Daily Report: Just The Two Of Us

I've sent Maid Susan and Kid Sister Ednil back home to Jasaan. It actually wasn't for financial reasons: I'm still having Susan stop by once a week to clean and do laundry and stuff for the same salary as before. Instead, I just wanted to be alone with Epril more. I wanted an emptier house. I didn't want to have to take people other than Epril into consideration when planning my day.

I've had a maid in the house for years now. I got one when I moved into that monstrous house in Pattaya. There, Maid Go had her own private apartments, and I really had the place to myself. Maid Go was simply too good to let go when I moved out of the big place and into the small place. In the small house, Go spent most of her spare time in her bedroom ironing, but it still was a little too crowded. Here in Cagayan De Oro, I have a house that is roughly the same size as the last small house in Pattaya, but now I had 2 maids, and they spent all of their spare time in the living room.

So, now it is just Epril and me. I'm much happier. Epril is better off with the change too. She is like me in that she enjoys puttering about, cleaning here, rearranging there, organinzing and straightening. She's taken to turning off the television and doing puzzle books instead of watching Wowowee with her sisters. And, of course, us newlyweds having the house to ourselves...

Epril and I went to the Japanese Restaurant on the hill for lunch. Then, after an evening at Spooks hanging out with the local expats, we actually went to dinner at another Japanese Restaurant in downtown that I didn't previously know about. (It was raining tonight, so we took a taxi down into town, and heard a radio advertisement for the restaurant on the way to Spooks, so made a last-minute decision to have dinner there.)

Unfortunately, when I got the bill, I noticed that the prices we were charged on all of the items we ate were 4 or 5 pisos higher than what was listed on the menu. Too bad: I was going to write nice things about them here; but now, fuck them and the 20 pisos they scammed me for. If you live in Cagayan De Oro and want Japanese food, don't eat at the Japanese restaurant near the Divisoria. Instead, go up on the hill to the new place (I'll put the name in later, when I remember to write it down).

After dinner, Epril and I walked to Quinze Amigos, and we hung out with the Turners. Mike Turner is having fun researching all of the different people with the name "Michael Turner". He started this project after discovering that there was a convicted felon named Michael Alan Turner (same middle name even) from the same town that he himself grew up in, and that Expat Mike here in Cagayan was accused of being Convict Mike when he was testifying in a court case here in town.

Anyway, there is a famous scientist, a cartoonist, two felons, a profesional football player, and two politicians who share Mike's name. (I joked with him that it must suck being the most boring "Mike Turner" of them all.) Read Michael's blog to find out about all the different Michael Turners out there.

After that, it was a taxi back home, and straight to bed. We were going to go with the Turners to play some pool, but by the time we got done chatting, it was 10:30 at night. Way past our bedtime these days.