Tuesday, August 17, 2010

a picture a day: july 2010

the seventh month of my on going project 365. it's an open ended project, anything goes, but with one rule: at least a picture a day.

for the january 2010 album of my project 365, click here.
for the february 2010 album of my project 365, click here.
for the march 2010 album of my project 365, click here.
for the april 2010 album of my project 365, click here.
for the may 2010 album of my project 365, click here.
for the june 2010 album of my project 365, click here.
for the august 2010 album of my project 365, click here.

the recurring theme for july: cats and rain.

*******



2010.07.01 the sleepers, mandaue city




2010.07.02 on a trip to the bank, mandaue city




2010.07.03 meow. i had to hold her down so i could take a picture of her, thus my hand in the picture. this was the only decent shot i got.




2010.07.04 still life with gulay




2010.07.05 playing with my strobe again




2010.07.06 a traffic altercation, cebu business park




2010.07.07 the rainy season's curse: muddy paths




2010.07.08 growth




2010.07.09 school boy




2010.07.10 on race day: my 5-year-old, very worn out, but still comfortable running shoes




2010.07.11 not for hire




2010.07.12 fascination




2010.07.13 a broken cat figurine, broken, ironically, by my cat




2010.07.14 the river crossing, after an afternoon of heavy rain




2010.07.15 behind the glass




2010.07.16 improvised latte: fill your cup with a small amount of hot water, enough to dissolve 1 or 2 teaspoons of instant coffee (depending on desired strength), add a bit of sugar, then fill the rest of the cup with milk




2010.07.17 working on my sacada pictures




2010.07.18 sto. nino de taxi




2010.07.19 si kibul




2010.07.20 legs




2010.07.21 kamunggay vendor, talamban, cebu city




2010.07.22 rainy days don't have to be so bad, if you have somebody to share them with




2010.07.23 sparks




2010.07.24 another rainy day




2010.07.25 the world from a side mirror




2010.07.26 and yet another rainy day




2010.07.27 water meters




2010.07.28 after days of rain




2010.07.29 chill, while waiting for the traffic light to turn green, hi-way, mandaue city




2010.07.30 the hand of darkness




2010.07.31 disco ball

Monday, August 16, 2010

ripples

yet another pond inspired haiku(ish) thing... whatever it is...

*****

a fish breaks the glass
-y green pond to give the cue:
circles dance

Thursday, August 12, 2010

the mudsurfers

i thought my afternoon was ruined. i was already halfway on my jeepney ride to the foot of the new mactan bridge when the rainclouds showed up. my inner optimist then tried convincing me that there might still be something decent to shoot, so i proceeded anyway. then i got there, and it rained like the end of the world. stranded, cold, and trying my best to keep myself dry (with my camera and all), i hid behind the bridge pillars for shelter and waited it out. then the rain slowed down. i was about to leave when i saw these kids playing with their skimboards on the mud. my afternoon wasn't so ruined after all.










looking at these pictures, i'm reminded of that french expression "joie de vivre", translated as "the joy of living", a concept no longer so abstract if you take a look at this kid's face.










much has been said and written about the filipino penchant for happiness, despite the circumstances. we can have the most prominent psychologists, sociologists, and journalists put out the most erudite and eloquent exegesis to explain the phenomenon, or... we can simply jump into the mud :)








i have a theory: "the level of fun in any activity is directly proportional to the quantity of dirt or mud involved." wouldn't you agree?







i took these pictures at the park below the new mactan bridge, on the mactan side, august 2008. that's 2 years ago, already. time flies. i'd posted these on my multiply account, thought i should share it here too.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

the walls have eyes

someone's watching...



street art near the corner of fr. rahmann st. and mango avenue, cebu city, october 2009.

sadly, this painting (no other word for it) of a woman with the most haunting eyes, is gone. it was already fading when i discovered it, the paint peeling off on some spots. this probably led to the street artist's decision to paint a new picture over it, one with a more youthful face, that of a smiling, and visibly happier, girl. i liked this one better though.

i think this painting's fate adds to the urgency of photographing street art, which is one of the city's redeeming features. compared to formal paintings, street art is ephemeral. formal paintings are shown in museums, encased behind glass, and put in climate controlled rooms with security cameras watching over them. every effort is made in their conservation.

in contrast to that, street art is exposed, not just to the elements, but to the ebb and flow of urban development. if the property owner decides to take down the wall where you painted your masterpiece, no matter how brilliant it is, no matter that it can rival even the mona lisa, your masterpiece goes with the wall.

so the photographer comes in, to tell the world that there was once a painting there, the face of a woman back from oblivion, staring at you, haunting you, with those eyes.



in case you're wondering, yes, that is my tripod's shadow.

Thursday, August 05, 2010

where sugar ain't so sweet

sacadas are the migrant farm workers hired seasonally by plantation landlords or hacienderos to work on the vast sugar plantations of negros island. for inhuman wages, they work under such grueling conditions that many consider them modern day slaves, vestiges of the old spanish colonial system of subjugation.



they are also called tapaseros, since that is what they do in the local language, 'tig tapas ug tubo'.



many landlords and sugar planters customarily use the pakyaw system in hiring sugar workers. teams of around 8 to 15 tapaseros work on harvesting the sugarcane, and they are paid per ton of the harvest.

pictured below is my host on this trip, pastor jonathan, surveying the field of harvested sugarcane.



if my memory serves me right, these men were contracted for P80 per ton of cut sugarcane, and we estimated that 3 days of work would earn each of them at most P300, or P100 a day. here in the city, i know of a few people who earn in an hour sitting down what these men earn in 3 days of backbreaking work. but still, they are relatively lucky. from what i heard, there are some farm workers who receive as low as P60 a day.



after cutting, the tapaseros then gather the cut cane in bunches, enough for one shoulder load. they will then haul off the bunches one by one to the big trucks the landlord has hired to deliver the harvest to the sugar mill. but that's if the truck arrives.



the tapaseros are only paid once they haul all their harvested sugarcane to the truck. if the truck does not get there on time (if it's busy somewhere delivering someone else's harvest, or is under repair), then the tapaseros have no choice but to wait. without it, they don't get paid.



sacadas/tapaseros are hired mainly during the harvest and milling season. in the periods when there is no demand for their work (from june to september, called the "tiempos muertos" or "dead season"), many of them go about looking for odd jobs, or they go back home with what little they've earned.

in the instance that their meager cash runs out, they are sometimes forced to either take loans from the landlord, or buy basic goods on credit from the hacienda store, also owned by the landlord, where goods can cost as much as twice the usual prices in town. this keeps them in a cruel cycle where they have to continually work off their debts.



the thing i regret most is not asking these men their names, or more about their lives, their stories. without their names, i'm afraid that, after reading this, they'll simply fade back into that notion we have of "the way things are". or worse, that we see them as nothing more than statistics, that we forget that they too are human. we have our debts to pay, for the sweetness that we indulge ourselves in is the product of the sweat that these men have poured onto these fields.



it's lamentable that p-noy's first state of the nation address made no mention at all about agrarian reform. but even more lamentable, that only the regular farm workers and tenant farmers are prioritized in the carp extension bill (republic act 9700) that congress passed in 2009, giving the migrant sacadas a lesser priority in the scheme of things.



on this excursion to the sugarcane fields, some kids from the neighborhood had also joined us.





they started picking up some of the smaller stalks from the harvested sugarcane and stripping off the skin, then proceeded chewing. this made me a bit nervous, as the tapaseros could clearly see what the kids were doing to their harvest. but the tapaseros did not seem to mind.



watching these kids soon led me to wonder what kind of lives they'll be leading in the future. i'd heard stories of landlords hiring children to do work on the fields (weeding, fertilizing, etc.) before the planting of sugarcane. this is time spent away from school, time spent away from their supposed way out of this life of penury.





i can only hope that these children will no longer be caught in the cycles of poverty that trapped the generations before them, that our generation will finally find the resolve to put an end to all this...





... that these men will be the last of the sacadas.





photos taken on my trip to basay, negros oriental, january 2010.

additional sources:
http://www.agriworkers.org/html/resources002.htm
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/54a/217.html
http://www.gmanews.tv/story/164637/new-carp-seen-to-kill-rights-of-thousands-of-seasonal-farm-workers
http://www.gmanews.tv/story/169245/arroyo-signs-carp-extension-bill-into-law
http://www.cockatoo.com/english/philippines/philippines_islands_negros.htm