Saturday – 11 Sep 2010

[smartads] I emerged from under the covers and hit the floor at 0642, but decided I wasn’t ready to be up, so I went back to bed at 0644.  Had to get up again at 0732, and have been up ever since.  I’m hoping for a wonderful day today.  I will try to make things at least as interesting as yesterday and no where near as boring as Thursday.
Just a quick note, because I saw an internet clip and a lot of people did not know this. Today, September 11, 2010, marks the 9th anniversary of the attack from Al-Qaeda on US soil.
We own a piece of land in Catmon, that is full of coconut and banana trees.  We brought a pawn on it, hoping to be able to make money off it when the harvest comes in.  Well it has made us a little bit of money, but not much.  Not enough to want to continue with it anyway.  Bebie and Lita went to see Poppa to get him to sign another title, because Bebie found someone that is willing to buy the pawn from us.  We will use that money to finish Lita’s plans for a small store in front of the house.  Hopefully the money from the store, the tricycles, the ice candy and the ice will be enough so we will not have to use any of my retirement check to survive here.  If we don’t have to use that retirement check, then we can save it to finish our house upstairs, so we can move there.

Forgot to tell you yesterday that it was Juvic Joy’s birthday. She was 19 years old, going on 20.   It hard to believe sometimes, but I’ve known her and her sister Grace, since the year 2000. I told you already that they use to be my ‘unofficial’ body guards. Now they both need someone to guard their bodies from preying men, young and old. We bought Juvic a cell phone and she gave her old one to Lita’s nephew that works at the Joyous Eatery. He needs a cell phone to call his parents back in Tambis. The party was pretty good. I got to eat chicken bar-b-q again with rice. I also had some of The Bar green apple vodka. Not too much to impede me, but I like the taste of it, so I drank it.
I tried a new Filipino food yesterday.   It is actually a fruit.  I forget the name of it already, but I found a picture of it and posted it.  It is called Rattan fruit at the site I found.  That’s not what they called it last night.  Mar called it something like “Wild Fruit on a Vine”, Callico or something like that.  It tasted like rotten grapes to me, but everyone else seemed to love it.

I got more of the story from WWII from Poppa too.  I forgot to add part of the story from yesterday.  He told me that when the US came back, they had a new type of vehicle that the Japanese had never seen before.  It was an amphibious vehicle.  The Japanese were really surprised when the vehicle in the water followed them up on the land.  Some new things he told me were that a lot of civilians hid out in the mountains of the Philippines for almost 4 years, while the Japanese were there.  While they were there they had to grow their own food and they did not have soap, for almost 4 years.  Now I can do without meat for 4 years, but soap, that would be harder.  They used coconut milk for soap, especially for washing their hair.  He said you had to be strong to survive through this ordeal.  I said, “No kidding, I can just imagine what it was like”.  The Japanese dropped leaflets for the Filipinos that said that everyone should surrender to Japanese Imperial Forces.  If you did not surrender and hid in the mountains (where most of them were already), then they would be found and killed.  Most Filipinos did not give in.  They hid in the mountains.  The Japanese did look for them, but they were too scared to venture too far up the mountain for fear of being killed by the Filipinos.  He also told me something that I didn’t know, but I guess it could be something that plenty of others knew.  Before the Japanese surrendered, after 2 atomic bombs, there was a plan to drop a 3rd bomb.  He didn’t know where, but he was sure about this.  My next visit to Poppa I will try to get some more of the story, or something else that happen to him way back then.  By the way, Poppa was born in 1922.  He may not be the oldest person alive, but he has been through a lot of things that I hope I never go through.

Just got word that there will be a scheduled brown out tomorrow from 6am to 6pm.  Guess I’ll have to find something to do during the day, since I won’t have my computer.  Can’t afford a generator powerful enough to handle my computer and all the other household appliances yet.  Have to have the freezer for the ice candy and ice, so they stay on.  Of course if this blog ever starts making money, then maybe the refrigerator, freezer and air conditioner can be turned off for a day.  Just as soon as I can though, I will get a bigger generator.  I guess I’ll work on that top 10 list I keep talking about.  Maybe I’ll be able to visit Poppa and get another story or some new information on the same story.

There was just a young lady here visiting Anna Pearl that had a monkey on her back.  No, an actually monkey, not a burden.  Well the monkey was mostly on her shoulder, but part of it was on her back.  She left before I could get to the camera though.

My wife is heading down town again.  Her and Vicky are going to buy some bowls and something else.  I just remember the bowls because I’ve been complaining that we only have 1 decent bowl in the whole house.  They will be riding down there with Eddie (Vicky’s husband) in our tricycle.  I’ll have to be selling ice candy while she is gone.  I’ve already sold 2 of them in 5 minutes.  The toughest part of selling the ice candy so far has been determining what kind they want, if they don’t understand English.  I’ve pretty much solved that problem by bringing out 4 or 5 different flavors and asking them to pick one.  Everyone likes it better when they have a choice, even batas.  I keep hearing them call from the fence that they want ice candy, so I’m going to sit outside for awhile, read a book and that will be faster.

You know, I sat out there for about 1/2 hour and no one showed up for ice candy.  Lita came back from down town though.  She bought me 3 bowls and she also got some steak and other meat from our favorite meat shop here, Monterrey.  There are 2 of them here in Calbayog, but we like the one that is on the highway on the way home, best.  I was thinking  about making myself a stew of some sort later, but no vegetables.  I’ll probably just use a can of the stewed tomatoes we have with some meat and rice.

Tagalog word of the day:  bagoong (see the link for description and pronunciation).  Very popular shrimp paste used on many different foods.  I see them eating this stuff with mangoes even.  I don’t like it either, but again, it is very popular and I believe there are many different kinds of it.

Lita decided to make me some hamburgers.  I had 2 of those with tomatoes and onions.  I think I’ve got the only mustard in the whole town.

Well I guess I’ll close for the day. Hope this post was pretty interesting anyway. I’ll post 2-4 more pictures tonight, if I don’t forget or get too busy. If I don’t tonight, I’ll have them on there tomorrow.

Salamat, Paalam