The weekend was great. Nina and I along with Bradica (the dog) went to North Salt Lake last Friday afternoon. Several Very Important Events were going on, of which the most important was Stephanie’s eighteenth birthday on Saturday. About 11:30 p.m. on Friday night we were headed to bed when I discovered that I had left the hose and mask home from my CPAP breathing machine. For the uninitiated, sleeping is impossible without the machine, hose, and mask. So, it was drive back to Pocatello time. Ty volunteered to go with me, driving his Lexus (because it has a radar detector). It’s a two hour and twenty minute drive … the radar detector took off about ten minutes. We spent the night at the house in Pocatello and drove back to Heather’s house the next morning, with (almost) everything that we had forgotten. So much for “packing light”!

The first Major Event was Danielle’s soccer game. They played very well and won 2-1. The sun was bright and hot. That’s when I discovered that I didn’t bring a hat with me. Heather’s umbrella worked well and I was probably the only one in the group that didn’t get sunburned.

The second Major Event was dinner for the whole family at The Olive Garden. Stephanie and her boy friend Nate joined us for that event. Nate treated Stephanie to a massage and pedicure at a spa for her birthday present. The food was very good (I had Parmesan-crusted Talapia … delicious and memorable!) but we were a bit pressed for time.

Why? Because of the third Major Event! Danielle has been accepted as an Apprentice Level 1 in the International Children’s Choir. The choir was presenting a concert for parents and friends at the Libby Gardner Hall at the University of Utah. This is a very prestigious choir and Danielle has a lovely voice. The concert was excellent and featured on a couple of numbers with a twelve-year-old pianist who is one of the child prodigies that we sometimes hear about. He literally brought us to our feet with his performance. The concert was about an hour and ten minutes of delightful and well presented music. After a year in the choir, Danielle can move up to Apprentice Level 2. A year later, if she wishes and has put in the work, she can join the main choir, which tours all over the world.

Finally on Saturday night, we had the fourth and Main Event: ice cream cake celebrating Stephanie’s eighteenth birthday while she opened up her presents. She was very nicely gifted, including a to-die-for handbag from her aunt and a porcelain sculpture from her mother that brought tears. It doesn’t seem possible that Ty and Heather are old enough to have an eighteen-year-old daughter. I’m certainly not old enough to have a granddaughter that old! However, she’s made it to womanhood and she’s a delightful person anxious to get into the world and take it by storm. Congratulations, Stephanie!

When I mentioned to a friend from the Philippines about Stephanie’s eighteenth birthday, I learned that this is a Big Deal in that country! For instance, people rent hotel salons for this event where there will be dinner followed by ball-room dancing (a Cotillion de Honor). Eighteen candles given by eighteen important female family members and eighteen roses given by other friends and family with either the boyfriend or the father giving the eighteenth rose. While we don’t go that far, it is still a Very Important Birthday.

I did post a few pictures from a weekend trip to Tagaytay in the Philippines on my last trip there. I have a few more pictures to post sometime. I also put up a ten-minute video on YouTube of one of the malls near the hotel where I stay.

Since I was here just a few months ago, there has been a lot of construction going on in the area of the hotel where I stay. One of the new arrivals is a McDonalds. It’s in a small facility that houses several other fast food restaurants as well as a 7-11 store. While the McDonalds is interesting, the 7-11 is delightful as that store has a good array of soda, cookies, and candy. Note the row of motorcycles. McDonalds delivers! Place a call, or even just send a text message, and they deliver to your door. I haven’t had the courage to have them deliver to my hotel room, though.

It’s been a very quiet Saturday. I spent a couple of hours at the Festival Mall and took some video with my little Sony point-and-shoot camera which I intend to put up on YouTube when I get back home at the end of the week. People might find it interesting to see what a mall experience in the Philippines is like. I’ve also had time today to read through several newspapers. A newspaper shows up in front of the door of my hotel room every morning just before I leave for the day, so I don’t have time to look at it. I had time to look through them today. And, of course, I have a few observations.

1. It’s election time in the Philippines. I think the elections are next month in late May and electioneering is in full swing here in the Philippines. The newspapers are quite full of different ways that the government is spending tax dollars in an effort to win votes for the upcoming election. The newspapers are quite gleefully publicizing all of the pork projects that are going on and the associated graft and corruption. However, talking to the people I work with here in Manila, they all agree that it doesn’t matter much who gets elected as nothing will change. As one colleague put it, “bad grass never dies”.
2. The traffic seems to be getting worse and the roads along with it. I had some meetings in downtown Manila in Quezon City on Friday. Getting to and from the hotel was quite miserable for a trip of about fifteen miles. We needed an hour and a half to get there and two and a half to get back. In an effort to reduce congestion at major intersections, several of them have been dismantled and blocked. The cross street no longer goes across. The driver has to make a right turn, go several hundred yards to a U-turn, come back the other way, and make a right turn to continue. That, of course, has only changed the problem rather than solving the problem. The solution set includes (a) significant road and infrastructure investment, (b) a good public transportation system, and (c) taxing vehicles off the road by charging tolls to enter downtown. I expect if I were to come back in 5 years, I would see no improvement but rather a significant degradation.
3. It is noisy in Manila. I think I’ve said this before, but everything is noisy. The vehicles are noisy. The traffic is noisy. Stores play very loud music. Malls play very loud music. People talk loudly (probably to be heard over all the noise).
4. The Bellevue Hotel has gone into cost cutting mode. There’s a whole bunch of little things that are different. For instance, all the light bulbs have been replaced with much lower output florescent bulbs. Now the rooms are dimly lit at night. Today at the mall I bought a couple of higher-output florescent bulbs for my room. It’s amazing the difference that a little light makes. On the other hand, the somewhat threadbare carpet is more visible!
5. There is construction going on all around the hotel. In addition, the hotel has started building a second tower to double the capacity of the hotel. There seems to be a lot of people staying here, so I expect that the hotel is fairly full. Maybe the cost cutting is to help pay for the new construction? Most of the new construction is for call centers. Three new ones are being built across the street. Convergys was already here. HSBC (a bank) has a big call center in operation here. So does General Electric — in a new building that was just beginning construction the last time I was here. The call center business is growing rapidly here. Because of some pictures of Convergys that I took a couple of years ago, I’ve met a person who works at Convergys across the street from the Hotel. Elreen provides Sprint customer services, working from 3 a.m. in the morning until noon so that the US afternoon and evening hours are covered. I can understand why customer support would be coming from the Philippines because the Filipinos want to be very helpful, are very polite and soft spoken, are well educated, and the labor rates are much lower here. Much of this customer support work is migrating from India to the Philippines because of the Filipino personality and the bill collection work is migrating to India because of the insistent nature of the Indians.
6. For some reason, the Philippine Peso is going up in value to the US dollar. It had increased from 52 pesos to the dollar the last time I was here last fall to 47 to the dollar now, almost a 10% change. It is unclear to me why this big change in value, particularly for a currency that is not very convertible. Most banks outside of the Philippines will not take or convert the Philippine Peso for some reason.
7. The air is quite a bit cleaner than the last time I was here. I don’t think it’s because anything extraordinary has happened; probably the wind patterns this time of the year blows the pollution away better than in other times. There are a number of high mountains to the south of town that normally aren’t visible through the smoke and haze, but they have been all week this week. I like the cleaner air!
8. There is a lot of health-related advertising here. Big signs proclaiming ways to manage blood sugar. Big signs advertising milk supplements for children to bring out the “gift in the child”. Big signs advertising nutrition products. These campaigns must work. Every Filipino I know carries a toothbrush with them and they brush their teeth faithfully after eating. It’s almost a ritual thing … everyone heads for the restroom after a meal to brush their teeth. Nothing bad about that; it’s just different.

There are probably more, but that’s enough for now. The trip is more than half over. Next Friday morning I’ll be on an airplane flying back to Pocatello and to my own world. It’s been fun getting another glimpse of the world from a Philippine perspective.

The invitation from a compatriot here in Manila was for a “unique farmhouse luncheon”. Of course, that deserved acceptance. It was indeed unique. The farm was only a short distance from the entrance to the Industrial Park where our plant is located. It was indeed a farm, although it didn’t seem to be very busy. We drove past horses, goats, and lots and lots of gamecocks. A big business in the Philippines is raising fighting roosters. Apparently on this farm it is also a big business. The main farm house buildings were lovely. They have a large swimming pool, several buildings connected by walkways and pathways, and a large recreation area. The owner opened up one of the buildings a few years ago as a place for a pleasant, peaceful lunch. Eating is by reservation only and only in small groups — 2-8 people. The menu is fixed in advance (and doesn’t have a lot of variety). There are a couple of waiters in the dining room, otherwise no one is around. It was very pleasant.

The menu today consisted of a light coconut juice drink, a very nice salad, followed by a seafood pasta, then pork, rice, various squashes, and a light cookie (with green tea for those interested) for desert.  The place isn’t air conditioned, but the weather in Manila right now is very nice. I’d guess the temperatures were in the low 80’s with a light breeze and low humidity. It was very nice to be out of my too-cold office in the plant! The only noise was the crowing of the roosters out in the farm area.

The roosters are raised to be very aggressive. Consequently, they cannot be together in a pen as they’d quickly kill each other. So each rooster has his own “house” and roost. The house is a couple of pieces of plywood in an A-frame shape with a pole on the top sticking out a ways. A rope is tied through the pole and onto the leg of the rooster which limits the radius that the rooster can roam, keeping it away from other roosters. However, the other roosters are close enough that they provide a constant stimulus to each other. That makes for a lot of rooster crowing and strutting. That was interesting as long as I didn’t think about the end purpose of these roosters….

The trip is going well and I think I’ve made the time change. I had some important items stolen from my luggage somewhere along the line. My Minolta digital SLR camera and lens was taken. A folder of CD’s, including all of my Lord of the Rings CD’s and a number of software CD’s was taken. I was bringing an iPod Shuffle over for one of the people here in Manila and that was taken as well. I’m pretty unhappy about that and hopefully I’ll be able to get some reimbursement from insurance somewhere for the loss. The loss of the software means that I don’t have any picture processing software on my new company laptop, so I can’t post any pictures. That’ll have to wait until I get home.

The completely uneventful flying experience ended in Manila right on time. My luggage arrived (although my digital camera has been pilfered from the suitcase!!) and I was in the hotel by midnight. Now I just have to deal with the jetlag. I was up at 6:15 this morning and after breakfast caught the 7:15 shuttle to the office. The day has been busy with meetings and in a couple of hours I’ll catch the 5:30 pm shuttle back to the hotel. I think then I’ll crash for the evening … or at least for a while. There’s a meeting at 10 p.m. that I should be attending on the phone. We’ll see if I can actually make it to that meeting.

The weather here is actually quite nice. It’s about 85 today with hazy sunshine and fairly humid (but not oppressive). Hopefully that’ll persist until the weekend. I’ve no idea what to do on the weekend, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something interesting to do. Meanwhile, I just want to go to bed.

We had a very good visit with Dawnmarie and Kirk and their family in Pennsylvania. We flew back on Monday, April 2nd and got home safely, but dead tired at about 11 p.m. The trip, while very quick, was a good visit. Somehow we need to figure out how to get more time to visit our family all over the country.

On Tuesday, Wendy, Aaron, Kendra, and Aidan arrived in Pocatello for a couple of days. What a lovely treat! Kendra is closing in on her thirteenth birthday and is a delightful young woman. We did a lot of visiting and talking during the day and a half that they were here in Pocatello. They left on Thursday (far too soon) and have arrived safely back home. I guess it’s now our turn to go up there!

I’ve posted pictures from Pennsylvania as well as from Kendra’s visit in the Picture Album.