Sunday after church we drove over to Soda Springs to spend some time with mother and dad. Of course, the main reason was Mother’s Day, but there were several other reasons as well. Mother had a couple of small things needing to be fixed, all of which I was able to take care of. We also had a great dinner and lots of good visiting. Thanks, mother, for being such a special person.

The weekend was good. After several days of unseasonably warm temperatures, we got back to normal and I spent much of the day on Saturday doing things at the house. The garage is now clean. The RV is ready to go camping somewhere (Memorial Day weekend??). The motorcycle has been washed and waxed. Then it got cold enough that I didn’t want to ride by motorcycle to work on Monday! Tomorrow we’re headed to Layton for some things that need to get done before we leave on the cruise in about three weeks. I’m really looking forward to that vacation. Time is going by way too fast in many ways. I feel like it should still be February.

My favorite brother was born on Mother’s Day. I always thought that was kind of a special treat. My daughter Dawnmarie was born on Father’s Day and one of her children (Kate) was also born on Father’s Day, so the tradition continues. So, my brother Perry’s birthday is always somewhere around Mother’s Day. I do remember the birthdays of all our children … it’s Nina’s job to keep track of the grandchildren (and she does that very well). Everyone has the need to “store” information. It turns out that most people store information with other people. As I mature, storing information with other people (and particularly with Nina) has become increasingly important. I even store information in my blog! Let the cryptologist’s figure that one out….

Today is my favorite brother’s birthday. Congrats, Perry! While you’ll never catch up with me, you are aging well. There’s one good thing about birthdays … you’re another year closer to retirement. I hope you’ve had a nice day! Remember to start getting to bed a bit earlier. It comes with age, you know.

LeeAnn posted these questions on her blog. I don’t really have anything else to write about, so here goes:

• How tall are you barefoot? 5ft 9in
• Have you ever flown first-class? Yes … but only because of upgrades or on company business
• One of your favorite books when you were a child? The Hardy Boys
• A good restaurant in your city? We’re still waiting for it to happen
• What is your favorite small appliance? Microwave
• One person that never fails to make you laugh? I can’t come up with an answer for this one!
• What was the first music that you ever bought? Elvis Presley, You Ain’t Nothing But a Houndog
• Do you do push-ups? Rarely
• What was one of your favorite games as a child? Hide and Seek
• When you were twelve years old, what did you want to be when you grew up? A pathologist
• Your favorite Soup of the Day? Clam Chowder
• Have you ever met someone famous? Gilbert Grosvenor, Chairman of the Board of National Geographic. I few to Madrid on a TWA flight and played Gin with him for most of the trip upstairs in the First Class lounge back when the new 747’s had such a thing. He was a delightful traveling companion and I didn’t know who he was until he paid off his $17.29 debt for losing at Gin.
• Date Of Birth? March 19, 1945 (There are days I feel older than dirt….)
• From what news source do you receive the bulk of your news? internet
• Current worry? How much longer until I can retire
• Current hate? Early morning meetings … we often have meetings at 6 or 7 a.m. in the morning at work
• Favorite place to be? A cruise ship
• Least favorite place to be? In a 7 a.m. meeting
• Do you consider yourself well organized? No
• Do you believe in an afterlife? Absolutely
• Where do you think you will be in 10 Yrs? Probably still in Pocatello, Idaho
• Do you burn or tan? Burn
• Are you more optimistic or pessimistic about the future? Very optimistic. Lots of good things medically and technologically on the horizon
• What did you fear was going to get you at night as a kid? I was never afraid of the dark
• What’s in your pockets right now? Keys, wallet, handkerchief, cell phone, pocket knife, fingernail clippers, 2gb USB memory stick
• Last thing that made you laugh? The comic strip Zits in today’s newspaper
• Worst injury you’ve ever had? Haven’t ever been seriously injured
• How many TVs do you own? Six, but one is a computer monitor (currently tuned to the Utah Jazz game against the Golden State Warriors)
• Best compliment received? Compliments are hard to remember. I did get an email from a former colleague a couple of days ago telling me that I was still missed at my former company
• What leaves you speechless? Foul language when someone looses their cool at work
• What is your favorite book? Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series followed closely by The Lord of the Rings
• What were you doing at 12 midnight last night? Absolutely sound asleep
• Who do you tag? My brother, Perry….

I now have a new digital Single Lens Reflex camera. After a lot of looking and investigation, I finally decided to buy the Sony A100 digital SLR. The deciding factor was that the Sony takes the lenses I already have. About a year ago, Minolta sold their camera divisions to Sony. The A100 is Sony’s first camera using the Minolta technology plus their own technology. The three lenses I already have fit the camera very nicely and all work correctly. That meant I only needed to buy the camera body and the Sony had sufficient capability for what I use a digital SLR for. I checked several websites and then went downtown to the local Inkley’s store. They were willing to come within about $40 of what the online price was and having access to their support made the deal. I took a few test pictures, but this one is the first real picture taken with the new camera. It’s so nice to be back in the digital world again!

Union Pacific Railroad’s #844 Steam Engine came to Pocatello Friday evening on May 4th. This was one of those Big Deal events in a railroad town like Pocatello. The train was making it’s way from Cheyenne, Wyoming (home base for the engine) to Tacoma, Washington and back. It will be back in Pocatello on Sunday, May 27th and will be open for tours all day on the 28th. You can be sure that we will be there, along with a cast of thousands, to look, touch, take pictures, and buy souveniers.

I did take a bunch of pictures — four rolls of film in all — and picked out a bunch to put in the picture album. This was old technology work. My Minolta digital SLR was stolen and my Sony Cybershot camera is in the repair shop. So I reverted back to 35mm film using my Minolta Maxxum 9 SLR. It’s time to buy a new digital SLR. Since Minolta got out of the camera business and sold it all to Sony, I think I’ll buy a Canon camera to be compatible with Nina. Now it’s just a choice of finding the best deal either in town or on the Internet. When #844 comes back to Pocatello, I want to be taking digital pictures this time!

We have just returned from Soda Springs and spending some time with mother and dad. It’s been a fairly cold day and snow was coming down when we left Soda Springs to come back to Pocatello. Today was also Train Day. Union Pacific’s big 844 Steam Engine was coming through the area and would be spending the night in Pocatello. The train was supposed to arrive at 2:30 and the web site said that the train often ran early. But, wonders of technology, the train has a global positioning system onboard and the railroad has an interactive map that shows the location of the train. At 2 p.m. the train was still in Wyoming and was running at least 3 hours late. Since we were planning to drive to Soda Springs after watching the train, we decided to go first to Soda Springs and watch the train come through there instead. It worked out well. We arrived at mother’s house, checked the web site, and waited until the train was about twenty minutes away. We drove downtown and got (hopefully) some great pictures of the train coming into town.

Since it’s spending the night in Pocatello and leaving tomorrow morning, we decided to go find the train after we got back to Pocatello. We found we could drive right up to it and walk all around the train. That engine is absolutely massive. We took a few more pictures and will be there in the morning when the train leaves to take more. Since I don’t have a digital camera right now, I went back to my older Minolta Maxxum 9 SLR film camera. It’s been perhaps a couple of years since I’ve used that camera and I’ve now opened the body twice before the film rewound. It’s a good thing there’s still more opportunities to take pictures of the train!

I’ve finally gotten the rest of the pictures in the picture album from my trip to Manila as well as Stephanie’s birthday. In addition, I took a little bit of video from Danielle’s International Children’s Choir concert. It’s about 33mb large, which isn’t too bad. You can watch the video by clicking here.

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.