Homesick

I'm finally homesick, but not for the U.S.

Or, I should say, at least not for the mainland.

After church today, I talked Shelly into visiting a big consumer travel expo at the SM Mega Mall in Manila. I used to write about the travel industry, and I loved going to this kind of show, where airlines, travel agents and destinations go all out to separate consumers from their wallets, often with fantastic "show-only" deals.

As crowded as the show was -- and as bored as Shell was from pretty much the moment we walked in -- we decided to go our separate ways and meet up later outside the exhibit hall. I went in, turned right, and almost immediately ran into the Hong Kong booth, where I picked up a map for Shelly's upcoming one day trip to Hong Kong. Already, going to the show had been worth it, I thought.

Wandering down a few more aisles, I came upon something that looked familiar: latte stones. I was at the Guam booth.

It's been a lot of years since I lived on Guam -- I left in 2006 and, aside from a couple people, I've lost touch with most everyone I knew there. I headed over to see if I happened to know anyone.

"You look familiar," a woman at the booth said to me, before I'd said a word.

"I'm Greg. I used to live on Guam," I said, taking a look at her name tag. "Regina? I don't think I know any Reginas."

"I'm Gina, actually," she said. And instantly, I remembered Gina from the many days I spent researching stories at the Guam Visitors Bureau.

"Yeah! You're still with GVB!"

"And Pilar's here, too," Gina said. "Do you remember her?"

I did, actually, and remembered her last name and, more importantly, the Chamorro pronunciation of her last name, which drew the attention of the man she was talking to.

"He must be a Chamorro!" the guy said.

I begged off of that, as I'm clearly not a Chamorro. I'm much too white. "So," he amended, "you're a Chamaole!"

(A brief aside here to explain "Chamaole," a word I had forgotten since leaving Guam. The indigenous people of Guam are Chamorros. Guam has taken to using the Hawaiian word for whites, which is haole, pronounced how-lee. A Chamaole, then, is a haole who has embraced island customs and makes an effort to be part of island society, despite his obvious foreigness.)

I knew he looked familiar, but I couldn't place him, either. It's been six years, after all. Turns out that he was Jesse Bais, the male half of Guam's "Jesse and Ruby." Ruby was just around the corner, and they were getting ready to take to the stage for 15 minutes of island music and dancing.

I loved the show, I loved the music, I loved the dancing. But the whole thing made me distinctly homesick for "Guam U.S.A. -- Where America's Day Begins."

Clark

I spent today riding in the car.

And it was no short trip, either. Bobby was heading to Clark, the former U.S. Air Force Base 90 minutes north of Manila, so I hitched a ride with him, figuring that at least I'd see something different than what I see in our neighborhood every day.

Clark was abandoned by the USAF about the same time the USN abandoned its facilities at Subic. Just outside Clark is the city of Angeles, perhaps best-known for the abundant girlie bars and legalized prostitution. Needless to say, when the Air Force was in town, Angeles was a booming city.

Since being given back to the Philippines, Clark has been developed as an industrial and tourist center. And although Angeles fell on hard times after the USAF left, it's booming once again. Apparently, many of the businessmen and tourists who visit Clark are just as tempted as the servicemen were. In fact, when Shelly visited Clark on business in October, she had a conversation with an Australian pimp while she was visiting a girlie bar. (Want more on that story? You'll have to ask her.)

Before lunch, we drove onto the former Air Force base, which is now used for a number of things, including a civilian airport, a load of duty free shops and hotels and as home to a wing of the Philippine Air Force. It looked a lot like Subic, a lot like Tiyan (the former Naval Air Base on Guam), and a lot like I imagine any other former U.S. military base looks: lots of very utilitarian buildings with big numbers painted on the sides. Interestingly, even though it is, in part, an active Philippine military base, access to Clark is in no way restricted. Though I'm sure there are places that are hard to get to, we didn't see them on our brief tour.

Fortunately for me, Shelly had also visited a good cajun/creole restaurant while in Clark, and sent us there for lunch. The shrimp étoufée was really good, the atmosphere was thoroughly New Orleans, and it was interesting to be the one exposing Bobby to something new for a change. (He ended up with fried catfish and hush puppies. After his lunch arrived, he stabbed one of the hush puppies with his fork and eyed it suspiciously, much as I have with any number of things I've eaten in the Philippines. After determining it was, basically, fried corn meal, he popped it into his mouth and was off and running.)

Aside from our errand and a window-shopping visit to a very expensive German deli, that was the extent of my trip to Clark. I didn't meet any pimps, hear any fighter jets or see a single dancing girl.

But I did have that étoufée...

Three Shopping Photos

Here are three photos from my grocery shopping last weekend.

Yep, that's Cookie Monster touting the deliciousness of pork and beans. Don't want a Cookie Monster can? PureFoods Pork and Beans are also available in Elmo (smaller) and Big Bird (larger) versions.

Rustan's Fresh is by far the nicest supermarket I've visited in the Philippines. It's also the most expensive -- and, from the ad above, it caters to the wealthy expat crowd. It has a nice selection of foreign goods, however, so we bought some Japanese rice for Shelly and some Australian cat food for Mister Tanaka. Me? I carried everything back to the car.

Did you realize it's not polite to stand on the toilet seat while using the facilities? Just in case you didn't, PriceSmart reminds you to "Please keep feet off the toilet bowl." Seriously. This is an issue in the Philippines. Rumor has it that it's not all that uncommon to see shoe prints on public toilet seats, though I have to admit that I, personally, have not seen this.

Sorry for the poor quality of this photo. Combine a cheap cell phone camera with a darkish CR ("comfort room") and this is what you get.

New Résumé Entry: Squid Cleaner

Turns out that cleaning squid is much easier than it appears.

When you go to the store, you get this sloppy, floppy, inky pile of flesh with tentacles. Once you start to look at it a little closer, it's quite easy to do.

After washing it thoroughly, I pulled out the cartilage that runs down the center of the squid, and removed the head and tentacles, which left me with these two pieces.

(By the way, I am topless in these photos.)

There was still too much squid there. How was I going to get rings from that big piece on the right? That's when I realized that I still have to take the skin off in order to get to the fleshy part.

Volia! It finally looked like I expected it to. So I cut off the tentacles to use in the dinner, threw the head away and put my shirt back on. Now, wish me luck with the rest of the paella....

Edited at 8:15 p.m., Monday, Manila time, to add that the paella turned out okay, though it turns out that my wife is somewhat squeamish over eating squid prepared in our house, rather than by, as she put it, "someone who knows what he's doing." (And, as I pointed out, agreeing with her, I am from Iowa, so I know how to cook up some pig, but there aren't any squid farms within a thousand miles of where I grew up.)

The squid did have a little extra-squiddy-tasting flavor, so I'll buy two small squid next time and see if they work any better.

Home of the Five Dollar Massage

No longer do you have to drive home after your massage. Schedule one in the evening, and you can simply drag your relaxed body from one room into the other, and head straight to bed, all for the very affordable sum of about five dollars an hour.

Last night, we both took advantage of the in-home massage business. We called in the middle of the afternoon, made a reservation and, promptly at 7:30, the masseuse rang our doorbell. I'm still sore today.

Shelly had spotted an ad for Thai massage, which neither of us had ever experienced, so we called in the afternoon to make a reservation for the evening. Shelly would go first, then me.

If you've never had a Thai massage, prepare to be sore.

After her massage, Shelly stumbled in to the room where I was reading. "She .... found ..... so ..... many ... spots .... I ..... didn't ..... know ... I ... had. It .... hurts."

She wasn't kidding. I should have expected pain when the masseuse climbed on top of me and proceeded to walk back and forth on my legs and back for an hour. You know those pressure points on your lower back, just above the point where you butt begins? I was in serious pain last night as she stood on top of them and dug her heels in. They still hurt today, but it's a good kind of pain. Today I do feel like I've been on the wrestling mat, though. Or maybe it feels like I fell out of a tree.

***

I actually watched the Super Bowl this morning for the first time in at least five years, and not just because I was too sore to do anything else. (Although, really, my reason for watching it wasn't any better than that. Quite simply, I woke up and it was on, so I watched it.)

Pittsburgh was in the game, so I actually had a team to cheer for, but had it not been for the banner I saw yesterday advertising the Monday Morning Super Bowl Breakfast Buffet at Outback, I probably would have forgotten all about it. Rather than spending 10 bucks at Outback, I watched it from our TV room with a bowl of cereal and my laptop, which worked just as well.

I've missed the Super Bowl for at least the past four seasons because I'm never home during this part of the tax season (working two jobs tends to do that to you) and, since nobody else goes out that Sunday night, it has made a good date night for me and Shelly.

And yay .... go Steelers!

***

I'm cooking with squid tonight. Anybody have any idea how to clean one of those suckers? I know there's some cartilage I have to remove, plus the squid's beak. Shelly has already suggested I cook topless so I don't stain my shirt with black squid ink.

Or maybe she's just hot for me.

We Walked

We made it to Walk the Line last night, and both of us enjoyed it.

It also spawned a lengthy conversation about whether Johnny Cash was a bad guy or not during his drug-fueled days. I learned a lot from the movie. I knew he had spent a bit of time locked up for drugs, but had no idea how badly he was addicted.

Shelly must have had a good time, as she walked out of the theater and immediately hopped on the Dance Dance Revolution machine.

Playing Dance Dance Revolution spawned a lengthy discussion between Shelly and the DDR machine, with my lovely wife questioning how accurately the machine was measuring her accuracy. It's possible that words were exchanged. I believe the machine won.

Walk the Line

I'll finally get to see the Johnny Cash bio-pic.

"Walk the Line" came out months ago in the States, but only opened yesterday in Manila. Considering that I've yet to run into anybody in the Philippines who has even heard of Johnny Cash, I'd better go this weekend. I have heard from a number of people that it was a great movie, on par with "Ray," and it's already won a bunch of awards.

One of the most interesting things to me is that Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspooon were hand-picked by Johnny and June to play them in the movie. I'm only a recent fan. I bought my first Johnny Cash CD -- American IV: The Man Comes Around -- in 2004. It's part of a series of recordings that he recorded near the end of his life with producer Rick Rubin, and it got me hooked. It includs covers of a bunch of artists you'd never expect to hear Johnny Cash singing, including U2 and Nine Inch Nails.

Amazing thing is, I think I've even talked Shelly into going with me, and she's definitely not a fan of the Man in Black...

Ha ha ha! This One's For Kathy

After hearing about how Shelly tortured her mother in Los Angeles by making her go first to a mall and then to Wal*Mart, I thought of her when I came across a link to this story.

It's a fairly long story that really does prove that news is only interesting when it affects you, so I won't bore you with too many details. The story, from a paper in northern Louisiana, tells of a businessman who started a store -- Dollar Palace -- in a town that nobody else wanted to touch, and how he's now facing competition from Family Dollar, a national chain that carries much of the same merchandise that he carries.

The story is not interesting for that reason -- though it is interesting, if you follow the slow death of small, independent businesses in America -- but I post it for this quote:

Debra Jackson said she likes shopping at the Dollar Palace because it is convenient and casual. "I don't have to get all dressed up like I'm going to Wal-Mart or something," she said.

When we get back to Maryland, perhaps I should start wearing a tie to Wal*Mart...

Getting More than I Bargained For

This post is not about bargaining, although it was taken at the fabric market.

Instead, it's about how, sometimes, you get more than you planned on getting when you're taking a picture. I'd chalk it up to being busy with composing the photo, then with fiddling with the exposure, shutter speed and everything else. But I took this photo with my cell phone, and I was just trying to shoot it quickly enough so that I wouldn't lose sight of Shelly.

I took this picture because of the unique face on the mannequin, but I think that the perfect expression on the sales clerk behind the mannequin is really the better part of this photo. I couldn't get that shot again if I tried...

Textiles!

Call me textile man.

Or the fabric man, or the cloth man, or whatever you like. We found our way back to the textile market after church on Sunday with no problems at all, except for the short amount of time that I was driving the wrong way down a one-way road. Fabric shopping-wise, we were golden.

As I noted on Friday, Shelly finds my taste in shirts particularly bad, so I let her "help" me pick out fabric that would be appropriate for me to take to a tailor. She doesn't hate all my shirts, just the ones that I picked out myself. There were a couple of fabrics we agreed to disagree on, though I still think she was wrong...

The market wasn't just for fabric. There were loads of clothes and shoes and rugs and anything else you can think of. And, I learned something about fabric: Did you know that it might come with a 45-inch width, or that it might come with a 60-inch width? Of course you did, but I didn't.

I ended up spending about $40 on fabric for seven shirts, which will each cost around $12 to make, which means I'm getting a great deal when compared to buying new shirts at home. Plus, I'll be relatively sure that, when walking down the street in Salisbury, I won't run into anyone wearing the same shirt as I am.

The Economics of an Expat

Another busy day today, which led to this long and rambling post....

Shelly and Bobby showed up at the house about 11:00 this morning. The plan was to take Shelly to the church, where she would go on a women's retreat to Antipolo City northeast of Manila, then head to Divisoria where we would visit the textile markets and try to track down a tailor or seamstress.

But first, we took Bobby out for lunch for his birthday, which had been earlier in the week. We went to an inexpensive Mongolian barbecue place that we visit fairly often. A bowl of stir fried meat, vegetables and rice runs less than four dollars and is big enough to fill you up for the rest of the day. We all enjoyed lunch, I think, and Bobby always makes good company.

Bobby and I dropped Shelly off at Holy Trinity, then headed across town to the textile markets. I didn't actually be buying anything today, but Bobby showed me the route to take so I can go back with Shelly at a later date. After all, every time I pick out a shirt, she hates it, so why would buying fabric to have shirts made be any different?

On our way back home, Bobby told me that he surprised how much money we had spent on his lunch. I told him it was because he's always been a good driver for us, because he's taught me a lot about driving in Manila and because he's a friend, if also an employee.

"I just hope you're satisfied with my services, Sir," he said.

I told him that if we weren't satisfied, we wouldn't have celebrated his birthday with him, so he didn't have anything to worry about. At that point, we hit a traffic jam and we started talking about boxing instead.

And what's the connection between a traffic jam and boxing?

If it seemed like we were driving on a parade route, it's because we were. Manny Pacquiao was returning home a national hero after beating Erik Morales in Las Vegas last weekend, and we happened to be on the route his motorcade was taking on his victory tour of Manila. As crowds thronged towards the car, I resisted the urge to roll down my window and wave.

But it wasn't until later that the meaning of that birthday lunch hit home. I was telling Shelly about the conversation I had with Bobby, when she succinctly summed up the difference between having money and not having money:

"Isn't it interesting," she said, "that a restaurant we consider to be inexpensive, Bobby considers to be very expensive?"

Dealing with that difference has been the hardest part of living in the Philippines. I expected it, but I didn't have any idea how difficult it could be at times. Bobby works long hours. Our gardener works long hours. The customer service guy I've gotten to know at the bank works long hours. None of them are destitute, but I doubt any of them have a lot of extra money sitting around, either. I'd guess they each make less than $10 a day.

I don't exactly feel guilty about having so much more than the people I know here, but it's hard to reconcile the differences in our economic lives sometimes.

Here's one thing I do realize after living here: It's only through (what--luck, the lottery, the grace of God?) that I'm sitting in a big house, typing on my expensive laptop and driving an expensive SUV. So much of what I take for granted at home simply doesn't exist in many people's lives here. And there's not much I can do about it.

Sunny -- Make that Chilly -- L.A.

Shelly's back from sunny, chilly Los Angeles. It sounds like all went well with her meeting, and she ended up with a couple of days to spend with her mom, who flew in to spend the weekend.

The weather in southern California seems to have been a bit chillier than here in Manila.

But, despite the chill in the air, Shell and Kathy apparently enjoyed their convertible. Did they need to be reminded that it was only January, and possibly too cold to have the top down??

I may just have the best mother-in-law ever, as she managed to pick up a copy of the Washington Post for me in Denver before flying out to Los Angeles. Yeah, the news is old by the time it gets from Washington to Denver to Los Angeles to Manila, but there's something about reading the dead tree edition that you just can't get from the Internet. Thanks, Kathy!

At 38, I'm right on the great divide of the newspaper-reading generation and the non-newspaper-reading generation. I grew up with parents who read the paper every morning -- in fact, it was part of our breakfast table ritual, passing various sections of the paper back and forth. Shelly's parents are also avid newspaper readers (her father is, at least), but Shelly, at 34, rarely picks up the paper unless she's traveling, prefering to get her news online. If you've ever studied the demographics of newspaper readers, you'll know that I'm the odd one, and that Shell fits in perfectly with our age group.

Manual Labor

One of the things that always reminds me that I'm in the Philippines is the amount of physical labor workers go through here.

Our gardener is here for 9 hours every Tuesday. I don't believe I've ever heard him use a single power tool. Lawn has to be mowed? He might use a push mower, but he might clip it all by hand with a pair of grass trimmers.

When you live in a country where unemployment is more than 10 percent, labor is cheap, which is probably why so many businesses employ security guards to open doors for their customers, and why so much of the labor is done by hand.

We watched this kid, along with three or four others his age and several more who probably in their mid-teens, at Aninuan last weekend as they first floated two dozen bamboo poles from one end of the beach to the other, and then drag them all up onto the beach. It wasn't back-breaking work by any means, especially since there were so many of them, but I couldn't help thinking that, in America, we would have loaded the poles into a pickup truck and driven from one end of the beach to the other. No way most Americans, myself included, would have gone to the effort these kids had to go through to move the poles from one end to the other.

A Relaxing Weekend, with Tattoos

In preparation for Shelly's trip to L.A., we spent an incredibly relaxing three days last weekend at Aninuan Beach, in Oriental Mindoro province, the northern part of which is littered with more white sand beaches than you could ever visit.

The difficulty with visiting Aninuan Beach, or even the more popular beaches in Puerto Galera or White Beach, is that there is very little information online, aside from a couple of top-end resorts. So, armed with two guidebooks and Bobby's minimal knowledge of Batangas and Mindoro, we headed off on Saturday morning for the Batangas pier, an easy two hour drive from our house.

We had an old -- and, as it turned out, completely inaccurate -- print out of ferry times from Batangas to Puerto Galera. I had called around to a couple of the high-end resorts Friday night, but they were both booked for the weekend. We decided we would try our luck and see where we ended up, though we agreed that low key and quiet would be preferable to a party atmosphere. With that in mind, we planned on taking a ferry to Puerto Galera, then a jeepney west to White Beach or Aninuan Beach where, we had read, the crowds would be significantly less than in Puerto Galera.

The downside, I pointed out to Shelly, is that there would be less to do.

"What is it you really want to do this weekend?" she asked me. "I was thinking about swimming, sleeping and reading."

"And?" I asked.

"And nothing. I really want to swim, sleep and read, and that's it."

I was floored -- and thrilled. A favorite vacation that I have fantastic memories of was my trip to Nepal in 1995. After bugging out of India early, I had a couple of weeks in Kathmandu, so slept late, went sightseeing midday, and read and drank beer in the afternoons and evenings. It was a great vacation, but not of the style Shelly typically prefers, where things are usually more active and structured.

I agreed that swimming, sleeping and reading sounded good, and I did it quickly -- before Shell could change her mind.

After Bobby dropped us off at the pier, we hustled inside, intent on making the 10:00 departure we had listed on our out-of-date timetable. Instead, we found a boat direct to White Beach for just 130 pesos. It would save us time and a jeepney ride from Puerto Galera, and probably save us money, too. Without a second thought, we bought our tickets and headed to the boat.

Most of the boats we had read about were ferries or high speed, twin-hulled catamarans. I was, then, somewhat surprised to see the outrigger that would take us from Batangas to White Beach. It was, well, smaller than I had anticipated.

Not only was our boat small, it rode relatively low in the water. As the outriggers tended to kick up a fair amount of spray, the boatmen rolled a thick plastic sheeting down over the sides of the boat, effectively locking us all in.

There were probably enough life jackets if we capsized, but I doubt most of us would have made it past the sheets of plastic. Fortunately, the water was smooth and an hour later we landed on the beach.

I had been chatting with a White Beach resident on the boat. She was on her way home for the weekend, and was nice enough to confirm that our guidebooks were correct, and that we could easily walk five minutes around the rocky point to the quieter Aninuan Beach.

It wasn't high season, so White Beach was, in truth, neither busy nor noisy, but it was more commercialized than Aninuan. We decided to go back across the rocks for another look on Sunday.

We easily found a room at the Tamaraw Beach Resort, which features little huts not far from the water and soon, unfortunately, a big concrete hotel. I'm sure the family who owns the resort will appreciate the money from the additional rooms when they open up, but it's probably a step towards making Aninuan Beach more like White Beach, which is to say, not as nice as it is now. The staff was incredibly friendly, they have a good cook in the kitchen, and the views and price couldn't be beat, and both of us would stay at the Tamaraw Beach Resort again, I think. Soon after arriving, we went for a swim, then decided that this beach dog had the right idea:

And thus began our 24-hour cycle of swim-sleep-read-eat-sleep-swim-sleep-read-eat, etc.

On Sunday, we did head back around the point to White Beach. Shelly had a mischevious gleam in her eye, and I followed reluctantly.

"Let's get tattoos," she said.

"Really?" Shelly had teased me once that she had gotten a tattoo while she was in the Peace Corps. I had never thought of her tattooed before, but had decided, then and there, that I liked the idea of Shelly having some ink. I was skeptical that there was a tattoo in her future, and knew there wasn't one in my future. Too much pain, I think.

"Henna tattoos, not real ones," she explained. "They last about two weeks. It'll be a bonding experience. Don't worry -- there won't be any needles."

There were two different tattoo shops on the beach, so we headed to the one that looked more prosperous. Once there, we picked out designs, and the tattoo artist began to sketch them, with a blue ball point pen, on our skin, before filling them in with a dark black ink.

We had to head back before sun down, as neither of us wanted to negotiate the rock pile in the dark, so after a couple of beers and a big bottle of water, we headed back to Aninuan Beach for the night.

The next morning, we had to go back to White Beach to catch our outrigger back to Batangas, so we had breakfast there rather than at the Tamaraw Beach Resort, which was probably a mistake, as it wasn't as good as what we'd had at the Tamaraw. Soon after, it was time to board our outrigger. The water didn't seem rough until we got out of the protected area near Mindoro. Once we were in the channel, it was a different matter entirely.

The thick plastic sheets once again came down. Because the front of the boat is higher than the back of the boat and the captain steers from the back, he can't really see anything once the sheets are covering the sides of the boat, so a lookout rides on the bow, acting as the captain's eyes.

Shortly after I took this picture, the waves picked up -- the swells were probably only four or five feet, but this was not a large boat, so we felt each of those four or five feet -- and two more boatmen headed to bow. I began to regret forgetting my Dramamine. I wasn't the only one. Once we were in the channel fighting the waves, which we hitting us mostly broadside, the lookouts not only helped the captain steer, but also signaled to him when to accelerate and when to put the engine into idle in order to minimize the effects of the waves. I managed to take a short video of our ride. It was taken with my phone, so the quality isn't very good.






The captain steered cheerfully through the whole thing, the expression on his face never changing, probably happy for the chance to show off his sailing skills.

Me? I was glad to be back on shore.