When I came back from a month-long vacation from the P.I., the entire terrace garden is in a mess. Not that my colleagues, whom I politely asked before I left, neglected watering them. Perhaps a sandstorm took place leaving the plants in total disarray and, except for the finger chilies and ornamental plants, everything has to be replanted.

I don’t usually let the basil grow flowers as it makes the leaves lose their flavor and scent but there’s this one batch on a small pot that I let to flower for ornamental purposes. On my return, the whole plant has died and dried to perfection. Good thing the flowers, though dried completely, the wind hasn’t swept them up so I could still collect the seeds for replanting.

Basil seeds can be collected from the flowers once they dried completely. Just remove the flowers, crush them with your fingers on a sheet of paper, plate or bowl and lightly blow and you’ll have the seeds separated.

Here’s Electro Boy gathering the seeds from the basil flowers.

Electro Boy seems upset to find that the cherry tomatoes have started to bear fruits but they have all dried out, too, except for a very few.

Anyways, I brought new chili varieties with me that I’m planning to plant when I start the garden anew and there’s the pandan (screwpine) and calamansi seeds, too. More food and plant posts to come up in a couple of days as I’m still having a blast taking photos of my new inanimate room companions.

I love bokeh. Most of my photos were taken using the shallowest depth of fields available on my two lenses (F4/5.6). Unfortunately, my lenses were only capable of those and it would probably take another decade before I could get my hands on a more decent fast lens.

But when I recently tried photographing birds and other small critters　and I can’t produce a single crisp image, I realized the need to resort to using smaller apertures. The three photos above were taken in burst until the bird left using 1/800 sec exposure, F10 aperture, 400 ISO speed and 300mm focal length. The quality is still far from what I’m hoping for but definitely better with my previous ones.

Click the photos to enlarge.

I hope I could meet with this little yellow bird again so I could give its color a better justice.

UPDATE: SH*T! The guys over at TPC are shooting birds at high apertures.

To avoid losing billions of dollars in both trade and financial transactions, Saudi Arabia will switch its weekend to Friday-Saturday from the current Thursday-Friday following a decision by the Kingdom’s Shoura Council.

“The legislative and consultative body on Monday approved a recommendation to make the change, with 83 members voting in favour and 41 members against. It was not specified when the switch would be made.

“The decision will be applied to workers in the public sector.”

Apparently, only Saudi Arabia remains to be the only country among the members of the Gulf Cooperating Council observing Thursday as holiday as Oman has marked the start of their weekend change for May 1, 2013.

Back at work, we used to refer to months with five Thursdays and Fridays as “high forecast” months because no matter what day of the week it may be we will still have 12-hour per shift plant operations and in which case there will be more opportunity to render overtime work and therefore, more overtime pay come payday.

This year, May and August are marked as high forecast months but should the weekend change takes place next month, the month of May will be no longer be one, August will remain (as there are also five Fridays) and November will be take the place that will be vacated by May.

Source: Saudi Arabia switches weekend to Fri-Sat, Arabian Business

An earthquake has been reportedly experienced throughout the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the rest of the Middle-Eastern countries which registered a magnitude 7.8 near Zahedan, Iran at 10:44:13.03 UTC on Apr 16, 2013.

Source: US Geological Survey

Sabi n’yo hindi lumilindol jan!?

Looking for that perfect summer outfit? Dying to take a bite of the most scrumptious food? Don’t worry–SCORCH is coming your way soon! Come and shop at the bazaar of the season to be held at the Elements Tent, Eton Centris, EDSA cor Quezon Ave. on May 4-5, 2013!

For details, please visit http://www.ScorchBazaar2013.tk/ or contact 0917 319 5630 (Archie) or 0917 816 1097 (Bettina) for more details. You can visit our Facebook (facebook.com/ScorchBazaar2013) page as well.