I found Nemo!

He and a bunch of his friends are currently happily residing near White Beach, Puerto Galera, the Philippines.

Diving was just so incredible. Yes, I was a little freaked, but it wasn’t really scary at all.

Everyone says you always remember your first breath under water. Well, that part was a letdown for me because I didn’t think it was all that spectacular. I mean, yes, it was cool, but it’s not like I thought I was going to die and all of a sudden realized I wasn’t and was so enthralled with it. I mean, I knew I was going to be breathing.

The part I didn’t realize is that I was going to sound like Darth Vader, though. That part threw me, but I figured out pretty quick that it was normal. It just wasn’t in the manual that I’d read.

 

The drill for the open water dives is you read this book and/or watch some videos, then get kitted up. Well, before that, there was a “swim test,” which was kind of vague. I’d gotten to the beach on Easter, and it was completely packed. Like I think about a third of the area’s population was there, and there were all kinds of kids swimming.

The beach itself was just a small little area, with maybe half a mile of little shop fronts. There were a few dive places, but mostly just food and T-shirt shops. My dive place also had really good food, and had some tables and things sitting in front of the store front, all full of people. This meant that there was quite a crowd between the beach and the dive place, obscuring the view.

After I got suited up in an exposure suit, fins, mask and a snorkel, my dive instructor gave me the sketchy instructions of, “Go swim halfway to that boat and back,” as he waved his hand toward the beach. This was the swim test. I think the book said 200 meters; I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that, but it was kind of weird. And I don’t even remember whose boat it was. I mean, I was wearing all that stuff walking down this short beach, gathering all kinds of stares. Ah well. I do get used to that living where I live.

Look closely to see the tiny crab

Anyway, after the test and some further instruction, I then hit the surf again with the dive instructor for stuff like how to cope when you lose your regulator, mask or whatever. It wasn’t bad, but I kept getting distracted by all the cool things under water.

For the open water certification, your first run-throughs are supposed to be “confined” dives. In most cases, this is done in a swimming pool, so I was pretty surprised when we waded into the surf, but it worked out. I certainly got to see more fun stuff than you would find in a swimming pool.

I’d never seen a live sea urchin before. Apparently they’re really nasty critters, but I didn’t try to touch anything. I looked around once and I was in the middle of a school of fish swimming by. They were little eight-inch glimpses of silver – hundreds of them, swirling right by my head. Everything was just so amazing.

 

On the second day, I did more of the same in the morning, but in the afternoon we went by boat to a dive spot.

The boats are really funky. They have these little pontoon-y things for balance, only, unlike a pontoon boat, the thingies don’t normally hit the water. They’re on practically ALL the boats, from the 100-seater (loose term) ferries like on the ride over to the two-man canoe size.

While the boat is tied to the shore, little kids use the pontoon-y things as diving boards and just climb all over the boats. In the US, that’d call for some really close lawyering up, but in the Philippines no one blinked an eye.

So we set out for the dive site – the first one was a giant clamshell/reef thing – and then I discovered I couldn’t just enter the water with the “giant step” technique in the book. No, they wanted me to flip over backwards.

 

The first guy did it and then the instructor told me to go next. I was like, "You want me to do WHAT?" and had a mild panic attack and wound up going last. But the other two dives I did it just fine. I am just not a big turner of somersaults.

I did, however, bump my head coming up once.

All you can think of underwater is how amazing God is. You can sit and look at one reef and think you've taken it all in and suddenly something else will pop out of it, like a lot of baby fish or some kind of eel. It's ever-changing and some of the stuff is just so subtle.

On the second day of boat diving, we went to a shipwreck site – think jon boat, not yacht. The junked boats had turned into artificial reefs, with stuff living on them and in them. The instructor brought down some bread and we hovered and held it out. The fish gathered around and ate out of our hands. The only word I could come up with to describe it was “magical.” Big Nemos, little Nemos, friends of Nemos. It was just phenomenal.

At one point a little Nemo came right up to my mask and stared at me, and I stared right back. I’d like to think he was as impressed as I was, but I doubt it.

So now I have to figure out where to go next to dive again. That was just so much fun, and just a different world entirely. Peaceful and serene, except for the few bumps when you realize you just got kicked by someone else's fin.

SE Asia is really tops for diving, so now it's a matter of figuring where else I want to go. Thailand and Indonesia (not Jakarta) are great spots, and it's not like there aren't any more in the Philippines. There are tons. So I don't know. But I do want to do it again.

The culture is amazing and friendly. Diving people are accommodating and quick to help, which is good because the whole money thing did NOT pan out. Mind you, I had a plan, an alternate plan and two back-ups. I left owing money, after taking two trips into "town" and trying all four of the city's ATMs (!) and begging in person at both its walk-in banks. Western Union also would have no part of me. Envision also refused to reset my PIN number like I asked, which really, really ticked me off.

Fortunately, the instructor didn’t try and have me detained or anything, and I had $100 US, which was enough to pay for the hotel and ferry, airport tax and taxis. (Did I mention how cheap traveling in SE Asia is?) Everyone at the dive center was incredibly forgiving.

I also had issues with Western Union once I got home, trying not one or two methods of payment but FIVE. Fortunately, Daddy was able to take cash to a location in Havana and the instructor got his money. I felt so very bad about it.

This was where I stayed.

But overall I got home safely and I’ve already looked at a map to see where I can go again. I’d have no problems going back to the same place, but I will also look at alternatives. However, I don’t know when I will go. The rainy season is about to set in and it might be awhile before it’s worth it to even try.

Next weekend, I am pulling the trigger for Hong Kong Disney. It’s not a three-day weekend, but Thursday is a holiday and a friend and her family are taking off Friday as well. I am not, but I will meet them at the hotel Friday evening and go to Disney on Saturday. For me, it will be a quick trip, but I’m fine with that. Disneyland there is supposed to be small, so it should be enough time.

The family is coming back at 11 a.m. on Sunday, but I booked the train two hours later. In that time, I am hoping to either get a haircut or see a movie. I live big, I know.

We interrupt this fairly reliable posting schedule

Happy Easter!

The update today is there will be no update.

I am alive and breathing, albeit underwater. I am in the Philippines, trying to get up the courage to learn to dive.

Did my first lesson today, with two "confined water dives" that were in shallow water in whatever body of water this particular Philippine island is on.

I'm across the strait from Batagas, on a beach called White Beach. It is NOT "the" White Beach, more like the Redneck Riveria of White Beaches. I love it.

But no regular internet access. I just paid 50 pesos for an hour -- the minimum time I could get -- and am on just to check email and assure people (hi, Zippy!) that I am alive.

Exploring a little

Today I finally got out an explored, but was essentially shell-shocked and vowed never to do it again

Certainly, that will change but wow.Overload.

After a fairly ho-hum start to another weekend, it perked up on my way back from the grocery store, when I ran into a group of colleagues/spouses who’d headed out to dinner. I was smack in their path and got caught up, bag of groceries and all.

Just what my apartment needs.

We went to some restaurant in the same building where the grocery store is (can get there from the apartment by going outside for about 10 feet, back in the department store that on the six floors of our building, heading down two escalators, out the door to the underground paths and down a set of stairs). The restaurant was on the fifth floor.

The dinner was good, of course, not that I know what it was. I tend to go with the rice because I can never get too much rice, but the other stuff was good, too, although I still stay away from tofu.

The way it works at Chinese restaurants is, everyone orders something, but one person places the order and everyone shares. So the more people who dine, the more stuff you have to sample.

Yesterday, I ate the about three dumplings but didn’t pick up on the technique of how to do it right. The first one I ate was OK and made it into my mouth more or less intact. The second one dribbled a bit on my jeans (despite the napkin in my lap and the fact I was trying to eat it over a bowl) and the third one just exploded. Oops. At least by No. 3 they had cooled off and no one was injured.

I'll take three. Not.

After dinner, we went to one of the people’s apartments, where I got to see the view from the other apartment tower, which faces a completely different direction than mine. That side has a view of a little sparkling water show. Or it looked little from the 14^th floor, anyway.We guesstimated it was the size of a hockey rink.

And it was reiterated to me that I have perhaps the worst kitchen of all my colleagues. The couple whom I visited also has a three-bedroom apartment in the same complex, but the layout is totally different, and I am jealous!

Life sized bedazzled mare. Who needs it?

Now, I do love my apartment – I’m wearing the fuzzy slippers right now – but my kitchen is just so tiny.  Theirs, OTOH, was about *three times* the size of mine, and completely open to the living area. Mine’s in what is a small bedroom/overgrown closet. Theirs had a pantry! I was just so jealous. I’d swap a spare bedroom for some counter and storage space.

Inspired, perhaps, by the social hour last night, I decided to utilize my metro card and explore this afternoon. For whatever deranged reason, I opted for OneLink, which, I thought, was a giant store with “everything made in China.” That’s what my colleagues have told me about it. So I was thinking it was a Walmarty store of some sort. (I do believe we have a Walmart, as well as a Sam’s, but heck if I know where they are.)

But I got there, and it was just like one of the cheap Jakarta malls I’d been to. Seven floors of little stores that sold everything under the sun, with the exception of clothing. (I am grateful for the exception.)

There were sticker stores, earring stores, phone skull stores, bead stores, bracelet stores, pillow stores, cushion stores, flower stores … you get the picture.

As you moved up the escalators, the size of the stuff grew: rug stores, big-ass vase stores, footlocker stores, chair stores, bed stores …

Truly, I was horrified. I knew there was that much junk in the world, but who knew it could be collected all under one roof?

Once in a while, I saw something that might be useful, like a silicone ice tray shaped like Lego blocks. (Any silicone ice tray would be better than the non-functioning plastic thing I have right now.) However, not a single item in any of the seven floors had a price tag and I hate bargaining, plus I don’t speak the language.

So I just walked up and down and wondered who on earth bought that crap.

Stayed in town on a three-day weekend

Today’s a holiday. It’s Tomb Sweeping Day, which is a day when people go to cemeteries and tidy up the gravesites of relatives.

Like in the US, the holiday fell on Saturday but everyone gets off on Monday.

I’ve had a couple of three-day weekends so far and have spent them in Hong Kong. Since I’m leaving town in a couple of weeks, I decided to go ahead and stay in town for this one. I had delusions of taking the subway with my newly-acquired metro card, but that somewhat fizzled.

But I did get out an about a little, although I didn’t charge my camera batteries. Oops.

On Saturday morning, I went with two couples (one from work, one a friend of that couple’s) to this giant tea market. By that I mean, blocks and blocks and blocks of tea shops. It was flabbergasting. Every little storefront had a tea-related shop, each with oodles of different kinds of tea. Tea bags, tea cakes, giant baskets of tea leaves, sticks, flowers, pots, bags, tins, fermented tea, new tea, green tea, black tea  – just everything tea.

But no sugar or any other additions. Just pure tea, and lots of different kinds.

Both the men of the couples were tea experts. One was a higher level expert than the other, and it was just kind of sit and listen to how tea was made. We went to one shop and just sat there and tasted tea after team.

I can’t say I remember the kinds, but I do know two were horrible. One tasted like wet grass and the other diluted sticks. But the rest were fine and had varying medicinal qualities. I think one you were supposed to drink before you ate and one after. I forget why

Apparently you’re supposed to taste tea somewhat like wine, which means I’ve been doing it wrong for four decades. Southerners apparently are quite ignorant in the ways of tea. But I’m fine with it. And I do miss Sweet Tea.

I didn’t buy anything. Essentially, I was too overwhelmed with it all. I had no idea tea aged. Some of the stuff was 30 years old. Apparently the older the better.

So that was Saturday, and the weather was just fine. Sunday it rained. We’ve entered the monsoon season a bit late, but so far it hasn’t been bad. And Sunday I really didn’t have anything of importance to do, so I just worked out, went to the grocery store and then swam and hung out on the steam room. Rough life.

Today’s big event was hanging out with a colleague who’s a single mom this month. Her husband has been med evac’d and hopefully will be back at the end of this week. She’s had a rough month. Her kids are about 6, 4 and 6-7 months. All that in one big apartment, but no yard and bad weather most of the time. She was pretty stressed.

So I headed out there and had breakfast at their building (nice buffet, but I had only bacon and toast) and then played with Play-Doh and watched “Bambi” while mom ran to the grocery store.

We all hung out until about 12:30 and I hope I helped mom stave off madness this week. She’d taken off Thursday and Friday, and when I asked why take off two days before a long weekend she said since the kids have been at home with the housekeeper all week, she was scared the housekeeper would quit and therefore stayed home those last two days. She was *really* frazzled when I got there at 7:30 this morning. The kids really are good kids, but boy, that was intense. 

I am glad I didn’t bother with Hong Kong, but I do hope to go again in May. I’m still eyeing Disney. And those are the kids I want to take. We figure we can go, leave the 7-month old with their daddy and take the other two.

Maybe over Memorial Day weekend.

A dull week and a past life

Well, in trying to come up with anything reasonably interesting that happened this week, all I could muster was that I broke a hair clip thingie. You know what I mean. One of those things that you use to clip your out-of-control hair in after you’re twisted it into a pony tail.

Theoretically, it’s easier on your hair than an elastic band. I wear those when I work out because I’d dent my head doing the exercises with the big plastic clip in it, but they tend to strip my hair. (Yeah, I know this is boring information, but like I said, this is the most interesting thing that I could come up with this week. Bear with me.)

As it is, I haven’t had a haircut since I’ve been here, and I think since September. Combined with the damage the little elastic thing does to my hair, I really can barely get a comb through it. Except it’s so darn limp and fine, it’s a rat’s nest.

But getting a haircut here is tough. I have absolutely no language skills, and my hair is remarkably different than the locals’ locks. I cannot even convey “please weigh these potatoes,” so trying to explain “take off five inches, re-layer it and feather the bangs” isn’t going to be in my vocabulary for the next couple of years.

Which means the hair clip thingie really is a great loss. I have three others, but they are quite inferior. They came in a set of three, and one’s a really ugly green color. I use that one to clip my MP3 onto my sleeve while I work out, what since the MP3 ($25 at Wal-mart; spared no expense on that one) clip broke.

I was just trying to yank back my hair and all of a sudden, something snapped and the clip broke. And I’m sad. Not because I loved it or anything, but because it was one of the few things I have left from my time in Morocco.

I’d bought it at the souk, paying down 2 dirhams for it, which is about a quarter. I really don’t have much else from Morocco, and even less with me and that was just a little token that I could keep close. Now it’s gone.

Morocco seems like a long, long time ago. I guess it was. I turned 40 there and now I’m 45. I still remember it and miss it, but all things related to it are fading. I’ve no idea how my host mom, EC and all my kids are doing. And no way to know.

It’s a whole different world going on over there, like some kind of parallel universe. I know it’s there, but I cannot access it.

For all intents and purposes, it’s as gone as the hair clip. It makes me sad.

Much of my life is spent chopping garlic

This has been one of the more boring weekends of my life, which is kind of saying something. I had two things to do and have been procrastinating on both, so I’ve done precious little.

Next month, I’m going to the Philippines and I’m hoping to learn how to dive. I have the class lined up and have some materials the guy gave me. They’re mostly YouTube videos, and sadly, I don’t learn that way. I need to study the material, and this is kind of sciency stuff – I just don’t get it.

So I meant to make a better stab at that this weekend but haven’t really made much progress. Maybe at lunch. I just wish I could find the book online instead of videos that may or may not be the right ones. The guy sent me a Dropbox link but I don’t have Dropbox and do not have room on this computer to download it. So I’m just doing YouTube searches and trying to find the right ones to research.

The other thing I need to do is write my part of the evaluation. I still haven’t done that and the deadline is looming. Sigh.

But I’ve stayed very busy this weekend putting off both of those tasks. I had a couple of movies going (“Hugo” and “City Slickers”) and have played, but not really watched, the second season of “Cheers.”

There’s been little productivity, although I did realize there’s a built-in shelf behind my sofa that fits all my non-TV DVDs. I have enough room to buy about 10 more, max, and one of those came in this week: “Gone Baby Gone.”

And then there’s my usual: working out, laundry and cooking for the week.

The workout routine is the same: about 65 minutes on the elliptical, four reps on all the machines and then 35 minutes on the bike. I am a pool of sweat after and, if the scales are true, lose .6 pounds during the hour-plus. But I drink it right back, quaffing God knows how much tea over the weekend.

On weekdays, I do the little routine right after work, but on weekends I wake up at my normal time, and get down there at 6:30 a.m., which enables me to be done, showered, laundry thrown in and be crawling back into bed by 8:30.

And, by 10 a.m., I wake up again and the tired and tingly feet are just a foggy memory. (Really, I am going to have to go see the podiatrist again. There is no way what my feet’s reaction to that elliptical is normal.)

After that, I do the pancake thing and maybe Skype and do emails, but honestly, until Sunday evening, I have nothing really set. But after going to the grocery store, I cook for the week.

So I take out my carrots, onion and garlic and start prepping. When I think back on it, I have spent a good portion of my life since PC peeling garlic. It’s the same rice concoction I made almost weekly in Jakarta, too.

I put a whole head in each week and as a result, it’s very pungent. Right now, when I open my fridge, it’s completely overpowering.

But because it’s garlic, that’s a good thing.

Birthday bowling in Bangladesh

Back from two days of leave! Had a great time visiting a friend. It was a quickie trip, as mine usually are, but lots of fun.

Never looked better.

I hadn’t taken any leave since September, when I started, and figured I was due around my birthday. So, after pricing flights and being astounded at how much it cost to fly to places within China, I headed out.

And I ended up painting the town red. Or, as the case turned out to be, the town wound up painting me.

After arriving on Saturday, I helped out a friend of my friend on Sunday morning, which is a work day in Bangladesh. We went to a school in the slums (keep in mind this is Bangladesh slums, not American slums) and gave an apple and a banana to each of the kids. I went into three of the classes and entertained the kids wholly.

First class, I asked them to sing a song in English and suggested “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” Next class, I asked a little girl to pick a song and they went into some song about an astronaut that was in English, but I’d never heard it before.

The third class was math, so I taught them a theater warm-up from Peace Corps where you count down from 8 to 4 to 2 to 1 on your right hand, left hand, right foot, left foot. They loved it.

On Monday, I signed up for a tour of Old Dhaka. The city is 400 years old, and the Old Dhaka part is pretty congested with a good percentage of the city’s 16 million residence. Many arrive into the city by boat from some other town across the river and cross by ferry.

The docks were the first stop on my little tour and man, it smelled. Overall, Jakarta reminded me of a combination of Jakarta, Morocco, India (that part was traffic) and Cambodia. The people were really friendly, too.

My tour guide and I went onto one of the ferries, which could hold over a thousand people. Granted, this wasn’t a sweet ride. There were no chairs and it would have been standing room only over several levels. I went on and it was empty, save for the random worker, sleeping on the floor or benches.

From the top deck, I could watch the little boats ferry passengers back and forth across a pretty dank looking river. There was trash everywhere, but the recycling program was pretty effective. Crude (as in trash pickers) but effective. And plastic bags are outlawed.

Pretty much all weekend (including the flight) was almost all men. It had just occurred to me on the docks that I hadn’t seen a single female when I spotted this little girl, maybe 7 or 8, who was taking flak but holding her own with some boys. We bonded and I asked the tour guide what her likely story was. He said she was probably a street kid, which was really depressing.

We also went to a market, where I saw a ton of coconuts among other things, the parliament building and their equivalent of the White House, only it was salmon colored.

But the weirdest thing was at some random street, where there was a party going on.

There is some Hindu holiday on March 17 and although I have no idea what it means, it prompts kids up to young adult to go into the street and party as they’re having dye squirted at them. It was completely bizarre. I watched for awhile and my tour guide asked if I minded getting wet and, well, no, I didn’t.

So I waded into the throng, which delighted the kids. I didn’t dance but did get squirted. My guide assured me it would come out, but it didn’t. Ah, well. Thrift store finds anyway. Well, not the bra, which now looks tie-dyed, too.

But it was incredibly fun, and definitely something I won’t experience again, especially on my birthday.

Later in the evening, I went bowling with some of my friend’s colleagues, which was also a ton of fun I do stink at bowling but that’s not the point. I almost cracked triple digits!

All in all, it was a fabulous way to spend birthday No. 45.