Daily Report: A Little Slower

Today being Sunday, I only did half a day's work. Then we had lunch of bar-be-que chicken and Jil's World Famous Fried Rice. (Potatoes, carrots, ground pork, onions, garlic, Magic Sarap, turmeric, black pepper, rice, and eggs.)

The Star Satellite TV has lost HBO, Cinemax, and Star Sports. That's kind of a rip-off, since we paid 9 months in advance only 2 months ago. Star Satellite did lower everybody's monthly charge from 900 pisos per month to 650 pisos per month. I'll leave it up to you as to whether that is a good deal now. Parasat Cable is now available in Jasaan, but it's more expensive than in CDO, and it still doesn't have The History Channel... so that makes up my mind.

In the evening, Epril and I went into Cagayan De Oro. First we stopped by Ron and Eve's house. They showed us the house they had refurbished next door: They want to rent it out by the week or month. It's really quite nice, all done up in bamboo, with a view out over Macajalar Bay.

Also, we discovered that they found a very nice little security system (a motion detector attached to a light and a bell) for a very low price. Epril and I had looked for something like that before and couldn't find one. Now we know where to look.

We went to dinner at Jollibee (we already did our one fancy dinner on Friday night) and then to watch a movie. We saw "Night At The Museum 2", which had a couple of funny moments, but really was kind of lame: A large portion of the movie consisted of pointless banter between various egotistical figures in history. Hank Azaria (of Simpson's fame) was enjoyable... barely.

(I had wanted to see Star Trek, and made up my mind to go into CDO to see a movie based on seeing that particular film. However, as I have learned before (and since forgotten), movies come to The Philippines a month behind the rest of the world. So Star Trek will have to wait.)

After that it was back to Jasaan. It's a good thing that I got those extra lights put on the motorcycle: Filipinos + roads + nighttime = idiocy. First, a woman, dressed all in black, walked right out in front of me, apparently oblivious to the four bright headlights and blaring horn bearing down on her. The nice thing about being on a motorcycle is my vehicle is only 2 feet wide, and it is easy to avoid things. In a car though, I would have sent her home to Jesus.

Then (even better... or worse), as Epril and I were going across the bridge at Tagoluan, I was behind a slow truck. I looked out ahead and saw no oncoming cars, and pulled out to pass. There in my headlights is a guy, dressed all in black, on a little black motor scooter, with no lights, coming straight at me.

Fortunately, having driven in Asia now for over 6 years, I expect just that kind of thing, and I just pulled back in behind the truck with plenty of time to spare. Dummie Darko on the other hand apparently shit his pants and went into the railing on the other side. Serves him right.

Anyway, it was an otherwise uneventful and pleasant trip back home. Then it was off to bed and I read my book for a while.