VW Beetle # 78

 

I haven't come upon a new VW Beetle in the area since October of last year. This morning, I went with a group of American friends to an eatery in Valencia. Not far from the eatery, I spotted this olive colored VW. This one makes #78 that I've photographed since I first started posting VW photos to another blog in November, 2016.

Looking back, I've published 70 VW posts onto my "Sorry, all the clever names are taken" blog. I'm tempted to transfer those posts to this blog ...... it would take quite a lot of work. We'll see.

 

Adiós 2022

January 1st has arrived and with it begins the year 2023 in the Gregorian calendar. It is traditionally the time when, like the month's namesake Janus, we take a look both backward at the old year and forward into the future. Who am I to go against long standing traditions?

It's been part of my philosophy to view person-hood has having three aspects; much like the Christian Trinity-Father, Son and Holy Spirit and the Hindu Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Of course, we have the three gunas of yoga - tamas,rajas and sattva as well. In my philosophy, the three aspects would be body, mind and spirit. 

It is those three aspects which I try to improve upon regularly.

How well have I done over the past twelve months?
 

 Readers of my blogs know I've been keeping books lists for several years. In 2022 I managed to read 102 e books; two short of a 2 book a week average. The majority of these books have been fiction with a few covering religion, politics, science or history. An English teacher once told me that he believed reading any book helps to improve the mind. In any case, I'd say the overwhelming majority of the books I read last year were worth reading.

I'm providing links to the monthly reading lists of 2022 for anyone interested in reviewing what I've read.
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December

As for the physical - I have to say that I've tried to take care of my body fairly well over the past 30 years. In 2022, my primary physical exercise came from bicycle riding. Looking at blog posts from January of last year, I see that, at that time, I considered my daily bicycle ride of 8 to 10 kilometers as a pretty good accomplishment for an old man. Now, my minimum daily ride is 10 miles (16 kilometers) with the occasional 11 to 13 mile ride.

In all honesty, I don't know that my progress spiritually has matched my progress in the other two areas. Perhaps, working on that could be a proper New Year's resolution.

Reading List for August, 2022

August being the anniversary month of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, it was originally my intention to read several books on the two bombings this month. However, as I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I miscalculated the amount of time it would take to read the last few books in July and actually finished reading John Hersey's Hiroshima ahead of schedule.

The first two books read in August were Susan Southard's Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War and The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians edited by Cynthia C. Kelly.

I had read that Southard had been concerned that, although much had been written on the bombing of Hiroshima, relatively little had been written on Nagasaki. She certainly made up for that neglect. Her book was similar to Hersey's in that like Hershey, she concentrated on the experiences of a few individuals. The difference being Hershey's book (or rather magazine article) was 106 pages and Southard writing more than 400.

There has been much written since 1945 as to whether or not the dropping of the two atomic bombs was necessary in order to end the second World War. As far as Hiroshima is concerned, I'm not sure how to answer that question. The arguments both pro and con the bombing seem reasonable to me. But, I have to say that in my opinion, the bombing of Nagasaki three days after Hiroshima was unnecessary and could possibly approach the level of a war crime.

I found the book on the Manhattan Project to be a bit tedious. Most of the essays and stories in that book were more about the "wonderful" achievements of the project, and less about any moral objection to the use of atomic weapons during the war.

When I had had my fill of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I went on to lighter fare. I did not post a review of Tracy Chevalier's book - I did, however write something on my thoughts on the work of Toshikazu Kawaguchi.

In July, I read the first of Dorothy L. Sayer's mystery novels, Whose Body? . I enjoyed that book enough to read more of Sayer's novels in August. I've written posts on two of those books - Cloud of Witness and Unnatural Death. . I've enjoyed the four books by Sayer that I've read this month; I thought I would manage a fifth one - The Five Red Herrings but I was unable to finish that ebook before the end of the month.

I have excuses, of course, as to why I'm still reading The Five Red Herrings . I've recently discovered a podcast which has taken up a lot of my time - The History of English Podcast. The podcast started in June of 2012. I've got quite a bit of catching up to do. I highly recommend this podcast to anyone nerdy enough to have an interest in the history of the English language.

Another reason why I've not finished with The Five Red Herrings has to do with Sayer's writing style with this particular book. The story takes place in Scotland, and Sayer thought it necessary to have many of the characters speak with a heavy Scottish accent. This makes it difficult to read. Here's an example from Chapter VII:

"Ay," said Jeanie, philosophically, "I'm no surprised. She's troubled in her mind aboot Mr. Farren. And nae wonder, wi' him mekkin' a' that disturbance and gaein' aff that gate an' never comin' back for twa nichts."
"Two nights?" said Wimsey.
"Ay. Nicht before last it was he went aff on his bicycle, swearin' somethin' awfu' an' nae ward tae say whaur he was gaein' nor what he was gaein' to du."
"Then he wasn't at home last night for dinner?"
"Him? Hame for's denner? 'Deed no, nor ony time o' the day. Monday nicht it was he come back an' fund Campbell i' the hoose an' sent him packin', an' after that there was sic a collie-shangie it nigh frighted my brither's wife into a fit an' her verra near her time, tu. An' oot he gaes and away, wi' Mistress Farren runnin' oot o' the door after him wi' the tears fallin' doon her cheeks. I dinna ken for why she takes on so aboot the man. I'd let him gae an' be daumed tae him, wi' his jealousies an' his tempers."

At any rate, here's the list of books read in August, 2022.

Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War   Susan Southard
The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians   edited by Cynthia C. Kelly
Girl With a Pearl Earring   Tracy Chevalier
Before the Coffee Gets Cold   Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Tales From The Cafe   Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Cloud of Witness   Dorothy L. Sayer
Unnatural Death   Dorothy L. Sayer
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club    Dorothy L. Sayer
Strong Poison   Dorothy L. Sayer

Visitors to the Blog

Out of curiosity, I went to Google Analytics to check on the visitors to this blog. Here is a screen shot of the cities where the visitors came from - April 01 until April 21.

A New VW Post

 

Having discovered the ends and outs of the road I called "entrance X" [And it Comes Out Where? ] the road has become a semi-regular part of my morning bicycle ride. The first time I traveled that road, I had come down Rovira Drive from Camanjac - the second time, from the Xuekashi Motorparts store and then left down Rovira Drive to Pulantubig. Today, it was my intention to enter at the motor parts store, then cross Rovira onto Boni Catarata, and ride to my friend's place on Motong Rd.

Unfortunately, my friend wasn't home, but the trip was not a total washout. While on Boni Catarata, I happened upon a old VW Beetle parked along the road.

Anyone familiar with my other blog, sorryalltheclevernamesaretaken will recall that a regular feature was my blog posts and photos of Volkswagen Beetles I came upon while wandering through Dumaguete.

With the coming of COVID, I spent less time driving around Dumaguete and I had not taken a new photo of a VW Beetle since March 04, 2020.

So naturally, coming across this VW this morning, I had to take a few photos and post them.

This post will be published in both blogs - sorryalltheclevernamesaretaken and robertsimms.blogspot.com.

 

Back in the Saddle

I mentioned in last Thursday's blog post that after 2 weeks, I was finally able to have my bicycle repaired. I went for a nine kilometer ride Friday morning and noticed that the mechanic had not properly adjusted the gear cables. He came to the house Friday afternoon and took care of that.

Saturday morning, I rode out to a friend's place where he was able to take a few photos for this post.

When Ken sent the photos to me I thanked him, but had to ask, "Who's the old guy on my bicycle?"

My wife often tells me that I have an angry look on my face - which I couldn't believe. It's just my "normal" expression. When I saw these photos, I had to agree that I do look angry, but I'm not.

 

More Strange Behavior from Facebook

Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time knows of my occasional disagreements with Facebook. Heck, this blog was created, due to Facebook having banned another blog for allegedly going against community standards. I dare anyone to objectively read either of my blogs and find anything offensive.

Today, I received another message from Facebook informing me that a link I had posted last year from dumaguetemetropost was also being removed today because it "violated community standards".

The article linked to is entitled "New year heroes", and I had forgotten most of the details of that editorial, but I was certain that there could be nothing in it that warranted Facebook's removal of the link.

With the help of Google, I was able to locate the editorial (linked to above) from dumaguetemetropost.com's archives.

Someone at Facebook has lost their mind.

The editorial is dealing with COVID, and Facebook is sensitive regarding anything posted about the virus, but there is certainly nothing in the editorial to justify Facebook's behavior. There isn't any false information being given, no fake news.

If anyone should be a judge of the community standards of Dumaguete and Negros Oriental, I would trust the dumaguetemetropost over Facebook.

The 2021 Book List

Beginning in 2011, I began posting, as a part of New Years, a list of the books I'd read during the year. This tradition began in my sorryalltheclevernamesaretaken blog and has been continued in this blog. Also, in January of this year, I decided to post a monthly list. That plan has actually turned out for the best.

In 2021, I read a total of 152 books - mostly ebooks - This is certainly far and away the most books I've read during any year since I began keeping track. The previous record total was 45 books - read in 2017.

In 2021 I was able to read a number of ebooks still under copyright, so I'm no longer limited to Project Gutenberg, Project Gutenberg Australia, and Faded Page. In May, I found a website that allowed me to download every mystery novel written by Agatha Christie in epub format (which I was able to convert to mobi for my Kindle). In October, I discovered another website which allows me to download ebooks by several writers which are also under copyright. That site is basically a "library".

I've decided that this year, rather than posting the 152 books in one post, I'd post links to each monthly book list of 2021.

Here, then are the 12 monthly book lists for this year.

January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December

On Reading "The Tin Drum".

In his novel, The Tin Drum , Günter Grass notes that attending funerals often reminds one of other funerals attended in the past. I suppose a similar principle might hold up when thinking about, or writing about books one has encountered.

In an earlier post, I wrote of how I came to read His Monkey Wife . While window shopping in a bookstore frequented by a friend and myself, I came upon a collection of short stories by John Collier. The selling point for me were the words on the book's cover - "By the author of His Monkey Wife ". Although I had never heard of Collier or his earlier book, these words intrigued me enough to purchase and read the short story collection. A similar thing happened in the same bookstore around the same time, regarding Grass' novel Cat and Mouse . Again, I was unfamiliar with Grass or his earlier novel, but the words, "By the author of The Tin Drum " was enough to convince me to read Cat and Mouse .

Back in the day (when we didn't even use the phrase "back in the day") it was difficult to get ones hands on every book one might want to read and I had been unable to find a copy of The Tin Drum . It was the blog post on His Monkey Wife that led me to search for The Tin Drum online. It was then that I learned that those two novels by Günter Grass are considered books one and two of his Danzig Trilogy - the third being Dog Years . I downloaded the three books with the intention of reading the three before year's end. I began reading the first book in the trilogy on December 12; certainly enough time left in the year to read all three.

Typhoon Odette had other ideas.

While we were lucky that in our area the typhoon caused few serious problems, we were without electricity for several days and when my Kindle's battery went down, I wasn't able to recharge it until the power returned. During those days, I was forced to read the 20th Century way......books printed on paper - Buddha by Karen Armstrong and The Bhagavad Gita translated by Eknath Easwaran.

The Tin Drum is not an easy read by any means, as a number of reviewers at goodreads.com have pointed out. The protagonist, Oskar Matzerath writes his memoirs while confined in a German mental institution and is viewed by most readers as an unreliable narrator. It is difficult to understand how much of Oskar's account is "real" and how much is delusional. In the end, I had to wonder if Oskar Matzerath was indeed a dwarf (or midget) or if this idea was part of his mental illness.

The novel is bizarre and disturbing, although it finally pulls together (more or less) at the end.That said, I'd like the novel much more if it were shorter.

I'm reading Cat and Mouse now. It's considerably shorter than The Tin Drum so I should be finished soon, though perhaps not soon enough to read Dog Years before the year is out.

Six Barangay Halls

This morning I wanted to indulge in four of my hobbies - bicycling, photography, blogging and posting to Google Maps. With that goal in mind, I decided to ride to six of the barangay halls located within cycling distance from my house. While there, I'd snap a photo.

For those reading this who aren't familiar with some of the ways of Philippines, each city and municipal area is made up of "neighborhood areas" called barangay. For the most part, the barangay will have a barangay hall / health center, although I have been in some barangay so small that a barangay hall is nowhere to be found.
The six barangay hall I rode past today are - 1) Magatas 2) Camanjac 3) Motong 4) Pulantubig 5) Boloc-boloc and 6) Tubtubon. According to Google Maps the distance traveled was 10.5 kilometers.
Magatas
This is my home barangay. Our house is less than 200 meters from the barangay hall and it's impossible to travel from our house without passing the hall. The old brgy. hall has been torn down and a new one is being built. There is a temporary health center just across the road from the hall.

Camanjac
Turning south at the Magatas Brgy. hall, my first destination is Camanjac. It's a 2.1 km ride with a slight upgrade. Of the six Brgy. halls I will visit this morning, three are actually located in Dumaguete - Camanjac, Motong and Pulantubig.

Motong
Heading east at Camanjac, I rode the 2.7 km to Motong. There are two different routes I can take. To me, turning right at Boni Catarata to Motong Rd. seems the most direct route, but according to Google Maps, turning later at Larena Dr. to Motong Rd. is 200 meters shorter. This seems counter intuitive to me so I went the (so called) longer route via Boni Catarata.

Pulantubig
This Brgy. hall is located about 1 kilometer from the hall in Motong.
The name Pulantubig translates to "red water". According to one source, there is a large red rock within the barangay, with water running over it; the rock making the water turn red. Where exactly this is located is unknown to me.

Boloc-boloc
Arriving at this barangay hall, I'm back in Sibulan. A distance of 2.2 km from Pulantubig.

Tubtubon
From Boloc-boloc, the ride is 1 km to the Tubtubon Brgy. hall. After Magatas Brgy. hall, this is the Brgy. hall I most frequently pass while bike riding. From here, I'll ride 1.6 km to my house in Magatas.The ride this morning was quite enjoyable. I can see making this a regular run. 

The August Reading List

For several years, posting a list of the books I've read during the year onto my sorryalltheclevernamesaretaken blog has been an annual event. When I began posting most of my doings to this blog, I posted the annual list for 2020 here as well.

Beginning in January, I began listing the books read on a monthly basis rather than annually.

In April, the list was made up by 15 dystopian novels.

In May, the list was rather small - with four novels by Anthony Trollope (whose novel The Fixed Period was the last dystopian novel of April) and two by Agatha Christie. Those two Christie novels was the beginning of a quest.

The book lists for June and July were made up entirely of novels by Agatha Christie. This list for August will likewise be of only Christie novels.

Counting the two Christie novels read in May, the total number of her novels (and collections) I've read to date is 58. With luck, I should be finished with Agatha Christie by the end of September.

So, here is the list of books I've read in August,

A Murder Is Announced
They Came to Baghdad
Mrs. McGinty's Dead
They Do It With Mirrors
After the Funeral
A Pocket Full of Rye
Destination Unknown
Hickory Dickory Dock
Dead Man's Folly
4:50 From Paddington
Ordeal by Innocence
Cat Among the Pigeons
The Pale Horse
The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side

Calabnugan Bridge

 

Today, I'm indulging four of my hobbies - blogging - cycling - Google Maps and photography.

Before leaving the house this morning for my daily ride, I put my camera in my sling bag - I'll be taking it with me today. My destination will be the bridge crossing the Okoy river in Barangay Calabnugan.

According to Google Maps, the distance from my house to the bridge and back is 7.2 kilometers. I want to mention that there is a slight uphill grade going there - with, of course, a slight downhill grade coming back.

When I arrived at the bridge, I took a few photos. A couple of the photos show the view from the bridge. Not only will these photos appear in this blog post, but I'll upload them to Google Maps as well.

 

Is Google AdSense Worth the Hassle?

 

Since day one of this blog, I've attempted to display Google AdSense ads. So far, I've been unsuccessful. I've found this to be odd on Googles' part as I've had AdSense on two others blogs for quite a long time.

I regularly receive emails from Google AdSense letting me know that the site isn't ready for ads. The emails suggest that the problem lies with a lack of content on this blog. That's a puzzle to me, as I try to update this blog on a regular basis. I suspect that the problem may actually be that Google doesn't particularly care for the content I place into this blog. Fair enough, I suppose.

When these emails appear in my inbox, I'm told to go to the "sites" area on the AdSense website. Going there, I see that this blog, robertsimms.blogspot.com isn't "ready", although my other blogs, sorryalltheclevernamesaretaken.blogspot.com and dumaguetewebsite.blogspot.com are shown as being OK. Everything says the AdSense status of those two blogs is working fine, however, as I write this, AdSense is not working on either of those blogs.

I suppose Google AdSense is dissatisfied with my performance. That works both ways. My sorryalltheclevernamesaretaken.blogspot.com blog has been active on AdSense for quite a long time, but it has been years since I've received any money from Google. As a matter of fact, my last payment was received in Sept. 2013. The program really isn't as profitable as Google would have us believe.

I have to wonder if it's even worth the hassle.

Anti-theft Device

It's been two weeks since I purchased my new bicycle. Not long after buying the bike, I wrote a blog post, recalling a few memories of bicycles I've owned years ago. 

I mentioned in that post that, prior to this new bicycle, I've owned two others - both having been stolen not long after I acquired them.

I wanted to make certain that this bike wouldn't disappear like the previous two. While we had workers building a patio/driveway on the western side of the house, I looked at the materials available and had them put up something outside that would help me keep my bicycle secure. There were sections of pipe leftover from the installation of the posts. Of course, the men had access to a welder, and there was a bit of extra concrete. The result was this post positioned next to the house.

There was even enough leftover red paint to cover the post.

 

Scaffolding and Metal Posts

Our new project began in earnest yesterday, and I'm continuing to document the progress. Today, I've taken 18 photos of the work done so far. That's way too many photos for one blog post, so I'll be doing as I did with the installation of the new gate and the construction of the wall going around our property.

I'm going to divide these 18 photos and put them into a post on each of my three blogs simultaneously:
Scaffolding and Metal Posts
The Scaffolding and the Metal Posts
Metal Posts and Scaffolding

Anyone interested in seeing all the work done today can simply click on another link to be led to another blog post.

 

Our New Gate

Its been one week since I last posted on the wall we had built around our property in Magatas, Sibulan. The photos today are of the gate that has been installed.

Of course, we're very pleased with the work, although the gate is heavier than we expected. I'm not complaining......I was just surprised. I said I wanted a top quality gate, and that's exactly what we have.

We're to keep the gate closed for the rest of the day. There is some cement that will need to set up.

It's been my practice to divide the photos I've taken, using half on each of my blogs.

Links to both blogs will follow below.

Our New Gate
The New Gate