Three places in one film.

Kodak Pro-image 100 and minolta sr-t 101

BOHOL:

ILOILO

TORONTO:

FIN.

Gogol.

(photo by Kit Camena, minolta x700 and kodak pro-image 100)


"Where did my friend go?" Gogol asked, impatient.
"They went to the Sunday Mass."
"Why?"
"Because it is a Sunday."
"Why?"
"Because some people go to church and hear mass on Sundays."
"Why? Why do they have to go to church?"
"I don't know. Because they want to go to church. That's the way things are, Gogol."

Dragging him inside the house, he broke free from his mother, asked again the first person he met by the doorway where his friend went. every time people tell him his friend went to church, he asked with a bewildered "WHY".

Gogol, at five, has no sense of religious tradition. In the most logical sense, he is probably the most normal kid, being what he should be at five.
Religion, or religious icons, are almost always used as a figure to help discipline young children. Crazy parents tell their children not to be bad boys and girls because "Jesus will get angry." Since Gogol's parents were atheists, every time they find the need to provide him with a disciplinary figure, they would refer to the police. In the end, Gogol reversed the process and threatened to call the police if he found them doing things he thought was wrong. At one point, somebody had to tell him he would be sent to jail after he punched a classmate. He was not even moved, did not flinch, did not show any signs of fear. He said he can also send to jail any police because his father designs buildings and prisons for a living. 
Gogol, it seems, also does not have a sense of authority. Or at least does not look beyond his parents for other figures of authority. 


-----


"Why is there a cross there?" he quizzically asked his mother while inside the bank, waiting for their number to be called.
"Well, they want to put a cross there so there's a cross there."
"It shouldn't be there."
"Is there a problem with a cross being there?"
"This is a bank, Nanay, not a funeral. Nobody died so we should not put a cross there."
"Some people love to put crosses where they work, even if they shouldn't. It's the way things are, Gogol."

-----

Puto post: Lunnenberg

Fuji Superia 200 and minolta sr-t 101. 

A day before we left Nova Scotia we were toured around by bus to the coastal areas of the province. We had lobster at the Belliveau Cove. I didn't quite enjoy it because it was a lobster dinner without steaming rice and I am very used to eating crustaceans with steaming Filipino rice. We also had to dip it in melted butter which, given the very "saucy" taste of myself (and the general filipino) is too bland. the rest asked for vinegar and fresh garlic and were provided a cider vinegar and fried garlic instead. For dinner, we had a makeshift buffet table and makeshift chairs and coffee table from crates used to hold lobster. We had dinner at a lobster farm. The lobster farmer is a friendly host who made us pose with the huge lobsters he kept in the tubs at a comfortable 2 degrees centigrade water temperature--the same water temperature of the atlantic ocean at this time of the year. if it gets warmer than that, he said, the lobster would start to molt and hibernate, and can never be sold until they are able to grow their shells back. so while awaiting for shipment, he tries to give them the comforts of home. 

Belliveau cove is rural, and french-speaking (or at least clareville is). In fact, other than Halifax, the rest of Nova Scotia is rural. there's a nostalgic feeling to it and you can level your imagination up by thinking something creepy, like getting lost in the middle of the pine forests or the wetlands. Belleveau is at St. Mary's Bay, the other side of the Bay of Fundy. This part of the world, Bay of Fundy itself, has the most interesting inter-tidal occurrence. in Digby alone, the tide can go as low as 30 feet. Fishermen had to tie their boats with ropes long enough to allow their boats to go with the ebbing and not dangle on harbor. The inter-tidal zone is so expansive if the same thing happened in Guimaras Strait (never mind the DEPTH, only the distance between the provinces, I mean) people from Iloilo can easily walk to Guimaras during low tide. Imagine that. That's how wide the intertidal  zone in Bay of Fundy is (in some areas of the bay tidal patterns can be about 15 meters/50 feet). More on Bay of Fund's intertidal zone here.