This was the month of the World Cup, or at least one version of it using a ‘football’; personally I am looking forward to the Rugby Union World Cup next year, which is to be held in England and Wales. Anyway despite England’s early exit it set me to thinking about why the Philippine people are such basketball fanatics. If you analyse the countries formally colonised by the various European nations during the 18^th, 19^th and early 20^th centuries you will see that the game of soccer has become the main game in most of them, this excludes the larger, former British colonies of Australia, New Zealand and the Indian Sub-continent where one or both of rugby or cricket are the main sports and sadly they are seemingly better than any of the current British teams at these games which is all the more galling since we invented them in the first place). But back to soccer, nearly all the Spanish former colonies in South America are really good at it, as are Brazil (Portuguese) and several of the former French colonies in Africa (Cameroon, Ivory Coast to name but two). So what went wrong here, after all the Spanish were here until the end of the 19^th Century? I can only imagine that, despite the Filipino being, on average, the 2^nd shortest in South East Asia, the Americans introduction of Basketball to the country during their time here, won out over what I would imagine is a much more suitable game for their physique and agility, of soccer; I mean apart from goal mouth tussles over crosses and corners, height is not really an advantage in soccer, unlike basketball, when it would seem to be almost a pre-requisite and is evidenced by the PBA restriction on the importation of overseas players over a certain height to the domestic game. But still all that not withstanding, you can see basketball hoops bolted or nailed to all manner of supports (walls, utility poles, trees) as well as free standing poles everywhere there is space for a game and sometimes where there isn’t really and this includes roadsides, car parks, people’s houses in addition to purpose built courts.

Basketball is such a way of life here, that beats anything in the UK, that even the sporting legend that is Manny Pacquiao, world champion boxer at 9 weight categories and currently a congressman in the Philippine House, that he trains using basketball and is now the head coach of the newly formed Kia team and he may even be a player coach for a season or two……

On a personal note, the month started pretty much as June had ended, quietly. Kat’s Tita Eva and Tito Bobby were still here, although they had taken a quick trip to Cebu with some of the family for a short break. Kat and I were mooching around the house, the rainy season having put a serious break on my gardening activities since the soil was too wet to dig or prepare for a seedbed. The lawn, such as it was had sprouted all manner of weeds, sadly selective weed killers are not easily available in the retail market here, so if I wanted to get rid, I had two or three choices, do it by hand myself, pay cousin Ricky to do it, or pay silly amounts of money to get a professional in to do it. Events, however, conspired to push this right down the priority list.

The night of Tuesday 8^th was momentous as Typhoon Glenda ripped its way through the island of Luzon, arriving on the southeast coast and travelling up to the northwest. I have no idea of wind speed, but the news channels all suggested we had winds of 150kph gusting to 170kph or more, but this was my first experience of a typhoon, what with the earthquake back in June we are clocking these things up quite quickly. What was for sure is that it was very scary with the sounds of the wind and things being blown around, this caused quite a lot of damage to trees, houses and utility lines. The power went out for us around 3 or 4am, there was a bright flash and a big bang and that was it, no lights and no air conditioning. The winds continued through the morning, bringing a lot of rain, although flooding did not seem to be a major problem this time at least inland at Santa Rosa City.

The lack of power to the whole area caused a number of problems, the most immediate was that, since, most of our household appliances use electricity in some form or another we couldn’t cook or keep food cold; also as the sub-division’s water is pumped from a well, using electricity and the stored water in the towers was soon consumed, we had no water, despite the solar water panel. The lack of water problem was fairly easily resolved as Kat’s parents have mains water, which is drinkable and was not affected by the storm. Cooking however was a bit of a problem, but we managed to buy a single burner gas cooker and a small cylinder of gas. The rest of Wednesday was spent tidying up where we could and mopping up rainwater where it had forced its way in through the windows. Taking stock it would seem that we were fortunate with very little damage and the whole of the local area was soon back up and running, with the exception of water and electricity to our development.

Wednesday night was our first without the benefit of water or power. I showered on the front porch using water in a bucket and a Tupperware container as a scoop (aka a tabo) this was not my idea of fun and besides the indignity of it all, the water was cold!!!!  Cooking in the dark was a challenge, although one that we rose to, after this we decided to go to bed early although sleep was a long way off as it seemed that all of the local frogs, lizards and geckos had found the pools of water nearby our house and were having some sort of an orgy, there were croaks, squawks, squeaks and whistles going on through the night, that and it was hot and humid meaning sleep was difficult.

It took a few days for things to return to a semblance of normality, the water being restored first through the use of a generator to run the pump, domestic power was a bit longer in returning, finally on Friday night around 9:30pm the lights came back on, as did the air con and the fridge!! The clearing up will take some time to complete as many old trees have been uprooted or badly damaged, so a full recovery will be some years away, the good news is that as far as I can tell, there were few casualties as a direct result of the storm and most of our friends made it through unscathed although some homes had roof panels torn off or windows broken and many people’s gardens have suffered some damage, ours included with the bamboos bent over and some leaves torn off but all in all not too bad.

I shall have more news in a few weeks, something momentous may be about to happen, but can’t say more right now……..