QUICK NOTE

I am still here.  I had my C-drive crash on me.  I’m hoping to be back to normal today or tomorrow.  I’ve got all the information to complete every day, so you won’t miss anything.

Please bear with me, again.  While this is solved.

Oh and I have purchased my own domain.  Not sure how to get to it since my C-drive crashed, but I will.

It is http://texaninthephilippines.com

I put a link on this blog to get to the new blog.  Just be sure you abandon this one and stayed hooked up to the other one.

Thanks.

The Batas

Reverof, Crystal, Joshua (sleepy or mad?), Raven (the eldest of all the batas, striking a pose), (unknown), Faye (with Papa) and Precious. Girl in pink is classmate of Reverof (this was his birthday party). Grace in background. Khan only bata not present for this picture.

Apilado’s

My nephew Ramil and niece Robbie with their daughter Faye at Agas-Agas Reception Center

Jade (waving), Jun, Ludy, Titing, Marianne (hands up) and Mar Apilado. Young lady in green is Juvic (not an Apilado). Behind Agas-Agas bridge Reception Center

Marianne, Robbie (in yellow), Ludy (waving), Mar, Faye and Raven (bent over) Apilado. At Hindag-an Falls and Forest Park

Sunday – 5 Sep 2010

This bright, shiny morning had me forcing myself out of bed at 0641.  Shortly after I woke up, I heard a tapping on the front door.  A neighborhood bata was tapping the door with a peso.  I asked her what she wanted, but she just stared at me.  It’s the language barrier.  Either I’m going to have to teach every Filipino I meet, English, or I need to learn Filipino.  I think me learning would be a much easier task.  I tried to find my wife to tell her, but I couldn’t find her.  I went to the houses in the back to find her, but Loni reminded me it was Sunday, she’s at church.  Loni is the girlfriend of Neneng’s brother.  He works for Neneng too.  I would put a picture of Loni on here, but not sure if she’d like it.  Besides, I’d have guys hanging around my house all day and night trying to see her.  I think she’s gorgeous, anyway.  Getting back to the little girl, I kept thinking, I know this girl from somewhere, I’m terrible at faces, but I just couldn’t figure out where.  I told myself that she looks like Vicky’s daughter.  The one that went to Tambis with Vicky and us.  I kept asking her if she wanted ice candy, she kept saying no.  Finally, thanks to her intelligence, not mine, she pointed to a large bag of charcoal we have outside.  All she wants is one of the bags of charcoal so they can cook this morning.  Sunday is Vicky’s day off.  But, still not being sure she is Vicky’s daughter, I charged her full price.  Only about 5 minutes after she left, my wife shows up from church.  Good timing.  But the little girl came back a few minutes after that to get some ice candy to sell around her house.  Turns out IT IS Vicky’s daughter.  I gave her back 5 pesos, cause we only charge family and friends 1/2 price.  I also gave her a free ice candy for being so patient with me.  In yesterday’s post I mentioned selling the charcoal for 5 pesos per 1/2 kilo, well they changed their mind.  Now it’s in bags of 1 kilo for 10 pesos.  I guess 1/2 kilo is not enough to really do much good when cooking.

Things are really tough here, but through it all people still smile and lend a helping hand when possible.  For being so poor, Filipinos are about the most honest people I know.  So much integrity.  I’ve dropped 50 pesos on the ground before, didn’t know it, and walked off.  This young man, picked it up and ran over to me to return it.  Now 50 pesos for a poor Filipino is a good amount of money, but he returned it just the same.  I let him keep it.  He didn’t want it, but I insisted.  After all, it’s only a little over a $1 for me.  I was just glad to see someone so honest.   That reminds me of something that happen in Tambis that I neglected to tell you.  When we were at the market buying the vegetables, remember when the kid called me tambok?  We left there and forgot to bring a bag of our vegetables.  We looked everywhere in the house for them, because we didn’t realize at the time that we left them there.  Shortly after 6pm that evening, after she was able to get away from her stand, the lady from the market showed up at the house with those vegetables.  She went several miles out of her way, just to be sure we got them.  Lucky for us we used a vendor that  knew Cathy and her Mom.  I’m sure that there are dishonest people here in the Philippines somewhere, but I have yet to run across them.

Today is my Mom’s birthday…Happy Birthday Mom…she is 21+ again this year.  Tomorrow is my baby sister’s birthday (she might hate the baby sister thing)…Happy Birthday Joyce…she’s going to be…, 1 year older (better not say the age, you know how some women get with the age thing).  She probably doesn’t mind, I think she’s cool about things like that, but just to be safe.  I say it is today and tomorrow, and it is, but not for me.  Their birthdays are on the 4th (Mom) and the 5th (Joyce), but today is the 5th here already.  Maybe IF Joyce reads this, she’ll post her age for y’all.  I will say this though, on her birthday, all of us will be in order.  I mean age wise, consecutive years.  Can’t reveal any years at this time because that would give away her age, but my parents had 5 children in about 5 1/2 year span, and one of those years in the 5, there were no children.  Guess they bought a TV that year.  All this will probably be explained in a later post, depending on all my sisters and whether they want the world to know how young they are.  Stay tuned for details.  Sounds like a commercial.

So far this morning @ 7am, my computer is in a good mood.  Running well and fast enough where I won’t be complaining, especially after that extreme slowness yesterday.

Spoke too soon about the computer being in a good mood.  Around 9am it starting acting up again.  It’s almost noon now.

The lady that does the manicures and pedicures is here again.  Did I tell you how much it costs for those here?  Guess I didn’t.  I just did a search on my blog, and no results came up.  So here’s the story.  Whenever someone here wants a manicure or a pedicure we have one special lady we call.  She’ll come by and everyone that wants one, gets one.  Now I’m not sure of the price of a manicure or a pedicure in Texas, but here it only cost 30 pesos each.  That’s about .75.  I know that that is cheaper than Texas.

Oh good, it’s starting to rain again.  Had to go grab some rags my wife had hanging out.  I actually didn’t quite get to them, because the manicure lady grabbed them for me.  Helpful people, these Filipinos.

My wife is so happy right now.  She just learned the best way to tie the bags for the ice and ice candy.  Vicky and the nieces have been doing that for her, but now she knows and she keeps saying she’s happy about it.

I laid down to take a nap at 1230 and didn’t  wake up until 3:58.  Guess I was a little tired.  It’s probably all the for best though because I have a fantasy football draft at 0300 in the morning.  That’s something that you have to adjust to living here.  You can get use to the time of day easy, but like that 0300 is a normal 2:00pm for most people that will be in that draft.  If I don’t say something, they won’t even know that it’s 0300 for me.  I’m only in that draft so late because it’s a league I’ve been in for years, even while I was in Texas.

I just counted the money we made from selling our ice candy.  My wife hasn’t told me ‘exactly’ how much she spent on supplies, but said it was around 1000 pesos.  The total amount we have since 15 Aug (our last deposit) was exactly 2200 pesos.  So that’s basically 3 weeks worth (and remember we were not here for 4 of those days).  This is also not counting the income from the tricycles or the charcoal.  So we seem to be on the right track to getting a well established business.  She told me that next month she will have Arnel continue building her little store and when that is finished, she will start selling bar-b-que.  We’re hoping that by the time they get that hotel fully functional, we’ll be ready for the tourist when/if they come.  We’ll have the ice candy, tricycles and bar-b-que that they can use from us.  I guess they’d have no need for the charcoal.  I hope we get our tricycle(s) converted to the “American size” before then.  We only technical own one and collect boundary on the other.  Maybe that will be the next thing we purchase, another tricycle or two.

You know, when you have a blog, you have to continuously think of good things to write about.  I’ve listed a few ideas down, like I’m going to make a list of the 10 things I love most about living in the Philippines and another list of the 10 things I hate the most.  I will put 1 in my blog each day, so 20 days worth, and explain why I love or hate it. So if there are any readers out there that have a suggestion for me for the blog, please suggest. Notice I put that in bold just in case someone is just skimming through.

We are getting ready to go down town.  Evidently there has been a carnival in town since Monday that no one told me about.  We are taking the batas there and going to a okay-okay (o-ki-o-ki, long i) store, at least I’m pretty sure of the spelling, I’ll check when we get there.   We just call it the Korean Store because it is run by Koreans.  We need to get some medium-sized bowls.  It’s like a whole flea market inside that store.  I’ll let you know how things go at the carnival and the whole down town experience in tomorrow’s post, with pictures of course.

Tagalog word of the day will be a double:  mahal kita (ma-hall key-ta)  means – I love you.

Guess I’ll close it down for the evening.  Hope you enjoyed today’s post and the whole blog.  Have a good look around.  I try to put good stuff on here for your enjoyment.

Salamat, Palaam

Precious, Crystal and Khan

Crystal Princess and Ceazar Khan (aka Khan Khan). Cathy & Ado's 2 oldest batas. As you can see, they are camera-shy.

Is there any doubt as to why her name is Precious. Look how cute that is. She is with her mother Cathy. Cathy is due another baby on 14 Sep. That will be 4 and counting.

Hallway and Screened in Porch

Our house is in front. 3 families of relatives live behind us.

When you get to the end of the hallway, this is what you see. Lita had this screen installed after we arrived to try to keep the bugs out. All the others families that live here have their houses inside this porch area.

OUR Tricycle and Vicky

This is our actual tricycle. Vicky's 2nd oldest son is using it. He was there to pick up ice to sell at a party that was going on. We sold 20 bags of ice to them.

Vicky (working as usual) going up to the unfinished 2nd floor to hang up clothes.

Saturday – 4 Sep 2010

It’s a beautiful, quiet morning and I decided to emerge from under the covers at 0611.  Not sure why I even got up at all, except I want to write more into this blog.  This is starting to get obsessive and I’m glad.  It’s something I like to do and it doesn’t drive my wife crazy.  That’s a good combination.  Last night after I published the post, we had 2, count ‘em, 2 brownouts.  First one occurred at 7:54pm.  It only lasted about 20 minutes, but about 10 minutes  after that, we had another.  We called the electric company and they said they had to replace something (I forgot what they said, I think connector) and it “wouldn’t be long”.  Man, I hate it when they say it that way.  Thankfully, this time, everything was back up at 9:28pm.  I was on my computer for both of those surges though.  I don’t see how anyone can maintain a computer here with all the sudden power outages, but there are plenty of computer around here.  Those surges bother me.

Today is my weigh in day.  I’ve already weighed in actually, and the news is not so good.  Not terrible, but I was expecting better results.  When I weighed in 2 weeks ago I was at 135.3 kilos (approx. 297 1/2 lbs) and today it was 136 kilos (approx. 299 lbs).  That’s a gain of .7 kilos (about 1 1/2 lbs).   Yeah I know, that’s ‘heavy’ duty stuff, but considering when I arrived here in May weighing 149.9 kilos (approx. 330 lbs), I’m on the right track.  Guess I’ll have to start the dreaded “E” word…Exercise.  It shouldn’t be so bad though, I’m sure I can find someone that will volunteer to walk with me to Calbayog Proper, it’s only about 1 mile.  I can still do that now, maybe not with blazing speed, but I can make it.  In fact, I’ve already done it once since I’ve been here.  Had to get a ride back though.  Figure after I get fit enough, I can take the long way around, go past the new open market they are building, go through down town, in front of the (soon to be) old market, then head on back home.  That would be about a 4 to 5 mile walk.  I’ll keep you informed.  Maybe since I’m relying it all to y’all, I’ll do a better job at losing weight.

The beginning of football season is upon us, and I’m a little bit worried.  No, not if the Cowboys can be the first to win a Superbowl at home, I know that’s going to happen.  This is my first football season in the Philippines and I’m worried because I’m not sure how much American football they will show on TV here.  They sure show a lot of soccer and basketball though.  I won’t even mind if I have to get up at 1am and/or 4am to watch them.  Just have them here.  I tried internet TV, but it didn’t seem like it would work well.  But when the season starts, I’m going to try it again, if I have to.  Maybe if I can get 1 or 2 of them to work, I can actually watch the games at a decent hour of the day.  My fantasy football may suffer if I can’t keep up with the games and players.

Lita was at the market again.  She is back already.  She bought 4 boxes of milk for the cereal.  I made pancakes for breakfast this morning.  I usually do pretty well with them, but today I kept burning them on at least one side.  It’s fine though, I ate them anyways.  I gave Cathy one too.  She likes pancakes and she is eating for two.  We don’t have Aunt Jemima here, but the Marigold version is decent.  Anna Pearl (another niece of mine) got one too.  She a very nice and nice looking young lady (16).  I’ll have a picture of her in here soon,  just as soon as I can get a picture of her younger sister, Chatty (14), in here.  Chatty is camera shy, unlike most Filipinos who are camera hogs and always striking a pose.  Both Anna Pearl and Chatty are Neneng’s younger sisters.  I think Chatty’s parents made a mistake in naming those 2 girls though.  Anna Pearl is the one that is chatty.  Chatty is more shy, turns her head when people are kissing on TV, but she seems to be the smarter of the two.  Since jobs are so hard to come by here, and someone has to pay for school, food and living, Chatty and Anna Pearl work for Neneng.  Anna Pearl gets paid because she decided to quit school to work more full-time.  Chatty doesn’t get a paycheck, but Neneng pays for all of her schooling needs.  Here when you take a mid-term or final test, you have to pay for it.  Last time I checked, for a semester of school, including all tests, it was about 6000 pesos (approx. $130).  If you don’t have the money, you don’t get to take the test and you don’t pass the course.  Of course the tests do not cost that much to take (not sure of exact amount), but most Filipinos here, don’t have extra money to spare for things like that.  I mean even when/if they do graduate from high school and/or college, unless you get lucky here or find a suitable place overseas somewhere, you’ll end up being a cook or tricycle driver anyway.  By cook, I don’t mean a chef either, or even something as wonderful as a short order cook.  Just another cook in the mix of things.

We gave Vicky’s youngest son (about 7 or 8 years old, but small for his age)  a lot of ice candy to sell down the street at his house.  Gave him 50 of them.  He sold them all, already.  It’s only 1:30pm.  Gave him 50 more to see how he does.  We gave him 20 pesos for his trouble (that’s 10 ice candies worth, and a lot of money for him).

I’m going to put in the Tagalog word for today now.  I almost forgot yesterday.  Today I think I will use the word:  baboy (ba-boy) .  Because that is what I feel like after not losing, and actually gaining a little weight this week.  It means: pig.

A nephew of my wife’s, that I’ve never seen before , just showed up.  Not sure what’s going on, but I’m sure she’ll tell me later, she always does.  Looks like just a friendly visit.  That happens around here a lot.  We have like the whole clan over here 3 or 4 times per month, just to eat and shoot the breeze.  Sometimes we drink beer and play cards.  I’m going to try to get some of them to play Empire Builder next time.  Most of them will make a special effort to communicate with the me in English.  They don’t mind practicing their English on me.  Oh, both of the young guys that showed up are her nephews and they are going to be working for one of my wife’s cousins (Juvic & Grace’s Mom) and she is getting ready to take them over there, because they are new to the area and not quite sure how to get there.

This computer is running super slow today.  I received a request (outside of the blog) to show a picture of my house.  Think Keith also asked on the blog.  Anyway, I’m going to put on there what I have.  The house is not much to look at on the outside and it’s only half-finished, but I’ll put it there anyway.  I just took some newer pictures of the interior and exterior of the house, the best I could without exposing too much of the things we still haven’t put away from when we moved in.  You see, this is only a temporary house, kind of.  When all is said and done, we will be moving upstairs and this is suppose to belong to Judith and her family (Grace & Juvic’s Mom).  But if Judith ends up being able to buy the house she is in now, then we may just stay here and build like an outdoor style restaurant upstairs with large umbrellas over the tables.  It’s a thought and very feasible.  That should be a very good business when the hotel opens across the street.  Even though they will have a restaurant in there, I think that some people will be in a hurry to do things, you know how Americans are, and they just want a quick bite to eat.  Besides we would have things that they don’t offer in the restaurant.  We’ll have American style food.   We are going to do that anyway with Loly Cat, just not a full restaurant, yet.

I was just informed that we will now also be selling charcoal.   Charcoal here is just old, dried coconut shells.  It works well though, burns slow and steady.  We bought a 25 kilo bag for 150 pesos and she will be selling it for 5 pesos per 1/2 kilo.   Not much of a profit, but we’re not in a hurry.  A lot of little things and eventually we’ll get to where we want to be, where ever that is.  Vicky’s son showed back up.  He sold 1/2 of the second set of 50.  He wanted to replace them because they were starting to melt.  We sent him out with a total of  25 again, so if he sells them all, that’s be 100 for the day.  Guess I’ll let you know about that tomorrow.  Time to sign off for the evening, it almost 8:00pm.  Think I’ll add a few more pictures too.

Salamat, Palaam

Actually its the only bedroom. When we move upstairs we will have 2, 1 will be a guest room.

We use a propane tank for our burner (on the left).

Refrigerator on left/Freezer on right (mostly for ice candy)

Exterior of our House

Hard to see I know, but this is the front of the house. You can see it is not all painted yet either.

This is our front door to the left of the bench. Ladder is temporary until we can get the money to build upstairs.