The "calm" before the storm

With the memory of last year's disaster brought on by super typhoon Milenyo still fresh in people's minds, the whole country's been in a generally chaotic state in anticipation of another typhoon expected to hit the country over the weekend.

Late last week, PAGASA had forecast that this new typhoon (Mina/Mitag) would be making landfall in the Bicol region and then would pass through the lower portion of the Southern Tagalog region, particularly over the islands of Masbate and Mindoro. Our president even cut short her visit to Singapore in order to come rushing home to oversee preparations in the regions to be affected by the typhoon: people were moved to evacuation centers, billboards taken down, etc.

Here at home I simply prepared for another long power outage: I made sure that my jug of water (for brushing teeth) in the bathroom was full and that my pail was full of water (for flushing the toilet and for washing) as well. I tried to eat as much of the ice cream in our freezer as I could: I didn't want to leave any leftover to melt during the power outage. We also considered going to mass Saturday afternoon in case the weather became too stormy for us to go out this (Sunday) morning. (We eventually didn't when we later found out that the storm wasn't going to make landfall overnight.)

And so we waited for the weather to deteriorate further and for electricity to get cut off once it got dangerously windy.

In the meantime, I constantly checked the PAGASA website for the latest bulletins on the typhoon's progress. I also watched for the latest weather news on television. Curiously, the international news networks and another weather website (tropicalstormrisk.com) presented an entirely different forecast: that the typhoon would be traveling northwest and cross the northern tip of Luzon. Weird.

But surprise! The typhoon remained stationary for practically the whole day yesterday. Now, isn't that the perfect typhoon? I know typhoons are notorious for unexpectedly changing course. This one apparently hasn't even made up it's mind!

Anyway, with the typhoon staying put somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, the weather yesterday and for most of today remained calm and mostly cloudy. Why, even the sun took a peek through the clouds yesterday morning, just enough for our cat to enjoy a bit of sunbathing in our backyard. It still remained unusually cool throughout the day though; temperatures hovered around 25C here inside my room. It's usually 28-30C at this time of the year.

And then suddenly late yesterday, PAGASA changed it's forecast: the typhoon was now to travel in the northwest direction toward Central Luzon and Northern Luzon.

Hmmm. I felt that there was something really fishy here. I found it strange that PAGASA stuck to its old forecast for so long when all other weather forecasts were saying otherwise. It seems that the previous forecast was made in order to give certain provincial government officials an excuse to declare a state of calamity in their respective provinces/regions and receive funds as a result.

Anyway, I suppose the typhoon will finally make landfall tonight albeit way up north of us. The wind began to pick up a bit only early this evening even if typhoon signal no. 1 had been declared over this area since Friday.

We shall have to wait and see what the weather will be overnight and tomorrow morning.

A new book and an old car battery

I got a bit of a surprise today: the book on St. Therese's last conversations that I had ordered through St. Joseph's Thesaurus three weeks ago arrived.

I was a bit embarrassed though because the Carmelite brother who watches the shop was the one who personally brought the book to my office. I had been expecting an e-mail notifying me of the book's arrival with instructions saying where I could pick up the book. Anyway, I gratefully received the package and thanked the young fellow for the special delivery.

He also told me that the other book was arriving sometime next week. That's something to look forward to!

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I also received another but less pleasant surprise later in the day when I was about to leave work.

As usual, I put my bags and other things on the front passenger seat then sat down in the driver's seat, inserted the car key into the ignition and turned it. As I was about to pull the seat belt across my front, I noticed something amiss: the dashboard lights had not turned on. Thinking that I had not yet turned the key, I tried turning it. But no, I had already turned it and yep, no dashboard lights at all!

That's when it occurred to me that the car battery was probably dead! But why? Did I leave my headlights on? I had turned on my parking lights when I drove to work in the morning because it was pouring. Maybe I had forgotten to turn them off when I shut off the engine when I arrived at work. Or maybe I turned the lights on by mistake thinking I had turned off the windshield wipers. I was so confused that I couldn't recall twiddling with any of the switches then. Oh well, whatever the cause was there was nothing I could do now but call home and ask somebody to come and pick me up.

So I ran back to the office and managed to get our utility worker to open the main office where the telephones were. I called home and told my father what happened. He said that maybe I had left the gearshift on drive. I told him, no, I was sure it was on park. Anyway, he said the battery terminals probably needed cleaning and that he was coming over in our other car to help.

I went back outside and waited beside my car, hoping my father would also bring along the new battery that he bought last year yet with the intention of replacing the old one in my car. I somehow knew that the car battery was really dead and needed replacing.

My father finally arrived after a good 45 minutes--I guessed that it took time to get together the necessary tools and paraphernalia--by which time it was already dark.

I first showed him what happens when I turn the ignition key. This time the dashboard lights came on but they were very dim and flickered. He decided to try cleaning the terminals hoping that would clear up the problem.

We opened the car hood and I held the flashlight he brought with him while he cleaned the car battery terminals which we found were not corroded at all. (He had his tools in a cute little bayong that he salvaged from an food basket gift we received a few Christmases ago.)

Anyway, we tried the ignition again but the lights were still dim. So okay, that meant that the battery was probably really dead.

My father then removed the old battery and replaced it with the new one that he had put in the trunk of our other car along with a pair of jumper cables. Once again, I held the flashlight while my father connected the cables to the new battery.

Just then, it started to drizzle!

As soon as the new battery was secured and connected, I ran over to the driver's side to try the ignition. The dashboard lights came on bright and steady! I turned the key one more time and to my relief the car engined started.

What timing: the drizzle was quickly turning into rain as we hurriedly put away the tools and closed the car hood. I managed to yell my thanks to my father as the raindrops got bigger and rattled on the car roofs and we both got into our cars. Then we drove home.

Fifteen minutes had passed since my father arrived to help.

Remembering that we had similarly found the car battery in our other car dead one morning several weeks ago (my mother was leaving for work but the car refused to start), I later asked my father if car batteries really just go kaput without any warning. He told me that the old ones didn't used to but that the new ones were known to do so.

Now, isn't that cheery thought? (Of course, I'm just being sarcastic here.) I just hope I don't get stranded again somewhere when that happens with this new car battery!

A visit to the old library

This afternoon I decided to check out the university library for books that I might list as references for the courses I am teaching this school term. That wasn't the only reason. Having relied mainly on my own books as well as books available in our department's reading room, I had not been to the university library for nearly ten years and was therefore also very curious to see what it was like after all this time.

Actually I wasn't expecting much. For the lack of support from the government and alumni, our university library has been low on funds that are necessary to purchase new books, maintain subscriptions to scientific journals and keep the collection updated as a whole. As a result, the library has become more of an archive of old outdated books and journals instead of the a state-of-the-art library that one usually expects of a university library. And this was true even when I was a student: I remember browsing through books published in the 60s and 70s when I had to do research for some project or homework.

Anyway, after trudging up the hill to the library building, I entered the building and was disappointed to find that the place was no longer cooled using a central air-conditioning system. Instead there were several electric stand fans placed in strategic locations that did little to ventilate the vast floor space. The heat wasn't so bad then since there were hardly any students around--which in itself was a shock to me. But I suppose most had already gone home for the weekend since only a few classes were scheduled on Fridays nowadays. In any case, I still wondered how warm it would be if the place was filled with students browsing through the collection and sitting on the old familiar library desks.

There was a slight improvement though in the library's services: there were computer terminals placed on long high desks for people to browse through the library's online card catalogue. Still, I noticed that most students continued to use the old card catalogue that stood at one side of the room. Perhaps only the most recent acquisitions were included in the online database.

I looked up the call numbers of a few books I was interested in then proceeded to look through the shelves. There I was not surprised to find that there were hardly any new books: Nearly all books I found on the shelf were published at least ten years ago. Come to think of it, while browsing through books looking for references for my courses, I don't think I ever came across a book published in the last five years. Nevertheless, I decided to take note of a few that my students might find useful at least as a sources of additional examples and exercises.

I was pleased though to find a book on a field that I was interested in and wanted to know more about. Yes, it was old just like the rest but I thought it might at least be useful for brushing up on the subject.

After several minutes of not finding anything else that I might want to borrow, I went up to the circulation counter and asked to apply for a borrower's card. I was made to fill up an application card and show my ID for verification purposes.

Then a funny thing happened: the library staff at the counter couldn't find a single blank borrower's card for faculty members. He sifted through papers in his desk drawer and found a few but none were printed properly. He consulted another staff member who also went through his things. Still, they couldn't find the right borrower's card, only the usual ones for undergraduate students and for graduate students. They eventually went to someone who seemed like their supervisor who went through several more drawers and filing cabinets.

All the while, I was wondering if I might be in fact the first faculty member to apply for a borrower's card for years. Perhaps the university's faculty members seldom visited the library itself (indeed, I didn't spot any other faculty member at the library then) and relied on the more updated collections found in the different reading rooms. Or else, many got their materials directly from the Internet. Ah, how times have changed. But what a pity. That's probably the reason why many are unaware of the poor state of the university library.

In any case, after a good ten minutes the library staff finally found a borrower's card in an old pile stashed somewhere and gave it to me to fill up.

It was then that another thing struck me: the library's borrowing system was woefully outdated itself. I had been to many libraries elsewhere in the world where books were bar-coded and simply scanned along with a the borrower's ID to complete a book borrowing transaction. Here, it was still the old manual borrower's card system.

Ah, well. One will just have to make the most of what is available and what the university can afford.

New leadership adjustments

Our department has had a new director for a month and a half now. But that's basically the only change in the department's organizational hierarchy because the rest of us who were appointed to administrative positions in the department by the previous director were retained.

I think it's a most practical step for a new director not to appoint new "cabinet members". Making the least or no changes at all would make the transition from the old to the new administration much smoother management-wise. Each of us has been at our respective positions for three years (the length of the term of a department head) and have already become familiar with the current university administration's policies and procedures. But we would have to adjust to our new director's management style as well.

In my case, I suddenly found myself already having to explain a few things to this new boss about matters related to registration and a lot of other things we usually have to do at the beginning of each school term.

Then when he was informed that it is required of each department to justify teaching load assignments of its teaching staff, he apparently took it upon himself to write the letter to the university official concerned with such things. In the past, my old boss would delegate that responsibility to me. I would have to prepare the supporting documents as well according to the university administration's specifications.

So I had been struggling to work on the latter yesterday--lots of interruptions as usual--and was about to start writing the letter with our justification this morning when our new director suddenly showed up at my office with his letter with some supporting documents attached. (I don't mind at all that my new boss wrote the letter himself. That way, the university officials will contact him and not me in case they have questions. He-he.) But when I looked through the attachments, it dawned on me that our director wasn't aware that supporting documents had to follow a specific format and I had to tell him so. I assured him however that I was almost done with the required supporting documents (in the correct format) and would be able to hand them to him within an hour.

At that point, I realized that this was just one of the few things about our new director that I'd have to adjust to.

My old boss was rather fond of delegating a lot of work to supporting administrative staff but was still very much a hands-on type of administrator. She would be constantly dropping by checking on progress, making suggestions and sometimes providing input herself. She was fond of calling meetings among us with administrative positions to update us and discuss issues taken up at the meetings held among different department heads in our college.

On the other hand, while this new director of ours similarly would delegate work to others he had less of a micro-management style and appeared to be more output-oriented. He would choose to leave it up to us to work things out by ourselves and then inquire only in the end about the results. And instead of calling meetings, he would rely on emails to send us information. (Whenever I'd peep into his office, I'd always find him sitting at his PC staring intently at the screen and busy typing up something.)

It will be interesting to see how things would work out in the next three years under this new boss.

Missing the signs

I've probably been approached by the third time this past week by a student who apparently was not aware of the new set of requirements we had made for working on a final project.

Since the teaching staff had decided on the new set of requirements before the last school term, we had to make the students aware of this. So I hung several posters around the building before the registration period then to announce the new requirements. One particular requirement I was anxious for the students to know was that they needed to present a proposal before this school term registration period before they can be allowed to enroll in the final project course.

To my satisfaction, students who planned to work on their final project for the coming academic year read my announcements and were able to meet up with their supervisors to work on a proposal. This is why we had that one day of proposal presentations last week.

Unfortunately, there were a handful of students who probably don't make it a habit to read the announcements posted on our bulletin boards. And these were the ones who approached me days after we were done with the proposal presentations. By that time it was of course too late. We had made it very clear that they had to present a proposal by last Tuesday.

It mystifies me how they could have missed any of the announcements I posted. I had one on my door, another at the bulletin board where we always post announcements about final projects, another on the corkboard outside our main entrance and a few more on each of the corkboards just outside out lecture halls.

For me not reading those posters was completely inexcusable. After all, the rest of their classmates didn't miss seeing those posters. So why did they?

Replaced by machines?

The Computer History Calendar gadget on my iGoogle page featured the following quote today:

The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
-- Sydney J. Harris, American journalist.

When I read that, the following thought came to me: Perhaps another real danger is that men will leave the thinking to computers.

It has long been the lament of high school and grade school teachers that the arithmetic skills of their pupils have declined since the invention of portable electronic calculators.

I for one believe that I myself have also fallen victim to the advancement of technology. I remember well when I had to use typewriters to type out my reports in high school as well as in college. Back then one had to be careful when typing, to strike the keys in the correct order and to watch out when you're about to reach the end of the line. Nowadays, word-processing software take care of justification and automatically insert a carriage return. Incorrectly typed words are corrected on the fly as well. For instance, I often mistype "the" as "teh". Unfortunately, that bad habit will probably go uncorrected because I will continue to type "teh" but the software will always replace that with "the".

With that I certainly hope my mental faculties won't be (at least further) diminished by the convenience of computers and smart software.

This blog's readability

Hey! You need to be doing postgrad work to understand this blog. Ha ha ha.

Yesterday I was checking a blog where one of the posts showed off the blog's readability. I decided to try it out just for fun for both my blogs. As I already said, this one received a College reading level rating. Curiously, it rated the reading level of my Federer blog as "Genius". I think though that its rather appropriate: you need to be a genius to read about a genius.

I really wonder what criteria it uses to rate a blog or profile's reading level as I've noticed that it gave rather well-written blogs I read a "High School" or "Grade School" reading level. The website does claim that the tool works for most websites.

Still, I'm curious.

Old homes via mail

One of the blogs I subscribe to via Google Reader is Interesting Thing of the Day. Given my love for trivia, I find the varied topics discussed there, well, interesting.

Recently, the topic was on the mail-order homes offered by Sears during the early part of the 20th century. (Goodness, saying that makes it seem so long ago.) While it was entertaining to read about the logistics entailed by mail-ordering a home during those times, I was more curious about the house designs then.

So I visited the archived Modern Homes Sears website hoping to see floor plans of the Modern Homes that were offered and was amused but not surprised to note some common features of the houses back then:

• As expected, the kitchen layout didn't indicate the presence of a refrigerator until the later models. Pantries appeared to be the standard instead in the early models.
• Some models didn't have a living room per se but rather a parlor (is this a Britishism for living room?).
  
• Cooking ranges appeared to be rather large. I think they were still using wood stoves as today's gas stoves were most probably unknown at that time and electricity was a luxury? (Sorry, I'm not an expert in this area.) The description of one house (The Wabash, Model Nos. 248) in fact explains that "Under the work table [in the kitchen] is a fuel box which can be filled once a week. The ashes drop from the stove through an iron pipe to the concrete ash bin beneath the floor."
• Long continuous kitchen counters didn't seem to be the norm either. There would be a sink with just enough counter space for dishes, a work table, the aforementioned range and a cupboard or two.
• Bathrooms were optional particularly in the smallest houses. The main page explains that "An outhouse could be purchased separately...". If ever a bathroom was present some floor plans, particularly that of the early models in the 1900's to 1920's, seem to indicate the old free-standing footed bathtubs rather than the fitted ones in use today and apparently introduced in the 1930's. Even then, each house was generally equipped with just one full bath. There was no such thing as a separate bath for the master bedroom which in itself was nonexistent as most rooms were simply labeled as bedrooms or chambers.
• There seemed to be greater variety in the architectural styles in the later models: a few houses featuring what I think is the Tudor style started to be introduced.
  

What I also found intriguing was a sentence in one of the descriptions that implied the imposed gender roles that was typical of that era:

From the screened porch you can enter direct to the combination dining room and living room without disturbing the women in the kitchen.

That statement seems to not only assume that women were relegated to the home and kitchen but also that it was a man who, being responsible for providing a roof over his family, was the one going through the sales catalog and likely the one as well to make the decision regarding the choice of a home.

Altogether, browsing through those floor plans provided me with a rare glimpse of the lifestyle a hundred years ago.

Trying to please everybody

I've already mentioned that one of my responsibilities at work was setting teaching assignments for our department for each school term.

This involves first of all deciding how many of each type of class (lecture or laboratory) each faculty member will be handling. This is a tough thing to do given the we are short of staff compared to the courses that we have to offer each school term. Most of the time, I have to make the painful choice as to who would have to handle more than the required normal teaching load.

The next thing I do is decide which courses will be handled by whom. In doing so, I naturally have to consider each faculty member's teaching preferences and, to a certain extent, qualifications to handle a course. As always, there are the very popular courses, which are those that most would prefer to teach, and then there are unpopular ones which are the courses nearly nobody wants to teach. (I happen to be handling a pair of courses that nobody else wants to teach and this is the main reason why I've been stuck with these two courses for nearly ten years now.) Most of the time, I get to assign to each faculty member the courses they would like to handle. But since somebody has to teach the unpopular courses and there are not enough sections for the popular courses for all those who want to teach them, I have to make another set of painful decisions regarding who would be forced to teach the unpopular courses and who cannot teach the popular ones.

Then the last thing I do when making these teaching assignments is assign specific lecture and laboratory sections to each faculty member so that the class schedules are not in conflict each other. While this is complicated as well and takes a few hours to do manually, this is not as big a hurdle as the one regarding teaching preferences.

Once all is done--and it sometimes takes me one or two days depending on how I get interrupted at work in the office--I finally release the teaching assignments to the rest of the teaching staff in the department.

And that is exactly what I did yesterday. I mailed everybody a copy of the teaching assignment and waited in my office for the first bomb to drop. And sure enough they started coming.

From those who were forced to teach the unpopular courses I got the expected howls of protest. But what can I do? I simply tell them to find somebody to swap courses/sections with if they really don't like what's given to them. There are those who also let me know that they don't like their schedules because they would like to have so-and-so day of the week free. So I tell them the same thing I tell the latter group: find somebody to swap sections with. Others are more resigned and accept what is given to them. But generally to those who are unhappy with their teaching assignments I just have to step back and wash my hands of the matter because I've done what I can do.

Besides, I've tried handing over the responsibility to others but they've all refused. They all understand that it is after all a very tough job trying to please everybody.

A very brief meeting

Yesterday I received a note saying that I had to attend a meeting this morning to present one of our curricular revisions to a the committee who is in-charge of evaluating such things before it is passed on to other committees higher up in the administrative hierarchy of the university.

As the meeting was set at 9am, I once again showed up at work earlier than usual to attend to other matters before I left. Then after posting a note on my door on my whereabouts and letting our department secretary know that I wouldn't be around for the next hour or so, I set off walking at around 8:50am to the venue which was at a building about a couple of minutes away.

Upon arriving there, I was shown to the conference room. To my surprise and slight irritation, I found the place empty: I was the very first to arrive there. Knowing that I would be wanted back at my office to sign papers as usual, I hoped that the members of the committee would arrive soon so that we could get the meeting over and done with. After all, we only had three short curricular proposals to discuss.

[This so-called Filipino time where Filipinos generally arrive very late for meetings or gatherings is one of my pet peeves. I recall being asked to be piano accompanist to a group for a particular event. I would always show up a good ten minutes before scheduled rehearsals to set up my keyboard and other paraphernalia. But the the group's members would always arrive half an hour late. I was so irritated with having to waste so much time waiting that I refused to play for the group for subsequent events.]

After waiting for about 5 minutes, somebody finally did come. We had to wait for a few more minutes before the committee chair arrived. And then it took another ten minutes for two more committee members to arrive. Still, the meeting couldn't start yet because a quorum of five was needed.

Finally when it was apparent that nobody else would be arriving--it was a few minutes past 9:30am!--the committee chair decided to start. So we went through the usual procedure of taking up curricular proposals: I as resource person would present each proposed revision and the committee members would make comments. As expected, we were done in a mere ten minutes--which is a laugh, because it took more than twice that time to wait for everybody to come.

Anyway, we all made our quick goodbyes--the committee chair was just as anxious as I was to get back to his office to attend to registration matters--then I started my walk back to my office building. I had gone less than ten meters when I heard somebody calling to me. It was one of the staff at the office where we had the meeting: I still had to sign the attendance sheet and would I mind waiting for the snacks to arrive? It turns out that the office staff had ordered some sandwiches and drinks but our meeting was over so quickly that the snacks had not yet arrived by that time!

In the end, when the snacks did arrive a good twenty minutes later we all just grabbed a sandwich each and left the drinks to the office staff. (By the way, I had the sandwich for lunch.)

Stood up and harrassed

Yep. I got stood up today but it wasn't such a big deal. After all, it was just a "date" with a colleague to discuss a proposal to institute a new course. Haha.

This happens to be the third time our meeting had to be postponed. We had agreed to meet two Fridays ago but I fell ill in the morning and had to go home before lunchtime. Before I left though, we reset the meeting to the next Wednesday, 31 October. But when I dropped by his office on Tuesday to confirm that meeting, he said he couldn't be around because he was driving his mother to a province far up north to see her dying father. So we decided to have our meeting today and as it turns out, he apparently forgot about it.

I had reported to work early today in order to get some things done before our meeting which I believed would start around 10am since my colleague usually shows up at work around that time. But as the hours rolled by and my colleague remained absent, I decided that he had forgotten all about our meeting (my cellphone battery was dead so I couldn't contact him either) and turned my attention to other pressing matters I had on my to-do list. So it wasn't so bad that I got stood up.

Besides, I had important letters to write for various purposes to administration officials in relation to the coming registration period. I was also busy with setting teaching assignments for our teaching staff for the coming semester--which is one of the toughest tasks I've ever handled as we are don't have enough faculty members to handle all the courses we need to offer each school term.

In fact, I nearly didn't get those done as I was always being interrupted by a constant stream of students coming in to my office to see me for all sorts of reasons. A small percentage of these were students who were dismissed due to failing grades and needed my recommendation to back up their appeal for readmission. These cases take a lot of my time as I have to review their supporting documents and talk to each student before deciding whether I should recommend approval or disapproval of his/her readmission. Some of the students were those whose final projects I was supervising as well and it took some time as well to read drafts of their final papers before I could approve of them. Most of the students though who came simply needed my signature for all sorts of forms they had to accomplish for the coming registration period. While it doesn't take too much time for me to ask a few questions before affixing my signature on the forms, these brief interruptions can still be annoying as they usually break my train of thought when I'm especially working on something difficult--like making teaching assignments!

Sigh. Such is my life in between school terms.

Proposal presentations

Most of today was spent with a couple of colleagues at one of our lecture halls listening to students present proposals for their final projects. The main purpose of these presentations held at the beginning of each school term is for us to assess whether each student's proposed project is worth implementing as a final project.

As there are around a hundred students enrolled in our undergraduate degree program in each year and only a handful of instructors who can serve as project supervisors, this is a long and tedious process. We instructors are practically forced to sit nearly all day scanning written proposals for their main points and watching slide presentations while listening to the students explain what they plan to do.

The presentations provide one of a few opportunities for me to pick out students whom we might tap to join the teaching staff when they graduate. I'm usually pleasantly surprised to find some students who can prepare good slide presentations and explain concepts clearly in straight Filipino or English--a rarity these days when most people use a shockingly ridiculous mix of both languages.

On the other hand, I'm appalled that most are still unable to make a decent presentation. Instead of including just key words or phrases in their slides, they write entire paragraphs--often verbatim from their written proposals!--which they tend to read off the slide rather than expound on using their own words. (There was one student who did have phrases only on her slides but read right off her written proposal.) I sometimes wonder if they were ever taught the proper way to present a seminar in the required undergraduate seminar course which they were supposed to have taken last school term.

This disappointment together with the fact that listening to proposal presentations hours on end can be very wearying--we had lunch almost an hour late today--is what I don't like about this part of being a project supervisor in particular.

Nevertheless I find the exercise very enlightening and gratifying at the same time especially when students surprise me by coming up very much on their own with unique and unusual topics that I most probably would never have thought of.

Grand Tour 2007: Bringing art to the people

I was sort of bored yesterday: there was nothing that new to read on my Google Reader and I was pretty much done re-organizing my stuff here in my room. So I thought I'd check the television for a change and switched through channels yesterday in search of something interesting to watch.

That's when I saw something being shown on BBC that I found odd: a framed painting by Monet--or at least a full-scale facsimile of it--hanging not in a museum but on the outside wall of a building. And then came another, this time a portrait of Spain's King Philip IV by Velasquez hanging on some street corner apparently somewhere in London. A third was a magnificent painting of a famous horse named Whistlejacket by a painter named George Stubbs. Still another was a self-portrait by Rembrandt. Every time a new painting--each hanging on some wall out of doors--was shown a reporter came along to comment on it.

By this time, I was intrigued and couldn't resist looking up the Whistlejacket painting on the Internet (which is a habit of mine whenever I want to find out about something). That's when I learned about the National Gallery's (in London) Grand Tour 2007.

A press release by the Gallery about the special "exhibition" reads:

For twelve weeks, the streets of London are being turned into a Gallery - as around 30 full size recreations of National Gallery paintings are hung on the walls, in the most unexpected and unusual of places.

Masterpieces from Caravaggio to Constable will be vying for position among the bustling streets from Soho to Seven Dials. Celebrating the richness, diversity and stories of the National Gallery's permanent collection, the Grand Tour aims to encourage people to make the short journey to visit the genuine works, and many more, for free.

Each picture will be in a replica frame, and have an information plaque next to it - just as it has in the real Gallery. The plaques will also include a phone number, which people can call to access a specially recorded audio guide to that particular painting, and its artist.

Isn't that an wonderful concept? Although it's some sort of advertisement for the National Gallery's impressive art collection, it's an innovative way of introducing and educating the public about these masterpieces.

I wish they could do something similar here in this country to at least help familiarize our people with our local (professional) artists or even about classical music in general.

I've heard of the likes of Juan Luna, Felix Resurrecion Hidalgo and Fernando Amorsolo and have seen a few their paintings mainly in pictures in books or postcards and, in a few exceptional cases, in special art exhibits. But that's it. I think nearly the rest of their works are hidden in some expensive museum or remain unseen by the public in someone's private collection--which is a pity to say the least.

Plus I'm sure there are a lot more Filipino artists from the Spanish times whose body of work has been sadly lost or at best is virtually unrecognized nowadays. (I should know: My family's got a few intricately painted portraits whose creators are little known painters in the 1800's.)

Such art should be more accessible to the general public for it to be better appreciated as well as for the people to be more familiar with the long history of Filipino art.

Actually, I must be an old soul: I am partial to the neoclassic--not sure if that's the right term as I'm no art expert--works of Luna, et al., to that of the modern ones like those of Manansala, Baldemor or Sanso or those that I see on the covers of PLDT phone directories. And I think the younger generation is getting too much into the Japanese anime type of artwork, though I admire the style myself.

Anyway, I for one would love to see more of Hidalgo's paintings. I saw one of his portraits, that of an old friar, at the Bangko Sentral museum a couple of years ago and my jaw dropped at the sight. I never realized what a talented painter he was until then. In fact, after seeing that painting and a few more others at the same museum, I now prefer his style to Luna's.

A bright morning and lost in time

Just a couple of thoughts. (Ha ha. I suppose it's obvious I have a lot of time in my hands nowadays.)

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First, I woke up this morning to find my bedroom bathed in sunlight filtering through the white curtains on my bedroom windows which were facing southeast. It was a wonderful sight. Such a thing happens only during this time of the year when the sun is low and angled to shine right through my windows in the morning.

I'm really glad that I decided to switch to white curtains after having boring peach-colored ones for more than a decade. Having white curtains definitely brightens up the room.

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These breaks between school terms are a very welcome respite from the drudgery of teaching day in and day out. The only trouble is that I tend to lose track of time or what day of the week it is.

With Monday earlier this week being a holiday for instance, I was momentarily confused about what day it was yesterday when I reported to work. The different classes I would have each day of the week obviously served as some sort of time markers during the school term.

And this morning, I was slightly depressed to realize that today was already Thursday and that practically most of the week had gone by. I also began to wonder what I had done with all that time only to recall with some relief that at least I had spent it cleaning up my room and meeting with my numerous students at work. Thank God not everything had gone to waste!