Sand, Ocean ... It Must be the Beach

Shelly shifted her holidays around this weekend. Rather than taking January 2 off, as her colleagues will in Maryland, she took today off, when not much is happening here, and we headed to the beach. It was officially a work day at the plant, so we had Bobby drive us to the beach. It would give us a chance to relax, and him a chance to sit around and wait for us at the beach rather than sitting around at the plant.

We headed to Matabungkay, about three hours south of Manila, and home to white sand beaches, if not to a lot of good snorkeling or swimming.

The beach was certainly scenic, but the water was too shallow to swim very much. We did find some water deep enough to snorkel. While most of the coral was dead, we did see more starfish than either of us had ever seen before. It was a nice day to get out of the city, we had a nice lunch, and had plenty of time to sit and sleep or read on the beach.

Any Help with Zombies?

Bobby and I spent today in Manila, picking up my computer -- believe me, after paying the repair bill, I hope I never drop this thing again -- and getting Shelly's sewing machine fixed.

Now, Shelly's sewing machine belonged to her great grandmother on her mom's side, so finding parts for it isn't easy. Fortunately, Bobby used to be a Manila taxi driver, and seems to know where to find everything. He took one look at the sewing machine and said, "oh, it's a Singer. We'll go to the Singer shop."

And so we did.

Around on the back side of the building, we found a combination Singer repossession sale and repair shop. I had no idea that Singer makes television sets, refrigerators and washing machines. (Perhaps they don't in the U.S.) I signed the machine in with the guard, and a service manager took it away. Bobby and I settled down with the security guard and few other assorted people to watch parts of three movies blaring on the probably-repossessed large screen television set, including the end of some movie starring The Rock on HBO and then, on Star Movies, the end of Bruce Almighty, the movie where Jim Carrey ends up with all of God's powers. After that finished, we were back to HBO to a movie where a group of people were trapped in a shopping mall, trying to remain out of the reach of the rest of humanity, which had all turned into zombies. (Remember, I missed the beginning of this gem.)

Actually, I was totally into this movie, so much so that I didn't notice that a clerk had gone around behind the TV, until he disconnected the cable from the big screen TV and hooked it into a smaller set that someone wanted to buy.

"HBO, HBO!" someone called out.

"32! 32!" someone else cried.

"Hurry up," I thought. "I want to see what happens next."

The clerk switched the channel, grimacing, probably worrying that zombies on the screen would send the old lady interested in the set scurrying out the door. We watched the zombies on the small screen. The lady bought the TV, and the zombies moved back to the big screen.

Ten minutes later, the sewing machine repair was finished. Unfortunately, I'll never know how to defeat an army of zombies.

Mmmmm...Crispy Pig

Here are a couple shots of some crispy pig -- lechon -- that was served at a company Christmas party last week. The crispy skin, while the tastiest part, is also almost certainly the part that is the worst for you. Unless you count the layer of fat that comes between the crispy skin and the juicy pork.

Lechon is a Big Deal, but it also must be a fairly common food, at least among those with money. Most of the supermarkets where the middle and upper class shop have lechon stands where you can buy it, every day of the week.

Christmas in the Tropics

Our Christmas vacation turned out to be a very nice couple of days. We started with cinnamon rolls from Cinnabon, and then opened gifts from each other and a few from our families. More are expected this week from Kathy and Carol; it will be nice to stretch Christmas out.

Turns out we gave each other some pretty cool gifts, I think.

I bought Shelly a couple of hand-made baskets/end tables that we'll take home

and she bought me the coolest gift I have ever received: tailor-made shirts.

Yes, I look like a dork, but I have never had a tailor-made shirt.

After opening presents, we headed to Makati to pick up John and Divina, Shelly's friends from Saipan, and brought them back to the house, where we all cooled off in the pool for a couple of hours before Shelly and I made a psuedo-American, psuedo-Filipino Christmas dinner. We had pork chops, after not finding any affordable American hams in the neighborhood, salad and a potato casserole, followed by Shelly's fantastic peppermint ice cream-frozen brownie Christmas dessert. After dinner, we all ended up turning in early: I had been up late going to church and wrapping presents, John and Divina were on Saipan time (two hours ahead of the Philippines) and Shelly, well, Shelly was just sleepy. Plus, we had an early wake-up call for our trip to Pagsanjan Falls, about 2.5 hours south of home.

***

On Monday, we got up early -- too early for a holiday, I think -- and headed south to Pagsanjan Falls, with a stop first to pick up Bobby to drive us through the province. Our destination was the site where Francis Ford Coppola filmed the final scenes of the movie Apocalypse Now, and a great spot for banca rides through the rapids on the Bombongan River.

Driving into town, a large road sign warned us not to "stop and deal with illegal boatmen flaggers along the road!"

Not far from the sign, we saw our first "illegal boatmen flaggers along the road!"

"Boss! Hey, Boss!"

"Boss!"

"Hey, Boss!"

Taken in by their compelling sales pitches, we stopped to talk to one of the flaggers, who thrust a pile of laminated photos of Pagsanjan Falls at Bobby. After a brief conversation, the flagger hopped on the back of a motorcycle, and we began to follow him, first down the main road, then a smaller road and then a smaller road still, until the motorcycle turned into the driveway of what appeared to be someone's house. Bobby rolled the window down about a two inches when the flagger came back to talk to us.

After another brief conversation that I couldn't understand, Bobby rolled up his window and put the car back in gear, leaving the flagger cursing behind us as we wound our way back to the main road through town. Another couple of miles, and we found our way to a hotel resort.

Several years ago, tourist numbers in Pagsanjan declined precipitously as banceros (boatmen) demanded larger and larger fees for the three-hour trip up and back through the rapids, so the government stepped in and set official rates for the trip: P580 per person, plus P50 for the mandatory life vest and P30 for a seat cushion.

We stepped into two bancas, or small, wooden boats, each with two banceros, Shelly and I in the lead, John and Davina trailing behind.

The trip started slowly. The Bambongan was slow and wide at this point, so the upstream paddling was easy for the banceros. And then we went around the bend.

The river narrowed and sped up noticeably as we entered an awesome gorge, with sheer cliffs towering overhead and rapids popping up every few meters. At the first rapids, we watched a downstream banca sail through, before our banceros hopped out and began to pull our boat over the rocks. These guys are experts: they know when to jump in to the river to push, and when to leap from rock to rock to pull. Through at least a dozen sets of rapids, they pushed and pulled until we were just shy of the falls themselves. (We had been warned that the water was too high for us to go under the falls, which is usually part of the trip.) We got out of the bancas and stretched our legs before getting back in and shooting downstream and back to the resort.

When we got back to the car, Bobby said he had done some investigating while we were gone and had uncovered the scam along the road: the unlicensed boats would take us part way to the falls, then demand more money to go the rest of the way.

On our way home, we stopped for what turned out to be a very good Japanese lunch at Hana, a restaurant we had noticed on the way into town. Of particular interest was the California roll which, rather than being made with crab, cucumber and avocado, was made with crab, cucumber and mango. The lunch, while delicious, must have been full of MSG, as all four of us slept most of the way home, and Bobby said he had been sleepy, too.

I somehow left the camera in the car when we went to the falls, but, fortunately, John had his along. Once he gets back to Saipan and e-mails the photos to us, I'll post them.

Merry Christmas

Just back from the late service at Holy Trinity -- by myself, because Shelly is well-known to turn into a pumpkin after about 10:00 p.m., and because we also went to the 4:00 service this afternoon in anticipation of her not making it to tonight's service.

It was a nice service, with a hymn in Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines, that I didn't understand, but found very beautiful.

We'll be opening gifts in a few hours, then picking up Shelly's friends John and Davina at their hotel in Makati and spending a couple days with them at our house. They're in the country from Saipan, where John is a teacher.

I still have some gifts to wrap. I know that my early-to-bed, early-to-rise bride will be waking me up much too early on Christmas morning.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, Sir!

Christmas in the Philippines brings out the, ahem, opportunity to give cash gifts to those who perform services for you.

This is not all bad. It's a chance for those who have to share with those who work hard and still don't have much. But drawing the line is difficult.

Shelly has been advised not to give a gift of cash, lest we become a good source of "loans" down the road, so we've given booze to the male service employees in our lives and shoes to the female service employees in our lives.

Bobby, our driver, got a good bottle of his favorite brandy. The pool cleaner and the gardener each got a bottle of rum. The guards at the village gate got a bottle of rum, too, which I suspect they'll share at their own Christmas party or by splitting up the gifts that neighborhood residents have given them. The housekeepers got shoes. Each of these gifts is worth at least one day's salary. Bobby's is worth close to two days' salary.

The telephone company courier gave us an envelope for his cash gift. The mailman also gave us an envelope for a cash gift. The telephone company courier, when he delivered this month's phone bill, asked me if he could have his "Christmas envelope." The way I look at it, he's not doing us a service; he's doing the telephone company a service, and that's where he should look for his gift.

But then I feel guilty. What's a hundred pesos to me? What's it worth to him? But, we've held the line there.

One guy who did get a cash gift from us this year was Cris, the helpful guy who is seemingly *always* working at the bank after hours, providing security and customer service to those using the ATM. He's there so often that we're on a first name basis now. Cris always stops traffic for me to back the car up, he's always friendly (genuinely, I think) and he studies an English dictionary while at work so he "can learn more difficult words so he can speak with foreigners better."

You can tell it's Christmas time at the grocery store, too. It's nearly impossible to get out of the store right now without one of the ubiquitous baggers carrying your groceries to the car for you. Most of the rest of the year, it's easy enough to bypass them, but right now they're working hard for tips. And at a tip of 15 or 20 pesos (25 to 35 cents), I'm glad to let them carry my purchases for me.

As I said, it's Christmas, the time of giving -- giving cash. It's part of life in the Philippines.

A column by John Mangun in the December 15 Business Mirror says that the Philippine Bureau of Immigration has implemented a new policy "instruct[ing] all immigration supervisors at the airports to refrain from extending holiday greetings to passengers lest this be misconstrued as asking for gifts or money."

"At first glance, this certainly seems like a silly idea," Mangun writes. "What is wrong with a government official welcoming arriving passengers at our international airport with a casual holiday greeting? Most foreign international travelers might even see this lack of greeting as an indication that the Philippines is not as warm and friendly as our reputation leads them to expect. But we all know the truth.

"Christmas is a time in the Philippines when everyone becomes your friend. The security guard that normally considers lifting the gate at the village entrance an inconvenience suddenly runs to accomplish the task. Smiles fill the faces of city employees behind the glass windows at hte office servicing the public. 'Merry Christmas' is not a greeting; it is a reminder of your holiday obligation to give. It is almost as if you are expected to pay for someone wishing that your Christmas is merry.

"The foreigners coming into NAIA do not know that is part of our culture, but we all do. A public employee with a 'Merry Christmas' on their lips usually has their eyes on your wallet."

So with that, Merry Christmas, sir! Merry Christmas, ma'am! I accept both cash and checks.

Are You Still There? Hello?

It's been far too long since I last blogged. It has been a very busy two weeks.

My period of non-blogging began with great news, perfectly suited to a blog entry. So, here it is, as it should have appeared two weeks ago:

***

Results came back from the test I took at the IRS in September, and I passed Part 3 of the exam, which means I have passed all four parts and am now eligible to apply to become an "Enrolled Agent."

What does this mean? Essentially, once the IRS completes its background check and makes sure I haven't filed any fraudulent returns for either myself or my clients, I'll be licensed to represent anyone who is having a dispute with the IRS. In other words, if you get audited, I can represent you, even if I did not prepare your tax return. (Currently, I can represent you only if I prepared the return which is being audited.)

In reality, there's probably not much call for this license once I'm back in Salisbury, and probably not that much in Manila, either, but it may help me find some tax season work here. Things are changing so quickly in the tax preparation world that I don't know how many more years I'll be able to make any money preparing other people's taxes. More and more are preparing their own taxes online (which is what I'd do, too, if I wasn't already a "tax professional").

Doing your own taxes can be a good thing or a bad thing. Sure, you'll save the hundred or two hundred bucks that you'd pay me to do your return, but you might not get back all the money that you're entitled to. Shelly will kill me for telling this story, and she might disagree with some of the details in my version of the story, but here's the story I always tell potential clients when they tell me they can do their own taxes:

The first year that I worked for H&R Block, I offered to do Shelly's taxes. (This was before we got married.) She declined, saying that she had always done her own and could do them very well herself, thank you very much. She finally agreed to at least let me check them over before she filed.

Shell worked through her 1040, and presented it to me with a rather smug look, as I recall (this may be a point she differs on). She was getting a refund -- $1 -- and was quite happy with that.

I looked at it for less than a minute -- honest! -- and said "Great! You're getting a dollar back. What about the thirteen hundred dollars that you're entitled to, but aren't asking for?"

I tell this story to potential clients not to harass my wife or to make her look bad, but to demonstrate that the extensive training I've gone through gives me knowledge of tax credits they may not be aware of. I snagged a $300 credit for Shelly that year through the "rate reduction credit" that is far too boring to go into here, and a $1,000 through an education credit she qualified for.

Back to the present. I took this test for three reasons:

1. The IRS is slowing moving towards requiring some sort of certification or licensing of professional tax preparers. Being an enrolled agent should meet this need for certification, which will put me at a competitive advantage versus other tax preparers, providing there's still such a thing as retail tax preparation when that day rolls around.

2. I took the test for the first time last year, when I was unemployed and had ample time to study. (Did I study enough? Obviously not, or I would have passed all four parts the first time around.) I like multiple choice tests, and I can usually do quite well on them. I hate studying, which is why I failed Part 3 last year.

3. As more and more people do their own taxes, the future of the tax prep industry may well be in defending people who have decided to do their own taxes.

Sometime next spring, the background investigation will be completed and, unless there's something in my background that I'm unaware of, I should be, officially, an enrolled agent. Yay!

And, Shell, if you think I've maligned you with any aspect of this post, the comment link is below! :-)

***

I'm trying to figure out how to structure this post. If I make it too long, you'll get bored. Since that might happen anyway, I'll steam ahead.

***

I had checked the IRS Web site on Sunday, December 11, and found the results that day. I had been checking periodically for a couple of weeks, and was flying high when I got the results.

That all came crashing down, quite literally, the next day, when I broke my laptop. (For a second time in the three months that I've been here, Shelly's advice to bring my old workhorse of a laptop proved prescient.)

I learned at least four things from breaking the laptop:

1. Never put your laptop on top of a stack of dirty clothes in the laundry basket. If you want to put it in the laundry basket, you're better off putting it under the clothes.

2. It doesn't take much of a drop to really mess up the LCD screen on a new laptop. Mine slipped off a laundry basket that couldn't have been more than three feet off the ground.

3. The LCD is the single most expensive part on a computer. I did some research before calling a nearby Apple Center, and knew I was looking at something in the neighborhood of a thousand bucks to get it fixed.

4. "51,000 pesos" sounds a lot more expensive than "925 dollars."

***

So, between a broken laptop, writing Christmas cards, wrapping Christmas packages, attending Christmas parties (one more tomorrow night), going out for multiple farewell dinners with the three Americans who were here working with Shelly and completing three freelance projects, we've been incredibly busy.

Things should quiet down for a while. Larry and Jamie left last Sunday, Jim left this afternoon, and my three freelance projects will be done before I go to bed tonight. There's a company Christmas party Friday afternoon that I'll be attending with Shelly, and we have visitors from Saipan staying with us December 25 & 26, but it will be a far less-hectic pace than the previous two weeks.

Driving (Legally)

Shelly has been, I regret to inform you, driving around the Philippines without the proper documentation. She ran out of time before leaving Maryland to get an international license, and used up her 21-day driving grace period weeks ago.

But I'm happy to announce that, as of last week, she is now legal.

When her visa was finally processed last week, we headed out last Thursday morning to get Shelly a license. You can't get a license until you have a visa, but it's taken almost three months to get her visa. You can only drive legally without a Philippine or international license for 21 days after your arrival, which is how she ended up driving illegally for all these weeks. (And me? I did not get a Philippine license on our Thursday trip because I don't yet have a visa, but I did pick up an international license before leaving home and can, therefore, drive for a year until the license expires.)

***

The driver's license office is in a dark wing of a mall that has seen better days. Most of the stores are closed, but the corridors of the mall are jammed with kiosks selling everything from dodgy cell phones to pirated DVDs. There's a Jollibee, a Shakey's Pizza and a couple of other small restaurants, but the escalators don't work, and most of the lights in the mall have been switched off. I'm glad we have Bobby along to navigate.

We fight our way through the masses, past row after row of chairs of people, snacking, dozing, chatting, but mostly waiting, and find ourselves negotiating with a fixer, someone who will help speed up the process for us. Using a fixer, despite prominent signs forbidding them, is essential, as it's just a few minutes before noon and it seems the office closes at noon so everyone can take lunch at the same time.

Our fixer, a tall, lanky man wearing a blue t-shirt, finds a clerk who will let us start the paperwork, even though it's 11:55. But first, we need photocopies of Shelly's license, passport and visa. No problem, says Bobby, because one of the kiosks in the corridor sells 2 peso (US$0.04) photocopies. Shelly fills out her paperwork and presents them with her photocopies, and the fixer, the clerk and Bobby begin a lengthy negotiation in Tagalog. Bobby is trying to get the clerk to waive the required drug test, but it seems that can't be done today.

The fixer leads us around the corner to one of several medical offices. Bobby pulls me aside and, in hushed tones, explains what's going on:

"You have a choice," he says. "You can wait until later this afternoon, or maybe until tomorrow. Or, for a fee, you can have faster service."

"How much do we need to pay for the faster service?" I ask, glad again that he's here to help us.

"They wanted 4,000 pesos (US$80), but I got them to take 2,500 pesos ($US50). Is that okay?"

Not wanting to spend the day at the driver's license office, much less return tomorrow, we quickly agree, and I dig through my wallet to come up with the cash.

Meanwhile, Shelly returns from the small bathroom and hands her sample to the nurse. The bathroom is dirty, the specimen cup was reused and it was, well, difficult for a woman to aim into the cup's small opening. There's no sink in the bathroom, so she washes her hands in sink in the waiting area. Shelly shells out P450 for the drug test, and five minutes later we're on our way to the vision test, which she quickly passes.

There are just two steps left, Bobby says: having Shelly's photo taken for her license, and then waiting for the license itself to appear. The rest of it "will be taken care of."

We leave Bobby behind as we head out to do some Christmas shopping, only to be called back 20 minutes later. The photograph hadn't worked, and Shelly needed to return for a second one. That taken, we're both ready to head for home. Bobby offers to remain behind to wait for the license and deliver it to Shelly at work on Friday. We quickly agree, glad to be on our way out of the mall.

***

After our lengthy, expensive experience, I'm not sure that I'll be getting a driver's license anytime soon, though it would make a cool souvenir. But, all in, it ended up costing something like $65, and for something I don't need, that's a lot of money.

Stinky the Monkey

We welcomed Stinky the Monkey to our home yesterday. Shelly has apparently been sending a photo of Stinky around to her family, so I may as well include it here, along with the story, convoluted though it may be.

I have always wanted a pet monkey. What boy hasn't, really? They're fun to watch, and intelligent, too. Now, obviously I wouldn't actually want a monkey -- a monkey would be a handful around the house, to be sure -- but monkeys have always been fun pet to fantasize about.

After adopting Mister Tanaka, I decided that, to match my personality, I would consider him to be a sarcastic cat, much like Bucky in Get Fuzzy. For all of his blustering, aggressive outside, Bucky also has a soft spot in his heart for his plastic bear, Smacky.

It's really because of Bucky that I started to think, sometime that last year, that maybe Mister Tanaka would like a pet, too. And what better pet for a cat than a monkey?

"Mister Tanaka could train him, and groom him, and the monkey could get snacks for Mister Tanaka out of the cupboard," I said to Shelly sounding, no doubt, like an eight-year-old after an afternoon of Pepsi and cotton candy.

"I would guess," said The Voice of Reason, "that the monkey would end up training Mister Tanaka. I think Mister Tanaka would probably rather have a pet goldfish."

I couldn't argue with Shelly's logic, but since I didn't actually want a monkey for Mister Tanaka, I didn't have to argue with her.

After seeing all those macaques last week, my trip to Subic last week re-ignited my burning passion for a pet monkey.

"I showed Mister Tanaka my monkey photos," I told Shelly. "He reminded me that he wants a pet monkey. He's going to name him Stinky."

"Neither of you are getting a monkey," The Voice of Reason said.

"But Ross had a monkey on Friends," I whined.

"Friends was a TV show," she said. "And Ross was a dork. Do you want to be a dork?"

And that was the end of that -- who wants to be dork, after all? -- until Sunday, when we were shopping for Christmas presents.

"Greg, come here," Shelly said, pulling me into the wood carvings department. "I found Stinky! You should buy him!"

I had been looking for a box or something similar to toss my spare change into each night. Stinky cost less than $10. He would make one heck of a cheesy souvenir.

Are you on my Christmas gift list? Don't worry. They only had one of them in the store, and I kept him for myself.

Go Hawks!

I woke up this morning to find that Iowa has been invited to the Outback Bowl in January -- despite a 7-4 record -- for a rematch of the 2004 Iowa-Florida Outback Bowl. The Hawkeyes got the nod over Michigan even though Michigan beat Iowa in Iowa City.
This is payback for 1996 when, despite finishing the season with a better record than Michigan and a victory over the Wolverines, Iowa was snubbed by the Outback and ended up in San Antonio at the Alamo Bowl. Who's headed to the Alamo this year? None other than Michigan. Go Hawks!

Holy Trinity

We found a church. It took a while, but it didn't take much looking.

Something like 85 percent of the Philippines is Roman Catholic. There are Catholic churches everywhere you look. Within a five minute drive of our house, there are at least two. We've even been to one of them, before we got settled in enough to start looking for a Lutheran or Episcopal church. If you're not interested in a brief discussion of my religious background, you'll probably want to skip the next paragraph, and possibly the rest of this post.

I'm a Lutheran. Shelly is a non-denominational protestant. Her parents go to an Episcopal church, mine go to a Lutheran church. She was raised Presbyterian, I was raised Methodist, and joined the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in college. We were married in an Episcopal Church. In South Carolina, we went to an Episcopal church, in Maryland we go to a Lutheran church. Some Lutheran Churches (though not the LCMS) and Episcopal Churches are "in communion with" each other, which allows the churches to share clergy, fully recognize each other's members, ministries and sacraments. (Which branch of Lutheranism you subscribe to is a big deal to some Lutherans. For me, not being raised as a Lutheran, I've been comfortable floating between the LCMS, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the Episcopal Church, as all three have very similar services. The differences come in the doctrine, something I was unaware of until I joined the Lutheran Church of Guam, which is a joint ministry of the ELCA and LCMS. Here's an explanation of the differences between LCMS and ELCA, from the LCMS point of view, if you're interested.)

Anyway, enough of the backstory. It may be helpful if you're interested in how we ended up where we did.

On Sunday, we filled out the new member paperwork at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Makati, a 30-minute drive from home on Sunday morning. We couldn't find any good Lutheran options, but we agreed that we wanted that same Episcopal/Lutheran liturgical service. The vicar has held posts around the world, and the congregation is very multi-cultural. I think we'll be very at home there; it's nice to have a church home in time for Advent.

High-Flying Cat

Hopefully this is not an adventure that Mister Tanaka will ever have. Thanks to Tatyana for passing on the link!


Stowaway cat arrives home from France
'She's bigger and heavier than before'

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (AP) -- Emily the cat is back -- after flying home in the lap of luxury.

The curious cat who wound up traveling to France in a cargo container touched down at the Milwaukee airport on Thursday, greeted by her family and a horde of reporters.

A Continental cargo agent handed her over to 9-year-old Nick Herndon, son of the cat's owners, Donny and Lesley McElhiney. Emily meowed and pawed at reporters' microphones as the family answered questions.

"She'll be held onto a lot all the way home. And then when we get home, too, she'll be cuddled a lot," Donny McElhiney said.

Her sumptuous return in business class on a Continental Airlines flight was a sharp departure from her trip to France, where she was found thin and thirsty but still alive.

"She seems a little calmer than she was before, just a little quieter, a little, maybe, wiser," said Lesley McElhiney, 32.

Emily vanished from her Appleton home in late September. She apparently wandered into a nearby paper company's distribution center and crawled into a container of paper bales.

The container went by truck to Chicago and by ship to Belgium before the cat was found October 24 at Raflatac, a laminating company in Nancy, France. Workers there used her tags to phone her veterinarian, who called the McElhineys.

Continental offered to fly the cat home from Paris after Emily's tale spread around the world and she cleared a one-month quarantine.

"This was such a marvelous story, that we wanted to add something to it," Continental spokesman Philippe Fleury told AP Television News at Charles de Gaulle airport.

After one Continental employee escorted Emily from Paris to Newark, New Jersey, cargo agent Gaylia McLeod accompanied the cat aboard a 50-seater from Newark to Milwaukee.

"I know it's close to the holidays," a tearful McLeod said. "I'm happy to be a part of reuniting Emily with her family."

On her flight home, Emily passed up a menu of peppered salmon filet and "opted for her French cat food" and some water, airline spokeswoman Courtney Wilcox said.

Apparently all that French food did Emily some good.

"She's bigger and heavier than before," Nick said.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

I Feel Like I'm Back on Guam

I feel like I'm back on Guam.

As I was editing and finalizing this week's worth of posts (I don't usually post a week's worth at once, but it's been a busy week!), the power went out. On Guam, it was a weekly occurrence, and it was nearly always blamed on a brown tree snake crossing over from one power line to the other, creating some kind of arc, and shorting the system out. I had other theories for the frequency of Guam's power outages, as did most everyone I knew. But the brown tree snake was the official reason nearly all the time.

This is the first power outage we've had, or that I've noticed, at least, since arriving. We noticed when Merlyn tried to make a phone call on the cordless phone, which was suddenly not working.

I plugged a fan in. It didn't work, either, so I checked the breakers, all of which were okay. I tried the fan in the kitchen. It didn't work, and neither did the overhead lights. I wandered across the street to check with my neighbor, to see if he had any power. He didn't, either, so I know the problem is not in our house.

UPDATE: The power was out for about 3 hours, during which time I wrote until my battery was drained, then read a book while eating leftover turkey. Shortly thereafter, the combination of tropical heat and Tryptophan put me promptly to sleep.

I Feel Like I'm Back in Japan

I feel like I'm back in Japan.

We had these nasty centipedes in Japan that were able to climb just about any wall and seemed to take great delight in dropping onto unsuspecting gaijin as they opened the closet door. They were also good at biting. Though I was never bitten, my friend Phil from Australia was bitten one night when he was visiting Yamanashi.

Last night, I had called Tanaka to come to bed. Although he's not a dog, he knows the routine and usually sprints to the bedroom to spend the night with us. Last night, however, I could not get his attention, no matter how hard I tried.

So I went downstairs to see what was up and found that he had cornered a very evil-looking centipede in the dining room.

Not wanting any of us to get bitten, I had to take Tanaka's new plaything away from him. After scooping it up in some tupperware, I stored it for the night in order to photograph it in the daylight. Plus, I wanted to find out what it was and would need to see it while looking for it on the Internet.

It seems to be a member of the scolopendromorpha family. Here's a blurb from the Emporia (Kan.) State University Web site:

Order Scolopendromorpha (3 families) - "epimorphic" forms with 21 or 23 pairs of legs and pedal segments, with a low degree of tergite "heteronomy" [segments are more-or-less uniform]. Includes the largest centipedes - the aggressive, intimidating species known to the general public. Occurrence: Worldwide.

After spending a night in tupperware, he seemed sluggish in the morning. I shot a couple of photos in the tupperware and then, going for a better view, dumped him and the nickel onto a piece of white paper. He took off at a mile a minute, forcing me to recapture him, as I really didn't want him wandering back into the house.

I hesitate to post this photo, as it may dash any hopes we have of anyone coming to visit. So, let me post it while reminding you: We have a cat. He caught a centipede last night. He'll get the next one, too.

I Can't Believe We Missed It

Digging through a backlog of newspapers this morning, I see that we missed the Fifth Annual Baguio Province Tossed Salad Festival on Sunday.

According to a story in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, this year's Tossed Salad Festival was dominated by thousands of children "enjoying their greens" at the Baguio Convention Center.

Their Styrofor bowls were filled with slices of carrot, lettuce, cucumber, tomato and bell pepper.

A woman said her three grandchildren quickly consumed two bowls each. A bowl cost P20 (40 cents).

Organizers earlier announced that this year's festival would try to break the record by feeding 30,000 people. But only 10,000 servings had been offered to the public as of 3:00 p.m.

Yes. There's an actual record for this. According to the Inquirer, the first giant salad broke a record previously set in Utah by feeding 5,000 people. The second fed 12,800 people, the third 29,000. (Only 9,000 people showed up in 2004 when the Tossed Salad Festival was held on the heels of a meningococcemia outbreak in the city.)

If any province is going to hold a tossed salad festival, Baguio would be the one. Much of the produce in the Philippines is grown in Baguio, which has cooler weather and better growing conditions than much of the southern part of the country. We often buy string beans, strawberries and lettuce labeled as being from Baguio.

Still, who would have thought that a tossed salad festival would be so popular?

Subic Bay, Baby

My alarm went off much too early this morning. 5:15 is too early just about any day.

But it was worthwhile, as I spent the day at Subic Bay with a couple of Shelly's colleagues who were headed there on business and invited me along for the ride.

Subic Bay is a natural deep-water port that was once home to the U.S. Navy and, before that, the Spanish fleet. Today the former navy base has been turned into a free trade zone and tourist destination.

When the Navy moved out, it left behind hundreds upon hundreds of old buildings, most of which remain in use today, and the infrastructure to support a small city.

This sign from the Public Works Commission just has to be a Navy remnant. Mr. Kool is affixed firmly to a huge air conditioning unit that appears to be in dire need of a visit from, well, Mr. Kool.

One of the largest tenants at Subic is FedEx, which hubs at least part of its Asian traffic here. The FedEx presence was of particular interest to me because, when I bought my computer, the shipping details showed that it was sent from China, where it was built, to Subic Bay, and then on to the U.S. I tried to take a photo of the tail of a FedEx plane to illustrate this paragraph, but a guard hustled over and told me that photography was "not authorized." So we drove around the corner and shot this one instead, which is all the better for being taken in front of a sign indicating that photography is, indeed, forbidden.

Part of the tourism development includes Ocean World, a small-but-informative Sea-World-like park though with, I think, more emphasis on education than Sea World. Walking through the aquarium, I discovered that while our digital camera was just not hacking it when it came to taking pictures of the fish, the camera on Rose's cell phone was taking good shots. Though I have yet to figure out how to use most of my phone, I have mastered the camera function.

As we wandered through the aquarium, we were met by Jeff, a park guide who explained each of the different tanks on display to us, and then invited us to come see the park's sea lion-painting show. Not a show where sea lions were painted, he explained, but a show where the sea lions did the painting.

"What kind of paintings do the sea lions make?" Elmer asked, quite reasonably.

"Abstract," Jeff joked.

Actually, Colby's painting was not nearly so abstract, as here he is shown painting the "L" in his name. We were told that the sea lions at Ocean World are South American sea lions, "the dumbest of all sea lions."

"Yet they can paint," Rose pointed out.

"Yes, but we have to feed them after each trick," Jeff said. "The California sea lions like you'd see at Sea World will perform without being fed after each trick."

"Sounds to me like it's the South American sea lion that's the smart one," Elmer said.

Subic is also home to thousands of macaque monkeys which live in the dense tropical forest. Ocean World has a rescued animals exhibit which includes a new family of macaques, which are actually a group of rescued individuals from which a new clan is before formed after the monkeys are nursed back to health. If released individually, a guide explained, they would be shunned by other groups; by releasing them as a family, they should survive in the wild.