[smartads] Calbayog City, Samar, is, in area, the second largest city in the Philippines. Its population is 147,000. It boasts a waterfall of seven cascades, an archaeological museum, numerous historic sites, and at least one university.
Useless Knowledge: During the fifteenth century, Venice ordained that local Italian prostitutes should bare their breasts while soliciting at open windows overlooking the city’s famous canals and walkways. The ruling was intended to separate the city’s “professional” women from the general citizens, and also to encourage young men to purchase the prostitutes’ wares and avoid the unspeakable sins of masturbation and homosexuality. (I think it’s a good idea, as long as the prostitutes don’t get old and saggy).
I found this site accidentally and it had some interesting information, so I decided to include it here do give y’all a chance to check it out also. Maybe you will find it interesting also. http://www.travelphilippineisland.com/
It’s been pretty boring around here the last few days. Basically it’s been getting up, sitting at the computer, playing games on the computer and watching TV for me. Even everyone else has not been doing anything exciting, but it’s been 4 days since my last regular post so I figured I better do something. I think I have enough information now for a decent post because today: 7 April, we had a bit of activity. Most of this post will be on 7 April, but I hope it is interesting enough for all of y’all today.
3 Apr – I didn’t check the hits tonight because I had the computer off for most of the night due to low power. The electric here sometimes doesn’t run normally and that causes my voltage regulator to have low power. This in turn causes the computer to power itself off at times. When I see that the power is low, I usually try to turn off the computer normally instead of it abruptly turning off. I get enough of that wear and tear on the circuits when there are brownouts. I’ve already lost my speakers and now it seems my DVD drive due to sudden outages.
I did shave this morning. I was starting to look like a mountain man, so I figured it was time. I usually only shave every 3 or 4 days anyway when I’m not going to be doing anything special, which is normally the case.
Lita and Cathy went to a farmers market this morning. They left a little after 4am. The farmer’s market is in the barangay Gandara. That is where Robbie (Ramil’s asawa) is from. I didn’t get up until 0511 and I did that only because when I got up to go to the CR, I noticed Lita was gone and I worry about her when I’m not with her and it’s hard to go back to sleep. If I didn’t have to go to the bathroom I would have kept sleeping and I wouldn’t worry about something I didn’t know. Of course I knew she was going this morning, but when I’m already sleeping, I don’t worry about such things.
Today I was thinking about tomorrow and all the bills I have to pay, plus getting tickets for our little trip off the island for a night or two. I’m hoping to find a good deal on airline tickets to where ever, but right now it seems the someplace in China is going to be the best deal. Guess I’ll find out tomorrow.
4 Apr – Hit’s at 0200 = 284818. I didn’t get up until 0807 and I only did that because Lita turned the light on to get something and it just happen to be one of the few times in life that turning the light on actually wakes me up. That happens like once in a 100 times, and today was that day.
Ado and I went downtown around 0900. The bank opens at 0900 and I wanted to be there when it opened to see if that was a good time to go to the bank. It’s not. I should have known better. The Philippines is known for running just a little bit slower than normal on just about everything. Setting up for customers at the bank is no exception. I’ve got it figured out now. In the morning if you want to go to the bank, go around 10:00am. If you want to wait until the afternoon, go around 1:00pm. Both those times have little customers, especially on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, unless those are paydays. Today at the bank I waited 20 minutes for them to set up after they started letting people in. I had to wait even longer, but of the ‘only 1 teller does dollars’ thing. Of course the 1 teller that did dollars had the 1 customer that had a large transaction to do, so while I waited each one of the other 2 tellers did 2 customers each. I was in the bank for almost an hour.
For some reason everyone else around here received their electric bill, but we didn’t. We have no idea how much the bill is for this month, but I should have enough to pay it when we get there. The place to pay the electric bill, at Samelco, is in the opposite direction from downtown, so we usually pay it last and then just come home afterwards. After I finally got out of the bank, we went to pay the Internet because it is downtown also. There were 2 people in line ahead of me there, but it didn’t take so very long. Next stop we went to put some gas in the multi-cab. That’s what we went downtown in because the Nissan ‘probably’ needs an alternator. We still have to get that checked to be sure. After getting the gas we went to one of the smaller grocery’s, not JustMar, so I could buy some Sky Flake crackers. I discovered that I like the onion and chive flavored ones best. Next stop…pay the cable bill. I had to pay 2 months worth of cable so it was P732 ($17). We don’t have a problem with the cable company here as far as the bill goes, not like every other bill. If we are a month late on the bill, they don’t seem to care, but I’m not going to push them much more than that. We did have 2 months overdue once before and didn’t hear anything from them and no service interruption. Now we are current so I’m not going to worry about that and next month is our last payment on the Pepsi truck so the extra income will be very welcomed. Our next to last stop close to the downtown area was to pay the water bill. Again I screwed this up. The bill was due yesterday, the 3rd, so we had to pay a P173.65 ($4) penalty for one day. Yes the 3rd was on a Sunday, but it seems that the water department is open 1/2 a day on Sunday to pay bills. I’m going to have to remember that to avoid any further penalty payments.
The final stop was at Cebu Pacific ticket office. I had to go to 3 different offices before I found one that didn’t charge extra for international tickets. I told them that I needed 2 tickets to anywhere off the island, just for a night or two. They almost booked them for me before they told me how much it was. The price they found was still too high, so they said they would call me back later when they found a better price. At this time I’m thinking I should have just left the money in the bank in Texas and used my card to pay for the tickets online. I still might do that.
About this time I’m getting hungry, it’s just past 11:30, but Ado had already eaten that morning and I didn’t want for him to watch me eat or wait on me while I did, so I didn’t say anything about that. We just headed out towards Samelco to pay the electric bill. When we got there, I told Ado, “Let’s go home”. There were so many people there. Usually when I go there, there are only a few people or even no people, but this time there were 60-70 people waiting. Forget that. That’s a lot of people and Filipinos, as stated earlier, like to work in slow motion a lot, so that would have been a very long wait. I just came home and Cathy went down to pay it the next day when she went to pay her electric bill. She got the receipt for us and the bill was P4600 (plus). I forget the exact amount and I’m to lazy to go get the bill in our box. It was, in dollars, between $106 and $110. That’s pretty decent for, although high for everyone else here. I’m happy with it every month.
I should have know better. I’m going to have enough information for a decent post with just the 3rd and 4th. I normally do after I start all my jabbering, so I don’t know why I wait so long. I’m going to close for now so I can post this, but I will be sure to do another post tomorrow to get y’all caught up. As I stated earlier, a lot of things happen on 7 April (our anniversary).
I already had this extra Useless Knowledge on here, so I’ll just keep it here and find another for tomorrow. I though I was going to need it to make a decent post, but I’m wrong again.
Type with ya tomorrow. Y’all might want to be sure to read the comments because there are a few interesting things that have happen recently that could interest you.
Useless Knowledge: Elvis treated his hair so harshly with dyes and styling products that, by the time he was forty, it had turned totally white. (And we never knew a thing about it).
Useless Knowledge: Adolf Hitler’s favorite dog, Blondi, an Alsatian, was used to make sure his cyanide capsules were lethal. Hitler used the cyanide to commit suicide when he saw it worked on Blondi. (Assuming he didn’t use the same capsule…recycled, I wonder what would have happen if that was the only capsule that actually worked)?
Salamat, Palaam
Today in Philippine History
3 APRIL
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Photo credit: http://www.filipiniana.net/featurearticle/12965241194965
4 APRIL
