Sunday – 5 Sep 2010

[smartads] This bright, shiny morning had me forcing myself out of bed at 0641.  Shortly after I woke up, I heard a tapping on the front door.  A neighborhood bata was tapping the door with a peso.  I asked her what she wanted, but she just stared at me.  It’s the language barrier.  Either I’m going to have to teach every Filipino I meet, English, or I need to learn Filipino.  I think me learning would be a much easier task.  I tried to find my wife to tell her, but I couldn’t find her.  I went to the houses in the back to find her, but Loni reminded me it was Sunday, she’s at church.  Loni is the girlfriend of Neneng’s brother.  He works for Neneng too.  I would put a picture of Loni on here, but not sure if she’d like it.  Besides, I’d have guys hanging around my house all day and night trying to see her.  I think she’s gorgeous, anyway.  Getting back to the little girl, I kept thinking, I know this girl from somewhere, I’m terrible at faces, but I just couldn’t figure out where.  I told myself that she looks like Vicky’s daughter.  The one that went to Tambis with Vicky and us.  I kept asking her if she wanted ice candy, she kept saying no.  Finally, thanks to her intelligence, not mine, she pointed to a large bag of charcoal we have outside.  All she wants is one of the bags of charcoal so they can cook this morning.  Sunday is Vicky’s day off.  But, still not being sure she is Vicky’s daughter, I charged her full price.  Only about 5 minutes after she left, my wife shows up from church.  Good timing.  But the little girl came back a few minutes after that to get some ice candy to sell around her house.  Turns out IT IS Vicky’s daughter.  I gave her back 5 pesos, cause we only charge family and friends 1/2 price.  I also gave her a free ice candy for being so patient with me.  In yesterday’s post I mentioned selling the charcoal for 5 pesos per 1/2 kilo, well they changed their mind.  Now it’s in bags of 1 kilo for 10 pesos.  I guess 1/2 kilo is not enough to really do much good when cooking.

Things are really tough here, but through it all people still smile and lend a helping hand when possible.  For being so poor, Filipinos are about the most honest people I know.  So much integrity.  I’ve dropped 50 pesos on the ground before, didn’t know it, and walked off.  This young man, picked it up and ran over to me to return it.  Now 50 pesos for a poor Filipino is a good amount of money, but he returned it just the same.  I let him keep it.  He didn’t want it, but I insisted.  After all, it’s only a little over a $1 for me.  I was just glad to see someone so honest.   That reminds me of something that happen in Tambis that I neglected to tell you.  When we were at the market buying the vegetables, remember when the kid called me tambok?  We left there and forgot to bring a bag of our vegetables.  We looked everywhere in the house for them, because we didn’t realize at the time that we left them there.  Shortly after 6pm that evening, after she was able to get away from her stand, the lady from the market showed up at the house with those vegetables.  She went several miles out of her way, just to be sure we got them.  Lucky for us we used a vendor that  knew Cathy and her Mom.  I’m sure that there are dishonest people here in the Philippines somewhere, but I have yet to run across them.

Today is my Mom’s birthday…Happy Birthday Mom…she is 21+ again this year.  Tomorrow is my baby sister’s birthday (she might hate the baby sister thing)…Happy Birthday Joyce…she’s going to be…, 1 year older (better not say the age, you know how some women get with the age thing).  She probably doesn’t mind, I think she’s cool about things like that, but just to be safe.  I say it is today and tomorrow, and it is, but not for me.  Their birthdays are on the 4th (Mom) and the 5th (Joyce), but today is the 5th here already.  Maybe IF Joyce reads this, she’ll post her age for y’all.  I will say this though, on her birthday, all of us will be in order.  I mean age wise, consecutive years.  Can’t reveal any years at this time because that would give away her age, but my parents had 5 children in about 5 1/2 year span, and one of those years in the 5, there were no children.  Guess they bought a TV that year.  All this will probably be explained in a later post, depending on all my sisters and whether they want the world to know how young they are.  Stay tuned for details.  Sounds like a commercial.

So far this morning @ 7am, my computer is in a good mood.  Running well and fast enough where I won’t be complaining, especially after that extreme slowness yesterday.

Spoke too soon about the computer being in a good mood.  Around 9am it starting acting up again.  It’s almost noon now.

The lady that does the manicures and pedicures is here again.  Did I tell you how much it costs for those here?  Guess I didn’t.  I just did a search on my blog, and no results came up.  So here’s the story.  Whenever someone here wants a manicure or a pedicure we have one special lady we call.  She’ll come by and everyone that wants one, gets one.  Now I’m not sure of the price of a manicure or a pedicure in Texas, but here it only cost 30 pesos each.  That’s about .75.  I know that that is cheaper than Texas.

Oh good, it’s starting to rain again.  Had to go grab some rags my wife had hanging out.  I actually didn’t quite get to them, because the manicure lady grabbed them for me.  Helpful people, these Filipinos.

My wife is so happy right now.  She just learned the best way to tie the bags for the ice and ice candy.  Vicky and the nieces have been doing that for her, but now she knows and she keeps saying she’s happy about it.

I laid down to take a nap at 1230 and didn’t  wake up until 3:58.  Guess I was a little tired.  It’s probably all the for best though because I have a fantasy football draft at 0300 in the morning.  That’s something that you have to adjust to living here.  You can get use to the time of day easy, but like that 0300 is a normal 2:00pm for most people that will be in that draft.  If I don’t say something, they won’t even know that it’s 0300 for me.  I’m only in that draft so late because it’s a league I’ve been in for years, even while I was in Texas.

I just counted the money we made from selling our ice candy.  My wife hasn’t told me ‘exactly’ how much she spent on supplies, but said it was around 1000 pesos.  The total amount we have since 15 Aug (our last deposit) was exactly 2200 pesos.  So that’s basically 3 weeks worth (and remember we were not here for 4 of those days).  This is also not counting the income from the tricycles or the charcoal.  So we seem to be on the right track to getting a well established business.  She told me that next month she will have Arnel continue building her little store and when that is finished, she will start selling bar-b-que.  We’re hoping that by the time they get that hotel fully functional, we’ll be ready for the tourist when/if they come.  We’ll have the ice candy, tricycles and bar-b-que that they can use from us.  I guess they’d have no need for the charcoal.  I hope we get our tricycle(s) converted to the “American size” before then.  We only technical own one and collect boundary on the other.  Maybe that will be the next thing we purchase, another tricycle or two.

You know, when you have a blog, you have to continuously think of good things to write about.  I’ve listed a few ideas down, like I’m going to make a list of the 10 things I love most about living in the Philippines and another list of the 10 things I hate the most.  I will put 1 in my blog each day, so 20 days worth, and explain why I love or hate it. So if there are any readers out there that have a suggestion for me for the blog, please suggest. Notice I put that in bold just in case someone is just skimming through.

We are getting ready to go down town.  Evidently there has been a carnival in town since Monday that no one told me about.  We are taking the batas there and going to a okay-okay (o-ki-o-ki, long i) store, at least I’m pretty sure of the spelling, I’ll check when we get there.   We just call it the Korean Store because it is run by Koreans.  We need to get some medium-sized bowls.  It’s like a whole flea market inside that store.  I’ll let you know how things go at the carnival and the whole down town experience in tomorrow’s post, with pictures of course.

Tagalog word of the day will be a double:  mahal kita (ma-hall key-ta)  means – I love you.

Guess I’ll close it down for the evening.  Hope you enjoyed today’s post and the whole blog.  Have a good look around.  I try to put good stuff on here for your enjoyment.

Salamat, Paalam