Thursday – 25 Nov 2010 – Texan In The Philippines

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A Quick Note: Since it is now 1 minute past midnight in Texas, I’d like to say Happy Birthday to my brother Mike. He just broke the age sequence that we had of 48, 49, 50, 51 & 52. He made it 48, 49, 51, 51 and 52.

This morning started out at 0730. I got up because Lita was checking her blood sugar while sitting on the bed and asked me if I wanted to check mine. I did and mine was a little high, but lower than the last time I checked it.

I had Nestle’s Corn Flakes for breakfast today. I only ate one bowl. The same size bowl that I ate the chili in last night. Actually it was even the exact same bowl.

I got a request from ‘anonymous’ for a change to the blog. They wanted larger pictures and a way to stop the music. Well of course there is already a way to stop the music, just check on the stop button (the square) at the bottom of the screen, right above the picture of the guy playing the guitar. As for larger pictures, all you have to do is click on a picture, and it will become larger. In fact I highly recommend that everyone do this while looking at the pictures because 95% of the time, I’ll write additional information about the picture and you can only see it if you enlarge it. Isn’t that right, Winda? I know she enlarges all the pictures.

Just so I’ll be able to use up a space, save a picture for later and help you out all at the same time. Here is the picture of the ice candy that I already posted back on Sep 14th, and a repeat picture of Precious, one of the good ones.

Cathy and Precious — Precious with her Mama, Cathy

What are the ingredients in ice candy? Well it depends on what type of ice candy you are making. At first I figured it was exactly like the frozen treats that most of us made with kool-aid when we were kids. Well it’s not. For example a strawberry ice candy batch, the ingredients are, in no particular order: strawberry extract, sugar, gelatin, sweet condensed milk and water. Water being what is used the most.

Precious was sleeping or I would have gotten a picture of her with the ice candy, but I did get a picture of her sister and brother holding an ice candy.

Crystal holding a strawberry ice candy in their kitchen

Khan with ice candy — Khan holding the same ice candy.

Lita wanted me to open one of those cans of Treet Luncheon Meat today. I hate opening those cans, almost as much as I hate opening the Spam cans. Anyway, of course it wouldn’t open like it suppose to. I pulled up the little ring and tried to pull back, but I couldn’t budge it. I noticed on the top of the can it says, Do not use can opener on this end. Well to me that means it’s okay to use a can opener on the other end. We don’t have an electric can opener here, so I grabbed the manual one and had at it. I got most of it but there were just enough places that the can opener wouldn’t grip so I still couldn’t open the can. I tried to gently pull it open, being careful not to cut myself, but no go. I then tried to pry it open with a big ice pick. I got it open enough so she could get the stuff out, but somewhere along the way I cut myself. Not seriously, just a small cut. Why do they make those cans so hard to open? Make it a circular can instead of that little square thing. Those dang Spam cans are the worst. The ones with the little key you have to insert and turn. What’s the point, it’s stupid. Two important things you should know about this little adventure of mine: 1) I don’t even eat the Spam or the Luncheon meat and 2) Lita said that next time she will just get Lynn to open the can because she is smarter than me. She was just upset that I got a very small cut, but I agreed and said “Good”. So maybe, unless Lynn is not here, I won’t have to open anymore of those dang cans.

I decided today that I need to get an updated picture of Casandra. I’ll do that later tonight or tomorrow and post it sometime in the next few days. The other day Cathy was over here with Casandra and I asked Cathy, “Where did you get this big baby, and what happen to the little one you had”? Casandra is 2 months old now, already. Did that seem quick to y’all too? Maybe it’s just me.

Beverage ailsle — Part of the beverage aisle at JustMar.

Cereal aisle — The cereal aisle at JustMar

Tagalog word of the day: (I missed this again yesterday, didn’t I)? I found out something else today about one of my previous Tagalog words. I told you “daliri” means “finger”, when in fact it looks like it actually means “digit” (as in a body digit). I noticed that when I was going to put in today’s word to translate, ‘toe’. For ‘toe’ the translation is: daliri ng paa. Now ‘paa’ means foot, so I figured daliri ng paa is either ‘digit of the foot’ or ‘finger of the foot’, which would you say? Maybe ‘daliri’ does mean digit, but if you use it by itself, it just generally means ‘finger’. Otherwise it would be “daliri ng kamay”. Okay all you Taglaog speakers out there, am I on the right track here, or am I confused again?

Victor came by tonight to install another light above the picnic table outside. Now in that patio area out there we have 4 lights, counting the one on the outside for the BBQ, that you can turn on. I don’t think they will have all of them on at the same time normally, but they are available if needed. I think she should have just gotten a larger bulb for the area above the truck and it probably would have been enough light to cover the picnic table. Whatever, it’s done now, and as long as they don’t continually run them all at the same time, it should be fine. We still haven’t gotten an electric bill since we’ve been here. The electric bill is in Judith’s name and Lita asked her to check on it, but I don’t know if she ever did. We’ve lived in this house for 5 months, and no electric bill yet. I think if it showed up this month, it’d probably be between P20,000-P25,000 ($465-$581). That averages out to about $116 per month. In Texas we were paying 2 1/2 to 3 times that, so that will work. That’s just a guesstimate though.

Is guesstimate the same word that surprised me before as actually being a word? I didn’t get that little red line under it like I thought I would. I remember this happen once before, but I forget what the word was. So according to the dictionary that this computer uses for spell check, guesstimate is an actual word. Did anyone else know that? I didn’t.

For lunch today, and probably my last meal, even though I started eating around 12:30pm, I had the same thing I had yesterday. It was so good that I had to make it again. I’ll tell you what it is, but it’s probably weird for y’all. It’s just something I made up and it turned out to be good. First I dice a whole onion, I like onions, especially cooked. Then I fry them in some olive oil, until they are very brown. ***I add in some of Lita’s special seasoning that she pre-made while we were in Texas***. I take them out, trying to leave as much of the olive oil in the pan as possible. Next I slice the potatoes in circles. This is after I washed the potato, but I do not peel it. Yes I fry it with the peels still on it, using the same olive oil I just fried the onions in. After everything is cooked and most of the grease is on the paper towel in the plate I put them in, I put the potatoes on a slice of bread. Then I put some ketchup on another slice of bread. I put some of the onions on top of the potatoes, then join the the slices of bread in holy sandwichmony. (I did get the little red line on that one). It is so good, especially the onions with that seasoning on it. Next time I cook it, I’m going to get Titing to try the onions and see what he thinks. Lita really liked the onions the first time, and that was before I told her it was her seasoning on there.

I just got a message from a site called Chitika. I applied for an account there to help me get ads on our site. They approved me for their Silver Level Ads. I don’t know exactly how it works yet, but after I publish this post, I’m going to sign in and check it out. They did say that if I want to qualify for their Gold Level Ads were I can make more money and get higher quality advertisers, I need to get 5000 impressions on my site, per day. Don’t know if I’ll ever get that high, and I’m not even sure what they qualify as an ‘impression’.

Since I’ve been typing this post, we have had 2 – 5 second power lapses. I can’t call them brownouts because all that happened that I know of is the fan blowing on me quit. But the lapse was so brief that it started again, before the fan even quit spinning. It’s weird.

Entire aisle — This is the entire length of JustMar

This is Khan all dressed up on his 5th birthday.

Anyway I hope this Chitika is something that will be able to help me get started on making even a small amount of money on this blog. Now more than ever y’all need to be sure to read, look around and be sure to tell any friends and/or enemies, about this site. I’m spreading it as much as I know how, and will continue to do so.

Well that’s it for the night. I just need to insert the rest of the pictures, probably 4 more, and I’ll be ready to publish. How I met Lita is still waiting in the wings. I don’t mind telling y’all how we met, but I’m glad that I haven’t had to use it yet. I’m still open for suggestions though. Maybe if I get a few more suggestions, I’ll put one or two of those on the back burner and tell you the how we met story. Wish me luck on the Chitika thing. Happy reading and thanks for reading my blog. I hope it brings a smile to your face today and every time you read one of them.

More Fun Facts about the Philippines

What’s in a name? The official name.

We commonly recognize the Philippines as the Philippines, which is correct…. Or is it ……well yes it is, however the official name is The Republic of the Philippines or in Filipino Republika ng Pilipinas. Which mean the same thing, but we all refer The Republic of the Philippines as the Philippines or the Philippine Islands and the reference to islands is quite fitting as there are 7,107 islands in The Republic of the Philippines, officially.

The Philippines was named Las Islas Filipinas after the Spanish King, King Felipe II in the 1500’s. For more information on the Spanish and the Philippines have a look here.

Information on the Philippines at a glance.

Official Language – English and Filipino. It is interesting how the language, Filipino came about and also how Filipinos use body language to communicate. On this page I will give you some useful information about the Filipino Language and also links to common phrases and for those of you who are interested same information on the history of Tagalog.
Capital City – Manila.

Instead of just throwing numbers at you, I have shown comparisons of Philippines information, with other countries to give you a bit of perspective. The countries I have used are the USA, Japan, China, United Kingdom and Australia.