I Don’t Know What’s Happening but I Like It

I’ve been reading Bob’s blog since almost the beginning, 2 1/2 years now and along the way there has been a lot of good information on life over here in paradise.  One of the best bits though related to marriage and talked about the inevitable “culture clash” that will happen between you and your wife but at some point in the marriage everything would hit a happy medium and you and your wife would begin to create your own unique culture.  Well seemingly that has finally started to happen in my marriage with Venice.

We were wed on July 10th, 2007 so it’s been over 2 years now that we have been married and there were many rocky parts to the path of wedded bliss.  We argued… quite a lot, and blamed it on the fact we are both so bull headed but this scapegoat of an excuse did nothing to help us.  To be honest there were a couple of times where I really wondered if I had made the right decision to move over here.

Ever since I returned from working in Alaska this year I feel different.  Finally unwound after a decade of high stress retail management jobs, finally more patient, and finally more willing to accept the quirks of life here in the Philippines.  It’s a necessary step on the path to true integration into Philippine society and of course true marital bliss with your wife, which leads me to the other half of the equation.  To truly meet in the middle and create that unique combination culture your wife has to change her perceptions as well.

I knew Venice was changing the day she said something sarcastically…. seriously, Filipinos do not understand sarcasm and unfortunately I come from a family history of sarcasm.  It’s no wonder Venice thought I was complaining so much in the first 2 years of our marriage.  There have also been other little things that all combined and taken as a whole shows me that my wife is starting to gravitate towards that happy medium between our cultures.

I’ve also changed in that I am more willing to accept Philippine myths and superstitions, or maybe not fully accepting but I won’t argue about them anymore.  I realized this in myself as I was planting garlic on the windowsills to keep away an alleged Aswang.  But the one thing that I have realized after 2 years of marriage is that I love my wife more than ever.  We have ridden through good times and weathered the bad ones and we are still together so I am willing to say that our marriage is built on strong foundations.  Who knows, as my new culture develops I might even let my wife persuade me into going to church… once in awhile anyway.

My advice to anyone who is married to a Filipina is patience.  The two of you will hit that point in your marriage when the same culture creation occurs and the two of you will be happier for it.

Philippine Internet Comparison

As I’ve mentioned in the past, there always seems to be a lot of interest whenever I write about Internet speed and Internet providers here in the Philippines.  In the past, I’ve used several different providers here, and each has advantages and disadvantages.  Right now, I am kind of experiencing a “glut” of Internet, but I kind of like it.

What do I mean by a “glut”?  Well, I mean that I have an oversupply of Internet connections!  If it’s possible to have an “oversupply,” that is.

I wrote back at the beginning of August that I had found Internet Heaven here in the Philippines.  Well, unfortunately, heaven was nice while it lasted, but after not too long a time, it kind of slipped down to purgatory instead of heaven.

Yes, when I wrote about being in Internet Heaven, I was talking about my new Internet Provider, SmartBro ShareIt.  ShareIt is a service provided by Smart Broadband, which provides an Internet Connection of “up to” 2 Mbps, and utilizes 3.5G connectivity from the Cellular network of Smart Telecommunications.  When I got ShareIt, I was extremely happy with the service.  The speed was great, and everything seemed wonderful.

At the time I got SmartBro ShareIt, I already had two SmartBro Canopy systems here at the house.  The SmartBro Canopy system is a different type of connectivity from Smart Broadband.  This one puts an antenna on your house, which picks up connectivity from the Cellular tower near your house.  The Canopy system is similar to ShareIt, but provides a connection of only “up to” 512 Kbps.  I was pretty happy with the Canopy system, and had been using it for over a year already.  My plan was that after I tested out the ShareIt system, I would cut off one of my Canopy accounts, then get a second ShareIt system, and cut off my other Canopy account, thus ending up with two SharIt systems.

I did go ahead and close one of my Canopy accounts, and nearly got the second ShareIt system.  However, back around the beginning of September, I started having problems with ShareIt.  The speed was still good, but it started happening that about one or up to two days per week, I had no signal on the ShareIt.  On those days, my Canopy system still worked, so I still had Internet.  But, if I had switched to two ShareIt systems, I would have been without Internet service at all, which is something I don’t want.

Another problem that I had found with ShareIt is that it did not work well at all with VOIP.  Thus, my Vonage IP phone system worked terribly on ShareIt.  Even though the speed was very fast, the VOIP just was terrible.  I could hear the person on the other end fine, but they could not hear me well, lots of flutter in my outgoing signal.  My previous experience with the SmartBro Canopy system was exactly the opposite, the person on the other end of the call said the connection was super, but on my end of the line, I was hearing only like half of what was being said!  Hmm.. this just was not acceptable.

Prior to using SmartBro (either system), I had been a customer of PLDT DSL for about 7 years.  I was always happy with the service until May 2008, when I started having billing issues with them.  They kept cutting off my account.  They said I didn’t pay my bill, even though I had receipts.  When I showed my receipt, they would hook me up again, but it was a pain that I was cut off 3 times in one month!  So, I switched.

Well, having the two SmartBro systems was pretty good, except that I was still unhappy with my VOIP situation.  And, having a US phone number is important to me for personal and business needs.  With this, Feyma and I decided to once again get a PLDT connection, which was installed on Saturday last weekend.  So far, I am very happy with it!  Funny thing is that it is the slowest of my three connections, yet it gives me the best VOIP experience by far.  Also, the surfing “feels fast” as well, even though the connection is not as fast as it is supposed to be.

So, now I have three different Internet Connections, provided by two different providers.  Just for clarity, though, PLDT owns Smart, so it could be said that all three connections are through the same provider, though.  Given that I have these three connections, which each use a different technology, I decided to do some testing.  Below, I will provide the testing results, and my thinking about each different connection.

All speed testing was done through Megapath’s speed testing service, at their San Francisco server.  PLDT and Smart have their own speed testing, but I prefer to use a speed test that the provider does not control, and also I prefer a US based server, since I am more interested in the speed to the rest of the world, not just the speed between Davao and Manila.  Speed tests were done 5 times, and a “middle” result was given for the result of the test.

PLDT DSL

I had the “Xperience” account, which is rated at “up to” 1Mbps.  It is a DSL service through my phone line.  Although PLDT does not offer any written speed guarantee, they told me that they promise 70% of the rated “up to” speed, so I should expect 700Kpbs at any given time.

Test results:
Latency:  125ms
Download Speed:  332Kbps
Upload Speed:  245Kbps

Works great for VOIP and downloads.  Even though it is well below promised speed, I am pretty happy with the results.  I will be asking for PLDT to do some “fine tuning” to see if they can’t get the speed up to where it should be, though.  Even if it remains where it is, though, I am pretty happy with it.  Speeds through the PLDT testing site are more up around 400 to 450Kbps, and that is the site that they will use for testing.

SmartBro Canopy

I’ve been using SmartBro’s Canopy system since May 2008, so almost a year and a half now, and have been pretty happy with it.  My only real complaint is that it is not too great for VOIP.

Test results:
Latency:  230ms
Download Speed:  409Kbps
Upload Speed:  235Kbps

Rated speed is “up to” 512Kbps, and I often get speeds even a little faster than that.  I suspect that the reason VOIP performance is not that good is because the latency is a bit higher than I would like.

SmartBro ShareIt

I’ve been using SmartBro ShareIt for about 2 months now, and I am very happy with it, for some applications.  When it comes to speed, it simply is unbeatable in my experience in the Philippines.  However it just is not usable if you want to do VOIP.  Also, it has been experiencing outages of up to 24 hours at a time regularly lately.  Because of this, if you don’t have some backup connectivity, you are likely to be frustrated with ShareIt service.

Testing results:
Latency:  315ms
Download Speed:  1.71 Mbps
Upload Speed:  417 Kbps

If I just want to surf the net, I want to use ShareIt every time!  For downloading files, it’s great too.  There is a podcast that I enjoy listening to everyday, which is a download of about 40 Mb each time I want to listen.  The download time for that file is rarely more than 2 minutes.  Not bad at all!  But, for anything that requires upload too… ShareIt tends to suffer.  VOIP is unusable.

For now, I’ve decided that I’ll be keeping all three connections, and using them for different things.

I have each of the three connections on a WiFi Network, so I actually have three different WiFi connections in my house!

Oh, what about the prices?  Well, they all cost exactly the same amount – P999 per month.  Having all three is not costly in my opinion – P3,000 per month, and I’ve got multiple connections, redundancy.  I should have Internet access all the time, or at least close to all the time now with the redundancy that these three connections give me.

Addendum: I originally wrote this article about a week ago, but other events pushed it’s publication date back.  During the time since I wrote the article, the flooding occurred in Manila.  During the Manila flooding one Internet provider or another was down at almost any given time due to the weather, but through the entire crisis, I had Internet connectivity at all times because at least one of my three connections still worked.  I must say that during the weather crisis the most reliable connection was the SmartBro Canopy system without a doubt.

I need a COCKTAIL!

While my friend, here in the Olongapo City area, was taking a prescribed medicine, he was informed by his Doctor that for the next thirty days he had to be “Cocktail Free”, a time out from consuming those wonderful beers and rum and cokes? Shock, was the only way to describe my reaction to that very sad news. So in simpatico I decided to join him in this month long cocktail fast!

We still got together for lunch and things, but it was Ice Tea’s instead of the normal libations. Two weeks into this self imposed fast I came to the conclusion that, this was not one of my better ideas. What was I thinking? My liver functions were good, I only shook a little in the morning, and I went to AA meeting’s and refused to tell them my name, remaining true to the program.  I had traded in a perfectly good car for one with an automatic transaxle (front wheel drive) so my wife could drive me home after Cocktails. This fast was defeating the reason for the new car. (See how my mind works?) With two weeks left on this dumb idea I broke the cocktail fast.

When a plan is bad, it’s just plain bad, so that day I had a rum and coke, and found it was a good thing I broke the fast, and was glad I did because,  after just that one cocktail, all was right with the world again!

If my liver does act up I’ll rip it out and hit spin cycle on my Maytag washer. Being retired and gainfully unemployed, I’ve earned the right to consume when desired. This is one of the reasons I inhabit these 7,000 plus Islands, I can think of one other, and they have brown eyes.

Those back in the good old U.S. of A. please don’t get the impression that we drink every day, for that is not true. Just the days we want to. Now I do tend to imbibe on days when I listen to Country Music. The trouble is I have 500 plus Country Albums on my computer (even more Rock & Roll). I download 100 albums to a flash drive (USB) plug it in to my Stereo hit random and can play Country Music for four days straight.

Then I remembered that relating our experiences to friends after interacting with our hosts can be fun. Unusual things happen here, bazaar even, even while just staying at home. As a dear departed friend Charlie always said; “We choose to live here! If you don’t like it, the airports in Manila, need a ride?”

Sweet Juliet

Sweet Juliet

Well, not a lot sweet about Juliet.  She’s a very naughty girl too.  She’s very jealous, can’t stand it when my girlfriend touches me.  Juliet, well she acts a lot like a monkey.   No, I mean really, like a Filipino monkey cause that’s what she is.

Those that have followed my articles will probably already know that I’m the proud papa of a 12 pound monkey.  I’m just guessing about the weight.  When I first got her she was just a little under 10 pounds but she was skin and bones.  Very thin and probably close to death.  She couldn’t maintain her body temperature.   She was having chills on a regular basis.

She’s doing so much better now.  She’s not skinny at all.  She has a large cage which she has to stay in more than I or she likes.  But, since she’s a  little monkey, its hard for me to take her out when I go walking.  Plus, I’ve been too lazy to walk.

Its taken a while, but she seems to trust me now.  When I give her food she doesn’t jump to the other side of her cage when I hand it to her.  She has made friends with some of the neighbors but its a guarded friendship.  She may turn on them at any moment with teeth blazing.  Some of the neighbors she doesn’t like at all.

She hates the male cats but there are a couple of kittens that she doesn’t bother.  They can get under her cage and she only looks on.  Even their mother, which she use to love to scare, she no longer harasses her.  Let the male cat come any where near her and she has herself a fit, throwing whatever she can to let that cat knows who is the boss.  The tom cat, he’s too cool to act scared.  Well, he tries to act cool but often she takes the cool right out of him as he scampers away with this tail tucked between his legs.  He will then turn around, look at her and walk away with his cool stray cat strut.

People often come by to share their snack with her, which she will take and eat.  Then lunge at them to watch them scream and scatter.  Every so often she gets a hold of someone by pushing her arms through the cage.  This thrills her.  She’s much worse if I am out there.  When I’m not there, I hear she makes a lot of friends.

Shower time is always interesting.  Since she has been outside, she doesn’t smell as much as she did.  She usually only gets a shower about once a month or less.  The only way to do it is take one with her while she holds on for dear life.  Her fur feels so much better after a shower, well to me, but I don’t know if she agrees with it.  I doubt it.  I haven’t given her a shower since we got our water heater.  Maybe she wont hate it so much now that it is not a cold shower.  She probably will though.

She never threatens me.  I have no fear of her any more.  She’s a bit afraid of me but likes to be with me.  Usually just outside of my reach.  If Jessie touches me though, she leaps onto my shoulder while glaring at Jessie and her hair standing up.

She wants to be part of what the family is doing.  Today, our little human reached his third birthday.  There were balloons and cake with ice cream.  Jessie gave her some ice cream while I gave her some cake.  She had seen us in the dinning room and was hanging around at the corner of her cage closest to us.  She liked the icing of the cake before eating the cake.  She held the ice cream by the cone and licked the cream of it before making the cone disappear as well.

Juliet loves to play catch!  It doesn’t matter what.  A ball or a can.  We put milk in her can, once the milk is gone she throws the can, usually at Jessie.  She never throws it my way.  After Jessie caught it a few times, Juliet started catching it too then throws it back.  She likes to play ball with Jessie too.  She tries to get under it though.  She will get on top of the ball and try to balance herself then fall off.  While laying on her back she will try to get under it.  Once I put a ball in her cage.  That lasted for about three days.  She managed to deflate it.  I came out one morning and it would no longer bounce, hitting the ground with a thud.  Not sure how she managed that one but there was a nasty gash in the ball. Would hate to see what she could do to skin if she really decided to bite.

She did bite Jessie hard once.  She got Jessie’s bucket of knitting supplies and I took it away from her and give it back to Jessie.  Next thing we knew, Juliet was clamped onto her leg and had sunk her canines into Jessie leg.  It left a scar.

One night, Juliet had been on my shoulder.  When she jumped to the ground, I noticed her chain was off.  I tried to grab her but poof she was gone.  As she ran toward the neighbors I shouted at warnings to no avail.  They couldn’t understand me.  The people scared her as they were sitting out side their house.   So what does Juliet do?  She goes inside their house!  For many Filipino that is bad juju.  For me?  I could see massive detestation in my near future.  She went in their house, not once but twice.  Then I got her in between Jessie and myself.  She leaped onto Jessie’s arm and started to bite.  I got her off before she did too much damage but it upset Jessie.  Juliet left her calling card in the form of teeth marks but they were not deep.  It upset Jessie but didn’t leave any scars this time.  She wasn’t trying to hurt Jessie that time, she was one scared little monkey.

I gave Juliet a last name.  That last name being Kong.  You see, this pint sized little monkey has a gallon of attitude.  As far as she’s concerned she’s Kong.  She might even put Kong in his place as she’s the biggest and baddest around.  She seems her position in the troop as second only to me.

A few months ago, Bob came to see us in Bogo.  We had a nice afternoon with Bob.  Bob is an awesome friend.  We went for a walk and Juliet came with us.  She made friends with Bob even if it made him and me a little nervous.  It went well though, she jumped on his shoulder and climbed on his head.  She was thinking about biting his ears though.  She loves to give love bites to the face.  Problem is, she isn’t all that loving.  She bites as if we have monkey skin and we don’t!  She doesn’t realize that though.

Juliet can become completely wild at the drop of a hat though.  We learned that as Joe, from the States came buy to meet her.  He tried to play catch with her.  Instead she took that as an attack and wow!  I saw a side of Juliet I had never seen.  She was on her chain but had Joe pinned to the burglar bars on our windows, just out of his reach with her teeth in full display and new monkey sounds I haven’t heard before.  That’s why I don’t take her away from the house.  Once she tried to jump on a passing woman’s head.  I’d probably still be paying for that.

She’s sweet to me though.  She will jump into my arms as if she feels safe there.  I consider it quite an honor.  It took a lot of patience to get her to this point.  I hope my slightly over weight monkey will be with us for a long time as she adds much joy and a bit too much excitement to life.  It helps me to fell a little bit Filipino.

If you’ve had experience with an exotic pet, either yours or someone else, I’d love to hear about it.  Also, tell us what makes you feel a little more Filipino.

Freedoms Lost

Most of you, like anyone, I am sure, Cherish’s his or her freedom and rights that we enjoy as citizens, and the law’s that are designed to protect us right ?

I got to thinking the other day as i was out tooling around, how much more i enjoy my life as a result of moving here to the Philippines.

I recently saw where the police in California, made a young girl of,  I forget maybe 7 or 8 years old, close down her lemonade stand for not having, get this, a business license, and a tax statement for earned income.

What I mean is, here I feel free to do the things I want without someone holding out his hand for some sort of permit or license.

What they are calling that I think is big government. I know there are lots of laws that protect us from one thing or another and laws that protect us from other laws and therein lies the problem in my opinion, there are just too many laws back in the US.

Here although there are laws to protect life and property it seems to me I feel free pretty much to do anything I want as long as I don’t hurt or bother anyone else.

It seems the RP has thier priorities in order and the US can learn from them, yes there is the corruption issue but for the most part the police here tend to major crimes like robbery, rape, murder and the more important issues instead of going to tell someone thier music is too loud or you can’t ride your scooter on the highway !

I know it seems simple but its the nuances that makes life enjoyable here in the Philippines and one of them to me is the freedom to make your own judgements.

What do you think ?

Luzon Flooding

Anybody who has been watching the news this past weekend is well aware that a real disaster has struck Metro Manila and the surrounding area.  Tropical Storm Ondoy passed over Luzon, to the North of Manila, but the Manila area really got the brunt of the rain.  Ondoy was not a Typhoon, but short of it.  However, it really packed a punch when it came to rain!

The rain in Manila on Saturday was actually even worse than New Orleans experienced during Katrina several years ago.  In just a matter of a few hours, the Manila area got more than 16 inches of rain on Saturday, and more than 80% of the area was under water at the worst.  Even as I type this on Sunday evening, the majority of Metro Manila is still under water.  So far, 75 deaths have been confirmed from the flooding, with the number expected to rise substantially when the final figures are known.

On Saturday morning, I had heard that there was bad flooding in Manila.  However, flooding in Manila is not an unusual event, it actually happens regularly.  So, when I heard about flooding there, I really did not think too much about it.  By Saturday afternoon, though, I switched the TV on and flipped over the ANC (ABS-CBN News Channel) which is sort of like a local version of CNN.  As soon as I saw the news, I was shocked at what I was seeing.  The streets were like rivers!  Not only rivers, but some of the streets looked like places for white water rafting, with rapids moving through the streets.

I saw one video taken from a bridge in Marikina City, one of the hardest hit areas, in which you could actually see dozens of people being swept through the water under the bridge.  The people on the bridge were actually throwing ropes to the people in the water, but they were moving by so fast that it was virtually useless.

The Philippine Government, and also private citizens in the area have mobilized a huge rescue effort.  Just like we saw during Katrina, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of people up on their roofs in the Manila area, because it is the only place where they can be to avoid the water.  Private companies and the government also are flying helicopters into neighborhoods and plucking people from their roofs.  When you watch the events on ANC, people are using their cell phones to call the News Channel and plead for rescuers to come and get them.  It’s really a sad situation.

According to the TV stations, this is the worst flooding that Manila has experienced since records have been kept.  Seeing the video of the city, I believe that too.

A good friend of mine had been visiting in Manila for a few days, and was supposed to fly back to Davao on Saturday, but the airport was closed.  All flights in and out of Manila had been canceled.  He went back to the re-opened airport on Sunday, and there were 450 people in line in front of him, but he was able to get a late flight back to Davao.

If you are in a position to assist financially for the victims of this disaster, there are a number of things you can do.  I called the American Red Cross and confirmed that if you wish to donate cash, you can donate through the Red Cross in your country, and you should specify that the funds are for the “International Response Fund” and specify that you want it to go to Philippine flood victims.  If you prefer, you can donate to the Philippine Red Cross, but it would be easier for you to use the Red Cross (or Red Crescent) in the country where you are currently located.  I am quite sure that any donation toward this disaster would be most helpful.  A lot of people are suffering in the Philippines right now.

The Compound Tower

Wouldn’t be able to spend all day on the Internet without The Tower. Sits about 10 ft from our front porch here in San Miguel, Jordan in Guimaras province;  I call our place “The Compound”. We have thirteen folks currently residing here. Oh, I could take a short walk to the local Internet cafes. Only 20 pesos an hour, not bad. But I wanted a high speed, super-duper, fast-as-lightning Internet connection where I plug in my MagicJack and talk to my Dad in Vegas or anyone else with a landline back in the States.  A connection where I could whiz (lot of that goes around here in our little rural province) around the Internet with blinding speed.

Went to the Smart store in nearby Iloilo at the SM City Mall. Explained my desire to have broadband service. Said a business that was fairly close to us had service, Albert’s Motorcycle Shop (wife tells me the shop owners’ were sponsors in our wedding; we had two weddings, but that’s another story.) Every time I turn around we run into someone that was a sponsor or someone who is a relative, and Sainted Patient Wife asks if I remember them. I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast this morning let alone someone that attended our wedding five years ago or a relative I had met years ago.

The nice lady at Smart says they will send someone to survey our site to see if we can get their broadband service called Smart Bro. So I gave the lady 999 pesos in advance for the first month’s service, and wait for a Smart Bro rep to show up.

A few days later a guy pulls up on a motor scooter by the name of Moises. “The Compound” sits quite a bit lower from Albert’s Motorcycle Shop tower location; Albert has a 35 foot tower, but we might need a higher tower. “How high?” I ask. “Maybe 60 feet, sir.” replies Moises. “How much?” I ask. “18,000 pesos, sir.” replies Moises. That’s a pretty good chunk of change, I gulp and think to myself. Moises says he will do a site check from his tower at 35 feet and let me know how it goes.

Moises texts me later in the day. Thirty-five feet won’t work. No LOS (Line of Sight) at that height. No signal. Do I want to go with the 60 foot tower? I text him back to go ahead with the 60 footer. Now just a couple of weeks before “The Chief”, the local police officer who of course is another relative, came by with his friend Roy ( of course my wife is related to Roy’s wife.) Roy is now our architect/contractor on some work being done at “The Compound”. Anyway, “The Chief” warned us at the time that installers are putting up Internet towers for some foreigners, and charging exorbitant prices. Now did that warning pop into my head when I gave Moises the go ahead on the 60 footer? Nope. I wanted my Broadband, high-speed connection no matter what.

I trusted Moises. He guaranteed me I could get my signal with a 60 foot tower, and I took him at his word. Here in the Philippines some things are just like back in the States. You make a judgment about a person, and decide if you can trust them. I looked inside Moise’s bloodshot eyes and took him at his word.

Well, the family is not happy about all this. They are all out in the front yard by my brother-in-law’s nipa hut talking in a frenzy in their local language. I ask the wife what’s going on even though I sensed I had figured it out. Sainted Patient Wife says the family believes I am paying too much for the tower. “Are they paying for it?” I asked my wife. She says my sister-in-law thinks I should get someone else to give me a bid on it. Probably a good idea, but Moises is the authorized installer for Smart, I’ve been waiting long enough to get the Internet here, and I will not wait any longer. Wife lets it go (for now) knowing I am getting irritated (I also got irritated in America so she recognizes my irritability here as well.)

A few days before the tower installation is due to happen, my wife informs me that Roy, our architect/ contractor could have put up the tower for 10,000 pesos. She wants to know if I had given any money to Moises yet. I said that I had not given Moises any money yet, but that I HAD given him my WORD that Moises was going to be the one to install the tower. If Roy installs Internet towers why was I not told this a couple of weeks of ago when he came by “The Compound” I ask Melinda, my Sainted Wife? (Let me please tell you, however, that I really like Roy. He is very smart, organized, and personable.) She says she doesn’t know why.

The crew of 5 comes in to install the tower. Moises tells me that he is only going to try to see if it works with a 50 section even though the tower the crew brings is 60 ft., broken down in 10 ft sections. He said it was too risky to go higher. I advised him that he was going to install a 60 ft tower as he promised if that is what it takes to get my signal. I also remind him that he told me before that he had climbed a 200 ft tower. He said he will go to 60 ft if there was no signal at 50 ft.

The tower goes up in 10 ft sections at a time. It is about 3- inch thick iron with supports welded on for climbing. It is supported by guide lines positioned throughout the front yard. A young man, not Moises, climbs the tower as the other workers get each section up to him with a rope. The guys get up to 50 ft, Moises hooks up the Ethernet cable to my computer, and gets no signal. Have to add that final 10 ft. section. The last section goes in, we have a 60 ft tower, and Moises (and I) are excited because we get a signal from the main tower, a very good signal. He goes to the Smart Bro website and reboots the computed as directed and then—-no signal, NOTHING!

He tries for another hour or so to  get the signal back. Still nothing. He then advises me he is an installer and not a technician; I had already figured that out for myself. He says he will be back tomorrow morning (hopefully with some help.)

Next morning Moises comes back with a friend of his who is a computer tech. The computer tech configures some LAN settings on my computer, gets the signal back, and I am online. I am overjoyed and thrilled to no end. So here I am staring at this monitor all day and typing. But I enjoy it. If you’re going to write a blog, what better place than the Philippines!

The Sarangani Bay 5,000 Artificial Reef Dome Project!

In early April 2005, Myself and my American friend John Heitz were having a couple of beers at my Cambridge Farm Bar after a day of diving! My bar is a place where many great ideas are born especially after a bit of worship to our favorite saint, San Miguel! During our dives we had seen all kinds of degradation to our local coral reefs both man made and natural but the organizations who were supposed to take care of such problems were doing nothing so me and John, on the spot, decided that if we wanted anything to by done to improve our local coral reefs then we would have to be the ones to initiate it! After a few more beers, the idea of the Reef Dome Project was born!

Over the next couple of weeks we came up with several designs of Dome Shapes and Sizes, all made with locally available materials in order to keep costs to a minimum. The buckets which were to act as the casting forms were purchased from the Gen San Fish Port, others were made up by the local Tire Repairing Vulcanizers, steel, sand, gravel and cement were all locally purchased locally so no extra expense added there! As form oil was so expensive we bought used vegetable oil from Jollibee to stop the concrete sticking to the forms! My two old laborers were now the dome construction crew and the project construction site was Cambridge Farm Hotel! Now, everything was in place and the project began!

The first few domes were deployed on 17th April 2005 in the waters fronting Maharlika Beach Resort! This was a learning curve for us as we had built the domes but had never rolled them into the water before but all went well and the domes, as we hoped were easily moved by a single diver! If we decided to pile them in pyramids as we did later in the project we could usually manage this with 2 divers! Now that we had deployed the initial domes and we could see that it was quite feasible to easily deploy more, we went into full production constructing the domes and it was not long before we had many sponsors willing to assist in this worthy project! On many occasions groups who sponsored the domes made the deployment day as a family social event with parties on the beach, others just donated money, even the Padi, Project Aware Foundation made a substantial donation so the project was really flying so we decided that the number of 5,000 domes would be required to complete the project and as you can probably understand, that at this early stage, we still had a very long way to go! The number 5,000 was just picked from the air!

After about 3 weeks we were inspecting the first domes that we had deployed and we were very surprised to find life starting to take hold in the form of small marine worms, tiny barnacles, green algea and other minute creatures! We were kind of shocked with this growth as we were thinking that it would be months or even years before anything really happened growth wise! We also noticed that small Damsel Fish had staked a claim to each dome as their home and would defend them vigorously even from creatures the size of divers, they were quite fearless and we got hit on numerous occasions! The more we studied the domes the more we got interested in how life developed on them! There were many broken an uprooted corals all around the reef so we decided to try to transplant some onto the domes just to see how they would react! Some were not successful and did not survive but many did especially the soft corals so we made it a point in future deployments to gather loose corals and attach them to the domes in order to kick start the growth!

The more domes we deployed, the more we learned about how long it took different kinds of life to take hold and grow! Barnacles were very fast growers but were also a food source for Parrot Fish etc! The  algae was food for the grazing creatures like Surgeon Fish! Some coral species took hold and grew very quickly while some of the harder corals take a much longer time to show themselves but in time, everything was growing well and new coral reefs were being created in different areas of Sarangani Bay and beyond! With this new supply of marine accommodation came the immigrants, fish of all kinds moved in, Shell Fish, Octopus and Crustaceans, Cucumbers and Urchins, predators like Lion Fish, Scorpion fish and Moray Eels, all forms of live were now in resident, these new reefs even started having some form of order to their society! To say that we were extremely elated was an understatement! We were two very happy people and were really astonished that our little project was creating so much improvement to the Marine Environment!

Like many projects, ours was not all plain sailing as we had our delays! Most were caused by bad weather which we could do nothing about, sometimes the local divers were not available to assist in deploying the domes and some delays were caused when the construction funds were a bit low but luckily for us, the Gen San City Government did not slow us down with Bureaucrats and we were left alone to continue where and when we wished to go! On one memorable occasion, we were taking domes out to an off shore reef on John’s Boat when the engine stopped! The operator looked into the engine compartment and it was flooded, the boat was sinking! Immediately we threw all the domes over the side into on deep water, bailed out the water from the boat and drifted into shore at Maharlika beach! The boat was saved but 17 domes were lost to the deep!

All in all, it took us 40 months of hard work to get 5,001 Domes deployed and on 29th August 2008 we finished the project and relaxed! It was a hard struggle all the way through but we had the determination to succeed! We have been asked to continue with the project but I think that we have done our part in assisting the Marine Environment with its recovery so I hope that others will take over and continue with similar types of projects!

There will be more information about this project but this will be in the form of other articles! If we are to help to restore what Man and Nature has helped to destroy, we have proved that with a little bit of determination, good things can be achieved without too much expense! For the 5,001 Domes, our total expenditure was just P942,329.00 which was about $21,000.00! Each dome cost only p200.00 or $4.20! Already another organization is doing a project to deploy 500 Domes in Sarangani Bay and there is interest from other areas of the country so with a bit of luck, the local coral reefs might once again be an impressive part of nature and give the marine creatures a more natural habitat than they have now in a lot of areas! If we allow the reefs to disappear then the whole marine ecosystem will collapse and that can only be a disaster for mankind so I sincerely hope that our project has played a small part in securing a better and safer future for the inhabitants living in the under the sea realm!

More pictures and details about the Coral Development on the Reef Domes will be detailed in future articles!

Now you can read me in the SunStar!

Just a quick announcement, everybody.  Effective today, I have a weekly column in the SunStar Davao Newspaper.  SunStar, I believe, is Davao’s largest circulation newspaper, and I am happy to be featured there.

My column is called “Mindanao Bob’s Journal” and will appear every Friday in the SunStar Davao edition.  For this week’s column, it is basically just an introduction of who I am and how I got here.  We’ll get down to more serious issues next week.

Unfortunately, this first column is not included in the Online edition of  SunStar, but perhaps future columns will be.

The Mighty Mosquito

You’ve heard the old saying that the pen is mightier than the sword, right?  Well, over the past several weeks, I have come to find out that the mosquito may just be mightier than either the sword or the pen.  Because of a mosquito, I have been sick for three weeks already.  And, when I say sick, I am not just saying that I didn’t feel well, I have been seriously ill.

Three weeks ago, I thought I had a cold.  I had sniffles, a slight fever and a sore throat.  It took a week or so, but it passed.  For a couple of days, I felt OK.  Weak, but OK.  Then, I had a couple of events to attend to one day – a breakfast with a friend, and then lunch with another friend the same day.  By the end of the day, I was so tired and weak that I could hardly even stand up!  I figured that I was not quite over my cold yet, and had overexerted myself.

After this overexertion, I had a higher fever, and was very, very weak.  It had been years since I had felt this sick.  I don’t get sick too often, but when I do, it tends to be somewhat serious.  Well, this time, as it turned out, it was quite serious.  I found out that what I had was not a common cold, but rather, I had Dengue Fever.  I should say, I have Dengue Fever, as I am still sick as I type this.

The next thing that happened was rather strange… I suddenly broke out with a whole bunch of red dots on my legs, and a few on my chest and face.  I wondered if it was measles or something, but I’ve already had that when I was a child.  I saw a doctor, and he told me that it was not measles, but rather, I was in the final stages of Dengue.

So, right now, the disease has passed, for the most part.  It can take weeks, even months, though, to regain your strength after going through Dengue Fever, so I still have  a ways to go before I am feeling normal again.  It’s a tough disease, and it really saps you of all of your strength!  Sometimes, you have so little strength that it is all you can do to just stand up.  Doing anything more than that can seem almost impossible.

What are the symptoms of dengue?

Well, there are many symptoms, and you may have some or all, it just varies.  For me, it started out with severe headache, cough, sore throat and sniffles.  I only had a minor fever, although the next week my fever was higher, but still not severe.  Also, I experienced some nausea and stomach discomfort.  Like I said, the red dots on my skin too, which were very numerous.  Pain behind my eyes was quite severe, like a lot of pressure behind the eyes.

With these symptoms, I first thought I had a cold.  Later, I knew it was too severe for a cold, and I thought I might have H1N1, Swine Flu.  Truth is, I think that Swine Flu, from what I’ve heard and read, is probably a lot milder than Dengue is, though.

What are the treatments of dengue?

Truth is, there are no treatments for dengue, officially.  No type of medicine will cure it.  There are “folk” remedies, though.  I have been using two.  Firstly, my friend, AmericanLola e-mailed me to tell me that one thing that is helpful is to make a juice by crushing the leaves of a papaya tree, which I’ve been doing.  It is some bitter stuff, but I drink it by the shot glass!  I don’t know if it works or not, but I’m trying it.  Another folk treatment is to make a tea from tawa tawa, a weed.  I did that once, and drank part of it.  I really didn’t like the stuff, though.

How do you catch dengue?

As far as I know, there is only one way to catch Dengue Fever, and that is from a mosquito bite.  It is from a certain type of mosquito, not just any mosquito.  This type of mosquito bites during the day, which I am told others don’t.  Also, only the female mosquito bites, which I never knew before.

While I cannot be certain, I believe that I may have picked up the virus when I visited Dinagat Island a few weeks ago.  I say this because I got sick about 4 days or so after I got back, so it would seem logical that I got the bite either on the Island, or perhaps on the bus while I was traveling.  That said, it is only my guess, and I could have just as easily picked it up right here in Davao, I just don’t know for certain.  I have no memory of being bitten by any mosquitoes, but it must have happened.

Dengue is not contagious, so one person cannot pass it to another.  You only get it from the bite of this certain mosquito.  I am thankful that I was not able to pass it along to anybody else in the family.

If you are visiting the Philippines, or any other tropical area in the world, I would recommend that you avoid mosquitoes at all possible cost.  Use some kind of mosquito repellent to keep them away from you too.  Believe me, you don’t want to catch Dengue!  It has proven to be a very uncomfortable sickness, and I hope you can avoid it – I wouldn’t wish this upon anybody.

Oh, if you are thinking of getting a shot to immunize yourself against dengue… don’t even bother.  There is no immunization against dengue.  The only way you can prevent the disease is by not getting bitten by any mosquitoes.