journeytosamal.com

Well it appears that I'm about to take the plunge. The one that almost everyone does eventually.

I've been playing with Wordpress all weekend to see if I could/would make the move. I set up a local server on my Mac to test everything and give me time to see how difficult this might be. To my surprise the most difficult part seems to be finding a theme that I like & at the same time is functional. There are lots of themes I like, and many that are very functional but getting the right combination has been more work than I anticipated. The other difficult part is yet to come. Evidently Blogger isn't excited about you moving on and isn't going to help you in that matter. I've found what I think are some good directions on what I need to do, but I am anticipating some issues.

Thinking I might want to go this route, I registered journeytosamal.com a few months back. In fact it's been live since that time, but I have the url redirected to here. So if you are one of those that comes here directly, now would be a good time to change that url in your bookmark.

I still need to get a host and upload the site, so I'm not sure of the timing of things. I don't anticipate any new posts until this is complete. Thanks for hanging in there.

Playa Azalea Update

Just a short note regarding Playa Azalea. The latest article in the Sun•Star regarding the resort/subdivision rehashes much of what has been written previously.

The most noteworthy new items were that they have opened for sale 250 hillside units, in two clusters. Of those 112 have already been sold. The project is composed of four clusters, 3 hillside and 1 beach side. The beach side will have the hotel and garden villas.

They must be getting fairly aggressive with their sales force. I've been contacted at least a few times about the the lots available. Evidently they haven't bothered to read the write ups I've done about Playa Azalea, based off the sales pitch I've been given. I do find humor in being called "Mr. Spokane", though.

Filipino Crusaders World Army

I first made mention of the FCWA in my post about the White House, the historic landmark on IGaCoS. I had tried to do some research in regards to the organization and the religious cult but wasn't very successful at that time.

In his recent article for Dateline IGaCoS for the Sun.Star, Roger P. Antalan provides much of the missing history regarding Hilario Moncado, the cult and the FCWA. It's a very interesting read for those that are interested in the history of Samal, the White House or the Moncadistas.



As I suspected they are related, with the cult being part of one of twelve divisions of the FCWA. The divisions are listed as: Membership, Organization, Commercial, Finance, Legal, Welfare, Musical, Labor, Women, Publication, Youth, and Religious Education.

I took particular note of the fact that the White House is located on 19 hectares of land called "Camp 19". This structure is very close to our land, and I'd sure like to learn where the boundaries of these hectares lay, if that is even known.

This is a fascinating piece of history for Samal, and the Philippines in general. Thanks to Mr. Antalan for providing this important historical information.

"Where's that confounded bridge?"

Do you think it's possible Robert Plant was referring to the Samal-Davao bridge, when he uttered those words at the end of The Crunge back in 1973?

Three months to review the already completed study, add in Filipino time (double it) and we're at about six months since they announced the go ahead. A rash of announced resorts and subdivisions followed (most probably already planned). And here we sit. Well there certainly has been an economic downturn since then, maybe that's the cause.

Most likely, and this is only speculation on my part, is that the bridge is a long way from seeing anything getting started. Some would say never, or not in our lifetime.

I check the news sites and search google occasionally but I'm not finding anything new at all. Maybe one of the locals there has some insights, but again nothing that I've heard about.

Samal Dairy Farm

I didn't see too many people drinking fresh milk in the Philippines during my last visit. Those that I did see drinking milk were doing so of the powdered variety. I didn't really question whether that was due to economics or availability. It didn't really affect me as I quit drinking milk long ago, but that's another story.

So I was quite surprised to run across this story of a dairy on Samal Island. I'd heard nothing of it previously but then again I haven't had a chance to venture out on the island much yet.

Samal Dairy Farm supplies cow's milk under the Samal Dairy Fresh brand to the local market, especially Davao. Their product line boasts a variety of melon milk, durian milk, fresh milk and mango milk. These come in 1 liter and half liter Pet bottles packaging. It sells at Php 45 for fresh milk and Php 55 for flavored milk, farm gate price. At their Muffler Man Shop in Davao City, these are sold at Php 55 and 65 pesos respectively. Foreigners in the area have already taken a liking for their products.

To date they have 48 cows broken down as follows:

Pregnant dams –5
Milking dams - 12
Yearling heifers-12
Bull calves - 3
Mature Bull - 1
Growing (?) Calves –14

With a daily milk production of 80 liters , they dream of increasing their herd to a hundred to make up for the economies of scale. To them, rearing 10 head is just the same as rearing 50 to a hundred animals. Samal Dairy Fresh Farm is bent on improving its waste management system by creating a biogas digester which will make use of the accumulated cow dung in the farm to generate methane gas. The effort started last November 2007 and is on its way to completion anytime soon. With this, the farm expects to lessen the farm’s P9 thousand monthly electric bill consumption. The biogas digester shall be used to augment fuel resources needed in the processing area. A deep well was also constructed as water source for the farm.

Samal Dairy Fresh products can be found in Asia United Bank, Stella Maris, Davao Doctors Hospital, Pag-Ibig office, the BIR and other government offices in the locality.

Samal Island Videos

For such a small place, Samal Island sure has its share of videos on YouTube and other such places. It's a really nice way to get a glimpse of the island, if you haven't had the pleasure of visiting there yet. Naturally many of the videos are of the resorts, as that is what draws most of the people to Samal Island. But there are many others showing the various attractions and sights of the island.

I especially liked this recent video in the post by John Grant in his column for the web magazine Live in the Philippines that many of you are already familiar with. It gives a nice taste of the island, away from the resorts.

Others worth checking out are:

Bat Caves

Hagimit Falls

White House

Scuba Diving

Do a search for Samal Island or IGaCoS, and you can while away an evening watching the multitude of videos about my favorite island.

Gabriel Custodio?

I'm hoping to get a little help on this. Maybe someone is familiar with art of the Philippines (Macky?, if you still drop by) and could verify a painting I bought while visiting my Mom in Tucson. It was her 80th birthday and I had decided to fly down for the weekend.

It's always nice to visit mom, and to see the area where I went to high school. Like everything else, it's changing a lot. During my visit we stopped at an estate sale in the complex around the area where she lives. These sales aren't uncommon as she lives in a retirement area on the outskirts of Tucson.

I think it was my mom, or possibly her friend, that spotted the painting and alerted me to it. I wasn't real impressed initially, especially since they had a price on it that didn't appeal to me. The painting appeared to be pretty basic, not that I know anything about painting but it was definitely an original oil painting. I did like the subject matter - a farm scene in the province. I noted that it stated "Custodio's Art Philippines -47" on it and decided to try research it a bit. Not that I thought it was worth anything special, but I wondered if I could learn anything about it or similar paintings of the era. I mainly wanted to assure the outfit running the sale that it wasn't worth much. Not a hidden treasure or anything like that.

Not much turned up on my Google search, but I did find a few references to a Gabriel Custodio that was born on 1912. Since I'm assuming the -47 is for 1947, I thought it was possible that he could have painted this. I could not find any examples of his work, but I did note a reference in one article to his "Philippine genre" style. Seems he also won a few awards in the early 50's, so this would be a bit earlier.

If anyone knows anything about Gabriel Custodio, his work or this style of painting, please let me know what you can. Thanks for any help.

BTW it's going up over the fireplace for now. A reminder of the simple life and and our retirement home land to be.