Today is Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 and it is now 2:26 PM here in the Philippines.
Music wise...Well this is one of the things I will enjoy about the Journals being lost. I get to impress upon my very few, scant readers those songs which mean so much to me, even if I had previously done so with the same songs in my Journal!
The 1st one is by a Filipino Hip Hop Fusion band, "Out of Body Special." The song is a love song actually. The thing that usually attracts me to a song is the bassline more than anything, even more than the beat and as usual this song has a killer bass line. The song is called "Give It."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyvBL3gaMl4
The second one? Well believe it or not I happen to think Justin Timberlake is a great singer and artist, seriously. This however is a song that has here to fore been hidden from the gaping masses, one that has escaped all scrutiny and you, as my precious readership, will now have a chance to see it and appreciate it yourself! The title is a secret!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhwbxEfy7fg
Reading wise? I have been heavilty into a book I picked up at a library sale in NYC when last there. "Conquistador" by Michael Wood and it is the companion work to the BBC Series on the Conquistadores and their incredible crimes against humanity.
I love travel obviously and like to imagine what it might have been like for the Spanish slave Estavancito who was with the De la Vaca Expedition when his party ran into disaster and he and a companion or two wandered through what is now nothern Mexico and the SW US, seeing all the different native tribes, talk about "Uncontacted!"
Or what about Pizzaro in his desperate voyage south from Panama coming across the Inca trading raft filled with gold and other treasures, and the Inca sailors talking about their far away kingdom? Even when I absolutely hate what the Spanish and Portugese did in the the world, at that time (and other times) I do have grudging admiration for men like Cortes and Pizarro, especially Pizarro who gambled it all on a dream, and won!
My life? I am still on Mindanao, while Rizza is in classes on Cebu. I am compelled to stay here for the time being because the violence is increasing incredibly fast, and the scariest thing is that most people are not even aware.
I sound paranoid, right? In a second I will elaborate.
In family news my eldest bro-in-law Ariel arrived here 3 days ago from a trip to Manila and the UK Consulate where he went for an interview trying to get a Student Visa. He is 23 and a certified Medical Technologist (no specialty but currently working in a small hospital in Cagayan del Oro here on Mindanao).
To get a job in his profession though, he must rely on one fof the voracious agencies that are really not much better than the pimps that recruit eager and naive young Filipinas to be "Singers" and "Entertainers" in Japanese "clubs." The agencies charge up to 3 years salary, get the lowest paying jobs for people, and usually hold your travel documents in escrow. Ergo, his attempt to enter as a Student.
I had tried to get him a job in NYC when I was there but found he needed 3 more exams, 2 professional and he would not have been able to scheduale them in the time I spent there.
Unfortunately, Mum and Dad already bought his ticket to Ireland, without even knowing the results of the Visa Interview! I guess they have their confidence up. As upper middle class (or the local equivalent) they feel that Ariel will not be denied but he is 23, and unmarried, and people are lliterally dying every day in the attempt to get from Asia and Africa into the EU, etc.
Anyway, we will know soon.
One of the results of the Global Recession has been the need to adjust our business practices accordingly. Our main line is milling rice and corn, primarily rice. Here to fore we have always been able to do business where we chose, and as Bisayans (Visayans) never went south of Targum here on Mindanao to do business. Now we must even deal in ARMM, which is the Muslim semi-autonomous region here on Mindanao (Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao).
If you had told Dad , or Mum, a year ago that we would be running our trucks into ARMM they would have laughed literally for minutes. Today we run convoys down there. I cannot get into specifics because it really is that dangerous. Hence my title today.
Starting a couple of weeks ago I began finally , out of sheer boredom, to patronise expatriate sites for Westerners in the Philippines. I generally am nauseated with those sites because this country seems to attract a general type of person from the West. I really hate to generalise but the Westerners I have had reason to observe seem to be here for either cheap and abundant sex, or alternatively to marry a much (decades) younger woman who most often is herself driven by insurmountable poverty to marry a senior citizen as soon as she graduates university, etc.
So I joined a couple of sites. One of them, and I will of course refrain from naming them, had a section for Westerners asking about living conditions in different parts of the country.
Apprently alot of these blokes meet a gal online, and then for whatever reason make plans to come live here permanantly which seems more than a bit rash, but to each their own I say. So one poster asks about Davao City, is it nice, that sort of thing.
I answered my honest opinion that the city is not much to speak of, very ugly physically (it was founded as a WWII Japanese colony), and very dangerous safety wise as is most of Mindanao, although Davao naturally is safer than the bush.
So a whiteman who is living in Iligan City (near Cagayan , the city where Ariel is living and working) says, "Rachamim, I do not know what your story is but you should not be having people think that all of Mindanao is a warzone," etc.
Says I, "Look, of course the island is not 100% dangerous but many parts of it truly are and people have a right to this information."
He goes on with the usual crap that Embassies do not know their ass from their head, that Embassy Warnings are written by morons that never leave their a/c offices, and so on.
I then tell him, "I do not want to pry into your personal life but I will ask for a reason, how long have you lived in Iligan?" He replied that he has been there since May this year. I then replied that then surely he must be have been put out by the mandatory evacuation of 45,000 people in Iligan this past August due to the MILF (Muslim Insurgency) entering the city in battle.
He of course called me a liar and said it never happened. hahahahah. A few people then told him in fact it did, and I guess he searched and indeed confirmed it because he said it must have been exaggerated since he never even noticed it.
I explained , as an old hand in this country (only living here fulltime since 7/2007 but been coming here since Rizza was a toddler), that what actually happens rarely gets reported, let alone exaggerrated, and that it is actually quite ALOT MORE violent than the press and govts. would have you believe.
Another site I joined is actually a blog, run off an expat site. Again, no names. so the blogger and I post back and forth, even asks me to write some pieces for him, which I agree to do but never did. The guy did a piece about a US UAV (Drone) that crashed here in MILF occupied Mindanao, and then started saying he was getting urls from the Pentagon on his site, from Philippines officials, and that he began fearing for his status in the country - and maybe even his person! He then begins talking about MY url!
Now I have always posted here, and on every site under my real name, and even given out my actual address, job in the States, just about every personal detail you can imagine. In other words, I am no shrinking violet, right?
I have however had a couple of unfortunate experiences in giving out all this info but nothing in this country. Still, I began using first, on advice of Ariel and another bro-in-law Nigel, an Anonymyzer (sic) to mask my url. Later when in the US this last time, I bought into the AT&T World Service Plan which gives me a nice way to mask my url. The problem though, is my huge mouth! I mean, what is the sense of masking my url if I have already given out my address all over the net (it is all over this site for example). I have also belatedly found that some prgrammes see right through it anyway!
My location is not an issue, for me. However this guy began really harping on it and so his paranoia became infectious and I said to hell with these sites for Westerners. Too many local Govt. officials, and others probably do read them, and in fact in that vein I probably should not have such a big mouth here...but I do and since I like BL I will stick to the site...just continue being more circumspect elsewhere, right?
I will talk a bit more about local events in a following post, due to the character count...
Music wise...Well this is one of the things I will enjoy about the Journals being lost. I get to impress upon my very few, scant readers those songs which mean so much to me, even if I had previously done so with the same songs in my Journal!
The 1st one is by a Filipino Hip Hop Fusion band, "Out of Body Special." The song is a love song actually. The thing that usually attracts me to a song is the bassline more than anything, even more than the beat and as usual this song has a killer bass line. The song is called "Give It."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyvBL3gaMl4
The second one? Well believe it or not I happen to think Justin Timberlake is a great singer and artist, seriously. This however is a song that has here to fore been hidden from the gaping masses, one that has escaped all scrutiny and you, as my precious readership, will now have a chance to see it and appreciate it yourself! The title is a secret!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhwbxEfy7fg
Reading wise? I have been heavilty into a book I picked up at a library sale in NYC when last there. "Conquistador" by Michael Wood and it is the companion work to the BBC Series on the Conquistadores and their incredible crimes against humanity.
I love travel obviously and like to imagine what it might have been like for the Spanish slave Estavancito who was with the De la Vaca Expedition when his party ran into disaster and he and a companion or two wandered through what is now nothern Mexico and the SW US, seeing all the different native tribes, talk about "Uncontacted!"
Or what about Pizzaro in his desperate voyage south from Panama coming across the Inca trading raft filled with gold and other treasures, and the Inca sailors talking about their far away kingdom? Even when I absolutely hate what the Spanish and Portugese did in the the world, at that time (and other times) I do have grudging admiration for men like Cortes and Pizarro, especially Pizarro who gambled it all on a dream, and won!
My life? I am still on Mindanao, while Rizza is in classes on Cebu. I am compelled to stay here for the time being because the violence is increasing incredibly fast, and the scariest thing is that most people are not even aware.
I sound paranoid, right? In a second I will elaborate.
In family news my eldest bro-in-law Ariel arrived here 3 days ago from a trip to Manila and the UK Consulate where he went for an interview trying to get a Student Visa. He is 23 and a certified Medical Technologist (no specialty but currently working in a small hospital in Cagayan del Oro here on Mindanao).
To get a job in his profession though, he must rely on one fof the voracious agencies that are really not much better than the pimps that recruit eager and naive young Filipinas to be "Singers" and "Entertainers" in Japanese "clubs." The agencies charge up to 3 years salary, get the lowest paying jobs for people, and usually hold your travel documents in escrow. Ergo, his attempt to enter as a Student.
I had tried to get him a job in NYC when I was there but found he needed 3 more exams, 2 professional and he would not have been able to scheduale them in the time I spent there.
Unfortunately, Mum and Dad already bought his ticket to Ireland, without even knowing the results of the Visa Interview! I guess they have their confidence up. As upper middle class (or the local equivalent) they feel that Ariel will not be denied but he is 23, and unmarried, and people are lliterally dying every day in the attempt to get from Asia and Africa into the EU, etc.
Anyway, we will know soon.
One of the results of the Global Recession has been the need to adjust our business practices accordingly. Our main line is milling rice and corn, primarily rice. Here to fore we have always been able to do business where we chose, and as Bisayans (Visayans) never went south of Targum here on Mindanao to do business. Now we must even deal in ARMM, which is the Muslim semi-autonomous region here on Mindanao (Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao).
If you had told Dad , or Mum, a year ago that we would be running our trucks into ARMM they would have laughed literally for minutes. Today we run convoys down there. I cannot get into specifics because it really is that dangerous. Hence my title today.
Starting a couple of weeks ago I began finally , out of sheer boredom, to patronise expatriate sites for Westerners in the Philippines. I generally am nauseated with those sites because this country seems to attract a general type of person from the West. I really hate to generalise but the Westerners I have had reason to observe seem to be here for either cheap and abundant sex, or alternatively to marry a much (decades) younger woman who most often is herself driven by insurmountable poverty to marry a senior citizen as soon as she graduates university, etc.
So I joined a couple of sites. One of them, and I will of course refrain from naming them, had a section for Westerners asking about living conditions in different parts of the country.
Apprently alot of these blokes meet a gal online, and then for whatever reason make plans to come live here permanantly which seems more than a bit rash, but to each their own I say. So one poster asks about Davao City, is it nice, that sort of thing.
I answered my honest opinion that the city is not much to speak of, very ugly physically (it was founded as a WWII Japanese colony), and very dangerous safety wise as is most of Mindanao, although Davao naturally is safer than the bush.
So a whiteman who is living in Iligan City (near Cagayan , the city where Ariel is living and working) says, "Rachamim, I do not know what your story is but you should not be having people think that all of Mindanao is a warzone," etc.
Says I, "Look, of course the island is not 100% dangerous but many parts of it truly are and people have a right to this information."
He goes on with the usual crap that Embassies do not know their ass from their head, that Embassy Warnings are written by morons that never leave their a/c offices, and so on.
I then tell him, "I do not want to pry into your personal life but I will ask for a reason, how long have you lived in Iligan?" He replied that he has been there since May this year. I then replied that then surely he must be have been put out by the mandatory evacuation of 45,000 people in Iligan this past August due to the MILF (Muslim Insurgency) entering the city in battle.
He of course called me a liar and said it never happened. hahahahah. A few people then told him in fact it did, and I guess he searched and indeed confirmed it because he said it must have been exaggerated since he never even noticed it.
I explained , as an old hand in this country (only living here fulltime since 7/2007 but been coming here since Rizza was a toddler), that what actually happens rarely gets reported, let alone exaggerrated, and that it is actually quite ALOT MORE violent than the press and govts. would have you believe.
Another site I joined is actually a blog, run off an expat site. Again, no names. so the blogger and I post back and forth, even asks me to write some pieces for him, which I agree to do but never did. The guy did a piece about a US UAV (Drone) that crashed here in MILF occupied Mindanao, and then started saying he was getting urls from the Pentagon on his site, from Philippines officials, and that he began fearing for his status in the country - and maybe even his person! He then begins talking about MY url!
Now I have always posted here, and on every site under my real name, and even given out my actual address, job in the States, just about every personal detail you can imagine. In other words, I am no shrinking violet, right?
I have however had a couple of unfortunate experiences in giving out all this info but nothing in this country. Still, I began using first, on advice of Ariel and another bro-in-law Nigel, an Anonymyzer (sic) to mask my url. Later when in the US this last time, I bought into the AT&T World Service Plan which gives me a nice way to mask my url. The problem though, is my huge mouth! I mean, what is the sense of masking my url if I have already given out my address all over the net (it is all over this site for example). I have also belatedly found that some prgrammes see right through it anyway!
My location is not an issue, for me. However this guy began really harping on it and so his paranoia became infectious and I said to hell with these sites for Westerners. Too many local Govt. officials, and others probably do read them, and in fact in that vein I probably should not have such a big mouth here...but I do and since I like BL I will stick to the site...just continue being more circumspect elsewhere, right?
I will talk a bit more about local events in a following post, due to the character count...
