San Pablo City Blog

If you haven't had the chance to download Google's fantastic free program "Google Earth", please do so here.

Basically, Google Earth is a virtual world globe on your computer. Google Earth is so detailed that you can zoom in into cities anywhere in the world and see the streets, the buildings, the vehicles, landmarks, and so on.

Not every part of the world can be seen in high resolution though, and for the longest time, San Pablo City can only been seen as a low res image... until recently. Kind of.

Below is how San Pablo looks on Google Earth now:



You will notice that the image is split in the middle with a definite line. The left section in dull green-grey and the right section in bright green. This means that you can zoom in on the left section and see more detailed images.

Zooming in you can see streets, houses, trees, etc.



In this zoom you can see the National Highway and the San Pablo diversion road. You can also see the Caltex gas station, San Pablo City Medical Center, the post office in San Roque, etc. This sattelite photo is from 2001 so new structures, like the Chowking and the new 7-11 are not there yet.

Hopefully, Google Earth will finally show San Pablo entirely in high resolution, and update their photos with more recent ones.

Typhoon Frank (international name FENGSHEN) hit San Pablo on the early morning of June 22, 2008. Thankfully, it didn't do much damage, at least in the neighborhood where I am at, except to down a few trees and knock out electricity for a day. I heard of some other areas in San Pablo that still has no electricity. But I hear of no grim news, the same kind of news that has befallen our fellow countrymen elsewhere, like in Iloilo. We here in San Pablo got lucky, this time.

I made a video blog about it at You Tube, which has gotten a lot of views. I guess it would be understandable because a lot of people outside of the Philippines, specially Filipinos and those who are involved with Filipinos in some way or the other, would be very concerned.


[vlog] Typhoon Frank, June 22, 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVQl10KmEHI

I wish I could have gotten some footage of the typhoon itself at its height, but it was in the middle of the night and it was just too dark.

Here are the honors that I got for the video today...


Honors for this video (8)
#95 - Most Discussed (Today) - People & Blogs
#81 - Most Viewed (Today) - People & Blogs - Australia
#46 - Most Viewed (Today) - People & Blogs - Canada
#78 - Most Viewed (Today) - People & Blogs - United Kingdom
#34 - Most Viewed (Today) - People & Blogs - Ireland
#55 - Most Viewed (Today) - People & Blogs - New Zealand
#53 - Most Viewed (Today) - People & Blogs
#14 - Most Viewed (Today) - People & Blogs - South Korea

It's been a while since I updated this blog. I think it's about time I start again. I've been taking a lot of photos of San Pablo, but in an effort to keep things up to date, I will only be using the newest photos in my entries.

The photo above was taken today at Sampalok Lake.

Here is the video version:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3-4SPgW8dc

There have been a lot of changes at Sampalok Lake, and I think most of them are good. The one thing that concerns me greatly is the development of the open area beside the stairs. Here is a photo taken today from the platform looking down the lake:



The restaurant at the bottom was constructed last year. I'm concerned because I really don't know what this new construction will look like or what it's purpose is. I'm guessing it might be commercial, probably another restaurant. Since nothing can be done about this anymore, that the local government didn't see fit to buy this property and develop it as a cultural landmark, I can only hope that this structure will not obstruct the view of the lake from the platform. We'll see.

Last December 31, I took my camera out to the plaza to take videos of the large mango tree. This tree, right at the center of the plaza has been around for as long as people remember. It has become a true landmark, eclipsing to some extent, the Rizal monument located next to it.



It was badly damaged last September 28, 2006, because of the strong winds brought by Typhoon Milenyo. You can see full extent of the damage in the 2nd and third segments of this video.

For high resolution versions, click here.

The San Pablo City Archive Project
Introduction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNJVArta82c

A high resolution version of this video can be dowloaded at Archive.org here.

Taking my intentions for putting up this blog to the extreme, I've taken up a personal project (refer to above) that would endeavor to archive moving snapshots of San Pablo City life from this time for the benefit of future San Pablo residents many decades from now. I've talked in length about the purpose of this project in the video above.

If you have a slow connection, click on the arrow above, then click pause. Wait for the video to load completely, and then click on play once again.

The first installment of the archive concentrates on the San Pablo City Public Market and Shopping Mall.



San Pablo City Public Market and Shopping Mall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbCn2PvIB0k

A high resolution version of this video can be downloaded here.

Newer at the time than Supreme, J. Bros theater was the cinema we in the family now preferred to go to. I was particularly fascinated by the vending machine in the 2nd Floor Lobby. Back in the late 70's, I'd never seen one before and I was facinated to see a cop drop from inside, ice would follow, then my drink. I thought it was fantastic!

As previously mentioned, 2 movies were shown one after the other. The following week, a new duo of movies will be shown. But if once in a rare while that a movie made really good money, they'd extend that for another week. I would often times find out which movies will be shown next because tricycles would often carry announcements at the back.

The last time I watched at J. Bros was sometime in the early 90's. "Ghost" was doubled with "Rocky V". Since I really liked both movies, I thought that was a terrific combination.

J. Bros has been closed as well, I figure, almost at the same time as Supreme did. Now, it's a NOVO, a grocery/department store selling cheap imported goods.

Labels: cinema, film, movies

Supreme Theater, located along Bonifacio, corner Burgos, is no longer so Supreme. In fact, it is now closed and have been for at least a couple of years. Although it still retains the original structure, it's now been converted into an "ukay ukay" or a 2nd hand clothing store.

I still remember going to the movies with my family in the 70's. I was just a young boy, and the ocassion to watch movies at the theater was always a time of great excitement. Supreme was the one of the two theaters in San Pablo we patronized (the other being J. Bros but more of that in a later post).I can even remember watching "Towering Inferno" at Supreme, and I remember it to have been a one of a kind experience because it's one of those very rare times when they only showed ONE movie that week. At San Pablo theaters, they usually show 2 movies one after the other. Sometimes their choices were weird (James Bond doubled with a crazy neo-Western Italian movie dubbed in English, or Star Wars doubled with a horror movie).

One of the unique things about watching movies in San Pablo is that they have a paging system wherein you can page a relative, friend, wife, husband, etc. who you believe to be watching the movie. Their names will be flashed at the bottom of the screen like a subtitle asking them to go home, or cook or whatever. It was so much a part of the viewing experience, that I thought nothing of it. Now I think it's hilarious.

The owners or managers of these theaters, in the face of dwindling patronage, saw it probably fit to start showing bold movies to maintain a profit. That was probably a mistake, because in the light of the growing home video market, people, specially MEN, would rather watch bold movies at the privacy of their own home for reasons only MEN would know and understand. This then drove away the families even more and closure becomes inevitable.

I often entertained the fantasy that if I became a billionnaire, I would buy Supreme, and restore it to its former glory. I would upgrade the video and sound quality to the latest standards, show only blockbuster movies, and be one of the theaters in the country to show them first, make it guaranteed seating and close the doors as soon as the movie opens, and last but not least important, I will install a cellphone signal jamming system (because it's hopeless to discipline people with cellphones inside the theater).

Well, if I only had billions of pesos.

Labels: cinema, film, movies