hide and seek

it's my birthday today, and in celebration, the sky has opened up with most amazing torrential downpour. truly a philippines rainy season phenomenon. absolute rivers are flowing down the street and it's impossible to move without getting drenched to the skin, even with an umbrella. happy birthday to me!

if this were a novel, i would be very worried about the pathetic fallacy. but as all signs point this this being real life, and not shakespeare, i'm not going to worry about it too much.

in the spirit of birthdays, as a gift from me to you, here are some pictures of me in the field taken by my friend miki.

see? i'm right there behind the clothesline. you can sort of see my pink bandana. this was a few weeks ago in valenzuela city.

see that blonde ponytail on the left? that's me!

here's a good one of the back of my head in caloong. by the way, the bandana is not a fashion statement. pure necessity. it's a great stink guard, dust filter, and sweat catcher. that it looks cute is an unintended side effect.


well, at least you can see my face in this one. here we are in a pedicab! and now, i am off to enjoy food, drinks and tagalog movies on my very special day.

closing the books on month one.

it's official - i survived my first month in manila!

the data from the measles campaign is starting to roll in now, so have been spending most of this week getting crossed eyes looking at excel spreadsheets and wrangling sas. it's all coming together though, and i think i will go out for more field work on friday and leave the data behind. which is great news for you (the readers, and future listeners of stories) because last week had such adventures as:

• stumbling across a cock fight (already described, with photos).
• traveling in almost every transportation device in the philippines : jeepney, bus, tricycle, pedicab, fx, taxi, and train.
  
• getting a few minutes into an interview before realizing i was in a brothel. oops.
• receiving a police escort into a slum. they called themselves the "delta force", a little unnecessarily, i thought. especially since they didn't even go in with us, but rather waited on the street.
  

this week i .... hmmm. i had a lot of trouble importing my data file into sas. for some reason the file kept importing with records missing. but i figured it out eventually - it had to do with trying to use a variable in the class statement of proc summary that had missing values.

riiiiight. which stories would you rather hear about??

unrelated to work, i've discovered that although 'sweet caroline' has everyone on their feet in canada.... not so much when doing karaoke in the philippines. lesson learned. stick to ballads & break up songs. and thankfully, copacabana has universal appeal. phew!

hope you are all enjoying sweater weather in canada - it's still tank top & air conditioning weather here until further notice.

a-ok

quick update : in case you heard about the bombing in manila today, i wasn't anywhere near the area & am just fine.

if you didn't hear about it, don't start worrying now :-)

in the field

here's the post you've been waiting for - a real nuts & bolts description of what the heck i am doing here.... WITH PICTURES!

as mentioned very briefly soon after i arrived, i'm part of a team working to support the national measles campaign in the philippines, which starts tomorrow and goes until november 15. the goal of the campaign is to immunize every child in the philippines between 9 months and 48 months, which translates into approximately 9 million kids. in a month. ok, big job.

our job is to conduct rapid coverage assessments to evaluate the campaign while it's in progress to pick up areas with missed kids so teams can go back and re-vaccinate. based on population estimates we've randomly selected barangays (similar to wards - the lowest administrative unit here) where we will focus our efforts, and then non-randomly selected out affluent barangays (where everyone is vaccinated anyways), and non-randomly selected in the poorest of the poor - where no one wants to go and will likely have the most missed kids. now that we have identified the barangays, we keep in touch with the city health departments and once they tell us the area has been completed we go in and randomly sample 25 families for interviews and evaluation of the house marking applied during the campaign.

some of the cities in metro manila began the campaign early, so we were able to go out today (yes, on a sunday) and begin some preliminary validation! here's my day, in picture format:

an example of how tough some of these houses are to reach. down an alley, around a corner, up a ladder (or two) in some cases.... this picture is a bunch of my team cramming into a doorway on our first interview. thankfully, we don't always travel en masse...



as a foreigner, you're always attracting attention, sometimes from above...

it's my first time in a tricycle! and look how excited i am. a tricycle is basically a motorcycle with sidecar that can fit up to four people (or more, if you cram). so, i'm off to the second site in the tricycle!


the second site was actually on the border of two cities, and this was the border.

some of my teammates crossing the bridge from one side of the barangay to the other.

when we got to the other side, a very excited local came up to dana & i and told us to come with him. where did he take us? to a cock fight, if you can believe it! if you can't, here are photos. it looks like a well attended cock fight to me, but i have no frame of reference.

i was told this was the winner.

after the cock fight, it was back to work. and over another bridge. this one more rickety than the last one by far!

here's me with some of the many kids that followed us around. dana had climbed up a ladder to a house on the second story, and took this one from up there.

here i am doing an interview! not speaking tagalog could be a bit of a barrier...


i saved my favourite picture for last... everybody we met today was really sweet and kind and so willing to let us into their homes. it was really amazing.

today was a good day.

call & response

boy, has it ever been smoggy and grey and cloudy in manila!
.
..
....
......

(c'mon, people! you know the drill)

how smoggy and grey and cloudy is it?

it's been SO smoggy and grey and cloudy in manila, it took 3 WEEKS for the mountains around manila to finally come into view.

seriously. i didn't even know they were there.

weekend #2 (of many to come) in manila

the culture shock is subsiding a bit, and i've started to see some beauty in manila. decaying beauty, but beauty nonetheless. manila is a city with an interesting history. i don't pretend to know all of it, but i do know that they have been colonized by the british, spanish, and americans, and the battle of manila in 1945 destroyed a lot of the old city, which led to a mostly chaotic rebuilding. as such, manila is a very strange & interesting, if somewhat disjointed, city.

some of the highlights from this weekend (pictures below):

• wandering around the san andres market, conveniently located 5 minutes from my place. my new favourite fruit : lansones. yum! mangosteens... not so much.
• drinks & music at the hobbit house, a manila institution famous for a) it being a co-operative of little people who operate a hobbit themed bar (complete with a round door to get in!), and b) great live music. in that order, obviously.
• taking a calesa around intramuros, the site of the original city of manila. it is a completely walled city, built in the 1500s (i think). you can walk around the entire city on the wall. even after hundreds of years of earthquakes, typhoons, and battles there are some really beautiful spots. again, decaying beauty. but beauty.
  
• late lunch at the aristocrat, another manila institution. my pick : sizzling gambas. yum again! stocking up on choco crinkles at the bakeshop afterwards goes without saying, of course.
  
• relaxing evening at om spa, conveniently located just 2 blocks away. check this out, ladies - an hour long swedish massage (best i've ever had!) AND a pedicure was only.... $16. you know i am going back.... weekly!

intramuros:



(our driver, danilo, and his horse rambo)
san andres market:


mmm, pig head on a hook!

things i have learned so far

1. i will never complain about the air quality in toronto again. you ain't seen nothin' until you've seen the black smudginess of the air here. triple ugh. or, if i do complain i will have a better sense of how bad it can get!
   
2. when walking on sidewalks in manila, there is a fine balance between having to look down so you don't step in, or on, something bad, and not looking down because you do not even want to know what is on the ground. i have yet to master this tightrope.
   
3. related to point number three, when walking in manila open toed shoes should be avoided at all costs. as well as any shoes you like and want to stay nice.
   
4. absolutely everything here is sweet. everything!! i tried to find a loaf of bread without sugar, and when i found one labelled "sugar free", it was sweetened with aspertame. on the plus side, slightly easier to cut back on the carbs.
   
5. filipinos eat 5 meals a day. officially, 3 meals and 2 snacks but really, 5 meals. example : i was at a meeting last week and two hours after lunch, it was snack time. fine. the snack? spaghetti with meat sauce and garlic bread. that's some snack!
6. people here prefer to drive an hour across town to do things in person rather than e-mail or call. a very different experience for me.
7. the predictive text on my phone doesn't recognize the words "karaoke" or "hobbit". don't ask how i found that out.
8. i can expect lots & lots of rain until december. and the national weather service is predicting five typhoons this fall. super. guess i should keep my kitchen well stocked....