Daily Report: Starting Out

I was up at 8:00 to the smell of bacon cooking. Susan is definitely defying expectations as a maid, and is making herself quite useful and keeping quite busy and generally making life pleasant for Epril and me. I had a very nice breakfast of scrambled eggs (which I taught Susan to cook to my preference yesterday), bacon, coffee (flavored with just a touch of Bailey's) and orange juice.

There was a light rain coming down as I rode to work this morning. I've rented a motorcycle from one of Mike's friends which is an absolute piece of shit... and I'm paying 200 pesos per day for the privilege. Buying my own motorcycle is definitely at the top of my list.

I got to Mike's office at 9:00 and was working by 10:00. Unfortunately I had Texas accounts in my queue, and work for the morning was rubbish. Additionally, Mike's office isn't the quietest place... mostly because of the traffic outside. He operates a "Search Engine Optimization" company called Harvest SEO, which apparently helps websites rank higher on search engines. Not sure what the people here do, but there are about 20 people sitting around at computers.

At lunch time, I went and bought some scissors and an umbrella. Then I went to Banco De Oro to deposit my landlord's (his name is Din) rent money in the bank... I'm paying 6 months at a time. My tax refund showed up in my bank account this morning, so it is 4 days after moving in that I'm paying the rent. (Nice guy, Din, allowing me to do that, eh?) Anyway, I tried to deposit the 210,000 pesos into his bank account off of my bank card, but the card was declined. Apparently the check from the IRS was still in the process of clearing.

I went back to Mike's office and did some more work... but not too much. Overall it was kind of a crap day of work. Epril and Susan had spent the day in Jassan (Epril's hometown about 45 minutes up the coast from Cagayan De Oro) and then came back at around suppertime. They bought some dumplings from a local store called Ororama, which we enjoyed for dinner.

Currently, we only have 3 channels of television to watch as we are waiting for the cable to be installed in the house. That leaves us with a choice of Filipino soap operas or Japanese cartoons (dubbed in Tagalog). The Filipino soap operas are on every weeknight from 8:00 until midnight, and range in quality from campy to crappy.

The first show on is called "Joaquin Bordado", which has some guy channeling Lou Diamond Phillips in "Young Guns" who has magical tattoos... but he mostly just walks around looking like he just got a colonoscopy. After that is a show called "Kamandag", which involves a bunch of guys wearing teddy bears on their heads and/or glitter around their eyes. I can't figure that one out, but it is at least as gay as it sounds. Finally, there is Mari Mar, which seems to involve lots of people (especially children) crying, some girl with different colored eyes and a scar, and lots and lots of bad acting. However, there is one actor who is Filipino-American and can't speak much Tagalog, so all of his lines are in English... which makes it one of the few bits I can understand. However, since that show comes on at 10:00 p.m., and I like to be in bed by then, I haven't watched it much.

I think the most annoying part of watching these soap operas though has to be the commercials. There are about 40 minutes of commercials for every hour of programming, and all of the commercials are for fortified milk for kids or skin care products. Apparently, the biggest consumer market in The Philippines is over-protective mothers with bad skin.