Saturday August 23, 2014
6:11 p.m.

Yesterday, I chose to go to the museum at the San Carlos University. The ride there was pretty brutal. Traffic here is not good. The main problem is the abundance of jeepneys. As far as I know, each jeepney is a type of private company. I’m sure the city regulates how many can be on the streets and driving a particular route, but I doubt that that regulation is very good. In any event, there are thousands and thousands of them on the streets at any one time, and they are all desperate for passengers, and, worst of all, will stop anywhere to pick them up or for the chance to pick one up. It’s not like a bus in a city in Canada that comes by once every forty minutes and stops at every third or fourth bus stop spaced half a kilometer apart. Imagine two hundred buses going down a road in a row, each one stopping every thirty feet. That’s traffic in the Philippines. I know my best option is to ride in the middle of the street beside the double lines, but that’s really dangerous. Instead, I ride along the right curb as best I can. When it’s safe and convenient, I move to the left and go around the stopped jeenpneys. But most of the time, that isn’t possible. The jeepneys often cut right in front of me and cut me off. I’m forced to a stop and have no chance to go around them. Other times, it’s too dangerous to swing out around them. Vehicles behind me are trying to do the same thing, and they will smoosh me against the jeepney if I try. I generally have no option but to be patient and stop, wait, and go, stop, wait, and go, stop, wait, and go, stop, wait, and go. Sometimes I listen to podcasts to pass the time. Yesterday, I didn’t want to be distracted by the podcasts. I needed to concentrate on the traffic. I can only remember yelling at one person. This was a dude on a motorcycle. He raced up beside me and then pulled ahead and turned in front of me and stopped, blocking my way. He just stopped right on the street next to the curb and there was so much traffic, I couldn’t get around him. I did my usual passive aggressive thing and shouted something like, “Great place to park!” I was so angry not because of what he did but because he was the hundredth person to do that in the last two weeks. He had become the symbol of that behavior pattern in Filipino drivers in general. It’s routine here for motorcycles to pull in front of me and then slow down suddenly as they turn right. I have no choice but to slam on the brakes or run right into them. They are incapable of timing my progress to see that if they turn in front of me, I’ll be cut off. I would let the bicycle go and turn behind it. But that would be far too polite and require too much common sense.

The traffic was so brutal yesterday that I almost turned around and gave up on my quest. But I persevered and after a tough ten kilometers, I started to see large numbers of university students in their matching uniforms. Perhaps I misremember what university was like in Canada, but university students here look like children to me. At best, they look like high school students – very young high school students. It doesn’t help that they all wear matching school uniforms and have ID tags around their necks.

San Carlos University was on the opposite side of the street, and it was an adventure just crossing the street and getting to it. The street was also being torn up and new sewer pipes being put in, so many of the entrances were closed and it was dangerous to get through the construction traffic. Universities here are not like universities in Canada. They aren’t open in any way. They are completely closed in by high walls and fences and you can only go in and out through security gates. For that reason, I hadn’t even been on a university campus until yesterday. I had to explain to the armed security guards why I was there, and I fully expected to be turned away. I only knew about this museum through a short entry in my 15-year-old Lonely Planet guidebook. I didn’t know for sure that the museum existed or was open to the public. I had already steeled myself for not actually finding the university or the museum. I figured the ride out to a new part of the city would be reward enough. However, the guard at the front knew about the museum and he seemed okay with my going into the campus on my bicycle. I had assumed they would require me to leave it behind as the vicious and dangerous item that it is. Once I was vetted, I was passed on to another security guard, who wrote down my name and address and contact number and purpose of visit and “time in” in a big ledger. Both of these guards told me that the museum was in the MRC building and they gave me vague directions on how to get there. The MR in MRC stood for Michael Richards, and I amused myself by thinking I’d find Kramer there. As I rode away from the guards, I saw and heard one of them get on his radio and start talking loudly about the MRC building. Apparently, he was calling ahead to give them a heads-up about my visit. That is the flip side of life in Asia. Normal stuff like traffic is brutal and drives me insane. However, as a foreigner, you can also be treated as an honored guest, and that sometimes makes up for all the hassles.

The MRC building was not nearly as close as I had been led to believe. I passed building after building only to be told that the MRC building was further along. The road began to climb and I soon found myself in first gear and powering up extremely long and steep hills. It was a sunny day, and sweat was pouring down my body. There was construction all over inside the campus, too, and all the construction crews would stop working when they saw me and just stare as I slowly climbed my way up the slopes. That can be somewhat embarrassing because of my slow pace. We would make eye contact from far away and someone would say “Hi, Joe!”. I’d greet them back, and then there would be these awkward long minutes as I ground my way up the hill, my legs spinning away in first gear. As often as not, one guy in a construction crew would say something and make a funny spinning motion with his hands. Everyone would laugh, and I’d become aware of how silly I looked with my legs spinning like crazy while I moved forward at the pace of a turtle. These guys would never have seen a bike like mine in action before. Normal bikes here would never be able to go up a slope like that even if anyone was stupid enough to try in this kind of heat. Students here wouldn’t even walk. The university had a system of shuttle buses (jeepneys) to take them from building to building.

After what felt like forever, I arrived at the MRC building. There was no sign, and I didn’t know I was at the right spot until a security guard hove into view and shouted at me and waved her arms. They were expecting me. Then began a familiar little interaction. The guard was a friendly, fat woman and she said I could just park my bicycle right there in front of the building. Of course, I didn’t want to do that. I needed to at least lock my bike to something – a tree or pole or fence. I’m looking around and trying to explain this to the woman, but I’m in no condition yet to be social and friendly. I’d just climbed up a mountain and was drenched in sweat. My legs and arms were trembling from the effort, and I didn’t have my bearings yet. I finally saw a pole that would serve as a place to lock my bike, and I asked if I could lock my bike there. She was okay with it, and she settled in to wait. This also got awkward because me parking and locking my bike is not a simple process. It takes a while, and I felt weird for making her wait. Just adjusting my bike so it didn’t fall over or something took time. Then I had to get out my cable and padlock and put that on. I had to remove the bicycle computer and put it away. It would be stolen otherwise. I had to apply my patented parking brake, without which my bike would spin around and fall over. I had to take off my sunglasses and put them away in their case. I had to towel off my face and body. I had to remove my cycling gloves and put them away. Then I had to remove the pannier bag and take out the shoulder straps I’d invented and put them on. It was like I was getting outfitted for war. Shifting over from cycling mode to walking mode is complicated when you do things the way I do them.

I was still expecting to be turned away at any moment. It was clear that a foreigner visiting the museum was not a common occurrence. The guard asked me about who was expecting me and who had invited me and what my purpose was. I had to explain that I was just a tourist and that I’d read about the museum in a guidebook. She assumed I was a biologist and wanted to know what university I was affiliated with. Again, I had to explain that I was just a tourist who liked bugs. I could see the security guard processing this and then coming to the decision to let her concerns go and just let me in. She brought me into the building and led me down a few flights of stairs and left me in a basement area where there were a few rooms with some specimens on display. It really was a museum of sorts. There was a sign with opening hours and that sort of thing. But beyond that, it looked pretty much like a bunch of rooms in any university with some glass cases in them.

My worsening vision now came into play a little bit, and I found it a real hassle to wander around this place and see things and read things. It was not a simple matter of just putting on glasses. My prescription glasses from Taiwan just don’t work anymore and my two eyes are so different that just looking at things was really hard. You don’t know how much you take vision for granted until you don’t have it anymore. It’s exhausting – mentally and physically – when you can’t see well.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that this “museum” was the result of a personal effort of a foreign professor that used to work at this university. He was a German priest and biologist who came to the Philippines decades ago and made it his hobby to collect specimens. He had died many years ago, and there were a few newspaper articles on display talking about him and his work. He had written one of the articles himself, and I was amused to see that his attitude and experiences were much like any Westerner in a country like this. The article was a personal account of one of his collecting trips, and he talked about how difficult it was to just get to the place – the poor roads and the terrible vehicles and sinking boats. Then he’d have to get permits from various officials, but the officials were always “away” for this or that reason and no one knew when they would be back or how to get the permit. He’d eventually have to get angry and start throwing his weight around and threaten to write letters to the government and other universities complaining about the inefficiency of the local officials. Then something would happen, and he would get his permit to go into the area to look for insects.

I enjoyed walking around the exhibits and checking them out, but there was nothing earth shattering about them. The Lonely Planet writer had said that the collection could be the envy of any major university around the world. Based on what I saw, that was a bit of an exaggeration. The exhibit might be the envy of a private collector who liked to collect specimens as a hobby. But I don’t see a world-class biologist breaking down the doors to see it or get his hands on it.

There was a room of shells and crabs and other sea creatures. There were a couple of rooms of beetles and butterflies and moths and that sort of thing. Finally, there was a room of stuffed and mounted birds and mammals. This last room was pretty sad. It takes a lot of skill to stuff and mount a bird or animal properly. And then it would take a lot of money and effort to maintain them in any kind of presentable shape. These birds and animals were a sorry sight – about what you’d expect for specimens that had been just sitting there in a stuffy room in the tropics for decades.

Still, I’m glad I went. I really do like insects, and I enjoy checking out giant beetles and huge moths and other such things. There were a few hand-made notices scattered about giving interesting bits of information about the insects on display. I had gotten there relatively late considering that, like most places in the Philippines, the museum was going to close for an hour and a half for lunch. But I didn’t really need much time to see everything. I went through all the rooms carefully twice and I still wasn’t there for more than forty minutes. The same security guard was waiting for me outside, and she asked me what I thought of the museum. She seemed to be expecting me to say that it was a complete waste of time, but I said that it was very interesting. I told her that I had a personal interest in insects. And she asked again if I was a biologist. Nope, just a dumb white guy on a bike.

I stumbled across a little outdoor coffee shop on my way out, and I sat there for a while sipping on an expensive coffee and marveling at the immaturity of all the students around me. Just children. I can’t say that I was impressed with the state of the campus in general. It hardly seemed like an institute of higher learning. I pondered on the fact that all these kids were supposedly the academic cream of the crop and were learning all the things that people need to know to run the modern world. I imagined that one of these students was learning to be a dentist, another to design bridges, a third to run a national economy, and I shuddered. I vowed never to use the services of someone who trained at a university here. The dentist I went to had gone to dental school in the United States, so I had some confidence in him.

While I was sitting at the coffee shop at the university, I reflected that I didn’t know anything about schools here. I didn’t know how expensive it was to attend them. My feeling is that going to university here is not a big deal. The entire country seems to consist of jeepney drivers and students. Those are the only people I ever see. It’s no surprise, therefore, that so many Filipinos go overseas to find work. They pump out billions of new graduates every year, and there is nothing for them to do here. The area around the university did nothing to ease my concern about the quality of the education on offer. Around the university for blocks and blocks were nothing but coffee shops, bars, and gaming Internet cafes. All these students were just like the dozens of jerks that drive me crazy in Internet cafes with their World of Warcraft idiocy.

Riding my bike back into Cebu wasn’t nearly as hard as getting out there. It was about a 20-kilometer round trip. Ever since I got new gear shifters and brake levers put on my bike, I’ve had a bit of trouble changing gears. This goes all the way back to when I first got that bicycle through the bike shop in London. Even after all these years, I still get annoyed when I think about all the trouble I went through to get that bike and how things turned out. For some reason, we decided to take off the shifting system the bike came with and replace it with grip shifters. And when they did so, they sawed off a section of handlebars from each side to shorten them. I can’t remember why they did this, but the handlebars have always felt too short ever since. There isn’t enough room for my hands to sit comfortably and manipulate the controls.

Anyway, when I got back from the museum, I spent a couple of hours trying to adjust things on my bike to make things a bit more comfortable. The problem is that my hands are so crowded on the handlebars that I can’t comfortably move my thumbs from the handlebars and get them around the gear shift lever. My thumbs hit the lever from behind, and I can’t get around them. I spent a fair amount of time adjusting things, and the only thing I could do was push the lever assembly as far as possible to the middle of the handlebars. This caused all kinds of problems with the other things I have on my handlebars (light mount, computer mount, compass, and bell) and it caused trouble with all the cables. I had to dismantle the brakes and pull out the cables and rearrange them all so that they aren’t being bent and twisted. Even so, I could never get all the cables right. One cable in particular seems far, far too tight. That makes sense since this shifting assembly was never meant to fit my bike. It’s for a 27-speed while my bike is a 24-speed. But things seem okay now. I’m going to take the bike out today and see how it feels.

I do wish I were rich sometimes. I’d start all over right now with a completely different bike and other gear. I often see bikes online with what seem to be awesome set-ups – the perfect specialty handlebars, etc. I know that if I started shopping, though, I’d never find these set-ups anywhere. Well, I’m thinking of riding my bike up to the top of the mountain to the viewpoint today. That may or may not be a wise idea. I’ll ride in that direction anyway, and see what happens. If it is far too steep and too far, I’ll just go part way. The problem is that I’m not in cycling shape, so attempting a climb like that might damage my knees and legs. I’m not worried about being tired and working hard, but I don’t want to strain my knees and damage them after this long layoff. We’ll see.

Tags: bike, MRC, museum, Philippines Bike Trip 2013