Argentina on to the Quarter Finals!

i think it would only be fair to mention the other team i'm cheering for this WC 2010 - argentina. :)

on sunday night, i know i wouldn't be able to watch their game against mexico because i was cramming to finish a report i'm due to submit early monday morning. i started getting into the writing late in the evening and after a couple of hours, i was distracted by a very familiar whoozing noise in the background (the tv was just left on for company). when i looked up, i was surprised to see that the game was about to start! when i looked at the watch, it was already a little over 2:30AM monday morning! i decided to sleep then but left the tv on. well, what can you expect with the tv turned on, right? so instead of "forcing" myself to sleep, i ended up watching the first half before finally falling asleep.

it was only in the late morning that i found out that argentina is moving on to the quarter finals! yes! :) i'm sure my friend betch will be happy to hear about that :)

here is lionel messi of argentina at the soccer city stadium on their final 16 game vs mexico 

photo credit: getty images (fifa.com)

and we advance to the 16!

tonight saw portugal entering the final 16 together with the group leader, Brazil. i definitely love the portuguese defenders for stopping the game at 0-0. with many attempts and ball possession of brazil, it was quite heartstopping fom time to time. with the ball mostly in brazilian hand (or for that matter, feet), ronaldo wasn't able to do much of his magic. the play with mareilles was probably the best shot they had at scoring a goal but lucio (well, i think it was him) just had to take the goal away from them! anyways, i'm just glad that portugal is secured a place in the final 16 and that they weren't beaten much by the favorite, brazil.

so now we advance to the 16! it would be a treat to have an argentina vs portugal finals (messi vs ronaldo) but i guess it wouldn't happen now since they would be playing on the same half of the draw. they might play each other but definitely not in the finals. we will just have to watch out for it.

this sunday will be another exciting game -- argentina vs mexico! can't wait to watch it! :)

saigon tops

food

1. baguette with meat - 10,000 VND
2. black cat - ~150,000 VND
3. pearly - ~ 55,000 VND
4. fried spring roll - ~ 50,000
5. noodles of the pho (not the pho itself) - ~ 30,000

shop

1. night market at ben tahn
2. bags
3. turtle compass

to see

1. motorcycles
2. mekong delta
3. cuchi tunnel
4. ben tahn
5. pham ngu lao st shops

turtle compass

best buy in saigon

day 3: saigon city

today is our last day in saigon. our remaining time here will be spent going around the city and replacing the damaged bags anni bought at a shop near ben than market. but first, here is our itinerary:

- early morning breakfast at the hotel (same food again - baguette with either scrambled eggs or jam, coffee or tea, and juice)

- go around pham ngu lao (we were in need of a little more cash for a last minute shopping) and buy the wetshop pants i wanted since day 1

- see notre dame, the post office, a couple of pagodas at cho lon, museum of atrocities, and water puppet show

- check-out at noon, eat a late lunch, go around ben tahn again and then go back to hotel to finish packing :)


***

it's already july 7 and it is only now that i am writing about our last day in saigon.

notre dame cathedral, saigon

we were able to do a lot of the things listed in our itinerary except for the pagodas. on our last day in saigon, it was raining really hard in the afternoon. luckily, we were able to visit notre dame cathedral in the morning and the post office, too. the cathedral was really beautiful. i would have wanted to take photos of its inside but there was a sign at the screen separating the church lobby from the pews saying: this is a place of worship not for tour. i felt guilty and never took a shot inside the church. although it was beautiful, i would never trade it for the more beautiful churches we have here in the philippines (one church comes to mind - the guadalupe viejo church at guadalupe). the next stop was the post office where there's this beautiful ceiling architecture and artistry. one can't miss uncle ho's (is it okay to call him uncle ho? people there call him thus) large portrait in the center wall. we also liked the telephone booths - made me think of the telephone booths in the UK. :)

inside the post office

what surprised us the most are the number of couples having their wedding pictorials in the area! one even had a change of costume because when we left the post office, the girl we saw was still posing at the front of the church in her white dress! :) in our less than an hour stay at the area, we saw at least four couples having their wedding photos taken. i wonder if they ever really get married inside the church or is it just for posterity? hmmm...

motorcycle traffic

trusting our tourist map, we set out to go to the war museum, also called the museum of atrocities. it was about a fifteen minute walk which took a lot longer because we just had to stop around almost every corner for anni to have her motorcycle shots. of course, we did have a little trouble crossing the street too, especially those where there were no pedestrian lanes. while in the taxi on our way to notre dame, anni commented that it might be scary to drive in saigon where motorcycles are the kings of the road. now, she said, she doesn't believe that if you can drive in manila you can drive anywhere. now, it's when you can drive in saigon that you can drive anywhere. as i am loyal to my country (LOL), i still believe the first. there's more character in the philippine street where jeepneys, private cars, cars of the politicians, tricycles, motorcycles, even pedicabs at times, and calesas fight for the right to their own space in the street! :) anyway, back to the story.

when anni had her fill of taking photos of the motorcycle scene, we walked along the park near the independence museum (which we weren't able to see) and had to stop again to have our photos taken with the poster of ho chi minh. we made another stop on our way to the war museum when we saw an inviting yogurt place. of course, after tasting their yogurt, we all agreed that the yogurt place at our subdivision is better than what we've tasted. i wonder if it is just because we have a different type of tasting food? good thing though was that the smallest yogurt was cheap - only about 35,000 dong (at this time, i only had a couple of dong left, just enough for entrance fees, food, taxi and terminal fee). from there, the museum was only five minutes away.

L: poster of ho chi minh at a park near the independence museum. sorry, i don't know what is says. R: in honor of the current copa mundial, a shampoo advertisement featuring portugal's ronaldo. as a basketball nation, we don't see this in our country, only posters of local celebrities endorsing the same product.

 

the entrance to the museum was about 15,000 dong and upon entering the building, what one will see are the different kinds of aircrafts used in the war. there was a chopper, a tora-tora and something that looked like an F-16. inside the museum, there were a lot of pictures depicting the pain and suffering the vietnamese suffered in the hands of the americans during the 20-year vietnam war. looking at those pictures, reading the story of the children murdered by an american soldier who later became a US senator, brought tears to my eyes and made me want to just sit there until my companions had their fill of the pictures. i couldn't even look at the pictures of the victims of the agent orange. it was so sad! after a while, we decided to go to the upper levels. looking at the museum guide, i wanted to look at the photos taken by (foreign) correspondents during the war. they were fascinating. most depict vietnam in chaos, vietnamese - both the farmers and the soldiers, the lean american soldiers, and a couple pictures of then and now vietnam. i wonder what the americans (and french) would have said when they come and visit the place? my sister one female caucasian wipe her tears while looking at the pictures. granted, one could say that this is just a one-sided view, the vietnamese side. still, there was so much suffering here. if there was something that made my heart heavy during my stay in saigon, it would be this. it is such a sad feeling to know that people a couple of years ago experienced this, and also knowing that for just a little bit, my own country was part of this as we were (and still are!) friendly with the american government. i also feel blessed though that i never had to experience such bad things. no wonder they call it the museum of atrocities. i never got to see the children's art at the other room but my sister said that they were all children's painting of hope. i'm glad that hope is never lost for all of us. i was also glad that the 12nn bell rang and we were asked to leave the place.

a picture displayed in the museum: a common vietnamese pleading not to be taken for questioning

our next stop was back to the hotel to check-out but after that, we were away to ben than and the rain had started pouring down. we got lost going to the water puppet show and got there early. we were able to get seats near the front on the last show at 5pm but as it was an hour or two away, we had time to waste. luckily there was this japanese art exhibit where we were able to while away the time looking at japanese contemporary art and movies.

japanese art by daimonji, 2002. an open air bath with a wide window.

the water puppet show was okay. not too exciting for me though because i didn't really appreciate the big puppets moving around the water because the water masked most of the movements, and there were a lot of splashing that i didn't understand what was happening anymore. add to it was that all the show were in vietnamese. i'm impressed with the voices of the puppets, though, and the music because all were done live by people seated at the wings of the stage. i do not recommend this much but if one wants to see a part of vietnam culture, then one should watch this, even just once.

water puppet show theater 

dinner was at the wrap and roll restaurant. a friend suggested we dine here to really eat the real spring roll vietnam is famous for. here, one can "design" their own fresh spring roll but since we don't know how to do it, we ordered something else and just watched the other diners do the "your-own-roll" thing. most of the spring roll was served with vermicelli. know what that is? that is the sticky sotanghon! LOL. one thing i learned that day. anyway, the food wasn't great (again, this is most probably because i grew up knowing a taste different from this!) but i particularly liked the vermicelli dipped in peanut sauce and the fried spring roll. oh, i remember now why i didn't like the fresh one. it was because they added some strong tasting leaf that for me, didn't really go well with the other veggies inside it, plus the wrap was tough - not the ones like in the fresh lumpia we have here, where it is soft and chewy. we were not impressed too because it was too pricy! unlike the restaurants we went to at pham ngu lao, the servings were big, tastier and they were cheaper by 100,000 dong! oh well. at least we experienced the "traditional" vietnamese food and have formed our own opinion of it, instead of basing it from other people's experiences.

fresh prawn spring roll

after dinner, we went back to the hotel to pick up our stuff and head straight to the airport. but before that, and i must say that we are totally grateful to mr. chan for allowing us this, we had to take a shower at the hotel's visitor bath/toilet since we got wet from the rain. once we were ready, again thanks to mr. chan, he carried most of our stuff and got a taxi for us. as an advertisement, if you are going to saigon and are on a budget, look up bich duyen hotel. the place is clean, the manager is very helpful, and it is near a lot of other eating/shopping places and sights.

at the airport, carrying just enough money to last us until we arrive in manila, we found out that there was no terminal fee at the airport! we were wrongly informed by someone who just recently came back from saigon! now, we were holding this much money and we decided to have our money changed directly to peso once we arrived in manila. unfortunately, and this is another lesson learned the hard way, the money exchange located at naia 3 do not, i repeat, do not change dong currency. so we are now left with dong bills for our bill collection! *sigh*

all in all though, this was a great travel with my sister and friend. i hope we can do this again soon! :)

day 2: on our way to cuchi tunnel

this was the second trip out of saigon that we booked with sinh tourist. hopefully, the half day trip will be a very good experience for us, especially since our friends who have already been there highly recommends this.

we woke up early in the morning to get to the 8 o'clock meeting time at the agency's office at de tham street. as we were early for the 815 o'clock departure time, anni and i decided to get some baguette with meat across the street for our lunch. a couple of minutes later, the sandwiches were done and we were already paying when we saw the bus leaving without us! for a few minutes, it was really crazy with our tourmates calling to us from the windows and us running towards the bus! it was really embarrassing. luckily, nobody knows us and they don't know where we came from! LOL.

after the commotion was over and we were nearing the cuchi district, the guide told us about the history of vietnam. this is what i learned --

• Vietnam War lasted 20 years. Did you know that?
• Two years before the war, it was decided that Vietnam shall be divided between the north and south, with the Communist controlling the north.
• Two years after the peace treaty was signed, Ho Chi Minh decided to invade South Vietnam on the idea that there should only be one Vietnam. In South Vietnam (and their own interests, more likely), the US, France and their allies defended their territory against the Communist.
• Cuchi is located in near Saigon but those who lived there fought for the North Vietnam. 
• During the war, once a soldier brings his family in the tunnels, they automatically becomes Viet Cong.
• Those who created the tunnels were Viet Cong fighting against the Americans and French.
• After the war, when the north won, the lives of those living in the south became unbearable as they were not treated the same way as those from the north. They were forced to flee their own country. 
• Properties of those in the south were confiscated and were left with nothing. They became poorer.
• It was only fifteen years ago that the west, meaning the US, lifted their embargo of goods.

• At present, Vietnam is a growing but they cannot afford to buy a car because they charge 300% tax. 
• The main transportation for the Vietnamese are their motorcycles. However, 75% of accidents in the past year was due to motorcycle mishaps.

These short facts made me realize that, even if they won the war, the Vietnamese were still the biggest victim of what happened. Sad, but it was really enlightening.

mekong river in pictures

typical mekong river boats that sell goods

boats with faces

boats with faces ply the ocean while the others do not. this is because the face is assumed to guard them from monsters of the ocean. these boats are never used in the river because they believe that when the small fishes look up and see the face, they might ran away and the fisherman won't have any catch at all.

boat with a face

Tom, the tour guide, displaying the bees from which our drinks came from

snake wine for sale

wonder how one puts a large snake in a small bottle? well here's the answer. the snakes are dried and when they become flat or small, they are placed inside the bottle followed by the rice wine. the liquid will then later be absorbed by the snake and it goes back to its original size.

monkey display made of coconut. we also have this in the philippines.

my ignorance has been lessened. so this is the dragon fruit tree!

anni and i tried the snake wine! eeewwww!

and this is where what we drank came from!

upon closer inspection, there's a chicken atop the snake in the container!

double eeewwww!

 opening a coconut

they say that this device is also available in the philippines but i've never seen one so i just had to take a picture of it!

making the coconut candy. it tastes better when it's warm.

stores along the river

a faced boat transporting rice

cruising the mekong river

After three hours on the bus, we arrived at the "wharf" and had to walk about ten minutes to our boat that will take us around the river. Nothing to it, but what was interesting are the stuff they had lying around to dry in the hot sun -- leaves. I don't know what they are so I can't describe them in detail. Similar to the Filipino way of drying their rice, too. There were also the hat that they sell to tourists on their way to their boats.

Tom said that the Mekong Delta has nine rivers and the largest one is the Mekong Delta. At where we were, Cai Ve, the main thoroughfare is the river and they sell their stuff on their boats. Although we were already late for the morning's floating market, we were able to see several boats that sell different kinds of produce: watermelon, potatoes, onions, etc. Interesting too are the boats' design, some have faces, some don't.

The tour brought us to a bee farm and let us taste their hot honey tea, lotus seeds, coconut candy, and snake wine. There, we also got to know the Sinulog t-shirt guy and his wife, who is also a Filipina. At lunch, we were exchanging about the things we do and when it was his wife's turn, all she said was that she is into "marketing and culinary arts." At this, the guy laughed really hard and added to his wife's statement --

"She does her marketing at the market and her culinary arts at the kitchen!" LOL.

We were laughing like crazy that the people at the other table were turning their heads to us. we must have been the noisiest group at lunch! Thanks to them though, we had a pretty good handle on the dollar-peso-dong conversion and the areas where to shop best. They were great people to get to know to but unfortunately, ours was only a day tour and theirs, a three-day tour. Hopefully, we would be able to meet them again in our future travels.

After lunch, we were also treated to a performance from the local people of the island. The guitar instruments are really unique because although they look modern and familiar, they sound different -- instruments that are designed for their folk music. The artists have really good voices however, they must have been doing this day in and day out, 24/7 that it seems they're not enjoying what they're doing anymore. There was even an instance where the lady performer was pouting and when the music started, she gave us a practiced smile. Hopefully next time, she'll give her audience a more genuine smile and put more heart to her performance because if not, her beautiful voice becomes just a voice and nothing special.

When lunch was finally over, the group hopped off the boat and had to go back to the bus. Unfortunately, this was our stop and had to say goodbye to our tourmates and to our new friends, MJ and Dean. Maybe one day, we'll see them again! :)

mekong delta tour - on our way

Woke up early to go to the Sinh Tourist Place (map later). We should have expected a little problem with our reservations, as we already had a bit of misunderstanding even during our email exchange with the staff the last couple of days, during our preparations. Eventually, I was able to fix and pay our reservations and still have time to go back to Bich Duyen to have my breakfast before the 745am meeting time.

*Bich Duyen to Sinh Tourist is about 10 minutes walk through Pham Ngu Lao St then to De Tham St.

Our tour was just a day tour to Mekong Delta River (cost: USD12). Our tour guide was Tom (western version of his name because I don't know how to spell his name) -- as he says, if we can't pronounce his name, just call him "Tom, for Tom Cruise." This guy was the typical build for a Vietnamese, slim and relatively tall. He, as most Vietnamese I've met here so far, can't pronounce English words properly although they can be fluent at times.  He spoke of Saigon's district, the country's history; he sang, and he calls the tour group "My Family." It was really disconcerting to have him call us family but I guess the others in the group like it very much - nobody complained but us. Maybe that is just how I (or us) was built -- family, is just family (including the friends you are close with) and does not include those that you have just met thirty minutes ago.

Things I learned from Tom --

• The Mekong River passes through several countries starting from Tibet, to Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.
• It is about 1,800 kms long and still growing! And here, the tour guide started saying that "history changes" because, when asked two years ago the length of the river, it would have been 200 km less. But history can be changed as what happened to this river.
• It is now called the Nine Dragon River.
• To say thank you, we say "Kam-ang" with the accent at the second syllable.
• To say "i love you," we say Men Yu Anh (Girl loves Boy) or Anh Yu Men (Boy loves Girl)! :)
• To say "sorry" or "excuse me," we say "sin loi"

We learned other ways to say things but I think I've forgotten them already and these are the only ones that got stuck in my head.

On our way too, Anni noticed a guy wearing a Sinulog shirt! He must have just come from our own country to see this great festival!

There was also these two old Australian couple sitted behind us who couldn't stop talking. So on our three hour trip to the Mekong River, it seemed that they haven't stopped talking. Yet there was one conversation that got my attention. The guy asked our tour guide what were those things in the ricefield and Tom answered that those were the people's dead. The countryside do not have any cemetery so they bury their dead in the rice field. Now imagine where your rice is coming from! LOL. And the lady suggested cremation but Tom doesn't know what it is and so he had them explain it to him and have the word written on a piece of paper because as he said, it's a new word for him! Isn't that pretty amazing? :) That was Tom's word for the day.

a ricefield with their tombs

saigon arrival

arrived around 1 o'clock in the morning at the tan sot nha international airport. the immigration queue was very short and we noticed that the immigration officers are really young, most probably not more than twenty-five years old. Anni however said that they might be older because of our asian genes. anyway, when it was my turn with the immigration officer, i had a hard time understanding him. i guess i haven't been acclimatized to their way of speaking yet --

officer: no visa?

as i come from an asean country and doesn't require a visa to enter their country, this statement confused me. so the only thing i had to say was --

me: i'm sorry? (meaning, can you please explain that statement/question?)

again, he repeated, "no visa." i was still probably looking confused that he said again "no visa" and then just shrugged. he was probably thinking what i'm idiot i am for not understanding! LOL. funny thing was when it was anni's turn, he also said the same and she got a bit confused, too. only my sister, who was last to have her passport checked , understood that the officer was just really stating that we don't have a (long term) visa. once she reached the officer, she immediately said "no visa!" :)

we were picked up by the taxi the hotel arranged for us (cost: USD 15). the driver was very kind to carry all our bags but it was touch and go there for a while since he got confused on where to exit from the parking lot. he ran into a closed checkpoint and had to reverse and go around the lot, only to return to the same checkpoint where we found out that there was really someone there to lift the bar for us!

around 2 o'clock am, we arrived at Bich Duyen Hotel, the hotel that we decided to stay in because of their quick email replies, accommodating manager and good reviews in several travel forums. we were greeted by the manager himself (who was already asleep but was actually expecting us), took our bags and passports, led us to our room on the second floor and immediately left us to have our rest. the room was pretty small but was enough for our needs. the toilet/bathroom was also very clean (which is our number one criteria for a hotel) and amply spaced! it has also an a/c, fan, cable tv and wifi (my number two criteria). we reserved this room for three nights and it only cost us USD25/night!

after a few minutes fixing ourselves, we were all ready to go to bed and sleep tight. we were still going to have a very early morning and it was just a few hours away....

saigon travel

this post is actually written today, june 20, but for the purpose of continuity, this will appear as a post on the 16th of june.

what's significant with this date is that  my sister, a friend and i are leaving on the last flight out of cebu pacific for ho chi minh city. this was a trip that had been booked months ago but was only prepared two weeks before the said departure date, including the hotel, tours, itinerary and budget.

i hope you'll enjoy following us on our journey to the land of Kim -- Saigon.

painting magnets: last day!

today is the last day of my magnet frame project!!! once the paint dries totally,  i'm sending it to the frame shop for its simple frame! :) i am totally excited!

 

after placing my cartolina world map guide onto the sheet, i started painting the uncovered area with black paint. after the spraying, i had to remove the cartolina right away so that the paper won't stick to the sheet with the paint (that is Lesson #6). this is the first half of my world map. i had a quite-not-so-easy job of removing the cartolina guides of the islands because they are too small and i'm afraid that if i made a mistake removing them, i'll mess the whole project up! fortunately, i didn't make many of them, nor where they too large to notice.

note: while placing the guide onto the green top, i noticed cracks on the areas where i messed up on day 1. i'm thinking that probably, the paint and primer that i used aren't compatible?

 

this, ladies and gentlemen, is my ref magnet iron sheet with a world map design! is this cool or what?! :)

painting magnets: monday

i was really excited to go home yesterday so that i can continue my magnet frame project. there wasn't much to it but add the next color - green. unfortunately, i think i used up a lot of the green color in my first attempt that the one i had right now definitely looked like it was spray painted. i was hoping i could pass by the hardware store for another can but they were closed already. i didn't want to wait so i went ahead and painted it like this. (note: i also found the same can of spray paint at the ace hardware store but they were selling it Php50 more than the price at the hardware!).

the definitely dried primer on my galvanized sheet in my messy, paint-smelling room.

as i told you, i only had this much paint left after the first application. nonetheless, i think this one would look better for my design than the first one....

here's another night of waiting for the paint to dry!

yet in the office, i learned a couple of things that i should have done or known before starting the project. thanks to sir gener, i am now definitely learning how to paint!

Lesson #1. the galvanized sheet is covered in a material that allows for non-rusting effect. for the primer to adhere tightly to the surface, i should have either applied a chemical to make the surface rough, or have it scratched. in an article i've read after hearing this said that using the rough side of scotch brite will do the trick.

Lesson #2. there are a lot of kinds of paints. the two most basic are latex and lacquer. if i have to use a thinner, i should buy a latex thinner for a latex paint and a lacquer thinner for a lacquer paint. all the way, i thought that there is only one kind of thinner!!!!

Lesson #3. the red primer that i used was an iron oxide primer. apparently, one kind of paint adheres better to this than another paint. the other primer is epoxy based.

Lesson #4. if using both latex and lacquer, there is a sequence that must be followed for the paints to stick. from what i gather, later first before lacquer is good but not lacquer before latex because the paint will just run.... hmm... or is it the other way around?!

Lesson #5. i am actually using a lacquer based spray paint!

painting magnets: sunday

officially day 1 of my ref magnet house project. i was all ready to start my project when i realized i had make a quick run to the hardware store to purchase my green paint. it was also raining so hard that i had to start the project inside the house (specifically my room) where it is dry and the cats won't get in the way.

so here's a quick view of my ref magnet frame project - day 1:

 

last saturday, i had to buy one whole sheet of galvanized iron and had the hardware guys cut it to my specified dimensions (about the size of a cartolina) -- for an extra fee! this was delivered afternoon of saturday so my day 1 basically started on sunday. not visible on the black cartolina is my world map which i'll cut later for my sheet's design.

bong mentioned that i had to apply a primer to the sheet so that the paint will stick it. she said that there is a red primer and a white primer. the guy at the hardware store apparently gave me the red one.

after quick drying the primer, i started spray painting the sheet with my green paint. this will act as the color of my continents and islands.

isn't the color cool? :)

my world map in cartolina all cut up. the plan is to paint over this a black paint. unfortunately, when i had to fix the placement of the cut-ups (which i already stuck to the sheet with a magic tape), i pulled the cartolina away from the sheet and the paint went with it, all the way through the primer! that meant that the paint wasn't as dry as i thought it would be! the next problem i encountered was that when i had to clear the area, i dropped the paint covers on the sheet and they too, created damages on the sheet. the only solution was to apply the primer again and had it dry overnight.

so i painted the sheet with a second coat of primer and i'm hoping that by the next day, this has completely dried!  

p.s. i found out this day that painting with a roller is definitely better than a brush! :)

painting magnets: saturday

another goal for this year is to make a house for my ref magnet collection. ever since we took away the magnets from our refrigerator in time for our inquisitive nephew's arrival, it hasn't gone back up where it should be. instead, they had been replaced by new ones purchased by me or given by my friends from their latest travels.

i was pretty excited this weekend because i finally found time to create the house for my magnets. my plan for the weekend was to purchase my galvanized iron (cut in a specified length and width) and paints. on friday night, i bought cartolinas and a world map (which was never punched in the counter so i had to print one at home!). i thought moving the world map picture to a bigger scale was easy but hell, no! i don't even know how to draw! but i guess i learned a thing or two by watching craft shows on tv. what i did was draw a grid in the picture and cartolina and copy the picture that way, corner by corner, box by  box! :) that is lesson number one in drawing for me! :)

did you also know that before painting anything on a surface, you have to paint a primer?! i didn't know that but luckily, my friend bong informed me so i was also able to buy that one at the hardware together with the galvanized sheet. unfortunately, my project will have to start on sunday since the shop will only be able to deliver the sheet after four o'clock saturday afternoon.