The neighbors are smoking again.
Not tobacco or weed, this time its wet brush. They pile this stuff up once a week and let it smoulder so the smoke gets in the trees for mosquitos. I guess someone forgot to tell them there arent any permathrin plants growing here so palm-smoke aint gonna cut it. But Damnit!! Its all inside my house!
It was one of those huge Tokay geckos… about 7 inches long. I woke up this AM and found this. That book is the encyclopedia of recreational diving, about an inch thick and weighs a few pounds. It was on this end of the screen. This morning, it was on the ground, the box had been turned slightly like it had been kicked, and the screen is BENT upwards and crinkled. Are there monkeys coming in this fucker?
You would not believe the retarded crap I have to take these days, just when it was going so well. I’ve lived on Boracay for over a year and I’m still getting mistaken for my departed roommate thats been gone for a month now. They see me out and think I’m him.
I’m getting texts about it: “why doesnt he answer?, can you ask him?” well, close but reduce it to tagalish text-speak. Come on people, we dont look THAT much alike. Arm tats and shaved head, thats all.
It’s 5am and I’m finally not hungover from 2 days ago. About damn time.
Guess I havent been putting my diving in here. I started the Master Scuba Diver plan with Dustin at Blue Mango. I’m filling up on cert cards and getting Tech I at the end. His big thing is that I get plenty of diving in and know my skills for the specialty certs. It does remind me that out all the people I asked, Dustin was the only one that explained RDP tables in a simple manner that was too easy to not understand on 3 dive projections… in under 30 seconds.
He did an excellent job of having me navigate all over a few unknown dive sites with nothing more than a compass and kick count. Since I already have my Rescue and EANx certs, he let me out further than I suspect others might go. I liked it. Tracing a route and returning to the mark is so much more meaningful when you can concentrate and not worry about observers.
For some reason, I’ve been enjoying the hell out of Boracay this past week, almost as if something’s changed.
Xibalba, jeeze I love this word. I mean, I just might get this tattooed on my forehead.
Xibalba is one of the Mayan mythical worlds, this one is not a happy place. I dont get the impression that its like most hell’s where you automatically go there when you die if not another place like heaven, it seems to be just another place they really dont want to ever go cause they’re gonna be FOOOKED! Some great wiki qoutes:
Roughly translated as “Place of fear”, its the name of the underworld, ruled by Mayan spirits of disease and death…
…It is unclear if the inhabitants of Xibalba are the souls of the deceased or a separate race of beings worshiping death, but they are often depicted as being human-like in form… The first among the Lords of Xibalba were One Death and Seven Death. The remaining ten Lords are often referred to as demons and are given commission and domain over various forms of human suffering: to cause sickness, starvation, fear, destitution, pain, and ultimately death. The remaining residents of Xibalba are thought to have fallen under the dominion of one of these Lords, going about the face of the Earth to carry out their listed duties…
…the Road to Xibalba was filled with obstacles: first a river filled with scorpions, a river filled with blood, and then a river filled with pus.
I mean, how friggin coolis that?!??! A river of pus!
A rehydration tablet (like alka seltzer) in a bottle or water with:
wow, thats a lot.
And a multi vitamin that doesn’t actually look like it has anything useful in any decent amounts and a lot of crap there should never be any need to be in a vitamin…with this:
jeeze, i feel like crap right now. I came home last night and it started raining again so those damn roaches started coming in again… but i forgot that the posion was already down and they’d die in an hour or so. my dumbass started spraying again and with the few drinks in me, guess i stayed in the area too long and inhaled the baygon. ive spent all day in either the bed or the bathroom. was supposed to finish my navigation specialty course with dustin today at blue mango. tomorrow is my last day ’cause he leaves for a week the day after.
I now have two of the large Tokay geckos. I used to think it was just a huge mother but now know its a different breed that rund around eating all the other smaller breeds of geckos, large bugs and… massive cock roached that are already posioned to death. Yuppers, I think they’re eating these 2 inch dead roached that died from uber doses of that Baygon posion thats so strong it makes even myself sick. Kills the huge roaches and spiders in a matter of seconds. But these geckos, they eat this toxic corpse and keep on truckin’.
Ya see, it was raining for almost two days last week and that drives these massive roaches inside thru the slatted windows, under doors and out of water drains. The hole in the drain grill is smaller than a pencil but they still manage to squeeze thru somehow. So I went around spraying all over and sure enough, a few hours later we had dead roaches all over; it looked like someone had unleashed muslim terrorism in the bug kingdom.
But the next morning, most of the corpses were gone. huh? A day later, I find these huge gecko turds and can easily identify it as whole-swollowed roach carcass. I bet these bad ass lizards are kicking back doing shots of Baygon when I’m not looking.
Went diving with Dustin yesterday at Blue Mango and enjoyed the hell out of it. I’m tired and just woke up late as hell. Was supposed ot be ther at 08:30, it’s now almost 11:00. I was up all night watching movies and CRAP I’m still tired.
For some reason, the brown outs haven’t been happening like they said. It’s not like it was a rumor mill that came up with the ideas, I personally called them and was told YES every day from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm would be a brown out for the entire island of Boracay. And it was going to last two solid months. But yesterday, it went out for 5 minutes in the afternoon and today for about 3 minutes around noon.
I’m not complaining… much the opposite. But I now suspect either they did a poor job of describing the outage (as being island wide) like they did the water issues a few months ago - which turned out o be only a few small areas and only from a certain distributor - completely unlike their public announcement that the entire island would be without water. Also, they could have put the fear of god into everyone in the beginning by making it sounds horrible (which it did) but then we would be relieved when its just a lot of spotty occasions of brown out - and no one complains much. Yea, I think that last one would be the way to go.
now….. for a random picture:
Ole's: some of the prettiest girls on the island, just waiting for a person to serve.
A few nights ago, I ate at Red Pirates for their Friday night all-u-can-eat buffet for 200 pesos, and that food was good! Tons and tons of BBQ skewers of beef and chicken (or was pork one of them?), some large grilled tilapia fish, a potato salad, a spinich/vinegar salad, a chef salad, rice, etc… man, it was good!
We sat at the front table with Jaqi, Rod, Declan, and one of the new kittehs that only wanted to snoop on the plates but not eat anything. After 2 plates, I was stuffed and ended up laying down on the bench for a while. A few times ther were camera flashes as people took pics of the kitten sleepng on top of me .. I still gota get copies of those.
It was a nice and relaxing night on Boracay with perfect weather of a cool breeze coming in from the sea. There was so much food left over, they were trying to get people to take plates of BBQ home with them.
food treasure - salvage rights being exercised in Red Pirates on Boracay
The new kittehs’ at Red Pirates have laid salvage-rights claim to Rods bag of leftover food. They might need to have some breaching tools lowered to them.
way too lazy
the new ice-company suppliers on Boracay. do you really want to buy your ice from a cart with the word "Yellow" in the title?
It’s 07:50 am leaving 10 minutes until the official start time of the power outage. They say they’re doing a substation installation and its gonna take 2 months of daily outages. But yesterday, it only lasted about 4 or 5 hours, perhaps less. I even called them and the guy answering was audibly weary of answering that question - yes, there would be many more such outages.
In Baghdad, we supplied a good deal of power to a ton of locations and I can think of a single area that consumed about 10 times more electricity than all of Boracay. It only took a handfull of electricians less than a half day to bypass every existing substation and generator to reinstate power. But Akelco, a government regulated firm, cant get this simple task done with the might of the Philippines government behind it for a tiny island like Boracay? Not for two months? Boracay only has a few single trunks… why not locally installed 1.5 MW generators? they’re pretty much standard every where else in the world… yes, even in third world countries. (but not here apparently). They’re even designed in shipping containers for ease of transport.
Oh well, lets see if the juice goes out again today…during peak usage times.
Brown out, black out, power outage; whatever you want to call it. I’m down at Blue Mango and sure enough, the generator is running. Supposedly for 2 months, the power will be out daily.
How does this happen? After a typhoon, they can get it up after 5 days but now the entire island is without electricity for 2 months, every day, during peak usage times.
Isn’t this supposed to be the crown jewel of the Philippines? The pinnacle of all tourism efforts both local and abroad? Akelco is allowed to raise and lower its rates without notice…now the power company can simply cut off power?
I seriously suspect a bullshit decision that benifits certain fuel distributors here on Boracay, Aklan, and where ever they come from. Thats a lot…a LOT of fuel thats going to be used by the resorts. I suspect that someone noticed the increase in sales duringthe typhoon.
Brown out that never stops? HuH?
This is what I’m hearing from a god friend of mine who also happens to own a resort here. The low-down as that Boracay power company, Akelco, is going to turn off the electricity every day from morning to evening (hottest times of the day) for 60 or 90 days.
WHAT!?!?!?!?!?!
Bullshit. I’m not referring to his info, I’m referring to these people not being able to side step a simple substation for 3 friggin’ months. OK, so how is it that 5 electricians in a warzone of Iraq can manage it with more power output than the ENTIRE of Boracay needs… but this place cant? This is the crown jewel of the Philippines, is it not? The entire country cant do in 3 months what takes a few electricians in Iraq only a single day to do?
We shal see if this comes to pass. Today is the projected start date. BTW, Akelco is the company I pay for electricity and they billed me for 4500 pesos for last billing period…when no one was even home! I’m sure the meter is correctly read, but someone is tapping into my line and they refuse to do anything about it. But now, I have my bat.
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