July update, after 3 months

It has been 3 months since my arrival here in the Philippines and according to psychologists, I should be in the third phase of my cultural adjustment or at least at the end of phase 2 (these are 1. Shock of the new, 2. Comparison to “home” and the things I am missing, 3. Acceptance of the new (adjusting to the status quo).

I guess this is true, as I am making fewer statements such as “back in the UK” or “in Europe we do it this way” with the exception of a few of those things that are still getting under my skin. It will be no surprise to anyone reading this that these things are:-

• Driving skills and attitudes, or the apparent lack of them, and yes, I admit that I hit a post whilst negotiating a car park a few weeks ago, damaging Kat’s car, but that is fixed now; I have no excuse for the incident, totally my fault. That being the case, the sheer insanity of some people and their total disregard for their own and the safety of others beggars belief sometimes.
• Bureaucracy, who knew it could be so hard to transact a simple application? To get my residency visa, I need to travel to Manila (Intramuros to be specific) to the Bureau of Immigration Head Office, the documentation cannot be submitted to the local office. Now this is relatively fine as we live about and hour of so from Manila and can make a trip out of it and will likely travel the day before and stay over in an hotel nearby, but what if you live further away???
• Queuing, or the total lack of it here, “Dude, I got here first and therefore should be served before you, get in line and wait your turn!!”

Kat says I am just grumpy or “masungit“ whenever I complain about things like this, but I know she feels annoyance too, but is more inured to it after living with such things all of her life. On the balance of things, I am thoroughly enjoying my life here, even not having a job at the moment is not a major concern as I am occupied enough with driving Kat around and some domestic chores, I admit I would like something a little more intellectually stimulating, but that may come in time and process improvement / management consulting may be the way to go.

I have developed a new concern, food, specifically fast food, or maybe not even that fast food in proper restaurants (‘restos’) something that I am frequently guilty of myself, because of the sheer convenience of it. There is a plethora of good, locally grown or caught food here in the Philippines, this includes many varieties of fish, rice, pineapple, tomatoes, banana, pork and chicken to name but a few. I arrived here anticipating to be able to avail myself of all this good, wholesome local produce and to share this with my wife so that we would both have a healthy diet and improve our levels of fitness and maybe even loose some weight. The progress so far:-

• I have lost approximately 7 to 8 kg since my arrival, probably due to a significant reduction in my consumption of beer. Kat is not convinced about this as she thinks a can or two in the evening and a bucket of beer (not as bad as it sounds, 6 bottles in a bucket of ice) on a Friday evening is a lot of beer, even after asking my friends when they visited about how much we used to get through back in the UK (around 18 to 20 imperial pints of beer each per week and that could be nearer 24 or 28 if there was a good party or sports event on the TV in the pub) that is a minimum of 10 to 12 litres, I can’t calculate US pints or gallons as I don’t have the conversion numbers, but it is a lot. I am now drinking maybe 3 litres per week and that includes going out on Friday night to the local sports bar for a couple of hours, if not then we are down to less than 2.
• We eat out, lunch, normally 3 or 4 times per week; this is mainly due to time constraints between clinics and hospital rounds, so we go to either the local mall or one of the other shopping areas near by. Dinner is mostly self cooked at home, a mix of Filipino or European food, cooked by either one of us.

• When we eat out, we often have either Filipino or American style food, this includes pork, chicken, steak and fish, however
• A lot of it has a fried element to it, especially things like crispy pata, sissig, and nearly all her favourite chicken dishes (see below)
• Kat loves crispy skin on chicken (so do I) so we often end up eating this, the idea of removing it, or not cooking chicken crispy is an anathema to her, the mere suggestion of boiled or steamed skinless chicken portions makes her feel ill.....
• Some of the fried food here is double fried to make it extra crispy (e.g. the pata), I have no idea what they fry it in, but sometimes it is a little greasy and even coconut oil can’t be all good. I have to confess that the best chunky chips (aka fries) are par-boiled in water, dried then deep fried at least twice to get the crispy outside, deep golden colour and the soft inside, but we don’t have a deep fat frier, so we are not eating proper chips at the moment.

• Kat is not, at the moment, encouraging me to eat street food, I think this is to avoid me eating weird things that I am not used to or may not like and there are some Filipino delicacies that I am going to avoid like the plague, e.g. Balut (Google it to find out what it is), but again a lot of this is fried too.
• We are eating way too much rice, breakfast is often rice from the night before, fried with some onion and garlic, lunch depends on where we are, dinner is often fresh white rice (thank whoever invented the rice cooker, much easier to use than a saucepan) but Kat and I probably get through on average at least one cup of uncooked rice each per day.....
• I have persuaded Kat to eat oat meal, cooked with warm milk and served with sugar or honey, this was quite a challenge as previously she had refused to eat it, but when prepared the “Gary way” she relented and has actually requested it. She is also now able to truthfully tell the parents of her patients that not only is it good for them (low GI) but also she eats it herself.
• When we don’t eat rice, we eat potato, often chips (or French fries) unless I cook them roasted or mashed, either way loads of starch.
• On the subject of potatoes, there is a lack of understanding about this wonder vegetable here, there is no availability of the many separate varieties (Maris Piper, King Edwards etc.) and the storage conditions are often sub optimal as the shops display them in daylight, which encourages them to turn a little green, which is not good. I would love to be able to select a good flourery potato like a King Edward to make mash or a slightly firmer one for chips, maybe once I have my own garden I will grow my own.
• We are not eating enough vegetables or fruit, I rarely get my 5 a day and that is with all that is available here (the orange juice is imported from Florida.....) bananas here are a little too sweet for my taste. Kat loves my roasted carrots, but we are back to things cooked using oil or other fats.
• Whilst Kat bought us a turbo-broiler, we don’t have what I would refer to as a proper oven, so we can’t cook some meals that I would like to try, don’t get me wrong, it is a wonderful device.
• It is a hot climate, so we consume vast quantities of soft drinks such as Coke Zero, Mountain Dew, 7UP and the like, these are mostly manufactured locally you will be pleased to hear at the Coca-Cola plant in Santa Rosa 2km down the road from our house (Pepsi has a plant nearby too!) we should be drinking more water.....
• I am still suffering from the affects of gout, something which some members of my family also suffer, I am not sure what the trigger is as it seems to have become worse since getting here, Kat tells me it is the beer, but really???? 
• We are often forced to use UHT milk as for some bizarre reason the local supermarket cannot keep their fresh milk cold enough in the display cabinet; the other week it was at close to room temperature when we checked which even in an air conditioned room is way too hot.
  I bought some from another shop where it seemed cooler, it lasted two days once we got it home and to be honest it wasn’t that good on day 1, the shelf life was for a further 4 days.
• A lot of Filipino food, whilst tasty is slow cooked in a mixture of soy sauce (or fish sauce) and other flavourings, many of which are highly salted and therefore can affect blood pressure. A lot of dishes also contain vinegar which lowers the pH of one’s blood (encouraging uric acid retention, see above ref the gout).
• There are far too many donut shops out there!!

On a separate note, I support the intention behind the various local ordnances which prohibit the use of plastic bags by shops to wrap items with the exception of those that are wet such as meat and fish. I quite like the alternatives to plastic that have been developed including the re-use of boxes and cartons originally used to contain the products or the use of paper sacks. But why oh why do so many of the supermarkets then insist on wrapping some vegetables in metres and metres of cling-film or ceran wrap such as carrots or tomatoes? They don’t need it.  I bought some frozen salmon the other day, it was wrapped in cling-film, placed in a plastic tray which was then over wrapped in film and then wrapped again in a third layer of film, surely one or two of these layers could have been omitted. Please provide the shoppers with bags, paper or plastic to select their own and reduce the wasteful use of a non-biodegradable material, it should be possible to recognise and weigh the produce at the check out.

• Update on the gout thing, I have been prescribed colchicine as a remedy for the latest attack, this has some unpleasant side effects which I am not going to discuss here, some of my readers will be aware of these, others are free to make use of Google to find out if they are so inclined, suffice it to say, this drug is not made available in the UK.....
  In addition to taking what amounts to a mild toxin (but honestly, what drugs aren’t) I have chosen to cut out the following from my diet until I am recovered

• Coke and other soft drinks
• Iced tea (not sure why I chose this, but it is something I have a lot of here but not in the UK).
• Oatmeal (no more porridge for me, but Kat can still have this for breakfast)
• Beans of most kinds (including bean sprouts)
• Green vegetables of the brassica family (broccoli, brussels sprouts etc.)
• Beer and other items with significant yeast content, including white bread
• Reduction in the quantity of red meat, so more chicken and fish, but not tuna so less sashimi and sushi.

I shall monitor the situation and re-introduce things one at a time to see which is the cause of my discomfort, I am fervently hoping that it is not the beer......