A Little Bureaucracy

The Philippines is a receipt-mad nation. I end up with a receipt in my pocket for practically everything.

Of course, I end up with cash register receipts, just like anywhere, but how many times have you bought a whopping 12 dollars worth of household cleaning supplies and had your receipt checked not once, but twice? The cashier rang my purchases up, the bagger stamped it with the "checked" stamp on the right hand side, and the door guard stamped it with the "released" stamp on the top, but only after checking -- and circling -- the number of items purchase. (You can always click on these photos to see a larger version if you want to see the detail.)

Just about anywhere you park your car, you'll receive a receipt when you enter the parking lot. Some of them are single-use,

and some of them are used over and over again.

Whether parking is free or not, you'll more often than not get a receipt. Bobby explained to me why there are so many parking receipts: they're intended to keep vehicle theft to a minimum, the theory being that, without a receipt, you won't be able to exit the parking lot. In fact, your license plate number is usually scrawled on the receipt in generally unreadable script by a guy who has been scrawling tag numbers on little pieces of paper for the last seven hours. I'm thinking, however, that if I were intent on stealing a car, I wouldn't stop and get out of the car just because a lone receipt-taker told me to.

But the Granddaddy of All Receipts has to be the "gate pass" Jim brought with him to Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday. But first, the backstory: we needed a cooler for the party, and didn't really want to buy one we'd either have to leave behind or ship home, so we asked Jim to borrow one from the hotel he's staying at. He's been there for a couple months, they have his credit card number, they all know him and, most importantly, they were willing to loan him a cooler, so it seemed like a good deal all the way around.

Then he showed up at the house on Sunday with this:

There were, no kidding, TEN signatures required to loan Jim a cooler that couldn't cost more than fifty bucks.

Numbers 1 and 2 weren't signatures so much as the names of two hotel employees who would be responsible for the cooler if Jim didn't bring it back in time. It reads "Please allow the bearer: Mr/Ms ________ of _____ to bring out of the hotel premises the following item/s temporarily/permanently.

Number 3 is the signature of the person who prepared the form.

Number 4 is the department head who "noted" the preparation of the form.

Number 5 is the cost control office representative, who also "noted" the preparation of the form.

Number 6 is the signature of approval from the Financial Controller/Treasury Manager, and Number 7 is the signature of approval from the general manager.

Number 8 is the signature of the security officer on duty, who witnessed the changing hands of the cooler, while Number 9 is the initials of the security manager on duty who acknowledged the witnessing by his security officer. Note that, if more people had been on duty that day, there are spaces below Number 8 and Number 9 for their signatures and initials, too.

Finally, Number 10 is Jim.

What a paper trail! But I think, perhaps because of all the effort put into borrowing the cooler, that the beer was colder and better tasting than any beer I've had since arriving in October.

Or at least that's what I'll tell Jim.

Three Day Weekend

We're celebrating Bonifacio Day today, in honor of one of the founding fathers of the Philippine Revolution for independence in the late 1890s. The actual holiday is November 30 but, like the Americans, Filipinos have moved this holiday to Monday to create a three-day weekend. No complaints there!

To celebrate, Shelly rousted me out of bed to make pancakes. In retribution for waking me up early on a holiday, I shall post this series of photos of Shelly eating her pancakes, topped with her tightly-guarded stash of George and Esther's limited batch, Northern California applesauce.

Thanksgiving Rehash

It's over.

As the host, I probably shouldn't say so, but I think our housewarming/Thanksgiving/pool party was a success. We ended up having 15 or 16 people over, which was a good number. A few of the recipes didn't taste quite right, but they were all good.

First, the pumpkin pie. I don't think any of the Filipinos had ever had pumpkin pie before today. They seemed, generally to like it, and it passed muster with the Americans, so it must have been okay. I could have used a food processor, as the texture was occasionally a bit chunky, but the flavor was good. And, when it came to the pie I overfilled and, therefore, had to bake for 90 minutes instead of 60, the pumpkin chunks that weren't quite mashed were soft enough not to notice. Granny Esther's pie crust recipe turned out great, as usual, even with my much less-skilled hands making it.

The stuffing also turned out well and, because of a last-minute stumble into a health food store at the mall last night, were made with actual dried cranberries rather than blueberries or cranberry-flavored cherries. The only weird part of the stuffing was the longanisa sausage, which is sweeter than what I would use at home ... and redder than what I would use at home.

It was packaged in red plastic, but when I opened it up, all the sausages were red, too. I hoped some of the redness was due to being raw and that it would turn brown as it cooked, but the sausage stayed the same red color. If that was my biggest problem, well, that's not much of a problem at all.

You want to hear about a problem? No, Shelly isn't putting on a synchronized swimming demonstration for our guests, she's cleaning dead earthworms out of the pool. The earthworms have, recently, been making nocturnal journeys into the pool, only to be unable to get out once they get in. Mary Ann and Maricel showed up three hours early after misunderstanding our starting time, so Shelly ended up putting on an earthworm removal demonstration for them.

We ate, we drank, Jim collapsed on the couch after eating and drinking...it turned out to be a pretty accurate portrayal of Thanksgiving. Now, if we had just had some snow...

Hot, Hot Kitchen

You know, today would be a great day for it to be cold. By mid-morning, the kitchen was stifling hot, and the oven will be on almost non-stop until tomorrow afternoon.

In the oven today:
Baking pumpkins, for pumpkin pie
Baking pie shells
Roasting two chickens, to serve cold tomorrow

In the oven tomorrow:
Roasting a turkey, from about 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.
Baking two pumpkin pies (separately, as they won't fit at the same time)
Baking a dish of stuffing

There have been a few, um, substitutions necessary. In addition to giving our dinner a nod to the Philippines with some noodles and rice, I'm baking pumpkin pies from scratch. After scouring the area supermarkets for canned pumpkin, I started to think about using fresh pumpkin.

"Do you think it'll be worth the effort?" I asked.

"Probably not," Shelly said. But she doesn't eat pumpkin pie, anyway, so I don't know why I bothered asking her. She's baking chocolate chip cookies, instead.

I sought a second opinion. Mom has been good at suggestion time-saving substitutions for dinner, most of which I rejected. Using a frozen pie crust, for example, would actually be a great idea if I was using pumpkin from a can. But I can't make the filling from scratch and cheat on the crust.

"I wouldn't see why using fresh pumpkin would be much more work than using canned pumpkin," Mom said. "When you read the side of the pumpkin can, all it lists for ingredients is pumpkin."

So I was off to the market to make what might have been the store's largest-ever single purchase of pumpkin. These aren't the big, orange pumpkins I grew up, but actually a much tastier, much smaller green pumpkin that I first ate in Japan but have started to see in the supermarkets at home.

Pumpkins, fresh from the oven

Mashed pumpkins, soon to become pie

I'll let you know how it goes. Brad's stuffing recipe will be getting a work-out, too, substituting dried blueberries for dried cranberries (my other choices of dried fruit seem to be mangos or bananas, neither of which would be any better than blueberries), walnuts for pecans and Filipino longanisa sausage for pork sausage. But, like I said to Jim yesterday, the Americans at the party will just be glad for the Thanksgiving dinner, and the Filipinos at the party probably won't realize anything's wrong if the taste isn't quite right.

Garbage

The garbage man, er, men just left. And it was quite a production.

Where else has the detritus of my life been attended to by eight garbage men?

Not at Mom and Jerry's house, where there's two plus the driver.

Not in Yamanashi, where I burned my own trash in a barrel in the backyard.

Not in Salisbury, where a single truck driver would extend a robot arm from the side of the truck to lift and empty the garbage can.

But in Manila? Yes. Seven men came to our house each and every Friday to haul away our refuse.

I have to do some sorting of our recyclables ... aluminum in the green bin, paper in the orange bin, plastic in the yellow bin, that kind of thing. Then, dry trash is put into a green plastic bag and it's all put out on the curb for Friday collection.

It's a well-choreographed operation. Two guys walk alongside the truck, tossing trash bags and recycling containers onto the truck bed, where five guys sort and re-sort everything into appropriate piles...cardboard here, newspaper there, aluminum cans and plastic bottles in a plastic bag hanging off the back end of the truck. And, if you happen to accidentally put something that could be recycled into your trash bag, don't worry: They'll rip the bag open and make sure it's all in the right pile before heading down the street to the next house.

At the end, just to make sure the garbage collectors aren't missing anything, is a guy pedaling a bicycle behind the truck, picking up anything that didn't make it into the truck bed.

Kitchen waste goes out three days a week. We have a small, green bucket with a lid that holds apple cores, rotten lettuce leaves, mango peels, egg shells and anything else that can composted. Fortunately, they do pick this up every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, as it could quickly become very smelly in the tropical heat.

So, what goes in the dry trash, you ask? Yeah, I wondered, too, since it seems like everything is either "recyclable" or "kitchen waste."

That's when I discovered that, placed right next to every single toilet in the house, is a small waste basket intended to hold, um, used toilet paper.

Our house is by no means unique. In fact, plumbing and sewage treatment systems across southeast Asia weren't designed to handle that decidedly Western concept called toilet paper. Traditionally, southeast Asian bathrooms came with a bucket of clean water to wash your backside with, meaning there was no need for a sewage system robust enough to handle toilet paper. (I don't know if this was true in the Philippines, or if the country's sewage infrastructure is just too old and fragile to handle toilet paper, but when traveling through the countryside in Vietnam a decade ago, I encountered a number of public restrooms that still employed the bucket of water method.)

Emptying the bathroom trash isn't nearly as bad as it sounds, especially since I mentioned to Shelly that it would make my job much easier if she would place her recyclable items next to the wastebasket, rather than in it. Emptying the kitchen waste is a far more unpleasant task: It only takes a few hours, in the heat, before the decomposition process begins.

Wait...She's the Robbing President?

A recent poll suggested that 60 percent of Filipinos want President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to leave office. An printing error on a batch of fresh 100 peso notes has given her opponents even more ammunition.

According to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, a European contractor misprinted the bills, spelling the President's last name with a v, rather than a y. The contractor was printing extra 100 peso notes to ensure a sufficient supply at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas throughout the Christmas season, when they are frequently used as gifts.

"I hope this is not deliberate," said Rep. Rolex Suplico. "My Spanish teacher told me 'rovo' sounded like 'robo,' which means robbery in Spanish. This is from 'robar,' which means to rob someone."

Another variant of the word, 'dorobo,' is used to describe a thief, burglar or robber in Japanese, said Rep. Benjamin Agarao.

"It's a national joke," he said.

The lawmakers suspected that the heavens might be conspiring against Ms. Arroyo, the Inquirer wrote, "because the circulation of the newly minted bill would be a constant reminder to the people of the 'cheating, lying and stealing' charges hurled against her connection with alleged ballot fixing in 2004."

This is not the first time the national currency has brought controversy to the GMA administration. Two years ago, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas began circulating new 200 peso notes, complete with a picture of Ms. Arroyo being sworn in as president, complete with a portrait of her father, former President Diosdado Macapagal, on the other side.


***

If that weren't enough grief for the embattled president, she was recently Google bombed by groups demanding her removal from office.

(You might have heard about the June Google bombing of George W. Bush, when searching for "miserable failure" brought up the official GWB biography as the top result on Google, Yahoo and MSN.)

The Khaleej Times reports:

[Y]oung Internet-savvy Filipino militants mounted what they called a revolt on the blogosphere to discredit Ms Arroyo and her deputies through a "Google bomb" attack.

The groups Youth Demanding Arroyo’s Removal (Youth DARE) and the "young radicals" Internet blog staged an online campaign to "Google bomb" the websites of Ms Arroyo and her most rabid supporters.

In the bombings’ wake, Google search queries for ‘pekeng pangulo’ (fake president) now directs a surfer to Ms Arroyo’s website (www.kgma.org). Type in ‘sinungaling’ (liar), and one gets to the site of her Press secretary and spokesperson. The word ‘sira-ulo’ (fool) is a surfer’s ticket to the website of Ms. Arroyo’s Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez.

There's an interesting list of successful Google bombs on Wikipedia.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Happy Thanksgiving from Greg, Shelly and Mister Tanaka!

I had forgotten, from my three years on Guam, how un-Thanksgivingly Thanksgiving feels in the tropics, with the sun shining, the air warm and the pool beckoning. It's even less like Thanksgiving when you realize that, aside from fellow Americans, nobody even realizes that today is a holiday at home, when families are gathering and, at least where I'm from, enjoying a chill in the air.

In Japan, there were enough Americans in Yamanashi that we'd get together, along with a few rogue Brits and Canadians, for Thanksgiving on Japan's Labour Day (which was, in late November, close enough to Thanksgiving to be the perfect day to celebrate). Turkey was hard to find -- and harder still to fit in a miniature Japanese oven -- but we always managed to find some tasty ham or something and most of the fixings for a big potluck. Plus, in Yamanashi, it was cold, so it felt like Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving on Guam was sort of like home, but mostly not. Being part of America, we had big, air conditioned feasts with turkey and stuffing, along with local favorites like fried rice or kelaguen (a delicious, spicy Chamorro salad made with chicken, beef or, my favorite, octopus). And if the feast was followed by a trip to the beach and some snorkeling in the bay, who was I to complain? I never said cold was good.

So to wake up this morning and wish Shelly "Happy Thanksgiving" on a decidedly non-Thanksgiving-like day was, to say the least, odd. I'll make it seem like late November by fixing a dinner that approximates a much scaled-down Thanksgiving dinner from home, with some chicken, a chilled pumpkin soup and some corn or string beans, depending what's in the refrigerator. In fact, the pumpkin is roasting in the oven right now.

Our real Thanksgiving will be on Sunday, as part of our obligatory housewarming/pool party. Depending on my ambition level on Friday and Saturday, I'll make a couple pumpkin pies (from scratch, as I can't find any canned pumpkin or frozen pie crusts at the stores), mashed potatoes, stuffing and, if all goes well with the cold pumpkin soup tonight, some more of that, all topped off with a sort-of smuggled turkey from home.

Myra asked me on Tuesday why I wasn't having the party catered. On Sunday afternoon, I'll probably be asking the same thing.

But it wouldn't have been Thanksgiving.

Thanks for Your Feedback

Thanks for your feedback on Sunday's post. I've fixed things -- at least for now -- by changing Blogspot templates. After I get done taking my fall income tax classes, I might just teach myself some basic HTML, so I can figure out what the problem really is.

How Does this Blog Look to You?

I'm not talking content....though comments on that are always welcome.

Shelly recently noticed that, when she views the Blog on a Windows XP machine, using Internet Explorer, that the sidebar is now all the way at the bottom of the page. When I view it on my Mac, in any of three different browsers, the sidebar appears at the top, right where it should be. (The sidebar is the area with the Manila weather and links to recent posts.)

Please take a moment to e-mail me and let me know how the page appears when you view it. I'm especially interested in other Windows users, but would appreciate hearing from Brad, Mom or other Mac users, too.

Thanks!

American Idol Comes to Manila

If I were a fan of American Idol, I'd be all a-twitter right now.

In fact, I'd probably be in line at one of the nearby malls, waiting to see Constantine Maroulis light the Christmas tree.

Even better -- if I were a fan, mind you -- I would be thrilled to know that Constantine himself will be lighting a Christmas tree just FIVE MINUTES from my house tonight.

His visit to the Philippines is big news, as you can tell by how he's plastered across the front page of the Philippine Star and other newspapers.

Hmmm. Maybe I'll try to convince Shelly that we need to go out for dinner tonight. How could she resist?

The Cat Earns His Keep

We're in the tropics, so we have those really, really big roaches that scare the hell out of you when you walk in on them.

It doesn't matter how clean you keep your house: With no winter freeze, those suckers are everywhere.

Okay, they're not really *everywhere* -- that's me taking poetic license. The house was sprayed just six weeks ago, so there aren't that many of them. But they *are* here, and they do make themselves known from time to time.

Which is one reason it's a good thing to have a cat. Especially a cat who is just beginning his career as a roach-catcher.

Twice this week, Mister Tanaka has caught a roach and played with it for the better part of an hour.

He has quite a sadistic streak, which I fully endorse when it comes to pest control. He bats the roach around until it ends up on its back, then carefully flips the roach back onto its belly. As the roach dashes for safety, Tanaka pounces and flips it over again, repeatedly, until the roach gives up and dies.

Unfortunately, Shelly threw away Tanaka's freshly-slaughtered roach yesterday before I thought to take a picture of the hunter and his prey. Next time the cat goes hunting, I'll go along on the expedition, this time with the camera.

Christmas Comes Early to Greg's iPod

Yes, that's Andy Williams over there in my "Recently on iPod" playlist. No, I don't listen to Andy Williams outside of Christmas. Yes, that means I'm listening to Christmas music already.

I buckled to local culture and tradition and added my holiday music, including cheesy old Andy Williams, who does a better version of "It's the Holiday Season" than anyone else.

Don't worry too much about my musical tastes, though. I also listened to Weird Al Yankovic's "Christmas at Ground Zero."

Or would knowing that make you worry more?

Well, I Did Pay for the Whole Thing...

Here's the fish I bought for Monday night's dinner party.

Now, I didn't have to cut it myself, though I could have. If I knew how. Or had the right knife.

But the man at the supermarket fish counter was more than happy to do it for me, and who was I to argue? He weighed it, gutted it and sliced it into some nice yellowfin tuna steaks for me, then stuffed everything into a plastic bag, sealed it up and handed it over.

Needless to say, Shelly was less than impressed when I brought the head home.

"You could have left that behind, you know," she told me.

"Sure I could have, but it's a fish head," I replied, as if that would explain why the head was now sitting on the counter, looking at her.

"I thought Mister Tanaka might like it," I added helpfully.

Turns out Mister Tanaka wants nothing to do with raw fish. He's an indoor cat, after all, with refined tastes. (He did do his little begging act at dinner once the tuna was grilled. The way he was pawing at everyone, our guests must have thought we never feed the poor cat.)

Actually, I just wanted to poke around inside the fish head to see what it was like. I discovered I don't have a knife sharp enough to slice through tuna skin, so my autopsy was short-lived.

Buying meat in the Philippines can be interesting. Depending on where you're doing your shopping, you'll find all manner of packaging. At PriceSmart, it's all prepackaged in styrofoam trays. At ShopWise, the meat is all behind a counter, and you're expected to point at the piece you want so the clerk can put it in a bag for you. At the Makati Supermarket, the meat is all out in the open (in a refrigerator case, but still out in the open). You can pick it up -- tongs and cross-contamination optional -- and bag it yourself, or you can have the clerk do it for you.

Or, if you're downtown, you can go to the meat market, where I unfortunately did not take any photos.

"Never buy our meat at this place," Shelly warned me, as we walked past row after row of stalls, each showcasing a different hunk of meat, sometimes on ice, sometimes not.

"Do you realize how much bacteria is on that cutting board?" she asked, as we watched a butcher pick up a hunk of beef and plop it onto a well-used wooden cutting board. This is the kind of conversation you have when you're married to someone in the meat business.

"Millions of people buy their meat this way every day without getting sick," I pointed out.

"Not me," Shelly said. "And not you. And if you do, don't tell me."

And with that, we walked past a stall selling fresh pig entrails. You know, I don't think she has much to worry about.

"This Feels Dirty..."

Sunday found us downtown shopping. Christmas is coming, and with corporate visitors in from the U.S., it seemed like a good opportunity to spend a day out with friends.

Except for Jim. He had to go to work, but he did want to make a purchase. Three of us were recruited to purchase DVDs that weren't necessarily, shall we say, legal.

Edwin, who seems to know everything there is to know about getting around Manila, knew the area around the Green Hills mall would be a prime neighborhood to shop for DVDs. Until recently, he said, DVDs were actually available at the mall but that, well, because it's illegal to sell pirated DVDs, mall management had evicited the vendors from their stalls.

But they haven't, apparently, barred them from sending touts into the mall. We were peppered with come-ons from the moment we arrived: "You want DVDs?" "DVD? DVD?" "New releases!"

Eventually, Edwin settled on one of the touts, and off we went, around a corner, through a grocery store, out onto the street, around another corner and down a hill, the tout remaining a constant 10 meters in front of us throughout, with Edwin, me and Shelly following, in a single-file line.

"This feels dirty," I remarked quietly.

"That's because it is," Shelly answered, falling silent again.

Edwin and I must have had the same vibe, because about the time I was thinking there was no way I would be doing this without a Filipino along to help, he stopped to ask a security guard if we were actually heading towards a DVD shop.

We dodged traffic crossing a street, stepped onto a sidewalk, and watched as our tout disappeared down a narrow, shadowy alley full of stands selling produce and jewelry.

"DVD, DVD," a toothless woman smiled at me, jabbing her finger in the air after the tout.

At the cross street, where the alley narrowed, we were met by a large woman in a billowy pink-orange mumu. "You want DVDs? I have them," she said. "Come with me. Trust me, trust me."

Trust me? Trust me, those words tend to have the opposite effect when you're about to purchase pirated merchandise.

We followed the woman and her tout into her store -- which doubles as her living room -- and were immediately presented with four boxes of DVDs. Shelly plopped down on a white plastic chair next to the front door, watching the endless stream of customers pop in and out of the store.

"These DVDs aren't illegal," the woman explained as I leafed through the box. "They're from Malaysia."

Ah, well that explains it, I thought. She's simply located her store in her living room to cut down on her commute.

I kept my mouth shut.

A bit of bargaining later, we finally reached a compromise on the "non-illegal, Malaysian" DVDs, and began running them through the living room DVD player. Edwin collected the working DVDs while I dug discreetly through my pockets, looking for the right amount of cash. Satisfied they worked, we paid our tout and beat a hasty retreat into the alley, looking over our shoulders all the way back to the mall.


Postscript: This shopping trip, with the tout and the ever-narrowing alley, was, without question, one of the most interesting things I've done in my life. It's also the most illegal thing I've done since the night I smoked pot in college. Yes, my life is that sheltered.

I'm glad I went. I'm glad we met the tout, went down the alley and into the store. A good writer cherishes off-the-beaten-path adventures and the expansion of his world. But, as a writer, I earn my living through my creativity, much like the writers and actors in the movies. And the writer in me wishes I hadn't followed through with the purchase.

I feel dirty.

Honorable Househusband

I read, somewhere, that expat spouses who were accustomed to having a job in their home country -- typically wives, but not necessarily -- tend to make elaborate meals while living , and not working, overseas.

The theory, I suppose, is that spending several hours in the kitchen every day breaks up the tedium of staying home and not going to the office every day.

It's true, in my case, that I have been spending a lot of time in the kitchen, and I do look forward to that mid-afternoon time when I can start whipping something up for dinner. I haven't been terribly elaborate yet (though I have been making my own sauces for pizza and lasagna, so that's a start).

But, am I bored?

On Wednesday, I got an e-mail from a friend back in North Carolina:

"I like the house husband idea," Mike wrote. "Work is overrated. Maybe some day, I'll have it as good as you."

I mentioned to Shelly, completely in passing, that Mike thought my life sounded pretty good to him, which prompted her to ask, "but does it sound good to you?"

It does sound good to me, at least for now. I'm doing some freelance work, so I've still got a hand in my craft, and I've probably written more in the past month than I have in the past year. More importantly, I've enjoyed writing more than I have in a long time. Certainly that's a result of writing for my purposes and the needs of my small blog audience rather than for the needs of an employer.

So far the lack of employment has not been an emotional difficulty.

I had a long conversation with Mom about this when I was in Iowa in September. Being unemployed and trying to find suitable work after moving to Maryland was a problem, no doubt about it. I think the main difference now is that I'm not expected to be able to find a suitable job in the Philippines and, further, any job I do find is likely to pay me on the order of eight or nine dollars a day.

So, for Shelly, for Mom, for those of you who have asked, holding the temporary title of Honorable Househusband is, so far, to my liking. But ask me again in six months.

Computer Update, and My Life as a Driver

Believe it or not, my computer is fixed, and we should be reunited this afternoon.

I called the Apple Center repair line yesterday, which referred me to Jeff, whom I had met a couple weeks ago. So, I called Jeff.

"Your computer has been ready for about four days," he said.

"Really?" I tried not to sound too irritated.

"We tried to call you, but there was no answer. We called both the cell phone and the landline numbers," he said.

I find that hard to believe, but you never know. Maybe they did try to call, but none of the calls went through.

Going into the city today with Bobby actually works out well, as I've been recruited for a couple of driver jobs this weekend.

On Saturday night, I'll be making my first trip back to the airport since arriving to pick up one of Shelly's colleagues who is arriving from Maryland, and on Sunday, I'll be one of the drivers -- and the sole male -- on a shopping trip. Today will give me yet another chance to leech information off of Bobby, who used to drive a taxi in Manila.

Happy Birthday, and The Long, Hot Walk

Yesterday was a day of celebration, with Shelly turning the ripe old age of 34. Something like 13 years ago, when I turned 25, she wrapped my presents in paper that said "Happy Birthday, O Ancient One."

While packing to move to the Philippines, I actually came across a sheet of that paper, one that I stored away for future use. I didn't bring it with me, but if we're back home next November, "O Ancient One" wrapping paper would be perfect for her 35th.

From the sounds of things, Shell had a good birthday celebration at work, complete with a surprise birthday party and, as she pointed out at least three times, "balloons with [her] name on them."

Shelly celebrates with tacos, beer, personalized balloons and Denver Broncos-colored combs.

I made tacos for dinner with homemade tortillas -- simple, but her request -- and a chocolate cake for dessert, and we'll go out for dinner this weekend, perhaps to Italianni's to hear their birthday song again. All in all, she had a good birthday, I think.

Our tacos were completed with some Herr's salsa that we bought locally, imported from Nottingham, Pennsylvania, all of 20 miles or so from Brad and Laura's house. Mom, Jerry and I even took a tour at the Herr's plant a year or so ago.

My day began with the realization that I had not gone to the supermarket last night to buy hamburger, cheese and lettuce for the tacos, which meant that I would need to make a trip to the store before making dinner. This was not a problem, but fixing our DSL connection (PLDT never did show up; I fixed it myself) and getting Vonage set up again took the better part of the cool part of the day, which meant I was off to the supermarket in the midday sun.

Walking to the store is nothing new -- I lived in Washington for more than a year without having a car -- but my sedentary suburban lifestyle means it has been a while since I've walked for actual transportation purposes. We're only 20 minutes from the gate, and there's a store ten minutes from there, so it really wasn't a bad walk there and back. Including shopping, the whole outing only took 80 minutes. But that doesn't mean I didn't try to use it to my advantage when Shelly got home.

"Wow," I said. "I walked all the way to the store just to celebrate your birthday tonight."

"It only took you an hour," she said.

"Yeah, but it was uphill both ways, and there was three feet of snow on the ground," I said.

"More like 100 percent humidity, wasn't it?"

"You're right" I said. "What I would have given for three feet of snow."

Don't Worry. There's No Sugar.

That's the Pepsi Max slogan ... don't worry, there's no sugar!

Pepsi Max, which tastes almost exactly like Diet Pepsi does at home, is a tasty soft drink I had all but forgotten about since leaving Japan in 1997. Depending on where you are, you can buy a single can of soda for somewhere between 13 and 25 pesos -- 13 pesos (about 25 cents) in the grocery store, 20 pesos from vending machines, 25 pesos last weekend on our tour of Corregidor. It seems like a good price, though the cans are slightly smaller here, weighing in at 330 ml instead of the 350 (354?) ml we have in the States.

Interestingly -- or not, depending on your perspective -- the Diet Pepsi made in the Philippines tastes nothing at all like the Diet Pepsi made in North America.

Housekeeping, or the Lack Thereof

The housekeepers are here.

It's an odd feeling to be an employer, although it's one that I've dealing with for the last month. We don't employ Shelly's driver -- the company does -- but we do employ the pool cleaner and the gardener. And now we employ two housekeepers.

We're actually just borrowing Myra and Marlene from one of Shelly's coworkers, and they'll just be here a couple half-days a week. As I type, Marlene is cleaning the kitchen and Myra is vacuuming upstairs, the gardener is working outside and a couple of people who work for our landlord are here installing towel racks, fixing the garbage disposal and a taking care of a few other miscellaneous chores.

Ah, the joy of not cleaning my own house.

Frankly, I'm glad to give up most of the work, but when Shelly and I were listing all the chores we wanted to pay someone else to do, I found myself in a strange position. "Doing laundry is my job," I said. "Emptying the trash is my job." When Marlene started cleaning the kitchen this morning, I started helping her put the dishes away.

Wealthy Filipinos hire domestic help for a couple of reasons, I've been told. In a country where there is a huge gap between rich and poor, hiring domestic help allows those with money to spread the wealth and provide employment opportunities. Of course, it also gets them out of doing the house work and yard work.

My good, hard-working Iowa upbringing is clearly at odds with hiring domestic help, but I'll never again be in the position to do so little work in a house so big. Before I know it, I'll be back home, scrubbing floors, washing sheets and wishing Myra and Marlene were there.

Check Your Firearms at the Door

I did a doubletake when I saw this sign near the national elections building in Intramuros a couple weekends ago.

It's appropriate though, as nearly everywhere I go -- hotels, the mall, the bank, tourist attractions -- there are security guards armed with shotguns, such as this guard at the old fort in Intramuros.

When Bobby was in college 25 years ago, he told me, he worked as a shotgun-toting security guard in Makati, Manila's central business district. I wondered aloud whether he had ever shot anyone.

"I never shot at anybody," he said. "Just over their heads, to scare them."

For the record, in my one short month in the Philippines, I have yet to feel threatened. Whether that's because of all the armed guards or in spite of them, well, I'm not sure.

I Shall Return

I may well return one day to Corregidor, the World War II island so closely associated with Gen. Douglas MacArthur. After a short visit there today with Shelly and Jim, there's plenty left to see.

MacArthur never actually said "I shall return" while he was on Corregidor. That most famous of MacArthurisms was actually spoken from the safety of Darwin, Australia, after President Roosevelt had repeatedly ordered MacArthur to leave the island before it fell to Japanese forces.

One of the first stops on our tour was a U.S. enlisted-men's barracks, bombed by the Japanese in 1942. Ironically, while the steel rebar used in the barracks was from the U.S., the concrete had been purchased from Japan. Barracks for Filipino soldiers, less than a mile up the road, was left almost untouched by Japanese bombers, as the Japanese were hoping Filipinos would become allies.

After MacArthur's successor, Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, surrendered to the Japanese in May 1942, Corregidor remained in Japanese hands until MacArthur did return in January 1945. The bombed out buildings, huge guns, caves and tunnels still remain and are a popular day-trip destination from Manila.

Buildings across the island are pockmarked by machine gun fire, such as the holes on the rear wall in this photo.

Visiting Corregidor on a tour bus was the natural next stop on my tour of War in the Pacific battlefields, adding it to Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Majuro Atoll, Pohnpei and Palau. But Corregidor was a completely different experience than in any of the other places. On the island of Peliliu, in Palau, Shelly and I took a tour on which we were the only tourists. On Pohnpei, Mom and I nearly walked past a cluster of Japanese tanks, they were so overgrown with brush. On Tinian, where there are no tour guides, Mom and Jerry and I climbed through an old Japanese administration building -- complete with the toilet facilities intact, but with no roof overhead -- and then sped at 100 mph down the same runway the Enola Gay used for her atomic-bomb-dropping flight to Japan. On Corregidor, at least on the guided tour, there was much less time for the sort of exploration we had done on Tinian, but with a tour guide, I learned more than I had anywhere else.

And would I return? Absolutely, especially if we end up with visitors who are interested in that sort of thing.

If you visited Corregidor a decade ago, there were no handrails on this building. The rails, along with a rope barrier on the roof, were installed at the insistence of the U.S. Secret Service in preparation for a 1994 visit by President Clinton.

.

Guards on the island today wear replicas of the World War II-era Philippine Scout uniform designed by MacArthur.

MacArthur said he would return. He did, three years later, when he liberated Corregidor from the Japanese Empire.

* * *

Our trip to Corregidor coincided with my first time driving outside the neighborhood where we live. Thanks to Shelly's excellent navigational ability, we were able to negotiate our one detour and my one wrong turn with no problem at all. I swear, though, that when I take my new driving skills back to the states, the DMV will probably want to revoke my license. Never in my life have I been so good at switching lanes without signaling, turning left from a non-turn lane and passing on the right.

How About a Job in Ireland?

I'm catching up on a bunch of sections of the Washington Post I brought with me after running out of time to read the paper in the run-up to the move.

An item in the August 28 "Unconventional Wisdom" column by Richard Morin (Outlook, Page B5) suggests I should be looking for a job in "the beer belt."

A new study done in Europe suggests that fat people earn less than thin folks -- except in those countries were beer is the national beverage of choice.

A number of recent studies in the United States and elsewhere show that workers who are obese are paid less for the same job than their thinner colleagues, all other factors being equal. So Beatrice d'Hombres and Giorgio Brunello of the University of Padua in Italy were surprised when the analyzed data from nine European countries and found an unexpected pattern.

In countries of the "Olive Belt" (Spain, Italy, France, Greece and Portugal), the heavier you were, the less you earned. ... But in Austria, Ireland, Belgium and other countries of northern and central Europe -- which these researches dubbed the "Beer Belt" -- fatter workers collected fatter paychecks.

...

What's so magical about beer in northern climes? Unfortunately, the researchers don't know, they confess in a newly released working paper published by the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn. "We speculate that such differences could be driven by the interaction between the weather, BMI [body mass index] and individual unobserved productivity."

The only downside I see to this is that, living in Ireland, I would drink much too much Guiness, which would make me even fatter than I already am. But if the study holds true, getting fat from too much Guiness should lead to another pay increase, which would give me more money to buy more Guiness, which would lead to another pay increase...

EPISODE 58: In Which I Try The Chocolate Toothpaste, And Actually Like It

Who says chocolate toothpaste is all bad?

After thinking there was no way I would brush with Close-Up "Choco Loco" chocolate-flavored toothpaste, I found myself in the toothpaste aisle at the Makati Supermarket yesterday with a bundle of single- (or maybe double-) use foil packs of Choco Loco staring me in the face.

"New Close-Up Flavalicious insanely delicious flavours enriched with Vitamin-Fluoride System for Complete Mouth Fitness" the package screamed. "Really stronger teeth, whiter teeth, healthy gums and fresher breath!"

The packaging -- "Limited Edition" -- went on to assure me that the "NEW active gel" would provide me with "a delicious indulgence of rich chocolate flavour with a hint of mint!"

How could I refuse?

Not sure what to expect, I gave Shelly one of the foil packs so we could compare opinions. The paste, far from the chocolate color I was expecting, is mostly toothpaste-colored, primarily white with just a hint of brown, making it a very pleasant light tan.

The taste reminds me of a chocolate mint Jelly Belly jelly bean ... more minty than chocolatey, and actually much better tasting than I had anticipated. It left my mouth minty, though it didn't seem to give me that long-lasting clean feeling that I'm used to.

When Shelly got home from work today, I asked her what she thought of it. She thought for a moment, then said it tasted like a chocolate mint Jelly Belly jelly bean.

Apparently, we're working on the same wavelength here ... or Close-Up Choco Loco really does taste like a chocolate mint Jelly Belly jelly bean.

There's more on the Close-Up Web site.


Computer update: Generally, I'm having no problem readjusting to the slower pace of life in the tropics, but two computer issues have been frustrating me lately, making me wish for the (generally) much better American service. (Don't let Comcast hear me say that, though.)

I somehow managed to screw up our DSL connection on Tuesday night and, since it's a holiday week, there are few technicians available to help me solve my problem. I've called four times now, as well as having a Filipina friend call for me. I think it's a five-minute job, but I've been waiting almost two days now for help with my simple problem. I think I'm familiar enough with the DSL modem to make the changes myself with a technician on the phone, but it sounds like someone will come to the house and fix it for me ... eventually. In the meantime, I'll continue to write nearly every day and post when possible. Friday is the end of Ramadan, and therefore another day off, even in this predominantly Catholic country.

On the issue of my computer, it's been in the shop for a week now, with no sign yet of the memory that has been ordered from Singapore. I was clearly being too optimistic when I hoped it would be ready today.

"We hope the memory will be here next week," the service department said when I called today.

Me, too.

Tasty

Shelly's back from a couple weeks in Shanghai, rural China and Hong Kong and, as she often does, she brought me a nice collection of newspapers to read. The October 29 South China Morning Post brought this Agence France-Presse story by Cecil Morella (Life, Page C7) about dining in the Philippines' Ilocos region:

Bile stew, buffalo brains, termites and raw grasshoppers -- even by adventurous Asian tastes the food of the Philippines' Ilocos region makes some visitors balk.

Over centuries, such delicacies have blended by necessity into the gastronomic traditions of this parched northwestern corner of the Philippines, where a brief rainy season heralds a time of plenty.

The tamarind trees on its scraggly hills shake violently as children pluck slumbering June beetles, while termites fly at night at their peril. Frogs are caught in the rice paddies, as are crickets and snails of various shapes, all which take pride of place as entrees on dinner tables, alongside young bamboo shoots, mushrooms and various vegetable shoots -- all smothered in cane vinegar and fish paste.

"Subtlety is not found in their gastronomic dictionary," says the official tourist guidebook of the cuisine of Ilocos Norte province. "Reflecting the difficult conditions of the land, most of the dishes are either salty or bitter.

"The Ilocanos' penchant for whipping up dishes from ingredients which others would consider inedible gives Ilocano cuisine its distinct edge."

At the weekly livestock fair on the outskirts of Batac, spouses Franklin Calacal and Minda Tan serve water buffalo meat and tripe cooked in bile, ginger and black pepper and served in a scalding soup. The diner used to cater to livestock traders ... but locals say the 35-peso (US$0.70) dish has turned the restaurant into the most popular in the province.

...

For those averse to bile stew, there's buffalo brain and a pork dish made of minced pig ears mixed with chopped onions and lime. "The peak periods are Lent and the Christmas season," says Calacal. His wife says that the clientele particularly love the "water buffalo meat. They say it's tastier and juicier than beef."

Western-style fast food restaurants are mushrooming across the region, "but I still go for the Ilocano food," says Jocelyn Corpuz, who runs a 40-year-old meat pie business with her mother.

She says Ilocos food is different. Her meat pies are made from papaya shavings, bean sprouts and egg wrapped in tangerine-coloured rice dough then deep-fried. "[Non-Ilocanos] think all we eat are weeds," she said.

An Ilocos-born senator once famously blew his top when his staff threw out the contents of his lunch box: nalta jute herb leaves, which they mistook for garbage.

...

Tina Bayden hawks frog meat for 150 peso per kilogram on Wednesdays and Sundays in the public market of nearby Laoag, the provincial capital.

The white meat is marinated in vinegar or lime and deep-fried, or seasoned with vinegar, garlic and soy sauce like a pork dish.

She keeps a few frogs alive in a small sack, just in case buyers want to prepare the dish differently. Fishermen catch the frogs from rice paddies using ordinary baited fishing rods.

The dry season brings new delicacies such as certain types of grasshoppers that are eaten raw as farmers harvest the rice crop. ... It's also the time when giant red tree ants build nests atop trees to breed their young. The large white eggs of these ants, which faintly taste sweet and sour, are among the most expensive of Ilocano delicacies.

One More Photo of Manila Bay

Here's one more photo of Manila Bay at sunset.
I'm having trouble adding it to the previous post about Manila,
so I'll add it here, instead.

Off to Manila

Saturday afternoon was a lovely, (relatively) cool day for an outing, which worked out well, since Jim and I had plans to visit downtown Manila with Edwin, operations manager at one of Shelly's plants.

Our first stop was Intramuros -- old Manila, a city-within-a-city, the seat of Spanish colonial government and site of most of Manila's top tourist destinations, including a shrine to medical doctor, writer, revolutionary and national hero José Rizal, who was executed by the Spanish in 1896 for his outspoken criticism of colonialism.

Intramuros

Inside the Rizal Museum

You might say this rings true today in America...

The old walls and crumbling buildings of Intramuros reminded me again of how short history is in America. Work on the walled city was begun in the 1570s and, while buildings inside have been destroyed countless times by fires, typhoons, earthquakes and war, the wall remains.

We took a drive past the U.S. Embassy, and then strolled along Manila Bay, until we found a shady spot to sit and drink a beer or two before having a seafood buffet (with some fantastic squid) and heading home.

Edwin made an excellent driver and tour guide, and I paid close attention to where we were in anticipation of, some day soon, driving downtown myself.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween. It's a big event here, leading off a couple days of religious holidays, with All Saints' Day on November 1 and All Souls' Day on November 2. Today's a holiday, too, which means it's been a marvelously quiet day in this perpetual construction site.

Our neighborhood sponsors a contest for residents who decorate their homes for Halloween, with a grand prize of P10,000 -- about $185 -- going to best-decorated house.

Some houses have been decorated for weeks, but this one, just a few blocks from our house, sprang up recently. The picture isn't as good as it could have been, but the display is truly impressive. Somebody put a lot of work into this.

Filipinos traditionally head to the cemeteries this time of year to celebrate their ancestors' lives. Apparently, it becomes quite a party, leading at least one of the national newspapers to run an article urging people not to turn the country's cemeteries into garbage dumps this week.

I'm keeping my eyes open for trick-or-treaters tonight, but we're pretty well off the beaten path, so I don't expect to see too many.

(I finally found a work-around to the missing USB cable, so stay tuned for photos!)