Half way

I'm halfway through my placement, and my! hasn't the time flown. This is of course assuming I manage to get my visa extended and don't get deported at the end of next week. Here's a collection of random images to celebrate. 

View over Laguna de Bay, to the east of Manila. This enormous lake is the remnant of a volcano crater.

Pagsanjan Falls. The final scenes of Apocalypse Now were filmed here.

Boatmen row, haul and drag tourist boats up the rapids.

Meet of the United Folding Bikers club. Stridas are very popular, Britain is known as the home of the Brompton.

Landslides on the road to Infanta.

Infanta - a narrow strip of habitable land between the mountains and the Pacific.

A visit to some badly eroded river bank protection.

This is what it should look like - the has only just been built, and has yet to see a wet season. The volcano in the background is Arayat National Park.

House abandoned after being hit by a debris flow following heavy rains two years ago.

Evening ride through Intramuros, the old heart of Manila. The horse was called Dave.

Manila Bay by night. Sinister squat building on waterfront is US Embassy.

Fieldwork

Rice fields, mountains

Last week was my first trip to the field: 2 days in Nueva Ecija and Pampanga provinces with a team planning to take river flow measurements at locations where water level sensors have been installed. This work is actually going to be quite important - we'll be using the measurements to improve the hydrological models which estimate flood flows in response to typhoon events.

Levels on lamp post by road bridge

Local resident cools off in the shade

Most of the time was spent driving to and from the mall for lunch; waiting around for other people to turn up; and, inexplicably, a trip to a buffalo milk processing plant. We did actually set up 3 GPS stations for static survey measurements (probably about 2 hours work all told); one of these blew over after 5 minutes, so we gave up on it.

GPS survey set up - this one remained upright

This is reminiscent of some of my experiences in Indonesia (see here for for a typical example), and brought with it a possible revelation. Some people not only don't mind the endless waiting around, faffing and generally being a bit disorganised - they actually enjoy it.

Not much water in the rivers

So in the end I didn't get to see any flow measurements being made - and this is something that I might have been able to help with. As it is, measuring flow at this time of year is a bit pointless anyway - it hasn't rained in 6 weeks and the rivers are almost dry. Hoping for better when I go to inspect a flood defence next week.

Popular tourist resort - especially with watersports enthusiasts