[smartads] I stayed up until 4 something this morning watching the Cowboys finally win a game. They won, but they still have problems that they need to address. So I made my way out of bed at 0947 today. I’ve got a feeling that this is going to be a slow day. But I’ll try to keep it as interesting as possible.
When I was watching the Cowboy game on the computer, I was watching it through Justin.tv and a link coming out of Canada. I got to see some Canadian commercials, a particular Toyota commercial several times. Anyway, I made it through most of the game before the site got canned. That’s a risk you have to take when trying to see it for free. I couldn’t find another site, but the game was already well in hand, barring a miracle by Houston. It could have happened though, but it didn’t.
http://www.justin.tv/search?commit=Search&only=archives&q=NFL
(copy/paste if interested)
Most everyone is so busy. Lita is cooking lunch, not for me, but for everyone else, that’s working. Vicky and Lynn are outside preparing things for the BBQ this afternoon/evening. I hope we get a lot of people today, but it’s raining again. It’s not raining hard, so it’ll probably not deter anyone from coming. Filipinos are use to the rain, so it’s just like a normal day for them. I’m getting to be that way too. Oh, it’s raining…oh um! No big deal, just another part of the everyday rainy season.
Looks like I’m going to be having hot dogs for dinner tonight. Only thing I’ve eaten all day is a few chips and it’s already 5:18pm. I’m going to have to find something good to talk about, I don’t even have 300 words yet, just about the opposite of yesterday. The hot dogs we have are ones by Pure Food. I was told that they are the closest I can get here to the American tasting hot dogs. Well I tasted them and they are pretty close, not quite, but I’m not arguing. I’ll just be sure to stop by a Sonic when I get back and get a foot long chili cheese dog, with mustard and onions. Maybe a Route 44 limeade to go with it. Gary I wish you could bring me some hot dogs, but I know that is not realistic. Oh, speaking of…Lita just opened the door and said the hot dogs are done. I’m going to go eat them now…brb.
Okay, that’s done. They gave me 6 of those little hot dogs, all nice and BBQ’d (just a little burnt) to eat, which would normally mean 6 slices of bread also, but not today. First of all I only ate 4 of the hot dogs, and on the last 2 I put them on 1 slice of bread. So 4 hot dogs, 3 slices of bread, no chips, but it’ll be 2 bottles of iced tea pretty soon here, cause I’m still in the process of drinking the second one now. As usual, no sugar in the iced tea. Don’t see how people can drink iced tea with a lot of sugar. Hoping to have that 133.9 kilos down a lot closer to 130.9 by the time Saturday rolls around. Doesn’t have to be done that far, just closer to it.
Tagalog word of the day: asukal (aw-su-kal) means sugar.
I found out yesterday evening that J is going to start working for us in January, when the LolyCat Store is scheduled to be open for business. Lita says she will pay him P1000 per month and also pay his college tuition. He will be sleeping in the store, on the bed I showed you Arnel making. He is going to be taking a 2 year course in what they call here HRM. Since this threatens to be a short post today, I think I’ll have a bit of suspense and not tell you want HRM stand for until tomorrow. Now if you do know, and you feel the urge to let me know you do, then please send it via e-mail and not via the comments section. As you know, if you’ve been reading, that J is J’s nickname. His real name is Saddam. Yeah, he knows, but he didn’t pick his name and he doesn’t exactly go around telling everyone either. Some of them around here call him Saddam, they don’t care, but I call him J. That sounds cooler anyway.
Also yesterday early, and I forgot to mention it with everything else I had to post yesterday, Eddie signed the contract for the 2nd tricycle. Now they have 2 and Arnel has the other one. I think Eddie decided to use this 2nd one and let his son use the 1st one. Whatever, it doesn’t matter to me, I’ll be getting P120 per day from them either way, plus the P60 per day from Arnel.
Having a hard time keeping the dogs out of the compound area. They push the gate open and walk in, when everyone is busy and not paying attention. If you run them off, they just come back later. I hear them at night trying to get in, and if there is a way, they will find it. They can’t get through the gate at night though, it is double locked. They were getting in through the window that we use for the BBQ area, but I make sure it’s secure before I go to bed now. I’m not too worried about them biting one of the batas, because the dogs are pretty scared, but if they are hungry enough, you never know. These batas don’t know enough to back off either, they persist in trying to irritate them and shoo them away. If those dogs would catch and kill those rats that run around here, I’d let them stay and feed them everyday. There’s at least 2 rats that just run damn near anywhere they please. No one seems to pay attention or even care, but I hate rats. They make me nervous. Titing says that if we kill a rat, then several more will just come to take it’s place. I think that’s bull, and if I had a BB or pellet gun, I’d kill those little rodents.
Lita just had me move one of those tricycles, LolyCat 1 (for lack of a better name) parked out front. Evidently Eddie doesn’t have room at their house to park 2 of them, so he’ll be leaving one of them here at night. He’s scared someone might ‘borrow’ it and not return it if he leaves it outside his house, not within a secure area. We can’t have that, it’s not insured. I wonder if you can insure a tricycle? Seems unlikely.
Mar just showed up with the first of the 3 itineraries for our tourist business. I’m suppose to look it over, correct any errors, form questions to ask (insurance will be one of them) and then discuss it with Mar before he finalizes it. After that I will be trying to recruit people to use our service. We will need a minimum of 5 people to make it work. A maximum of 20 people. I’m hoping for only 5-10 the first time, just to be sure everything goes smoothly. They don’t all have to be from the same place, we just need to have that many with everyone that signs up. Of course I will do whatever I can to be sure that everyone is happy. Mar is a very intelligent and knowledgeable man, but you have to control his imagination and ambition. He may try to do too much at once and end up not being able to fulfill the customer needs. He did come up with a name that’s okay with me. He called it MJ Tourist Services. He also has prices on here, well I should say price, because it is a pretty much all-inclusive tour package, but I’m going to look things over, check out a few places, find the prices and try to get the best deal possible. I’m not so greedy that I have to make a mint off other peoples hard earned money. It’s going to take me at least a week, maybe two, to research this thing thoroughly. If I’m going to be part of it, I want it to be right, no half-baked stuff. I want to be sure that the tourists feel they can trust us so they will want to use our service again. That only makes sense. If you look confused and things are not set up properly, then you look unprofessional and I’d be embarrassed, and I don’t embarrass easily. Mar’s in a hurry to get started, but I’m going to slow him down until everything is just right.
I haven’t taken any new pictures recently, but I’ll see if I can find some older ones that I haven’t posted yet. I know I’ve got pictures that were taken a long time ago, when we were all a little bit younger, and in my case, a little bit larger. Maybe I’ll slide a few of those in too. They are from the Philippines, just from things that happened before we retired here. Yes…I’m sure I’ll put, let’s say 4 of those in today. You’ve already seen them, if you are reading though, but I haven’t post them yet while I’m writing this. 🙂
Well once again it didn’t turn out to be a short post as I thought it would be. Maybe Joyce is right, I just ramble on and on, until we get around 1500 words and I start to gear it down after that. I’m still not going to tell you, today, what the HRM stands for though. It’s something that I can have in tomorrow’s post, in case it really does lack input. I’m starting to doubt whether any of them will be short to tell you the truth. I can just fill empty spots with sentences like this. Or like this…whatever.
It is now 8:48pm. I usually post around 7:00pm, but I guess it really doesn’t matter to y’all. As Joyce says, she is just hoping to read more and even wants me to send her more pictures in an e-mail. Chill Joyce.
Guess I’ll end this for the evening. I’m hoping something interesting will happen after I close, so I’ll have a good start on the post tomorrow.
He who does not know how to look back at where he came from will never get to his destination.
Jose Rizal
Salamat, Paalam
Pure Foods is about as close as I have found to an American tasting hot dog. Some of the other brands I have tried in the past made me gag. Believe me, if I could manage to bring some American hot dogs and sausages with me, I would have a suitcase filled with them. At least in Angeles, there are two delis that make their own sausages. One of them is owned by a Czech, who has become a good friend, and the other is owned by an American and both are very good. They import the meat and spices so they are as close to what I can get in the States as you can hope for.
I know what HRM stands for by the way but I won’t share it here. Jen has a cousin studying that in Calbayog and her brother was going to study that but switched to IT. He is going to College in Angeles and lives with us there. He is in his second year and her cousin is in her third year.
I understand the gagging part. It makes Lita mad sometimes that I do it, but I can’t help it, to me, it’s nasty. I’m hoping that someday you will show me these sausage places in Angeles, I’d like to give them a try. Yes, thank you for not sharing the HRM here.
Remember it’s the rambling that’s interesting, JJ. 🙂 Re the tour business, glad you’re taking your time to review and make sure everything jibes. I forgot your tourists can arrive at the Tacloban (Palo, really) airport, too. And I think this is the right time to start because the government’s push is the development of tourism in the area.
How far is Titing’s house from yours. The question mark key has migrated somewhere. I’ve got to fix that. And soon. It’s making me nuts. IER.
The photos definitely add much flavor to your daily blog.
Keep typing!
Like Winda said I to enjoy the ramblings keep it up.I also enjoy your pics as
i have been in the area relate to soom of them.On your post yesterday about the kids stoping by for ice candy,the are so cute and polite i get a real
joy when they come by and i try to get them to talk,they rae so shy.
John on a different topic if i may ask,how often are the brownouts happening.Who do you have your internet threw is pretty fast?Have you ever thought of cars service out of the airport there farther away places than a trike can take a few passengers.hope all is well in samar
That’s at least 3 of y’all that like the rambling, probably more do too. I’ve got a ton of old pictures, so I guess, since no one seems to mind, I’ll start adding those in each post. There are so many of them, and some of them are copies of other ones, so I can’t promise I won’t repeat some after awhile, but I’ll try not to.
My goal with the batas is to just get them to smile, or giggle is better.
The brownouts, disregarding the 4 brownout day, are not really so bad. Normally we have a couple per week, in additional to 2 more per month that are scheduled. Some weeks, there are none whatsoever. It’s the uncertainty of when/if there will be one that bothers me. Hopefully when/if that power plant down the road gets built, all this crap will stop or at least significantly slow down.
My internet service is with Globe (Broadband) and it is pretty fast. At times it is almost as slow as dial up though. Mostly it is fast. Sometimes it is so fast, I don’t see the screen change, and I keep waiting. I keep double checking now.
Are you talking about a business of cars from the airport? The airport is not really that far from downtown Calbayog, and there are so many different types of transportation now, tricycles (non-motor and motor), transportation vans and buses, I’m not sure it’d be feasible. If they really decide to build up this area, and it looks like they are, I’ll bet someone with a lot more money than me is already considering that, shuttle buses. Maybe even the guy that owns that big hotel across the street. He has invested a lot of money, and I’m sure he’ll do what he needs to, to make it work. It’s something to consider, but I’d have to find a way to come up with the money first. Heck, I can’t even get enough money to finish my house yet. Unless I wanted to use my own truck. It’s big…ummmm! We’ll see.
Okay then, I’ll ramble. Of course I’m being sure it all ‘jibes’, because if the people aren’t happy, then I’m just wasting my time. Sure I’ve got time to waste if I want to, but if I’m going to waste time, I’m going to do it doing nothing. Not sure we’d want tourists showing up at Tacloban at this time. Mainly because all we have is 1 package set up and it’s all in the Cebu area. In fact, all 3 packages we plan are all down that way. Do you think tourists would be interested in Tacloban, besides MacArthur Park? From the back of my house to the front of the porch of Titing’s is about 6 feet. Even with the older pictures in there? It doesn’t matter, just pictures? Keep reading!