ramblings
I am disgusted at some things, happening, circumstances or situations here. I will rant about whatever comes to mind: I have tried four times, since Thursday, to retrieve from Eleanor Sebiano a laptop computer that I loaned-out a month ago. I don’t know whether she still has it. I have twice e-mailed the Filipino to whom I had loaned the computer, and he won’t respond. ‘Neither a borrower nor lender be,’ I guess. And don’t trust Eleanor Sebiano ( for various reasons).
Every week we lose phone service and DSL, our connection to the internet in this flat. So I’d like to have the portable p.c. to use in one of the cafés that offer free wireless internet access (Veniz Café, Zola’s Resto/Café, Red Lion Pub and Starbucks). No, I don’t frequent these places though Bible study is in Starbucks and I’ve gone once. I’ve just noticed their ‘free wi-fi zone’ signs.
We’ve heard that when in the typhoon season our neighborhood and others in Tuding lose electricity due to downed power lines, people flock to the mall which always has electricity. And Starbucks is in the front of the mall. So when we don’t have electricity at home, Dom and I can try to hail a jeepney or taxi to go to the city and chill in Starbucks for a while and get on the internet.
In this flat we have repeated electrical blackouts, from five minutes to hours. We also lose water pressure because we don’t have a municipal water supply but rather a water tank above the back yard that must be filled by a water delivery truck. Today I had water in the shower, but the Panasonic water heater in the shower didn’t have alternating current, so I had a cold shower (not lukewarm -cold ).
A few days ago, while working on the internet, I see a roach crawling along the top of the couch a foot from my left elbow. When I’m reading the Bible, I see past the top of the book a roach crawling straight up the yellow-painted wall. One morning I walked into the kitchen and a roach was calmly walking up the face of the microwave oven.
One day when Dom and I were watching a movie, we heard a chirping inside the room, somewhere behind or beside us. it sounded somewhat like a cricket, yet not quite. Later, I left my chair at the computer to look for the source of the chirping behind and above me. The small cousin-of-a-cricket was on the wall above the door to my bedroom.
Now I’m hearing only pleasant frog and cricket sounds outside our flat. But too often we have to hear a chorus of barking dogs or caterwauling roosters. This morning I awoke to Kenny Rogers’ greatest hits blasted-out by the rednecks who live below/behind us.
Jeepney drivers often won’t stop so we can board or ride on the back. That’s frustrating when we’re standing under a tree or an awning surrounded by rain and we want to go home. Store clerks and sidewalk vendors tell us that they don’t have products that we can actually see behind them! Internet café clerks usher us to the lousiest computers, without USB ports for uploading data to the internet, with the lousiest monitors and keyboards with the letters rubbed off many of the keys and some keys stick.
I’m glad that I haven’t been pickpocketed here. I heard in The Red Lion Pub about guys losing wallets and cell phones.
I wonder if those guys were in the wrong places -in crowded bars or sports arenas or… I don’t know. I’ve roamed crowded streets on weekends, jockeying for position on sidewalks and crosswalks and lobbies, trying not to be poked in an eye by an open umbrella. I haven’t lost a wallet or loose bills or cell phone yet. My 5mp camera/phone is usually tethered by a lanyard to a belt loop while it rests in the bottom of my left pants pocket. No one has attempted to remove it.
We’ve had light rain showers here, which remind Dominic and I of the upcoming rainy season, beginning in late May or early June. We’d like to be able to buy a cheap car or van to stay out of the rain, yet we’re not getting all the website design jobs that we had expected that we would. We had thought that we’d be swamped with jobs.
_____________________________________________________
More important than all of this minutiae is the fact that Dominic and I have ceased dealing with Eleanor Sebiano of Turning Point. I recommend that no one deal with ‘Ely’ Sebiano. Look before you leap. If you are a student at APTS, don’t allow Ely to take you throughout Baguio City and Gumatdang and Turning Point to try to extract donations from you and from your church ‘back home.’ †