Daily Report: Storm Clouds

Another good day of work. I may never get back to my pre-upheaval income at this job (the realization of that fact is why I moved from my $750 per month house to my $200 per month house) but I should be able to get back to... ohhh... about where I started 6 years ago. My original goal upon starting medical transcription was to do 1,350 lines per day, 7 days per week... or 20,000 lines per pay period. (Lately, I have been in the 8,000 to 9,000 line range per pay period, down from the 30,000 lines I used to do... it was that bad.) Like I said before, at least I'm more optimistic about my job security than the average American right now.

We had rain yesterday for the first time since moving in, arriving right at sunset. From the jungle perch, I got to see the setting sun hit upwards upon the rain clouds to create that cool gray-orange combination.

Mechanic Jun says my motorcycle now won't start, and he needs to bring the Motorstar mechanic (Jun's just a "Motorstar customizer" or something) to fix it. I'm guessing that the bike is now well-and-truly fucked up. I'm not surprised; I was even expecting it. The bike was a p.o.s. to begin with, otherwise I wouldn't have sent it off to be customized and "upgraded" with only 2,000 kilometers on it.

I don't blame Jun. He had never worked on this particular model of Motorstar before — although he knows other Motorstar motorcycles inside and out. Unfortunately for Jun, he is only realizing now that he is like the local Toyota hot-rodder agreeing to mess around with a Prius or something. Fortunately for me, I paid in advance on terms that were very agreeable to Jun... agreeable at first blush, when my motorcycle was sitting in his garage, having just arrived, not yet screwed up.

Yes... I'm behind the times again, but here goes: I saw the Skype video phone yesterday for the first time, as Epril chatted on her laptop with Honey Maeh in Viet Nam. Quite good overall: I'd say about 6 to 10 frames per second at 400 x 300 pixel resolution, with what seemed like a quarter-second lag. Not bad for a completely-free international video phone call. I remember my first extended stay overseas in 1986, when I was 17, in Brazil. What a difference the internet has made to living overseas. I'm still astounded sometimes.

I knew this would be the case, but I didn't think it would bother me: I've had lechon manok (rotisserie chicken) for about half of my meals since moving out to the jungle. It's starting to bother me. I'm going to have to start sending Susan out to the local restaurants to get some take out food more often, damn the fact that it is $3 per meal instead of $1 per meal. It's either that, or I'm going to have to get used to eating the pungent little 8-inch fishes that are the primary diet of folks out here.

Anyway, I played some Playstation 3 (Grand Turismo Prologue) for an hour, then climbed into bed and read my book on Filipino history. (I'm almost done with that... I have to get something else to read this weekend.) And finally going to sleep at my usual early time.