Most importantly, we have moved into our house this week, met some of our neighbors, and are working on getting a car. We got very lucky with the house, first of all. We were expecting to get one of the smaller two-bedroom townhouses, but fortune smiled on us and we were given a roomier three-bedroom unit. Other than the extra space, the additional benefits are key: a walk-in closet (did Anita call them ahead of time?), a small side yard (small by American standards, but one of the bigger patches of grass in the section), and lots more windows (since the larger units are on the end of the row, we get sun on three sides). We couldn't be happier with the new digs.
My first war is against ants. We've been pretty clear of them so far, but in my brief experience here I can tell that if you leave any kind of food or drink out for too long, they will have it scouted out and have planted their little ant flag on it before you say Raid. We keep everything that is not well sealed in the fridge, including stuff you wouldn't normally think of putting there, like cereal. We even created sort of an ant-trap for the dogs' food dishes, but I wash the bowls after every use anyway. The 15-kilo bag of Eukanuba Natural Lamb and Rice dog food (naturally my first purchase in the Philippines) sits in a giant tub with an airtight seal. Whenever I throw food away it's like I've borrowed a page from the SNL skit, "The Anal-Retentive Carpenter," bagging the food before I throw it in the trash so as not to create an ant stampede. So far so good.
Our first project now is to buy a car. We're pretty far outside of Manila, which is great in many ways because there is a lot of green around, and more importantly it's quiet and feels safe. However, there is no convenience mart right in the development so even for groceries and such transportation will be key. We plan to get that squared away before we even think about hiring a driver, because we can try to do a lot of the driving ourselves (ack!), especially in the areas of town we know. For the rest of this week, though, our long-time friends Nonoy and Edith have lent us a car and driver. We probably would have starved on the streets by now without their help, which has obviously been invaluable in so many arenas. Edith is like a walking communications center, with two cell phones that are constantly on, while she converses with us at the same time. She could run a small country while shopping at the mall.
And speaking of malls, Stephen and I conducted our first joint intelligence operation at the mall, trying to find out what we could buy around here. We went to the SM South Mall, owned by one of the largest department store companies in the Philippines, Shoe Mart. They sell more than shoes, obviously, and have expanded into mall construction and management, and even resort development. They built the Mall of Asia, the seventh largest shopping mall in the world, on reclaimed land on Manila Bay. It includes an olympic-sized ice rink, and this is a tropical country, so you do the math on their power bill.
South Mall is not the Mall of Asia, but still it's very big, even by American mall standards. Malls in the Philippines generally are entire towns within themselves. This one had a movie theater, pool hall, boxing gym, ice rink, health clinic, computer school, mini amusement park, build-your-0wn Hotwheels toy car center, paint-your-own pottery place, and--yes--even stores and restaurants! I even saw, for the very first time ever, mime lip-sync. Think about that for a second.My enthusiasm for exploring our new home, though, quickly gave way to severe exhaustion caused by the cacophony of noise. There were grandstand acts (like the mime lip-sync) in the center of every intersection of hallways in the mall, but they competed with the karaoke microphones that every electronics store sold (and, if you're gonna sell it, you'd better have people singing on it constantly, right?!); on top of that, every store had its own background music playing, though I'd call it more foreground music than anything else. Then inside many stores salesmen working for the product companies themselves hawked their wares infomercial-style, usually with microphones and loud music blaring in order to better get your attention.
The aural assault wiped me out very quickly as I was still a bit jet-lagged, and I found myself getting edgy--well, to be more exact, Stephen pointed that fact out for me. Ah, husbands. The outstanding sashimi we later ate with Nonoy and Edith was more than enough to revive me, though. I never knew tuna tasted so sweet when it is that fresh. Much of what is sent to Japan for sushi is actually fished off the shores of the Philippines, so we get a terrific supply of the best tuna you've ever tasted. Don't bother with the salmon, though, which comes from the Atlantic after what must be a very long journey. It's not even recognizable as salmon because it has faded to a tan clump--nothing like the healthy pinkish orange with white stripes that you'd think of. The difference between our Platonic ideal of salmon and what you can get here works exactly in reverse with tuna--what is available even at the best sushi places in Boston and NYC is a pale facsimile to the stuff you can get relatively cheaply here. The sweetness in my belly more than made up for the ringing in my ears!
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