Only One in Three Filipinos Speak English

One of the things I like about living in the Philippines, I told Shelly's colleagues this weekend, is that I didn't have to learn another language to live here.

(Don't get me wrong. There's something fun about learning Japanese, in my case, and being able to wow visiting friends and family, but it's also nice not to have to worry about communication when you're shopping or going out for dinner or hiring a housekeeper.)

But, according to a story in The Foreign Post, only one in three Filipinos now speak English.

The Manila-based Social Weather Stations said its March 8-14 nationwide survey of 1,200 Filipino adults illustrated a steep slide in English proficiency in less than six years.

While about two-thirds of those polled said they understood spoken English and an equal number said they read English, just 48 percent said they wrote English and about a third said they speak English.

About 27 percent said they thought in English while 14 percent said they were not competent in any way when it came to the English language.

The survey did not comment on what caused the sudden decline.

Still, it remains very easy for an English speaker to get around here. Everyone I'm in contact with on a regular basis speaks English perfectly well, with the exception of the guy who cleans the pool. Although we have yet to have a conversation beyond "good morning," it does make me wonder why my experiences don't match with the results of the survey.

Brit Backs Out of Crucifixion

In a story headlined "His British bravado failed him in crucifixion stunt," The Foreign Post, a free weekly paper aimed at Manila expats, reports of a British newspaper columnist who took part in the Good Friday rituals I wrote about a week ago. A would-be British participant, the report says, "chickened out to the jeers of almost 10,000 spectators."

Seven Filipinos had themselves crucified in the bloody imitation of the Passion of Jesus Christ in the town of San Fernando, an annual tradition that has become a macabre tourist attraction.

Briton Dominic Diamond joined the Filipinos in carrying a cross to the hill in the town north of Manila, but when it was his time to be nailed up, he merely knelt down and prayed for 10 minutes.

After praying, the story continues, he explained his actions to the group leader, "and then left the scene in an ambulance to the jeers of the watching Filipinos."

Of course, Diamond was not available for comment for the story, as he apparently sold his story to a British TV station. A check of Google News turned up nothing else about Diamond's stunt.

I can't really blame him -- even what we saw looked to be excruciating, and there were no nails involved. I cannot being to imagine what it would be like to be crucified.

Meet Mr. Catangui

Shelly suggested recently that I write about some of the interesting people we meet. I'll start with Mr. Catangui, the exterminator who came to the house today.

We have had a couple areas of the roof -- the eves, or the overhang, actually -- fall off recently, and we, and our landlord, wanted to make sure the damage wasn't caused by termites. The contractor who fixed the areas said it was just water damage, but you never know.

So Mr. Catangui (ka-tan-ghee) and his crew of three showed up this morning to check on the house. Mr. Catangui is probably in his late 50s or early 60s, who told me, immediately after confirming that, yes, I am an American, that he has a son who is a professor in South Dakota and that, just last year, he drove across Iowa on his way to South Dakota from Chicago. And, he said, he has a friend in Manila who is also from Iowa, so there was plenty to talk about while his crew inspected the house (and found no termites) and sprayed for roaches.

"But your house is very clean," Mr. Catangui said. "I don't see any roaches at all."

"Yeah, but they -- thank you, that's very nice -- but yeah, we do have a few roaches," I said. "We see one every few days, especially since our cat hasn't been home to torture them."

"Well, then, let's spray," he said. It's not like he was going to disagree, since he'd be earning some cash for doing so.

Turns out that Mr. Catangui, who was wearing a leather Harley Davidson cap, also recently spent some time in Washington, DC -- near Maryland, we established -- on vacation. After trading Washington tourism tips, we chatted about the poultry business; his son, who is an entomologist studying West Nile Virus; and his grandson, who will be heading to Florida next month to play Little League Baseball for a couple of weeks. He was a very friendly guy to talk to, and very interesting.

And our house is now, once again, cockroach-free.

The IRS: Setting New Standards of Efficiency

Okay, that title sounds snarky, but it isn't meant to.

Living overseas has all sorts of interesting implications when it comes to income tax season. Most countries don't require its citizens who are living outside the national borders to pay income taxes. Americans -- lucky us -- are required to file a return on "all worldwide income," no matter where earned, no matter where we live. (There are provisions in place, fortunately, to exclude a large chunk of that income from U.S. taxes, but we're still required to file a return.)

Unlike the rest of America, we weren't rushing to get our return filed this week. Six weeks ago, we filed Form 2350 with the IRS, to request a filing extension so that we can meet the overseas residency requirements that permit us to exclude our overseas income. Curious about how this works? e-mail me and I'll explain. I won't bore the rest of you.

The bottom portion of Form 2350 is a mailing label, filled out by me, with a place for the IRS to mark whether our request has been approved or not approved. While we use Shelly's parents' address for most of our mail, the mailing label, of course, contains our Manila address.

Approval from the IRS came in the mail today, in a standard Internal Revenue Service envelope. And, finally, here's the interesting part: there are apparently enough of these requests and other overseas correspondence from the IRS that the envelope entered the mail stream just a few kilometers from our house via a Manila-based mail forwarding company. There's a seven peso stamp, and a return address sticker for "Royale Logistics Phils., Inc."

I'm impressed. Rather than spending 84 cents to airmail a letter to us, the IRS spent 14 cents on domestic postage, plus the mail forwarder fee (likely just a few cents per piece) and the cost of shipping the envelopes here in bulk (certainly less than 65 cents per piece).

As a taxpayer, that's definitely a good thing.

And the Beat Goes On

I'm not a morning person. I can be, if I have to be, but I generally don't like to wake up at 6:45.

Unfortunately for me, that's when the banging and beating of house construction -- and house destruction -- begins. And from the looks of it, it's going to be a slow project.

Our neighbors moved out a week or so ago, though their furniture remains stored in their garage, so we don't know if they're gone for good, or just for a while. The day after they left, the banging began, as a work crew descended on the house to begin taking it apart, piece by piece. There's a reason you don't see any machinery in this photo: It's all being done by hand.

The hammering and pounding are slowly working their ways into my dreams, which at least means that I'm now able to sleep through some of the destruction. This is one of the rare times that I envy Shelly's sleeping patterns. I doubt that she'll ever be awakened by the project.

This morning, she wasn't even at home when they started work.

Wow, I'm Hot!

According to MyHeritage.com, I'm hot.

MyHeritage.com bills itself as a geneaology assistant: upload your photo and compare it to a database of other folks from around the world in hopes of spotting distant family members you probably didn't know you have. MyHeritage compares your face to others in the database and suggests a half dozen or so people who look like you.

Of more interest, perhaps, is the database of stars, athletes and other famous people. And it's there that the whole project became quite hilarious to me.

This website thinks I look like Anna Kournikova. You know, she's the, um, cute, blonde, female Russian tennis star. She's not my first match, though. I apparently look even more like Alexis Bledel of the Gilmore Girls.

I guess it could be worse. After running my photo through the database, I ran Shelly's. She looks like -- get this -- Mickey Mantle. And, Opie from Mayberry.

So, in no particular order, other than the first photo on the top level, which is the "closest match," here are several famous people that Shelly and I -- at least the versions of us on our Christmas card -- look like. You can click on either image below for a larger, easier-to-see version.

Greg looks like: Alexis Bledel, actress; James Cagney, actor; former Vice President Dan Quayle; Welsh poet Dylan Thomas; Michelle Pfeiffer, actress; and Russian tennis star Anna Kournikova.

Shelly looks like: New York Yankees slugger Mickey Mantle; Opie Taylor, Richie Cunningham and now big-shot director Ron Howard; kung-fu movie star David Carradine; Geena Davis, actress; Kim Basinger, actress; and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

So, get busy uploading your photos, and let us know who you look like!

Art Bell, Now Broadcasting from Manila

Brother-in-law Jim might be interested in this, as well as anyone else who can actually tell me who Art Bell is.

Art is now married to a Filipina, and living in the Philippines, according to a story at radioink.com.

For those of you not in the know, Art Bell used to host Coast to Coast, an overnight radio program about UFOs, ghosts and other other-worldly phenomena. He still hosts C2C during the weekends, and will apparently continue to host from Manila.

For the life of me, I can't remember how I know that Jim has listened to Coast to Coast, but I do.

Home Again, Vet Again

Mister Tanaka came home yesterday, released from cat jail with strict health care instructions and directions to bring him back every other day for the immediate future.

Tonight, he's once again living with the dogs.

Shelly brought him home last night, and all seemed to be going well. He didn't get to leave behind his hated Elizabethan collar, and he still has to take his hated medicine, but he appeared happy to be home, re-marking his territory with his paws and head.

Holding him to give him his medicine got me hissed at -- though Shelly, who actually gave him the medicine, did not get hissed at. Hmmm. But, he was generally cooperative with the rest of his meds -- and trust me, he has plenty to take.

He stinks to high heaven since he can't groom himself properly, his collar causes him to walk into walls a lot of the time, and, after living with dogs for the past month, he now seems to growl when he's unhappy, but we were all happy that he was home. Once he loses his collar, he'll stop bumping into things and will get himself groomed, so those are both short-term issues. And, I guess we'll get used to his growling.

But, shortly after arriving home, we noticed that he was having difficulty urinating again. After at least eight fruitless attempts to pee in his litter box, I bundled him back into the car and took him back to the vet this morning, where he was once again catheterized and drained. The vet assumes he has another bladder stone, so we're switching his diet to a high-acid food, which will hopefully dissolve whatever is in there, and will keep more from forming. We're hoping he'll be back home again tomorrow.

Ugh. Will this never end??

No Traffic Tickets, Please

No Traffic Tickets, Please, I'm a Senator.

You can bet this driver never gets pulled over by the police. License plate number seven denotes that this car belongs to a senator, and therefore should not be delayed. The thing is, ALL senators have a seven on their front tag, so it's virtually impossible to know WHICH senator this is.

Executive Order Number 400 reserves "low number plates" for top government executives:
1-President of the Republic of the Philippines
2-Vice President of the Republic of the Philippines
3-Senate President
4-Speaker of the House Representatives
5-Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
6-Cabinet Secretary
7-Senator
8-Congressman
9-Associate Justices of the Supreme Court
10-Presiding Justice and other Justices of the Court of Appeals
11-Chairman of the Commission on Elections
12-Cabinet Undersecretary
13-Solicitor General
14-Chief of Staff, AFP/Chief, PNP
16-RTC Judges

Not only can the senator, congressman, etc., have a low-numbered tag, his or her spouse gets one, too, meaning that there are a relatively large number of cars out there that are simply not going to be pulled over. And their drivers know that: I'm passed constantly on the highway by sevens and eights, and I'm not a slow driver.

In truth, it is possible to tell one senator from another, as they do have regular tags on the back of their car. The low number on the front, though, means they're never going to be pulled over.

Not For Sale

This property owner must have gotten tons of phone calls, if he was motivated to put up this sign. It's just a 20 minute walk from our house, but, alas, we cannot buy it.

Good Friday

We hit the road early this morning, stopped in Makati to visit Mister Tanaka briefly, and then joined the whole of Filipino-dom and left Manila for the provinces.

Unlike most Filipinos, who have headed to the provinces to visit family, we were heading out to find one of the Philippines' many Good Friday processions and reenactments of Jesus' crucifixion. Our destination was somewhat vague: Head north from Manila on the North Luzon Expressway; when the NLE ends, drive on the backroads until you find a procession.

It didn't take long after getting off the NLE until we started seeing small bands of men, often dressed in Jesus-like robes, carrying heavy wooden crosses on their shoulders. Our plan was to keep driving until we found a large procession. We stand out enough as it is; we didn't want to join a group of three or four people.

After 40 minutes, we finally came upon a church in Tarlac, Pampangas province. We parked the car, hopped out, and joined a large group of people who were watching the church's own procession. While the men were not wearing robes, they were hooded and had ropes wrapped around their legs. I didn't get a chance to ask the significance of the ropes.

Periodically, the men would stop to rest. While they rested, the men walking alongside would beat their bodies and their feet with sticks. Talking to some of the parishoners, I learned that this parish has been reenacting the crucifixion for more than 50 years.

After reaching the church gate, the men put down their cross, then crawled on their hands and knees into the church courtyard.

After reaching the church, the men -- still hooded -- left the church yard and were loaded into motorized tricycles. Their backs were bloody from from parishoners flogging them with bags of broken glass.

The parishoners told me that, next, everyone would watch the men "go for a swim" or "take a bath," depending on who I was talking to.

"It's about one kilometer down the road," a guy said. "Want to ride in a tricycle?"

Shelly and I did head down the road, but decided to walk the kilometer rather than ride. People couldn't believe that we were walking. Everyone else was either riding -- in trucks, in tricycles, on bicycles. After all, who but white people would walk in the midday sun? Even the carabao were standing in the shade, working as little as possible.

When we arrived at the bathing/swimming site, we found a party in full swing, and we were immediately offered plates of food. We declined, not wanting to crash the party, but did spend 15 minutes talking to two OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers) home for the holidays: a headwaiter on Carnival Cruise Lines, based in Miami, and a nurse based in London in the summer and Dubai in the winter. The two gentlemen were extremely friendly, and we enjoyed talking to them. We eventually excused ourselves and made our way back to the car, but not until we learned that the men would be crucified at the church at 2 p.m.

On our way back to the car, Shelly pointed out a tapioca plant. I had no idea what a tapioca plant looked like, and wondered how she knew.

"I lived in Palau for two years," she said.

Duh.

We hopped in the car and drove half an hour south to Clark Air Force Base, in hopes that tasty Cajun restaurant in neighboring Angeles would be open for lunch. It wasn't, unfortunately, but we did find an excellent Mexican restaurant, without question the best we've found since moving here. Many of the restaurants and bars in Angeles are owned by retired U.S. servicemen, which seems to help make them authentically American.

We arrived back in Tarlac just in time for the crucifixions. Fortunately, nobody was actually crucified -- there were no nails, though apparently some parishes do use nails in the hands and feet. The men were hoisted onto their crosses and tied up with rope, baking in the hot sunshine.

I spent a fun 15 minutes talking to the local kids, ranging from about five to 16. I was quite an attraction. Just like Japan, the girls were much more talkative than the boys. Though Shelly was hiding back in the shadows, the girls easily picked her out as my wife. Eventually, though, I decided that I was attracting too much attention, and that we should probably go.

On our way home, we pulled over on to the side of the road and recorded this procession in another town. Sorry for the poor quality of the video. That's what you get when your video camera is also your phone.






The dedication of the men we saw today was absolutely stunning.

Manila, Ghost Town

Shelly was working from home today, so I took the car to pay Mister Tanaka a mid-morning visit. In order to give her some time with me out of the house, I thought that after visiting the cat, I'd wander over to Makati, hit the malls and see a movie.

It would have been a great plan, except for one thing: Makati, and apparently all of Manila, was deserted. It was a complete ghost town. No traffic, no pedestrians, no cops, nothing. Maundy Thursday carries more significance in the Philippines than it does at home.

Today and tomorrow, Good Friday, are pretty much commerce-free days in the Philippines. A few stores were open today, but there won't be much at all open tomorrow. The whole week is called Holy Week in the Philippines -- and after driving around today, it's no surprise that the Philippines has the first, and largest, entry on Wikipedia's Holy Week page.

The Philippines is the only predominantly Catholic country in Asia, and there's no question that much of the country is very serious about Easter. While I grew up "celebrating" Good Friday with my 4-H club's annual bake sale, the day Jesus died is taken much more seriously here. Without giving too much away, Shelly and I do have interesting Good Friday plans. If all goes well -- in other words, if we can follow some mostly non-existent directions to a place where we might be able to find what we're looking for -- I should have some interesting photos, or at least a good story, to post when we get home.

And the name of that 4-H club? Shelly nearly fell over laughing when I told her that we were the Nevada Nice Guys.

***

We're in the middle of summer here, though it hasn't been anywhere near as bad as some fellow expats have made it out to be. Maybe it's been a cool summer, or maybe I've just lived in the right places to prepare me for Summer in the Philippines.

Everywhere I've lived, people have told me that "summer is really, really hot here." I'm sure it's true, at least from a local's perspective, but I've found that few places have actually measured up to a hot, humid August in Iowa.

That's not to say that North Carolina, or Maryland, or DC, or Guam aren't hot places in the summertime -- they all are. The only place I've lived that comes close to an Iowa August is Yamanashi which is, appropriately, Iowa's sister state in Japan. Nestled in the mountains west of Tokyo, the Kofu Basin regularly hits 40 degrees Celsius -- that's a toasty 104 degrees Fahrenheit in Iowa. I walked the aisles of the supermarket during the summer just to stay cool.

Manila, by comparison, has been hot, but not unbearable. Admittedly, my daily air conditioned trips to Makati to visit Mister Tanaka may have made it seem more comfortable than it actually is.

***

Mister Tanaka has overstayed his welcome at the vet. He's feeling much better, and should be coming home soon. In the meantime, he has started expressing his annoyance at being poked and prodded by biting and hissing.

What he doesn't yet know is that even after he returns home, he'll be making regular trips back to the vet so they can follow his progress.

I Got a Lot of 'Splaining to Do...

We're back, finally, with an update.

Things are going fairly well for Mister Tanaka, but it's been a long, long three weeks, and he's not home yet. But first, the excuses:

Not updating the blog for the past three weeks has been, to some extent, a conscious decision. The last thing I want this blog to become is a daily medical update for Mister Tanaka. Knowing that you might abandon me no matter which path I took, I -- seriously -- thought a bunch about whether you'd be less likely to come back after weeks of vet reports or after weeks of neglect.

The reports from the vet, complete with Shelly's bar graphs showing the ups and downs in Tanaka's blood work, have been very important and, fortunately, exciting for us and a few others, who we have kept updated through e-mail. But, really, would a cat's red blood cell count and blood urea nitrogen measurement really make good content for a blog?

With that, I resolve to write only a few paragraphs about Mister Tanaka and the vet. Today marks the end of three weeks at the vet, and we're all, frankly, ready for him to come home. It looks, finally, like that might happen in the next week. We've spent what amounts to an embarassing amount of money on his care, and he's been through no fewer than three surgeries. He's been hooked up to an IV for most of the last three weeks and, I'm sad to report, he no longer has a penis.

So, back to a couple of weeks ago... I have felt a lot of guilt over the past couple of weeks for choosing the vet I did. My reasoning was sound -- he advertises in an area where a bunch of foreigners live -- but he was not able to do what Tanaka needed to be done. Friday, March 17, Tanaka had his first surgery and, aside from emptying his bladder, nothing was resolved. His urinary tract obstruction was still in place, because the vet couldn't get a catheter inserted. So, after a call to our vet in Delaware and to Shelly's cousin, who is also a vet, it was clear that if I left Tanaka at the first vet, he would die. Shell's cousin made that clear: "If you don't take him to another vet tomorrow, or even better, tonight, he'll be dead by Monday."

The vet was nice enough to give me a referral to another vet, this one in Makati, which is where I should have taken him initially. By the time I arrived at the Makati Dog and Cat Hospital on Saturday morning, Tanaka was awake, but not moving around much, still drugged from the previous day's surgery. I had read so much online and learned so much from the vets I spoke with that I knew exactly what was happening and what would probably need to be done.

Within 10 minutes of my arrival, the doctors at Makati D&CH were prepping him for another round of surgery. This hospital has been in business since 1916 and is currently run by a fourth generation vet and his father and is certainly one of the most experienced places in Manila.

Dr. Carlos the elder took me into an examination room to show me a poster of a procedure called a perineal urethrostomy, which is used in extreme cases of urinary tract blockage and, essentially, turns a male cat into an anatomical female by removing his penis and creating a urethral opening too large to become blocked again. I had read about this and had assumed it would be an option and agreed immediately. Ah, would I want Shelly to be so cavalier with my penis? Well, I suppose if dying was the other option, I would be...

"His penis is small," Dr. Carlos said. "So small."

***

An hour later, Tanaka was unblocked, hopefully permanently. Recovery time for this procedure is usually seven to 10 days, so I was hopeful he'd be home in a week or so. I left for lunch, then went back a couple hours later to peek at him through the kennel doors. He was already much livelier than he had been prior to surgery. Even worse than losing his penis, the vets were unable to give him any painkillers due to the damage that had been done to his kidneys by his backed-up urine.

About 10 days ago, his stitches were removed. What Shelly and I have taken to calling his "mangina" has healed well, but a day or two after the stitches were removed from his stomach, the incision the first vet made opened up, causing Tanaka to quite literally spill his guts. After emergency surgery to get everything back in place and to remove some dead tissue, he was stitched up again. Those stitches were removed today. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

In addition to his three surgeries, countless infections and complete lack of pain killers, Tanaka has also had to suffer the indignity of an Elizabethan collar.

Despite the setbacks, we've watched his blood work improve pretty much everyday. The numbers have stabilized now in fairly good territory. He has learned how to pee again. He has gotten loads of grooming from us, because he can't reach anything around that Elizabethan collar. He'll probably have to be on a special diet for the rest of his life, and his life will likely be shorter than it would have been without kidney damage. We're hoping he'll actually come home next week, after nearly four weeks in the hospital.

***

And, if you're still here, you now understand why I didn't blog about this every day. My eyes are glassing over, and I was actually there for most of it.

The rest of the excuses for blog dormancy come from my otherwise entirely pedestrian life. I've been busy with lots of freelancing, including a project writing marketing copy for a new client in Manila. Add to that that Shell and I have spent roughly three hours a day driving to Makati, visiting Tanaka and driving home, and I frankly haven't had much spare time to write. I have a couple of writing projects I'd like to be working on that have had to take a back seat to, well, life.

A couple of interesting things have happened, and I'll get those posted in the coming days. One of them is the onset of summer. Despite the fact that it's nearly 9:30 p.m., it's still a balmy 29ºC/85ºF here in Manila. Meanwhile, in Delaware, Brad has just informed me that it snowed this morning...