JDDavao

The US is lucky there was no actual backlash for firing tear gas into Mexico. Disarming a couple of Gomer Pyles is nothing. We would have done the same.

I was just thinking about this. Shame. And fines. All of us Americans here probably recall the Keep America Beautiful campaign PSA that showed the old indian chief astride his stallion, tear running down his cheek as he surveyed the litter across "his" land. Cue voice over: "People start pollution. People can stop it." I consumed a bazillion hours of TV as a kid and that PSA is burned into my gray matter. Aside from being trained to throw things away properly by my parents, I actually felt bad for that old fellow when i saw trash on the street. For God's sake! They'll make the indian cry! And then, as extra incentive, the littering fines were upped everywhere - especially along highways where trash used to be tossed out of automobile windows at much higher rates than it is now. But those won't work here. Shame doesn't work here for more than a few minutes and there's no one to levy fines as those in charge of doing so are all under a canopy at the crossroads or sitting in their vehicles with the windows up, AC on, and disco lights going. An appeal to patriotism might work here though. Especially if the President were to make a fist at some litter and swear.

Davao IS clean. In parts. Along the National Highways through populated areas you can see street sweepers out with the dustbins and brooms. However, the Powers That Be just widened the road that goes past our house which included installing all-new storm water handling pipes and drains. What they did not do is clean up the road when they were finished or plan regular gutter cleanups. The result is three feet of dust, dirt and gravel from the middle of the curb lane to the curb itself and brand-new drains that are clogged with litter and dirt. The dirt road (driveway) that serves the several homes back here is covered with litter from the schoolkids who use it as a shortcut. The end that empties onto the main street that was widened is thick with wrappers and litter - made worse by the proximity of a newish sarisari that's there. I've said to my wife that I'm going to clean the driveway up because it reflects poorly on our home but she stops me. She warns me that if I do, people will see it as my job and may begin to bring trash to the driveway for me to collect and throw. ::sigh::

Many thanks, manofthecoldland! The Cream Ale kit is bottled up. Now we wait for bubbles...

Bottling my home brew today, I hope. Happy beer day!

I am of the opinion that the Brgy captain had cooked up the extra demands from the farmers as a way to get 120K. The farmers get political favors, everyone gets a piece of the pie with El Capitán getting the largest slice. But now it seems that opinion and P200 will buy me a small Starbucks...

Speaking of batteries, fellow ShippingCart patrons should be aware that batteries are not shippable via their service. However, I don't know if that's restricted to regular batteries or if it also includes computer/electronics batteries. It's best to ask as you otherwise won't know until the item is rejected in your cart.

When BDO was giving out new ATM cards, we went to the mall bank where we opened our account to pick ours up. Of course, it took almost two hours to receive something you'd get in the mail in the US, what with new forms and signatures and rubber stamping. But the thing that got me the most was that the desk girl had a passel of new forms that had been filled out by customers which had been punched through the top margins with two holes. Threaded through the holes was a piece of string. Dozens of very important forms collated and bound with an errant piece of string. I asked her if the bank ordered the string specially or if it was her idea. She gaped at me for a moment until she realized I was joking and then she laughed. No answer though...

Wow. People here in Davao stake goats out all of the time. Cattle, too. Although, it's hard to pick up a cow and run with it...

I share just about everything with my wife. To the point where she's been known to tune me out. But then, my hearing problem has isolated me for years now from "face time" with people. As for the stories here, yes. Many times I share both big stories and small. You all share the same last name, by the way. It's Fromtheforum. Most often your first names are Thatguy.

Live by the tadger, die by the tadger...

We used to have a Filipina friend in Seattle send us the things we ordered. She even shopped for us on occasion. She has children - one with special needs - so we felt guilty for adding to her "to do" list. Then we had another friend in Nevada do the same. He has family here and visits regularly (was born here) so that worked out nice. The trouble is waiting for the box to fill. So now we use ShippingCart.com. No long wait to fill the box, no guilt for asking someone to shop for us, and a pretty good cost for sea shipments. The only problem now is that, thought they claim a 96% on-time rate for air and sea, my last two sea boxes were late and so are the next three coming. My wife still does the "do you still want these?" thing to me. Sometimes I think she hides my clothing so I forget about them...

An odd one, for sure. And seemingly completely disinterested in his wife's "illnesses". I mean, never asking for test results or receipts or her doctor's contact info until told he should? I would have learned everything possible about lymphoma and B-vitamin deficiency and been in constant contact with her caregivers. But it seems he contacted the PI and is/was working with him so, who knows? Reality is often stranger than fiction.

I was very surprised to find sirloin and T-bone steaks at SM Ecoland the other day. They were small but real. They also had some big hunks of sirloin. I was tempted to ask the boy to cut me a 1-inch steak from one piece but didn't. I got some giant beef "cubes" that I'll cut up smaller and cook with cubed pork, sausages and black beans for a make-shift feijoada. I like the BBQ sausages from Swiss Deli here in Davao. I usually buy Johnsonville smoked sausage for my breakfast meat. Either that or have bacon. Longganisa is good but I literally burp it ALL day and I can't stand that anymore. I suppose I miss decent tomatoes the most.

"Help Desks" in the Philippines are only there to get you frustrated enough to stop complaining.