Busy busy busy

I am busy. Too much is going on in my life. I'm back in Virginia Beach, and everything's frozen over. Well, not everything. Before it started freezing, there were hundreds of happy little ducks and geese feeding in the impoundments. Now, there are like two. Many of them probably just went into the middle of the bay, since most of the aquatic vegetation near the edges of bodies of water will probably be iced over as well.

Tundra swans coming in for a landing

Closeup of Tundra swans - notice the two on the left still standing on ice

Tundra swans and friends sitting in the pools

Lesser scaup

Canada Geese and other waterfowl

I'm working on a few other cyber-projects to be rolled out by Christmas. I am happy to announce that I will definitely be doing a repeat of my "Food Challenge," but this time, there'll be a twist. You should also anticipate a few coherent photography-related posts. Also forthcoming is a top-secret project that I haven't told a single person about. Actually, that's a lie. I've asked about a dozen people for help on this project, but none of them know the entire story, and you'll all be shocked.

I'm off to training this week in the beautiful state of West Virginia. I mean it; I enjoy the mountainous scenery much more now that I know what it's like to live in a flat coastal region. I'm then going to be back here for literally three working days before driving back to NJ for the holidays.

Keep an eye out for more content, and thanks for reading!

Food Challenge!

Today’s article is a complete change in subject matter from my previous posts (though it’s not like that hasn’t happened before). Two weeks ago, I purchased a 10 pound bag of chicken parts for less than six dollars. However, I found myself clueless as to what to actually do with the chicken parts. So, I submitted requests to friends for up to three ingredients. I promised to use three of the submissions to create a dish involving chicken, and I even used a real hat to pick them out of.


Of the 33 ingredients submitted, I chose the following (person who suggested it in parentheses):

Bananas (Gary D)
Garlic (Karen H)
Lettuce (Kyle P)
I had some lettuce and bananas left over from the week before, but I bought additional amounts of both ingredients. Everything else came from my kitchen.


Note: the above picture also contains a bowl of chicken skin, which I originally planned to use creatively but eventually discarded. I'm not even going to bother telling you what I was going to do with it...

I literally spent half a day trying to figure out what to do. I decided that, since I couldn’t decide on one dish, I would create three small dishes. One of them uses all three ingredients and chicken; the other two use only some of them. However, they’re all connected in some way, mainly through use of garlic. I also used the same pan and reused the oil for all three dishes.

Banana tostones with shredded chicken – This dish is inspired by a Central American/Caribbean dish, usually done with unripe plantains. However, I was doing this with slightly green bananas, which behave radically differently from green plantains. I sliced a banana into thirds and then proceeded to smash it with my palm. It’s a good thing I decided to do it gradually, or there would’ve been mashed banana all over the cutting board. I heated up and salted some oil and began to fry the banana pieces. I basically flattened them until just before it felt like they were going to fall apart.

I realized I didn’t have any breasts left in the bag of chicken, so I had to improvise and strip the meat from drumsticks. I took the meat and put it in a pot with enough water to barely cover the chicken. I boiled the chicken pieces and estimated when the chicken would be done (I checked this by cutting one open). It didn’t take long because they were so small anyway.

I drained almost all of the water out of the pot and then added a chopped clove of garlic and two spoonfuls of pasta sauce. I initially added the latter because I thought it needed color, but also because I couldn’t think of what else to flavor it with. I also added a dash of “Ghost Pepper” (Naga jolokia) hot sauce my sister gave me from Nashville a few weeks ago. It’s probably the hottest sauce I’ve ever tasted, and one dash was more than enough.

The chicken simmered for about 5 minutes or so; I stirred it occasionally. Then, I took the chicken pieces out and shredded them with a fork and the unsharpened side of a knife. Chicken went on the fried banana, and lettuce went on the chicken.

Sauteed romaine lettuce – I originally wanted to do a stir-fry, but that would has been too easy (and I couldn’t find a way to incorporate bananas without terrible consequences). However, the idea of cooking lettuce still intrigued me, so I did it anyway. I’m tired of writing narratives, so here’s a list of instructions:
Toss some oil in a pan and add garlic until it barely starts to brown (keep the stove on medium heat).
Add a few tablespoons of soy sauce and slightly less water. This creates a broth.
Add romaine lettuce and cover for about 40 seconds.
While the lettuce is cooking, mix about a spoonful of flour and a quarter cup of water. Add more water if needed to make a slightly thick liquid.
Uncover the pan. Add the flour mixture to thicken the sauce. Sautee and allow to cook for about a minute more. Serve.

Banana mustard chicken – Yes, you read it correctly.
First, I made a puree out of bananas and mustard. I figured mustard would work because it has a strong flavor that would completely distract from the gooeyness of pureed banana. I literally smashed a banana with a fork until I couldn’t see any white and then squeezed mustard on it. I also added a little bit of White Cranberry Peach juice cocktail, simply because I had it open in the fridge. I don’t have a blender, so I mixed it all by hand.
The next step went horribly wrong. I meant to cook up a little garlic and then add the puree to it. However, the pot I was using heated up way too much. The first bunch of garlic I added burned within seconds. On my second try, I had to lift the pot from the stove immediately after adding the garlic. I then added the puree and let it sit for the while. The puree went onto the chicken thighs, and the chicken went into the oven.

After about 25 minutes, I checked on the chicken and spooned additional puree over it. I had no idea how it went because it was covered in yellow goo, but it didn't look good.

I don’t actually remember how long the chicken was in the oven. It probably took about 40 minutes total. I actually took it out but put it back in to keep warm when the other steps weren’t done yet.

This is the final product:

Overall, it tasted AMAZING. The lettuce was surprisingly good, considering that I would never have thought of cooking romaine lettuce. I’ll probably make more of that in the future.

The tostones were a bit disappointing. The fried banana overpowered the chicken. I was originally going to do a giant tostone instead of three small dishes, but I’m glad I didn’t. I really had no idea what I was doing with the chicken, and I probably could’ve done something to spice it up more.

The banana mustard chicken was the highlight of the meal. When creating it, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing or if it would work. It turned out surprisingly good, and I’m surprised I’ve never encountered the banana-mustard combination before. I was completely taken aback by it.

In addition to the three suggestions and chicken, I used the following ingredients: water, soy sauce, flour, salt, pepper, mustard, vegetable oil, tomato sauce, white cranberry peach cocktail. In retrospect, the juice could’ve been left out.

There you have it, folks. I literally picked three ingredients at random and somehow had to pair them with chicken. The entire process took me about 2 hours; I attribute this to my lack of basic cooking skills and the fact that I had never done any of these techniques before. Skinning the two chicken thighs took me about twenty minutes. It also took me a while to develop the right mustard-banana ratio. If you want to try making anything you saw here, just ask me!

There’ll probably be a part II using the 30 ingredients that weren’t chosen. Also, I am planning to do a dessert, a vegetarian dish, and more… so if you’re friends with me on Facebook, keep an eye out!

Thanks for reading!

Wildlife Refuges vs. National Parks

In honor of National Wildlife Refuge Weeks (which was this past week), I thought I would say something about this system of federally-owned lands that include 552 refuges spanning 150 million acres in all 50 states. I first stumbled upon a National Wildlife Refuge 3 years ago and have now had the opportunity to visit or work in 7 in four states. I've had the privilege to meet people who have worked in several of them, each with their own unique characteristics:

• the world's largest wintering elk herd (National Elk Refuge)
• the smallest deer (Key Deer) and turtle (bog turtle) species in North America (Key Deer Refuge and Great Swamp)
• oil spills (Breton Island)
• unexploded ordnance (Plum Tree Island)
• nuclear waste (Johnston Atoll)
• Superfund sites full of PCBs, chromium, lead, asbestos, rocket fuel, and who knows what else (too many to mention)
• active volcanoes (Alaska Maritime)
• tropical rainforest (Hakalau)
• sandy barrier islands that change shape every few months (Monomoy)
• an urban skyline (Minnesota Valley in Minneapolis, John Heinz in Philadelphia)
• habitat for migratory organisms of all sizes, including bats, whales, sea turtles, manatees, whooping cranes, wood ducks, sturgeon, and even butterflies

No other agency is the world has purview over such a wide array of conservation-related issues. That said, many Americans aren't completely aware of their wildlife refuges. They're often confused with privately-owned preserves, parks operated by local governments, and wildlife rehabilitation centers. However, the most common system that the NWRS is confused with is the National Park Service. Now, I enjoy a visit to an NPS-run site (I last counted 39), but the Park Service is NOTHING like the NWRS. They might both have pretty animals running around them and employ people who wear uniforms, but there's are several differences between the two.
America's national wildlife refuges are run by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), whose main mission revolves around conservation of biodiversity and natural resources. The refuge system is only a small part of the FWS, which also operates fish hatcheries, lists and protects endangered species, and responds to environmental catastrophes (most famously the Deepwater Horizon disaster and other oil spills, but also including forest fires). Wildlife refuges are specifically designed to protect biodiversity, both directly (a cave that contains the only habitat of an endangered fish) or indirectly (a wetland used by migrating birds). The Park Service protects landscapes and historic sites for recreational purposes. Of course, there is some overlap between the two. NPS has sites such as Everglades National Park, an enormous wetland of key significance, and Yellowstone, a tremendous habitat for a variety of wildlife. Likewise, refuges such as Chincoteague in Virginia get a significant number of tourists.
One obvious characteristic that differentiates the refuge system from national parks is the emphasis on management for biodiversity. Refuge operations are designed to protect natural resources; national parks are designed to serve visitors. Refuges often clear grasslands and fields to encourage habitat succession or alter water levels to create plant growth. I’ve heard of entire refuges closed for a couple days due to prescribed burns, invasive plant spraying, or controlled hunting. I even know of a refuge that closes much of trail system during the winter when bird populations are at their greatest to protect them from intrusion by visitors; in a national park, the trail would probably be open to allow visitors to see the birds. Similarly, many refuges that aren’t located within an hour or so of a major metropolitan area don’t have a visitor center, or any visitor services at all. They simply don’t make a huge effort to attract any because it’s not a priority.
Finally, here’s my more biased distinction between refuges and parks. National Parks are places you go if you want to drive beyond a gate and instantly be dazzled. You can see dramatic geological formations, ancient Pre-Columbian ruins, majestic forests, and historic buildings where history was shaped. All you have to do is get there and walk around. In comparison, National Wildlife Refuges are places where you can go for an hour and not see anything. You can be at one for a couple hours and not see anything. If you don’t make an effort to look and don’t have any patience, you’re not going to see anything. But suddenly, there will be moments that you won’t find anywhere else: three bald eagles fighting over an opossum, two snapping turtles engaged in territorial fighting, the eerie call of an American Bittern echoing miles across a wetland, or a peregrine falcon flying across a beach. Then, as suddenly as the moment started, it disappears, and you’re back to sitting in the marsh.
Thanks for reading.

The Social Network: What’s All the Buzz About?

I don’t get to see dramas in the theaters very often. I enjoy watching dramas with great acting, but I just can’t get anyone to see them with me (with the exception of the time I dragged my family to see Precious). So, after hearing the buzz about The Social Network, I searched around for a week until I finally found someone to go see it. Having never read a review of it (I usually don’t), I expected it to be an overdramatic, overacted attempt at making programming nerds look cool. Instead, what I found was an overdramatic and intricately crafted muddle of a film.

In The Social Network, David Fincher portrays the interpersonal struggles that accompanied Facebook during its rapid initial growth. The focal plot involves the growing divide between the reserved and quite Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and his outwardly confident but misguided companion, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield). I must say that I’m not a huge fan of Jesse Eisenberg. He’s one of a growing class of actors who seem to exclusively play pale, skinny, and awkward white boys unsure of their direction or purpose and who spend most of their time staring blankly at the ceiling with their hands in their pockets (along with Michael Cera). If you’ve ever seen Eisenberg in The Squid and the Whale, Adventureland, or Zombieland, you probably wonder if he can play anything else. That said, I was really confused with where his character was going. What is he trying to get at? Is he seeking revenge on the upper echelon of Harvard social structure? Or is he just another bored techno-geek?

Meanwhile, Andrew Garfield provides a stunning performance as Saverin, Zuckerberg’s initial business partner. It’s easy to feel sorry for him as he slowly becomes estranged from the company, but it’s painful to see how shortsighted he really turned out to be. Garfield plays a smart and keen entrepreneur who unfortunately grows more and more out of place as the story progresses, and yet he continues to be completely oblivious. In any other situation, Saverin's drive to push the company forward by monetizing it probably would seem to be the right decision, but, like Zuckerberg, he really doesn't have a clue what's going on, and it subtly shows.

As for the rest of the movie and its actors, I founded to be so dramatic to the point where it was almost tiring to watch. There’s a two-minute long scene of a Harvard rowing team competing against a Dutch boat accompanied by an industrial version of Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” (thanks, Trent Reznor) that left me perplexed as to what the preceding montage had to do with anything. I don’t know if it was intended as such, but I couldn’t stand the performance of Armie Hammer as both Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. It was like Tweedledum and Tweedledee walked into an Abercrombie catalog. There are similar moments of short bursts of emotion or random details that seem out of place. Yet, I enjoyed the striking cinematography and clever filmmaking overall. The movie made powerful use of lighting, accented by the eerie glow of computer screens.

As a self-admitted nerd who went to quite possibly one of the most introverted and technology-obsessed universities in the country, I’m often frustrated at the media’s portrayal of us as bespectacled, wired-in slobs with nasal voices and tendencies to quote obscure comic books and down 2-liter bottles of mountain dew on an hourly basis (think Big Bang Theory). Thus, I snickered to myself at the details that reminded of my tech school moments: the scenes of Eisenberg running through the snow in shorts and flip-flops (there was always that guy), writing equations on the window with a dry-erase marker when there was a lack of paper, and alcohol-induced bouts of programming rage (I think I even participated in a coding drinking game once). On a personal level, it was satisfying to see college portrayed at least remotely like I remembered it.

The The Social Network is an intricate and complex drama that tells the story of a couple of guys who watched as they changed the world and didn’t know what to do about it. At times, it strives too much to create tension, with characters that are defined by extreme personalities. When I first heard of this concept, I thought it was going to be social commentary on alienation and tensions of relationships due to dependence on technology. On the surface, The Social Network seems nothing like that: simply the story of the early beginnings of Facebook and their struggles. However, in detailing Zuckerberg and those who surrounded him, The Social Network is a story of characters with internal conflicts struggling to interact.

Thanks for reading...

Note: This was my first movie review. Ever. Comments are appreciated.
EDITED 10/10 1100: Grammar and formatting

Happy little moths

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon some of the coolest animals I've ever seen. Hanging off of the butterfly bush in front of my house was the following scene:

I found myself wondering what on Earth these things are and what they were doing. Rather than actually tell you up front, let's go through a little thought exercise. What was amazing about this incident is that the two insects didn't move the whole time. At all. I got pretty close to take these pictures and even used the flash, but nothing startled them. Thus, I was able to examine them very well by sight. So let's get to it:

1) What Phylum/Class are they? It's pretty obvious to me. They have six legs, two pairs of wings, and segmented bodies. That means they are members of class Insecta, the insects.

2) What order of Insecta are they? The two pairs of wings rule out several orders, including Diptera (flies). The hind and forewings overlap and are of strikingly different sizes, ruling out a bunch more, such as Odonota (dragonflies and damseflies), Plecoptera (stoneflies), Neuroptera (lacewings), Trichoptera (caddisflies), etc. They're also really fuzzy, which doesn't happen in too many orders in North America. At this point, I've narrowed it down to Hymenoptera (wasps, bees, and ants) and Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths).

3) It's all in the wings. After reading my last line and seeing the above picture, you may have thought "What kind of a butterfly or moth has clear wings? It must be a Hymenopteran." Sure, you've probably never seen a butterfly with clear wings. However, have you ever seen a wasp with a big fat body and small eyes? I think not. Upon closer examination (a decent picture of which requires a microscope or very specialized camera), I discovered that the darker portions of the wings are covered with scales. Hymenopterans do not have scales, so it must be a Lepidopteran.

4) It's a moth. Butterfly antennae have little knobs at the end. Contrary to popular belief, some moths are indeed active during the day.

4) But wait, there's more! I thought it would be impossible to identify these further without a magnifying glass. I forgot that I had my insect book inside, so I ended up cheating a bit. I went online, looked up moths with clear wings in Virginia, and found the answer almost instantly: genus Hemaris, the clearwings.

As for the behavior, it's probably some sort of mating. Yes, moths have sex. I can't exactly prove it (I didn't feel like picking one up and poking around inside it), but I don't know of anything else that would keep two insects in that position and not allow them to get bothered. I've seen similar situations with cicadas and grasshoppers that barely move if they are disturbed while mating.

On a side note, I've been getting back into Photoshop a little more. I dropped it for a while after visiting my sister's art show last year and realizing how easy it is to over-edit everything. However, in this situation, a bit of editing is necessary to accurately portray the subject. The lighting was funky, with shots from the front of the moths appearing too bright with flash or too dark without it. So, I took the following shot...

... and did some cropping and color saturation.

I also found it impossible to get a good shot from head-on. The picture below is probably the best I took, and still turned turned out pretty badly.

So, I utilized the over-used "Shadows and Highlighting" tool to bring out some features of the moths.

You can see how tiny its eyes are (just under the antennae), and there even appears to be some of its probscis visible. This pretty much confirms that it's not a wasp; I can't imagine a wasp head looking anything like that.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Maybe it'll get you to look at insects a bit differently, and not just as brown things buzzing around lamps. Thanks for reading!

Really quick update...

I moved again. I temporarily transferred to another refuge about 3 weeks ago. I've spent the past three weeks trying to write something meaningful about my new experience. I was going to publish a post yesterday, but I scrapped it because it could have gotten me fired. I decided that I really can't blog about my work anymore, or at least for the time being, because I don't really agree with the reasoning behind what I currently do. I still do my job and do it well, and I respect the decisions made by people above me. However, I was finding it hard to clearly state my intentions in a blog post, and I don't want to have my message misconstrued.
In other news, I'm going to take wildlands fire training next week. It's actually quite scary for me. It's something I've wanted to do since I was about seven, but I'm pretty sure I'm not really qualified to be a firefighter, physically or emotionally. I guess that's why it's called training.

Thanks for reading.

In Memoriam

Last week, I was notified that my great aunt, "Lola Enchay" passed away. She was a younger sister of my grandfather and a longtime resident of Cagayan Valley province. For those of you not familiar with Cagayan Valley, it's the second most-northerly province in the Philippines (only the isolated Batanes and Babuyan islands are more north). It's largely rural; most of the province is mountainous or at least hilly, but the areas near the coast are very flat and largely agricultural. It's also really far from Manila; when he was my age, my dad would travel to Tuguegarao, the capital of Cagayan Valley, from Manila in a 24 hour bus ride. When traveling there in May, it was supposed to take us about 8, but due to construction, it took us about 12. The road through the mountains is only two lanes, so they often limit it to one lane for several miles at a time. Here's a shot of a holdup as we were entering the province of Neuva Vizcaya from Nueva Ecija. This shot looks exceptionally harrowing with the line of buses and tractor trailers, which shared the road the entire journey with cars, motortricycles, and the occasional dog.

The highway (if you could call it that) passes through towns both large and small, ranging from small cities with internationally known institutions (the Science City of Munoz, home to groundbreaking research into the agronomics of rice), World Heritage Sites (the city of Vigan and a coquina church in Paoay) to small clusters of homes with chicken-filled yards extending into the street. Most towns looked something like this:


For the rest of this article, I'm going to focus mainly on the town of Abulug, located at the northernmost part of Cagayan Valley. Like many areas of the Philippines, the local language is not Tagalog (the national language), but Ibanag, a language with about 500,000 speakers. Oddly enough, in Ballesteros, the town just before Abulug, the local language is Ilocano.Abulug, like many other small communities in the Philippines, has a mix of what most Americans would describe as "traditional" lifestyle and "modern" innovations (I'm going to comment on this is another post because I have a very strong opinion on developing countries). Many houses there have electricity, are pretty solid, and have some form of plumbing and running water in the vicinity. Here's the home of my aunt's family, which had all of the above and a quasi-functioning toilet (it doesn't flush automatically; you do have to throw a bucket of water into it):

Okay, so that's a really bad picture and doesn't demonstrate anything other than that they have a corrugated roof, walls, and flowers. Maybe I'll find better ones later. However, compare that picture to this one:

and you get a pretty good idea of what housing is like for many rural Filipinos. The bamboo house below looks like it's made of grass, but it is actually made of a combination of bamboo and various tightly woven native fibers, leaves, and grasses. They are generally woven while the fiber is still green or wet, so it hardens as it dries.

Infrastructure varies a lot as well. As we were leaving Abulug afternoon, we came a across a road that was being paved for the first time ever.

This is probably shocking to my suburban readers. However, considering that their are very few four-lane highways outside of Manila and very few medians or even lines in the road, this wasn't surprising. Then again, those of you who live in or have traveled through some rural areas of America know that there are places in this country that still lack paved roads. When many people don't even have cars, a dirt road still suffices.

What I loved most about Abulug was the presence of palm trees. I don't know why, but trees in lines always strike me as particularly attractive.

The estuary and beach on the edge of Abulug:

I really like palm trees:

My favorite picture in Abulug, however, is of the gacca clam. This small clam (about two and a half inches long at most) grows in brackish and saltwater flats and appears to be in the family Donacidae (there are Donax clams all over the place here in VA). You can eat one of these my simply opening it like a normal clam. Or, you can stick it in your mouth and try to open it with your teeth. Guess which method I tried...
PS I'm really busy with work and also am lacking in the internet department. I've got a number of draft articles on the way but never have time to proofread them. Thanks for reading and look out for more!

Moved in, and more articles to come

So, it's been WAY too long after my last post. However, I have been incredibly busy since returning from the Philippines and have way too many stories to tell at once. I plan to release the first of my Philippines essays this weekend.




The reason why I've been so busy is that I've finally moved down to Virginia Beach. I moved here last weekend but didn't officially start work until yesterday. I am currently living in a three-bedroom apartment shared with three other employees of my agency on the second floor of a modular house. It's pretty cool and all, with it's sustainable bamboo floors and solar-powered water heating.

What's especially unique about where I live is that my house is located at the convergence of three unique neighborhoods. For those who are unfamiliar with the area, the Hampton Roads metro area is home to the world's largest naval base, as well as significant Army, Air Force, and Coast Guard operations. It's a hub for international shipping and a major center for innovation. It's a historic region, home to the first permanent English settlement in America and the first seat of the oldest elected representative body in the Western Hemisphere. It's also a remarkably crowded tourist haven. The house is located at the intersection of three roads:


To the West comes miles and miles of subdivisions full of houses that all look the same. This part of town is home to the first time I have encountered a Walmart with a grocery store. This part of Virginia Beach is so desperate for a glimpse of normal urban life that they had to artificially construct a hill our of garbage in order to give variety to the landscape and built the only tall building in Virginia Beach. To add to their desperation, they creatively named it "Town Center."
To the east lies the beach community of Sandbridge. Many of you may have vacationed in Virginia Beach and recalled a busy boardwalk packed with high-rise hotels, seafood restaurants, and body-to-body beaches. That's not Sandbridge. Sandbridge may be slightly crowded on weekends, but the community itself consists of rental homes. Much of Sandbridge has no public parking, so the beach remains relatively quiet. This is what it looked like on the afternoon of July 4th.

It's also 20 minutes south of the touristy Oceanfront (separated by miles and miles of subdivisions), so it gets slightly less crowded. That said, Sandbridge gets enough traffic that, on multiple occasions, I have had to wait a few minutes trying to turn out of my road due to the large volume of vehicles. The refuge is located south of Sandbridge and looks kinda like this:

More on that later.

South of me is the area known as Pungo. I will probably elaborate much more on Pungo due to its unique nature, but it's a combination of new, big houses, soybean fields, and swamp. Those who follow me on facebook know that during my runs through Pungo, I have been repeatedly yelled at and insulted by passing drivers.

Finally, there's Back Bay, a bizarre natural landmark consisting of 9,000 acres of water, swamp, farmland, sandy forest, pine forest, and even beach. Ah, but not sand-covered-with-reddened-skin beach. This kind of beach: Our beach is closed to surfing, swimming, picnics, and sunbathing (normal beach stuff), but it's a great place for a long quiet walk and superb photography. Both of my mornings thus far have been spent on the beach. The first was a sea turtle nest relocation, and the second was a bird survey lasting for about 10+ sandy miles from Sandbridge down to the NC border. It's a great place to view shorebirds, and I've even seen dolphins swimming not too far from shore. The beach is covered with shells of all sorts, as well as the various live crabs and mollusks that inhabit its sands.

That was a really long post. I'll definitely elaborate on some of the things I've mentioned, especially the various neighborhoods and the state of the beaches around here.

Thanks for reading!

Travel updates

I am currently in my last day here in the Philippines, and with it comes internet access. I arrived here last night after two weeks of travelling through the Philippines, where I did not have frequent internet access (or flush toilets, for that matter), and four days in Singapore, where I had internet but didn't have time to use it. This is the last stage for what has been a whirlwind tour for me. I would normally call this a vacation. However, considering that this trip has included a four day and 30 driving-hours loop through northern Luzon, a five day trip by plane, van, and boat of three islands in the Visayas, no sleeping in past 7:30, five days where I woke up before the sunset, and not sleeping in one place for more than three days, it's felt more like being a rubber ball bouncing around in a spinning washing machine.

I expected to take this opportunity to write a few posts in the coming weeks detailing various aspects of Filipino culture for my mostly American audience. However, due to my lack of intertubes, I am going to release a series of articles in the next coming weeks. So, look out for future posts on:

Why America is making the Philippines is fat, why the Philippines is making America fat, and why fat is making the Philippines America
How to flush a toilet with a plastic bucket
Navigating the miasma of moving vehicles that is Filipino traffic
What happens when you mix fermented prawns, pineapple, cucumbers, chili paste, and a donut
Dispelling stereotypes about rural areas in developing countries, with insights from relatives
Very cute animals

Feel free to suggest topics.
Thanks for reading, and look out for more...

The future awaits...

Four years of college have come to an end for me. This past Sunday, I walked up to a podium and received my degree in biology. And now I'm off into the world. Yes, I do find it absolutely scary.

I'm probably going to follow this up with a much more in-depth view of my college graduation, but I at least thought I'd announce to the world what my plans are after graduation: I have accepted a job working for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in Virginia Beach, VA. It's still hard for me to grasp the fact that I'll actually be doing the job that I've been hoping to do for about three years now. Even before that, I always had the environment as a possibility, but it always took the backseat to something else. This time, it's for real.

I don't start until the end of June, however, because I am taking a several week-long trip to the Philippines to visit relatives and travel to various areas of the country. So, my excuse for lack of activity will be an intense month of traveling and then packing for the move south.

I leave you with a sunset picture that I took while on a dinner cruise the Thursday before graduation. I credit Cleveland's unique sunsets to its position on the lake and the composition of its smog.

PS: I have reacquired PHOTOSHOP!!! And other stuff too.

Warming of the Global kind, pt. 2

This is a follow-up to my earlier post, Warming of the Global kind. A few of my readers have submitted questions, so here are my responses.

• Why is it now called "climate change" and not "global warming?" Did they realize they were wrong? No. "Global warming" refers specifically to the changein the air temperature of the Earth. The phrase "climate change" encompasses more, such as the change in water temperatures. Personally, I think the phrase "global warming" makes it seem like the whole world is turning into a giant desert, it's going to stop snowing all of a sudden, and before you know it, Greenland will become the new Florida. A lot of people thought that "global warming" meant massive, visible changes like a decrease in the amount of snow or a sudden increase in the number of hurricanes. In reality, there are and will always be cold winters and mild winters, hot summers and cooler summers, etc. Although many glaciers are melting at rapid places, there still are ice floes and glaciers with little to no change. We may not even see changes in those areas for several years due to their location.
  
• I still don't think humans caused it. That means we have to stop all this "sustainability" nonsense and get back to the days when it didn't matter how much gas your car guzzled and you could buy whatever appliances you wanted. My response: even if you don't think humans caused it, there still is a change in the climate (with data to back it). Fossil fuels are still limited. Water resources are still scarce. Population growth is still occuring and bringing with it all sorts of dilemmas relating to disease, starvation, and waste. Regardless of who cuased it, it's a major problem, and we need to change our lifestyle or else our grandkids are going to grow up in a giant ball of brown goo.
  
• I believe that humans coexisted with dinosaurs. Since we were responsible for their extinct- Let's not even go there now.
  
• Have you seen An Inconvient Truth? Do you worship Al Gore? 1) I once saw An Inconvenient Truth on TV, became incredibly bored, and changed the channel after a few minutes. It was on again at a later time and I tried to watch it all the way through. I was still extremely bored. 2) Absolutely not. Sure, he's raised a lot of awareness about environmental problems. However, I disagree with a lot of his methods and feel that he does a great job of preaching to the choir while alienating critics.
  
• Recommendations for learning more? Too many to name (maybe a later post). I recently saw Food, Inc., a documentary about the food industry. Aside from the typical montages of chickens on conveyor belts and pigs in slaughterhouses, it provides a look at some of the unsafe and unsustainable practices that the food industry takes. I especially enjoyed their mention (albeit brief) of the effects that corn subsidies have on America, including both its health and environmental effects.

Stay tuned for my 3rd installment of the series. By request, I will be doing an entire post dedicated to the "hockey stick" graph. I just downloaded the original paper by Mann, Bradley, and Hughes and will read it once finals are over.

Thanks for reading...

Warming of the Global kind

For some reason, when often I tell someone who does not work in the environmental sector that I am interested in the environment, I get a response about global warming. Maybe that person just saw "An Inconvenient Truth" or really likes Al Gore or thinks that climate change is all made up. Actually, 9 times out of ten, it's the latter. I'd try to explain to that person how environmental science is NOT the same as studying global warming, or how one fluorescent light bulb really doesn't make a difference. Nonetheless, they keep complaining until they get tired. In light of that, I've decided to debunk the relationship between global warming and environmental science:

• Global warming is bulls**t because it snowed a lot this winter, and even last winter. If it's snowing more and more, it can't possibly be getting warmer. I get a lot of that. However, remember that regardless of how much it's snowing evidence still shows that the air has been getting warmer recently. Warmer air absorbs moisture more readily. With more moisture in the air on average, you are likely to get more snow in the winter.


• So, are you going to fix global warming? Environmental science IS NOT the same as studying climate change. That's called climatology. Environmental science is the study of the different forces in the environment, of which climate is only one.


• I'm not going to switch to the new fluorescent bulbs because they have dangerous stuff in them. So, it's true that compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) have mercury in them, which incandescent light bulbs do not. However, CFLs actually reduce the amount of mercury that's released into the atmosphere through coal power plant emissions by 79%. You can look at the EPA's factsheet for the original graph here.


• Yeah, but if you throw CFLs out, there are all sorts of toxic chemicals that could poison the environment. That's also true, which is why you're not supposed to throw them out in regular trash. Click on that link in the previous paragraph for recommendations for disposal and steps to take if you break a CFL. If you're argument is that we shouldn't use them because people won't dispose of them properly, there are already plenty of things that we use that people don't dispose of properly on a regular basis: printer cartridges, turpentine, paint thinners, industrial/drain cleaners, certain types of paint, motor oil, oil filters, car batteries, elderly relatives, antifreeze, computers, computer monitors, roofing tar, transmission fluid, countless older appliances using now-banned substances such as freon, etc. You get the idea.
• I read that things like switching from plastic bags to using cloth bags don't really help the environment that much. Why do you still take actions like that? It's all in how you view it. It's true that switching from plastic to cloth doesn't lower the amount of energy consumed drastically, but it's still a step. If you're the kind of person who believes that no progress is better than some progress, then it's a valid action. Plus, it's mildly appalling just how many bags the average family goes through. My roommates and I only use cloth bags for grocery store trips, and yet we still have a surplus of plastic bags that continues to grow.

This addresses some of the more common questions I get. Seeing as I didn't even get to cover half of my intended topics, there will probably be a part 2 in the near future. Feel free to comment below with other questions.

The big announcement

So yeah, I still haven't started my second blog yet. However, I promise I will very, very soon. No really. However, part of the reason I'm doing this is that I'm going to create two accounts to separate the types of content that I normally would post to a blog like this. This blog will remain a source for information about my life, about my travels, and some of my opinions. However, the second blog will contain some of my more controversial essays, my art, and my fictions writings.

That's why my second blog will be anonymous. I don't know how long it will remain anonymous, but I'm not planning to link it from this blog and I'm also not planning to mention anything it that would give off my identity. That's partially because I don't want people to look me up and get my rambling opinions and the like as the first thing they see. I'm not even going to tell anyone the url.

Part of it had to do with the fact that this blog was really losing its focus and needs to get back to that. It started with swamps, continued to art, then included El Salvador, jeopardy, and everything else in between. I want to focus this blog more on personal experiences and the environment. I'll still include photography and the like (I have really cool stuff along the way), so keep an eye out.

So there you have it. Thanks to everyone who reads this, and look out for an updated Blogging the Swamp and a heavily disguised second blog by me.

Modifications

So, I've been really busy with the start of the semester and everything. I'm extremely excited for all my classes, especially my senior project. I'm taking relatively few courses, but some of them will have a pretty large workload.

As some of you may have noticed, I don't really write about swamps anymore. It's not that I don't like swamps. I just have found other things to write. Therefore, look in the future for a second blog that I will be running in addition to this one. The difference is that my second blog will be focusing almost exclusivle on one topic (to be revealed later). Also, I will be inviting several of my close friends to serve as writers for the blog. I found this necessary because I was having enough trouble maintaining one blog by myself.