UN Says RP's Poorest Provinces "Like Africa"

You could be forgiven for believing, based on this blog, that the Philippines are all drivers and gardeners, shopping malls and supermarkets.

But, of course, it isn't. There's widespread poverty and unemployment in the Philippines and a huge disparity between poor Filipinos and rich Filipinos. (It isn't just expats who go shopping at the malls near our house. In fact, expats make up just a tiny minority of the faces I see at either of them.)

A United Nations-sponsored study released last week indicates that the country's poorest provinces have conditions approximating those in some poor African countries, while the most progressive provinces were on par with Jamaica or Turkmenistan.

The study, with provinces ranked in terms of the UN's Human Development Index (HDI), measures life expectancy, literacy and per capita income. The survey did not rank Metro Manila, where we live, which enjoys a variety of advantages over the provinces, being the seat of the Philippines' political and economic power.

The Top 5 provinces, as ranked by the UN, are Benguet, Laguna, Batanes, Rizal and Cavite. (Two of these provinces are where the plants Shelly works at are located. I learned last week that many of the line workers in these poultry plants are college graduates who simply can't find a job where they can use their college educations. With such an oversupply of labor, it's understandable why the average Filipino laborer makes just a few dollars a day.)

According to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the HDI "measures an area's living standard not by its visible 'urbanity' -- the growth of factories or commercial centers in a locality -- but by how much the people enjoy 'public goods' like health or education. ... A province may have a high income level but still have low HDI if it doesn't translate into 'investments in health or education.' "

The lowest-ranking provinces had scores on par with the world's poorest countries, including Niger, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad.

Sick PowerBook

Remember that old PowerBook that I retired in September?
Well, lucky for me, my wife is pretty darn smart. I was preparing to wipe the drive clean and toss it in the garbage when she suggested I take it to the Philippines:

"You should take it with you," she said. "What if you have problems with your new computer?"

It was pure prescience, I tell you. The day the movers came to pack the house, I encountered a strange message that said "You need to restart your computer" in four different languages. It was frustrating to get an error message I had not encountered in my decade of using Macs, but I had no time to figure out what to do about it, and restarting the computer seemed to resolve the issue, at least temporarily.

Things got worse. Using Microsoft Word at LAX and Narita, the PowerBook crashed a few more times. Over the past two weeks, it got worse and worse, to the point Tuesday where it happened four times in 10 minutes.

My research indicated that it was a kernel panic, essentially an error that the operating system cannot recover from. The gray, multi-lingual screen is Apple's version of the Windows Blue Screen of Death.

I uninstalled all the shareware and freeware programs I had downloaded, reinstalled the system software and eliminated, to the best of my ability, any other potential software issues. The hardware tests I ran indicated that I probably had some bad RAM, which meant it was time for a trip to one of Manila's four Apple Centers, where I met Mr. Jeff, who agreed with my diagnosis but wanted to recreate it himself.

(Of course, when I decided that I needed to take the PowerBook to the shop, it stopped acting up, much like your car will when you take it to the mechanic and you're forced to play the "I swear it was making the noise on the way here" game. The Apple Center receptionist was sympathetic, at least. "They always do that, don't they?" she offered.)

Finally, the PowerBook did panic for Jeff, so he replaced the memory on Friday and has had no problems since, with every application up and running, he said when I talked to him today. But, the memory he installed is apparently just one he uses for diagnostic purposes, rather than one that I could, say, take home with me.

"I had to order the chip from Singapore, so it will be next week before it's ready," he told me.

Next week could mean a lot of things. It could mean Monday, it could mean Friday. Unfortunately, next week is a big holiday week in both the Philippines and Singapore, so it means Thursday or Friday rather than Monday or Tuesday.

The truth is, I have everything I need on this old machine I'm using, and it served me perfectly well for three years, so I can't complain too much. It even has the bulk of my iTunes collection on its tiny hard drive. And, it doesn't have kernel panics.

And thanks to Shelly, it's here with me rather than sitting in a landfill at home.

Photos

Several of you have commented on the complete lack of photos since my arrival in the Philippines. Somehow, the cable that connects the camera to the computer got left behind, so I'm unable to liberate any of the photos I've taken from the camera. I'm working on solving this problem, and hope to have some photos online soon.

Chocolate Toothpaste

Now where the heck was this product when I was a kid?

Unilever Philippines has been advertising the heck out of their newest line of toothpastes, the CloseUp "Flavalicious" flavors, which include Luscious Lychee, Tangerine Burst and, yes, Choco Loco.

I haven't tried this chocolate mint-flavored toothpaste yet, and can't imagine I will, but a quick look around the Web gives it a wide variety of reviews. Predictably, kids love it, but to adults, the consensus seems to be that it's just plain wrong to brush your teeth with dessert.

Unfortunately, after digging deep into the Unilever Philippines Web site, I couldn't find any marketing materials for CloseUp, much less anything that would shed some light on the history of chocolate toothpaste.

So if you're having trouble getting your kids -- or your spouse -- to brush their teeth, let me know and I'll ship you some Choco Loco. Of course, once you run out, don't blame me if your kids start brushing their teeth with a Milky Way.

Drug Store Madness

In the States, I hear, many of the states are starting to require, if you want to buy psuedoephedrine, that you buy it at the pharmacy counter, even though it's still an over-the-counter drug. Iowa, actually, has been doing this for at least a year, and Maryland started doing it not long before we left for the Philippines. If it reduces the amount of ice, or crystal meth, produced in home-made drug labs, well, it's probably a good idea.

In the Philippines, there's not much you can buy off the shelf, aside from things like deodorant, toothpaste and shampoo. So imagine my surprise when, on my third or fourth day in the country, I went to buy some Robitussin* ... and found it just sitting there for the taking, no pharmacist intervention required.

"Well, things must be changing in the Philippines, or what I read was just wrong," I thought. "That should make trips to the pharmacy much more convenient for me."

So today, when I headed into a pharmacy to pick up some saline solution for my contact lenses, I naturally looked next to the deodorant, toothpaste and shampoo, only to find that, while Robitussin is available freely off the shelf, saline solution -- that addictive, dangerous saline solution -- has to be purchased directly from the pharmacist.

There's probably something logical about this, but I haven't figured it out yet.

* The Robitussin, at P119, or just over $2, was a welcome change to the $13 bottle I bought at LAX on my way over. The average isn't quite there yet, though, so I'm thinking I might need to develop another nasty cough...

Last Day of Class

It was over almost as soon as it began.

Today marked Day 6 -- the last day -- of Yakitori 101's English component. We spent much of the period working on being persuasive, both in written and spoken English. The way this group of students has opened up has been amazing to me. When the English component began, there were one or two who were confident about their English ability. Everyone could speak well, and most of them could write and read fairly well, but most of them were nowhere near as confident as they were knowledgable.

I asked them, at the end of class, what the most important thing they had learned was. Almost without exception, they said that they now felt comfortable speaking and writing English.

"To me, or to anyone?" I asked.

"To anyone," was the reply.

Class was over, I gave a little "good job during the past six days" pep talk, and then the class surprised me with four sets of performances in my honor: original poems, a great song-and-dance routine, a "letter to Greg" and a short, one-act play about our first class in which, quite hilariously, the star of the show mimicked me perfectly.

Never has any class I've taught, whether English in Japan or taxes in Maryland, paid so much attention to what I was saying.

Here's one of the poems...

Once in my life, i met this guy,
I thought he was just passing by
They said he's our english teacher
I can't help but smile, "i thought he was a jester."

He walks funny as it may seem
But deep inside he is a king.
A king named Greg, that's who he is
For he has a lot of good deeds
He shares to us what he knows
A kind, unselfish heart it shows.

You us what we need to know
Even if it makes our minds blow
Self confidence we never had before
Then you said to us, "speak in english more."

For all the times we shared together
And the knowledge you impart to us
Rest assured that we will always treasure
And forever we are always greatful.

Today you'll be saying goodbye
I hope nobody will cry
For we will surely miss you, Gregory,
And seeing you, we hope this is not the last.

I'll be back for their graduation ceremony next month, I hope.

The Filipino-sniffing cat

I came home from class today, unlocked the front door and out popped Mister Tanaka. This is noteworthy for two reasons: At home (that is to say, in the States), he hasn't expressed any interest in going outside ever since he moved to a house with screened porches, and ever since arriving in the Philippines, he's turned tail and run into the house any time a door has been opened in his presence.

I scooped him up off the front porch and took him to the back yard, which Shelly has very cleverly cat-proofed with chicken wire. He spent a few minutes sniffing around the patio, then the garden until he saw the gardener, when he sprinted back into the house.

At which point I realized that Mister Tanaka hasn't yet met a Filipino he likes.

Tanaka has always been a friendly cat, playing with literally anyone who would give him the time of day, from Mom and Jerry to Nick and Kathy to Brad and Laura to Vivian to Kathy and Ed -- or at least Kathy, as Ed really wanted little to do with Tanaka. We had Jim over dinner last week, and Tanaka took to him like it was the most natural thing in the world, rubbing against Jim's leg and begging for a bite of dinner, but when Bobby came to the door with a vacuum cleaner Shelly had ordered at work, Tanaka headed upstairs.

It seemed as though Tanaka's aversion to Filipinos was based on skin color.

The theory seemed sound until I realized that the vet who saw him in September was black. Tanaka seemed quite happy with her, aside from the poking and prodding she doing to him, which left the skin color theory dead in the water.

Then I remembered that my friends and I used to joke about gaijin-sniffing dogs when I lived in Japan. Dogs, it seemed, would never bark at the mailman, the newspaper man, any sort of delivery man -- or even ax murderers for that matter, provided they were Japanese. As soon as a foreigner wandered down the street, however, the dogs were off and barking, even before they could see us. The theory, then, was that because most of my friends and I tended to eat a fairly Western diet, we smelled different to the dogs than Japanese did which, in turn, caused them to bark at us.

While the typical Japanese diet and the typical Western diet are significantly different, it doesn't seem that the Filipino diet is that much different than what we're used to. Certainly, there are differences, but nothing as pronounced as those between Western and Japanese. The truth is, I have no idea why Tanaka doesn't seem to like any of the Filipinos he has met. I hope he'll get over this soon, though, since he is, well, in the Philippines.

Parting thought: If Tanaka's aversion to Filipinos is diet- and scent-based, I guess you could say that we have a Filipino-sniffing cat.

Just in Time for Christmas

Two observations from the mall today.

1. A sign reading "Countdown to Christmas: 62 Days"

Christmas comes early in the Philippines. October, to be exact. Radio stations and retail stores are already playing Christmas music -- and not just occasionally, but all the freakin' time. Shelly, in fact, has already had her company's first gift exchange. I'm not sure how many more there will be, but the system is set up so that the folks who earn more money spend more on their gifts, so naturally everyone else in the plant is hoping that Shelly will draw their name. She ended up receiving a nice pink (the in color in Manila) sarong for the first exchange.

2. At least a dozen copies of "Go Wolverines: The Insider's Look at University of Michigan Athletics" at National Book Store

Needless to say, I was tempted, as it promised a preview of the Big Ten basketball season. It was wrapped in plastic, or I would have picked it up to see what the preview looked like. I nearly put it in my shopping basket -- it was only P49, or about 90 cents -- until I looked a little closer: The publication date was January 2005.

It LOOKS like ESPN

The "Dream" satellite tells me that we have ESPN. And I believe them, really, I do.

We indeed do have a channel that looks like ESPN. It has SportsCenter. It has the same manly graphics that I'm used to at home. It's on channel 40, which isn't even that far from its Comcast location at home.

But right now, in the middle of Saturday afternoon stateside (and about 2:25 Sunday morning here), when there are more college football games on TV than you could count, ESPN (officially "ESPN International: Pacific Rim") offers a rerun of baseball's National League Championship Series.

I shouldn't complain, right? They could be showing snooker, right? (Nope. The World Snooker Tour kicks off at 1:00. Nothing like a cold beer and a snooker match to while away a Sunday afternoon.)

So, while the ESPN Web site has managed to keep me up-to-date on the Iowa-Michigan score, I don't know that I'll make it through the 4th quarter. On the other hand, Iowa does have a 14-10 lead at the end of the 3rd quarter...

A less-finicky cat?

We've never seen Mister Tanaka as finicky as he's been over the past couple of weeks. Generally, he'll chow down on anything, from pancakes to Doritos to tuna to, well, actual cat food.

So we began to worry about him when he refused to eat the Friskies we bought him.

This is a cat who has eaten Friskies his entire life. The box of Friskies we brought home from ShopWise was made in Australia, but looks pretty much just like his made-in-America Friskies. Except, obviously, it isn't exactly the same, or he'd be eating it, just like he's been eating the few remaining morsels of American-made Friskies we brought from home.

He did finally snarf down several flakes of tuna last Saturday night, straight from Shelly's dinner plate, over her not-so-energetic protests. This was after a nice chunk while I was fixing dinner, along with a few pieces of grated cheese. He hadn't eaten much all week, and was obviously hungry.

So, my Sunday shopping last week included a box of dry Whiskas, which we've never bought before. He didn't get much further with that than he did with the Friskies.

Until this weekend, when he finally started eating both the Friskies and the Whiskas. He's evidently realized that his made-in-America food is gone and that, if he's going to eat, he's going to have to eat the (apparently not-so-delicious) Australian version.

Next? I fully expect that Tanaka will prefer the Australian version by the time we go home.

Premier seating? Why not!

Shelly's in Shanghai this weekend on business, with business elsewhere in China to follow next week, so I went out tonight with Jim.

After being first delayed by traffic then making a massively incorrect left turn and ending up, well, "somewhere we didn't want to be," we finally got to the mall just a few minutes before Lord of War, the latest Nicolas Cage flick, started. Rather than a nice, leisurely dinner, we ended up grabbing burgers at Wendys (how foreign of me, I know) before the show.

And then we got to the ticket window, where we were faced with two classes of ticket prices. For P80, or about $1.45, we could have regular seats. For P100, or about $1.80, we could have "premier" seat. How could we turn down better seats for a mere 35 cents? The last time I saw a first run movie for less than two bucks was, what, 1980-something?

The seats were faux leather, stadium-style seats, and the screen was the largest I've seen since the Uptown in Northwest Washington, so it was definitely a good place to watch a movie. Plus, a Coke set me back about 50 cents. Take that, Regal Cinemas!

First Day of Class

I started my Yakitori 101 English class today by asking students to ask me questions about myself. Lucky me, one of the first was: "What qualifications do you have for your position?" Hmmm. That's a good question.

Well, I taught English for three years. I've taught tax classes the last two falls, and would have taught this year, too, if I wasn't here. Those are both okay, I suppose, but then I realized that, well, I get paid to communicate in English, generally through written English, but sometimes through other means of communcation. Seems like good qualifications to me.

Class was a great pleasure. As much as I enjoyed teaching in Japan, I was frustrated by the difficulty I had actually communicating with my students. There were a couple I could have actual conversations with, but usually there was just too big a gulf between their English and my Japanese abilities.

So to walk into a class of mostly fluent 20-somethings was great. I couldn't ask for a better introduction to Filipino culture. Many of the classroom activities that had failed me in Japan have actually worked very well here.

We're going to review grammar and have some public speaking practice, but I think writing and reading will be what the class really needs. All in all, it's an extremely energetic class, full of bright people who, I think, will teach me as much as I'll teach them.

e-Meddling

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal Asia published what was probably an editorial from the regular WSJ entitled "e-Meddling" which, perhaps, opened my eyes to the future of the Internet:

International bureaucrats and assorted countries are struggling to wrest control of "Internet governance" from that old unilateralist bogeyman, the United States. There's only one problem with this picture: Cyberspace isn't "governed" by the U.S. or anyone else, and that's the beauty of it. But if the United Nations gets its way int eh coming month, the Web will end up under its control.

While it may be nothing more than another charge against the UN by the right, Googling "united nations" and "internet" did bring up a dozen or so stories, not exclusively from the right.

The WSJ-A editorial goes on to explain that, to the extent the Internet is governed, it's done by a nonprofit organization called Icann which administers the "root zone file," assuring that any domain name is assigned to only one Web site. That's the extent of "governance" over the Internet.

Real "governance," one the other hand, writes the WSJ, could bring oversight of content .... For an example of how the Internet is governed, look no further than the strict limits China -- one of the main proponents of "internationalizing" the root zone -- places on Web sites that promote or even discuss democracy.

While the UN's Working Group on Internet Governance says it would respect freedom of expression, the WSJ is skeptical -- and so am I.

But that won't surprise anyone who knows me. The libertarian in me says to naturally distrust government when it proposes regulating speech.

On the other hand, if UN oversight of the Internet would reduce all that spam in my inbox.....

And you think people hate G.W. Bush

Practically every day since I've been here, there have protests outside the presidential palace, calling for the removal of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (usually "Gloria" or "GMA" for short in the press). Three days ago, police used a water cannon to break up a prayer rally and protest led by several influential priests, elevating the story to the top of the front page for the past several days.

Gloria's view is that the people are tired of the protests. "I'm asking everyone to continue with their work, avoid participating in illegal assemblies and mass actions being pushed by those with self-serving interests and whose only objective is to bring down the country," she said in Filipino, translated to English by the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

The Inquirer continues:

But Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez was his usual self, saying some of [the protesters] were nothing more than publicity seekers. "I am appalled ... that [the water cannon was used], but I do not condemn the reaction of the police because they're being pushed to the wall. Maybe some who were sprayed with water may have wanted it so they would land in the papers," he said.

This all stems from Gloria's alleged cheating in the last election and the supposed illegal removal of the popular former president Joseph Estrada. I haven't been here long enough to figure out which paper is pushing which agenda, but the feeling I've been getting from Filipinos I've spoken with is that the anti-Gloria feeling is widespread among the working class. She's the pro-business candidate, while Estrada, a former movie star, plays the role of populist.

Inquirer columnist Conrado de Quiros, in explaining why his column focuses so frequently on the presidential mess, wrote:

Who doesn't want variety? ... But I always go back to GMA: Because she is there. Because she should not be there. ... The problem is not whether GMA has done good or bad as President, it is whether she has a right to do good or bad as President. She is not the President. The problem is not the conduct of her rule, it is the legitimacy of her rule. The problem is not the quality of her rule, it is the fact that she is ruling. She has no right to. You cheat in an exam, you are expelled from school. You cheat in elections, you are jailed for life.

Most troubling, I think, is the presidential banning of the freedoms of speech and assembly. de Quiros says the country has been "conscripted into silence."

That is what is the killing of the impeachment complaint, the ban on rallies (against GMA, there is no such ban on the pro-GMA), and the ban on public officials appearing before the Senate signify. Collectively, they say that we may no longer talk about the fact that GMA stole the vote.

Bizarre similarities to the U.S. aside -- though I don't think Bush has yet banned rallies against him -- it's a fascinating, and somewhat scary, time in Philippine politics. There are rumors of martial law, a much-disbelieved promise by the president to step down if "the people" demand it and a general feeling of uneasiness about where the country is heading.

We're far enough from downtown Manila that we're generally unaffected by the rallies and protests. Today, though, a large contingent of farmers from the southern provinces marched through our neighborhood on their way to downtown Manila, snarling traffic and bringing out the police in droves. Parked at the gate was a fire truck positioned, apparently, to repel any protesters who decided to stay here rather than continue on downtown.

Driving...Outside the Gate

Today is Sunday, errand day. At home, that means hopping in the car, going to Wawa to pick up the Sunday Washington Post, then heading out to Wal-Mart, Giant, Home Depot, Target, PetSmart, or wherever else.

In Manila, it meant driving outside the gate for the first time.

We live in a very large gated community, large enough that we drove 10 minutes to church this morning (within the community) and still weren't at the back of the community. Driving inside is no big deal, as there isn't a huge amount of traffic. But to get to Ace Hardware, ShopWise and the Makati Supermarket to run my Sunday errands, I had to head outside and actually drive in the Philippines.

I've watched Bobby drive every time I've been in the car with him, trying to learn Filipino driving etiquette. Outwardly, it looks much like it does at home: traffic lights, octagonal STOP signs, lines painted down the center of the road. In reality, driving in the Philippines is more of an art form, knowing when you need to obey the red light, and when you're better off running it, when you should stay in your lane, and when you can squeeze three cars into two lanes. (We usually stop at the red lights, but not always, and we tend to ignore the lane markings, especially when they're not convenient. And when you're ready to cross oncoming traffic to make a left turn, we pretty much claim even the smallest break in traffic as our own.)

"There are only two kinds of drivers in the Philippines," Bobby told me, "offensive and defensive. And you have to be both. Sometimes at the same time."

Which is pretty much true, I discovered. I found myself following a car that had drifted to the left at a stop light, expecting him to turn left. Instead, when the light turned green, he gunned his engine and slipped in front of the jeepney in the lane to his right, leaving me totally exposed to the oncoming traffic.

So I did what any good Filipino driver would have done: I gunned my engine and made the left hand turn. It might have been against the light, and it might have been illegal, but it was also appropriate, given the circumstances.

I think I would have made Bobby proud.

Happy Birthday!

After running my errands (including a second box of cat food for the cat who has suddenly turned finicky), Shelly took me out for my birthday dinner. The plan was to celebrate on Oct. 25, one month late, but it looks like she'll be in China then, so we did it tonight, instead.

She had a great spot in mind, a place she's been on every trip to Manila, a restaurant called Italianni's. After Googling around, I now know that Italianni's also has branches in the U.S., though I've never heard of it before. However, the U.S. stores don't have the excellent Sicilian Chicken Salad they serve here: chicken breast, mangoes, ripe red grapes, pine nuts, with a lemon-dijon dressing and romaine lettuce.

And, I'll bet they don't have as much fun singing the birthday song in the U.S., either.

Shelly swears she had no plans to announce my belated birthday celebration to the staff, but if she did, she was off the hook, anyway, as our server noticed I was opening birthday cards. After a long wait for the bill, she came to the table and apologized, explaining that they were "preparing the ice cream for the birthday."

The birthday song started normally, with a happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday to you, and then immediately turned into a rousing edition of Macho Man.

Body...wanna feel my body?
Body...such a thrill my body
Body...wanna touch my body?
Body...it's too much my body
Check it out my body, body.
Don't you doubt my body, body.
talkin' bout my body, body,
check it out my body

Shelly was in stitches the whole time. I think she would have fallen off her chair if it had gone on much longer.

I'm tempted to take Shell back to Italianni's next month for her birthday. First, she likes the place. More importantly, I'm really, really curious about what they sing to women.

Settling In

Tylenol P.M. does wonders for the out-of-sync body. A good night’s sleep a couple nights ago, and I’m almost good as new. I’m still getting sleepy much too early in the evening, but I’m managing to stay up an additional 30 minutes or so each night. Before long, I’ll be completely on Philippines time.

I was offered a job today – part time and temporary, but a great opportunity to jump into the local culture. I’ll be teaching English to a class of future line leaders at the “Yakitori 101” class at one of the plants Shelly works at. There’s no syllabus and no text, so not only will I be teaching, I’ll be creating the class, too. I’m going to spend some time on Monday observing “Hot Dog 101” at a different plant to give me an idea of how the classes are run.

Both the satellite TV folks and the broadband Internet folks showed up yesterday, so we’re online and watching CNN again. Getting the Internet set up was no problem, but I can’t get the wireless router we brought to reach much beyond the room where it’s set up. I suspect there’s too much steel and sandstone in the house and that the signal just can’t get through. I’m trying to come up with a good solution to this, but so far have not. I may end up doing my surfing from the living room rather than my office, as I had hoped.

I’ve taken over the cooking duties, for the most part, playing housewife to Shelly’s hard-working salaryman. With a miniature refrigerator (about half the size of an American fridge), that puts me at the grocery store every few days. For the most part, it’s a familiar trip: I don’t think there’s anything I’ve looked for that can’t be had, for a price. But it’s incredibly cheap to eat local produce: We had a fantastic fresh pineapple, a bunch of fresh beets and some tasty dalandan (oranges), all for less than a dollar. The grocery stores I’ve been to have all been at rather high-end shopping malls, crammed full of every kind of luxury good imaginable, along with a wide variety of American and Asian fast food joints. Certainly things aren’t always so rosy out in the provinces, and the disparity between the rich and the middle class, not to mention the poor, is something I may never adjust to.

We're Here!

We made it to Manila, finally. After something like 23 hours in the air and another 5 or so on the ground, Tanaka and I arrived at Ninoy Aquino International Airport at about 11:00 Monday night.

Aside from it being a long, long walk from the gate to the immigration and the baggage claim, NAIA was nothing like the chaos I had imagined after reading Lonely Planet Philippines and a variety of Web sites. It was all very smooth, and nobody even asked to see Tanaka's documents.

I wandered outside, trying to remember where Shelly had said to meet her. I ended up calling her -- and padding the pockets of a guard who loaned me his cell phone. The damage: I paid 2 bucks for something that should have cost just a few cents, but it was easy and probably worth it, at least once.

After a quick Shelly and her driver, Bobby, collected us at the parking lot and whisked us home. It took me an hour to get into sleeping mode, but at least it was a restful night. Shelly finally woke me up at 10:00 this a.m. She took part of the day off and we spent it having lunch, figuring out what to have for dinner and shopping. I went for a swim in the afternoon, and then determined around 5:00 that there was no way I was going to be able to fix dinner....jet lag had begun to set in. Shelly fixed a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches, and I was out by 7, only to awake at 11, 2, 3, 4 and 5:30, all perfectly logical times for the jet-lagged body!

Tanaka seems to be adjusting well, though there's construction on three sides of us, and the noise is making him kind of skittish, with lots of hiding under the bed and in various corners. He hasn't eaten much, but he's drinking plenty, so I suspect he'll come around.

Updated October 17. Now I know how much that $2 phone call was really worth. One dollar is worth about 54 pesos. That 108 pesos I paid for the one minute phone call could buy several packs of AA batteries, 4 kilograms (8.8 pounds!) of cucumbers, 1.25 kilograms of lettuce, 3 kilograms of imported onions or 2.5 "Snacker" meals at KFC. Suffice it to say that, in a country where the average laborer's wage is between 200 and 400 pesos a day, I overpaid.

Google Knows I'm Overseas...

Loaded up my Firefox browser and was greeted by Google....in Tagalog!

What else does Google know about me?

Almost There

Narita International Airport, Tokyo
October 10, 2005

Tanaka is, the inside-the-bed-incident aside, a great traveler. I have not heard a peep from him since leaving Washington. I'm fortunate to be flying business class on my way over, sitting in the top section of a Northwest Boeing 747 with a small shelf between my seat and the window. The shelf is just wide enough to fit Tanaka's Sherpa bag, which means he sat by my side rather than at my feet for the Los Angeles-Tokyo leg of our trip. This has allowed me to reach in to pet him from time to time and to sneak him an occasional Pounce treat.

On landing, the ground agent came aboard and made an announcement for me to "please see the ground agent upon deplaning." And, sure enough, after walking up the jetway, there was a woman holding a placard with my name in both English and Japanese. Seems she wanted to take Tanaka's travel documents to make photocopies of each of them. I found myself easily falling back into my days of trusting Japanese efficiency, saying, "sure, here you go" and turning his entry to Manila over to a total stranger. She promised she would meet me at Gate 22 in 20 minutes, and that's about what it took her to get there. Only in Japan would I trust this to work!

When transfering between international flights at Narita, you have to go through security screening again. Carrying Tanaka through security had been my biggest fear of this whole trip. He's squirmy under the best of circumstances -- definitely not a cat who likes to be held for much more than a minute. I knew that, in Washington at least, my trip through security would be a fairly complicated dance:

1. Take shoes off.
2. Take computer out of bag.
3. Put shoes, computer and computer bag through the x-ray machine.
4. Go through metal detector to make sure I don't cause it to beep.
5. Take Tanaka out of his bag.
6. Put Tanaka's bag through the x-ray machine.
7. Carry Tanaka through the metal detector.
8. Return Tanaka to his bag.
9. Hope computer hasn't disappeared through all of this.
10. Squeeze computer back into a very full bag, while putting shoes back on.

Lucky me, I was also selected for "additional security screening," but the whole thing went much more smoothly than I had assumed it would. Tanaka, for once, had no interest in going anywhere other than my arms.

Security at Narita was much easier. I didn't have to take my shoes off, didn't have to take Tanaka out of his bag and didn't have to take the computer out of its bag. I carried Tanaka through the metal detector in his bag, which a 40-year-old man then visually examined while cooing "ah, kitty-chan!" It did, at least, give Tanaka a moment to stand up and stretch.

So, we leave soon for the last 4.5 hours to Manila. I can't wait to see Shelly, and I'm sure Tanaka feels the same way.

A Third of the Way There

Sunday, October 9, 2005
Los Angeles International Airport

Finally, time to start blogging again. The last three or four weeks have been simply amazing. Amazing in terms of how much I’ve gotten accomplished, amazing in terms of what I have learned, amazing in terms of actually getting the household furnishings packed and stored away.

I had lofty goals. I was going to chronicle, down to the most boring minutae, what goes in to preparing for an international move of indeterminate length. What happened, in reality, was that life got in the way.

Instead of blogging, I completed two sizable freelance projects.

I took Part 3 of the IRS Enrolled Agent Exam. Again.

I spent a week in Iowa visiting Mom and Jerry when I should have been packing.

I visited just about every doctor in town, checking out any body part that could bad over the next year or so.

Took Tanaka to the vet for the same treatment. Then fretted over whether or not his “authenticated” health certificate – his entry to the Philippines – would make it back from the Philippine Embassy in time for us to leave.

Tried to convince Tanaka that, yes, he actually did want to spend a bunch of time in his Sherpa bag, practicing for the trip.

Sorted, packed, sorted some more, packed some more, unpacked a bunch of it, then sorted it all again.

Worked with the property manager to prepare the house for rental. Keep your fingers crossed.

Tried to get forwarding addresses to anyone we do business with. (I know I have failed at this task, but I can no longer keep track of who I updated and who I didn’t update.)

As I said, I had lofty goals.

This past week has been the most trying. I worked my last day on Tuesday, to spend at least part of the day with my successor at the hospital. The movers were due to show up Thursday to pack and Friday to take everything to storage, so everything I needed to get done had to be done by Wednesday evening. Easier said than done, when you add in a four-foot by four-foot pile of mulch that didn’t quite make it as far as the garden and, therefore, needed to be moved manually by the only laborer left at home. (Mom said last fall we should have pruned more of the low-hanging around our driveway. Having had two rather large trucks in our driveway in the span of two days, I now concede that she was probably correct.)

Vivian has been a great help, and a great neighbor, over these past few days, too. I’ve stored a few odds and ends in her attic, she has fed me when I’ve been too busy eat, and she gave me a place to sleep when I realized all the rooms in town have taken up by the Seagull Century bicycle ride. She said “that’s what good neighbors are for.” Well, she is a good neighbor, and all three of us are going to miss her while we’re gone. Thanks, Vivian!

Tanaka has been a great traveler so far, aside from making me dig him out from inside the bed at the Red Roof Inn last night. Roughly a third of the way to Manila, I’ve only heard three brief, loud meows from him, and that was as we sat on the tarmac at Washington National Airport. When the plane started moving again, he stopped meowing, perhaps thinking his complaint about our delay had been heard. At this point, he’s sitting, apparently quite contentedly, on a desk next to me, watching me type, fondly recalling the days he could roam freely, prying the keys off my computer’s keyboard.

The longest leg of our trip is starting soon. If I’m lucky, I’ll get some sleep and can begin recovering from this nasty cold I picked up somewhere over the past few days.