Off to Panay Island

Thank you for visiting my blog. I will be leaving for a trip to Iloilo and will not be updating my blog for the entire Holy Week. I have always made Holy Week a time to reflect and contemplate on my life. Last year, I spent the Holy Week in Marinduque, which you can read here here, here and here.

See you again soon and I wil be posting about my Iloilo adventure when I come back the Monday after the Holy Week.

Take care and God Bless!

The Looban: Life Inside the River Slums(3)

A large family (20 members--the other five are outside) lives in 10 sq.m living space



The typical toilet of the slum house in the Looban.
Human excrements drop directly to the river below.



In the Looban, chismis (gossip) is a social activity of the women (although men also sometimes engaged in it). Idle afternoons, when household chores are already done, are often the times when the chismis session begins. Topics are varied i.e., the pregnancy of a teen-age neighbor, the mistress of a male neighbor, etc. Chismis often leads to verbal tussles among the women folks.



Kids play the popular Filipino game Tumbang Preso.






Public bathing is considered a socially acceptable activity in the Looban.






Siesta time.

Aquaman

Another amazing tool created by man! The Lunocet is an invention created by engineer Ted Ciamillo. It's a 2.5-pound monofin made of carbon fiber and fiberglass that attaches to an aluminum foot plate at a precise 30-degree angle. The key to the 42-inch-wide fin's speed: its shape and angle, both of which are modeled with scientific precision on a dolphin's tail.

Lunocet users have already hit about eight miles per hour, nearly twice as fast as Olympic Gold Medal swimmer Michael Phelps at his speediest. TWICE AS FAST!!! Using the Lunocet, some swimmers are close to being able to breach completely out of the water, like whales! The Lunocet can be purchased for only $1,500.00! I don't know why that seems cheap to me....

Now I need to learn how to communicate with marine life, and I'll be prepared when Black Manta tries to rise again!

Presidents

Ha Ha! I don't see anything odd, do you?

Man, I hope Obama does great things... It's rare that you see a man who's so down to earth, so intelligent, and so personable as he is.... He's kind of like the opposite of a politician.... He just doesn't seem crooked, like he actually has my best interests at heart.

Almost as crazy as a black guy becoming President of the United States of America during my generation? I'm watching women's college basketball highlights on television....with the sound on....

Tumefactive demyelination

Findings

Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3, and Figure 4 demonstrate a hypointense T1, hyperintense T2 weighted expansile mass involving the splenium of the corpus callosum. The mass has well defined borders and partially effaces the atrium (trigone) of the left lateral ventricle. There is mild patchy enhancement (Figure 4). DWI images demonstrate increased signal throughout, but only the even more hyperintense rim (Figure 5) demonstrates true restricted diffusion on ADC images (Figure 6). The remainder of the mass is increased signal on ADC images, indicating increased diffusivitiy.


Diagnosis: Tumefactive demyelination


A noncomprehensive list of lesions involving the corpus callosum includes the following: masses such as lipomas, lymphoma, glioblastoma and astrocytoma, and metastases; demyelinating diseases such as multiple sclerosis, progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, and Marchiafava-Bignami disease; vascular lesions such as infarctions, vascular malformations; and trauma. More focal lesions with restricted diffusion involving the splenium can also be seen in patients with epilepsy receiving antiepileptic drugs and in the setting of hypoglycemia. Narrowing the differential possibilities to a few relevant entities requires clinical history and detailed analysis of the imaging characteristics. Many of the disease processes mentioned have some unique characteristics that may help favor a particular diagnosis. However, in spite of a full clinical history and an arsenal of imaging tools, a biopsy may ultimately be necessary, as was the case with this patient.

The diagnosis in this case was tumefactive demyelination, which may be thought of as a solitary demyelinating lesion measuring greater than 2 cm and with characteristics that mimic neoplasm. Because of this, tumefactive demyelinating lesions are commonly diagnosed as such only after biopsy. Several imaging characteristics suggestive of such a lesion have been described. These include a large lesion with circumscribed borders and little or no mass effect or surrounding edema. Demyelinating lesions in general also tend to demonstrate an incomplete ring of enhancement, with the nonenhancing component facing the gray matter. The enhancing rim is felt to represent the leading edge of demyelination, and therefore usually faces the white matter. Some foci also have been shown to have decreased perfusion in some studies, which would help distinguish them from glioblastoma and lymphomas.

The abnormality in our case does illustrate a few of these characteristics, such as a circumscribed border and lack of surrounding edema. The lesion did demonstrate increased diffusivity on DWI/ADC maps, which would argue against a highly cellular tumor like lymphoma and a high grade glioma. Active foci of demyelination may demonstrate restricted diffusion. In our case, the thin peripheral rim of restricted diffusion may represent an active edge of demyelination. The mass effect on the atrium of the left lateral ventricle is a confounding factor that can be associated with tumefactive demyelination or neoplasms. Metastases usually elicit a large amount of edema which was noticeably absent in this case. Infarction is also unlikely given the patient’s age and based on the imaging characteristics of the abnormality. Infarctions involving the corpus callosum are uncommon because of the ample blood supply from the anterior and posterior circulation. Unfortunately, none of these features is specific enough to warrant watchful waiting, and therefore a biopsy was performed.

The Looban: Life Inside the River Slums

The Looban (pronounced as Lo-oh-ban) is a term loosely applied to the interior cluster of stilt shanty houses in a slum area. The Looban is composed of numerous clusters of houses and dwellings divided by narrow unnamed streets and blind-alleys.

The Looban which we are about to explore is an interior squatter neighborhood located along the banks of the Estero de Paco in Barangay Ducepec, in Paco, Manila. The houses are built along the river banks and extended up to three meters to the river. This means that half of the house is on solid ground and the other half is beneath the toxic river.

Most houses are very small, known locally as the Barong-barong. It is like a box structure made of different kinds of scavenged materials: plywood, cardboards, pieces of wood salvaged from the garbage dump site, flattened tin cans and rusted tin roofs. On top of the roofs can be found, invariably, vehicle tires or concrete blocks as a means of leverage in case of typhoons.

There is no definite shape of the houses. The architecture is not the main concern. The main concern is to provide each member of the family with enough sleeping space, which, unfortunately is not always enough. There are no rooms inside the houses. The one room that they have is used for dining and sleeping. There is no proper toilet within the houses. There is just a very small walled room called Kubeta where a small hole on the floor is opened directly to the river underneath. This serves as the toilet.

Most houses have barely any furnishings. It is not considered important to buy these luxuries. Food is the most important commodity that they buy with what little money they earn. As such there is also no electricity or clean water system as they cannot pay for these services. The electricity problem has been solved by a few enterprising men who managed to connect illegal wires to the electric post. These enterprising men were given 5 peso a day by each of the houses. But the illegal connection starts only at night as the Meralco (the power service provider), checks the wires at day.

The clean water is being fetch through an illegal connection to the water pipes. But a few neighbors who managed to get legal connections protested because they said that the stolen water was being charged to their account. These few with legal connections sell water by the Timba (bucket) for 2 pesos. All day, there are numerous timbas lining the faucet for clean water. It was a good business. Although there is also a Poso (deep well) where people can get water, but its water is not potable for drinking (only for washing clothes), so most buy potable water.

Access to the Looban is through a small opening of an unnamed street. People go in and out of the Looban through this very narrow passage. Sometimes, when there are numerous people going in or out at the same time, they have to walk sideways to make enough space for a walking passage.

***

I have to say that photographing the living conditions inside these squatter dwellings has been the most difficult task I have yet done as a photojournalist. In a period of several weeks, I visited and revisited the Looban so as to immerse myself with the plight of the poor Filipinos living inside this squatter area. Many of the residents welcomed me even though I was alone and a complete stranger. Despite the warnings given to me by some people that life inside the slum could be dangerous to a stranger (indeed, one of the streets was named Street of No Return), I felt no hostility from the people living inside. If there was, I did not notice it. In fact, many of them were very friendly and accommodating, even allowing me inside their dwellings for interviews and taking photographs.

The men seemed to be very hospitable, too. As I walked along the narrow streets, I found some of them in drinking session and offered me a "shot". I always decline such generous offers and I'm glad they did not force me, because if they did, I would have to drink a shot. Seeing my camera, they willingly agreed to my offer to photograph their drinking session.

Life inside the slum area is hard. Really, it's hard to be poor. Most families have barely anything to eat, and their living conditions are deplorable. Some houses are like little boxes where rats, flies, cockroaches, and mosquitoes share a living space with the human beings.

This series has been a great learning experience for me, and I will never look at life the same way again.

My Little Art

Check out these amazing little pieces of art created by an artist in Finland, named Mari Kasurinen. Mari is selling them for £330 (Approximately $470 US) each and will ship them anywhere in the world... What a fun idea... Talk about thinking outside the box... I think I'll stick with the $5.00 My Little Pony from Toys'R'Us, but the rest of you should definitely help support a starving art student.

My Little Stormtrooper


My Little Slave Princess Leia


My Little Han Solo


My Little Chewbacca


My Little Skeletor


My Little He-Man


My Little Bride Kill Bill


My Little Joker


My Little Batman and Robin


My Little Jack Sparrow


My Little Edward Scissorhands


My Little Crybaby


My Little Alien


My Little Elvis


You can see the rest of her My Little Pony Art collection at her site at:

http://www.marikasurinen.com