Ang Dabawenyo

As a blogger, no matter how long you’ve been blogging, it’s always a rush knowing you get more and more readers as you go along. And it’s particularly inspiring when someone actually appreciates your blog.

This I-love-Davao blog of mine just got blogged!

Sinag of sinagshine.blogspot.com chose Ang Dabawenyo in her entry in the ongoing You Got Blogged! review-a-blog competition. Her review is really heart-warming, and certainly adds to the motivation for me to write even more about my hometown. Thanks, Sinag!! Read more »

It’s not officially Christmas season yet, but in the Philippines it already is. It’s not even December yet, but malls, restaurants, shops, etc. have started adorning their places with Christmas decor. Such is the Filipino Christmas spirit. And it’s no different in Davao.

Take a look at Victoria Plaza. Their Christmas tree — which has become an expected fixture during the Yuletide season — is already up and brightly shining. The mall’s suurounding parking area is festooned with a thousand colorful lights, it looks so festive! Read more »

The Christmas season is again nearly upon us. For those who are no longer at the receiving end but are in fact at the giving end of Christmas gifts, it’s a yearly struggle to think of that adorable gift for family, friends and colleagues.

A friend of mine, Aloysius, has a great set of gift ideas for Dabawenyos. He calls his shop Photo Story. I guess that’s because he and his wife Beng believe that photographs should be presented in such a way that they can tell you their stories.

View their catalogue of gifts that can frame your photos and your memories so well: Christmas 2007 Offerings. They’ve got Photo Pillows, Desk Clocks with a photo on the face, Jelly Belts (a string of framed photos that you can hang on your Christmas tree). Here’s a unique gift: the ru-PIX Cube. Check out the online catalogue to see them all!

Photo Story is located in Buhangin. The website should have their contact numbers.

As some of my readers might already know, I’ve created a new blog for my food escapades: Davao Delicious. From now on, that’s now where I will write about eating, cuisine, restaurants, coffee shops, what have you…. It’s my newest blog, and probably not my last.

It wasn’t planned, though, this baby blog. You see, I’m doing a website for my friends, Rochelle and Romano Venuti (owners of Swiss Deli, Picobello Ristorante Italiano and Prego Café). In search of a domain name late at night several days ago, I came across a catchy and available name, davaodeli.com. Without delay, I purchased the domain, and told the husband-and-wife team about it the following day. However, they weren’t too keen on it. They still preferred to have their real company name in the upcoming website’s URL. (They eventually settled for dbutcherdbaker.com — coming soon!) Read more »

There’s an ongoing event in Davao, called Kalimudan. It showcases the region’s traditional cultures: the Bagobo, Manobo, Kagan, and others. I know that Davao has many local tribes (more politically-correctly referred to as “cultural minorities” — but I personally don’t like this term at all), but I didn’t know that there are in fact more!

The Kalimudan (ka lee MOO dahn) festival aims to increase the level of consciousness regarding the Davao region’s tribal communities. It’s a sad fact that the average Dabawenyo is not aware at all of his heritage, his history. This event will hopefully address the need for more awareness not only of our traditional peoples’ way of living, but also of their plight, concerns and current issues. Read more »

Recently, a reader left a comment on one of my posts regarding the importance of blogging as a means of getting a message across. Curious, I clicked on her name’s link, and it brought me to an advocacy blog called In Defense of our Safety. The way I see it, the blog is (1) an effort to document the blog owners’ activities concerning an issue they feel strongly about; and, (2) a way to let the community know about what’s going on.

What is going on? Well, apparently, there is a growing concern for the safety of the residents of Trinidad Greenhills in Ma-a. New housing developments, in their drive to complete more residential projects, are reportedly neglecting the safety of existing homeowners and their properties. Read more »

I’m so happy to announce that — finally! — I’ve gotten around to completing my Japanese-language WordPress blog: (ManMaru Kükan or “Maru’s Space”). I’ve had my maruo.blogspot.com blog forever (and it’s actually doing very well, SEO-wise), but I’d always wanted to port it to WordPress — I just never had that push I needed to do it.

But last week I got a Japanese client who’s asked me to include their website as part of my deliverables. And one of my closest friends, Ichido Miyake, has also decided to start blogging already. He’s begun writing in English for Bob Martin’s Live in the Philippines Web magazine, and will soon publish his Japanese articles on his own blog. Read more »

Tomorrow is my folks’ wedding anniversary, but my brother Jake, who’s in town for the long weekend, would be heading back to Manila already, so we decided to take Mom and Pop out for lunch today. We brought them to Picobello Ristorante Italiano, which is a great little place for family get-togethers.

Picobello’s offerings are some of the best you’ll ever find in Davao, whether you’re a fan of Italian food or not. Their pizzas sell like crazy, and their other pasta dishes are just heavenly! And to top it all off, Picobello’s waitstaff are well-trained and show it with their brand of service. Read more »

Coffee Beans

“A coffee bean is the seed of the coffee plant (the pit inside the red or purple fruit). The fruits, coffee cherries or coffee berries, most commonly contain two stones with their flat sides together. Coffee beans consist mostly of endosperm that contains 0.8 - 2.5 % caffeine, which is one of the main reasons the plants are cultivated.”

Hops

“One of the four principal ingredients of beer, hops are flower cones added to beer as a bittering agent, a preservative, and an aromatic.”

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Undas. Kalag-kalag. Day of the Dead. Technically — according to the Catholic Church — 1 November is actually All Saints’ Day; it’s the day after that’s supposed to be the day for remembering our departed relatives. But in traditional practice (one might even say it’s now part of our culture), millions of Filipinos troop to cemeteries on the 1st of November. That’s why each year, the President has to declare that day a non-working holiday.

(This year, even 2 November has been declared a holiday, by virtue of its being sandwiched between a holiday and the weekend. Is it logical? Go ask business owners. But that’s for another post….) Read more »