Daily Report: Jungle Beauty

Above is Contestant #1.

Contestant #2, the winner.

Contestant #4.

Contestant #5, third place.

Contestant #6.

Contestant #10.

Contestant #11, second place.

Conestant #13.Not a very good day of work. You would think that complaining about my recent work performance would be the impetus to make a change, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong.

I made spaghetti again for lunch, same as yesterday. I'm like that: I'm either all about the food, or I couldn't care less. If I don't want to make the effort, or can't think of anything in particular, I'll just eat any old thing. I'll do mustard sandwiches for dinner if nobody stops me.

Epril volunteered me as a judge in a beauty pageant last month. It was way up in the hills outside of Jasaan in a village called Natubo, and driving up there, I was thinking, "Way out here? It's going to be a bunch of village girls." However, when I got there, I was really surprised by the beauty of the contestants... all girls from the region.

So, when I was asked again to be a judge, I didn't hesitate. (The pageant organizer likes me for the 1000 pisos I contribute to the show, and the panache of having a foreigner as a judge.)

This one was a bit out of Jasaan as well... further down the coastal highway about 5 or 6 miles. A small fishing village called Jampason. The beauty pageant as per usual started late... at about 9:30. I chatted with the Mayor of Jasaan for a while... who married Epril and me. One of the other two judges was a city counselor, and the third was a local guy who did something with modeling... I can't remember. There was a loud DJ, with disco lights, and a stage.

Once again, the girls were very pretty, and it was a fun show. The first part was the girls wearing "fantasy costumes" which were just bikinis all decorated up with feathers and stuff. After that was a shorts competition, which was bikini tops and shorts. Then there was a bikini competition. Then after that, the girls came back out and did their "bikini grind", which was just a sexy dance. Then awards were given out to the top scorer in each category. Then 3 finalists were chosen, and the judges chose a winner.

It seemed that one of the 3 judges (not me) had a favorite though, and was determined to see her win. Contestant #2 never even ranked in the top 5 of my scoring (except for the bikini grind, where she was quite sexy). Either the other 2 judges both favored her by a bit (which I doubt), or one of the judges was favoring her by a large margin, giving all the other girls 4 and 5 out of 10, while giving her 10 out of 10. By my math, that is the only way it could have worked out.

Anyway, yes, number 2 won. Number 11, who won last month's competition that I judged in Natubo, was second. Number 5, whom I put as a tie to win with number 11 in my final score, was third.

We left Jasaan at midnight on the mark, and got back home at 12:43. That is the fastest I can make that trip without buying a faster motorcycle: I had an empty highway and my bike at its (embarassingly slow) top speed the entire way.

Below is the video of the "bikini grind" which, along with all photos, were taken by Epril. Turn your volume down before watching: The tiny microphone on the camera mated with the big speakers of the pageant sound system, create a god-awful din. Some of the photos aren't too good. I picked one photo of each contestant, and some contestants had only one photo to choose from.