Oh yes. I can be fun and trivial too. 🙂 My way of relaxing on a Friday night, after a lonnggggg and exhausting, demanding week at work.

I found this cool site through my wicked sister Lai, who’s now back to blogging after a long hiatus. Welcome back, Evil K.

So, you want to find out who my celebrity look-alikes are?

According to the results above, I bear 70% resemblance to LARRY KING. Not bad. I have long fantasized being a broadcaster, lol. Hey look, we wear the same spectacles! And man, look at those foreheads! I really should ease up on that shampoo I’m using. 😀

Thanks to my hairstyler at my favorite J-Cool beauty salon, I could *almost* pass off for a redhead like JULIANNE MOORE.

‘Nuff said. 😉

There are at least three main activities that occupy people in Japan during summertime:

1. Swimming at the pool or the beach

When I first got here, I was surprised to know that swimming pools and beaches are open only during specific periods in a year, i.e., July-August. Boohoo. In the Philippines, save for typhoon seasons, we get to enjoy the pool and the beach 365 days a year. And the waves there won’t look as if they were trying to eat you (see photo at Hasanuma beach below). 😀

Aya and Tatay running away from the giant killer waves! Taken in 2005.

During the one and only time we went to the beach, to our dismay we found out that it was just too crowded for comfort. And as you can see in the photo, the place wasn’t that great at all. And get this, everybody takes a “break” between 12 to 1 pm, and again sometime during mid-afternoon. As in, everybody gets their butts out of the water and waits for the announcement when it’s okay to resume swimming. How KJ is that?!!

2. Attend matsuri or festivals

Lots of dancing in the streets, beautiful floats, people chanting and drinking booze having fun. My favorite is buying food like chikin karaage (fried chicken) and furankufuruto (frankurter) at the stalls. The Tsukuba matsuri is held every year during the last weekend of August or first weekend of September. The giant floats, called “nebuta,” are quite impressive and are worth watching.

3. Watch hanabi, or fireworks
Hanabi = ?? = fireworks. “Hana” is flower, while “bi” is fire. My most favorite of all is the Tsuchiura Fireworks Festival, although it is held in October.

Actually, we don’t even have to wait for festivals to enjoy fireworks. We can do that right at our own frontyard. Here are some photos of Aya enjoying her Hello Kitty-inspired “lusis” fireworks. 🙂

I can’t imagine doing something like this if it wasn’t Christmas or New Year’s eve. Needless to say, doing this made me nostalgic all of a sudden. I just miss the times when I would have fun making the “watusi” pop like crazy and holding the “lusis” as it fires and ebbs away into oblivion.

Sometime ago I received my very first award since I started blogging. This is the Thinking Blogger Award, courtesy of Gypsy and Dimaks. Thanks a lot, guys. I am truly honored. 🙂

I’m now returning the favor and will now bestow this award on five other people.

Here goes!

Shai Coggins – who hasn’t heard of her by now? A highly creative, awesome mom-blogger-enterpreneur. She will always be an inspiration to all bloggers out there. I serendipitously stumbled on her blog while in search of a recipe for chicken sopas. I’ve been hooked ever since. 🙂

Annamanila – now you are truly multiawarded! How many awards have you received already? And here’s one more! Indeed, we are so blessed to have you in our blogosphere. Truly you have a drawing power with your words.

Frances – an amazing writer, her posts are insightful and very engaging. I believe that hers is one of the top emerging blogs in the Filipino blogosphere nowadays. She recently picked up my thoughts on scientists learning to communicate effectively and expounded on it with such verve and passion in an entire post of her own.

BW – one of the unique bloggers out there who could write about anything under the sun, and engage readers to discuss IDEAS. I could never forget our interesting discussion with Dimaks about life on other planets and Carl Sagan’s philosophies. Unfortunately for us, he frequently hibernates from blogosphere to attend to his more demanding offline activities – but when he does come back, he usually does this with a vengeance. 🙂

And the last but not the least (oh, why do I have to give out only 5 instead of 50?):

Senor Enrique – winner of the 2007 Philippine Blog Awards for Photoblog of the Year. He truly deserves the Thinking Blogger Award, not only for the photos, but for his insightful description of people and events in Manila. Take in his luxuriously rich and vivid photos, but also don’t forget to take time to read his very perceptive observations.

Ok guys, with the exception of Annamanila, I don’t know if you’ve already been given this award before. But if you haven’t, then you know what to do. Pass it on. 🙂

Update: I would just like to add that this happens to be my 200th post. What an appropriate opportunity to mark the occasion. Oh boy, I never thought that I’d get this far. But…here I am! Thanks to all who’ve been patiently reading my posts. Kore kara mo yoroshiku ne. 🙂

Natsu da! Matsuri da! I missed Aya’s natsu matsuri (= summer festival) at the daycare this year. I was in China then. This happens to be one of their major activities, so I’m so sorry to have missed it. Inspite of my initial misgivings, I did have fun last year when I attended it for the first time. And it even rained then, so most of the activities were confined indoors.

Fortunately, Aya’s Tatay and Lola were there to participate in the event, and gladly took pictures and videos so I could at least see what I’d missed. 😉

Here are some of the photos they took:

Aya and Lola pose outside with Aya’s classmates (the two girls). The other adults are parents of one of the girls.

Aya proudly wore her new yukata (= light Japanese kimono, traditionally worn during summer) which I bought for her before I left. It’s red – but of course! I’ll make her wear it again when we attend the “real” summer festival organized by the city of Tsukuba this coming August 25/26.

Actually, somebody suggested that I buy a similar outfit for myself – although I’m sure it would be much more expensive than children’s! But I also heard that there are some cheap ones being sold by Uniqlo nowadays. So hmm, I’m definitely considering it. Anybody out there who wants to lend me their yukata for a day? 😀

Here’s Aya giving the “peace” sign while watching the parade. Thank goodness for the good weather! At least now they could perform the activities outside.

I’ll post the video next time.

Bahay Kubo Research is getting revitalized.

After years of languishing on the Internet, the site is rejuvenated with a new design, new sections, and get this, a blog. Eh? Filipinos blogging about science? You got that right!

I invite you to hop on over to BKR and check out the site. As of now the blog itself has nothing much – but we sure hope that that will change soon enough. And please help spread the word to Filipinos who are into science and technology, research and development, academe or industry, to join us in this new portal. There is so much we can learn from each other. This medium is an excellent place to start spreading and promoting our ideas.

Ipakita ang galing ng Pinoy sa agham!

Almost everyday, Aya brings something home from the daycare. Kids from her class always do – may it be colored illustrations, works of origami, or anything they picked up from the park like stones and stuffs. They call them omiyage, which means souvenir. They bring home their omiyage to show their parents like prized possessions.

When we picked up Aya from the daycare yesterday, she proudly held two plastics – one was holding a colored liquid (mizu iro = colored water), and the other a collection of cast-off skins of cicadas. She told us that they call them semi no nukegara in Japanese. Semi = cicada, nukegara = cast-off or shed skin

Cicadas? Eww.

Aya’s little omiyage is a collection of shed skins of cicadas. Shudder!

There’s one subject in science that I kinda dislike, and that’s Biology. I hate tinkering around remains of things that used to be alive. I shudder at the sight of frogs and cats giving you a lifelike stare whilst swimming in formaldehyde. My cousin, when she was still a medical intern at a hospital, once showed me a picture of their class dissecting a human corpse on a table. The thought of dissecting a human made me sick. I swore that I’d never become a medical doctor, ever.

I digress.

Anyway, what amused me to no end was the fact that Aya would actually pick up a cicada’s skin, when she would jump up in fear of small insects that would occasionally visit us at home. Anyway, I jumped at the opportunity to explain to her that some insects shed off their old skins. It’s almost the same as changing old clothes as we humans do. But hey, I do know some people who would love to shed off their old skin in a heartbeat, given the possibility, haha. 😀

Well howdydo! Ever wondered why aliens in sci-fi flicks are almost always designed with insect-like attributes?

I was really looking forward to watching the latest animated movie from Pixar, Ratatouille, at Cineplex here in Tsukuba. I know that the movie opening was on July 28 – yesterday. But when I checked out the schedules, to my dismay I found that there are no English-subtitled (字幕版) versions, only the Japanese-dubbed (日本語吹替版) version.

Curiously, the title of Ratatouille (rat-a-too-ee) here has been changed to “Remy’s Delicious Restaurant” (レミーのおいしいレストラン). I won’t blame the producers for changing to title to something more digestible – what the heck does “ratatouille” mean, anyway? You can watch the trailer here.

I had so much fun watching “The Incredibles,” I wanted to see this new offering from the same director, Brad Bird. A rat who wants to be a chef? It’s so far out, so out of this world. But Pixar has a knack for pulling off otherworldly, impossible stories like these.

In Japan, not all animated movies are shown in both dubbed and subtitled versions. Most, if not all, Disney-produced movies are exclusively shown in the dubbed version. It definitely caters to the younger Japanese generation, but it invariably leaves out foreigners like me who still love wholesome entertainment and will forever be children at heart. 😉 As far as I can remember, only Finding Nemo was shown in both original and dubbed versions. That was the only Disney-animated movie that I was able to watch at the movie theatre. As for the rest, I had no choice but to wait for the DVD to come out.

Sigh. Looks like I have to wait for Ratatouille on DVD instead.

Has anyone else seen it already? Any thoughts? Was it as good as the earlier Pixar movies (with the exception of Cars, of course). But don’t give out any spoilers. 🙂

“Now shut up and eat your garbage!”

Update, 31 July 2007: Many thanks to Egay for the info about the meaning of “ratatouille.” Only then did I look it up in the dictionary and found that it refers to “a vegetable stew, usually made with eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, and onions, seasoned with herbs and garlic.” Hmm, what do you know?!! Egay, at least you got the zucchini part. 🙂

Hainan is known as the “Hawaii” of China. Haikou, also known as the Coconut City, is a major port of the island, and has a domestic airport for flights connecting to various major cities in China like Guangzhong and Beijing. As soon as I arrived at Haikou, the sights and scents welcomed me as if I was returning home. Really!

Quite interestingly, within my short stay of three days in that island, I was able to sample native “Filipino” dishes like adobo, lechon kawali, and even the intricate kare-kare. Of course there are also other dishes available, but those dishes caught my attention because of their familiar taste. Not exactly cooked the way we Filipinos cook them, but the resemblance is still striking. And if you’re wondering if the said kare-kare dish was served with bagoong(shrimp paste), the answer is a resounding yes. However, as with the dishes, the bagoong was a bit different from the ones we have in the Philippines. It was not too salty, and even had a spicy tinge to it.

More than the food, though, was the fabulous opportunity to have a glimpse of the sea. I love the sea. Everyday, from the balcony of my room, I would stand outside and take in the breathtaking view before me.

Sunsets were spectacular. Here is a photo I took one afternoon:

That black thing, which at first glance would instantly remind you of the Loch Ness monster, is just a fishing boat. Sorry to disappoint you. 🙂

Everyday I was busy attending lectures and talks, but on my last day there, I made it a point to go out and walk along the shoreline. It has been years since I last did something like that. So with the waves lapping at my feet, I took a morning stroll on the beach.

The whole place was peaceful and serene. The sand, although they claim it to be “white sand,” didn’t entirely look white to me at all. It looked reddish, in fact. At low tide, the sea appeared tame and shy, with a few rivulets claiming the shore here and there.

Along the way I chanced upon a fisherman with his first catch of the day. How simple life would be, if all we did everyday was catch fish, just enough for us to consume in a day? No more angst about the complications of life.

Of course, I left my mark on the shore, even if I knew that the sea would later reclaim that part of the shore and erase what I wrote there, never to be seen ever again.

But isn’t that the way life goes? We leave our mark, even if we know that time will erase all traces of our efforts. The only time we can claim, the one that is truly ours, is the present.

As a blogger, have you ever experienced days when there is simply no excitement to blog anymore? Have you ever felt or thought – Enough of this crap. I don’t need to do it anymore. It’s just a waste of time. Who would want to read my posts anyway?

And to paraphrase the title of one of Richard Feynman’s books: Why would anyone care about what I think?

And indeed, on the same vein, why would anyone care what I had for lunch? Why should my life be interesting to others?

I’ve mulled on these thoughts for days on end. And I realized that If I would continue blogging at all, then I must blog about ideas that I am passionate about.

Ideas that can give others a refreshing view of things.

Ideas that inspire.

Ideas that can move others to change the way they see the world, or change themselves.

Ideas that will be drive me to change for the better.

I’m not saying that these are the things that bloggers should write about. I’m just saying that this is the direction that I would like my blog to head to. Transformation will take a long process, but the time to start is NOW.

I’m passionate about my role as a parent and my work as a researcher. I’m passionate about making a difference in other people’s lives.

Enough of self-promotion. Ideas are here to stay.

Here is part two of the series.

Q: Did you have a chance to work as a research assistant?
Not as an RA, but as a graduate student. The only difference between an RA and a graduate student? The grad student does not get paid. The work is usually performed as part of the graduate thesis.

Q: Did you attend any special programs or schools that nurtured your interest in science?
The special science class in high school which I attended was the only one I could cite as one of those institutions that nurtured my interest in science.

Q: If you had children, would you send them to science schools?
Right now it is too early to tell, but I would if I found out later on that my daughter had a strong inclination towards science. Right now I am doing everything I can to expose her to science, such as by conducting home experiments with her at home. I have bought her several science books – too early for her age, I guess – in order to spark her early interest in the subject.

It would bring me greatest joy if my daughter would consider a scientific career in the future, but I would not stand in her way should she decide to pursue a completely different career. I want what every parent wants for his/her child – for them to grow up and be the best persons they could be, in whatever area or field of expertise.

Q: Of all the science projects you have worked on, which one gives you pride?
My continuing work on superconducting thin films prepared by pulsed laser deposition. It’s a very difficult work to produce an excellent thin film that fulfills the required properties for a specific application. Optimization of several parameters, which eventually dictate the final film properties, takes a lot of patience and hard work. After several years of working on the system, I was able to produce high quality films which would take ourselves one step closer to our goal of using these materials for practical applications in the “real world.”

Q: What subjects or skills did you find useful in your scientific pursuit?
Communication skills – both written and oral – are highly important. I can’t overemphasize this enough. A good scientist needs to be able to communicate his or her results to others, or a particular audience. If you can’t do this properly, then your effort is wasted. How else will they know of your results? If you can’t write, then consider a different career. There’s lots of writing required in science, and half of the time you will spend writing research proposals, technical papers, reports, books, and other materials. One also needs to develop good public speaking skills, to confidently stand before an audience and present results in a concise and logical manner. I remember something that happened when I attended a conference not too long ago. There was a guy who at the beginning of his presentation began to stutter, and everytime he tried to say a word he sounded as if he would choke on it. Finally he hyperventilated in front of a shocked audience. He just couldn’t go on. Clearly embarrassed, he had no choice but to get down from the stage and let his colleague finish the presentation for him. This case clearly illustrates the need for scientists to learn how to speak in front of an audience in a prepared and confident manner.

As a student I used to rehearse my “speech” several times before a presentation. But trust me, in time it gets easier. Now I can make presentations on the spot without having to rehearse beforehand. It takes practice.

Q: What advice can you give to the Filipino youth who are inclined to science?
Pursuing a scientific career, either in the Philippines or elsewhere in the world, is a very fulfilling job. I wish I could say that it is fulfilling not only intellectually but also economically, but clearly this is dependent on one’s location. Nevertheless I would like to believe that all scientists are “citizens of the world,” and the problems that they tackle, even if local, could have significant ramifications on the lives of human beings on a global scale. Choose a subject that you are passionate about, and be consistent. Passion will keep you going even when the going gets tough.

Q: What advice can you give to science teachers?
Never stop striving to learn more and improve your skills. Knowledge is dynamic; it is continually growing.

Never give up on children, especially those who express a strong desire to learn about science. Never take their poverty as a reason not to teach them science. Be an instrument in diffusing strongly held fallacies, beliefs, and superstitions.