- Philippines is an archipelago of more than 7,107 islands. (For those that don’t know, an archipelago is defined as a large chain of islands).
- Luzon is the largest island in the archipelago.
- The capital of Philippines is Manila and its national language is Filipino.
- With a population of about 90 million people, the Philippines is the 12th most populous country in the world.
- On the islands of Philippines, there are more than 200 volcanoes, though only a few are active.
- The Philippine flag is the only flag in the world which is hoisted upside-down when the country is in war.
- In the Tabon Cave Complex of Philippines, fossil evidence of Homo sapiens has been found. According to the studies, the area was inhabited around fifty thousand years ago.
- The Philippines comprises the two thousand years old Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras. These are accredited as World Heritage Sites.
- Ferdinand Magellan, the Portuguese explorer, was the first European to visit the Philippines.
- Mount Apo, at an altitude of 2,954 m, in the island of Mindanao is the highest point in the Philippines.
- About 80% people of the country’s total population are Roman Catholics.
- The people of the Philippines are from different ethnic origins such as Malay, Chinese, Spanish, American, etc.
- This nation was baptized the Philippines, after King Philip II of Spain.
- Its capital city Manila was named after a white-flowered mangrove plant, the nilad.
- The Philippines remain the colony of Spain from 1521 to 1898. Subsequently, it went into the hands of the USA.
- It was the first Southeast Asian country to gain independence in 1946, following World War II.
- The Philippines stretches onto the area of 115,830 square miles, which makes it equal to the size of Italy.
- With more than 11 million Filipinos overseas, the Philippines has the largest diaspora networks in the world.
- The Pacific Ocean is known to contain the deepest ocean trenches in the world. The Mindanao trench, which lies close to the Philippines, is six and a half miles deep.
- The Philippines is regarded the “text capital of the world”. About 350 to 400 million SMS (Short Message Service) or text messages are sent daily by 35 million cell phone subscribers in the country, which is more than the total daily text messages sent in the U.S. and Europe, together.
- However, the land area of the Philippines is about 1/30th of the U.S.; it has a coastline of 36,289 kilometers while the U.S. coastline is just 19,924 kilometers.
- The karaoke was invented in the Philippines and not Japan. Karaoke means “singing without accompaniment” in Japanese was invented by Roberto del Rosario. The invention of “Sing-Along-System” was later called karaoke.
- The “Conus Gloriamaris”, which the rarest and most expensive seashell in the world, is one of the 12,000 species of seashells found in the Philippines. And about 488 coral species, out of the 500 coral species known worldwide, are found in the archipelago.
Tagalog Word of the Day: masaya (maw-sa-yah) means happy.
I’m sure you noticed by now that I changed the theme of the blog. So far I’ve gotten all positive comments on the change, but please express your opinion also. Y’all don’t be surprised if it changes again soon, because this theme doesn’t have as many sidebars as I’d like. I’d like to have at least 4, but the best would be 6. I want to have 2 on each side, 1 on the top and 1 on the bottom. The not so important, but nice to have stuff like all those different blog sites would go to the bottom and the really important things (in my mind), like the ads and hot topics, would go across the top or #1 spots on the sides. Maybe the guy that designed this theme can add some sidebars to it. I’ll e-mail him and ask. It couldn’t hurt to ask, and I don’t want to be changing the theme ever week or so. Maybe that would be a good thing. Do y’all think that having a different theme every week or every month is good, or do would you rather it just stay the same all the time?
There is a bell over at the hotel, probably on their paging system, that sounds like the bell you hear at the airport. You know, ding, ding, ding, ding sounds in ascending order followed by the same tones in descending order. I like the sound as long as they don’t play it continually. Then it gets annoying. I’m referring to the day they were testing it and played it about 50 times in a row. I had to put on my headphones and listen to my music to keep from going crazy.
There’s a website at www.gooverseas.com that will be having a poll early next year to vote for the best overseas blog. In his e-mail the guy said ‘after the holidays’ they will begin. This is a new way for them to determine the top overseas blog. In the past they have been selecting it themselves, but they decided to let the reader decide starting this year. I’m on their e-mail list so they can let me know when the contest starts. When I find out, I’ll let y’all know, so you can vote, hopefully for me.
We had a brownout Tuesday from 6:10pm to 7:44pm. It went out right in the middle of a Bones episode that I’ve never seen before, so I’m pretty upset about that. I’m hoping it will repeat soon and I’ll get to see it anyway.
Mar and Ludy brought me a few groceries from Cebu, since I didn’t get to go with them. I received 4 cans of Van Camp pork & beans, about 12 cans (I haven’t actually counted them) of Underwood Chicken Spread and 3 small squeeze bottles of mustard. The mustard was not necessary because they even have that here in Calbayog, but it for sure will not go to waste and I’m very glad to have it. The kicker for the whole thing is that they didn’t even charge me for it. They said that that is a Christmas present for me. Now I know that they like to celebrate Christmas here from September to January, but this is the earliest that I’ve ever received a Christmas present. I told you I had some very cool Filipino relatives.
Ramil was also in Cebu and he got me a few things too. He sent them back with Mar, but Mar gave them to Ramil’s asawa, Robbie to give to me. From Ramil I received 2 cans of beef stew and 1 can of cranberry sauce. I asked him for all that. I never heard of the brands that he bought, but they were all made in the USA, so I’ll give them a try. Lita was happy to see the cranberry sauce and wants Ramil to get her some more for when he visits during Christmas time. I’m not sure exactly what day he will be showing up, but whenever is fine.
This lovely Wednesday morning I was up at 0711 and I was feeling like my throat had something stuck in it. I felt like that if I talked it would sound like I had a bad cold. When I talked though, it sounded okay. Just to be on the safe side I made some instant grits and drank a cup of hot chocolate to help the feeling go away. It kind of worked, but even now I still feel it a little bit. I’m going to be taking a shower pretty soon, so while I’m in there, I’ll gargle with some Listerine and see if that helps.
Lita went to the market this morning. She asked me if I wanted to go, but it’s just too much of an effort go downtown in a tricycle. I always have to scrunch. I needed to check my fantasy football for Week 12 anyway. At this time it is only 11:30am on 1 Dec, so there is still plenty of time for things to happen. This blog is already big enough to publish, but I’ll wait a little bit longer.
It just now started to rain at 11:33am. Rain, rain, rain. It sure does rain a lot around here when it isn’t summer.
Tagalog Word of the Day: ulan (ew-lan) means rain.
Yeah I know I put 2 Tagalog Word of the Day entries. I just put one for yesterday and one for today.
We, well mostly Lita, put up some Christmas lights today. Mar and Ludy bought those for her while in Cebu also. We have to pay them back for the lights though.
I just got an e-mail from WordPress that said someone registered for my blog. Do y’all see a place to register? I’m thinking it doesn’t show up on mine because it registers IP addresses when you register, and it won’t register the IP address that the site originated from. I am slightly concerned because I don’t want it to be some hacker or something else terrible.
For lunch today, about 12:15, I had 3 of the chicken spread sandwiches with some Lays BBQ potato chips. As it turns out, it will be my only meal for the day. It is 7:47pm now and that’s too late to be eating before bed. Tomorrow I’ll probably have 2 meals though. For lunch I hope to have a can of that beef stew so I can find out what it tastes like. If not for lunch, then I’ll eat it for dinner tomorrow night, but I don’t like to eat after 7:00pm normally, unless I know I’m going to be up for a long time anyway.
The Top Blog results at this time are: Personal 393 of 1469 (26.7%) and Overall 2088 of 6556 (31.8%). We have 82 unique hits at this time. The #1 Personal has 10,875. I sent an e-mail to the #2 guy (at 9,362 now) to find out if he’d let me do a guest blog on this site. I’ve never done that before, but I hear that it’s a good way to maybe get a bigger audience. Since he gets around 10,000 hits per day and his blog is similar to ours, I figured he was a good one to ask. I’m not even sure if I should write as normal, or just write something close to it, but a little different. I want his readers to like what I write so they’ll want to visit our blog, but I don’t want them to be disappointed when they get here.
I saw the following excerpt in an e-mail and thought it was sweet, so I decided to share it with y’all.
Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child. The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, ‘Nothing, I just helped him cry’.
I think I’m going to end this post for the day. If anything else happens tonight, it’s 8:08pm now, then I will just add it to tomorrow’s post, if I get enough things to write about. Of course maybe tomorrow is the day y’all find out the unique way I met Lita.
I don’t think I have very many pictures left, but I’ll load the ones in the camera now, even though it’s only 3 or 4 in there. I’ll find 4 or 5 more to post so y’all will have at least 8 of them. I’ll try to make it good ones, even if they aren’t exactly mine.
Salamat, Palaam
Have you ever been down to the fish port.That is where the fishing boats come in to unloadthere catch and it goes across steet to be sorted some then will be trucked to manila.
It is quite interesting how they take there fish off the big bancas.Might be some interesting pictures.
Nope, never been there. Seems like that might be pretty early in the morning. I’d really have to be motivated to do that.