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.