Ermita: We Came Across a Fork (and Spoon) in the Road

It’s now the end of summer and before we ship out for a job, destination TBA, we are visiting the folks at home, Janice’s home that is. Papa has a cyst the size of his fist on his back, so it’s a bit of a family crisis now. Still we enjoyed a couple of nights visiting the barangay before holing up in Ermita, the tourist ghetto of Manila.

Ermita has turned out to be truly refreshing. We are staying in an old hotel with a friendly lobby. Lots of expats, westerners like me, making trips back and forth to Angeles and Puerto Galera, with their asawas and sometimes their children in tow. The food is good and plentiful.

This is a nice place to finish the summer, despite our quandary. You see, from here we make a critical choice: to take a teaching post in Palestine or to try our luck in China. Will we be on a plane to Qatar or Singapore in the morning?

August 23, 2007

Cebu City: My Audition for ‘Jackass’

Today I gave into my wife’s pressure and hired someone to remove my graying beard with hot wax. I theorized that eventually new follicles would grow and my next beard would be dark and youthful all over again, and that at that point she would stop nagging me about shaving.

Frankly this was so was so painful I had to abort this mission. I wanted to kill the lady waxer when she said I have a low tolerance for pain because this was like having your skin peeled off over and over again. I swore after this never to let another person touch my beard again, ever. My wife, like everyone else, will just have to accept my guapo salt-and-pepper face until they put me six feet under.

Damn, if this wasn’t the most stupid masochistic thing I’ve ever tried. Men, don’t ever try waxing!

June 21, 2007

Cebu City: Where Magellan Lost His Head (Literally)

In Cebu City we holed up in a hotel for 2 weeks, mainly to relax, while taking care of medical and dental checkups.

While here it has been extremely frustrating finding film for my 35mm Pentax K-1000 SLR and my old-school Yashica medium-format 120 camera, so I’ve shipped my anachronistic wares back to the barangay in Agusan del Sur. The rest of these blogs will probably be accented with so-so pics from my cellphone, an Asus V80. In its defense, the Asus is not too bad for a cellphone cam.

While here in Cebu City I finished my second draft of a book review for the TESOL Quarterly, and submitted it for peer review. Knock on wood, my critical review of “CALL Research Perspectives” will be my first scholarly publication. Knock on wood.

June 10, 2007

Barangay Maygatasan: The Green, Green Grass of Home

Our story begins in Agusan del Sur, where we were married in June of ’06. We visited family in my wife’s barangay, got good herbal massages from Ate Inday the healer, a beard trim with a straight razor, and even got to be with Janice’s kuya on his first airplane flights. The only disappointment is our karaoke machine was gone from our sari-sari store (Parker’s Blessings); the barangay council made us shut it down. We’ll have to buy more votes during the next election cycle, I suppose.

May 28, 2007

Bickle’s Adventure Begins: Exiled by Homeland Insecurity

Some folks choose the expatriate life. I was forced into this choice. United States immigration policy prohibits me from bringing my foreign wife home.  Seems there is an economic means test that us spouses have to pass before we can bring our families to our native America. Meanwhile, any Mexican who can sneak through the fence is likely to gain amnesty someday, despite their economic means. I hope and pray that we still have a great country to come home to; at this point the Republicans in charge have adopted liberal policies that are sending us into hell in a handbasket. My prediction is that the USA will become a mentally ill liberal fascist state, and that my promise to bring my wife to the greatest country in the world will no longer be possible to keep. As this blog begins, I’m scared of what will come, but rising to the occasion. Never let your government keep your family apart!

The journey begins with a long-ass trip to Butuan, in Agusan del Sur, from the biggest little city in the world, Reno, Nevada. This entailed a week of packing, filling 5 dumpsters with so much shit that the Reno garbageman has put out a contract on me, and losing some precious things like my late father’s gold wedding ring. Hint: don’t wear rings while shuffling packing boxes to and from Public Storage. After a long and excruciating journey, which almost meant an overnight delay in Lost Wages airport, I made it through Philippines immigration with only a one-way ticket. That means I’m truly stamped out of my homeland, whacked out from travel, and excited to reunite with my lovely wife.

Unbelievably, I am on an airplane right now. It’s been a hectic week, but the adventure has finally begun.

This adventure has a primary goal, to bring my Philippines wife to my home country of the United States. secondary goals are to gain overseas teaching experience, to see some of the world together, to bring perspective back to U.S. American classrooms, and to make a baby or two.

Now I’m starting the longest leg of the journey from Reno, Nevada, my home for the last 4 years, to the Mindanao barangay where my wife grew up. Vancouver to Manila is about 13 hours in the air, yet this particular flight is surprisingly comfortable considering it’s only Fiesta Class (economy) on Philippine Airlines. I’m at the end of a 4-seat row, and guy named Gary from Knoxville sits the other end. In short, we each have two seats to spread out in. In this case, high fuel prices are a godsend.

Well, my late dinner is here, after a day (a week, really) of hiblood. I hope to write more later, whether I share the details of the past week or just focus on The Now and The Future. The latter is more likely, as the hi-blood needs to drop.

By 2am of this flight, time shifts. Saturday never comes when you jump across the International Date Line. Time shift is one of the perks of Asian travel, and a perk that I enjoy.

A few catnaps and I’m less weary. This week has been rough: dropping heavy things on my feet repeatedly, aggravating my torn rotator cuff, pissing off the garbage man by filling 7 dumpsters, listening to my Turkish neighbor talk incessantly, calming my worried mom who questions incessantly, losing my late father’s wedding ring by sweating so much packing box picked it off, and abandoning so many possessions that were dear to me.  At least when we return, we’ll have less to move.

So now my earphones play English and Pilipino love songs, while i drink black coffee and review my notes/texts on Bisayan Cebuano, the poorly-documented mother-tongue of my wife’s family. Since I’m not laying over in the capitol, there is no need to review Pilipino notes this trip. I’m focused on acquiring Bisayan, by immersion into their culture.

After the barangay, we’ll live in Cebu City for a few weeks, primarily to take care of.dental and medical checkups, then we’re off to the northern Borneo cities of Kota Kinabalu and Kuching. We hope there is such a thing as a beach in Singapore for our anniversary of 6/28. Wife wants to see Bangkok, so the month of June will end in Thailand. I’ll be hunting or teaching jobs as we go, and we’ll both be assessing each country to see if it’s worth expatriating too.

To paraphrase an old hobbit, “We’re off on an adventure.”

May 25, 2007