[smartads] Lita came in to wake me up at exactly 0730 this morning. She wanted me to get up and get ready to go downtown. Well I wasn’t leaving until at least 0900 so I couldn’t understand what the hurry was. So I didn’t bother getting out of bed until 0758. I got up, took a shower, shaved and put on fresh clothes. No breakfast this morning so maybe I’ll get something to eat while I’m downtown. I need to get money from the bank, buy 3 more stools (the 3 we have now don’t seem to be enough), buy Lita some vitamins (she’s out), need bacon and bread. I also need to pay the Internet bill.
Did anyone notice that the hits on my blog actually went over 10,000? I remember not too long ago I was worried that I wouldn’t even make it to 1000. Now I’m hoping for the 50,000 mark. I listening to music again, still testing all the downloaded songs. Tell me lies, tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies – Fleetwood Mac.
In case any cares, I changed the band-aids on my finger last night. Lita did a better job of putting these 2 band-aids on. She put one horizontal and the other vertical and it covers the entire cut. Had to change it before I wanted to because I washed some dishes yesterday and got it pretty wet. My finger was actually all wrinkled by the time I got the band-aids off. But it’s good to go for a few more days now. Not much pain while typing anymore either.
Interesting things happened on my trip downtown today. What’s weird though is shortly after all these things happened, I thought, well now I have lots of things to put in my blog. Like right now Frank Sinatra is singing “Fly Me To The Moon”. I told you I had a wide variety of music.
First thing that happened downtown is after I got there, the camera decided to have an ‘exhausted battery’, as it said on the camera screen. I did manage to get about 5 pictures before it gave up though. I bought some new batteries later and got more pictures. That Home Depot here is going to get rich off me, just selling me batteries.
Before we came home, I asked Ramil (he was driving our POS) if he had eaten yet. He said no, so we went to Chow King and I had, yep you guessed it, orange chicken. It’s the only thing I really like there. Heck, it’s about the only thing I like at any restaurant around here. I had to drink 3 large cokes while there too. Yes, I had to, I was thirsty, as usual. While I was leaving there was this little kid with his hand out, I haven’t seen too much of that recently, but I didn’t have any change. I told him, “I don’t have any change, here take this”, and I handed him a P20 bill. Boy, oh boy, did his face light up. Probably more pesos than he could get otherwise, all day. He just hit me at the right time, and I was in the mood to give him the money. After all, what is P20, about .45? Not a big deal for me, but it made him happy.
We were already out of downtown, at Monterrey’s to get the bacon and bread, and I remembered that I forgot to pay the internet. So we went back. While I was paying the internet, I asked the lady there about an upgrade, and she said, yes, they do have upgrades from what I have. This kind of surprised me because I was thinking all this time that I had the best internet I could get at my location. Turns out, I have a data line only. It’s the slowest internet service they have. What I was thinking I will not put in print here. I can change to a wireless service, double my internet speed, add land line phone service, and get a free phone from them, for only P300 more per month. If I wanted to, I could triple the speed for P600 more per month. This is all good news, right? Well as it turns out, not all the news is good. Since the service I have now is a Wi-Fi service and I have a 1 year contract, I have to pay a P2,500 penalty for breaking the contract before the year is up. Well, crap! I thought about it for awhile and told them to go ahead and do it. I’ll pay the penalty. I want the faster service and we need to get a phone anyway. I made sure though that if I wanted to upgrade again to the fastest service, it wouldn’t cost me another P2,500. It doesn’t, since they are both wireless and it would be an ‘upgrade’, then there is no charge. There is only one 1 year contract, after that there are no more contracts. They checked and it was available in my area, so I decided to get the fast, not fastest, service for now, to see how that works, and upgrade only if necessary.
So Gary, they do have really fast service here, but not sure if it’s in SJ. The speeds they quoted me were 1mg, 2mg and 3mg (for businesses only). I’m getting the 1mg for now ($30 per month), and hope that will be good enough. They should be here sometime next week to install all necessary equipment. I don’t have to pay the P2,500 until I get the bill, so that was good, except my next bill will be almost P3,500, plus the new service of P1,295. Almost P4,800 for next month. I hope the phone they give us with the phone service is good enough to last awhile. We have 3 phones coming from Texas soon. Actually a friend will be mailing the box next month. It’s 2 boxes that we packed after we sent our last stuff over before we came here. She wasn’t able to get away until November to mail them. We’re not in a hurry, so it’s no problem.
Anyone notice that I still call our truck, POS? That’s because while we were getting ready to come home, it had another problem. At first we thought it was the same problem as before, you know when the wheel fell off, but it turned out it wasn’t. Ever since that wheel fell off, I’ve been apprehensive about riding in there. This time it turned out to be something they said was simple. They just replaced a bolt that came loose and was making things rattle like crazy. Of course we couldn’t find an ‘exact’ match for the bolt here. We found one that was the same, only it was longer. They got it to work, somehow. Don’t know if there was actually extra room where the bolt goes in, or they cut the bolt, or what. Tomorrow Leo and Titing are going to test drive the POS, just to be sure. I was really mad when this happened. I told Lita to just tell Titing to call them up and return the damn thing, I don’t care that we will lose money, it’s a safety hazard. Turns out, the way things operate here, is that Titing and Neneng have already given the loan company a bunch of checks that they will cash as the date of them come up. So getting them back would be difficult. So, I’m going to hope that this last fix will be the final one for awhile. We may have other options, but will not try to execute them at this time.
It decided to rain again today, surprise surprise. George Strait has some Ocean Front Property in Arizona.
When LolyKat opens I have a thought that I picked up in Okinawa while we were stationed there. On the side of the road they had these little food stands. Never mind. As I was typing I decided that it probably won’t work. In Japan, the dinners were pre-packaged. We like to cook things as they order it here. And we don’t have to worry about buying the package to put them in. The ones in Okinawa had like fish, rice and vegetables all packaged together. We could do that, but seems pointless if your cooking it as they order. I guess we could have the pre-packaged stuff in addition to the freshly cooked stuff. Only advantage I can see with that though is that with the pre-packaged stuff, you don’t have to wait. So if you’re in a hurry, and most Filipinos are not, then you could get it and go.
Don…I got you a picture of everything that we sell at our BBQ. There was one more ‘weird’ thing that I forgot about, chicken feet. They are all in the pictures below.
Well it’s time to close again. What do y’all think about the Philippine trivia that I have started putting on here? I had to put something and some of these things looked interesting.
World’s Largest Shoes
In December 2002, the Guinness Book of World Records has recognized Marikina City Philippines for crafting the world’s largest pair of shoes – each measuring 5.5 meters (18.2 feet) long, 2.25 meters (7.4 feet) wide and 1.83 meters (six feet) high. The materials for the P1.2 million pair of shoes could produce 250 pairs of regular shoes.
Salamat, Palaam
Good news about the internet. I hope that the higher speeds are available in SJ. They told Jen that all we had to do was install a land line. Jen was going to get that moved from her family’s house to our house but, alas, that has not happened yet. I guess too many other things going on to get that taken care of…grrrrrr. She leaves for Manila on Friday so it won’t happen before she leaves. She told me this morning that they have been without electricity for 3 straight days in SJ. 3 days?? That would drive me totally gago.
How do you send your boxes from TX? Do you have an LBC there?
Hope you do have the internet service there in SJ. That would help you out a lot. You can take care of it when you arrive, it’ll work out, be patient.
3 days, no electric. That would drive me mad too. We’ve never gone that long here that I know of. Knock on wood.
Not sure if LBC is available in Texas or not, but we have Forex, same type of service. There is another carrier, but I forget the name of it because we never used it, it might even be LBC. I’d have to ask Lita to be sure though.
Gary if you have any asian stores in your area that is the easiest as almost all
of them have a Balikbayan service,even the little town in Alaska where i am
from has three,dosent have to be filipino and most are forex like John said.
Gary if i could ask you what bank do you use in PI,In jan. i will be in angeles and before we head to calbayog we would like to open a acct there that has a branch in calbayog,do you know of one or two. Two years ago i had one with BPI but closed that one.thanks for any info you can give me.
I don’t know all the banks they have in Angeles, and I’m not Gary, but just for the record the banks here, that I know of, are PNB, Metro, UCPB (mine), Rural Bank, Green Bank, RCBC, Landmark and Citi Savings (not Citibank).
Wayne, I use China Bank in Angeles and my wife uses PNB. I know that there are Metro Banks in Angeles also. When we need to send money to my wife’s family, we deposit it at one of the Metro locations in Angeles and the family can pick it up in Calbayog.
There aren’t any Asian stores here that I know of. I googled forex and found one in Montana that is 400 miles away. There has to be something closer than that. I will keep looking for options.