Our muddy road, replete with ruts deeper than Bill Gates’ pockets, has finally been restored to drive-able conditions. “Road Repaired! A Big Thanks to Guimaras Governor Gumarin.” And thanks to the crew from the Guimaras Provincial Engineering Office.
Read moreRoad Repaired! A Big Thanks to Guimaras Governor Gumarin
Regular readers of “Philippines Plus” know your author, the crusty old expat, is a cheap son-of-a-gun. Sure, we might be paying big bucks for our monthly 1290 Peso Plan with Cignal satellite, 26 bucks, but I wanted a more frugal option for one of our other four television sets
Read moreCheap TV in the Philippines: ABS-CBN TVplus Black Box
“SM City North EDSA Expat Experience” relates our latest shopping adventure in the Philippines. It was a chaotic shopping trip. I was almost convinced Filipinos in Manila had started their Christmas shopping early. After all, the Philippines has the longest Christmas season in the world and begins September 1st.
Not much cow manure on our new road nor much traffic unless it’s time for the local schools to begin their morning classes.
If this were a website where more colorful language was allowed, the title for this post would certainly not have read “The Great Guimaras Ultrasound Gaffe.” But you can bet there were some phrases I uttered this past Saturday at a local laboratory that cannot be repeated on this site or in front of any nuns or preachers of the Gospel. Merchant marines? Yeah, no problem.
Read moreThe Great Guimaras Ultrasound Gaffe: The Kano Loses His Cool
American expat’s return to America. That’s correct. I’m going back to the United States of America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. I haven’t been there in over five years since my retirement to the Philippines with my beautiful Filipina wife. My asawa will stay behind with her Father, who is afflicted with dementia, and who had to be stopped today from going to a cock fight. Of course, we don’t know who invited him to this event, but he was determined to go. Our 16-year-old domestic helper, Mera, barely five feet tall and probably not weighing much than a duwende went out to stop Lolo.
The Tom Cat, The Kano and Lolo
My asawa went to our local Generics Pharmacy in Guimaras a few weeks ago to buy me some pain medication. I’ve stopped by our local drug outlet on occasion to pick up various medicines for the family. Being a friendly American expat in the Philippines, for the most part, I usually chat with the locals when I go out in public. When my wife made her aforementioned run to the drug dealers and told the two female employees working the counter that she was getting the medication for her husband, they both remembered me and called me the fat Americano.
I was sitting in the emergency room at our provincial hospital in Guimaras, where my asawa had accompanied me on a return trip to determine the severe pain I was experiencing. From past experience, I had no doubt that it was another kidney stone attack, as I had suffered one four years ago. Many people that have kidney stones have a recurrence of them within seven years unless they take preventive actions. I didn’t. A lack of drinking water every day and excessive sweating, which I do a lot of in this tropical climate in the Philippines, surely contributed to this recent attack.
Read moreA Return Trip to the Emergency Room in Guimaras, the Philippines: Part Two
Regular readers of this website, and those that have been with me since the early days of “The Rooster Crows at 4am!,” will know that I was a fairly regular visitor of The Shirven Hotel in Guimaras.
David, far left, Paul, and The Kano
Read moreRebirth of The Shirven Hotel in Guimaras in the Philippines