I don't know who put this crazy organization together, but the idea of actually having stuff to do is a bit foreign to me. Joke lang (in case my boss is reading this)!!!
This week has seen the installation of the first of many BioSand filters along with a poster on my campus. Kids and faculty alike have been coming up to me and asking how it works and where they can get one if it really works as well as I say! Yay for small victories!
On top of building, installing and preparing to give a half-day seminar on BioSand filters, I am also working with the NGO "A Single Drop" to develop a program to bring around 700 filters to the province of Albay within about 6 months. These numbers will change, but for the sake of scale you should know that 700 filters is a CRAPLOAD!
This project will also serve to develop some kind of disaster preparedness plan for the poorer areas of Albay. This region gets hit by 20 typhoons every year with only minimal typhoon preparation or education. It seems obvious to us Americans to say things like "keep extra blankets around," or "make sure you have some clean water saved," but when you can't afford food or simply have no education, your life is lived very fatalistically. "Bahala na" is a phrase commonly used here to describe the attitude of the Philippine poor. Literally translated, it means "it is up to god," or "come what may." But I digress.
We are planning on helping rally the people to help themselves, especially when it comes to the massive amount of annual typhoon damage recieved by Bikol (not that things are regularly as bad as they were this year).
Anyhoo, things are going well here in Bikolandia; too much work to do, crazy hectic city life, fun when I have a free moment, and of course just sitting on my roof watching the stars.
End of ramblings, more serious posts when I have my serious face on.
Ingat kamo!
Friday, February 16, 2007
Thursday, February 01, 2007
News. Weather.
I haven't posted in a while. It happens. Sue me.
New Years in the Philippines sounds more like a war than a celebration (El Salvador memories). We set of fireworks and made merry.
I went to Hawaii in mid-January for 10 days and had an ABSOLUTE BLAST! It was just me and my parents, but we managed not to kill each other for 2 weeks... We all learned to windsurf and went hiking. Hawaii seems like what the Philippines COULD be if there was more money available and they kept everything really clean (oh yeah, and if they served cheese and guacamole on command). Pictures are coming soon, but it was an amazing trip to a beautiful tropical paradise.
I HAVE WORK!!! Finally, after 9 months here in the Philippines, work has begun to pick up. I am currently preparing to train a number of people at my university how to construct BioSand filters to be sold in the surrounding area. The BioSand filter, for those who don't know and are too lazy to read A Single Drop, to develop this project. They want me at the front of this project helping develop trainings to clean the water for the whole freakin' province! When things go well, they really go well here.
I have had a great deal of help in my projects from the people at Hands-On Disaster Relief who have been essential in assisting me make my first few demonstration filters. It is also work checking out their website; they have basically set up shop here in the nearby municipality of St. Domingo and have been working 'round the clock to help this place recover from its disastrous state. They operate in a really organic and wonderful way: They post on volunteer and travel websites about what projects they have and how many volunteers they need, and anyone in the area (aka. South-East Asia) can contact them and stop in for a few weeks work. They provide food and a roof over their heads, all you have to do is get there. Right now they are making tarps for peoples' roofs and building new boats for fisherman through donations from the US.
Anyways, that is the news and the weather. More on BioSand as it takes off, and it is going to REALLY TAKE OFF!
Ciao
New Years in the Philippines sounds more like a war than a celebration (El Salvador memories). We set of fireworks and made merry.
I went to Hawaii in mid-January for 10 days and had an ABSOLUTE BLAST! It was just me and my parents, but we managed not to kill each other for 2 weeks... We all learned to windsurf and went hiking. Hawaii seems like what the Philippines COULD be if there was more money available and they kept everything really clean (oh yeah, and if they served cheese and guacamole on command). Pictures are coming soon, but it was an amazing trip to a beautiful tropical paradise.
I HAVE WORK!!! Finally, after 9 months here in the Philippines, work has begun to pick up. I am currently preparing to train a number of people at my university how to construct BioSand filters to be sold in the surrounding area. The BioSand filter, for those who don't know and are too lazy to read A Single Drop, to develop this project. They want me at the front of this project helping develop trainings to clean the water for the whole freakin' province! When things go well, they really go well here.
I have had a great deal of help in my projects from the people at Hands-On Disaster Relief who have been essential in assisting me make my first few demonstration filters. It is also work checking out their website; they have basically set up shop here in the nearby municipality of St. Domingo and have been working 'round the clock to help this place recover from its disastrous state. They operate in a really organic and wonderful way: They post on volunteer and travel websites about what projects they have and how many volunteers they need, and anyone in the area (aka. South-East Asia) can contact them and stop in for a few weeks work. They provide food and a roof over their heads, all you have to do is get there. Right now they are making tarps for peoples' roofs and building new boats for fisherman through donations from the US.
Anyways, that is the news and the weather. More on BioSand as it takes off, and it is going to REALLY TAKE OFF!
Ciao
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
New Typhoon Pictures
New Typhoon pictures have been posted, by popular demand:
CNN article written by a fellow volunteer about a landslide zone near my office.
My Webshots Account
New album of Typhoon pictures
Other articles and pictures pending publishing.
New notes:
As the relief operations in Albay get organized and efficient, I have begun implementing the BioSand water filter project that I have talked about with some of you loyal friends/family/readers. I have recieved word from a number of people who feel morally obligated, or at least excited, to help financially in some way. The BioSand water filter project needs funding as well as some subsidies so that some of the poorer folks here can buy one. In essence, it is a filter that costs about $24 to buy and will provide up to 220 liters of clean drinking water per day for longer than you will live. It is a great project in need of funding. If you feel like you want to help with this, then I encourage you to contact me. Please don't feel obligated to give, but understand that if you do, this money will go to a good project and not to line the pockets of a local opportunist.
Side note: Although some of you may be encouraged to give goods instead of money, understand that the shipping costs and time will make it much more worth it to merely wire money this direction. Before you even think about sending anything, talk to me; I will provide any transparency in project execution that you might require so that you know I am not a lying sack of monkey poo.
CNN article written by a fellow volunteer about a landslide zone near my office.
My Webshots Account
New album of Typhoon pictures
Other articles and pictures pending publishing.
New notes:
As the relief operations in Albay get organized and efficient, I have begun implementing the BioSand water filter project that I have talked about with some of you loyal friends/family/readers. I have recieved word from a number of people who feel morally obligated, or at least excited, to help financially in some way. The BioSand water filter project needs funding as well as some subsidies so that some of the poorer folks here can buy one. In essence, it is a filter that costs about $24 to buy and will provide up to 220 liters of clean drinking water per day for longer than you will live. It is a great project in need of funding. If you feel like you want to help with this, then I encourage you to contact me. Please don't feel obligated to give, but understand that if you do, this money will go to a good project and not to line the pockets of a local opportunist.
Side note: Although some of you may be encouraged to give goods instead of money, understand that the shipping costs and time will make it much more worth it to merely wire money this direction. Before you even think about sending anything, talk to me; I will provide any transparency in project execution that you might require so that you know I am not a lying sack of monkey poo.
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Ouch!
Long blog, cliff notes:
-Typhoon happens to city.
-Typhoon happens to Page.
-Page is scared.
-Page is okay.
-All other volunteers are just as okay as Page.
-PICTURES ARE HERE
-.....
-Profit
As many of you now know, through my Mom's emails and the large international news coverage, Legazpi City was just hit by the biggest typhoon in more than 30 years.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Philippine_typhoon_toll_may_hit_1,000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Pacific_typhoon_season
Wiki's stories cover what anyone who is not a Bikolano saw, I am here to provide the front-line details about this massive disaster.
November 29th:
Went about my daily life; left work a little early after the school shut down the power, knowing that the typhoon was on its way. I didn't think much of this round of bad weather since the last typhoon, Milenyo, was reported to be the worst in 20 years. I figured, stupidly, that there really wasn't that much cause for alarm. Legazpi City had a signal 3 (out of a possible 5) and I was content to go to bed and not to work in the morning. The farthest extremities of the typhoon had begun to reach town and rain intermittently. I went to Julia's (another volunteer who lives in town) to camp out the storm with a friendly face. We cooked dinner and bought a coupla beers to pass the evening away.
November 30th:
7 AM: The last storm warning text message I would recieve arrived and said that this one was gonna be a doozy, specifically a signal 4. In the Philippines, typhoon strength is categorized by area, not by storm. It is said that a storm is of a certain signal in your area depending on the wave height and wind speed where you are specifically. Personally I think this system is decieving, people assume that the storm is going to stay one signal in their area and not get any worse, when that is the opposite of what is likely to happen. Typhoon Durian (appropriately named after the smelly fruit) was a signal 4 which, for a Filipino typhoon, translates to winds between 131 and 155 mph and 13 to 18 foot waves.
But enough science, all that is available on Wiki. Wiki does not go into what happens when you are poor, have a poorly constructed house, and then things are leveled by a giant tropical pain-machine.
8 AM: Still lying in bed. I like bed. Bed is warm. Bed doesn't have rain in it...yet.
9 AM: See 8 AM.
10 AM: The wind is beginning to pick up, but I am still not worried. Again, see 8 AM.
11 AM: It is hard to lay in bed comfortably when loose pieces of metal sheeting are being slapped against the roof by the wind. I get up. There is no more cell signal.
12 PM: The storm has been raging for a while and Julia and I point out the growing stream in the road outside her apartment. We laugh about how lucky we are that it is so small and that we are elevated above the road.
12:30 PM: Things really start to suck.
12:31 PM: The roof is getting louder and louder. The rain is now seeping in through the cracks in the roof and is raining in the dining room. We move all important stuff to the bedroom and hide it in Julia's dresser. The rain is now flying in through every gap or crack in the house. Some buckets are put down to catch the water as it falls.
12:33 PM: The first bucket fills.
12:34-1:34 PM: This hour was scary. Looking out into the street, the floodwaters rise from nothing to 4 feet in the road. 4 feet of water outside translates to 3 feet inside. We are standing on stools inside the apartment and watch as they, and then our feet on top of them, are submerged. A casual glance at the bathroom reveals that the floodwaters have overtopped the toilet. We are now standing in a mix of floodwater and raw sewage. Ew.
We look out the window at the front of Julia's place and see a jeep go floating by and decide that things are maybe a little TOO hectic to stick around here much longer. I contact the neighbors, who live in a 2 story concrete house and happen to be Julia's landlady's cousins, by climbing up to their balcony above the raging torrent that was once a street. In order to get Julia's 80-year-old landlady to that house, we have to wade through waist-deep water. The landlady is old, and waist-deep for me means neck-deep for her. If we had a camera out, this would have made the headlines of some major newspaper; the big, white american carrying the small, frail, old woman to safety over raging floodwaters. Oh well.
1:35 PM: I see that bucket go floating by, rendered useless by floodwaters
Afternoon/Evening: Once the floodwaters had risen to waist deep, adrenaline took over my brain and made the rest of the day a blur. We escaped from the storm to a large concrete house and were lucky enough to be fed and given a bed by the landlady's cousins. I pass out and have dreams about things besides large tropical weather patterns.
December 1st: In the morning, we look at Julia's place and try to do some basic cleanup. Basic turned into shoveling and scrubbing all of the mud from her floor. I return to my house to find broken glass and wet books, but nothing too intense. There is no power, no information, no cell signal and no running water. Julia and I clean all day long, sunup to sundown.
December 2nd: More of the same, but with an exciting twist. Around noon, when I am carrying buckets of water from the pump to the house for laundry, a man darts by me on his bike, almost running me over. At home, I would have just screamed at him, but this was unusual for the Philippines; people are generally courteous here. I look where he came from and see groups of other people running up the hills and, in general, going places in a hurry. When someone finally stopped to answer my inquiries, all he said was "TSUNAMI!!!!!!" and kept running. I looked down the road where everyone was running from and I felt what can only be described as pure terror. My mind froze and my body panicked. I told Julia and, within 30 seconds, we had both grabbed the 2 or 3 items we deemed essential and were on our bikes ready to ride. At that moment, the barangay captain came out and said it was just a hoax.
I found out later that 24 people were hospitalized and 3 killed due to the panic caused by this scare. I was more scared for my life in those 30 seconds than at any point during the previous day's typhoon.
Since then: I have been helping with any relief effort I can find. According to local authorities, 7-10 students at Aquinas University were killed when the floodwaters entered their boarding house. My university looks like it got hit by a giant mud-bomb. The morgues are filled with bodies. Barangay Padang (CNN web story pending) was completely wiped out by a volcanic landslide. Luckily for Peace Corps, myself and all the other volunteers (we are all safe and healthy) have been brought together for our language learning camp. We have been working half days and assisting any local relief efforts available the rest of the time. We play with the kids, we carry sacks of rice, we do whatever we can. This will probably continue for me once the other volunteers leave for their respective sites.
If you finished reading all this, I thank you for caring. If you skipped to this part from the beginning, then you are a bad, bad person.
-Typhoon happens to city.
-Typhoon happens to Page.
-Page is scared.
-Page is okay.
-All other volunteers are just as okay as Page.
-PICTURES ARE HERE
-.....
-Profit
As many of you now know, through my Mom's emails and the large international news coverage, Legazpi City was just hit by the biggest typhoon in more than 30 years.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Philippine_typhoon_toll_may_hit_1,000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Pacific_typhoon_season
Wiki's stories cover what anyone who is not a Bikolano saw, I am here to provide the front-line details about this massive disaster.
November 29th:
Went about my daily life; left work a little early after the school shut down the power, knowing that the typhoon was on its way. I didn't think much of this round of bad weather since the last typhoon, Milenyo, was reported to be the worst in 20 years. I figured, stupidly, that there really wasn't that much cause for alarm. Legazpi City had a signal 3 (out of a possible 5) and I was content to go to bed and not to work in the morning. The farthest extremities of the typhoon had begun to reach town and rain intermittently. I went to Julia's (another volunteer who lives in town) to camp out the storm with a friendly face. We cooked dinner and bought a coupla beers to pass the evening away.
November 30th:
7 AM: The last storm warning text message I would recieve arrived and said that this one was gonna be a doozy, specifically a signal 4. In the Philippines, typhoon strength is categorized by area, not by storm. It is said that a storm is of a certain signal in your area depending on the wave height and wind speed where you are specifically. Personally I think this system is decieving, people assume that the storm is going to stay one signal in their area and not get any worse, when that is the opposite of what is likely to happen. Typhoon Durian (appropriately named after the smelly fruit) was a signal 4 which, for a Filipino typhoon, translates to winds between 131 and 155 mph and 13 to 18 foot waves.
But enough science, all that is available on Wiki. Wiki does not go into what happens when you are poor, have a poorly constructed house, and then things are leveled by a giant tropical pain-machine.
8 AM: Still lying in bed. I like bed. Bed is warm. Bed doesn't have rain in it...yet.
9 AM: See 8 AM.
10 AM: The wind is beginning to pick up, but I am still not worried. Again, see 8 AM.
11 AM: It is hard to lay in bed comfortably when loose pieces of metal sheeting are being slapped against the roof by the wind. I get up. There is no more cell signal.
12 PM: The storm has been raging for a while and Julia and I point out the growing stream in the road outside her apartment. We laugh about how lucky we are that it is so small and that we are elevated above the road.
12:30 PM: Things really start to suck.
12:31 PM: The roof is getting louder and louder. The rain is now seeping in through the cracks in the roof and is raining in the dining room. We move all important stuff to the bedroom and hide it in Julia's dresser. The rain is now flying in through every gap or crack in the house. Some buckets are put down to catch the water as it falls.
12:33 PM: The first bucket fills.
12:34-1:34 PM: This hour was scary. Looking out into the street, the floodwaters rise from nothing to 4 feet in the road. 4 feet of water outside translates to 3 feet inside. We are standing on stools inside the apartment and watch as they, and then our feet on top of them, are submerged. A casual glance at the bathroom reveals that the floodwaters have overtopped the toilet. We are now standing in a mix of floodwater and raw sewage. Ew.
We look out the window at the front of Julia's place and see a jeep go floating by and decide that things are maybe a little TOO hectic to stick around here much longer. I contact the neighbors, who live in a 2 story concrete house and happen to be Julia's landlady's cousins, by climbing up to their balcony above the raging torrent that was once a street. In order to get Julia's 80-year-old landlady to that house, we have to wade through waist-deep water. The landlady is old, and waist-deep for me means neck-deep for her. If we had a camera out, this would have made the headlines of some major newspaper; the big, white american carrying the small, frail, old woman to safety over raging floodwaters. Oh well.
1:35 PM: I see that bucket go floating by, rendered useless by floodwaters
Afternoon/Evening: Once the floodwaters had risen to waist deep, adrenaline took over my brain and made the rest of the day a blur. We escaped from the storm to a large concrete house and were lucky enough to be fed and given a bed by the landlady's cousins. I pass out and have dreams about things besides large tropical weather patterns.
December 1st: In the morning, we look at Julia's place and try to do some basic cleanup. Basic turned into shoveling and scrubbing all of the mud from her floor. I return to my house to find broken glass and wet books, but nothing too intense. There is no power, no information, no cell signal and no running water. Julia and I clean all day long, sunup to sundown.
December 2nd: More of the same, but with an exciting twist. Around noon, when I am carrying buckets of water from the pump to the house for laundry, a man darts by me on his bike, almost running me over. At home, I would have just screamed at him, but this was unusual for the Philippines; people are generally courteous here. I look where he came from and see groups of other people running up the hills and, in general, going places in a hurry. When someone finally stopped to answer my inquiries, all he said was "TSUNAMI!!!!!!" and kept running. I looked down the road where everyone was running from and I felt what can only be described as pure terror. My mind froze and my body panicked. I told Julia and, within 30 seconds, we had both grabbed the 2 or 3 items we deemed essential and were on our bikes ready to ride. At that moment, the barangay captain came out and said it was just a hoax.
I found out later that 24 people were hospitalized and 3 killed due to the panic caused by this scare. I was more scared for my life in those 30 seconds than at any point during the previous day's typhoon.
Since then: I have been helping with any relief effort I can find. According to local authorities, 7-10 students at Aquinas University were killed when the floodwaters entered their boarding house. My university looks like it got hit by a giant mud-bomb. The morgues are filled with bodies. Barangay Padang (CNN web story pending) was completely wiped out by a volcanic landslide. Luckily for Peace Corps, myself and all the other volunteers (we are all safe and healthy) have been brought together for our language learning camp. We have been working half days and assisting any local relief efforts available the rest of the time. We play with the kids, we carry sacks of rice, we do whatever we can. This will probably continue for me once the other volunteers leave for their respective sites.
If you finished reading all this, I thank you for caring. If you skipped to this part from the beginning, then you are a bad, bad person.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Things that happen where you are not
Greetings, loyal readers!! Hello to anyone who comes occasionally! Goodbye to anyone who is not here.
Over the last few weeks, I have actually had a ton of REAL WORK to do (scary, isn't it) so I haven't been much of a blog updator. There are designs and proposals and meetings, OH MY! Hopefully at least one of these irons will come out of the fire and bear fruit down the right track to the light at the end of the tunnel of love (too many metaphors?).
Honestly, I think I would put you all to sleep if I started talking about the proposals I have been writing. Instead, I thought I would talk about a few things that really give me a warm, squishy feeling inside. First, imagine that you just had a tray of fresh brownies dumped down the front of your pants. Got it? Let us begin:
- Geckos; instead of scary, evil looking spiders that may or may not kill you (USA) we have lizards very similar to the Anoles that I had in a terrarium in elementary school. Those died for lack of food. The ones here eat every gosh darn mosquito in the place. I love it. It is also incredibly cool to watch them run at full tilt along the ceiling. One would think that they would fall or simply forget that they were upside down and fail to plant that foot before lifting the other one, but no. They are probably the best good luck charm I have found here in this crazy tropical pair-o-dice.
Public Transportation; Let's face it, if you live in the good ole US of Oil and are trying to "live a normal life" without a car, you will be met by strong social, economical and temporal barriers. What I mean is that every aspect of American (specifically Sub-Urban and Rural) life is entirely governed by the assumption that everyone there is comfortable buying, owning, using and maintaining a motor vehicle of some sort. Bus schedules and many peoples' varied workdays and need for daily efficiency make public transportation a joke. Added to this is the food procurement process which, in "America," has been totally centralized to the point where mom and pop shops no longer exist and everything is run through freeways and parking lots and efficient, digitally managed lines. Okay, okay, I said these things would be positive; how are those brownies doing?
In the Philippines, what happens when you need to travel somewhere beyond convenient walking distance (and you don't want to use your bike for one reason or another)? You walk to the road, look at the column of jeeps headed your way, flag one down and hop on for the ride. Even public transportation in the US has to be scheduled and managed to remain thus (ever been yelled at by a bus driver who couldn't wait the extra two seconds for you two get on so that he could keep on his second-to-second schedule?. In the Phils, you walk to the road where you know you can find the route you want and within a minute, usually less, you have your reasonably priced ride and most likely some really bad music and mid-80's posters of Tom Cruise to go with it. There are a lot of reasons that something like this would not work in the US; I will not delve into all of those now, suffice to say that people are stupid and demand that any personal injury liability be put on someone else's shoulders insead of their own dumb-ass (McDonald's Coffee).
If you don't want a jeep and need to go a shorter distance, it is likely that a motorcycle-with-sidecar (tricycle) can take you there with a smile and a small shrine to Mr. J. C. saying something to the effect of "you had better pray that we don't crash, I need both my hands on the wheel right now!" It is also a brownie-esqe feeling when I see that, in a land devoid of phonebooth/volkswagen stuffing contests, they have managed to cram 13 Filipinos and all of their market purchases onto a 250cc tricycle. Good times.
- My third and final warm and fuzzy award goes to any person who I have seen on the street and has smiled back with nothing to lose or gain from me. Walk down the street here. Look someone in the eye, smile and raise your eyebrows a bit to say "How YOU doin'?" and they will respond in kind (though sometimes with less teeth). The kids run up to you and want to touch your hands and know your name. The men want you to get drunk with them at 8:30 in the morning. I have resisted most temptations so far. Everyone wants to know who you are, where you are from and "Wont you come meet my daughter? She is 23, just like you! She wants to go to the US when she finishes her degree!"
On the bad days, the constant attention feels more like an icepick to the nostrils than brownies in the pants, but that is the way Peace Corps goes. Due to the long, colorful, shared history of the US and the Phils, Americans are like royalty here. Everyone in my neighborhood knows my name, where I live, what I eat for breakfast on each day of the week, how many times I have gone biking this week and when is the best time to ask me to join them for a cold one or five (answer, after 12:01 PM).
Warm and fuzzies having been completed, you may now eat your tray of brownies.
Over the last few weeks, I have actually had a ton of REAL WORK to do (scary, isn't it) so I haven't been much of a blog updator. There are designs and proposals and meetings, OH MY! Hopefully at least one of these irons will come out of the fire and bear fruit down the right track to the light at the end of the tunnel of love (too many metaphors?).
Honestly, I think I would put you all to sleep if I started talking about the proposals I have been writing. Instead, I thought I would talk about a few things that really give me a warm, squishy feeling inside. First, imagine that you just had a tray of fresh brownies dumped down the front of your pants. Got it? Let us begin:
- Geckos; instead of scary, evil looking spiders that may or may not kill you (USA) we have lizards very similar to the Anoles that I had in a terrarium in elementary school. Those died for lack of food. The ones here eat every gosh darn mosquito in the place. I love it. It is also incredibly cool to watch them run at full tilt along the ceiling. One would think that they would fall or simply forget that they were upside down and fail to plant that foot before lifting the other one, but no. They are probably the best good luck charm I have found here in this crazy tropical pair-o-dice.
Public Transportation; Let's face it, if you live in the good ole US of Oil and are trying to "live a normal life" without a car, you will be met by strong social, economical and temporal barriers. What I mean is that every aspect of American (specifically Sub-Urban and Rural) life is entirely governed by the assumption that everyone there is comfortable buying, owning, using and maintaining a motor vehicle of some sort. Bus schedules and many peoples' varied workdays and need for daily efficiency make public transportation a joke. Added to this is the food procurement process which, in "America," has been totally centralized to the point where mom and pop shops no longer exist and everything is run through freeways and parking lots and efficient, digitally managed lines. Okay, okay, I said these things would be positive; how are those brownies doing?
In the Philippines, what happens when you need to travel somewhere beyond convenient walking distance (and you don't want to use your bike for one reason or another)? You walk to the road, look at the column of jeeps headed your way, flag one down and hop on for the ride. Even public transportation in the US has to be scheduled and managed to remain thus (ever been yelled at by a bus driver who couldn't wait the extra two seconds for you two get on so that he could keep on his second-to-second schedule?. In the Phils, you walk to the road where you know you can find the route you want and within a minute, usually less, you have your reasonably priced ride and most likely some really bad music and mid-80's posters of Tom Cruise to go with it. There are a lot of reasons that something like this would not work in the US; I will not delve into all of those now, suffice to say that people are stupid and demand that any personal injury liability be put on someone else's shoulders insead of their own dumb-ass (McDonald's Coffee).
If you don't want a jeep and need to go a shorter distance, it is likely that a motorcycle-with-sidecar (tricycle) can take you there with a smile and a small shrine to Mr. J. C. saying something to the effect of "you had better pray that we don't crash, I need both my hands on the wheel right now!" It is also a brownie-esqe feeling when I see that, in a land devoid of phonebooth/volkswagen stuffing contests, they have managed to cram 13 Filipinos and all of their market purchases onto a 250cc tricycle. Good times.
- My third and final warm and fuzzy award goes to any person who I have seen on the street and has smiled back with nothing to lose or gain from me. Walk down the street here. Look someone in the eye, smile and raise your eyebrows a bit to say "How YOU doin'?" and they will respond in kind (though sometimes with less teeth). The kids run up to you and want to touch your hands and know your name. The men want you to get drunk with them at 8:30 in the morning. I have resisted most temptations so far. Everyone wants to know who you are, where you are from and "Wont you come meet my daughter? She is 23, just like you! She wants to go to the US when she finishes her degree!"
On the bad days, the constant attention feels more like an icepick to the nostrils than brownies in the pants, but that is the way Peace Corps goes. Due to the long, colorful, shared history of the US and the Phils, Americans are like royalty here. Everyone in my neighborhood knows my name, where I live, what I eat for breakfast on each day of the week, how many times I have gone biking this week and when is the best time to ask me to join them for a cold one or five (answer, after 12:01 PM).
Warm and fuzzies having been completed, you may now eat your tray of brownies.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Skype is cooooooool....
I know I shouldn't be as impressed with technology because I surround myself with it on a regular basis, but SKYPE IS AWESOME!!! I am not only calling my parents, hands-free I might add, from the other side of the world, I am also blogging about it and referencing pictures mid-conversation.
If you are reading this and you have a computer and would like to talk to me, consider getting skype and we can do some free person-to-person calling.
The age of going to the 7-11 (or 6-12, depending on where you live), looking up the international rates on phone cards and then trying to hold a decent conversation through 8 second delay is now at an end. I am talking with both of my parents on two different computers and chatting and blogging and surfing and scratching my ass all at the very same time. If I wanted to, I could have a burrito and make it all really freakin' crazy.
Get Skype. Call me. We will talk about things and stuff.
If you are reading this and you have a computer and would like to talk to me, consider getting skype and we can do some free person-to-person calling.
The age of going to the 7-11 (or 6-12, depending on where you live), looking up the international rates on phone cards and then trying to hold a decent conversation through 8 second delay is now at an end. I am talking with both of my parents on two different computers and chatting and blogging and surfing and scratching my ass all at the very same time. If I wanted to, I could have a burrito and make it all really freakin' crazy.
Get Skype. Call me. We will talk about things and stuff.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
New pictures!!!
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