I Used to Live There! – Page 9 – Bradley's Old Fashioned Weblog

Unusual Names in the Philippines

May 13, 2010 Bradley Farless2 Comments

Naming conventions differ the world over, but for the most part have remained rather traditional in the US. That’s slowly changing, but for now you’ll still find plenty of people named John, David, Heather, and Lesley.

In the Philippines, names are a lot more creative. I’ve seen a girl named Cherry Pie, another named Happy, and my brother-in-laws and my wife are all named after Catholic saints. Seriously. Most of my brother-in-laws have 3 ‘first’ names. My wife has 2.

At first I was a little turned off by the idea, because I had a rather conservative upbringing and lived in a repressive American subculture called the US Army. Now, though, I think it’s interesting how people here break traditional boundaries and express their creativity through naming.

Here’s one sample I saw at the Jollibee in Antipolo, Rizal Province, inside the Shopwise store.

Finally Making Some Progress Fixing Up My In-Law’s Place

May 13, 2010 Bradley Farless6 Comments

So, in the last post I was talking about finally making some progress and that progress was seeing the first load of refuse being hauled away. Both my mother-in-law and father-in-law have been collecting things, mostly junk for lack of a better word, for quite a few decades. I’m talking rusty, broken knives, bits of wiring, broken figurines, worn out brooms, and other things that no longer work that they didn’t want to get rid of because some day they might figure out a use for it again. The result is that the house was so packed with crap that there wasn’t even enough room to actually live in it.

My wife and I are making our best effort to solve that problem. I wound up getting a lot of exercise, a lot irritated and I also got in a lot of yelling before the garbage went on its merry way.

Thank God.

Anyhow, with that stuff gone I can start putting things that are worth keeping in the attic, or clean them up and leave them on display, rearrange the furniture, get the electrical wiring installed correctly, fix the plumbing and the roof and then do some repainting. The place is in a state of disrepair that’s ridiculous, and I can’t see letting them continue on living this way, even though we’ll only be living here temporarily. In a few months we’ll be moving again to Manila proper for work and school and we’ll be renting an apartment. I want to improve their standard of living before that happens and then maintain it by visiting weekly.

Besides the accumulated junk, the problems I see in this house really blow my mind because they’re things that I took for granted in the US (and to some extent in Singapore) without even realizing it. Among other things, there’s a water shortage. We have to get up at 5 AM to fill drums of water to use throughout the day because by 6 AM the taps run dry. It’s an interesting experience, and I suppose it’s not very depressing for me because it’s just temporary, but I can’t imagine facing the realization that life would be that way every day, forever.

As for our own sleeping arrangements, we walked into a bare bedroom. It didn’t even have a bulb in the light fixture and for the first 7 days we couldn’t find one to fit it. We were using a lamp but our cats knocked it over and broke the bulb so we spent the last few nights with an LED flashlight hanging from the fixture. We finally found a hardware store with the bulb today while shopping for concrete and when we plugged it in, I was excited, because it was like crawling back out of the stone age into modernity again.

We also had to get a dresser for all of our things. We found one we liked and had it delivered. I was afraid of the amount of time I’d have to put into assembling it but the delivery guy set it up himself. He did it in about an hour… without a manual. That’s impressive to me. See the pictures below to get an idea of how many parts the thing has.

The latest thing going on for us is having a real door set up to partition my wife’s bedroom, hallway, and bathroom off from the rest of the house. There are various reasons for this, but mostly it boils down to privacy and security. You can see in the photos of the dresser that we got one with locks on it. The windows also have bars on them. In these small villages crime is rare because everyone knows each other, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist and it’s more prevalent if you make your house inviting to potential robbers.

Anyway, the guy is about halfway done with the door installation. He was redoing the concrete around the door frame right before he quit for the night. This should finally get done tomorrow and then we’ll stop renovations until June, when we want to redo the electrical and repaint.

Other than that we’ve been trying to get familiar with the layout of the town again. We’ve been spending time finding cleaning supplies, buying some pots and pans and other necessary items for daily living. We’ve also been meeting up with family and eating out in Antipolo to try to relax a bit. Like enjoying this big halo-halo at Chow King for instance:

I have a feeling that the next few weeks are going to be filled with quite a bit of work, but in the end I’m sure it’ll all be worth it when the house is clean, orderly, and comfortable for living in again.

They say not to drink the water but…

May 13, 2010 Bradley Farless6 Comments

… I must have messed up, because I had some serious problems over the last two days.

We’ve had a lot of work going on around the house, including work we’ve been doing ourselves. I’ve been pretty exhausted and getting sick on top of it really wore me out.

All of these things combined to create a disaster that ruined a bag full of noodles. If you’re eating, you should save this for later.

So, it was early morning and there I was, sitting on the toilet having a problem. After I was done, I had another problem. The pipes are kinda screwy here so the toilet clogged. There’s no running water right now because of a drought so dumping water into the bowl is the only option. I couldn’t get it right so I just left it that way and passed out again. That evening, I was in there trying to wash up and mess with the toilet at the same time when I felt an urge.

A serious urge.

With no toilet available (due to the damn thing still being clogged) I made a mad dash through the house, naked and covered with soap mind you, and grabbed the first plastic shopping bag I saw, which I assumed was hanging on a doorknob for placing garbage in.

I then ran back to the toilet and handled business. It’s not the weirdest thing I’ve done. I’ve utilized empty boxes in the middle of the desert in Iraq before, so why not? Better than the other alternative.

So anyway, the next day my wife came and asked me if I’d seen the noodles she bought at the grocery store. I said I hadn’t so we looked around quite a bit. I’m pretty sure no one stole the noodles, though she does have hungry brothers that roam the house occasionally.

Then it dawned on me.

After I finished laughing like a hyena I felt bad because I had really wanted to try some of those noodles. Not to mention my wife was pissed. But you know… shit happens.

Can I Have My Personal Space?

May 10, 2010 Bradley Farless8 Comments

I was just thinking about the serious lack of personal space available in Singapore. It’s become even more apparent now that I’m outside the country, in the Philippines.

The Philippines can be very crowded in places but I noticed something on the third day of being here: no one had bumped into me, pushed me out of the way, tried to shove past me, or tried to walk straight at me, expecting me to move for them.

I used to think that Singaporeans walk like bumper cars because it’s just so crowded there, but I realized that the reason must be something else entirely. Is it a lack of situational awareness? Are people so pacified there that they don’t pay attention to where they’re going? Are they selfish to the point that they think everyone else will always make way for them?

A few weeks ago I was in Takashimaya and a woman walked out of a side passage, staring at something in the distance in the opposite direction from where I was approaching. She just kept walking, straight across the walkway, without a care in the world, until the side of her face was twisted around by my shoulder slamming into it. I kept going, without bothering to offer any sort of condolences for what would surely be sore chin, because it’s not my fault that she was too stupid to look where she was going.

On the other hand, here in the Philippines, people seem to naturally swerve and veer around each other without much of any problem. There are exceptions, but it really is the exception, where in Singapore it seems to be the rule.

On top of that, people in Singapore tend to want to jostle past you in stores, or step in front of you when you’re looking at something on the shelf or rack, or they try to ram you out of the way instead of letting you get off the train before they attempt to board. It’s not everyone of course. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions, rather than the rule.

So, Singapore, I implore you to sort your problem out. Pay attention to where you’re walking at least, because not everyone is going to jump out of your way and not everything will repel you gently when you walk into it because you can’t be bothered to pay attention to where you’re walking.

Cleaning, Cleaning, and more Cleaning

May 10, 2010 Bradley Farless10 Comments

After arriving here on Wednesday we’ve spent the last 5 days cleaning for about 5 hours a day and the end is nowhere in sight. I’m something of a clean freak to start with, but just getting things to a level of basic sanitation and orderliness is my current goal.

For the first few months of my stay in the Philippines I’ll be living out of my in-law’s house, which is a bit north of Manila in a surrounding town. The house has been mostly derelict for about six months, with only an occasional visit to make sure it’s still standing. My in-laws were both living out of other houses in other provinces until just recently. So, the place is a disaster area. Besides the accumulation of junk from decades of things being left here as a store-and-forget drop off spot, there’s dust, cobwebs and the buildup of grime to deal with. So, there’s quite a bit of work to be done to get this place into a condition that’s suitable for living in.

I wish I could just throw money at the problem and make it go away, and for some parts I can, but most of it is just going to require hard work. I have to haul stuff out of the house to the curb and do quite a bit of scrubbing, wiping, dusting, and brushing.

I didn’t realize just how much work it would be. We spent 7 hours on just one room today. It was the worst room, though. It had been unoccupied the longest, so it was full of bags of junk, sometimes literally.

I suppose when you have more than one house, you can’t quite keep up with what all you’ve left where, so arranging it, sorting out what needs to be saved and what can go, and then doing basic cleaning can be a long, long process.

The goal that I keep in mind is that once it’s all done, I’ll be able to relax and enjoy life here. Hopefully with another week of work we’ll have everything wrapped up and ready to go.

Voting Day in the Philippines for 2010 Elections

May 10, 2010 Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

Today was voting day for the 2010 elections. We got here just in time to witness the madness. In the US, campaigning can get pretty wild and out of hand, especially when the target audience is a bunch of radicals or ultra-rightwing conservatives, but in the Philippines they step it up a notch.

First off, the campaigning is in-your-face. You really can’t miss the fact that there are elections going on because almost every available inch of wall, post, and overhang is used to display posters of the candidates. Some campaigning parties will even run strings across roadways (as seen in the image above) and have hundreds of the same poster hung up. It gives the whole thing a sort of festive feel. I also saw a lot of private vehicles and transportation vehicles (like taxis and tricycles) covered in campaign posters (pictured below). Every last one has a profile photo of the candidate, presumably at their best.

The other interesting thing about campaigning in the Philippines is that trucks will drive around, or position themselves, with music blaring to draw attention to a particular candidate. They’ll use the music (minus the vocals) of a popular song and overlay it with a slogan or a song about the candidate. For example, we heard one playing the music from Lady GaGa’s Poker Face.

Today was the actual day for voting. We hadn’t intended to leave the house, for safety reasons, but wound up going to a restaurant called Max’s with my father-in-law, brother-in-law and brother-in-law’s wife. It was a delicious meal! The only sign we saw of the voting process was a long line of tricycles and a crowd of people gathered at one point along the road, outside an elementary school where the voting was being done. Other than that it was traffic and business as usual. I suppose the real drama might come when the results are announced, if they haven’t been already.

I believe this year was the first year that the Philippines used an electronic voting system, rather than manually counted ballots. The idea is that it’s supposed to inspire confidence in the citizens and allay fears of corruption and cheating. It may work in some areas. Some parts of the Philippines are so poor that a shiny computer screen is almost like magic, but most educated voters will probably realize that computer results can easily be manipulated, the same way that manual votes can easily be forged or disposed of.

If you’re not familiar with the government in the Philippines, it’s so consumed with corruption that it’s surprising it hasn’t fallen apart yet. The current president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, is recognized as one of the most corrupt leaders to ever hold office anywhere.

I doubt that the election will be any more fair this year than it’s ever been, but hopefully whoever gains office will be more fair than the outgoing president.

Giant Billboards

May 8, 2010 Bradley Farless1 Comment

One of the first things you’ll notice as you leave NAIA (Ninoy Aquino International Airport), besides the hellish traffic, are the gigantic billboards. Ya, giant really isn’t even enough to describe these things.

Billboards aren’t anything new to me. They’re all over the place in the US, especially along highways, but Manila takes it to a whole new level. These things are about four times the size of the average billboard in the US. They’re so big, in fact, that they pose a safety hazard during bad weather. My wife was telling me that a few years ago there was a hurricane that caused a lot of the billboards to fall over. They fell onto the highways, which had cars on them, and killed a few people.

I think they’re pretty interesting to look at, but only because of how big they are!

PX Goods in the Philippines

May 5, 2010 Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

My wife and I were having a conversation a few weeks ago that just popped back into my head. She was telling me about how imported goods in the Philippines are sometimes called PX goods, but she doesn’t know why. I could be absolutely wrong, but I have a theory about that!

As you may or may not know I spent 8 years in the Army, and “PX” is an Army term. It’s short for “Post Exchange”. Almost every Army base has a post exchange on it, regardless of where it is in the world, with the exception being some in combat areas or when the post is just too small. Even some of the camps in Kuwait have a PX. The PX is like a big department store. You can buy clothes, kitchen stuff, electronics, DVDs, music, games, and sporting equipment there, among other things. A few even have sections for gardening.

So, how does this tie in with the term being used in the Philippines?

Well, there used to be a strong US military presence in the Philippines around the time of World War II, the Vietnam War, and even during the Cold War. The first place that comes to mind (that’s still standing, albeit no longer under US control) is Clark Air Base in Pampanga. It’s recently been given another name, but most Filipinos still know it by the old, American name. I found the following information on Wikipedia:

Clark Air Base was originally established as Fort Stotsenburg in Sapang Bato, Angeles City in 1903 under control of the U.S. Army.

That article goes on to say that Clark Air Base had a “base exchange”, which is the Air Force term for a post exchange, but I think that initially it had a post exchange, like all Army posts do, and that word stuck in the minds of the local population.

Regardless of where you are in the world, a PX carries the same variety of goods which are mostly things from the US. These goods would eventually make it into the local population by resale from troops trying to turn a buck on people wanting genuine American items. So, in the Philippines, these items would be seen as imported goods.

So, long story short, I think the term “PX goods” is used to describe imported items because PX goods from the US military PXs that used to be in the Philippines were all imported items from the US. Again, this is just a theory and it could be something else entirely, but this just fit so well with what I know!

Cat Export Preparations Update #7

May 5, 2010 Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

Monday night the AVA health certification was approved, so I immediately got online and made my payment. I didn’t want to run into any hang-ups with my card not working properly in some scanner at a government office. I didn’t have time to take chances.

I did have time to sleep in a bit though. Not intentionally of course, but I’ve been so exhausted from running around preparing for this move and from stress that I just slept for about 12 hours straight that night. When I finally got out of the house it was around 2 PM already. I went directly to Tanjong Pagar to pick up the certification.

I was expecting it to be pretty hard to find. I actually had my iPhone out with the Maps application running. It was kind of ridiculous though because there I was, walking down the street with my face glued to my phone, trying to figure out when I’d be close to the Ministry of National Development building. The thing wasn’t reading quite right because when I looked up, there it was right in front of me.

It’s a pretty massive building that’s hard to miss. I could’ve seen it from the MRT station if I wasn’t so busy trying to use my iPhone’s Maps.

The process of picking up the health certification was painless. I was in and out of the office in about 10 minutes.

It took a little more effort to find the Philippines Airlines office at Parklane Mall. You have to show them your documents at least two days before your flight so they can fax them to the terminal office and, presumably, have proper arrangements made on the aircraft.

I’d never been to, or even heard of, Parklane Mall before so I had looked it up on Google Maps before leaving the house and, once again, I was walking with my face glued to my iPhone screen. And… once again, I was standing there looking at that screen, trying to figure out where I was in relation to the mall when I looked up and was staring at the entrance. In my defense, the entrance to Parklane Mall is kind of hard to pick out from the rest of the storefronts in that area.

The entrance is between the DBS and McDonald’s signs in this picture. Hardly the average mall entrance in Singapore.

Anyhow, I wasn’t quite prepared for what all the agent wanted to know at the office there. He wanted to know the dimensions of the carrier, if it was IATA approved, its weight and the weight of my cats. He wanted to see the credit card I’d used and of course he wanted to see the documentation. He made copies of the export permit, import permit, and AVA health certification.

I wound up leaving their office at 5 minutes to 5 PM, which is when they close, so I made it, but barely.

If I could go back in time and reschedule this all, I would set it up so that my flight was on a Sunday. Having that weekend, a holiday weekend no less, in the middle of the 7 days leading up to our flight, cramped our available time for getting things done for the cats. Everything has to be done within a certain amount of time leading up to the flight. Some of the documents are only good for 7 or 10 days.

Anyway, I’m glad that stress is over. Now we just need to show up at the airport with them in the morning.

The next post you see on this blog will be published from the Philippines. Hopefully I’ll have a happy tale to tell about our cats’ first trip on an airplane. By then I’ll have all the information I need to complete my step-by-step guide on importing cats to the Philippines from Singapore as well. I’ll be publishing that on my ‘Philippines’ blog. You can find the link to it at the bottom of the sidebar. I got it going but haven’t posted much to it yet.

Take care, and see you on the other side!

The Soup Spoon @ Bugis Junction

May 5, 2010September 4, 2021 Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

My wife and I are constantly finding and trying new restaurants and I’m kinda sad that this one slipped our notice until just two days before I leave Singapore. The Soup Spoon has some GREAT food.

My wife ordered the Simon & Garfunkel Ragout (pronounced ‘ra-goo’). I had a little taste of it and it was delicious. I don’t know how close to original the ragout recipe is, but it was great on its own.

I had the Velvety Mushroom Stroganoff. Ever since I got to experience the mushroom soup at Say Cheeze in Tampines 1 I’m always on the lookout for a chance to try a new recipe. I never realized mushroom soup could be so good, because in the US plain ‘cream of’ soups aren’t that popular and the ones that come in the cans are really bland. The mushroom soup at The Soup Spoon is really excellent. It’s thick and the chunks of mushroom are big enough to sink your teeth into.

The soups could be a meal by themselves, especially with the bread roll that comes with it, but they had a set meal offer that we took advantage of.

My wife tried their Garden Green salad. She said it was nice.

I had the Chicken Tikka half-wrap. It was ok. I think I’d have enjoyed it more but it didn’t really go well with the soup I chose. The taste was tart and sour, which was an abrupt change after the smooth, mellow tastes of the soup. Oh, and the stuff on the side that you can see in the picture above? It tasted just a bit south of foul. I left that alone.

Overall, the meal was very satisfying and very filling and, surprisingly, very affordable at only 22 bucks for both of us.

I’m just sad that I’ll probably never eat at this place again. It would’ve been a regular stop for me if I’d known about it earlier.