Saturday – 16 Oct

[smartads] This morning I decided to get up at 0659.  Why, I have no idea, I just did.  I guess since today was my weigh-in day, I wanted to hurry up to find out how I’m doing.  In fact that is one of the first things I did when I got up, was weigh myself.  I arose, went to the CR, to get out any excess water weight, and headed for the scale.  I pulled my Weight Watcher scale out of the box, because I still keep it in the original box that I bought it in, and placed it on the section of floor that is not slightly tilted.  I always weigh in the same place, with the same scale.  It’s the only scale I have, so that is easy.  When I stand on the scale, at first, I’m always nervous about looking at the numbers that come up.  Today was no exception, but I have to look.  I looked down and the numbers were: there.  I’ll tell you the amount later in this post.  I’ll hide it because I want you to read the whole post.

Well Ramil actually did leave this morning to go start his new job in Manila.  He left the house about 0630 and should be in Manila by now, it’s 7:30pm.  He says he will rest tonight and tomorrow and start work on Monday morning.  He also said that he probably won’t be home for about 5 months.  That’s kind of hard for me to believe since he has those 4 children.  I was over there earlier and the baby, Faye, was already crying, Poppa, Poppa.  That’s probably just the initial reaction though.  She’ll get use to it.  I know he wouldn’t have gone unless it was necessary for him to do so.  I think he’ll be home for Christmas though.  It’s also hard for me to believe that he would miss that with those children.  Robbie says she doesn’t miss him yet, maybe in 2 or 3 months.  Robbie’s cool, I like her.  She makes me smile a lot, and that’s not an easy thing to do.  There are comics on TV that don’t even make me smile, and the whole audience is roaring with laughter.  It’s just not that funny to me.  Robbie’s going to have her hands full with mga bata though.  They like to jump around a lot and scream, you know, kid things.  She still has to work also, so I guess being at work will be a nice quiet time for her compared to home.  I assume that mga bata will be watched by Lolo, Lola and Auntie Marianne a lot in the next few months.  Ramil is hoping to get a job much closer to home, but this job in Manila came up first, and he couldn’t afford to turn it down.  Robbie told me that she made P33 (something) per day, at least I’m almost positive that’s the amount she told me.  I’m pretty sure she makes about P1000 per month at her office job.  She works at the University where Mar is the Vice President.  She must do a good job, because she has been there for awhile.  Well Ramil was our driver and we paid him P2000 per month, but he was always borrowing the money ahead of payday to pay bills and buy groceries.  I don’t know how much his job in Manila pays, but I’m sure it’s much more than P2000 per month.  I hope at least P2000 per week.  That’d be nice for them.   They deserve to have a break go their way, especially Robbie.  That woman works all day, then comes home and works cleaning the house too.  She washes clothes every weekend, with 4 bata and a limited amount of clothing, that is a necessity.  She also has to help watch the children too.  Well now, she’ll have to watch them by herself at night time.  I know a lot of people do that, but that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve a nice break going their way.  I hope they get it soon.

Titing and I have decided that we will be going for a walk, early mornings on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.  He can’t go on Sunday because he has to go to church and I don’t want to go on Monday’s because I’m up late watching NFL games on the computer.  So on those 3 days each week, we will walk around the big circle as I call it.  We will go by the new market to downtown and then back around to the main road to the house.  Well that should be about a 3 mile walk.  I’ll try to remember to measure it and let you know.  Whatever it is, it’ll be better than sitting here doing nothing.  You know when the weight comes off, it could turn to flab if you don’t exercise.  I would really be flabby if that happen.  I try to lose it slow so that won’t happen.  Of course everything doesn’t always go as planned.  Titing has to start exercising because his doctor told him he needed to.  He is not overweight by a long shot, but he has high blood sugar and the exercise will help keep that down so he won’t have to go on medication or, worse case, insulin.  He brought the subject of exercise up to my one hundred and twenty nine point five kilogram self, I just accepted because I was thinking about doing it anyway.  Works out good for both of us.

Today for lunch, about noon, I had fried potato sandwiches.  Only 2 of them.  The bread is starting to get moldy already.  You have to eat bread fast around here.  I’m going to start only buying 1 loaf at a time, instead of two.  For supper tonight I had Ramen soup, 2 packs.  I think I’m down to less than a half dozen now.  When Gary shows up, probably next week, and brings my stew, I’m going to have a can that day and try to make the rest last as long as I can.  Only eat it when I absolutely feel I need it.  Jaclyn is going to be sending me a box, against my wishes, because I think she shouldn’t be spending that much money on me, and she can bring most of it when she comes to visit in June.  She can stuff 60-70 pounds of it in an extra suitcase.  They will be allowed 6 suitcases.  They won’t need that many for only a 10 day vacation, especially when Wyatt won’t need that much.  Then she’d have an empty suitcase to bring back all the purses she plans to buy here.  I must admit though, that when/if the box arrives, I’ll be glad to see it.  Jaclyn suggests that I take a picture when I open it and have that posted here.  I think I’ll do that.  I hope I remember.  She’ll probably remind me when I let her know it has arrived.

Today a guy from the cable company came by.  Seems that we had not paid our cable bill fully yet.  He was here to collect P720 or turn the cable off.  Well we gave him the money.  Come to find out that the money we gave him is for July and August.  I don’t understand the bills here yet, but I going to learn, so this won’t happen again.  The bill that I saw is not really clear, it didn’t have a due date on it.  I don’t think that was the original bill though.  The cable is in Ramil’s name, not ours, so sometimes we don’t see the bill.  Maybe with Ramil gone, we’ll see it now.  I guess we still owe for September and the October bill is probably due soon too.  That’ll be another P720, I guess.  I didn’t see any late fee attached to it, but who knows if there was or not.  I’ll get use to all this, if I just take more charge of it.  I have been letting Lita do it, but she is getting over whelmed with everything else, and you know I don’t like to see her over exert herself.  So I’ll take more responsibility for the bills.  She worries too much about little things like that anyway.

7,107 Islands
The Philippines, a democratic country in Southeast Asia that declared its independence from Spain on June 12, 1898 but only obtained its full sovereignty on July 4, 1946, has a total land area covering 300,000 square kilometers (115,830 sq. miles) and distributed in 7,107 islands.  According to the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority, 15,854,922 hectares or 53 percent of the country’s total land area were forestlands while the remaining 14,145,078 hectares or 47 percent were alienable and disposable lands as of December 2000. The three major island groupings are Luzon (7 regions, 38 provinces), Visayas (3 regions, 16 provinces), and Mindanao (6 regions, 25 provinces).

World’s 17th Largest Island
Luzon, with a total land area of 104,688 square kilometers is the world’s 17th largest island (excluding continental masses of lands). Listed as the 19th largest island is Mindanao, with a land area of 94,631 square kilometers. The world’s largest islands are Greenland (a Danish territory), with a total land area of 2.18 million square kilometers; New Guinea, 820,033 square kilometers; and Borneo, 743,107 square kilometers.

Okay, that’s about it for the day.  Did you find my weight for today that I had hidden?  Not sure how tomorrow will be.  I haven’t gotten any more questions from anyone except Wayne.  Wayne I’ll be asking Mar when I see him next about some of those things.  Wayne and Jaclyn has been the only ones on here commenting the last couple of days.  I hope everyone else that normally comments, is doing okay.  I’ll be back tomorrow.  Has anyone considered the idea of being a guest writer once or even once a week or month?  Not necessary, but it may be some more interesting things to read and see.  Something with a different point of view then mine.  I’d want you to stay within the theme of the post though.  It’d have to be something about you in the Philippines.

Salamat, Paalam