Jaycee and the kids are now home from their trip to the Philippines. She was there for two months visiting the family. They are now adjusting to the time difference.
They were all up last night at 2 am, running around the house, playing with their toys and making lots of noise. I tried keeping them up during the day but they fell asleep before lunch.
Last week I moved all my science projects out of the living room and back to my lab at school. The solar panel is complete, just need to calk the clear panel to the top.
Now it’s time to get ready for Christmas and get everything back to normal.
I finished my solar panel project this week. I’ve been working on it on and off for the past two years and it’s finally done. The only thing I need to complete is to put the clear acrylic panel on top to protect the cells.
Here are my previous posts on building the solar panel. Part 1 gives information on the parts I bought to build the 18 volt, 60 watt PV solar panel. Part 2 describes my frustration of learning to solder the cells and the time needed to do this well. Part 3 describes my attempt to solder the tab wire to the negative part of the cell and how I’m going to wire the cells to produce the correct voltage. This last post will summarize the task of completing the solar panel before school starts and what my future plans are with solar power panels.
It took me a couple of days to complete all the soldering. I got better at it as I went along and only broke a few cells. Luckily I bought enough and I still have about ten left. The hardest part was dealing with corrosion that built up on the tip of the soldering pen and getting an even flow of solder to flow onto the three positive connections on the back of the cell. I had to scrap a few cells because of poor solder connections.
Bryan McClelland, an entrepreneur in Manila, Philippines, is making bikes out of bamboo. Seems like a good idea as there is lots of bamboo available for a raw material. Some of the bike parts are made of metal. His claim is that bamboo has the same tensile strength as steel and a higher strength to weight ratio. He sells them for between 500 and 600 dollars. Check out the video below. So would you ride one of these bikes? I would.
We’ve been here in Mindanao, Philippines for almost two months now, and tomorrow we are leaving to go back to Pennsylvania. Our bags are packed and we are ready to go. Our taxi will pick us up tomorrow morning at 5:30 am for the hour and a half drive to Davao International Airport. My mother in law and sister in law are flying up to Manila with us to help with the kids and to get a little more bonding time in. We’ll stay in Manila until Wednesday morning, when our flight for JFK.
We had a great time here with the usual ups and downs. The weather was hot and humid but there was an exceptional amount of rain with some flooding in our area, especially last month. I’ve had lots of time to read, think, and spend time with my family.
Our long flight leaves Wednesday morning and 20-something hours later, we arrive at JFK on Wednesday night. I’m usually good on long flight as long as the baby sleeps for a while. I walk the kids around the aisles to stretch our legs and to pass the time on the plane. I’m just hoping I can make the time change quickly when I’m back.
Last week we went to Samal island to swim at the beach. We took a small boat (bangka) ride from Davao to Samal. The ride is about 15 minutes. As you can see the water is very clear at Paradise island Resort. We stayed until noon and went back to Davao where we went to People’s Park for a stroll. We stayed in Davao for the night and then went back to Digos.
I’m trying a new video player for this post. I’m using the same flv video as before but I’m not using the plugin to play the video. I’ll see how this one works.
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.
This past Sunday I went for a ride up to Makilala in Northern Cotabato to visit the family of my brother in law, Fernando. It was about an hour to get there riding on his motorcycle. The ride was nice, but it started to get hot when the sun came out. We left early from Digos, around 7:30am.
By the time we got there, the temperature was a little cooler because of the altitude and the cloud cover. We brought some pancit caton and pan, which is a noodle salad that you can eat with bread. We met his mom and dad coming from church and then headed for their house up in the mountain. We walked for about 20 minutes up the mountain to their house where we all ate the pancit. I was amazed how quiet it was up at that house as I couldn’t hear any cars, trucks or that faint noise that comes from distant trucks on a highway. Just peace and quiet.
While we were there, some of the relatives showed me how they harvest the rubber tree and gave me a chance to try. They are able to sell the liquid coming from the tree locally. On the way down from the mountain, Fernando dropped me off so I could walk over a small suspension bridge that spans a river. He met me on the other side, where his sister lives.
On the ride back we stopped to see the new stadium Davao del Sur is building. It was much bigger that I thought it would be and is due fro completion in another year or so.
Jaycee and the kids are now home from their trip to the Philippines. She was there for two months visiting the family. They are now adjusting to the time difference.
