[smartads] This day started for me officially at 0744. That’s when my mind told me body to get out of bed and my body obeyed. Lita was at the market when I got up, but I knew that because she told me she was when I went to the CR at 0701. So she was still gone when I finally did get up. She showed up while I was checking my fantasy football results. So far I’m not doing bad on that, but still have some serious problems with some teams. First thing I did when I got up though was check my comments. Since it’s a long, long way to 50,000 hits, I don’t seem to worry about that as much as the comments anymore. It’s always good to hear things, or have an opportunity to help somebody with something. Only 1 comment, from Gary, when I check, but followed shortly by a comment from Don. Speaking of which Gary, try this website, they have 2 pages of balikbayan services there: http://www.filampages.com/index.php?cat=128 . I saw some services in Northern California and Colorado, but I didn’t see any for Montana, of course they didn’t list all the locations they have on the Fil-Am front page. Several of the sites advertised flying balikbayan boxes. In fact one of them, Monark Worldwide, uses that for their slogan, I believe. I accidentally came across this site looking for something else. Nice timing, and the first thing I thought of was to let you know, because I was thinking of how weird the timing was.
Back to Lita and the market. When she did show up, she had bacon, bread and a couple of the new rib eyes from Monterrey’s. She also had some of the chocolate chip bread, but I don’t really like that bread unless I get my toaster. I went by to get that toaster yesterday. Gloria I looked at the 5 Star, and they do not have pop-up toasters there. They have like a toaster oven, but I have one of those. It’s not out of the box yet, but I’ve got one. I’ll look at Robinson Mall for the toaster. I want an excuse to look around the mall anyway.


Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams Jr are having The Conversation right now.
Well I’m about tired of all that spam now. I was glad before because it meant that my site was getting more attention, but now it’s getting to be too much. It’s always the same stuff. I click on “Delete Permanently” but they just keep coming back. I did get one new one today, but that doesn’t make me feel better. Guess it’s the price I have to pay to get my site noticed.
Today Titing was outside cutting a small, old tree. It was protruding out too far for him, he was scared I might run into it. It is outside where Arnel is building HIS new Store. Yeah, he’s building a little area in the other corner and he will be selling food throughout the day. Lita said he could sell until 3:00pm, then after that, it was her turn. So Titing is going to start early, he said he was going to start at 6:00am, but that seems a bit early. We’ll see. Back to the tree cutting. I was watching him, all he had was a small hand saw and it looked like it was going to take him an hour to cut that tree. In fact, he said that’s how long he actually thought it would take him. I told him we needed a chain saw, we could finish it in less than a minute. Since we don’t have one though, I helped him out a little bit. I sawed awhile. My arm got tired after only about 3 minutes though. Probably because I was going fast. But while Titing was sawing this time, I grabbed the part he was trying to saw off and starting pulling it. After only a couple of minutes we got it off, I just ripped the whole thing off. There were some termites in there, and I told Titing if we waited a couple of years, they would have done that job for us. I got a picture of it, but I didn’t do it until late, after it was dark, so it’s not a perfect picture. It’s clear enough, I guess, but it would have been better in the daylight. I didn’t even think about taking the picture, but Titing asked me if I was going to show it on here, and that triggered my mind to get the camera and take the picture. Titing told me the name of his Store, but I forget. I’ll get that for y’all later.


I’ve got the band-aid off my finger. I keep getting it wet and my finger gets all wrinkled. It’s pretty much closed up, but tonight before I go to bed, I’m going to treat it and put another band-aid on it. I’m just letting it breathe for now. It seems to be doing well.
Doug Stone says “I Meant Every Word He Said”.
No test drive for the truck today. Titing likes to be around when someone is working for him. Since Arnel was building the store, he wanted to supervise it. We will, for sure, give that truck a good test drive before we use it to go to Tambis at the end of the month. That’s about an 8-9 drive so we need to be sure, as much as possible, that it’ll be good enough to make the trip. IF IT BREAKS DOWN AGAIN, I’m going to be exercising whatever options we have left to do to get rid of it. No more excuses, no more payments. It’s ridiculous to have to put up with such nonsense. Things like that wheel falling off is putting us and innocent by-standers in danger. I didn’t even have this much trouble with my Kia Sportage in Texas, and that was the worst car I ever owned. It was also the only new one I ever bought.


There were so many mga bata bumping around out by the BBQ that Vicky had some hot grease spill on her. You should have heard Lita telling those kids to get away. Doesn’t look like it’s too serious, but the idea that it was even allowed to happen is the point. I hear her out there talking to Titing about it now.
Ramil was washing a pair of shoes earlier, he is anticipating getting a job interview soon and wants to be ready. I hope he gets the job, whatever it is. He needs to have a regular job, so Robbie doesn’t have to work so hard. He has such good potential and needs to follow through with it if he’s ever going to get anywhere.
Earth, Wind and Fire want it to be “Always and Forever”. Always and forever, like it seems the rain is around here. It rained again today. I really shouldn’t be complaining though, because when summer rolls around, we’ll get very little rain. I’ll be complaining about no rain then. In Texas I learned not to complain about the heat, because I hate cold weather. Here I don’t have to worry about cold weather, so I’m substituting the rain for it. I’ll get use to it eventually, just like everyone else around here seems to have. When we have a big sudden downpour, it doesn’t seem to affect anyone in the least. They just continue on with their normal business until it stops. Just use umbrella’s, card board, sacks, wood … whatever to keep from getting wet. Filipinos can adapt easily. That’s probably why their #1 export here is people. Yes Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) is the #1 business here. Well I guess technically it’s not ‘here’, but it’s the #1 business for the Filipino people.


“Celebrate” good times, come on.
Lita got tired of me complaining about my temporary computer chair, so you’d think I’d get a computer chair, but no. She just gave me a big pillow and put it behind me and told me to just use that. I’m still going to try to get something for this computer for Christmas and/or my birthday in January. Like I said, I want the printer #1. Now I think the chair should be #2.
We’re going to have to put down some linoleum or tiles on this floor. I figured out where all that ‘dirt’ was coming from. When I’m on the computer I always rub my feet on the floor. When I do that, the concrete or paint on the floor comes off and it just collects until I notice it, and sweep it. At least I figured that part out. So simple too. It seems it’s usually something simple, after you figure it out.
Elvis is Girl Happy right now.


Tagalog word of the day: baka (ba-ka) means beef.
The Leaf Musician
He became famous around the world for his distinct talent. The Guinness Book of World Records has recognized Filipino National Artist Levi Celerio as the only man who could play beautiful music with a leaf. Celerio appeared in “That’s Incredible” and the Mel Griffin show where he played music with a leaf. The Guinness Book of World Records said: “The only leaf player in the world is in the Philippines”. As a composer and lyricist, Celerio wrote more than 4,000 songs.
Okay I’ll blog with y’all tomorrow. As usual, I hope you enjoyed today’s post. I will be traveling to Tambis again in a few weeks, and I’ll get different pictures than I did last time, so y’all can see more of everything.
Salamat, Palaam
I just joined a few days back and browsing to get the feel of it here at the expat-blog. Thank you for sharing your experiences, enjoyed reading your adventures…will read the rest in time.
Glad to have you here. I hope to continue putting enough things in here that a lot of people will enjoy. At the end of the month, I will have a 3 day adventure, so be sure to read that. Remember, if you know anyone that might like to read this, let them know. I’ll take all the readers I can get.
Thanks again for stopping by.