[smartads] One of the best and most popular places to visit in the Philippines. I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard of the wonderful things to do there. It has grand beaches, nice hotels, international foods and spectacle people. The place just oozes with fun, fun, fun.
Due to all the rain recently I have not gotten out of the house much and thus have no new pictures again. I do have a few, but I will wait until next post on those. This post will focus on Palawan Island and Puerto Princesa city.
Useless Knowledge: Ellen DeGeneres was the first stand-up comedienne Johnny Carson ever asked to sit down on The Tonight Show guest couch during a first appearance.
22 Mar – Hits @ 0050 = 234583. I was up and semi-coherent at 0716. It’s a wet morning, but that should be no surprise, because yesterday was 9 days in a row for rain and today makes 10 days. I wonder what the 2nd longest streak of rain is? I say 2nd because everyone already knows that the record is 40 days and 40 nights, and hopefully that record will never be broken. I’m not talking about consistent rain all day either, but just some rain during the day or night within a the 24 hour period.
We have a lady here today to wash our clothes. It’s been awhile since our clothes have been washed because everyone was waiting for the rain to stop, but that doesn’t seem to be going to happen anytime soon and I’m running out of shorts to wear. We told the lady that we would give her P200 ($4.65) to wash our clothes and she seemed okay with it, but when she finishes Lita will give her P300 ($6.97) instead because we had 3 baskets heaping full of clothes. That’s cheaper than going to a laundry mat in Texas, and probably cheaper than using our washer there too, but we also have no dryer here so we have to hang clothes out. When it’s raining, we have to get creative with the hanging out. We have the over hang, the bathroom, the store and even our room to hang things up. When we finally do get settled we plan to buy a dryer to use. The American sized dryer that we can buy in Cebu or Manila. The washer we will pass on for now, because we don’t want to take business away from some of these wash ladies. They need the money to support their families and it’s a way we can help without giving them a handout, which so far as I know, no able bodied Filipino has ever asked for a handout. The children and old people do, but I don’t mind that.
As of today J is not back from Tambis. It looks like he will be bringing his sister back with him when he does come back though. Supposedly she will be working for Mar. I’m not sure how many sisters J has, but a sister of his was suppose to come work for us a couple of months ago, but never showed. I wonder if it’s the same one? Maybe he only has 1 sister, I don’t know. Anyway, we’ll know if she’s coming when/if she gets here.
We haven’t had the store open since J left for Tambis. Lita plans to let J be full-time in charge of the store. That will be his primary responsibility, but of course when he is not busy he should help Vicky and/or Sally with whatever they are doing. I’m hoping that that will work out better.
23 Mar – Hit’s @ 0135 = 237626. I was up and about at 0754. Once again it was a wet morning, making it 11 days in a row for rain.
I got a picture of Sally today. I figured out yesterday that I didn’t get one of her yet. I didn’t have too much trouble getting her picture, not as much as some people around here (Chatty, Jascyl). Jascyl is not so hard to get a picture of anymore, but Chatty has turned it into a mission to NOT let me get a picture of her. I’m persistent, so I’ll get one eventually.
Lita went to the market early this morning. She is also going by JustMar this morning to buy a few things like plastic bags for the store, syrup for my pancakes (if they have it), a can of corn (for my stew) and a couple of other items that I don’t remember right now. I have to write things down when I go to the store to ensure I remember them. Lita just remembers them and she rarely forgets anything. I do expect her to be tired and ready to lay down when she gets home though, because, as she puts it, she is not a ‘chicken spring’ anymore. Yeah, that’s suppose to be ‘spring chicken’, but it’s cute, and I gave up trying to correct her on getting things like that backwards years ago. She knows what it’s suppose to be and sometimes she gets it right, but then she has these slip ups, but it’s not that big of a deal.
Brown out at 0918. Brown in at 1018. That “brown in” is just something I made up by the way. It is not used anywhere else in the Philippines that I know of, or by anyone else, just me. I think people will start copying me after they hear it long enough though, that’s usually how things work. During the brown out, about 0950, it started raining again.
Tagalog Word of the Day: kayumanggi (kah-u-mang-ge) means brown…but I don’t think it’s used much. I think most Filipinos just use ‘brown’ instead.
I made more stew today. I turned off the burner at 1130, took the pot off the burner and set it on the table to cool a little bit before I start eating it. I always make enough for 2 meals, but sometimes I’m not that hungry and it turns out to be enough for 3 meals. I haven’t been sharing my stew recently, but usually no one seems to want to try it anyway. Oh, if I offer it, they would probably take it because they do not refuse free food. If they have food for free then that’s less money they have to spend to buy the food. As spicy as I make the stew though, I don’t think the children could, or even should, eat it.
J showed up today, with his sister. She’s good looking too. Her name is Marlyann. Not sure of the spelling right now, but I’ll check on it later. No picture of her yet either. At least here name is easy to pronounce (Mar-lee-ann). I’ve never heard that name before, I like it. She will be sleeping in the store tonight because Lita has J sleeping in the house on the extra bamboo bed that triples as a bed, a table and a bench. It is inside the house and Lita is afraid J will get sick again if he stays outside. It’s the same type of bed outside in the store anyway. A lot of people here are use to sleeping on the hard surface beds, like the bamboo and it doesn’t bother them. I guess I’m too spoiled, because I could only do that if I was really tired. I have slept on concrete before, while on alert in the Air Force. You get so tired then, and you get so little time to rest, you take advantage of whatever time you have. If I’m really hungry and really tired, I’ll take sleep over eating every time. That is true even when I weighed over 300 pounds.
Brown out again at 4:38pm. I’m not sure of the ‘brown in’ time, because I was not here. I was down the street buying some “Red Pepsi”. It didn’t last very long though. Did you notice the times of the brown outs and brown ins? They all end with “8”. So the ‘brown in’ time for this last one was probably 4:48pm. It was just a few minutes long.
Lita went to the market for a 2nd time. She brought Marlyann with her. She is suppose to stop by Mercury Drug to buy me some of the Mexican Style peanuts that I like.
This is the new link I added to my “Blogroll” – General Information about the Philippines. This site gives a few details that I have not seen on other sites. http://asialuxuryproperty.org/retirement_philippines.html
Today is Poppa’s birthday. He is 89 years old. We had a party a Joyous Eatery and I just got back from there. Of course I forgot to bring the camera, but I’m blaming that on Lita. Although I knew that there was ‘suppose’ to be a party, things change on a moments notice around here, so you just never know until it’s time. She didn’t warn me about it being time to go and just said lets go, Ramil is waiting to take us now. Ramil took a few pictures at the party and he is suppose to send them to my e-mail so I can transfer them to the blog, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens on that. I’ll remind him when I see him and he’ll probably do it if he can, he’s pretty good about such things.
Well I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough information to have a decent post, but thanks to me getting off subject a couple of times, I tend to do that from time to time. I think that that is something that many of you readers out there don’t mind and in fact I think some of y’all prefer it.
That’s the post for today. I’ll have another one tomorrow I think. This one was 3 days after the last one, because as I said, I didn’t think it would be long enough to have a good post. From now on if it’s possible it ‘could be’ long enough, I’ll do a post. I’m sure my blah, blah, blahing will make up for any lack of information.
By the way…Lita did remember the peanuts.
Useless Knowledge: Diminutive actor Felix Sills played the hirsute role of Cousin Itt on The Addams Family. Years later, he was Twiki on television’s Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and also was one of the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi. (I also wondered about that Cousin Itt and Twiki)
Salamat, Palaam
Today in Philippine History
22 MARCH
http://philippine-revolution.110mb.com/tejeros.htm
23 MARCH
1901 – Philippine President-on-the-run Emilio Aguinaldo is deceptively captured by imperialist American soldiers led by Frederick Funstons posing as prisoners of the traitorous local Macabebe scouts in Palanan, Isabela nearly 2 years & 3 months into the Philippine-American War (1899-1914); drawn up by Funston, the manner of Aguinaldo’s capture, which would be condemned by the anti-Imperialists in America, is marked by the forgery of the letter of Gen. Urbano Lacuna after Filipino surrenderee and turncoat Cecilio Segismundo turned over crucial dispatches indicating Aguinaldo’s whereabouts and by the subsequent disguising of traitorous former freedom fighter leaders and 78 Macabebes, members of the “Philippine scouts” [read: imperialist anti-Philippine Republic mercenaries] as Filipino replacement soldiers; instead of resisting or fighting to death the Bald Eagle forces as a way of sustaining the morale of his soldiers still valiantly fighting the new colonizing forces during the Philippine-American, Aguinaldo will become a cooperative US Prisoner of War and will swear allegiance to the enemy flag within only a few days from capture, even issuing on that same day a widely circulated proclamation wherein he calls upon his soldiers to accept imperialist-imposed peace and unite “around the glorious and sovereign banner of the United States”; in a few years, all generals of Aguinaldo’s republic would capitulate although the Fil-Am War will be continued until about 1914 by other freedom-fighting soldiers and Katipuneros/veterans of the 1896 Revolution; Aguinaldo will capitulate fully and will receive 300 hectares of choice friar lands that adjoin his Imus, Cavite home town.
Photo credit: http://www.yonip.com/archives/history/history-000053.html
