Living life in the Philippines

Chau's Visit

2008-06-01T04:22:00.000-07:00

Well - Chau has been in town for the last 3 weeks... and we have been having a blast!! We have done a little bit of traveling, sightseeing, shopping, etc... Every day has been an adventure... I will miss her a lot when she leaves..

Bantayan, Santa Fe

2008-04-08T04:43:00.000-07:00

Here are just a couple pictures of my recent Bantayan trip... great beaches...

Anyone in the market for a new car...?

2008-03-27T14:29:00.000-07:00

She's for sale!! ... Hit me up for a friends and family deal. - Just over 50k miles - She comes with both stock tires and those pretty 20's below....

update -

2008-03-27T14:14:00.000-07:00

Rats are now dead - thanks to my super human rat killing skills.... Anyways -I am heading about 450 miles north (1 hour plane flight) to Subic bay for this weekends adventure... Next week I will be going to another part of the Bantayan Islands that I have yet to explore..... ahhhh life is great.

It's been a little while

2008-03-18T20:59:00.001-07:00

Sorry to my family and friends for not keeping this thing up to date... I haven't had a whole lot of time with working and traveling... I have started to take advantage of my location and how many cool places I can visit for realitively cheap! Most weekends I find myself either on an airplane or a boat going to one island or another... I have been all over Cebu now, the Bantayan Islands, Bohol and started to explore Manila a little - Subic bay, Clark, downtown Manila - etc.... I spent about a week in Cambodia a few months ago and a day in Thailand. I will get all of these pictures posted ASAP -

I have finally upgraded my house too!! woo hoo! I found a great house in an awesome location at a price cheaper than my previous house - the only catch was that it wasn't furnished... Good thing furniture is somewhat cheap over here... However, I did splurge a little on a new LCD tv and sound system.... I mean I had too - all of the pirated movies out here! I am enjoying my new digs - My maid loves the place too - I gave her a decent size room and bought her a new bed - she loves moving things around and organizing things in her pinoy way - (I move things back to what makes sense) - Molly seems to really like the place too - there are a lot of bookshelves and gates she can climb on - even a few trees... The only thing I don't like are two HUGE rats that are living outside... I'm telling you - these things are at least a foot long... what sucks about it is that Molly likes them - They will come right up to her cage and she will sit there and pet them and groom them - ewww... I told her that I don't like her hanging out with animals like them but I don't think she understands... I have tried rat poison, sticky traps - throwing rocks (I hit one but he still got away...) My next move is to buy a BB gun and do some hunting - I will let you know how it goes....

I promise I will post some pics soon of everything I talked about...

Dengue Fever

2008-01-21T22:32:00.000-08:00

I hate it!!! stupid mosquitoes - I woke up about 2 weeks ago full of mosquito bites on my arm - I laughed a little and joked with my maid that I probably had dengue... I should have knocked on wood... well low and behold I ended up getting a 106 degree temperature - that lasted for 4 days and a wonderful pounding headache followed by orbital cramps in my eyes and seized up calf muscles, an awesome rash covering my WHOLE body... I was in and out of the hospital for about 4 days getting blood drawn from the only vein they could find... over and over and over again (I have a sweet green bruise to prove it..) Don't worry people, I am not going to die... I am actually getting a lot better - I think I am at about 75% health now and about 10 lbs lighter. needless to say I have bought stock in bug-on and I hunt and kill mosquitoes on a daily basis in my house.... god bless the philippines! read up some more at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengue_fever

starting off the new year

2008-01-14T19:16:00.000-08:00

Well - I have not done that great of a job on keeping this as up-to-date as I thought I would but hey... what can you expect. So 2008 has now arrived and the new year brought a lot of hard work with it - So my life has really just been work work work... and just a little bit of play. There is really not anything exciting to update on other than my recent trip to Bohol which was amazing!! I went with my buddy James and we ended up going to a very provincial area where most tourists don't go - but wow this place was amazing, truly a slice of paradise...

I spent most of my time at this beach... AMAZING

Nice little beach behind me...

Showing off my muscles...

Just lookin good - what can I say....

I was caught off guard here....

Is it just me or do I look like a cartoon here

This was my transportation for the trip...

Me being mature and acting my age..

Molly grooming her new friend meow meow

Trying to get a Christmas vibe....

2007-12-18T16:43:00.000-08:00

No - This is not baby Burger King....
saint Niño monument at Sugbu SRP center

I am realizing that people do Christmas a lot different here than in the states.... I guess the first thing that I noticed was that I started getting "Merry Christmas in advance" text messages and greetings from people starting in September. They call it the "ber" months... So any month that ends in "ber" I suppose it means that Christmas is on.... Annoying? Yes!....

In order to add a little holiday cheer in the air I set up a few Christmas activities for my employees - The first was a employee party here at the office - I had already used all my office budget on the activity for the next day so everyone pitched in and made it out to be a pretty nice spread... We had games, food and presents...

We ended up having a really good time - I received a shirt that was about 2 sizes too small but it is the thought that counts. The only thing I was disappointed with was that around 20 of my people couldn't make it to this activity but those who could make it made the most of it... I have such a good group of people working for me and being around them really puts me in a good mood.

Some of my employees at our Christmas party

Raising a finger in victory... nah... I was just with team 1

During this activity we also finished wrapping all of the remaining gifts for the Christmas Outreach program - We arranged to have a foundation meet us at a location about 30 minutes away and bring 40 needy kids. The kids they decided to bring us were from the Badjao community.

Badjao are one of the coolest indigenous tribes from the Philippines. They are a complete sea based community, living on the protected coastal reefs, everything they needed came from the sea, the reefs and mangrove.... That was back in the day though... Now a lot of these communities are migrating to other provinces to get a better standing in life... Unfortunately begging has become one of the Badjao's strategies for trying to integrate into modern societies - leaving them uneducated and behind the times...

So less talk from me now... I will let the pictures tell the rest of the story....

Location of our event SRP center

The bus arriving with the kids

rounding up the group

Most were well behaved... others threw chairs.... not really ha

I don't think many knew what McDonald's was....

...let alone the Hambuglar... wtf... look at
the disappointment on the faces... haha it was
classic. We tried to get the kids excited and were
expecting some cheers but all we got was silence.
The only thing you could hear was me laughing.

Now with "rubble rubble" gone - they had some fun..

In the end - we handed out 40 gifts - they each received a backpack - school supplies (note book, pens, pencils, rulers, crayons, scissors, glue) - toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, toys and candy... a decent haul for these kids... The smiles on their faces made it priceless and well worth the time effort and money.

All and all, a job well done - Happy kids... Happy employees... Happy Holidays.

Hello, hello :) ....

2007-12-14T17:20:00.000-08:00

Life so far... quick update

Well - Where do I begin... It has almost been 1 year since I moved here to the Philippines and a lot has happened but the whole year has gone by so fast that it seems like a blur. When I first got here I was not really culture shocked because I was just so busy with work... I did not have time to really look around and see the difference but as soon as reality hit I realized that it is a whole different world. A few of you can relate with me I suppose, especially you fellow RM's... I served my 6 month mission in Cincinatti so I avoided a similar experience... :P

One sad thing about this whole situation is that I had to leave my
girlfriend back home :( sad face.... I don't think too many of you have met here... she is my asian sensation... Chau (like "chow") - This girl is amazing! beautiful, stubborn :P, understanding (sometimes)..... Bottom line, I love her to death and we are making this long distance relationship work... Little background about her... we met a little over a year ago - and we have been dating ever since... She is 20 years old (I know I am robbing the craddle) going to the U and is probably the smartest, most amazing girl that I know - When we are together everything is perfect... I miss her way too much!

Anyways, I get a lot of people that I talk to that ask how my life is here.. what I do day to day - so here it goes...

Life is a lot slower here, Work is less stressful, money is never an issue - (it will be if the peso keeps going down!), I get treated with respect any where I go- yes, just because I am white, the weather is great!, the culture is amazing.... There are more positives than negatives about living here - It really is "living the dream" as some people put it.

My day to day life consists of the following: Tuesday-Saturday,
These are my working days, I have both a dayshift and nightshift working for me (no, it is not a sweatshop). So I will come into work anytime between midnight and 6 am and stay for at least 9 hours... I always try to spend an hour or so talking with my baby doll back in the U.S., Chau (amazing girl). Now, what I do after work depends on when I go into work because we have to consider the following factors - traffic, weather, whats open, etc... My options are: Go home and relax and play with Molly, my pet monkey - Go to the gym - go shopping at one of the million malls - go to the beach - etc... there are actually a lot of things to do here... the only bad thing about it is that there are not that many people to go do things with, I just don't have too much in common with the majority of the people here. I just recently made friends with a large black man named James - He is a trip! he is like 6'5 240, mean looking guy but this dude cracks me up... we have good times. He buzzes around the island on his little scooter and is in a local scooter gang (I think I will stick with my car here)...

Anyways, that is good enough for an update - here are a few more pics for your viewing delight! - I will try to keep this thing updated so check back every now and then...

A few random beaches - pictures I took from the boat....

It isn't much but it's my temporary home *Molly camping out on my head