Featuring Caohagan Island on Our Research

        Hello again! Good day! Today I will be sharing to you my journey in Caohagan. As a fifth year Mechanical Engineering student, I am now getting busy on major subjects, review subjects, and of course our undergraduate research. Me and my team, Jason Caspe (@jasoncaspe) and Christian Chavez, decided to design a power generating system to one of the islands in Olanggo, Cebu that does not connect to electricity grids. This is to help the community in charging their phones, flashlights, and any rechargeable device in times of need.

        The research environment that we are going to help is the island of Caohagan.

        Caohagan is known by its white beach and hospitable people, there are even a lot of Koreans who visit the place. Although rich in island's gift of water and nature, their community lack electricity. The Caohaganons (people in Caohagan) have depended on the generator given by the local government over the years. The generator runs from 5 in the afternoon until 11 in the evening wherein residents have to pay 30 pesos daily. So to aid a little of their situation, our team thought that the island's wind abundance makes it a potential site for a wind turbine system installation as an alternative source of electricity. Hence we entitled our study, "Design and Fabrication of Wind Turbine Electronic Device Charger".

        So that's it for the technical side! I dont want to bore you so I will now be sharing you how we had fun upon visiting the island for the second time. We did not have enough time for the first visit because of interviewing a lot of people. Not like on the second where we just monitored the wind's velocity day and night. 😊

        In the above picture is our classmate Steven Manilag who lives in Caohagan. He helped us go there using their own pump boat and his whole family accomodated our stay. We are very grateful to their family for letting us in their home. We arrived at Caohagan at 5 pm and we took our rests by the beach side only to witness their beautiful early morning.

        No wonder a lot of tourists keep coming back to this island. The vibe in the morning is serene and fresh of sun and blue waters. If I were to wake up every morning like this, I'd like to pair it up with a hot cup of coffee because the sea breeze chills and relaxes our bodies. It feels like the literal meaning of "a fresh and brand new start".

        Look at this silhouette when we left the beach side early in the morning and the "against-the-sun" effect powers up this picturesque view of my friends. Here lies the residential area of the community, there were pumpboats everywhere this side of shoreline. We were about to go to the other side of the island to see the rest of its beauty.

        This is it! While the beach side resides white sands and tourists, the other side of the island is rather rocky, quiet and peaceful- soothing place to listen intently to the waves and trees as though they were welcoming our arrival.

        We took a few pictures on this rocky adventure but this is my favorite. We can see how the island go as one with the ocean and the skies. It is a lot of beauty in a picture. Such a nice view when a single building or city-feels infrastructure not present. Surely a picture paints a thousand words. But the words fit for this trip is just calmly fun and serene.

        And as we went deep on our trek, we passed by a little forest full of greens and fresh air(actually everywhere on this island smells really fresh). I took a photo with Jason Caspe as a remembrance of stepping foot on this wonderful place together with our friends.

        From left to right is Christian Chavez, me, Jason Caspe, Steven Manilag, and Bronito Bontuyan Jr. We were taking a rest from our walk although not really exhausted but just taking a pause to take in the appreciation of the whole island. It is such an overwhelming feeling to have fun like this while doing an undergraduate research. This is truly what every student needs if ever they want to take a break from the life they are currently in.

        And finally to wrap up the whole journey, we went swimming! We tanned ourselves even more than we are by soaking in the cold waters under the beautiful heat of the sun. We surely hope we will come again and have fun while prioritizing our research. But most importantly learning that we need not sacrifice the enjoyment even under pressure of the academic life!

        That's it for today! Gracias! 😊