I was out of the house early today in order to drop my bike off at the shop to have a second battery put in, and have the non-blinking turn signals and loose wiring on the headlights fixed. I dropped the bike off, and then took a taxi back home. (Taxis are still one of the best "cheap things" about The Philippines compared to America — along with movies — with a 30-minute, 10-mile taxi ride costing under $4.)
After that was another poor day of work, although it did start off good.
I think that work is also slow now in part because I'm taking lots of notes on the new operative reports I've been getting, and downloading previous work from difficult doctors and keeping a file of their work. Operative reports can be lucrative after you get them figured out: A cardiologist dictates all of his coronary bypass notes pretty much the same. He's dictated so many of them that he can (and does, actually) say them in his sleep, so they are impossible to understand at first. However, after you know what is being said, you can just copy and paste one of his prior dictations and... mutatis mutandis... you have an instant 60-line cardiology report worth $5.
I'm just not there right now. I've got 20 doctors covered so far, each one doing 5 or 10 different surgical procedures, and a couple hundred more to go.
At 5:00, it was back by taxi to pick up my motorcycle. The new battery, installed and fixed and all the wiring done cost $30. Unfortunately (a) they put the new battery in the storage space under the seat, so that needs to be moved; (b) 3 miles down the road, I noticed the horn was no longer working; (c) 4 miles down the road, one of the lights went out again and the other started flickering like a strobe light. The turn signals did work though. Got that part sorted.
Epril and I went to Spooks Friday night expatriate get-together as per usual. There were very few people there tonight. I met this nice guy Oliver from Florida, who is in town looking for a place to settle and start a family. I chatted with him, Ron Van Ordern, and Bob McCrea all evening. (Bob convinced me to try and make some dill pickles here in Cagayan, since they cannot be purchased. Good small business idea, that. Jil's Dills?)
After Spooks, Epril and I joined Ron and Eve, and our new friend Oliver at Town Restaurant for dinner. We shot the moon, eating and drinking ourselves silly.
Then it was home to bed at midnight.
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7 comments:
My mother has a great recipe for kosher dills...
mataho on koh lanta
Do you think you are going to be able to make things work with this employer? It sounds like a significant drop in take-home pay.
From what I understand, this is an industry wide problem. My cousin-in-law, Mike Bird: His mother works as a medical transcriptionist as well, but for my company's big rival, and she has many of the same complaints I do.
For the time being, I still have a job, I still am living in an exotic and tropical land where costs are low enough to handle a cut in pay like I'm receiving. Changing jobs here is difficult, and not necessary or desirable at the moment because of the uncertainties involved. If I were living in America, obviously, the story would be quite different.
Mataho,
Feel free to post that recipe in the comments section.
You need to sell that lemon of a cycle to some other farang Ha! Ha!
from Jakal
OFF THE SUBJECT:
Jil...HOW can you not have posted the guy throwing shoes at Bush?
Almost feel bad for W...almost.
Jakal,
Nope. I've said many times I wouldn't sell my mistake to somebody else. Although perhaps once I've done enough upgrades on it to call it a custom job (and all of the caveats that come with it), then maybe. I've got plans to repaint it, upgrade/replace the engine, et cetera. Kind of make a hobby out of it.
Issarat,
I actually had a "new blog entry" window open and was going to write about it, but couldn't really think of anything to say other than "good reflexes for an old guy" and "we all have weirdos to deal with". Well, that and perhaps how throwing a shoe plays well to the Arab crowd, but went right over the American President's head (pun intended).
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