We got together with our wedding Ninong and Ninang last weekend at his church and home. Two years ago when we were here, we didn’t have time but this trip we wanted to visit all our friends and family. Our Ninong is a pastor at a small church here in DIgos. We were invited to their home on Sunday. Before we left, though, Jaycee received a text for us to come to his church as they were all there and it would be better for them to take us to their home instead of us trying to find it.

We found the little church on the other side of town and went inside. They had a small band and were singing so we joined in. It was a nice sermon as he mixed Bisaya and English together. I could understand some of what he was saying. After the sermon, we all went to their home, first stopping for some Durian and other fruits.

As you can see from the video, they live off the main road and we had to walk to get to their home. We all ate some Durian and lunch together and Jaycee talked about when she was younger and living in Digos. We also talked about what it’s like to live in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. After lunch, we walked around and they showed us the local high school and a river where some kids were swimming.

They have a new park here in Digos. Actually, it’s the same park, just updated. We went over there the other night after dinner to see what it was like. New to the park is a beautiful multicolor water fountain and brick surface. You can rent a bicycle for 15 pesos an hour. We all rented bicycles and rode around for an hour and had a good time. Enjoy the video.

I was out the other night taking some pictures with my camera and I wanted to see how the sky looked long after the sun sets. It’s referred to as the blue hour and this is the time where you will get a blue tone in your images. The picture of our store is in the blue hour, but the rest are a little past as I was using a high ASA to get some blurred images of the moving trikes.

I brought with me a monopod to help keep the camera steady. It’s not as steady as a tripod, but it works good enough. In these images of our neighborhood here in Digos, the large clouds are a familiar site. They usually build into rain clouds during the night that produce copious amount of rain. We really need a few sunny days here with no rain.

Yes, those two topics go together and we had to deal with both the last few weeks. Fortunately, everything worked out for the best.

Last week we had a party for little Kevin’s first birthday. But in the beginning of the week we had a bit of a scare. KayceeAnn woke up with a fever one day. She had the fever on and off for two days and we were worried that she might have Dengue fever. Here in Davao del Sur, Dengue fever is at epidemic levels and there were over 375 confirmed cases with 10 fatalities last month. We’ve had lots of rain and there are too many mosquitoes here.

We took her to the hospital the next day where they gave her a blood test. The blood test was negative and it turned out she had a cold. We went through the exact same thing when little Kevin developed a high fever a few days later and again we thought the worst.

We took him to the clinic, but it was so full we left for the hospital. Here in Digos we have three hospitals. But this time, all the hospitals were full with long waiting lines to see a doctor. Luckily, we took her to the new hospital on the way out of town where the waiting time to get tested wasn’t so long. Again we found that he didn’t have Dungue fever. We were happy, but we still had two children with bad colds.

By the time of Kevin’s birthday, everyone was healthy again so we planned a party with food and cake. Mama invited her co-teachers and Virgie invited some of her co-workers. It’s funny, by the time we were ready to give the kids some food, we had an additional ten to fifteen kids here- just the neighborhood kids mingling in. Good thing we ordered some extra food and there was enough for everyone.

Video Update :
As you can see from the video, we had the food catered in and we had two clowns to entertain the kids during the party. This video is encoded with the iSkysoft Converter and has better quality than my previous videos.

I’ve been converting my videos to flash using On2 Flix Standard, which is a one-pass flv encoder. The results were ok but not good quality. With this video, I am using a new flv encoder. I was so happy when the video encoder, iSkysoft Video Converter, updated to include flash conversions. I checked my original purchase and found that I was eligible for a free upgrade from 1.9 to 2.0.

I am very pleased with the results of iSkysoft flash that I might write a post on the quality of it and the On2 encoder. The On2 Flix uses the vp6 encoder which is the same encoder used in Adobe Flash Pro. The problem is that if you want good results you need to have the On2 Flix Pro, which is about $200 or Adobe Pro which is over $500.

Here are some pictures and a short video of a few of the events that happened around our neck of the woods. Earlier in the week, we all went out for lunch at the local barbecue chicken restaurant with the whole family. The next day, I heard some loud noise and wondered what it was. Turns out that the barangay was spraying for mosquitoes all around and they did our property too. I also have a short clip of me riding my motorcycle around the block.

Yesterday, as I was out walking around taking some pictures and someone was showing my wife and daughter the new baby goat, (kanding), that was just born. I took a few pictures as my daughter was having so much fun with the baby goat and all her new friends.

This past Sunday, July 4th,  my son Kevin was baptized at the San Isidro Catholic Church in Digos, Philippines. There were six other children baptized during the ceremony. He has five Ninongs (Godfather) and five Ninangs ( Godmother). As you can see in the video, it was a beautiful ceremony even though there was no air conditioning.

After the ceremony, we had  a party for family and friends with a roasted pig, fish, and chicken along with lots of rice.

I kept the video to less that two minutes to avoid any bandwidth or buffering problems. I used my new camera, the Kodak Ni8, as it takes very good video.

I spent the morning digging out my car and shoveling the front sidewalk. I had a lot of help from my friend Ed. He came over with his snow blower and did most of the driveway. Thanks Ed. That saved my back and muscles. With the snow today, I would guess the total to be near 18-20 inches. Spring starts in three weeks – can’t wait.