Monthly Archives: August 2014

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An eventful start to my journey home . . .

I began this post last night while waiting for my Emirates flight to Dubai in the Pacific Club Lounge in Terminal 3 at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport. I am now in Dubai waiting for my onward connection to Birmingham.

Until last Friday, 15 August, when they transferred to Terminal 3, Emirates along with almost all other airlines serving Manila still operated from the rather run down Terminal 1. That terminal is at last undergoing a much needed refurbishment.

While looking bright and clean, Terminal 3 is rather stark. But the check-in, immigration and security is a big improvement over Terminal 1. Maybe because so few airlines are yet relocated here. KLM, Cathay, and Singapore Airlines are due to join Emirates soon.

I settled myself into the lounge then decided to take a few photos. The lounge is nothing to write home about, adequate being perhaps the kindest description, but far superior to the lounge that Emirates used to use in Terminal 1.

Leaving the lounge to take some shots of the concourses, I hesitated over the threshold of the lounge entrance, and then the double glass doors suddenly closed on me. Rather than retracting, they continued to close. And all of a  sudden there was a loud explosion as one of the glass doors disintegrated all around me, glass flying everywhere, and I was left standing in a pile of glass shards. No real damage to me, but the door was a mess. I have a small cut on my right leg, a nick really, now covered in a handsome gauze dressing. The lounge staff were most solicitous for my welfare. That first G&T on the flight to Dubai to recover from the ‘trauma’ hit the right spot.

 

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Chilling in Los Baños . . .

For the past week I have been at the headquarters of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños in the Philippines, where I worked for almost 19 years until my retirement in April 2010. I had to attend two meetings in preparation for the 4th International Rice Congress (IRC2014) that will be held at the end of October in Bangkok, Thailand. The first meeting, from Monday to Wednesday, was the SciCom Exec to finalize the content and structure of the scientific conference. The IRC2014 Organizing Committee met on Thursday and Friday. We were kept busy from morning to night, although there were opportunities for some social gatherings, and I also took full advantage of staying in IRRI’s Guesthouse to enjoy the nearby swimming pool every morning at 6 am.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. My journey began on Friday 8 August, traveling on Emirates Airlines from Birmingham to Manila via Dubai (BHX-DXB-MNL). There were minimal delays at BHX, and we landed more or less on time in DXB around midnight local time.

Enjoying my first (?) G & T
My starter for ten . . .

The stopover was about three hours, and by the time I’d cleared security, checked out Duty Free, and made my way to the EK lounge in Terminal 3, there wasn’t too long to wait before we were boarding the next flight to Manila. That wasn’t a good flight. It was comfortable enough, but there was turbulence the whole flight – not severe by any stretch of the imagination, except for the occasional sharp bump – and just persistent enough to prevent me from settling. Added to that, a large gentleman across the aisle from me settled to sleep immediately after take-off from DXB, and snored the whole way to Manila! After landing in Manila NAIA Terminal 1, I had passed through immigration and customs in less than 20 minutes, but traffic congestion around the airport (it was around 5:15 pm on Saturday), and during the 65 km drive to Los Baños, delayed our arrival at the Guesthouse until almost 8 pm.

Meeting old friends
Despite the busy schedule of meetings, I was able to catch up with the many old friends at IRRI. I was given an office in my former DPPC unit, now called DRPC.

On Tuesday night I was treated to dinner at Sulyap Gallery Café and Restaurant in San Pablo, about 10 km south of Los Baños. And we had a lovely evening: great company, great food. What more can you ask for?

L to R: Eric, Zeny, me, Vel, Corints and Yeyet

L to R: Eric, Zeny, me, Vel, Corints and Yeyet

On Wednesday, Yeyet and her husband Christian took me out to dinner in Los Baños. They were married in March, and had invited me to be one of their sponsors or ninong. Of course I wasn’t able to travel then, but I did send a short video message that was played during the wedding reception. It was a complete surprise to everyone (except Vel with whom I’d made the arrangements to receive and show the video).

On Thursday and Friday nights the IRC2014 committees got together to relax.

Checking out the genebank
Our meetings finished by Friday lunchtime, so I took advantage of some ‘free’ time in the afternoon to visit the International Rice Genebank in the TT Chang Genetic Resources Center, and meet my former staff and colleagues.

Now the genebank is really the only place in Los Baños where you can chill out. The Active Collection is kept around 2-3C, but the Base Collection is maintained at a decidedly frosty -18C. Since I left IRRI in 2010, a new and much larger cold room to house the Base Collection was added to the genebank infrastructure, with funding from the World Bank. Seeds are still stored in vacuum-sealed aluminium cans, but nowadays, everything is neatly bar-coded. (I was even shown a new tablet-based scoring system, complete with photos and descriptions, for germplasm characterization).

Pola, Ato, and Soccie – the ‘Three Musketeers’
Mel – handling seeds in the seed drying room, maintained at 15C and 15% RH
Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton and Ato posing patiently in the Base Collection at -18C while I took my photos
Vacuum-sealed aluminum cans in the Base Collection.

Despite the fact that I had responsibility for the genebank for a decade from 1991, and obviously it’s my ‘baby’, I’m immensely proud of the staff and their conscientious attitude in conserving this extremely important germplasm collection.

Out and about on the farm – Typhoon Glenda
This morning (Sunday) I decided to take a tour of the IRRI Experiment Station, not only to see all the various rice breeding plots and experiments, but to visit the wild species screenhouses on the Upland Farm, and see what damage the recent Typhoon Glenda had caused.

‘You can take the man out of IRRI, but you can’t take IRRI out of the man’. Wandering around the farm, looking at all the fields and labs where I worked for almost 19 years it was hard not to feel really nostalgic. But when I visited IRRI last November, it was almost 4 years then since I had retired and I had been away long enough to have made ‘the separation’. Nevertheless, IRRI and its work has become part of my DNA, and I really do get a thrill wandering through the fields. Rice breeding and science is a numbers game, and IRRI plays that game to the highest proficiency. The field plots are immaculate, and surprisingly so considering the severity of Typhoon Glenda which apparently hung around the Los Baños area for more than 6 hours. There must have been some extremely turbulent vortices to have caused the damage that it did, although this time, there was little if no rain damage. Typhoon Glenda was a ‘dry’ typhoon compared to many.

Damage to the south side of Chandler Hall
The roof of the Service Building was ripped off
This quite new greenhouse, used in the C4 project, received severe damage
Many of the greenhouses received some damage to the roof and side panels
Many of the famous pili trees along Pili Drive from UPLB to IRRI were uprooted
Me and some of the GRC field staff inside one of the wild species screenhouses
Multiplying wild rices
Inside the wild rices screenhouse – some plants in the foreground are flowering
Soccie keeps this wild rice nursery in fantastic shape
Submergence tolerant rice varieties, showing variants with the SUB1 gene after a period of flooding – these are the green plants
IRRI is now using bar coding in the field for all its breeding lines
INGER demonstration plots – the variation between varieties is striking
Rice-maize rotation field plots
Demonstration plots of IR varieties, with iconic Mt Makiling in the distance

An Iranian feast
On Sunday evening, I met up with an old friend and former staff member, Bita, who now works for Accenture in Manila. Bita is originally from Iran, but moved to the Philippines when she was eleven. Both her parents are rice scientists. So Bita grew up in Los Baños, went to UPLB, married and had four lovely children, and has now opened an authentic Iranian restaurant in Los Baños called Everyday Kabab.

I had a lovely meal of dips and naan bread (check out Bita’s garlic and yoghurt dip) followed by chicken and beef kababs, prepared using Bita’s secret recipe. She also serves a traditional cherry drink from Iran; it’s neither sweet nor sour, but very refreshing. And Everyday Kabab is growing in popularity among the LB community – it certainly began to fill up while I was there.

And finally, another surprise . . . 
Once we’d finished early on Friday afternoon and I left GRC, I returned to the Guesthouse for some rest, and to work in a more comfortable location. At least I could wear shorts and a T-shirt. But I hadn’t been in my room much more than 30 minutes when the phone rang, and to my surprise, it was Lilia Tolibas, our helper who worked for us for 18 years. Although working mostly in Manila these days, Lilia still has family ties in Los Baños, and had heard I was in town. And she came specially to see me.

We had a good chat for almost an hour, and it was then I heard about her misfortune during last November’s Typhoon Yolanda that hit her home town of Tacloban so badly. After we had left, she built a small house in Tacloban and moved many of her belongings there. But the tidal wave that hit the town destroyed her house, and sadly one of her sisters drowned. She works for the American Chamber of Commerce in Manila and they were quickly offering humanitarian relief. They found her family, and quickly also found her sister’s body who was given a decent burial, a dignity not afforded to so many victims. Lilia is still waiting for her compensation from the government from the humanitarian relief that so many countries donated. It’s a scandal that this is not being released to the victims and families.

Flying home . . .
Tomorrow night, Monday, my EK flight to DXB departs at 23:55 from the ‘new’ Terminal 3 at NAIA. I say ‘new’ advisedly since it was constructed almost a decade ago but, until now, had not be used by the major airlines. Emirates transferred to Terminal 3 last Friday. Let’s hope that this NAIA experience is far superior to many I’ve had out of the decrepit Terminal 1. I should be home in the UK by early afternoon on Tuesday.

A busy week, yes. Fruitful? Yes. Many things accomplished? Yes. Now it’s time to complete the final tasks and before we know it we’ll all be heading off to the congress in Bangkok at the end of October.

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More Loire Valley than Thames . . .

The day dawned fair, and as so often this summer, Steph and I took full advantage of the weather last Wednesday to take in yet another National Trust property. Heading 73 miles southeast from our home just south of Birmingham, our destination was Waddesdon Manor, built by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild in 1874. Surrounded by mature parkland (these house builders from previous centuries certainly had a long term vision) full of majestic trees, Waddesdon Manor sits on a hill with magnificent views over the Vale of Aylesbury, the Chilterns, and west towards Oxford and the Thames Valley.

Designed in the style of a Renaissance French chateau, the property comprises the main house (with its separate ‘bachelor’ wing), overlooking an impressive parterre that the National Trust gardeners maintain to an impressive standard, a rococo aviary stocked with many species from Southeast Asia that we are familiar with from our nineteen years in the Philippines and, at some little distance from the main house, a stable block that now houses visiting exhibitions and dining outlets.

The North Front and main entrance
Waddesdon Manor, home of the Rothschilds
The entrance drive from the first floor
The South Front
Looking across the Parterre and Fountain Pool
The Parterre from the first floor
A fine example of the many flower beds, statuary and garden furniture found all around the Waddesdon park
The aviary
The stables

The National Trust has recently built a car park for 1000 cars, which goes to show just how popular visits to Waddesdon can be. We were quite lucky, and it was not too busy during our visit. There’s a regular shuttle every 10 minutes from the car park to the house. The walk takes a suggested 15 minutes (but we think much longer). Entry to the house is by timed ticket that can be booked online ahead of your visit.

There’s no doubt that Waddesdon Manor is one of the most impressive houses we have visited. Everything has been cared for, and the house certainly does not have the feel of a museum, even though it’s stacked to the rafters with the most exquisite objets d’art – but more of that later. Even as early as the last years of the 19th century Baron Ferdinand’s sister Alice was aware of the effect of sunlight on the furnishings, and from then till now, the house contents have been shielded in good part from the worst effects of light. Surprisingly, photography is permitted throughout the house (unless indicated otherwise, but there were no restrictions during our visit), but as with all National Trust properties, the use of a flash is not permitted. Thank goodness for the advanced settings on digital cameras that permit photography even in low light levels.

But it’s the interiors of Waddesdon Manor that leave one feeling rather slack-jawed. The opulence – and ostentation – is overpowering. Priceless clocks, ceramics, silverware, and sculpture adorn almost every available surface. Old Masters cover the walls. There is magnificent furniture dating back several centuries in almost every room. This is a Rothschild expression of wealth and power, kept in the family by a series of astute marriages between quite close relatives.

Paneling in the breakfast room, off the West Gallery
The Conservatory, off the Breakfast Room
Anteroom between the Conservatory and the Dining Room
The Dining Room
The Red Drawing Room
The ceiling of the Red Drawing Room
The Grey Drawing Room
An urn, 1m tall, in solid malachite, was a gift from the Tsar of Russia,
The Billiards Room in the bachelor wing

While you can’t help marveling at the wonder and beauty of the enormous collection assembled by Baron Ferdinand, I came away from Waddesdon Manor with a sense of unease. I have now visited quite a few National Trust properties over the past three years, many of them built and furnished by individuals who, in their time, were fabulously wealthy. Was Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild any different, or is it that the construction and furnishing of Waddesdon Manor is comparatively recent compared to many of the other properties? I read that Baron Ferdinand built Waddesdon to house his collection of fine objets d’art, to show off to his friends. So I got the feeling that he somehow assembled such a fantastic collection just because he could, not because he really appreciated their beauty. They were there to be displayed, not to add to the aesthetics of the Manor. Certainly there is so much to see, so much to take in, that it really is challenging to appreciate everything there.

Waddesdon was bequeathed to the National Trust in 1957, but the family still have an interest in the property. And one of these is the sale of fine wines from the Rothschild vineyards in the Bordeaux region of France. A visit to the wine cellars under the west wing is fascinating, with one of the galleries stretching for many tens of meters, and stacked, floor to ceiling, with boxes of wine ready for sale.

So although I’m glad I visited Waddesdon, and did marvel at the beauty of the many things we saw, it won’t be high on my list for a second visit any time soon.