amadeo - pineapple plantation

The reheated pandesal with a little butter was the best he had for quite a while. The texture decided the goodness of any pandesal. And these had the coarse-sandy surfaces that the bites on them stimulated the want of more bites. He had 4 or 5 of them.

Josie is a happy lady in her 50's. and though she's a single mum of a son and a daughter, she doesn't feel she lacks anything in this world. Being a property agent for the last 20 years, dealing with properties in areas around tagaytay, she has seen the boom time of property in the last 10 years, from sleeping wilderness, to a booming investment hot spot, with prices of land went up 10 times, she did not let the good time go without enriching herself with buying and selling parcels of lands speculatively. she has a big house in silang, and other farm lands around the area, and currently finishing up a 17-storey hotel in silang.

They visited her pineapple farm in Amadeo, a small town near to tagaytay. the 2.7hec farm has 20,000 pineapple trees, each one already topped with ripe or near-ripe fruit. each tree lasts for 3 years, and fruits every year - the first year, with biggest fruit, 2nd not so big, the third year barely sizable enough to be of any commercial value. then they have chop down the plants and do the replanting.

2 workers, father and son, took care of the plantation. They lived in a house inside the plantation with water and electricity, and paid each p6000 monthly.

It was an eye-opener for the first-time pineapple plantation visitors. They had a good time in plucking up ripe pineapples, taking pictures and also listening to the getting-rich story of Josie, the power-mum.

maragondon farm - muddy and flat

It was a muddy trip.they drove by the alternate highway passing thru trece matires, then silang. then they reached tagaytay, thick fog shrouded the lake and its vicinity.

They drove thru alfonso, and rocked by a broken road for a kilometer. Then onto tarmac again for quite a distance, before met by broken road again, they met the farm owner, kapitan albert and his entourage(his sister-in-law, 2 brokers).

the land is flat and fertile. a good piece of land, indeed.

they pulled over their vehicles 500 meters before the farm and had to take out their slippers and wade onto the muddy path to get to the farm.

the 10hec farm do not have right of access, but going thru the other farm lot. 4 hec has been rented out to plant sugar cane, the rest with some unattended banana and other trees, and a tapioca field. they had a good 30-minute walk in the farm.

when they had done, carlo the property agent got his toyota stuck in a depression when he was trying to make a u-turn. the people nearby came out to help to lift the car up to free it.

enbloc again - cross fingers

He received an sms - the 80 percentage point of the enbloc project has been reached. Meaning they can go ahead to call for tender to sell the estate enbloc. and just before the one-year expiry date on july 8.

It's been more than 3 years since they started the project. This the second time they embarked on it. The first time was in 2007, when they reached 76 percent and all of a sudden, a new enbloc law came into effect and everything had to come to a halt, because of new clauses in the new law.

now that they have reached the 80%, the next lap will be to hold an owners' meeting and call for tender to sell the estate.

will there be any buyer for an $800-million property?

- cross fingers

lucban - a sensible town

Lucban, quezon - a water city. Every drain and ditch is filled with moving water, all from the surrounding mountains, running down the slopes. And it's typhoon - season, egay has just left, falcon already reared it rainy head, the water rushes into the town like nobody's business. Lucban also is a clean and tidy city, compared with a lot of cities and towns in the philippines, and even other cleaner places in the other countries. clean, not much rubbish around, no faul smell of rotten garbage around the corners or at the back streets. Tidy, as its layout is simply a matrix of horizontal and vertical streets, like some well planned subdivision. It's also an enegrtic and closely knit town, with the streets measured only two-car-lane wide, everything is next to one another. With people in every street, it also exudes a lively atmosphere. It's a green town, plastic bags are banned here. Moreover it's a haggle-free town, prices of all shops are uniformly fixed, no bargain, no discounts, esp on the product they are famous for, longanisa. lucban also produces a lot of pineapples from the farms nearby, very juicy and tasty type - like the sarawak pineapple. the market is full of activities, buying, selling, people walking, taking jeepeys, driving cars, motors.....

they put up one night in a hotel(only one?) in the town centre and had a very good tour of this somewhat very-normal but very-well-kept town.

and the people - very peaceful, that's why itchie the property agent said, "DON't worry. there's no NPA - new people's army, here."

he likes the town - a place of peace and good sense.