On January 4th 2009, I was so lucky that my old high school classmates decided to set the venue of our reunion in Costa Marina Beach Resort. It gave me a chance to discover that there is indeed a paradise nearby my city. This post contains pictures that reveal the morning part of our reunion.

Meeting Place: Maryknoll High School of Panabo

A day before, we agreed to meet outside the school campus of our alma mater at 6AM.  It’s not unusual that when you meet a group of people for an event here in the Philippines at certain hour, everyone arrives the next hour. Tardiness is never good but you know, it happens. So I arrived early at 6AM to know if my classmates have gained some punctuality. And guess what? Most of them arrived at 7AM as expected! Nothing changed at all, same old!

Out of over dozens of classmates we had in our high school, only twelve people confirmed to join the “reunion” including myself.  From Panabo City, we rode an air-conditioned bus to a place in Davao City called Sasa, where we transferred to a boat for Costa Marina in the Island Garden City of Samal.

Boat Transfer to Samal Island

When we arrived in the wharf, we had to split our group into two for the boat transfer. I belong to group bound for the first boat. Like I said, I’ve never been to Samal Island until this event, so pretty much you can say that this was my first time to ride this type of boat. Although the sea between Davao City and Samal Island was pretty calm, I made sure that I sit near a lifejacket (just in case — hehehe). The boat took around 15 to 20 minutes for us to reach the island and since we are not frequent visitors, we decided to take pictures while we were still on the boat and immediately after we set our foot on the island.

It basically took us over 30 minutes of picture-talking since we landed considering the long walk before you actually enter the beach resort.

When we reached the entrance of the resort, a board reminded us that our entry is not free. Each of us had to pay PHP 100.00 ( or $2.17 USD ).

Costa Marina Beach Resort

Costa Marina Beach Resort is a unique blend of a nature and beach resort. There’s a nature-styled restaurant with matching tropical animals near the establishment (first time I saw a peacock there!) . The ambience of the place is rather romantic that I wished I could bring someone special and together be one with nature’s serenity. From there, the feeling was like we were inside a lush forest beside a pristine, white sand beach.

From Costa Marina, we can also view Davao City from the distance. All of that, along with breeze of cool wind in sunny mid-day, took away all our stress and worries.

In the next post, I will show you the activities we did in our little high school reunion besides swimming. Like this post, it will also be loaded with heaps of images that you’ll enjoy to see.

As for Costa Marina, this certainly isn’t the best beach resort of Samal Island considering that the fees are cheaper and local-friendly. Low-budget tourist can go here with no problems but if I would bring someone with more luxurious taste, the Pearl Farm Resort is basically the best beach resort to enjoy if you come to Davao City, Philippines.

Like what we do annually every December 25th, this year the Christmas Eve reunion I had with my family and relatives in Ma-a, Davao City, was a bit good because on 25th we went to a local tourist spot called Davao Crocodile Park. The park is not really a new place in the city and I’ve seen it featured many times on local television. However, I must confess that it was my first time to enter that park and seeing the place in person is very wonderful. It was my first time to witness as well some tropical animals that I couldn’t find in my backyard. You can say how exciting the tour was by reading this post and watching the pictures.

Davao Crocodile Park is pretty near to where we had a family reunion. As you can see from the picture above, the weather wasn’t good when we went to park. As soon as we arrived, we learned that the entrance fee is PHP 50 ($1 for each child) and PHP 100 ($2 for each adult).

We own one black-capped lory at home and even though it knows how to mimic or call my name, that bird wasn’t that cool. The one I saw in Crocodile Park proved to be one.

Here’s the juvenile cage of crocodiles. We tried to tease these static-looking animals and they are not friendly. Imagine if you were thrown inside this cage, you’ll definitely be devoured by all of them.

Glad that we went to Davao Crocodile Park, I was able to see in person a real ostrich walking in front of my eyes and I was able to feed them (at safe distance) as well. They walk like a sexy chick but whenever I stare their legs I can’t help to think of finger-lickin’ good fried chicken at KFC.

I’m so glad that I brought the camera with me. I never had pictures such as this when I was a kid. If you ever visit Davao Crocodile Park with your family, a digital camera will be useful. Make sure its batteries are full charged.

There’s an ethnic statue between crocodile breeding pens so we took some shots. We’re the folks of the Shire. lol

I was thinking to buy a souvenir item until I saw the price tag.

Overall, the tour at Davao Crocodile Park was truly great. As I enjoyed the splendor of nature, I was thinking a lot of a special person whom I wished to be with to have a perfect Christmas but he’s too damn far from me. I also wished my friends in USA (Gerardo), Canada (John MacDonald) and Australia (Brad and Chris Morris) would be able to come here in Davao City one day to relax and be one with nature (though they might already be). Davao Crocodile Park is just one of the city’s gems and many are still hidden and they await for you to be explored.

Merry Christmas everyone!

It has been more than a year now since I first enjoyed SmartBro Internet service and I must say that the last 12 months have been excellent with few problems with connectivity. SmartBro’s customer care hotline have been top notch. I would only need to dial *1888 on my mobile phone, press call button, and then a technical representative would assist me shortly to troubleshoot my Internet connection. If they are unable to solve the problem, the customer care representative then forwards a request to dispatch contractors to my place within three days and check my network hardware and settings.

Things Have Changed

Beyond my first year things have significantly changed, I’ve experienced a series of Internet blackout in the last three months that have put my job and future at risk. For three months, shortly after every downtime, I’ve been calling a lot Smart’s customer care and I always hear them saying the “base station tower where I am connected to is having technical problems” and that “the connection will come back within 24 hours.”

For a couple of times, I was not even able to reach them for help and I just got a pre-recorded voice message telling me that “all lines are busy.” The most annoying of all, is that I cannot predict the exact time the connectivity failure will strike. And it happened to me a lot when I was discussing important work-related things with my business partner and my boss who is based in Canada when we were near deadlines to finish something — and then out of the blue, SmartBro Internet went dead and I got disconnected for at least one or two hours. It made me feel sometimes that Smart doesn’t deserve the Php 999 (  $24 USD ) flat fee I pay per month for their SmartBro wireless broadband running at 384 kbps. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of ISP options in our area, so I think I will just need to endure their service and hope that I would gain back its quality like before.

Today, I reevaluated my workplace to see if things have changed in the course of nine months. I’ve been like a couch potato sitting in my chair all day long and working all the time – yet I was very productive – so no regrets at all. Work alone was not a problem at all since my skills tend to suffice the needs of my employer and I was quite fast adapting the business-work environment they embraced to me.

Last January, I showed my workplace in one of my blog posts. It was revealed there my real office situation at that time. Now, I want to show where I work now. There is not much difference but at least few things improved. I got a new chair, LCD monitor and new sound system – things that helped sustain my energy and zeal throughout the day of work.

To let you know, I have a daily work routine. I usually start my day by waking up around 9AM to 10AM. After taking a quick breakfast and doing my personal preparations, I immediately “assemble” my office in our veranda. My office table is there all the time so what I do is bring my laptop outside, my LCD monitor, audio-voltage regulator (AVR), my infamous electric fan, my sound system and my office chair. After they are all set, my day of work begins. The air temperature in my workplace during the day ranges from 28C to 34C.

My workplace is really unique for my Web-inclined profession. There are few things that are not common in a usual office scenario. While sitting in a corner during the day, several creatures catch my attention and give me little entertainment. One time, there was a stray kitten suddenly jumped on my lap while I was working and slept on it. Then I saw our neighbor’s dog chasing our ducks and chickens. Plus, I have an officemate in a soul of a black-capped lory.

I stay outside working until 6PM to 7PM (sometimes up to 9PM), then I start packing and disassembling my office and move things back inside the house. There, I assemble them again for my next phase of work that commences around 7PM and ends up to 3AM (sometimes up to 5AM).

As you can see, I’m pretty a hardworking person. I work nearly 18 hours a day (more than twice the number of hours of work in a real office environment). But see, I have no regrets whatsoever; bloggers and web developers like me do this for good. And we do it like this for now because we strongly believe that our hard work will lead us to somewhere else in the future.

And we do it like this for now because we strongly believe that our hard work will lead us to somewhere else in the future.

Working alone was the most challenging of all, but my love and zeal to change pushed me further and let me feel like not working at all.

The Web’s most popular e-commerce and money transfer business, PayPal, just expanded their services to the Philippines and Indonesia. October 5 last year, PayPal rolled a mass mail announcing to their members residing in such countries about their initial withdrawal and receiving features. They announced that fund transfers are now available using debit or credit cards.

Though it was good news, and some Internet savvy people were jumping, it was still infant and very limited. This is true because the number of credit card and debit card holders in the area is smaller compared to the number of people who actually have bank accounts. Nevertheless, PayPal did a good introduction – much better than nothing.

Today, January 29, I got a copy of PayPal’s mass mail again saying that they have finally launched the much-awaited local bank withdrawal. I was very happy reading such news and I was imagining just how many IT people are jumping to the roof upon reading PayPal’s mail.

It is good to take note that eBay Inc., the company that owns PayPal business, might have launched the feature in order to support their campaigns of the localized versions of eBay.com website in the region. Either way, it’s still good news!

PayPal just unlocked millions of merchants and customers from the two nations to the online business world. Their expanded services enable more Filipinos and Indonesians to buy and sell products online, and to send and receive money through the Web. The lack of online money transfer agents in the previous years had always been the hindrance of the people from the said countries in participating money transactions on the Internet. This scenario is about to change though.

So, if you’re a Filipino or Indonesian who’ve been dreaming of using PayPal in participating Web transactions, now is the time to wake up, join our big brothers, and rock!

Sign-up for PayPal Now.