Ang Dabawenyo

From the time I posted my Venice of the south? piece last April, Davao City has had a couple more floods, and Dabawenyos simply accept it as a fact of life here. But the other night’s flash flood — and the rain wasn’t even that heavy — caused loss of lives (25 as of this [...]

As everyone probably knows, typhoons do not hit Davao at all. But that doesn’t mean we don’t experience flooding in some vital parts of the city. For years and years, flooding — due to bad drainage and sewage systems — has been a malignant problem, and nothing seems to be happening to completely address it. [...]

Davao City still enjoys the distinction of being the only city in the Philippines with an emergency response center available on call 24 hours a day. Just dial 911 on any landline or mobile phone (toll free) in case of emergency. Recently, the Davao City 911 Emergency Response Center opened a new operations hub in [...]

I read in the papers today that a Ninoy Aquino International Airport official (who prefers to be anonymous) is considering feng shui to “fend off ‘evil spirits’ that may be haunting the NAIA Terminal 3.” O.M.G. This high-ranking official was wise to request anonymity from that newspaper. Feng shui is a body of practices invented [...]

Recently, I invited my good friends Christian Te and Chattee Lara to a photo shoot of the newly-constructed Governor Generoso Bridge I (more popularly known as Bankerohan Bridge). The two were game for it, and we braved the traffic on the bridge last night. Both are avid photobugs, and are members of the Fanatic Photographers [...]

With all the Internet-based services and new technologies available to the global audience, it’s rather frustrating that we still don’t have a full-service mapping system for Davao City. All we have available are tourist maps that aren’t even to scale, and road maps that aren’t really road maps at all. The city government actually has [...]

Finally, after a year and a couple of months, the new Bankerohan Bridge is open to serve the riding public. Just in time for school opening! I’m going to try and post some photos of the new bridge. It’s a completely new structure, which was built in a span of 3 or 4 months, if [...]

In last Monday’s issue of Edge Davao, my fellow columnist, Mr. Aurelio Peña of Trading Post, wrote about the planned bridge that will span the gulf from mainland Davao to the island of Samal. We haven’t even finished rebuilding Bankerohan Bridge yet… but I digress. Mr. Peña’s article was entitled “Arab money to build Davao-Samal [...]

At the threshold of summer… and it’s raining. I hear from my friends in Manila that it’s getting really hot over there, but here in Davao it’s been raining too much. Not that I’d rather it was hot here. But, the rain’s dampening my spirits. I’ve never really liked the rain — it’s always caused [...]

The old PTA Grounds, which was recently renovated and given a major makeover, is now known as “People’s Park.” The winner of the name-the-park contest is Romeo Sardon, 75, of Matina. He won the P50,000 prize money for having his entry chosen to be the park’s name from now on. Sardon is a retired electrician [...]