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……..

Our new house, first anniversary and being back in the garden......

It has been an interesting couple of months since my last post. We have moved into our new house (aka “The one with all the CCTV cameras”) and are happily if not a bit a bit distractedly finding homes for all of our stuff. We are also in the process of having the garden landscaped and a few teething troubles sorted, but more of this later.

A week after moving in, Kat and I also celebrated our first wedding anniversary; I have to confess I still find this to be a novel idea, being married so late in life. Kat arranged a week away for us both in Donsol, somewhere I had been looking forward to visiting for a while as there is the opportunity to maybe snorkel with whale sharks. Due to the relative closeness, I thought it would be easy to drive down; after all it is only 400km or so from where we live. Well, yes, you’d think so wouldn’t you; however I hadn’t taken into account the fact that the National Highway is only at best a dual carriageway (2 lane) road and in many cases is only a single lane, the traffic, including psycho trucks, jeepneys and tricycles, and it is currently road works season with traffic control mostly being either the old “he who gets there first has right of way” or maybe a guy (sometimes a youngster) or two with red and green flags indicating go or stop. I was never so glad to see some traffic lights as when we arrived in Camarines Sur. Anyway the long and short of it was that to drive the first 120km took nearly 4 hours after which we stopped off for the night at a pre-arranged hotel stop. The remaining journey took us just short of 10 more hours, arriving at the hotel a little after dark.

The resort Kat had booked was elegantly simple, no frills just what was needed. The room was basic but comfortable and this extended to the TV, which had no satellite signal with 4 channels provided by the resort, one of which was dedicated to the history of the Whale Shark Interaction set up with the assistance of the WWF. On our first day there 9 sightings were made of whale sharks with the tourists able to snorkel with them on most of the occasions. Since Kat and I were relaxing after the epic drive the day before, we had chosen to go out the next day, sadly only 2 sightings were made on that day, but we did get to see a whale shark although if you blink you could miss it. The following day I got to go scuba diving for the first time in something like 3 years. The first dive was a skills check, although once we had completed that part of the dive, we headed for a really beautiful wall, I should have brought my camera. On the second and third (both to the same place) we hoped to visit a cleaning station and maybe see some pelagics, specifically manta rays. This dive was in a fairly strong current which made it a bit of hard work, I really need to get back and work on my fitness. The plan was to swim to a rocky outcrop and then use a reef hook to rest and wait for something to come to the cleaning station, sadly I managed to clatter into  the rocks and put my hand on a sea urchin, resulting in 4 spines in various fingers, very uncomfortable. You can see my crash landing near the end of this short video clip yes, I know piss poor skills and all that.

Anyway, after a few more days relaxing, we drove home, managed it a bit quicker this time, only 12 hours in total and we stopped a bit closer to home, which gave me the chance for a Double Whopper from BK for breakfast the next day!!

Once we returned to our new home, we set about trying to sort out the house. This entailed buying of more furniture (I thought we had enough already, but it seemed not) such as book cases and bedside cabinets, a 3 piece suite for the upstairs family area and a few bits for the office. The subdivision is still far from complete, meaning that there is a lot of open ground and part finished houses, these are an endless source of dust and dirt, which is a bit of a nuisance and does cause a lot of cleaning. Kat and I are very much enjoying the  house, especially the hot water shower courtessy of the solar panel on the roof, it seemed like a luxury at the time of installation, but I am really glad we did it. Our water consumption is noticeably higher than in our previous house, and not because of the weather requiring more showers per day, but the sheer length of time we are spending enjoying the warm water. There is only one slight problem, we have horrendously hard water here, which is sourced from a local well, our chromed brightwork is really suffering with calcium deposits, I am not sure how best to treat these without damaging the finish. We are now looking to put a treatment system into place, probably a reverse osmosis membrane with a particulate filter, I am not sure whether to include UV B sterilisation as we drink largely water from a treatment station.

We have had a few guests around so far, a few of Kat’s friends came round the other day, we had a light dinner with some take out and soft drinks. After that we had a somewhat more important visitor. Kat’s aunt Eva is visiting from the USA where she has been living for many years, I know she will hate me for saying this, but she is the de facto matriarch of the family, being the eldest sister and having supported many of the family members in the Philippines financially to gain their education amongst other things. Anyway, Tita Eva, her husband Bobby, Kat’s parents and two of her sisters were coming round to tea and I was getting very stressed as I knew that not only was this the first time the family had visited, but also the first time I had met Tita Eva, and I really wanted her approval, I also knew that this was important for Kat too. I spent the day tidying as Kat had some rounds to do for patients admitted to various hospitals, and also tried to keep the landscaping guys supplied with water as they completed the lawn. I needn’t have worried as Tita Eva and I got on really well and she welcomed me to the family, I was much relieved the visit had gone well and everyone liked the house.

Another thing happening at the house right now is we are having the garden landscaped, to be honest we are being a bit conservative, no water feature at the moment, just some bamboo plants, a few small bushes and other shrubs and frog grass for the lawn area. This is a weird plant, and is not a true grass, having flat roundish leaves; the good part being that it spreads across the ground and doesn’t grow too high, and therefore needs little or no cutting, great for a lazy ass gardener like myself.

Seriously though, I am trying to grow us some vegetables, not many as we don’t really have a lot of space to do so, but a variety that I can say I grew in our garden. At the moment I have some chili peppers growing, Jalapeño, Habañero and cayenne as well as some ordinary yellow bell peppers and also trying some aubergine or egg plant as it is known here. The ground perparation for these has been hard work, as although I am only talking about an area of some 4m x 4m the soil is quite heavy here, full of clay and other sticky stuff and digging in the termperatures here is hard work for a softy like myself. I go out and do a small bit, then have to retreat to the shade whilst leaking sweat to cool down. Needless to say, the digging is taking some time to complete. The whole enterprise is further hindered by the sheer quantity of large stones, rocks and construction detritus that is burried in the soil, necessitating constant raking of the soil, collecting up of the rocks and carting them off for disposal. Kat observed that every time it rains, more rocks appear; sadly she is correct, I think I need a riddle or some sort of screen to try and capture all the stones etc. in the top few inches but that sounds like more hard work, perhaps later.
Once all of the preparation has been completed, I hope to plant some lettuce, beans, onions and once the rainy season is over some tomatoes although I may put these into pots or a planter……

A slightly more comedic aspect to all of this gardening is the need to keep all of the new plants watered. I have to confess that, perhaps naïvely, I thought that living in a tropical country and especially during the rainy season, that this would all be taken care of naturally. However, it seems that: -

•   You can’t rely on Mother Nature to provide just the right amount of rain, twice a day
•     Rain can be wind driven, meaning that the walls or the house itself shelters some parts of the garden.
•  We have an extended roof to provide shade; this also acts like an umbrella
•  Despite the heavy soil I complained about above, there are also some bits, probably with a lot of sand from the construction, where drainage is not a problem and the ground dries out really quickly.

What this means is that I can be seen at either end of the day, standing in a pair of shorts and Wellington boots (Hunter’s don’t you know!) holding a hosepipe and spraying water onto most, if not the entire garden, and yes, I do get funny looks from our neighbours and others passing by.

That’s all for now, I hope to have another instalment in a couple of weeks, at least the end of July.