Surprising South Korea Stats

I was debating with a long-time reader on the sensibility of South Korea attacking North Korea and putting an end to the Korean War now — rather than later — because of various strategic benefits I feel to exist.

However, one thing we both agreed on was that such a South-Korean-initiated fight would not happen: South Koreans don't have the stomach for a hot war.

Wrong.

45 percent of South Koreans support a stern response to the artillery attack "even if it would escalate arms clash with North Korea," according to The Korea Times. ... But If there is another attack, these responses suggests around three in four South Koreans would support military response.

In this other article, a post-attack analysis proves that North Korea may be even weaker and inept than analysts originally thought:

South Korea's military concludes the attack was meticulously planned, although much more damage would have been caused if the North's equipment wasn't so old and faulty. A high-ranking South Korean military official said that North Korea used thermobaric bombs, or "fuel-air bombs," to wreak havoc on Yeonpyeong Island, the first time it has done so.

The South Korean military is examining around twenty North Korean shells that failed to explode and were found lodged in concrete walls and in tree branches. Eighty of the 170 shells fired managed to land on the island. Roughly 90 rounds fell into the sea.

The number of duds is expected to increase, as troops are still combing the island for shells. South Korean authorities believe the duds and the shells that failed to reach the island were the result of North Korea's aged equipment or flawed gunpowder and detonators.

Think about that: 170 shells fired on a completely unsuspecting population with what was termed "meticulous planning": almost two thirds of those fired shells failed to work properly, and those that did work caused only 4 deaths? Do you think North Korea used such unreliable, ineffective, inaccurate weaponry on purpose? I don't. I think that's the best they have. It is what I've suspected for a while... and again, is the reason why South Korea should take out North Korea now before the North manages to cobble together a nuclear weapon that might actually work.

In this article, Popular Mechanics busts the theory that North Korea could "flatten" Seoul in a surprise attack.

What's Wrong With A President Palin

I've never thought that knowledge is the most important aspect of being President Of The United States: as President, you have other people to remember details, provide background, and come up with ideas. It is wisdom, logic, reasoning, and critical thought that supersede knowledge in making good presidential judgements.

What is most important in a President is, first and foremost, dignity, self control, and maturity. Naturally, nobody normally mentions such aspects as being important in an American President because they are sine qua non... or at least were, until Sarah Palin came along.

Sarah Palin is the first potential major presidential candidate to lack the dignity, self control, and maturity necessary for a President. To put it simply, she really shoots her mouth off... and childishly as well.

Seriously: Read some of Sarah Palin's "tweets" and Facebook posts and try imagine any other past American president (or candidate thereto) speaking in such a way.

Andrew Sullivan said it very well today:

"[This] isn't is anything approaching the kind of character we expect in a president. A simple respect for the office she seeks would not reflect itself in these increasingly callow, sarcastic, cheap jibes at a sitting president. But sadly, like so many now purporting to represent conservatism, there is, behind the faux awe before the constitution, a contempt for the restraint and dignity a polity's institutions require from its leaders.

There is no maturity here; no self-reflection; no capacity even to think how to appeal to the half of Americans who are already so appalled by her trashy behavior and cheap publicity stunts. There is a meanness, a disrespect, a vicious partisanship that, if allowed to gain more power, would split this country more deeply and more rancorously than at any time in recent years. And that's saying something."

Amen. America needs a genuinely respected President representing it, not a shallow twerp with a rhetorical arsenal limited to low-brow populisms, threadbare aphorisms, redneck sensibilities, and a seventh-grade girl's sense of humor and propriety.

Daily Report: Miscellaneous Thoughts

Wizard of Oz... first time in 25 years. (No, I didn't put on "Dark Side Of The Moon.") I've assigned Epril the task of watching that movie before our next chat. I told her a quiz would be forthcoming. (How the hell can you know the lyrics to every Tom Jones song, but not know "If I only had a brain... a heart... a home... the noive"?)

Rain in Florida looks a whole hell of a lot colder than it actually is.

One part coffee, one part gold rum, one part creme de cacao, and a big pressurized bottle of whipped cream: Danger Will Robinson!

I, by myself, will never dirty enough dishes in enough time to justify using a dishwasher, so I'm just forgetting I have one. Similarly, I have to soil every piece of clothing I own just to create a "medium" load in my mother's cement-mixer sized washing machine.

If you don't have a hot water heater stuck to the wall of your shower cubicle with the pipes running in and out of it, Asian style, you will eventually run out of hot water. Then you will discover that certain temperatures in Florida are actually substantially colder than expected.

The movie called "Elf": Best Christmas movie ever. "Hello! I'm Buddy The Elf! What's your favorite color!?" Above mentioned coffee/rum/cacao mix shot straight out the nose.

They should schedule more mine accidents in places like Afghanistan. Then Americans would pay more attention to the place.

Smell is the strongest memory trigger. This old Florida house used to belong to my (maternal) grandparents. There used to be a smell on the back veranda caused by a liquor cabinet that used to sit there in the corner (a combination of Grandpa's cherry carpentry, the plastic inside of an ice bucket, spilled scotch, and rubber coasters). That cabinet has been gone for a decade, but the ghost of the scent of that thing still lingers. Every time I walk by... not exactly my nose... but the uttermost back of my brain... perks right up and remembers Grandma and Grandpa's cocktail hours of 30 years ago. I can still see my grandmother Ethel sitting on the yellow/white patio furniture in her Florida-issue white slacks and green/white tropical shirt, chatting and laughing with Aunt Dotty... who had the whitest hair ever and wore pink. My grandfather Howard would be in grey slacks and a drab knit golf shirt... smiling, always smiling. That was his bar in the corner. That smell was his smell.

More Americans got Pay-Per-View for Manny Pacquiao than they ever did for Mike Tyson. LOTS more.

There never has been, there is not, and there never will be — all evidence you may see to the contrary — an American version of the show, "Top Gear" or an American version of the show "Iron Chef". The British have been sensible enough not to try to recreate The Simpsons, and the Japanese have been smart enough not to try to recreate Buffy The Vampire Slayer... we Americans should leave well enough alone as well.

Florida doesn't have any small birds because all of these frickin giant birds the size of kites ate them. Geckos here are not nearly as cool as their Asian counterparts.

Stir fry a bag of pre-mixed salad, chopped up leftover steak, and ginger-garlic marinade and you've got a heck of a 3-minute meal.

I-Phones suck in America too.

If somebody assures you that they will undoubtedly forget to do something on Thursday night, you should probably believe them.

I'm a genuinely smart guy... but the only way I could stop this f**kin clock radio alarm from going off every morning was to unplug it.

Milk plus creme de cacao, microwaved for 2 minutes, equals "good night."

My Thanksgivings Of Yore

My formative memories of Thanksgiving are a true Rockwellian version of the holiday: My (paternal) grandparent's stately old farmhouse nestled in a small offshoot of the Hudson valley 30 miles south of Albany, surrounded by a great green lawn and maple trees still speckled with brown marcescent autumn leaves, tapped and hung with buckets for syrup. Outdoors, there were the barns, riding on the tractors (one red and one gray, which I preferred), petting the black Angus... the giant pond too cold for swimming, but good for throwing pebbles and floating handfuls of grass... the mysterious mazy hayloft... the banks of the Kinderhook River... the long empty dirt road called Kinderhook Lane leading back along the river through the forest to the town of Brainard. It's all still there of course.

Inside, the rustic den decorated by my grandfather's hunting victories was filled with the glow of football on the TV, the sound of my father and uncle talking some grown-up subject, the smell of my grandfather's cigar as he sat and played some hundred-year-old folk song on his Hammond... Joplin featured prominently. I'd sit on the floor and watch his left gray sock bounce around on the bass pedals and his right gray sock work a crescendo on the giant volume pedal.

In the kitchen, my Grandmother would march back and forth from various appliances, head down, moving with a certainty and inevitability surprising for her small size. She was always talking to somebody in the kitchen as she cooked... but her eyes were always on what she was doing. She was far too purposeful in the kitchen to actually take the time to look at people.

The house had two upstairs: One still used, the other an apartment that served as the kids' play area. There was a long-unused door behind the beds that none of us ever tried to open. There were some baby's toys there that we tried to convert to more-adult play activities. There was a little white closet with a big sunny window behind the staircase where we could spend afternoons chasing / capturing / teasing the black flies that always show up in late Autumn in upstate New York.

Everything in the house just seemed to be from a time when Pilgrims and Indians lived nearby.

All the expansion leaves were put into the already-large dining room table and an accompanying card table was set up for us kids. A giant centerpiece of fall vegetables flanked by a dozen candles was on the main table, and every place setting had a dozen eating utensils, a green napkin in a silver ring, and a big red goblet. We kids got our own 2-pronged candelabra, in the flames of which my cousin Andy would stick his fingers (and encourage the rest of us to try) in a little game of pain tolerance.

Then of course came the food: All of the dishes, right and proper, perfectly done as such memories ought to be. To this day I really think I ate more then, as a young boy, than I eat now at my adult Thanksgivings. Pumpkin and apple pies were always the finishing touch, usually eaten in the grand living room in front of the fireplace. (I loved playing with the bellows: it made a neat whistling sound as I pumped.)

After that, came the goodbyes as the cousins all bundled up, and were led out through the back door to the cars, lights on, warming up in the chill night. An early winter breeze coming through the door would make me long for my pajamas and one of the warm beds upstairs in my aunt's old bedroom... the smell of mothballs from the closet there is still fresh in my memory.

Daily Report: Weekly Report... Whatever

I got my driver's license on Monday. Drove 3 minutes to the DMV, and within 30 minutes, I had a brand new Florida driver's license. Unfortunately, unlike Asia, I cannot just hop on a motorcycle and go now. Nope: A special license after a special course for motorcycle driving. I'm thinking about buying a scooter... but a large one like a Yamaha Majesty. Compared to costs in Asia, big scooters aren't that expensive. Plus the insurance is less than a car, plus the gas mileage is much better. And in Florida, you can drive 2-wheeled year round. Granted, I have my mother's brand new Toyota Corolla in the garage at my disposal... but I'd rather have my own ride. Oh: I also like the Nissan Juke for $19,000 (760,000 pisos) if I were to go the 4-wheel route.

On Tuesday, Mom and Paul left for Gainseville (where Paul's son's family lives) for Thanksgiving, leaving me alone. I didn't do much all day except work. (That's still going well.)

On Wednesday, my new team leader moved me off of "training", so I can go back to working nights now whenever I want. Uncle Bob came over for a drink and we chatted for an hour. (He brought this huge jug of pretzels with him.) Then I cooked a ham steak for dinner and chatted with Epril online. She got all the paperwork for the initial I-130 form mailed out to me today. My expectation is still for her to be arriving around the end of March or beginning of April.

Yes... all in all a bit tedious and boring. Hell, I would dare accuse things of being typical (a word and condition which I have striven to avoid for my entire life). Well... it's still sunny and 80 degrees. The St. Augustine grass is green, the grapefruit tree next to the veranda is sagging with fresh fruit, and a sandhill crane is majestically high-stepping through the back yard. A gentle breeze is waving the curtains as I type, and other than Uncle Bob's air conditioning unit humming next door and the rustle of palm fronds in the breeze, everything is beautifully silent. Maybe things aren't as typical as I feared.

Dale Chihuly Is Cool

In the common happenstance of not turning the channel after something I was watching on television had finished... and some unknown subject began to air on my television, I have discovered the beautiful glass artwork of Dale Chihuly.

Having grown up near Corning, New York -- one of the world's capitals of artistic glass art -- I spent more than a few moments of my life watching trained artisans creating glass artwork, some of which (Steuben Glass) would become some of the most valuable contemporary glass on the planet. Therefore I have an appreciation of artwork like this. This is simply incredible stuff.

Thoughts On North Korea

One of my hobbies — or, whatever you call some subject you pay particularly close attention to — is North Korea. I've been following that country closely for years, especially via great blogs like One Free Korea.

Here are my thoughts:

1. North Korea is not going to go away USSR style, with oppressed citizens suddenly standing on the NK equivalent of the Berlin Wall. Instead, North Korea is going to go out like the crazy uncle with a gun collection: quickly, ugly, and most obviously violently.

2. Now that South Korea has an excuse, they might as well get it over with: Evacuate the DMZ plus 50 miles — and yes, that includes all Seoul — and do what is going to happen eventually anyway: Take out North Korea... but on South Korea's own terms.

Seriously: Why wait for North Korea to determine the rules of engagement? The engagement is going to happen, and sooner — not "or"... but rather "than" — later. This is a fact that is painfully obvious for those of us who understand what is happening in North Korea. North Korea has absolutely no strengths now (other than the ability to shell Seoul), but can only become stronger as time goes on (as the discovery of 2000 new North Korean centrifuges hints at). The longer South Korea waits, the more damaging the destruction of North Korean military capability may be once the decision is made (or forced) to do so.

South Korea, with this recent shelling of their territory, has been given what is essentially full diplomatic immunity to solve their 50-year headache in one fell swoop. They should simply put North Korea out of its misery now.

Oh... and p.s.: Nothing would set China flat on its uppity diplomatic ass more than a shooting war between the Koreas. And that is, regarding China, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, a fantastically good thing.

Jungle Jil PSA

My old classmate and Hollywood's most popular musical act, Dan Finnerty and The Dan Band, will be on The American Music Awards tonight... performing with Pink. Tune in if you can.

Daily Report: Yeah, That's More Expensive

Sunday: It's not quite the same here in Florida. I'll miss Sundays in The Philippines most, because those were the days spent with family doing fun stuff... that usually involved bathing suits, picnic tables, big pots of food, and lots of photographs. Here, it's more just a quiet day that doesn't hold the promise of jungle fun that it used to.

I did a bit of work today, then watched some TV ("Pawn Stars" marathon, History Channel), joined Mom, Paul, and Uncle Bob for cocktails, and then had steak for dinner.

I did go out to the movies tonight... Harry Potter. The ticket was $9 (360 pisos) and a 1-liter soda was $4.50 (180 pisos). Actually, I think that the U.S. theater soda prices weren't that much higher than The Philippines when you factor in the small cup sizes over there. But the ticket prices in The Philippines were 100 pisos... so almost 25% the cost of U.S. But, the U.S. theater seats were much more comfortable, and the sound system was substantially better. I'm not sure what the absolute value of those features are, but they should count for something.

By the way (since it doesn't make any difference: if you've seen the first 6 movies, you aren't going to skip the 7th and 8th) I didn't think the movie was all that good. The slow parts were too slow, and the fast parts were too fast. And the washed-out grisaille palette of the movie really muted the whole visual experience.

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UPDATE:

Stepdad Paul mentioned that there are discount movie theaters here that show a lot of the same movies for only $3 per ticket... 120 pisos. He did not know the cost of a soda at the discount theaters, so those I cannot compare. But, if you stick with the discount theaters, and their chairs too are more comfortable, sound system better, and soda prices comparable... then yes, the one example I liked to use to show how costs in The Philippines are substantially less than The U.S. — going to the movies — may not be nearly as good as I originally suspected. (Anybody with more knowledge of the discount theaters in America, who can add to / subtract from what I just said, leave a comment.)

Daily Report: No Remote Control

We finally figured out that Tyson has a better reaction to my voice over the computer if we hook up some proper speakers to it instead of just the little laptop ones. He still doesn't know that it is me... but he is more interested than before.

Epril left the webcam on the laptop running up in the bedroom while she went out, and Tyson came in and proceeded to grab a roll of toilet paper out of the linen closet, jump up on the bed, and destroy it in a display of unmitigated glee, as is his wont. I had never seen him do that before, as he normally flees the scene and postures innocence out in the hallway as soon as he hears someone coming... so I never realized how much joy he got from that behavior as he laid on his back, legs in the air, munching a roll of toilet paper. No wonder he risks a beating for the experience. I've seen porn movies with less passion than the Tyson Does Tissue video I watched. (Naturally, shouting at him via the computer, "Tyson! Get down! Tyson! Bad Dog! Tyson! Drop it! Tyson! I've got my shoe! [My spanking implement] Tyyyy-SON!" had no effect on him.)

Epril and her friends are really fluttering the dovecotes in Jasaan: Big house, lots of young and good-looking people hanging out watching BluRay movies on the big-screen TV, eating big meals, and laughing and having a good time day and night. According to Epril, the neighbors' jealously level is rising precipitously.

But it's what I want Epril to do: I'm not there, so Epril doesn't have anybody else to take care of, nothing to do but wait for me to get her visa, and obviously nobody to keep her company but her sister. Why not have everybody come over and watch movies, play games, eat, drink, and be merry? (And no, they aren't loud at all... especially compared to our chainsaw-motorcycle, puppy-dog-yapping, cock-crowing, board-sawing-hammering neighbor across the street. In fact: Epril... Crank it up! Piss those people off as much as they pissed me off when I was there. Revenge time.)

Work is still going well. I managed to do above my old 7-day average (7000 "lines"... 1000 lines per day) in just 5 days this week. (The 2-day shortfall was due to training.) That's pretty damn good, and represents an almost-50% increase in production (and pay). Unfortunately, they still have me on "full proofing" for the new account, to make sure I actually know what I am doing, so for the meantime I'm working days and losing my night-shift bonus, which is 12% above what I earn during the day (here).

The only thing that sucks is now I really am going to be working nights here in America... what is / used to be days in The Philippines. Nights are not nearly as easy as they used to be when I was in New York City and had the nightlife there anchoring my daily routine on my days off.

Well... I'll just have to get used to it. The way to look at night work is just consider it part of your sleeping schedule: You work-plus-sleep 16 hours per day. Nothing should interrupt either work OR sleep. As long as your free time and out-of-work/sleep obligations fall outside those 16 hours, there should not be any problems. Oh: And when you work nights, sleeping is a job. You have to make pains to sleep right, create the right sleeping atmosphere, and the right sleeping frame of mind. "Good sleep hygiene," the doctors call it. I have to get all those old skills back if I'm going to be able to work nights.

Daily Report: Their Diet Starts Tomorrow

Another good day of work... but not as good as the days which came earlier this week... but tons better than any day prior to that. A transcription hysteresis has fallen upon me and it lies light on my soul.

Tonight, Mom and Paul treated me out to a Chinese restaurant all-you-can-eat buffet. Pretty stunning... and yet another example of ways that America can be cheaper than The Philippines, even in the difficult-to-match eating-out category: For $9 (360 pisos), a buffet filled with crab legs, sushi, peel-and-eat shrimp, and a multitude of dishes that didn't skimp even a tiny bit on the dearest ingredients. (All domestic beers were $2... 80 pisos... each.)

But you know what? People talk about how fast food is making America fat. Bullshit. It's all-you-can-eat buffets instead. I've never seen so many 400-pound people in one place in my entire life. There were more morbidly obese people eating at this one restaurant than there are in the entire population of Thailand.

You know, as a guy who is moderately concerned about watching his weight and is generally cognizant of what he eats, it's a bit upsetting to bite into a piece of sesame chicken, and then look over at the next table and see these mountainous people tucking into an all-too-similar plate of food as what he has selected for himself.

From now on, I'll only eat at restaurants were everybody looks like an aerobics instructor.

Oh... it looks like electronics and home appliances are not the only thing affected by my destructive aura. Puppy Gracie, since my arrival, has become a major behavioral problem... jumping up when she shouldn't, toileting accidents, nipping, barking. She was the perfect model of obedience before I arrived; now a clasic case of canine oppositional defiant disorder.

Daily Report: Slow News Day

My aura continues to break things: A 1-pixel-wide bright horizontal line has appeared on my 4-month-old computer monitor. Currently it comes and goes... but is obviously the beginning of the end.

I learned about the joys of streaming high-definition movies to your television: On your computer, go to www.NetFlix.com and line up the movies you would like to see. Then go to your Bluray player's menu, select the NetFlix icon, and... (once more, with feeling), bada-bing, bada-boom. Epril (via online chat) was thrilled to learn that NetFlix also has all the recent Pinoy movies in their collection as well. When she gets here, she will not be at a loss for Filipino things.

I ♥ Steven Colbert

After my tight-underwear experience in Detroit, I just love what Steven Colbert said the last night:

What if I started... let the free market take care of it... if I started an airline called "Zero Security Airlines". It's like, "Skip the Line! Get on Board! It's Zero Security Airlines!" And our symbol would be rolling dice.

Yeah... exactly. Sign me up for their frequent flier program.

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UPDATE:

A commenter notes that there is already exactly that type of airline flying: Seaport Air. It even says right on their front page,

"No lines. No rubber gloves. No need to take your shoes off. Simply arrive 15 minutes before your flight, board and go. It's air travel the way it should be - fast and hassle-free."

Granted, they only fly to about 10 airports... and all munincipal airports from the looks of it. But: You go, Seaport Air!

Daily Report: Et Cetera

Continuing on in my destruction of everything (as outlined yesterday), my mother's coffee machine is now dying. I'm expecting the entire house to collapse in the next few weeks as a result of my presence.

In my job, I simply tore shit up today. Can't put it any other way. It was almost as good as the good old days. This new account is a godsend.

Eating is continuing to be a fun undertaking here. Mom is feeding me well. On Sunday, we had a chicken in a mushroom rice risotto; on Monday, we had a pork and saurkraut stew, on Tuesday we had fish, and then on Wednesday, we just ate all of the leftovers.

Epril and I are in constant communication on Skype and by e-mail and text messages. Epril and Tyson seem to be adjusting to life without me around. Her friends have kind of moved into the house to keep her company... kind of the new frat house on the block. That's cool... just wish I could be there to enjoy it too.

The Best Cooking Show On Television

I've fallen instantly in love with Good Eats.

Finally, a cooking show that actually teaches you how to cook... instead of just what ingredients to throw on the stove to achieve a desired meal. (Yes, the show has been on the air for years... and I am just discovering it now. If you haven't heard of it before, read on. If you have, allow me to join you cognoscenti in it's praise.)

Seriously. This guy Alton Brown is providing culinary information that, for some reason, never occurred to anybody else to provide. A 30 minute program on knife skills? Now that's something I can use. I don't need to know how to make a truffle brioche... but tell me how to properly choose the best stew pot out of dozens of choices at the store, and you've got my attention.

And his lucubrations on food are the same thing: Last night, he explained the food called ham. The various kinds of ham, how to cook the various kinds of ham, how to carve ham, and clever little tips for making ham preparation easier. Brilliant stuff: Educational, entertaining, humorous, and totally worth watching.

I found some episodes online here on Fancast and here on YouTube.

The video below on cooking a porterhouse is the apotheosis of what this show is about



.

(Photo Credit: Studio Chambers)

Daily Report: Sow's Ear Now Silk Purse

My new account at work... I went through training yesterday and there was one aspect that I found pretty dismaying: The account requires that I constantly go to outside sources to pull in information for medical records I'm typing. It is rather time consuming.

A doctor will often say, "Insert the medication list I dictated on May 9th for this patient." I have to go to the external source, search for the document, load the information, copy the few medications (sometimes even just one or two drugs), paste them... all in all, a process substantially slower than just typing out something the doctor could just read into the phone.

Then I told my new team manager how for years I had specialized in transcribing oncology and hematology reports. She immediately started throwing that kind of work my way... and I was amazed:

"Mrs. So-and-so is back to my office today. Uh... just copy the report I dictated from last Tuesday. Change the laboratory values to read x, y, and z... Change the vital signs to read a, b, and c... I'll see her back next week."

(Cancer patients obviously visit their oncologist quite often... and, well, things don't change much from week to week. Before, when I did this type of work, doctors would just say "nothing has changed" or something, then hang up... or they would dictate that readers should just refer back to a prior report. But they never did this: They never just copied and pasted vast quantities of old report into a new one.)

So anyway... The doctor says copy the old report. I open up the other older report, copy $3 worth of text, paste it into this week's visit, type the new information for another minute, and then submit the job. Bada-bing, bada-boom.

Granted, not every job is like that, and those pesky little medication lists crop up just as often. However, on my first day on the new account with the new software and new manager, struggling, stumbling, stopping to question, stopping to study, stopping to get quite angry with some malfunctioning software, stopping to call the help desk to get it fixed: in all that chaos, I managed to do the same amount of work in the same number of hours that I used to do on my best days on the old account with the old software.

At least as far as work goes, it's the good ol' days all over again. Hot damn. I thought my income would go up by 25%? Nah: Double it.

Daily Report: New Everything

You know how I've often told you that everything I buy immediately breaks? Well, apparently it's an aura that emanates from my body that contacts every machined part within range, causing it to fail. Only days after arriving, my mother's 9-year-old winter / Florida car went wrong.

Stepdad Paul decided it was time to trade it in, so off he and mom went to the local Toyota dealer and leased a brand new Toyota Corolla in a lovely color called Capri Sea Metallic for the low low price of $100 per month. (The old car on trade in served as the down payment.) See? Definitely cheaper than The Philippines. (Of course, my mother's credit score of seventy trillion was a big factor in the low price.)

I've promised not to take my destructive aura anywhere near the new car.

Unfortunately, the dishwasher, which I and my aura have been emptying regularly is now entering a terminal phase.

At work, I started my new account... on a new team... using new software today. Given all of those changes, it really is like starting an entirely new job. The account is definitely not as good as I had hoped. But it isn't a complete disaster. There are just some intricate aspects to the work that are really time consuming. While they can never be sped up to a point where they don't significantly eat into my production levels, the process can be improved upon. (And if there is one thing I honestly am good at doing, it is taking tedious and time-consuming processes, and streamlining them.)

I paid a visit to the local community college today. One of their campuses up in Bradenton/Sarasota (an hour away) has a radiographic technician program that I'm interested in attending. (Radiographic technician = a guy who operates and maintains MRI machines and/or helps interpret the results thereof... an assistant radiologist.) It's a pretty hefty 3-year degree. Heheh: If and when I finish it, I'll have completed 4 college majors in 8 years of classes... almost 300 credits.

I've gathered the preliminary information to start Epril's visa process (the "I-130" form and all associated attachments). I just need to have Epril mail me some things and I'll get that sent in.

My Aunt Carol's birthday was tonight. She is the third of three aunts/uncles — all widowed — who are living here in Venice, Florida. I'm happy here because of the amount of family I have around. They are the kind of folks who put up with me regardless of how much damage my aura does. She, along with my parents and Uncle Bob and I, had a nice pork roast for dinner, and a carrot cake for dessert.

Daily Report: The Other Option

I spent the day today pondering the possibility of staying here in America... bringing Epril here.

I rode today down a quiet palm-lined boulevard in fantastic weather, past acres and acres of manicured lawns, beautiful neighborhoods, pristine stores with parking lots shaded by oaks and bordered by purple bougainvillea bushes. It's really the very apotheosis of tropical splendor and modern convenience I personally hoped to find when I moved to Asia... and would have preferred once I got there.

The cost? I can now state that it is true that, other than housing, living in Florida isn't that much more expensive than a place like Pattaya Beach (again, for me... I don't know about you). Owning a car here is certainly much less... home supplies... gasoline... electronics... the list goes on. The food I eat is cheaper here. I don't buy much clothes, but the clothes I have bought cost about the same or less. Things related to entertainment and relaxation are a little more expensive, but we went out to eat tonight and the fish and chips we had were about the same as I would pay at a restaurant in Asia. Obviously, there aren't too many $2 meals here like you can find with street vendors in Asia, but you can still get a reasonable bite to eat for not much more.

The social scene? Everyone here is friendly, just like in Asia. But I would admit that social aspects represent the second biggest difference: There aren't as many opportunities to socialize here, especially with people my age, and Floridians aren't as colorful as expatriates, and the social activities aren't as amusing, but the opportunities to socialize still exist and are actually easier to start and maintain than I find with expatriates or Filipino people. But, it has been years since I was a partier, and you would have to agree that sitting around the pool with a bunch of guys drinking beer and talking politics is pretty much the same whether you're here or there.

The culture? The country? Obviously that's the biggest difference. But, you can't just say "it's different" without enumerating those differences... both good and bad. There are a lot of nice things about the Philippines as a country; but there are also a lot of problems there: a vast number of things that are annoying, distracting, or merely tolerable... things you "just have to get used to", as they say euphemistically. The West coast of Florida may be one of the culturally emptiest places on earth, but everything works, the frustrations are few, everyone is healthy and wealthy and educated, and opportunity (though currently strained) exists for all. You may look at pictures I took in The Philippines and see a bamboo hut and think "wow, how exotic", but maybe you fail to think that it really is also a bamboo hut where some person lives their life... survives... and little else. You may see the photos of motorellas, carts, and motorcycles on some street and think, "wow, how rustic", but also you might fail to think that that street is also smoky, noisy, poorly maintained, and devoid of traffic laws or people in possession of licenses, driving skills, or a natural fear of death.

What is really causing me to think like this, however, is my wife. Although she doesn't mention it (much), I know that her biggest dream is to live in America. She follows my lead in all things and has adjusted her goals and efforts toward a life in The Philippines, as I wanted... but I know she would rather be here.

I know she wants to work in a store selling clothes — a simple wish. (If she came here and did that, she would almost earn as much as I am earning currently.) Our lives are one now, and her wishes matter as much as mine (if not more, in my opinion) as does her future, her life, and her happiness.

Finally, I'm really not a risk taker... or at least not anymore, insofar as I used to be. Going back to The Philippines now would be a risk... unless some truly certain option were to present itself suddenly (which it won't). There are lots of ways I can earn a living in the U.S., and most of them are what even the most jaded of us would term "steady" (and with my work experience and degrees, obviously better-paying); there are no such assurances for me back in Asia. A successful business today could be a flop tomorrow; a job offer now doesn't mean a job next year. That may be true in America too... but all else being equal in the respect of the steadiness and certainty of earning a living (which it isn't) it is also here where my "reset" button is. It is here I return to when things go wrong. This is my home port from which all ships of opportunity sail. It's why I'm here now.

Nothing is decided, but it is what I'm thinking about.

Daily Report: Fighting Weight

I checked my weight for the first time in years. Amazingly, I have neither lost nor gained a pound in almost 6 years. I'm surprised primarily because I really judge my weight based on how well my clothes fit... and they have fit better over the last year. I have a 38-inch waist and am 5-foot-7, but according to my BMI I'm supposed to be obese. Whatever. Uncle Bob says I've reached my "fighting weight." That sounds about right. Maybe a little more walking and the wide availability of diet versions of everything here in America will bring the weight down a little. Probably not.

Another walk today, this time with my mother. We stopped at my Aunt Alice's house (my mother's first cousin) and got caught up on her family. Then Uncle Bob came over to the back porch for our usual 5 o'clock cocktails. (Vodka martini for me, wine for Paul, and my mother has scotch and soda.) Conversations at cocktail hour in my family tend to oscillate between home improvement and family matters, while the two papillion puppies (my Uncle Bob has Papillion Martini, while my mother has Papillion Gracie) frolic and amuse us.

I'm being fed stupendously. Tonight Mom and Paul served up big thick pork steaks with a sesame ginger glaze, along with "mushed" potatoes (with the peel still on them when they are mashed) and peas.

I went out to the liquor store. It seems like the new "in" thing is fancy tequilas... high end $50 to $80 bottles like Patron (even flavored). I had a bottle of that about 5 or 6 years ago. I have a feeling that the popularity came about because pretty much every travel show host on Discovery TV that I've seen has taken a trip to Jalisco to sample the finer distilleries.

Oh: A bit of good news. My company offered me a new account (I've been scheduled to lose the old one for 3 or 4 months now, and that loss was the precipitating factor for having to return to America) that does not use speech recognition at all. That's a big benefit and should lead to a healthy pay increase. I had been making about 100,000 pisos per month, and hopefully that will go up now about 25%. Good thing too: We're behind on the bills because of this sudden move. It cost Epril and me about 200,000 pisos ($5,000) to get me here to Florida. (Apologies to Maggie... we haven't forgotten you.)

I've got a netbook computer now and Epril and I are connected pretty much 24 hours per day. We're having fun: I took her on a webcam tour of the house, sat down and played some music on the piano for her, and she just loved seeing Gracie come up and snuffle the webcam. We're not happy to be apart, but thanks to the internet, it doesn't sting as much as it would have otherwise.

Yeah... it all seems a little boring, I know. But it depends on your point of view: now instead of Americans reading about my uneventful life in The Philippines with great interest, it is Filipinos (or, at least the one Filipina who matters most) reading about my uneventful life in America with great interest. And that's what this is all about.

Daily Reports: Birds Of Prey

I went to sleep last night at 3:00 in the morning. Then at 6:00 I was up like a flash. I don't know what other people's jet lag is like, but that is what it is like for me: Three hours of sleep followed by nine hours awake, repeat... pretty much just like what I went through as I was traveling.

I went for a walk with my stepfather, Paul, this morning. We put on our parkas and mufflers and braved the frigid temperatures of Florida. We took Gracie the Papillion Puppy for a walk around the mile-long circle road that runs through the subdivision in which I am currently living.

Paul pointed out (and I have finally taken an interest in) the various trees and bushes one finds when one ventures out of the factitious surroundings of modern indoor life.

There were half a dozen broad-winged hawks and vultures soaring over us as we walked. We were a bit worried for Gracie: She is the consistency, size, color, and weight of a bag of marshmallows (and to a hawk, probably tastes just as good): no running loose across open expanses for her.

My mother has a piano here at the house, so I went online and discovered that you can find lots of classical sheet music online in .pdf format. I printed out some old Beethoven sonatas that I used to play in high school and Chopin preludes, and spent the afternoon reacquainting myself with the concept of reading music. Amazingly, after almost a decade of not having sat down at a piano, the ability to read and play came back almost immediately.

I chatted with Epril again. She's worried about Tyson. Since Epril only carries the most minimal fondness for the shoe-and-mascara-eating beast who casts a level 5 annoyance spell against all players... when she gets worried that things aren't well, that means something.

(Epril called me at about midnight my time asking me if it was okay for her to go out swimming with her friends. She likes to keep me updated on what is going on.)

I had another 3-hour nap in the afternoon — or closer to 5 hours, which is probably a good sign that I'm finding a rhythm — and then got to work. Work actually was good tonight. The silence and the hour of work is definitely beneficial: I don't have any distractions, and I certainly don't have anything to look forward to when I finish work at 3 in the morning... so it's a lot easier to get lots done.

Note to self: Michelob Honey Lager. $7.50 for a six pack and it tastes a bit like Red Horse.

Daily Report: Best Friend, Best Buy

Epril is hugging my pillow at night in my absence. I find myself staring for long minutes at Epril's photo. But the one most affected by my sojurn to America by far is Tyson. He's been lying under the living room couch all day long, the very image of canine melancholy. I tried talking to him through Epril's laptop, but he doesn't make the connection.

I went shopping at Walmart today. I bought socks and a nice warm sweatsuit to battle against these Arctic conditions here in Florida. (Temperatures stayed in the 60s all day... even my coffee had a crusting of ice on it after only a few minutes.) I also enjoyed Walmart's grocery section which, I must say, puts SM Supermarket in CDO to shame.

I was right though: Epril and I are going to cut down greatly on expenses during this divergence... especially in food. Taking beer out of the picture (which I won't... but bear with me), my own food costs have gone down 50% since the price I pay for my expensive food has been cut in half. Since Epril now is not only not eating the expensive food that I was buying, but has switched to her locavore favorites like stinky fish and chicken intestines, her food cost has gone down by 80% or more.

But yes: I can't go out and buy a liter of San Miguel for 51 pisos ($1.20) now... but I did make myself proud by buying a 12-pack of Milwaukee's Best (the hairshirt of beers) for $7.50 instead of the two 6-packs of fancy-schmancy European brew for $9 each. (I might not do that again: some sacrifices are too difficult to bear.)

In addition to that, Mom and Paul are doing a splendid job of feeding me. I was generously provided my ham-and-swiss-on-wheat for lunch, as I had been dreaming of. Then for dinner there were salmon steaks with a maple-dijon glaze grilled on planks of freshly-cut cedar.

I went back to work tonight, but after an hour I couldn't stay awake and took a 2-hour nap. Then I was back to work until 3:00 in the morning. I fell just a little short on my own work goals for the day, but otherwise all is well there... seemingly.

Daily Report: 120 Days

I went through one of those Bio-6000 see-everything scanners at Detroit airport. ("Our new system lets us ensure safety and security without as much contact.") I step through the thing and the airport security guy speaks into his wristwatch, "Confirmed... anomoly, left groin." (As best I could figure, that's apparently DHS-speak for "his underwear is suspiciously tight", since that was the most anomolous aspect of my groin of which I was aware.) So, instead of the Bio-6000 see-everything scanner providing me less contact with security, for the first time at an airport checkpoint, an airport official got his hands on my balls.

Epril and I took the ferry to Cebu on Wednesday night. (Trust me on this: Presidential Suite or nothing... only double the price of the cheapest ticket yet 10 times the value.)

We had a nice vacation in Cebu before heading out to the airport. The Shangri-La resort hotel is very nice... but the food wasn't very good. We met with a very nice couple living in Cebu whom we had been introduced to via the Yahoo CDO Expats Group, who showed us the ropes of selling on eBay. We also had a nice evening wandering the SM Mall there, as well as some discount shopping in the market district.

After that it was off to the airport... one-hour evening flight to Manila... seven-hour layover... thirteen-hour early morning flight to Detroit... seven hour layover (drinking Sam Adams Winter Lager at the Fox Sports Bar)... then a three-hour flight to Fort Meyers, Florida... then a ninety-minute trip up to Venice.

Right now it is in the low 50's in Florida... what a ripoff: Trying to stay warm and this is what I get? My feet seem to be suffering the worst. They haven't had to heat themselves in almost a decade and seem to have forgotten how to do so. Work computer and monitor survived the journey without a problem. Mom and Paul have set up a nice home office for me and I have a breezy palm tree outside my desk's window as a reminder of home.

The tentative plan still is for me to return to The Philippines on March 1st... 4 months from now, give or take. But, we'll see what the future holds. Epril and my life has been literally been adjusting itself every day for the last 3 weeks and continues to do so.

Now: If you will excuse me, I need to go buy some nice thick socks.

Daily Report: Borrowed Time

I've got myself an extra half week before going back to America. I'm going to take care of a few things here before heading out... some loose ends that need to be tied up. I was going to leave them until I got back... or have Epril take , and then I've got meetings with Attorney on Thursday. Then it will be back to Manila on Friday, and then flying out on Saturday.

I'm going to start on the process of getting Epril a spousal visa. I ocare of them, but figured it would be better instead to get them done now.

That's a good thing. I'm going to head up to Manila on Monday and Tuesdayriginally didn't want to because I had been told that once somebody has a green card, they aren't allowed to leave the United States until they get their citizenship or something like that... a mistaken belief, according to what Attorney told me: People with green cards can come and go (with restrictions) from the United States without problem. Attorney also said that with Epril's various positive "attributes" (already having a Filipino passport, already having used her passport to travel to many countries, already having been approved once for a U.S. visa), he should be able to get her a spousal visa to America (a "green card") in very short order.

---

UPDATE:

I completely forgot to mention it. When I was hanging out with Warren on Friday, I had a massively good idea for a business in America: Helping doctors make the switch from transcription services to speech recognition software. Then, Warren added in another idea: He is going to be starting a Filipino-based outsourcing company, and told me that he'd give me a share of whatever American-based business I could get for his company. (He's Australian, so that is where his focus is.) Either one of those ideas could be very lucrative... but both of those ideas also mean working in the United States for certain periods of time each year.

Con Artist and Rapist Harris Black Thinks He's Cool

Sociopath Harris Black, the Canadian con man from Pattaya, Thailand, who makes his living by stealing money from unsuspecting people he scams on the internet, and gets his sex from unsuspecting Thai girls he lures back to his apartment to be date-rapedAccording to official Quebec court documents, Black pled guilty to Sexual Assault (art. 271-1-B), and an Indecent Act (art. 173-1) in 1999 and served 18 months probation. These two charges stem from two separate incidents with two different women on December 9, 1997 and November 28, 1997, respectively. Black, isn't just a convicted scam artist -- he is a convicted sexual assault offender in Quebec., sent Epril a message by his Facebook account, which she thought was highly amusing. (She texted me saying, "That rapist Harris Black wrote to me.")

Subject: Harris Black

Epril, I know many pinays believe in karma. Your husband used to look down his nose at me and write this publicly in his blog when I was building my business and had less money.

He went as far as writing bad things about me when he was on top of the world.

Since hearing about Jil going back to America as a failure, this has been the highlight of my week. My business is soaring and Jil's stuck on the other side of the world.

That is karma at its finest! Should you wish to live in Pattaya, Thailand and be taken care of by a stable and successful Jewish Canadian man who does not drink or smoke, I'll gladly fly you over. From what I can see, you are a good woman who got stuck with a loser who is obese and has alcoholic tendencies.

Getting Canadian residency and a passport is much much easier than USA. There are millions of pinays already there.

My direct email: resumes345@gmail.com

Funny... his online singles ads that he used to meet unsuspecting girls and date-rape them in Thailand always used to be premised with the statement "no Filipinos please." My how times have changed.

Thanks Harris for the laugh, the opportunity to update and refresh your stained name on the search engines, and of course the opportunity to link your professional e-mail address with your history of scams and sexual assault (although I assume that the "345" means that it was the 345th time your scam of CareerExperts were uncovered and you had to switch to yet another alias and e-mail address). Maybe your "soaring business" (snort) of scamming people will suffer just a tiny bit as a result of this. Please think of me if and when it does.

If you see Harris walking around Pattaya, let him know I said hello.

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WHO IS HARRIS?

I'll just mention how I came to know Harris Black.

Harris Black really is a sex offender and convicted con artist from Canada. He's been the subject of several headlining news broadcasts in both Vancouver and Montreal because of his crimes. (There is an entire YouTube channel dedicated to news broadcasts about him.) There is a website put up to warn people about him and the dangers that he represents to the the potential victims whom he comes into contact with. Even one of the local Pattaya forums has a permanent article at the top of their website warning people about him. He lives in Pattaya, Thailand, and represents the worst of the worst of foreigners who go to live in Asia: A wanted man (with arrest warrant for rape in Canada) who makes his living by being a criminal parasite on both the expatriate population and the local population as well. He has gone online posing as a nun, as a representative of an orphanage, as a job recruiter and resume writer, and as a debt collector in order to scam money from people. (1. 2. 3.)

But what Harris Black is most famous (and despised) for in Thailand is having written several "articles" (here and here) on how to con local girls into date-rape situations... using his own personal experiences and stories.

Harris Black actually first came to my attention when I discovered that he was stealing Daily Reports from my blog and copy-posting them on the Pattaya Secrets Forum, pretending that they were his life. The administors of the forum cancelled his account. Harris threw a tantrum and started posting vulgar and insulting comments on my blog.

Next, Harris wrote me an e-mail saying that he wanted to be friends and to find out more about my work. Considering what he had done (both to me specifically and to the world in general), I was actually quite polite and told him that I would answer any questions he had about my work, but that I didn't want to hang out and be friends with him. Harris threw a tantrum and posted more vulgar and insulting comments on my blog.

After that, Harris tried copying my blog style and writing on the Thai Visa forum under an assumed name. Since no matter what part of the internet Harris goes on, he winds up being vulgar and insulting, every internet forum cancels his accounts as soon as they find out he is registered there. Thai Visa cancelled his account. Harris threw a tantrum and posted more vulgar and insulting comments on my blog.

Finally, Harris (apparently because he didn't like something I wrote about somebody else) went on various internet sites and started calling me a drug dealer and pedophile. The sites eventually took the posts down. Harris threw a tantrum and posted more vulgar and insulting comments on my blog.

So, welcome to the mind of the typical sociopath, where the victims are always at fault, and the sociopath is always the maligned and misunderstood innocent. Welcome to Harris Black's World.

p.s. Harris: Eric doesn't want to be friends with you either.

Daily Report: Opportunities, Missed and Taken

I got notification that the house on Camiguin, "Jungle On The Rocks", was available if Epril and I wanted to move in... and at the price I had hoped for. That figures... and sucks.

Actually, we could afford the move... or, more accurately, I could afford to move Epril into that house if I wanted to. But I won't: Epril doesn't know anybody in Camiguin, and relies on me to get out into the various social circles where she can get to know people (in person... see Facebook discussion below). She would be terribly bored and lonely if I moved her there now.

My pay isn't going down with the move back to America. If anything, being in Florida will increase my income because I won't have as many things to do with my spare time, so I will work more.

Additionally, Epril and I figure that we will have at least 15,000 more pisos per month of spare cash because of this move: I won't be buying expensive imported grocery goods here. Air conditioning use will go down, cutting the electric bills. Epril won't be going to the expensive restaurants which I like eating at. Driver Chris won't be called upon every time we go into town. Epril's preferred meal of dried fish will replace the more expensive roasted chickens and pork dishes that are eaten when I am here.

I don't think my party this Friday will be well-attended. Warren is leaving for Australia on Saturday and wanted to get together before he left, so I originally figured we would hang out together on Friday afternoon. Then as an afterthought I decided to invite everyone else; but Friday afternoon seems to be a terrible time for people to get out for a few hours of sun and swimming. I've been getting nothing but regrets of being unable to attend. Oh well. If you can make it, I'd be happy to see you there.

Epril and I are going to try to open an eBay store. It's not something that would work in many places other than The Philippines, but here it can work well. It is possible to resell items in this country at a fair profit. Something that you buy in the big markets of Cebu or Manila can be resold to people who live on other islands and cannot easily get to those markets. Payments for online purchases, interestingly, are easier here than in most other countries: Not only are there lots of competitors to the Western Union form of business, but Filipinos can even send money to each other via their mobile phones.

An important marketing tool for this type of retail seems to be (and here is where Epril has a distinct advantage) Facebook. The online retailer puts up a photo album of the items being sold on Facebook, and then proceeds to "tag friends" (Epril has almost 2000 friends) to the photo. Then the friends come and look at this "photo catalog" and make purchases. Another marketing tool I plan to use for the eBay store is two of my friends' SEO (search engine optimization) companies.

Finally, we'll be looking at importing goods from China. Through my Eagles fraternity, I have a fellow Eagle brother in customs, and he'll help us bring in shipments of low-cost goods to sell online.

I'm really not sure how long it will take me to get back to The Philippines. I know now what income I consider to be my own personal bare minimum to survive (because that is what I had been earning for a while), and Epril and I together need to be earning exactly that — but preferably more — before I can return. I think realistically my return will be after Christmas. But if our first plan fails or does not meet expectations... and the second plan... and the third plan... Who knows how long I'll be gone?

Yes, it is possible that I might just choose to stay in America and bring Epril to live there. I'd get some 9-to-5 briefcase-and-tie gig, and rat-race my way to retirement in 20 years, while Epril would learn some profession of her own and we would lose ourselves in the modern dual-income humdrum of domestic bliss. But right now my mind isn't open to that option. Maybe I'll become more receptive eventually, or maybe a stateside opportunity will draw me in, or maybe I'll have no other choice. I don't know.

All I do know is that this place, Northern Mindanao, the state of Misamis Oriental, is what I consider home now, and that isn't going to change. I'll move around and maybe even spend years or decades before I get back here... but this is the place I will eventually return to, retire to with my wife and live happily to the end of days. All else is unknown now.

Thank You Mrs. Hoffman

I'm amazed at the process of growing older. If it didn't directly correlate to edging ever closer to my end of days, I would consider it one of the greatest aspects of life.

I don't miss much about my youthful self. Perhaps that was because I was frivolous and ignorant, and I stayed childishly pickwickian and unwise even into my 30s. I harbor no nostalgia or Proustian melancholy about the person I was.

I am especially happy to be rid of the educationally apathetic mind that I possessed all those years ago.

Indeed: What is best about growing older for me is that knowledge and intellectual excellence are becoming the most important things, and this is a fact I take much joy in. Understanding ideas, learning new subjects, expanding my horizons, gaining philosophical and epistemological insights, and better expressing myself are to me the true hallmarks of age.

It is with that nisus in mind that I contacted my former high school English teacher, Mrs. Mary Hoffman, and asked her to help me fine tune my writing into a high-speed, grammatically turbo-charged, chirographic communication hot rod. I sent her samples of my writing from this blog, and she responded with very time-consuming, very detailed, and very helpful hints regarding mistakes or shortcomings in my English technic (and also thanks for that one, Mary).

As I mentioned to Mrs. Hoffman, the saying is that "youth is wasted on the young," and I adduced that education, too, was a luxury wasted on the young. I would like to thank Mrs. Hoffman for this rare and valuable second seating in her classroom. I doubt any of you, regardless of your zest for learning, would dispute that what I am receiving is a wonderful gift from a truly dedicated educator.

Again Mrs. Hoffman: I sincerely thank you.

Jil's Party Over Party

Everyone is invited to attend my "Party Over" party at Twin Hearts Pool Resort here in Jasaan at 11:00 a.m. this coming Friday.

See you there. Bring food if you want, and beer will be sold at the concession stand.

A Brief Explanation

A lot of people are wondering what happened to cause this "sudden" shift in my employment situation, and are also wondering whether or not my writing on the internet had anything to do with it... whether there was some animosity on the part of my company in all of this.

What happened was this: My company has half of its operations in India, and half in the United States. My company originally asked its client hospitals whether or not it would be okay to send their records overseas to be worked on. Some of them said yes... and their records are now sent to India. Some of them said no... and their records remain in America.

As an American living outside of America, I posed a conundrum to my company: Could they allow me to work on the records of hospitals who had (now) specifically stated that they wanted their records to remain in America? "No" is what they eventually decided, and created a new policy stating that American employees must be working in America. It's not an unfair decision: I'm just one person and I could be jeopardizing million-dollar contracts just by dint of my work location.

My company did offer me an option that would have allowed me to continue working in The Philippines: They offered to change me over to the status of an overseas worker to work on the Indian accounts. Unfortunately this meant also getting paid an overseas (Indian) salary. I didn't ask precisely how much that would be before turning it down, but obviously it would have been a fraction of what I am currently earning. Since what I am currently earning is already a fraction of what I was originally earning a few years ago... there was no sense in cutting a fraction into a further fraction.

So, did my blog have anything to do with this? No. Does my company even know about my blog? I don't think so. "Jil Wrinkle" is a moniker that does not appear on my passport, paychecks, or work e-mails. But, if people at my company were interested enough, and actually looked on the internet to see if there was any American doing medical transcription in The Philippines and writing about the experience, they would easily put two and two together.

And that doesn't worry me: The simple fact is that everything that I say about my job (and to some extent, my life) here on the blog I also freely mention to my coworkers and supervisors — at least those supervisors and coworkers with whom I have a long working relationship and with whom I get along well. So, there is nothing that I write here (both positive and negative) that I have not mentioned, do not mention, or would not mention to anybody at my company who asked. And: Those things that I would not say to people at my company... they are not written about here either.

My company has generally been very cool and we've had a good relationship. The dramatic drop in pay that I have seen over the last couple of years was industry wide, and is not my company's fault. My move to Asia, when I did it 8 years ago, was not something that my company knew about when I did it, and I know for a fact that they would have said no if I had asked permission. Yet, overall they accommodated my location and provided me a lucrative overnight slot to work in so that I could work days in Asia. They shipped materials and parts to Asia instead of my home in New York, saving me the cost of forwarding them. They allowed me to skip company calls because of the cost of dialing in. When the questions mentioned above first cropped up a year ago, there were people who stood up for me and vouched for me.

The only way in which my company let me down was the suddenness of this decision: I was warned that it was a possibility on a Monday evening, and then told to pack my bags on a Friday morning. I actually had to ask for a week more work before leaving (although they did offer me 3 weeks — one paid, two not paid — to make the move, but I only took one week). I honestly expected that when this decision came around, that I would have a month or more to get ready to make the move.

Anyway, I hope this clears things up.

Daily Report: Lemonade Doesn't Taste That Good

I've been working on getting excited about the upcoming move back to America. I've been wanting to visit there (visit) for a while now... missing the place. I can think of a few things that I can get excited about: The food that I mentioned earlier; I'll be seeing some relatives for the first time in almost a decade; uh...

hmm...

Okay... Going to a bookstore the size of WalMart will be nice.

Oh: I've missed watching the network newscasts for some reason. Commercials too.

Yeah: Seeing traffic intersections where every person obeys the law... that will be a treat. Seeing all the new American car models will be fun.

Not running out of water... I've missed that. A good cup of gourmet coffee... looking forward to that.

Carpet between my toes. No carpets in Asia, you know.

Feeling a temperature below 75 degrees for the first time in years. Maybe I'll even be cold in Florida.

Well, those are my reasons why I'm looking forward to going back to America. Yay. Can you sense my excitement at the prospect?

Business Opportunities In The Philippines

There really are lots of ways to make money in The Philippines... and the return on investment can be truly spectacular. There is a simple reason for this: If a poor Filipino has a capital fund of only $50, he cannot survive if that money is only earning him a $10 return per year. While a 20% annual return on investment in America would be wonderful, an indigent Filipino needs to earn a 20% return on investment per day in order to feed his family. Granted, it may take hard work to get a 20% return on investment per day... but that is what he does to survive.

The problem most foreigners have when coming here to make money is that they don't think like Filipinos. Wealthier Filipinos look to their poorer counterparts, find out what they are doing, and then just go large with it.

The other day, I was talking to my friend Geoff, and he was telling me about the coconut oil business. Coconut oil is created from the dessicated rind (the white stuff) of coconuts. Poor folks take 500 kilograms of coconut rind (purchased for about 2,500 pisos... $65), leave it out in the sun for 3 days (if you've been to The Philippines, you probably have seen this), and then take the resulting 200 kilograms of dessicated rind to the coconut oil producer and sell it for 3,700 pisos... $95. That's about a 50% return on investment in 3 days... 400 pisos per day.

What the wealthier Filipino businessman does is build a giant 20-foot by 20-foot grill, puts 1000 kg of coconut rinds on it, lights a slow-burning fire under it, and within 24 hours, he has 350 kg to take to the oil producer... earning 2,500 pisos per day in the process. There is no big technological jump here, or huge investment in equipment. (The grills are just 4 cement walls and iron bars.) Instead, it is just taking a traditional way of doing something here and applying mass-production to it. Instead, it is just having the capital necessary to build the grills... having enough money to be able to buy the wood to light the fire.

All agriculture and traditional manufacturing here is the same way. The difference between a guy who sells 20 papayas per day and a guy who sells 2000 papayas per day is essentially the number of papaya trees each owns.

Yes, of course there are the very wealthy Filipinos who have much larger operations upon which real economies of scale can be drawn. I'm sure that somewhere in The Philippines, somebody has built an automated coconut oil making machine in which whole coconuts go in, and within an hour barrels of coconut oil come out. That's a rare (and yes, even more lucrative) level of industry in The Philippines compared with the working population as a whole. But that is indeed another level of business beyond the scope of this discussion.

The simple upshot is that the best business opportunities in The Philippines are the simplest. They are the easiest to set up, and the least risky and least costly to lose or have fail. And, let's face it: This is a country where your attempts at making money may run into brick walls. In a place like this, logic dictates that ten $2000 business ventures are much safer than a single $20,000 scheme.

It is easy to be fooled into thinking that the well-to-do Filipinos earn their money in retail or the service sector... but that's just because those are the visible operations that you come across on a day-to-day basis. But those are the secondary efforts of a family's conglomerate of business interests.

If you were to ask the owner of some store you are in (and not the person who is running the place... that's the owner's nephew or cousin or something), I am sure he or she will tell you that it is the big rubber plantation, or the fleet of fishing boats — and not the internet café or the lechon manok stand or the boutique at the mall — that is their bread and butter.

Daily Report: Miscellaneous Thoughts

When I go back to America, I'm either going to quickly lose 50 pounds because of being distrait and having no appetite... or I'm going to quickly gain 50 pounds as I find solace in my long-missed, now-available comfort foods and American culinary treats such as a ham and swiss sandwich, things loaded with with ricotta cheese, proper beef and burgers... the list is endless.

Life in practice will not change much here: From 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., the bottom two floors of this house will be unaffected. I'll still be just a quick electronically-transmitted message away. From 9:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., this house will be unaffected, except for the empty space next to Epril as she sleeps.

I'm going to go back to America and work just as I am doing now. I'll leave my bank card here with Epril. The bills will get paid, Tyson will get walked, clothes will be washed, TV will be watched. Life will go on.

No, I'm not willing to sneak back to The Philippines and start transcribing without my company knowing where I am... like I did back in 2002 in Thailand. Back then, I was perfectly willing to either (a) go back to New York should I get caught, or (b) get fired and then go back to New York should I get caught.

Now, losing my job means Epril losing my support. I have more responsibilities, and I am not allowed to tinker and toy and take risks with my ability to take care of her. I won't be back until I have a new way to earn a living here.

Obviously, I have no shortage of ideas on how to make that happen. Epril will be here and she and I will be working together over the internet on Jil's "Joint Operation Home Now System Of Online Networking", otherwise known as Jil's JOHNSON. It will be a long and hard bit of work... but obviously getting me back here is all that Epril and I are thinking about now.

Nine days left.

Daily Report: Without Warning, The Party Is Over

My company told me yesterday that if I wanted to keep my job, I had 2 weeks to get back to the United States. Since if I lose my job, I'll have to go back to the United States anyway, I figured I might as well go back with a job rather than without.

I'll be leaving November 2nd, flying to Florida to stay there for the winter. Epril will be staying behind, which is the part that's killing me. We've never spent any time apart in 3 years, and I have no idea how to deal with that. Hell, I haven't even left yet and I'm already messed up... as is Epril.

Obviously, I'll be focusing all of my non-work-related efforts back in America on finding a way to come back to live in The Philippines. Big thanks go out to my mother and stepfather for providing me everything I need to survive back in the U.S.: Primarily lots of emotional support... along with everything else.

If anybody out there has any clever ideas, escape plans, or golden parachutes to offer, by all means let me know.

Legalize Pot

(Photo credit: New York Times and Sashenka Gutierrez/EFE, via European Pressphoto Agency)

I see that California is set to legalize marijuana soon. I hope they do. First off, marijuana when compared to alcohol is less intoxicating, less addicting, less damaging to health, less damaging to property, and less damaging to society.

Second, the drug war against marijuana alone costs hundreds of millions of dollars per year in America. Third, the tax that could be generated from the sale of marijuana would be enough to solve California's budget deficit... and several other states would do well to notice.

Check this out:

Two days ago, Mexican authorities seized 134 tons of marijuana in Tijuana, just across the border from California. The value of the seizure was estimated at $340 million.

According to the logic of prohibitionist economics, such a huge bust should have quite a damaging effect on the marijuana market in the United States, right?

Wrong. Mexico confiscated more than 1,300 tons of marijuana in 2009 alone, and before that the average was more than 2,000 tons per year. Yet each year, production goes up and street prices in the U.S. remain relatively static.

In California, the efforts to make an impact on the availability and price of marijuana result in similarly impressive seizures, but they too fail to have any effect whatsoever. Each year during the late summer and early fall, eradication programs such as CAMP take to the hills and skies, destroying millions of budding marijuana plants. Yet each year, production goes up and street prices remain relatively static.

Take 1,300 tons (1.3 million kilograms) and divide that by the 300 million people in America, and you get 4 grams per year for every man, woman, grandparent, and child. When you divide that into the 5% of Americans who smoke marijuana every month, that number goes up to 80 grams... about 3 ounces.

Soon California... and hopefully thereafter the rest of the United States... will legalize the growth and sale of marijuana. If you want to put everybody from murderous Mexican drug cartels to your shady local pot dealer out of business, fix a huge amount of government cash problems (and make America a mellower — and hopefully less drunk — place in the process), legalizing marijuana is a good first step.

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Here: I decided to add in this graphic which I put on my blog 3½ years ago. Below is the list that you get if you ask doctors, scientists, and law enforcement officials (instead of politicians) how they rank the 20 most common illegal (and legal) drugs in terms of what I shall call the "how bad they are" measure (i.e. on average, how much people who regularly use a particular drug (1) damage their health, (2) get addicted, and (3) damage their family and society in the process).

1. Heroin 2. Cocaine/crack 3. Barbiturates (sedatives) 4. Methadone (pain killer) 5. Alcohol 6. Ketamine (psychedelic) 7. Sleeping pills 8. Amphetamines 9. Tobacco 10. Buprenorphine (pain killer)

11. Marijuana 12. Inhaling solvents 13. 4 MTA (stimulant) 14. LSD/acid 15. Ritalin (ADHD drugs) 16. Anabolic steroids 17. GHB (the "date rape drug") 18. Ecstasy 19. Poppers / Rush (inhalers) 20. Khat (chewable stimulants)

Genderqueer

People are generally well-aware of the miracle transformations that a drag queen can perform to turn himself from boy to girl. But, it is the much-more-rarely-seen drag king who is the true Shaolin Makeup Master.

Daily Report: You Thought I Was Joking

I've said it 100 times before: Everything I buy (or have given to me, or come into possession of) breaks as soon as possible.

The computer that I bought for the living room: It died. Windows won't start.

Yes... it was under warranty from the shop at Limketkai Mall where I bought it.

So I stopped by the store today where I bought my broken computer...

My Wife Is Beautiful

She's also one of the friendliest, most gentle, humble people I've ever known. She cares for me and loves me as much as my mother does. She makes me smile and laugh as much as any friend I've ever had. She's passionate and alluring and has made all of my dreams and fantasies come true.

I'm the luckiest guy I know when it comes to finding the perfect wife.

Another Fine Example Of American Expatrioteness

Douche.

The American, Clarence Bruce Beach, who is a resident of the village, allegedly pointed a 45 caliber pistol with an open hammer at the complainant, Mrs. Daisy Rizon, who is also a resident of the village, and threatened to kill her and the supposed dog that belonged to her daughter.

Beach allegedly had a prior altercation with the dog of Kristin Aballe, the daughter of Mrs Rizon, and he declared that he was going to kill the dog. He was allegedly walking his mongrel dogs when the German Shepherd Dog of Mrs. Aballe reacted to the presence of such dogs and attacked the American’s dogs.

I would like to point out that this is the kind of situation where your Filipina wife can come in very handy: Instead of reaching for your gun (okay: your "wife's" gun — we know the drill), you go to your wife and tell her that if she doesn't go and find a solution to this problem you are having with these other people, you are going to wind up in jail.

Chances are, your wife already knows that you are a stupid and psychotic twat (since that kind of thing tends to be hard to hide), and she will believe what you are saying and will make every effort under the sun to stop your problem... and your idiocy... from happening.

Obviously this advice is a little late for Mr. Beach now; but I doubt that his world will get any less annoying in the future — nor his disposition any closer to adult and/or civilized — so he may want to file it away for future reference.

Daily Report: Kingston Lodge, Diet Starts Tomorrow

Today was the first monthly Sunday Bar-Be-Que at Kingston Lodge, and the entire expatriate community showed up for the event.


Everybody had a great time. The Sunriser Band (from Zax) played great music through the afternoon, while Danny's staff cooked steaks and sausages on the grill.

Epril and I both had the same thing: A steak with all-you-can-eat salads for 275 pisos, plus two big side sausages for 45 pisos each.
Of course, the kids spent the entire time swimming... lots of kids!



Of course, the first rule of socializing in The Philippines is that the girls (and drag queens) have to get together for lots of picture taking.

And of course, after sufficient liquid courage has been consumed, the husbands grab their wives and hit the dance floor.

And after the guys are all tired out and back to their tables and beers, the girls just keep on dancing!