Water Water Everywhere

This past Wednesday was the first monsoon rain of my Philippine career, the kind where you step outside for a brief moment and find yourself soaked through to your underwear. Even the dogs found it a bit wet for their tastes, though of course they were happy it was finally cooling down (or so they thought...it's hot again now). Stephen spent the day trudging through Manila looking for heavy-duty power converters for our printer and other 110 volt appliances. The truly miraculous part was that our friends Derek and Jimmy went with him in their shorts and sandals, walking through streets flooded with sewage and goodness-knows-what slime. Fortunately, we are not prone to flooding in our own neighborhood, so don't worry about little ol' me.

I've settled down into a very nice routine, largely supported by our new helper. On the one hand, I feel guilty that you can employ a person full time to clean, cook, do laundry, go to the market, and even watch your kids for between $60 and $150 a month (on average). I feel like I am taking advantage of the overall poverty of this wonderful country. Conversely, it is rewarding to actually provide employment for an individual who wants it. I console myself that I cannot solve the problem of poverty in the Philippines by boycotting domestic help, so I might as well provide one person the means to support her family. Well, that's what I tell myself anyway.

It's pretty darned decadent. She arrives as I am heading out for school (having eaten a breakfast of fresh fruit salad she prepared the night before), washes all our dishes from the night before, scrubs the kitchen and bathrooms from top to bottom, washes our daily laundry and folds yesterday's load, changes the sheets, cuts more fruit, sweeps the walk, weeds the garden, and washes the car. She's a hard worker, to say the least, and she is a large part of the reason our shipment is unpacked already. Not everything was put in the right place, but it was out of the box and that is over half the battle. I come home to a house where I could eat off of any surface at any time. Even the dogs hardly have time to shed a speck of fur before it's swept up. After a tiring day of work, I get to walk into a neat, ordered house, and it's just a beautiful, beautiful thing. Operation Heaven-on-Earth: check!


Back in the Oarhouse tonight to visit friends. We went to a Georgetown alumni function on Wednesday night in Makati (the business district), which was quite nice. We had to pay annual dues to get in, and that wasn't cheap, but it was almost worth it for the "Georgetown Alumni Philippines" t-shirt. Love that schwag, I tell ya.
We bought fresh live crabs that night and froze them (a kinder death than boiling I have to think) and Stephen is going to make me some Thai curry crab tomorrow. Yum. His tenure as CQO (Chief Quality-of-Life Officer) has so far been a success and we are in negotiations to extend his contract. Gotta run because my friend Ben's computer (which I'm using) is running out of power. So long everybody!