Daily Report: Cheap Drinking

I spent my first morning working from home, instead of downtown at Mike's office. I can sit at my desk and look across the valley while I type. It's lovely.

My home office is still in the preliminary stages: I need to buy a new personal computer to go with my work computer (for my graphics editing, and to play games, mostly), and I need to buy Epril a laptop. I need to buy new monitors too. (I'm using a loaner computer monitor from Mike for the time being... thanks again bud, if you're reading.)

For lunch, Susan cooked chicken afritada, which was chicken simmered with vegetables in a sweet tomato sauce. Quite nice.


Cagayan De Oro has two really
nice shopping malls, three
older shopping malls, and a
central business district that
contains hundreds of small
stores. Other than food and
drink, there really is a fine
retail scene for well-off
shoppers in Cagayan De Oro.After lunch, Epril and I went to the SM mall (about one mile from my house) to buy some odds and ends. We started off at the liquor section of the SM grocery store, where I discovered that hard alcohol in The Philippines is much cheaper than in Thailand. A bottle of Absolut Citron was 810 pesos ($19.75) here, whereas in Thailand it would cost 930 pesos; a bottle of Kahlua here was 634 pesos ($15.50), whereas in Thailand it would cost about 1,000 pesos; and a large bottle of Baileys Irish Cream here was 668 pesos ($16.25), whereas in Thailand it would cost about 1,350 pesos. I also bought a bottle of some extra-cheap tequila for 150 pesos so that I could try to make some strawberry margaritas tonight.

After the liquor store, it was off to Ace Hardware where I bought some more extension cords and various other electrical cord/plug supplies. I also bought some bug "chalk" to chase away the ants I've occasionally seen wandering around the house.

By the way, I really enjoy shopping in Cagayan De Oro much more than Pattaya. The salespeople here are much more helpful. I believe that any improvement I see though is primarily because of the immensely better English skills of the Filipinos. Thai people who can't speak English as well may or may not try to be helpful, but their likelihood of fulfilling your request or meeting your expectations is simply lower. (Still though: I do think that Filipino salespeople in Cagayan are more cheerful and friendly and focused on customers than their Thai counterparts in Pattaya.)


Epril took this photo of the village
across the river at the bottom of the
hill across from our house. Amazing
that this scene is only a mile away from
a bustling, congested city of 500,000.
Even more amazing is that the entire
3-mile valley in front of me looks pretty
much the same along its whole length.In the afternoon, I got the television set up in the master bedroom, and set up the home theater so that it would play TV broadcast audio through the surround sound speakers. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon working. (Not a great day... but I'm getting warmed up still.)

In the evening, Epril and Susan went and bought some chicken, rice, and gravy from the fast food place at SM called "Greenwich"... 51 pesos (41 baht, $1.25) per serving... very good.

I also tried to make strawberry margaritas. I found a little bodega in the center of Cagayan which sells frozen strawberries that have already been chopped and processed and are sitting in their juices, which are pretty good. But the margaritas I made tonight were not very good. Too much ice, I suspect. Heh: The worst thing about such a failure is that I have to drink not-quite-perfect strawberry margaritas for several nights in a row. Bummer, eh?

We watched the season one finale of Battlestar Galactica on TV, and then 4 episodes of Heroes before going to bed. It's funny, with this monstrous television, when Epril and I walked by the electronics store today at the mall, all of the 40-inch and 50-inch televisions just seemed so small suddenly... and with the little 30-inch televisions, we felt like we couldn't even see the picture. It's amazing how such a monstrous TV can change your perceptions.

Anyway, off to bed before midnight. The stars were out tonight over the Cagayan river valley... which is something I hadn't seen here before in the summer season.