I live in a small fishing town, General Luna aka GL, on the island of Siargao, at the far right hand side of the Philippines. To avoid going troppo (drinking too much, doing nothing), I am researching my neighbours' way of life, diet, etc.

I have learned more about my neighbours in the past months than I have in my previous nine years in the island town of General Luna (GL), so it must be doing me some good. I hope you will benefit from it, too.

As of now (24 October 2007) I have started a weblog, and thrown a couple of unfortunate incidents of Filipino culture into the mix.

It's an ongoing study, and I haven't yet reached many firm conclusions, but I think you'll probably get the drift of it.

My apologies if there are technical glitches here and there in the web pages; one of the greatest obstacles I have had to overcome is the sheer cussedness of Bill Gates's program 'Front Page'. That and the rainy season climate.

My research has two main aspirations:

1 - To record and celebrate a way of life that has long disappeared from the 'developed' countries of the world, and is fast going from the rest of it. It is a 'Hunting & Gathering' way of life that still exists for millions, all along tropical coasts throughout the world. It is a way of life poor in monetary terms (the local average pay for wage earners is about $4 a day), but rich in so many of the other facets of life.

2 - To counter the prevailing views of most archaeologists, palaeoanthropologists, and others concerned with our deep past that we primarily developed as hunters on savannah or prairie or even marginal woodlands, and that the beginnings of agriculture really only started with grass seeds

There are many aspects of our physiology and psychology that point to our great past acquaintance with coasts, islands and the sea. I would like my efforts to help in some way to explain some of them. 

My dedicated band of research assistants has braved moonlight beach parties, sunny beach barbecues and island, reef and swamp boat trips. We (or rather they) have climbed coconut trees, caught crabs, trekked through swamps, and asked too many silly questions at market stalls without buying anything.

My thanks to them.

If, along the way, this website helps promote GL and the island as a tourist destination, then so much the better. The town has given me a good life for some time, and any help I can give it back is gladly given.

Internet Plagiarism Policy: I unapologetically utilise other people's website information, on the basis that it is freely available at no cost to anyone, nor of pecuniary value to the author. It is simply too difficult to try and trace the original writers of websites for permission to use their material. If I'm asked to stop doing this, I will. I haven't enough money to be worth suing.

However, I do try to give full credit and link my information to the original website so you can follow up, and probably get the same information, and more, from the real experts. 

Just click on blue underlined links or blue framed photos to go to the original site.

Quotes are in blue - my own comments in black.

References: I finally have the internet here now, so it has made a huge difference. Previously, we had no telephone land lines, so no internet. The nearest academic library is (still) 3 days voyage away, but now I download internet files daily. Many of the PDF files I refer to come from newsgroups who store them in their files sections, but for some reason, PDFs don't show their source. You'll just have to Google (Scholar) for them, if you're interested.