Tuesday – 16 Nov 2010

I had a hard time getting all the pictures in here, except the two of Wyatt.  The other 3 pictures came from Jaclyn’s Facebook account and for some reason when I tried to transfer them over, they were coming up only as ‘already tagged’.  I guess that if they are labeled that way, they don’t meet all specifications to be uploaded with the software I use, because these wouldn’t.  Anyway, I found a way around it, obviously, so now the world can see Matthew, Jaclyn and Wyatt Mock.

It’s been pretty boring around here again today.  I started not to do a post for today because it’ll be a short one.  I already told Jaclyn that I would have her pictures on here tonight, so I figured I’d go ahead.  It’s already 9:00pm and I have very little left to write about.

Lita went downtown today.  She went to buy a new light bulb to replace the one that was stolen.  She borrowed one from Ado, and she returned it after she bought the new one.  She also had to buy some tomatoes so we’d have some and to return the 3 tomatoes that I borrowed from Neneng yesterday, even though Neneng said it wasn’t necessary.  The only other item I know that she bought was some sugar.  She needs that to make the ice candy and a few other things.

I had onion rings for supper tonight.  Not much of a supper, but they were good.  They were much better than the last ones we cooked.  This time we just used flour and milk to coat the onions instead of that mix she used last time, for chicken.  I had to cook the onion rings myself and the grease was popping.  One time it popped so much grease out that it covered 2 of my fingers.  That was like 2 1/2 hours ago, and my fingers still burn.  I put some water on it right away, and some lotion after not too long, but it’ll probably still leave a mark there.  My right middle finger got the worst of it.

The BBQ business hasn’t been doing so great recently, probably mostly because it won’t quit raining.  Every night since we’ve been home from Tambis we have had a very hard rain that lasts for quite a while.  I think it discourages people from venturing out and thus affects our business.

Lita gave me a bottle of lotion for the computer room yesterday, but I see it is gone now.  I guess she changed her mind and took it back.  But I still have my Vaseline Men’s body and face lotion, I like the smell of that one better anyway.

For Top Blog we are at 443 of 1445 (30.6%) Personal and 2247 of 6256 (35.9%) Overall.  I forgot to do this yesterday so I don’t have the 24 hour hit count.  Right now our hits are at 31157.  They sure have come a long way since I was worried about getting that first 100.

Since I’m stuck for material tonight, I’ll be following a suggestion that our newest reader, Jack (from Australia) suggested.   He thinks I should talk about my first visit here, how many times I’ve been here before we moved here, and whether my off spring have been here.  I’ll talk about the last 2 tonight and the first one tomorrow.

Okay my first visit to the Philippines was in 1984.  I’ll discuss it in detail tomorrow.  I didn’t visit again until 2000, but I visited every 2 years after that.  So 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008 and then we moved here in 2010.  We really didn’t decide we wanted to move to the Philippines until 2000.  We really did not want to move down to the province (Tambis) because it would be just too hard on both of us.  In 1992, we found out that Lita has some relatives living here in Calbayog.  She hadn’t seen them in a long time and was rather surprised to find them.  She even actually met Titing for the first time then.  I say she met him in 1992, and she did.  I did not make the trip with her to the Philippines that year.  We were stationed in Okinawa and she came over with one of her best friends.  She just won $5000 playing bingo at the Crow’s Nest on Camp Shields there in Okinawa and wanted to come take care of some things.  I could not get off work, so she just came with her friend Violeta.  She was a little scared to do it, but it was necessary at the time.  It turns out to be the turning point in our lives though.  If she would not have gone, maybe she would not have met her family here in Samar, and we would never have known about Calbayog City, and never thought about moving to the Philippines.  It’s was a break that we desperately needed and was lucky we had the opportunity to move here.

As for our off spring visiting here.  I doubt that will ever happen.  In 1992 when Lita came here without me, our son stay with me also.  The only one of my relatives that has been over here to the Philippines is my nephew David.  I don’t think he liked it very much, even though he tells me he did.  He didn’t give it much of a chance though.  My niece Jaclyn is suppose to come for a visit this coming May, although now she says that her husband Matt may not be able to come then because he is suppose to be changing  jobs and they don’t know what the new employer will say about them going on vacation so soon after getting the new job.  I’d like for our son to come visit, but he’d have to bring his wife and 6 sons with him, and he can’t afford that.  Two of those 6 are actually stepsons, but they call him Daddy and he is good to them.  Heck, he probably can’t even afford to come if it was just him.  We’d send him the money to come, but we can’t afford it either, not yet anyway.  Maybe by this time next year we will be able to do that.  Of course right now we have plans to return to Texas in January 2012 for 3 months.  Maybe we will take care of that then, if we can.

Tagalog word of the day:  anak na babae  means daughter.  Evidently the word anak that I translated before does not actually mean ‘son’, it means like child, but it is widely used for ‘son’.  Guess ‘daughter’ has to be separated somehow.  So anak na babae  (a-nak na ba-ba-e).

That’s that.  It’s almost time to close up the BBQ, in fact I hear them doing it now.  Lita will be coming in any minute now with the money from the day so I can count it and put it in our log.  I hope it’s better than it has been recently.

Philippines Trivia

• Fernando Amorsolo, a painter, was the first national artist declared by the Philippine government. The award was conferred on Amorsolo in April 1972, several days after his death.
• The world’s second deepest spot underwater is in the Philippines. This spot, about 34,440 feet (10,497 meters) below the sea level, is known as the Philippine Deep or the Mindanao Trench. The Philippine Deep is in the floor of the Philippine Sea. The German ship Emden first plumbed the trench in 1927. The world’s deepest part of the ocean is the Marianas Trench, which is over 11,000 meters below the seal level.
• The symbolic name for the Philippines, Juan dela Cruz, is not a Filipino invention? It was coined by R. McCulloch-Dick, a Scottish-born journalist working for the Manila Times in the early 1900s, after discovering it was the most common name in blotters
• Mayon is the most beautiful mountain I have ever seen, the world-renowned Fujiyama (Mt. Fuji) of Japan sinking into perfect insignificance by comparison. British traveler-writer A. Henry Savage Landor
• Ilo-Ilo golf and country club is the oldest golf club in the Philippines. It was built at 1908 by Irish Engineers.
• Emilio Aguinaldo lost to Manuel L. Quezon in the country’s first presidential elections in 1935.
• Bagumbayan was the original name of Luneta Park.
• Of the 500 known coral species in the world, 488 are found in the Philippines.
• The Philippines is home to some of the world’s most exotic birds. One of the most endangered species is the exotic Kalangay or the Philippine cockatoo (Cacatua haematuropygia), which belongs to Psittacidae or the family of parrots. Some cockatoos can live up to 50 years. They are known for mimicking human voices. Most of them measure 33 centimeters in length and weigh 0.29 kilogram.

Salamat, Palaam