Day 6 (11 February 2016) in Davao, Philippines

I woke up at 3am and made my self ready and went downstairs, checked out, and asked the hotel staff for taxi. I got taxi and loaded my mag and headed to the airport. I was worried if the security got curious with my magnetometer, fortunately it passed the security without any problems. However, at the checking counter, the Magnetometer box weigh 50kg. The lady at the counter said, it has to be 32kg. Wow! a big blowup. What shall I do, she said dived the stuff and move to my luggage. I moved everything inside except the sensor and heavy cable to my luggage. It is now weigh 35.5kg, but she still refused to Check in it. So strict? she had me to wait aside until he supervisor comes. Finally, her supervisor allowed the 3.5kg excess weigh to be checked in. Where did I stuffed the other items from the Magnetometer box? I stuffed some of them into my luggage and my backpack. My luggage and the Magnetometer box are now checked in. Hope they make to Davao.

Boarding Air Asia Philippines to Davao

Ok, they did. I was told someone from the site will be waiting for me outside the airport gate but I couldn't find him. I called him and he was there but waiting for me on another arrival gate. He took me to my hotel, where I was greeting by Fr Dan McNamara. After I checked in, they drove me to site, Fr McNamara came with us just to make sure I'll get what I want, though he had to return back to university as he a class.
The site looks very desirable. Start testing and data looks very clean. Finally we accomplish a lot today. We bury the sensor alignment and also performed the GPS connection. Now the biggest problem will be Internet connection, which is scheduled to meet the IT guy tomorrow.

The data looks very clean!

AMBER electronics sharing table with SCINDA GPS

Sensor got a good home for the rest of its life

Fr McNamara invited me for dinner at the Jesuit residence, which i enjoyed it very much. It was very good experience. Now so exhausted and would like to crash to bed, hopping praying that the Internet connection will work tomorrow.

Day 5 (10 February 2016) in Manila, Philippines

I headed to the observatory with little hope. I decided to test by connecting the bbb and looking at the streaming udps. In the meantime until the IT guys figured out how to get BBB online, I reinstall the software and make a test and it seems now working. One step development.

Now at least the mag reads normal value

However, the site is noisy and if the Jesuit residence get permitted, the sensor should be moved there if not to the site where the Japanese magnetometers is located which is about an hour drive from Manila. Thus, I had to trained a staff how to aligned the sensor. We dag a temporary hole for the sensor and trained Clint how to do it. Somehow, a little achievement. Now the Internet connection. They're very ken to get us IP address with no firewall attached to it. However, none of them know how to configure the BBB to static IP address. I requested to register the MAC address so that there is no need to configure it. They refuse to register the MAC address. I took it to the campus main IT department and explained to main IT engineer but he had no idea how to do it, and promised to get back to Clint tomorrow morning. Hope that will be resolved soon.

The temporary site of the sensor!

Now worry about trip to Davao. James planned to travel with me to Davao. Around 5pm I head another accidental problem. James has got family emergency which could not allow him to travel, very unfortunate and hope the emergency won't be that serious.

The picture taken next to SCINDA system at Pope's office (L-to-R, Cristine, Pope, me, and Clint)

Finally, my Manila trip concluded by having dinner with Pope and his student, Cristin. They took me to one of typical Philippinos restaurant. Clint dropped us at the restaurant but couldn't joined us for dinner because he had to take his son to home but he will be back to drive me and the Magnetometer to my hotel, which he did. I arrived at my hotel around10pm with my magnetometers; and crashed to bed, because I have to wake up at 3am to catch my flight to Davao.

Day 4 (9 February 2016) in Manila, Philippines

Today was very hectic day in general. I arrived at the observatory earlier than expected appointment time with James. Since he was not there, I had to wait at the reception desk for him. When he arrived at the observatory, he told me that he got permission at the high school, and we rushed there to test the site. Although the site is not a desirable site for magnetometer sensors, but I had to test it and found similar unexplained saturation. Now I tried to question what is wrong with such detection, is it the instruments fault? Is it just the area covered with underground wire that saturate everything? Or what, a lot of questions but no answer. I never had such experience before.

Very strange mag saturation

Having lunch with James and his research group

Went back to the observatory and tried to make a test with the other magnetometer which was scheduled to be deployed in Davao. I still got the same. However, that gave me an asuranc that it is not instrument fault. So what is it? Still no answer. We want to test it outside the campus, and Clint drove me and the Magnetometer to outside the campus, it was the other end of another university, university of Philippines. We made a test using ups battery, still the same. Back to the observatory and performed other test. We download the software on another computer, Clint laptop and perform similar test but found the same. Ok, is it the ups making voltage spikes? I removed our ups and used one of their ups, still the same. In the meantime time the Sun completed its task for the day, and it's getting very dark and I had to go back to my hotel. I start googling to get some answers still nothing. I tried to sleep around 1130pm but woke up at 3am and continue navigate for answer. I tried to Uninstall the software and reinstall it. However, the computer did not allow me to Uninstall the software. Well, I had to make contact to our BC it guy, Sean, and he tried to access my computer remotely and found so many corrupted glitch. We finally manage to Uninstall it. We finished the cleanup around 820am in the morning.

Day 3 (8 February 2016) in Manila, Philippines

Since today is a holiday here in Philippines, not much activity today. I was told to wait on a standby mode if in case we get some responses from those people who are responsible for the compound where we would like to relocate the sensor we will do some site testing. I was in my hotel the whole day waiting for update from James. It is now 4:00pm and he sent me a note that we couldn't do anything today as he did not get any responses from any of them. We're now schedule to meet tomorrow at 9:00am. I'm still crossing my fingers that things will go smooth as planned.

Day 2 (7 February 2016) in Manila, Philippines

As expected today's sleeping conditions was not right. Since I was so exhausted, last night I went bed quite early and unfortunately woken up at 1:00am and couldn't be able to go back to asleep.

Manila observatory

Anyway, after having breakfast I went to the observatory to meet my point of contact. Since I arrived there a few minutes earlier I did walk around the beautiful campas. The 150 years old observatory, which was established by Jesuit, is a separate institute that is not supported by the government. Ateneo de Manila university, also Jesuit university, is located in the same compound. Scientists at the observatory teach at this university.

This is us (left to right James, me and Pope whom I met at ICTP) at the top of the buildings, surveying for GPS antenna location!

Finally I met Dr James Simpus and two other staffs (Pope and Clint), whom I met at ICTP and Indonesia when they came to attend summer schools where I also participated as lecturers. We did not waste time to start navigate a possible home for AMBER sensor. I picked very quite place, at least from external visible magnetic stuff. I requested if we can start testing if the site is really magnetically quite place.
Unfortunately it is not. For the reason we do not know the sensor detected a very big noise that quickly saturate the measurments. It reads way more than 65000nT (maximum range for our magnetometers). We tried different options, such as moving the sensor to different locations, but still big interface that keeps saturate our measurments. We spent more three hours looking into different options but no change. Finally we gave up that this area is not a good site for our sensor, and packed everything back into its box and called it off for the day.
What is next? That was the question I asked to my self. James gave me hope to put it either at the Jesuit residence or at the high school, both of them are away from the observatory. The bad news is, today is Sunday and tomorrow is also a holiday  (Chinese new year), and those offices are closed. However, James will try to contact people from those two facilities if they can allow us in tomorrow at least to test the site if it magnetically quite place. Pray for me to get a nice home of my sensor quickly so that I accomplish my mission ontime/as planned.
Now I'm back to my hotel straggling not to go bed early so that my sleeping conditions behave normal.
Around 10:00pm I got update from James, it seems there are positive sign from both facilities. We may be able to test the site at the Jesuit residence tomorrow afternoon the earliest. However, due to the holiday, we can't do anything at high school site tomorrow. Keep crossing your fingers for the best of luck.

Day 1 (6 February 2016) in Manila, Philippines

Guess what takes long to get out of Manila airport? Well if you said immigration, you're absolutely wrong. Immigration process is actually very quick and efficient. It is the taxi line that takes century to get taxi ride to your hotel. 
When you step out of the buildings, you will hear mixed voice 'taxi' 'taxi'. If you follow  them without asking the price, they will rip you off. Because they do not have meter on their taxi, thus they just tell you crazy price. The good news is there are few taxis, they called them yellow taxi, that have meter on it. However, it has a long waiting line that takes about excess of an hour. What surprised me most was the price the other taxi offered me. It was four times higher the price I paid for metered taxi. Good to know!

Part of Manila city as viewed from my hotel window

Another new thing, at least for me, is how badly Philippines atmosphere is polluted. I remember when I went to China for the first time back in 2006, I had a hard time to see a blue sky. Well it is the same here in Manila. I thought here there are less industries or factories that emit polluted gas into the atmosphere; that may be true but at least I witnessed amazingly crowded traffics, with many of the cars are very old which may not pass smock check control if there is any.
Let's step aside the global warming issue and explore something else. How about some uniquely fun stuff. Take a look the vedio shown below. This is how the Philippinos attract customers into their ice cream shop; unfortunately they do not have that much customers inside but they got a lot of spectators watching them dancing just from outside. 

Anyway today, I'm so exhausted and will crash down soon. My scientific mission will be kicked off tomorrow.

Day 5 (15 January 2016) in Nagoya, Japan

Today is my last day in Japan for this trip. My flight from Nagoya departs at 2:50pm, which means I've a free half a day to look around Nagoya. Since I'm in Nagoya, I would very embarrassed if I leave Nagoya without visiting the Toyota Automobile museum facility. BTW, Toyota company's headquarter is located at Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, around 30km from Nagoya. Just a few history about Toyota automobile production company, the 11th-largest company in the world by revenue; it was founded in 1937 by Kiichiro Toyoda as spinoff from his dad's company (Toyoda industries) to create automobiles. Three years earlier, in 1934, the Toyota Industries created its first product, the Type A engine, and, in 1936, its first passenger car, the Toyota AA. Now the world renown car company, Toyota Motor Corporation, produces vehicles under 5 brands, including the Toyota brand, Hino, Lexus, Ranz, and Scion.

Anyway, I went to the museum this morning. I had to catch two train. If you love to see how car technology changed from time to time, this is the best place to be. It was so amazing. See some pictures from my visit.

This was the first engine the then Toyoda industries now Toyota Motor Corporation produced. They called it Type A engine.

Toyota Motor Corporation's first passenger car, named as Toyota AA

This was Franklin D. Roosevelt's (32nd US president) limousine!

From this Benz Velo in late 1886 in Germany

To this Toyota FCV-R in 2011

Toyota i-REAL in 2009

I'm now sitting at Nagoya airport, waiting for my flight to Narita airport then to home. My first time visit to Japan in general was so interesting and lovely. Hope science will bring me back again. Thank you Science.
I'm now back home safely.