ollie, and Becca (who did all the heavy lifting) for producing the gorgeous Molly.

And yes, I thought Molly was a strange name, but long after O&B chose it, they found it was my paternal grandmother's name. She died before I was born, but that's a wonderful omen.

Not that I believe in omens, of course (as I cross my fingers behind my back), and ignore Shedney, who is looking at this photo and also going goo-goo just behind me, and saying she wants one of these for herself.

Don't Go Down to the Swamps Today...

2008-07-22T17:27:00.000-07:00

...because the Nipa Palm flower may get you.

The nipa flower's the nearest thing to a space monster that I've ever seen. They look as if they're about to come bursting and bubbling out like distinctly unfriendly extra-terrestrials. Just like Day of the Triffids. And they're big.

The flower usually grows more than a metre high, and in the fetid darkness of the brackish swamps that nipa palms inhabit, they stand out like, well, aliens.

Later, a seed head will grow, with about 40 large seeds, each enclosed in a strong husk, the whole about the size of a basketball. The seeds themselves are often called 'vegetable ivory' and are reputed to be carved by native tribesmen somewhere or other.

I tried carving them myself, but they didn't live up to their advance billing.

The nipa palm (Nypa frutescens) itself is quite innocuous, as are the flowers, of course.

The leaves are used as roofing material , widely available as roughly 4ft x 15" 'tiles', at about 8ç each. They don't last a lifetime, but they are waterproof, and a lot cooler than the corrugated iron sheets that are nowadays replacing them.

They don't need to be 'farmed' as such, but nipa stands do have owners, so be careful to ask if you want a nipa seed head as a souvenir.

The flowers, when they have grown seed heads, are tapped, like coconut flowers, for their sweet sap, which is then distilled to make pa-oroi, a strong-tasting liquor which, thankfully, is very cheap. (It's the local hooch that I mention in my blog title; I usually buy it by the 5-gallon jerry can).

I keep my hooch in a plastic water dispenser with a tap. It is half-filled with coconut-shell charcoal, that filters out the fairly awful natural taste of the pa-oroi.

My original intention was to make fruit-flavoured liquors of the stuff, by macerating some of the local fruits in it, but each time I tried that, I took to tasting it frequently, and none of my efforts ever matured, as they should have done, for more than a month.

Cheers!

PS 1 I just found I did this same story about a year ago at: http://smallislandnotes.blogspot.com/2007/10/pa-oroi.html Shows how forgetful pa-oroi makes you.

PS 2 A wonderful photo-essay on the making of pa oroi, or laksoy, as the Butuanons call it (about 3 hours drive from Surigao City is at EatingAsia:
http://eatingasia.typepad.com/eatingasia/2008/04/sago-isnt-the-o.html

Katambak

2008-07-21T18:19:00.000-07:00

Katambak (the local name for sea bream) are various different kinds of Snappers.

This one (Sailfin Snapper - Symphoricthys spilurus) is not typical at all.

It has those long 'tails' from its dorsal fin and its anal fin.

Otherwise, it's quite tasty.

The fish already has a very nice camouflage pattern along its sides, like a not-very-good artist trying to paint waves, but it's got those long, functionally useless streamers from its fins.

When I look at an animal like this, I wonder why it did it. Why grow long tails from its fins? Sexual advertisement, or what ?

Perhaps it's a very good example of 'costly signalling', ie, that it can afford an extra bit of showing-off to attract a mate (think peacocks' tails).

Jungle Terror Orchid

2008-07-20T23:43:00.000-07:00

This is part of an orchid that grows on the second coconut tree down in my garden. It's the sexy bit, the bit that makes insects (mostly bees) come in to pick up pollen.

I've not seen such a greedy image in nature before. It has little beady eyes, and a gaping mouth, and even little hands at each side. And it's got a big wide-open bag to hold all the victims it finds, for future consumption.

It even appears to have arms and hands, to drag its victims into its ever-open pouch.

But don't those insects ever watch movies?

The creature at the heart of this flower is a copy (or perhaps the inspiration?) for the creature that burst into the world in Alien.

H.R.Giger's wonderful inspirations for the original film were great, but the first Alien was aggressive.:

The second film, though, showed a more seductive Alien, and Sigourney Weaver fell for it.

Francoise On The Beach - Pablo Picasso

2008-07-20T21:39:00.000-07:00

Pablo Picasso was often in love but perhaps his greatest love was Francoise Gilot (companion between 1944 and 1953). Or, at least from his pictures it would seem so. She was not, in fact the most beautiful girl in the world (very Greek, with a long nose, and certain things going around the corners of her mouth that would produce hard wrinkles later).

But, in this tender series of drawings, Picasso created her essence in a very, very few simple lines. He did these sketches (or etched them, which is about the same thing), in the first few years that he knew her, and I once had one of the prints from a limited edition.

That is, he didn't capture her essence, but his idea of it. She was, undoubtedly, a lovely lady.

Here is a sketched etching of her (I've been vandal enough to put a Technicolor background to it.)

Picasso's artistic shorthand was amazing; here are a very few simple short lines, giving the very essence of the woman he loved.

"The sketch is like a tree; a trunk growing up from the narrow neck to fruit in abundance".

(No it isn't; he drew the face first, and the neck afterward; but why not give a bit of desconstructionable bullshit).

And just look at those simple, simple lines; total and absolute confidence in exactly where they will go, and exactly what they will shape.

Picasso really was a faux naïf genius, and I'll go on to say a bit more about him in later posts.

Francoise went on, from Picasso, to marry Dr. Jonas Salk, the co-inventor of the polio vaccine. For one woman to marry two geniuses (genii?) in a lifetime is a more than considerable achievement.

Plants, Fruit and Trees of Siargao - 249 photos

2008-07-19T00:45:00.000-07:00

I am so impressed by the identification of my talikubo that I've put an album of photographs on the net here at Flickr or here at my webhost.

I've only just joined Flickr today, so I'm not entirely sure how it works. Hope I've got it right. That shows only 200 photos, until I dig in my pocket and update.

The second is to my website host, with all 249 photos, so, if you don't mind, since it has no comments section yet, please e-mail me here, but please head your message Plant Identification, so I don't dump you in the spam box with the Nigerian, Lottery, and Viagra scammers.

I would dearly love to have some help with identifications.

Somebody Reads This Blog! Talikubo Update

2008-07-18T18:37:00.000-07:00

Isn't the internet wonderful!

Within hours of posting my question on Talikubo, I had an answer from a gentleman from Texas, Brandon McHenry

The plant you have on your blog for which you are looking for an identity is Dischidia cleistantha.

[It certainly is - here's the flower]

Dischidia is a family of epiphytes from SE Asia and Australasia. It is closely related to Hoya although it is vegetatively a much smaller plant and the flowers are usually not showy. Almost all of the species have close relationship with ants and many have evolved interesting vegetative aspects to attract ants. They are some with pouch leaves where ants can build nests within, another type have disk shaped leaves pressing against the trunk which again act as ant shelter. Two other types of Dischidia are not designed to attract ants (although they usually are found around the aerial ant nests), having either flat thick leaves (as in D. hirsuta) or bearing small knob-like leaves along very long internodes (eg D. bengalensis). Researchers have traced the movement of radioactive carbon and nitrogen atoms from ants to plants, confirming that the plants assimilate matters brought in by the ants.

See this for photos of other Dischidia species.

I'll be peering round my Dischidia later this morning with a magnifying glass, looking for ants. I had no idea that these plants share their place in life (forgotten the technical term) with ants. That is, if it stops raining.

I also have at least one other Dischidia species in my garden, and other plants that may be related.

Number 1. I think I'll give myself the first chance of identifying this one. No flowers yet, but it has established itself well on the coconut tree I draped it over, a month or so ago.

Number 2.

This is also very weird. We found it in the jungle, wrapped tightly round a rotten piece of bamboo (see lower part of right hand photo).

The leaves have 'sucker pads' at each leaf base.

For a long time, it languished, but has recently grown some new leaves. It has now run out of bamboo, so perhaps it wonders where it's going to go next. Perhaps when it's finished wondering, it might put out some flowers, in gratitude for having a new home, and even some very casual care.

I'm afraid that Brandon McHenry is going to get deluged with Identify This! requests from me.

I'll be blogging some more about weird Philippine plants from time to time.

Newer Posts

2008-07-18T08:50:00.000-07:00

I´m on a roll now. I've just found out how to post stories into the future, so I've got half a dozen stories ready to roll out over the next week or so.

I'll be doing this often; it's cheating the system, I know, but when I've got the blogging mood in my brain, I may as well take the best advantage of it.

Talikubo - Can Anyone Tell me What This Is?

2008-07-17T03:40:00.000-07:00

This is one of the weirdest plants I've ever come across. It grows on tree-trunks here in the Philippines, and I only know its name (talikubo) in the local language, Surigaonon.

The leaf colours can vary from the pink-blushed green you see on the left (perhaps due to being in full sun?) to bright apple-green.

At first I thought it was a kind of fern, but then I see that it apparently has tiny flowers, that come out from underneath (?) the leaves . That's unusual for any flowering plant; most come out from the next node above the leaf.

I've only seen these flowers as they are shown here, like unopened buds.

Perhaps they open at night, or perhaps they're not flowers at all, but something else.

Note that, just below the second bunch of buds down, there's a strange naked phallic excrescence. Maybe it's a flower of the other gender, or maybe it's a new shoot going off to spread around another part of the tree.
If that's so, why does it grow up straight, and not have the sense to go out horizontally, right or left?

I wanted some of these plants to stick on my garden coconut trees, so I went to the jungle, and this is what I found when I stripped one off the tree

The leaves, pair by pair, are like a couple of inter-locking pieces of tortoise-shell armour. (the famous Roman testudo).

Underneath the close cover, the plant's colours are comfortably dark deep purple.

If I knew how to do it, I'd cue in a bit of Smoke on the Water at full volume about here, to make sure you're still reading.

The leaves' edges seal in the darkness and moisture enough to allow the roots to wander over surface of the tree trunk, and pick up nutrients. They don't have to leave their shelter, but some of them do.

This part is not especially strange; many creeping vines send out roots from their leaf nodes.

What is very strange is that this plant's leaves are not just silly old sunshine-pullers (which are wonderful enough), but have developed a strategy of hold-onto-all in convergence with limpets. Unlike limpets, though, they can't move; but they can send out another shoot, and thus progress over the tree bark.

I don't know of any other plants whose leaves have developed into small, domestic houses, where the leaf margins turn themselves into life-sustaining seals.