We stopped for lunch at a Pizza Hut in a small mall in Calamba (far south side of Manila). There were no facilities in the Pizza Hut so I went into the mall to use their facilities. I was struck by this sign one the side of a booth for selling some kind of a card. Fall in line? The multiple possible meanings were delicious to think about. I’m sure that the Filipinos think the sign is quite normal. I could picture people falling all over themselves in line and my experience here is that Filipinos don’t queue anyway. It’s usually every person for themselves!

The Pizza Hut was an interesting experience. There is a much more varied menu than in the States. I had a chicken oriental salad and it was very nice. The pizzas ordered by the other guys looked to be pretty good — but much more cooked than at home. The crust was very hard on all the pizzas coming out of the oven. After lunch I took a few minutes outside to take a few pictures. Some of them will get posted tonight to the “pictures!” link on the right side of the page. More pictures to come!

On Saturday the IT department here is going to a cultural heritage center Villa Escudo for the day. I’ll bring the camera along with both (fully charged) batteries and should have a field day taking pictures. If so, then they’ll show up on the web page sometime over Sunday or Monday. In order to “maximize our time” at the center, we’ll be leaving at 5 a.m. (gasp). It takes a couple of hours to get there and a couple to get back, so I think I’ll have plenty of time to experience everything interesting at the place.

There is about 14 hours time difference between Manila and Pocatello. It’s 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, April 27th in Manila and about 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 26th in Pocatello. The morning hours in Manila overlap with the evening hours the previous day in Pocatello. After being in a part of the world for a time a person gets used to the time differences and can quickly calculate them in the head. I haven’t gotten there yet and have to double-check my mental calculation quite regularly. There is a time zone converson chart hanging in the office here which I use quite regularly. Manila doesn’t change time between daylight savings and regular time, so whenver the US changes times, everyone here in Manila has to relearn the time differences.

The other interesting difference is that Manila is fairly close to the equator and the length of daylight changes very little during the year — perhaps only about a ninety minute difference between the longest daylight day at Summer Solstice and the shortest daylight day at Winter Solstice. Conversly, in Pocatello, the daylight hours difference is fairly pronounced with as much as 6 1/2 hours daylight difference between December and June. Essentially the sun sets at about the same time year around in Manila. According to the US Naval Observatory, the sun sets at 6:27 p.m. on the Summer Solstice and at 5:32 p.m. on the Winter Solstice. The meaning for me is that there is no real good light for pictures after I get out of the office in the evening! I’ve also had some late night meetings which makes getting up any earlier than 6 a.m. difficult.

Last night after I had dinner with the general manager here, I caught the 8 p.m. shuttle to a local shopping mall. I wasn’t at all prepared for how large this mall is — and it’s one of two malls within a five mile radius. The other one is supposedly the same size with a little more emphasis on restaurants. The mall closed at 9 p.m. and I learned that meant the outside doors were locked at 9 p.m. About 8:45 every store started shoving people out and closing the shutters. At 9 p.m.. all the doors everywhere were locked and getting out required a guard to open the doors. Finding a guard wasn’t difficult, however. Every entrance door into the mall had two guards on duty. They inspected all purses and backpacks coming into the mall and looked at the same going out. The entrance from the highway into the mall parking area was also guarded and the driver had to show identification to get past the checkpoint. While the security certainly isn’t intrusive and is actually fairly superficial, it is certainly more than I’m used to seeing. There has been some terrorist activity in Manila and these measures are quite OK with me if it keeps me safe. Further, whenever I go into my hotel, there’s a fellow out front with a dog that sniffs everything being carried into the hotel. Then at the front door a doorman looks inside of all bags and backpacks. Again it seems to be somewhat superficial, but it’s still much more visible security than is present anywhere in the US.

At the mall I spent a little bit of money in a drug store. My noise-cancelling headsets have a piece broken off. I bought some superglue to piece it back together so they’ll work on the flights back home. Also, the change in diet caused my system to rumble a bit too much yesterday so I also picked up some pills to settle that problem down. It turns out that pills like Imodium AD are purchased pill at a time. I could buy as many pills as I wanted at 50 pesos each (about $1 apiece — a bit pricey?). I bought five of them since one should do the trick, but I’ll be here for about 18 more days and who knows what future diet issues will cause. I’m now at work and the day is well underway. Life is OK.

I’ve had no real opportunity to be anywhere except the hotel and the office. I did get a few pictures yesterday afternoon around the office and this morning from the hotel room window. I’ve posted a few pictures — just click on the “pictures!” link on the right side of the webpage.

I went back to the hotel yesterday afternoon about 3:30 and grabbed a couple hours of sleep. I had dinner at the hotel and went back to the room to catch up on some work activities. About a half-hour after I went to bed the power went out at the hotel and I sat in the dark for about an hour before power was restored. My nasal CPAP machine (for sleep apnea) doesn’t work with no electricity! That made for a little shorter night than I wanted, but the day today has gone quite well. Jetlag is a difficult issue but I’ll be here long enough on this trip to get quite acclimated to the time in this country.

It gets dark early here — when I got up after my nap yesterday at 6 p.m., twilight was almost over and nightfall was descending. There isn’t much close around the hotel so it isn’t worth trying to take a walk in the area. Tonight I’ll take the shuttle over to one of the malls and walk around there with camera in hand. There just might be something worth taking a picture of. I also have a meeting at 10 p.m. tonight so I’ll likely have another chance to write something about my impressions of the country so far.

It was a very long day but completely uneventful from a flying perspective. The flight out of Narita was on time and in a newly refurbished 747. Very comfortable and a very nice flight. I even got a couple hours of sleep! The service consisted of one meal which was also tastey. This flight had on-demand movies, but I wasn’t interested in movies. I was ready to get a little sleep. The cabin lights came up about 5 minutes before we landed in Manila, which was about 10 minutes later than the scheduled arrival.

It is quite muggy here as I would expect. How long does it take to get used to that? I’m not sure. The transfer to the hotel was uneventful. Driving methods haven’t changed since the last time I was here, but I only had to suck wind once when we came pretty close to colliding with a van that cut in front and then stopped in the middle of the road (because they got cut of by a jeepny) to let someone out. The hotel is 20 stories tall and one of the tallest buildings in the area. The rooms are comfortable and very European in style. I got to the hotel about 11:50 p.m. local time and was in bed by 12:15! I’ll take a little more time to look around when I get back to the hotel this afternoon.

When the phone rang to wake me up at 6:30 a.m. I definitely wasn’t ready to get out of bed. I kind of quickly showered, shaved, and dressed, and headed for the breakfast room. I got there with 5 minutes to grab a quick bite and then meet the folks to ride into the office. I did make it but will be right ready for lunch sometime today. The workday has now started and I’m moving reasonably well myself.

I’ve arrived safely and without incident in Narita. This airport looks nothing like it did when we left in 1998. Literally everything has been redone. There is a new lounge and it has WIRELESS! It’s just a little after 5 p.m. here, which is about 2 a.m. there in Pocatello.

The wireless costs 500 yen for a day. Not a bad price considering what most other places arer charging. My flight to Manila starts boarding in about an hour and leaves in about two hours. Some of the rice fields were flooded and I took quite a few pictures out the window. I may even have a picture of Mt. Tsukuba. Definitely have Tsuchiura. It smells the same here, however. There’s no mistaking the odor of Japan when you walk up the jetway. There are quite a few people here in the lounge. There are flights to Bangkok, Shanghai, Manila, Hong Kong, and Singapore in the next couple of hours.

The airplane over here was a 747 and Northwest has upgraded their airplanes a bit. Business Class is larger than just the front part of the airplane. It now extends back several more rows into were Economy was before. The food was reasonably good. Dinner took a long time to get served. Breakfast was served about 90 minutes before we landed. We were at the gate about 4:15 local time which was about a half-hour early as I recall. My iPod ran out of battery a couple of hours before we landed. I was glad I had my minidisk player with me. There was no power on the plane for laptops where I was seated. Only in the up-front area and upstairs in First Class. “Soon,” the flight attendant told me. I was not in the front part of the airplane. Business class was full. First class had room for 8 and had 3 people. I didn’t look at Economy, so I don’t know how many people were back there. We had a lot of turbulence coming across — more than three hours in one stretch.

We went north out of LAX up to just north of San Francisco and then went out over the ocean. We continued way north, however, along the same track that I would have expected we would fly out of Seattle. It is very quiet here in the lounge so I expect most people have come in from the US and are making connections. Lots of folks are snoozing.

It’s quite clear outside and about 50 degrees. It is very green, just as we would expect. It makes me a bit “homesick” as this is one of the beautiful times of the year in Japan. Oh well. I guess looking out the window will have to do for this trip!