Time Machine

The Time Machine stopped by our house yesterday, courtesy of Brad and Mom.

Some time ago, Brad took on the project of whittling the Family History as Presented in Slides down to a manageable number -- which happened to be somewhere north of 200. He turned to Mom for underwriting the project and, since they did all the real work, I'll take on the role of PR Flack, shamelessly promoting my past, adolescent geekiness included.

Putting aside the unfortunate junior high years for a moment, I was a cute kid. In 1969, when I was just 21 months, I was already learning how to ride a horse. This is no longer part of my skill set.


By the time I was 3-1/2, I was already wearing suits, preparing for my big legal career. Now I wear shorts whenever I can. This green ensemble from 1971 probably got me beaten up.


By the time 1975 rolled around, I had settled on blue as my favorite color. It didn't really matter what shade of blue, as long it was blue. "Hey! The trim on your lunchbox matches the color of your shirt," said my lovely bride last night. Yeah, that's exactly I was going for...


By the time I was in 3rd grade, I was a four-eyes, so to speak, with a charming pair of black-rimmed glasses made especially for an eight-year-old. I really like Brad in this picture. I'm not kidding ... with his pose, his stylish combination of plaid, a turtleneck and shiny black shoes, and his apparent lack of interest in me, he could be a model in, say, a 1977 issue of GQ.


In 1981, when I turned 14, I was working hard to cultivate the geek look. I was also, apparently, an Iowa State fan back then, though I believe I have repressed those memories.


Just three months later, at Christmas, not only had I perfected the geek look, I had also adopted the sullen teen attitude. I'm sure my parents enjoyed this phase of my life as much as I did.


Lucky for me, I started wearing contacts in ninth grade, so by the time the 1984 VEISHA parade in Ames rolled around, I was one stylin' guy, at least as far as my eyes go. I'm not sure what I can really say about wearing purple wool on a sunny day other than, "I had no choice."


Somehow, my nearly non-existent marching skills didn't keep me from landing in the Hawkeye Marching Band. Odds are, I'm hung over in this Saturday morning pre-game photo. Believing in keeping traditions alive, I spent most home-game Friday nights with a couple dozen other band members, wandering through the bars of Iowa City, playing the Iowa Fight Song and singing bawdy versions of other schools' fight songs (Hail, hail to Michigan, the cesspool of the east!) in exchange for free beer. Creatively, we called this activity "Beer Band."


And, most unfortunately, Brad made sure to include this 1986 photo of me in my brief mustachioed period.

* * *

The CD brought along some old fashion memories, as well. I'm sure my father's leisure suit was all the rage in 1977 -- in fact, Mom says he wore it frequently -- but I don't remember the Leisure Suit Lynn era. You'd think with those silver-dollar-size white buttons, I would have been scarred for life.


Remember when people got dressed up for a flight? I don't, but I've heard about it. There's another picture of my grandparents and Mom and Dad at O'Hare International Airport where Grandpa is also wearing a suit. He was dropping Mom and Dad off. How times have changed.


And here's a side of Mom I've never seen before, doing a pretty good imitation of a 1963 pin-up girl. Frankly, I find this photo to be just a bit too much Back to Future, where Marty meets his mom when she was in high school and finds out his mom was, well, cute.

* * *

We're off for a week's holiday to Palau and Guam, visiting old friends and seeing how the islands which were our homes in the late 1990s have changed. Posting will likely be erratic for the next couple weeks ... not that it hasn't been recently.

My 9/11 Story

Living overseas, I've actually missed most of the media-encouraged remembering of the five year anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington, but I've heard a few podcasts and read a few stories online. In the interest of contributing to the overload -- and since I lived in Washington on 9/11 -- here's my story:

I was heading for Milwaukee the morning of September 11, where I would be working at the National Newspaper Association's annual convention and trade show. My flight, as I remember, was due to depart around noon, so I was home watching the Today Show that morning at a time when I usually would have been on the subway on my way to work.

After the first plane hit the World Trade Center, I called my boss and told him to turn on the TV. While we were talking, the second plane hit. It was all so strange, and my mind -- like so many others' -- hadn't really caught on to the terrorism angle yet. Looking at my watch, I thought to myself that I should probably leave for the airport a little early, as there might be extra security checks that morning.

At that point, I never would have thought that the airport would be closed and that some of my coworkers, who were already in Milwaukee, were going to be stranded in the midwest for a few days. One of those coworkers is from New York; her father worked in the World Trade Center. (He was okay, fortunately.)

So, I grabbed my box and my suitcase, hailed a cab and headed south through the streets of Washington, bound for the airport. The cabbie was listening to WTOP, Washington's all-news radio station. He appeared to be Middle Eastern, and I found that I didn't know what to say to him, even after he said it was a terrible thing that happened in New York.

We were on the Rock Creek Parkway and had just rounded the curve by the Kennedy Center when we saw the huge plume of dark smoke rising across the river. Although we didn't know it at the time, a plane had hit the Pentagon just moments before we came around the curve. The top of the plume was still well-defined, and the crash had not yet been reported on WTOP.

This was where I made my second foolish decision.

"Do you want to go home?" the cabbie asked.

"Nah, let's keep going," I said, partly out of a sense of duty to get to Milwaukee, and partly because I wanted to see what was going on, rather than watch it on TV.

A few minutes later, he dropped me off at the airport and immediately picked up a new fare. They had just locked the doors to the terminal, and the guy who grabbed my cab was one of the lucky ones who could get out of the area quickly. My cab must have been one of the last ones to get onto the airport property before they shut down the access roads and herded us all to the Metro station, where I waited with my box and my bag for a train to show up. (I had avoided Metro that morning specifically because of my box and my bag, and here I was, with both of them, waiting for a train.)

I tried to call Mom, I tried to call Shelly, I tried to call my boss, who was only five or six miles away, but none of my calls would go through. Eventually, a train showed up, we crowded on, and went just two stops, stopping before the Pentagon. We went back above ground, where Metro was organizing buses to another subway station. The roads were chaotic that morning, and my bus driver had to pick his way through side streets and alleys to make any progress at all. The trip between subway stations, which should have taken 20 minutes or so, took nearly three hours.

Once aboard the bus, I finally was able to get a call through to Mom. Not knowing how long it would take to complete another call, I had her call Shelly and my boss, just to let them know that I was okay. I've thought back on this many times since 2001 and thought, of course I was okay. I wasn't at the Pentagon, and there were no other attacks in Washington, so why wouldn't I be okay? But being on the bus, all I knew was rumor from those people who managed to make phone calls: a bomb had exploded at the State Department, a plane had hit the White House, the towers in New York had collapsed and people had jumped 90 stories to their death.

That evening, walking down Connecticut Avenue, talking to Shelly on the phone, Washington was eerily quiet. There were few cars on the road; people were walking and talking to each other, watching the fighter planes overhead. I began grinding my teeth in my sleep, a response to stress that lasted for three or four months afterwards, and doing some permanent damage. I watched Sabrina, the Teenage Witch Goes to Europe, or something like that, on TV Friday night, simply because it was the first non-9/11 program to be on my non-cable-equipped TV since Tuesday morning.

I eventually made it home, some five hours after I had left for the airport. It was a traumatic day for me, but it was nothing compared to what others went through.

Mmmmm...Ube

I've lived in the Phililppines for nearly a year, and I only just today finally tried that staple of the Filipino desert, ube ice cream.

Ube, pronounced something like u-bay, is really the purple yam, or taro root, and it's used to flavor everything from ice cream to cake and candy. You can, no kidding, buy a box of Betty Crocker Ube Cake Mix at the supermarket, if you're so inclined.

I probably avoided ube ice cream for so long because of its color. It's just so incredibly purple. (This photo has been minimally photoshopped, but only to lighten it up, not to alter the purple color. That's really what it looks like.) From my Western perspective, it's an unnatural color for food, and visually unappetizing.

One of Shelly's coworkers and a couple of customers were in town today, and conversation led to ube ice cream and its alleged deliciousness. Since they were coming over for dinner, Shelly added ice cream to the menu.

Dinner itself went well, though I found myself nervous cooking for customers. I have cooked for most of Shelly's coworkers who have visited the operations here, but never the company's customers before. For some reason, I decided to make a Filipino dinner instead of an American dinner, which only heightened my sense of unease. (We had chicken adobo and rice for the main course, then I curried some slices of pumpkin, chilled them, and served them cold; blanched some asparagus; and stir fried some greens with garlic, fish sauce and soy sauce. It actually turned out pretty well, I think.)

And then Shelly brought out the ice cream. It was very purple. But it was also delicious.

Shoes, Shoes, Shoes

There was a time that, when you thought of the Philippines, you thought of Imelda Marcos and her shoes.

Imelda, wife of former president Ferdinand Marcos, president from 1965 to 1986, is still seen, from time to time, around Manila. Some 200 pairs of her shoes are still seen every day at the Marikina Shoe Museum. Scattered among the shoes are photos of Imelda and Ferdinand hanging out with world leaders. After doing some work at church to set up the ECW's new used book exchange, we headed to Marikina to see the former first lady's shoes.

Marikina is well-known in the Philippines for making shoes, and a part of the museum is dedicated to the craft of shoe-making. The tall post in the center of the photo is covered in "shoe lasts," the wooden models of feet that shoemakers use to make their shoes.

Field Trip

With Shelly working from home today, I had a day with the car, so I headed into Manila heading, eventually, to run a couple of errands and do some of the touristy things that Shelly had no interest in.

After doing the work I needed to do, I headed to Makati and parked the car near the Metro Rail Transit System's Ayala Station. (There's a photo of the station at this link, by the way.) I had no particular destination in mind, but hadn't ridden the Manila mass-transit system yet, and thought I should take a ride from one end of EDSA to the other. I took a brief stop to shoot a couple of photos at the Araneta Station.

Outside the Philippines, Araneta Coliseum is perhaps best-known for hosting the 1975 Muhammed Ali-Joe Frazier "Thrilla in Manila." It's also known as the largest indoor facility in all of southeast Asia. Several months ago, we went to the wet market that's at the lower right of this photo. For the unitiated, a "wet market" is the place to buy your meat, fish and vegetables if you want to avoid paying supermarket prices. Do to my wife's background in the meat business, I am prohibited from shopping at these places, as the meat is generally plopped into an unchilled pile, then cut atop a wooden cutting board with a knife that isn't cleaned between customers.

Just for the sake of completeness, here's a shot from the other side of MRT's Araneta Station. With the MRT ride taken care of, I was off to the Museum of the Central Bank of the Philippines, popularly known as the Money Museum. We tried to visit once before, but the museum is only open Monday through Friday. Getting through the imposing gates of the Central Bank compound was easy -- the guards asked me if I had a valid ID, but didn't want to see it -- and the musem itself was interesting, if you're into the history of money.

For example, did you know that in 1998, President Joseph Estrada issued, in honor of the Philippine Centennial celebration, the largest legal tender note in the world? It's worth P100,000 -- about $1,925 -- and measures 8.5 x 14 inches, the same size as a sheet of legal paper. The bill features his swearing in ceremony, and is certified by the Guiness Book of World Records as being the largest in the world, topping, according to the museum, the 1 Quan note issued by China in 1368. Only 1,000 of these bills exist, so grab yours now, fold it up and stuff it in your wallet.

The P200 note -- a bit less than $4 -- debuted in June 2002. Not to be outdone by the man she replaced, new president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had her father, former president Diosdado Macapagal, on the front, and her swearing in ceremony on the back.

Money in the Philippines vividly illustrates the close relationship between the Philippines and the United States. This P10 note from the 1930s features George Washington (the note is "payable in silver pesos or legal tender currency of the United States"). And the current P100 note actually has the American flag on the front, in a depiction of the July 4, 1946, ceremony when the Philippine flag went up over Manila, and the U.S. flag came down for the last time, making the Philippines truly independent.

Air Pollution

I took the Mazda in for an oil change recently. We get the oil changed at the Mazda dealer, and it works pretty much just like it does at home: I take the car in, sit and read the newspaper, tell them go ahead and change the air filter "if it needs to be changed," read some more, pay the bill and go home.

And afterwards, just so you know they actually did change the air filter, the service department gives you the old filter to take home. And then, if you're curious about this sort of thing, you open the box and look at the air filter. And you are instantly amazed by how polluted Manila air is.


It's no surprise that Manila's air features more pollution than anywhere else I've ever lived. When driving towards Makati, it's often smoggy, sometimes so smoggy that you can't really see the skyscrapers looming in the distance. But when you actually see that pollution in your air filter, it's kind of sobering.

The "Ber" Months Are Upon Us

The "Ber" months are upon us, and that means it's time for Christmas music in the malls.

Yep, Christmas music. And Christmas tree displays and "Pre-Christmas Sales." Appearances by Santa himself can't be far behind.

In the Philippines, Christmas is fair game once you hit the months ending in -ber, which is how I came to hear Silver Bells, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Winter Wonderland and oh-so-many-other Christmas songs on what would be Labor Day weekend if we were in the States.


I would think that my father-in-law could score some big points with his boss if he launched this kind of program at his bank in Colorado. I can see the ads now: "Apply for your Pre-Christmas Installment Madness Loan at every Colorado Rockies game! Hurry, because this promotion only lasts until September 17!"

Um, no.

***

Happy Birthday, Brad!

Weekend at the Beach

We spent last weekend at Alona Beach in Bohol, a 75-minute flight and 40-minute taxi ride south of Manila.

After liquids were banned on flights in the U.S. and elsewhere, I called Philippine Airlines to ask if the same rules were being enforced in the Philippines. "No," I was told. Of course, when we arrived at the airport Friday morning, there were signs indicating that liquids indeed are now prohibited on PAL, which is how I ended up flying with this classy carryon bag. As it turns out, Shelly carried her water bottle on without any problems, and I carried mine on on the return flight, so enforcement seems, at the best, spotty.

It's been a long time since I've flown into an airport as tiny as the one in Tagbilaran, the capital of Bohol, where you walk down the boarding stairs directly onto the tarmac, giving you fantastic views of the plane, if you're into that kind of thing. Which, if you know me, I am. It also gives you a great view of the "fire truck" they wheel out prior to your flight's arrival:


The beach was fantastic ... clean, white sand, only a few tourists, and a good selection of hotels, bars and restaurants, one of which advertised itself as "the best pizza on the beach." Shelly tried the pizza, and declared that if it indeed is the best pizza on the beach, then any other place selling pizza must make a really, really bad pie. Pizza aside, you know you're going to have a good weekend when this is the view out of your hotel room door:


Don't like the sand? Just look inland, instead:


After a day of snorkeling and napping, we headed out for a massage -- the blind masseur I had squeezed my head so hard I thought it was going to burst -- and dinner. On Saturday, we headed inland for a tour of Bohol with Rogelio, a driver we had met on the beach. Our first stop was the site of the "blood compact," where in 1565, Spanish explorer Miguel Lopez de Legazpi explained that he was not a Portuguese plunderer and Boholano chieftain Rajah Sikatuna agreed not to kill Legazpi and his men, and then sealed the deal by drinking a cupful of each other's blood. There's also a great overlook here, with a bunch of tourists standing around:


Just up the road from the blood compact site is the Church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception in Baclayon, the second-oldest church in the Philippines (and the country's oldest non-extensively-renovated church), founded by a pair of Spanish Jesuits in 1595.


But the real highlights of a trip to Bohol begin when you get to the Chocolate Hills, one of the Philippines' top tourist destinations. During the dry season, these 1,268 nearly identical hills turn a nice light brown, giving the hills their tasty name. Even when they're mostly green, the hills are an impressive place to visit.



Bohol's other highlight are the tarsier monkeys, primates which are just a few inches tall, yet can jump nearly five meters. They can rotate their heads almost 360° and have eyes that are, relative to size, 150 times larger than human eyes. These little guys can't see well during the day, so spend most of their time hanging out on tree branches. It's also the oldest primate group, having been around for an astounding 45 million years. I've stuck my fingers into this photo just to show the size of a tarsier.

Prunes, Apricots and Bacon

I've been here long enough to have a pretty good idea of where to find things in a Filipino grocery store. Usually, they're stocked in much the same place as they are at home. Dairy is in the back so you have to walk through the whole store to get there. Sugary cold cereal is eye-level for kids; bran is eye-level for adults.

But every once in a while, I have trouble finding something. And it's no wonder. My local supermarket yesterday featured this oh-so-logical collection of dried apricots, prunes, raisins and ... bacon.

Of course, if I had actually been in the market for a package of Hormel brand "Real Crumbled Bacon," I never would have found it. I probably would have been wasting my time in, oh, the canned meat aisle, for some reason.

Prison

Our post-church outing today took us to the grounds of Manila's New Bilibid Prison, for no reason other than we knew we could.

The prison, some 25 km from downtown Manila, is actually not far from our neighborhood. In fact, we had an excellent view of the taller buildings around our house from near the prison walls. As we drove through the compound, we found the minimum, medium and maximum security camps. At the minimum security camps, we could easily see the cell blocks through the barbed wire, with laundry hanging out of the windows to dry. At the maximum security camp, all we could see was a 15-foot wall. Outside the main gate (pictured here, looking somewhat like a castle) are shops selling prisoner-made handicrafts, including a backpack for carrying rice.

Uniforms

Many Filipinos in the service industry wear uniforms, more so (it seems, at least) than in the States. Many retail workers in the U.S. don't wear uniforms, most bank workers don't wear uniforms and, although I can't be sure about this last one, I would bet that most housekeepers don't wear uniforms (Alice from the Brady Bunch excepted, of course).

Many housekeepers here do wear uniforms, and certainly most housekeepers in this neighborhood do. Unless you work for us, that is. We've never even considered buying a uniform for Cheryl, which just might make us bad employers. If we ever decide that we are in the market for housekeeper uniforms, we can pick them up at any grocery or department store, right under the sign that says "Maid Uniforms."

Oh My Ghost!

Shelly has been suggesting watching a Tagalog movie for a couple of months. I finally found one that looked goofy enough to keep us interested through the parts that weren't in English. (In this case, about 85 percent of the movie wasn't in English, and since most people in the Philippines speak Tagalog and most foreigners don't watch Tagalog movies, there were no subtitles.

The trailer I saw a week ago for this movie made it look like a comedy, which it was. The first half of the film was filled with breasts, weightlifting midgets, the effeminate men known in the Philippines as bakla, more midgets, more breasts, fart jokes, physical humor (running into doors, that sort of thing), short skirts, cross dressing and a fat actress who goes by the name "Orca." The star of the show (Trixie, the one showing off her breasts) works in an advertising agency (named, apparently, simply "Advertising Agency") and has to fend off the unwanted advances of three tough guys who meet her at the gym.

Then the movie gets dark for a bit: The three guys don't like being turned down, so they break into her house and attempt to rape her. Instead, while outside on a balcony, she gets pushed over the wall and dies. The comedy part of the movie was over, but not for good, as Trixie reveals herself in her ghostly form to her sort-of boyfriend, Alvin, he freaks out and hilarity ensues.

Following a trial -- where the three guys were acquitted and where I learned that Filipino lawyers don't have to wear ties while litigating -- Trixie declares, in English, "It's time to take justice into my own ghostly hands."

This sort of brings the comedy back, as she first sets the three tough guys up, leading to them nearly being gang raped in prison (but in a funny way, you see....), followed by killing one in a car accident, driving another insane (he's hauled off in a straitjacket) and chasing the third around the house with a meat cleaver. She says in English, several times, "It hurts. It hurts, you know," which drew great laughter from the Filipinos in the audience, though I can't begin to tell you why. It's obviously an in-joke, and I'm obviously in the out-group.

In order to stop her murderous rampage, Alvin proposes to Trixie, but once they're at the church, the Father refuses, saying that it is only possible to join two visible people in marriage. (You might have thought Alvin would have checked this out ahead of time...) So Trixie says something like "wait a minute," heads over to a woman who is minding her own business in the front pew, and jumps into the woman's body. At that point, the Father agrees to marry them, making me think that while marrying a ghost is not okay, possession is. (While I haven't heard of the Vatican getting all uptight over this movie like they did over DaVinci, something tells me the Pope would not approve of a man marrying a dead woman who has possessed another woman's body. But, hey, I'm not Catholic, so maybe I'm wrong.)

Once they're married, Trixie heads to heaven, the other woman faints when Trixie leaves, and Alvin rushes to her side, where they begin to fall in love.

While I may have seen a dumber movie at some point in my life, I'm not sure what it was. However, this was a good movie for us non-Tagalog speakers to watch, as the plot was simple enough to follow without actually understanding the dialogue.

ANTS!!! Or, In Praise of Terro

We have bugs in our house.

We live in the tropics, and there's not much you can do about bugs other than declare chemical warfare on them. Sometimes the bugs wins, sometimes the humans win. Visits by cockroaches are relatively rare, thanks to Mr. Catangui.

Ants, however, are another story. The rainy season has apparently driven them inside, as we've recently been overrun by them without a corresponding slide into slovenliness. Nothing we've found here has been able to control them, so I asked Mom to send us a bottle of Terro, the best ant killer I've ever used (and which she's kindly sent to me on Guam and in Japan, where it's worked equally as well as it does back home).

Within minutes of putting a few drops of Terro in strategic locations, we had hundreds of ants coming out of hiding to chow down. (Though they look like some sort of tropical mega-ants, that's just Shelly's macro lens making them look impressive. The drop of poison is about the size of a pencil eraser.) Terro says it works by not immediately killing the ants, but letting them live long enough to take it home and poison the rest of the colony. It apparently works, as several days into their extermination, we're once again ant-free.

Or at least nearly ant-free. We do live in the tropics, after all.

I Drive Too Fast

I've been trying for several months now to grab a photo of a Filipino hearse, but something always goes wrong: I'm alone in the car, it's too dark, it's raining, there's too much traffic, or something else. The best I've done so far is this shot, which Shelly grabbed for me today as we drove home from church. We were passing the funeral procession, she had the camera ready, and I shot right past the actual hearse, mistaking this lead car full of flowers for the hearse.

Why, you might ask, am I trying to take a picture of a hearse? Well, unlike hearses at home, the back end of most hearses I've seen here are glass-enclosed. Whether that's so passersby can see the casket or so the deceased can see where he's going, I don't know...