Riverbend Journal

  One sign of increasing wealth in the Philippines was the sheer number of restaurants everywhere. When I say they were everywhere, I do mean they were everywhere. Once could zoom in on a google map anywhere, including in residential districts, and find restaurants on every street and corner. I suspect licensing for restaurants in the Philippines is much less onerous than it is here in the States, which helps to explain the sheer number of them. Many look like they are just run off the porch of the home where a family lives and for the most part, I avoided those. I'm sure there are many with excellent cooking but I tend to think an actual restaurant with a name to uphold might care more about serving food that won't make me sick.  So one afternoon while out driving about, we went to eat at a newer restaurant which was making a name for itself on social media. From what I gathered, the cook of that particular restaurant had made his name on some cooking television show for cook...

  One of the things I always enjoy experiencing in the Philippines is going to the market. It is totally unlike the sterile process of going to the local grocery store here. Here, everything is in logical order and there may only be one or two options for each particular item you wish to purchase, especially when it comes to fresh vegetables and proteins. The Philippines is the exact opposite in nearly every regard. To start with, all of the food markets of Baguio are open air. You either walk down relatively wide alleyways like the one above or you enter the labyrinth of aisles on the ground floor of many of the surrounding buildings which are still open to the outside. There may be some added lighting but there is certainly no doors to open into a conditioned space. Trucks crawl up the mountains in low gear to arrive to the outskirts of Baguio every morning with fresh produce. Grains and warm season veggies like peppers, squash and tomatoes come up from the lowlands of the south ...

At the end of our day touring around Baguio, someone suggested we stop at a new art place called Pugad Ni Art Studio. We had to stop a few times to ask directions as it turned out to be hard to find and I can see why after we finally got there. It was essentially in a building that essentially blended in with the neighboring houses and other than a sign on the door, was otherwise unlabeled.  Even when we knocked on the door we had to wait for a lady to answer it amid a bunch of barking dogs who assured us we could come inside and look around. Immediately inside the front door I saw the above sight, an unworking Volkswagen van sitting in the living room on some dirt scattered over the floor. To one side of the van were the living quarters of the live in artists and on the other side was an art studio where the art was made followed by five small floors or art hung on the walls. I enjoy looking at modern art and at first, the visit seemed to be like a visit to just about every modern...

  I have always found the best way to cure jet lag is to find plenty of things to do that first day to force brain to be active until normal sleeping hours in my new time zone. So after a partial night's sleep and some morning hours reading until my Filipino family were awake, we ate some breakfast and headed out to explore some new sights around town. Our first stop was the Diplomat Hotel which after years of being empty, is slowly starting to be fixed up and marketed as a haunted place. Although I don't believe in ghosts, I can see how people might think there are ghosts here due to a somewhat sordid history. It was built by Americans after the Spanish War and became a seminary. During World War II, it was a place of refuge for Filipinos until the Japanese invaded it and turned it into a head quarters. Within it's walls, many a Filipino native along with the priests and nuns were tortured, raped and executed. During the later days of the Japanese occupation it became a ...

  Before I left on vacation, I hinted at doing something different for the dresser top than I usually would do. I knew I wanted to make the top out of walnut for the color contrast and just the sheer beauty of the wood. However, working out of my garage that I use at night to park too vehicles leads to some restrictions on what I can have for equipment. Normally, I would buy walnut boards that I would run through my table saw to clean up the edges enough that I can glue them together to form a surface big enough for what I want. This however, usually results in a slight wavy surface that isn't perfectly flat because said boards have slight twists in them. Also, because I have no place to purchase lumber where I can select the perfect boards, I end up with a surface where I can see the edges of every board used. This time however, after pricing out mail ordering the required walnut boards and ending up with a surface not quite flat and seeing the outline of each board, I went a diff...