Daily Report: Waving From The Rooftops

Epril left this morning for a 36-hour trip with the expat wives to Camiguin Island, which is The Philippines' smallest province located off the coast about 90 minutes' drive north of Jasaan. I would have enjoyed going but for the facts that I had to work and that I would have been the only guy in the group. You can read here about the place. I've yet to go, but understand its volcanic hot springs and white coral beaches are lovely.

A group of little girls on the next street over, standing on their house's balcony, have discovered that they can see me sitting here in my third floor Jungle Perch, about 75 meters away. Apparently I interest them. There were about 6 of them, aged 7 to 10 I would guess, waving at me. (At first, I couldn't believe that they could even see me in here, but every time I turned my head in their direction, they would instantly renew their ludic efforts to get attention.) I waved from my desk, and their childish giggles were carried back on the breeze. Within an hour, the number of Jil Watchers had swelled to over a dozen.

There was one of those rare orange twilights tonight that I've only ever seen in Asia. I imagine it must happen when a thin flat layer of low clouds snatches the orange part of a sunset and bounces the color over the entire sky, making everyone and everything appear to be made from carrot. It's not particularly pretty... just a noteworthy 5 minutes of a rather queer prismatic trick of the light.

Ednel made a beef and vegetable soup for me tonight for dinner, which was rather good. I have her signed up for that 8-month culinary course in Cagayan De Oro (it's 60,000 pisos plus-plus), which starts next Saturday. Obviously, an 8-month culinary course isn't going to accomplish much but it is a better-focused curriculum than what Ednel was taking at the local community college with Hotel and Restaurant Management. They studied napkin folding there, believe it or not: a college course for napkin folding.

Anyway, eventually we'll send Ednel off to a proper chef school when she is a bit older. In the meantime, I imagine that this 8-month course will be a great little isagoge upon which to found her culinary training. After that, perhaps an apprenticeship. We'll see.

I watched a completely interesting show on The History Channel tonight: The history of playing cards.

After that, I read my books. I've added a second book to my reading list (along with Rutherfurd's "Sarum", which I've almost finished): "Jurgen" (online in full in Google Books... just click and start reading) by the American author James Branch Cabell, a contemporary of Mencken. It's a bit of high-brow escapist/fantasy farce... and was the subject of an obscenity case back in the 1920's.