Geeky Yet Waterproof

I forgot mention in my entry yesterday that as we were waiting in traffic, a guy was walking straight down the middle of the road, in between cars, pushing a cart full of peanuts to vend to people waiting in their cars! I love third-world countries.

Today, after driving by Manila Bay, we went on tour of Intramuros. Intramuros is a medieval fortress built by the Spaniards in the 16 century when they were occupying the Philippines. It used to be almost a whole city, but after it was bombed in WWII all that’s left are the stone walls and one of previously seven cathedrals.
The tour lasted about three hours, but it was really good. The guide kept putting on costumes pertaining to what he was talking about — for example, when he started talking about the US in WWII, he donned an “Uncle Sam” top-hat with the American flag printed all over it! At a later time, he put on another “American” hat, aviator glasses, and a pipe.
The tour wasn’t just about Intramuros, but all of Filipino history. I learned a lot I didn’t know, such as the fact that the reason Filipinos are short is because most of them are allergic to milk, or that the Philippines is a mix of cultures similar Halo-Halo ice cream, or that the occupying Spaniards couldn’t use mattresses on their beds because they of the fact that they bathed once every three months.
It was really cool just to walk around a medieval Spanish fortress, in the Philippines. I kept thinking I was in Europe, and then seeing palm trees! Tropical plants! Filipinos!!

On the way back, Christopher and I were still highly amused by the driving situation, even after the 2nd day: as you may know, Filipinos have a habit of decorating everything to death, and the streets are no exception. They paint weird white and yellow lines down the middle of the road, but I guess it doesn’t matter because people don’t seem to notice them.
In the States, if a car takes up part of your lane, you’ll honk your horn, angry that you can’t get by unless the whole lane is free. Here, a car will drive straight down the middle of the divider line, but you’ll squeeze right by them using the local “make room” teaching.

As we were waiting at a stoplight, we heard “pulis” sirens, and saw a motorcade escorting a black mercedes, which turned out to be the president. I’ve heard she’s the most corrupt president the Philippines has ever had, but it’s still cool to say, “Oh, by the way, I saw the president today…”

Today we arrived in the Philippines, after 16 hours of flying and a stop in Taiwan. I’m traveling with my grandparents and my cousin, Christopher. We’re staying with my grandmother’s sister, Tita PeeWee, in a town outside Manila. We’ve only been here for a few hours, but so far, I’m loving the Philippines.

The first thing I noticed when we stepped off the plane was the heat. We came from freezing Seattle to 85° Manila. And besides the heat, there’s the humidity; just standing outside, you’ll be wet within minutes without even sweating.
It’s hard to believe it’s actually December in these islands, and it’s an extremely new feeling, seeing Christmas decorations hanging on palm trees.

After Tita PeeWee picked us up at the airport, we went directly to a little restaurant for lunch. I then discovered one of the greatest things of going to a different country: the Filipino food in the Philippines puts the Filipino food in the US to shame. I wasn’t hungry, but when I tasted the Pancit I was ravenous. I thought I knew what good fruit was, but when I tried the mango smoothie it was like a whole different fruit.

After we had all eaten our most satisfying fill, we continued on to Tita PeeWee’s house. Now let me tell you, when they say the traffic is bad here, that’s an understatement. I won’t go into detail, but let’s just say the painted lines on the road mean nothing here.
While waiting forever in the traffic, we saw dozens of Jeepneys — old military jeeps converted into hippie vans with religious sayings written all over, used as public transportation.

When we finally reached our destination, we rested for a little while, and then Tita PeeWee took us on a tour of the town. It’s just a suburb of Manila, but in this village we visited two malls, each one bigger and more colorful than anything I’ve ever seen in the US!

After that we went to the local country club, where Christopher got a massage and I practiced with the swim team. Since everyone was having exams this week, there were only three other people at the practice, named Miggy, Jammy, and Romain. But the coach said there should be more tomorrow, so I’ll get to meet more locals.

This first day has been really exciting. So much in fact that I’ve already taken over 130 photos (sorry). Chances are, my finger isn’t going to slow down with the shutter for at least the next few days, so I’ll be uploading all my photos every night which you can see on my web gallery.

At the Apple Store in Southcenter Mall, Seattle!

At a filipino party outside Seattle waiting for 1am! More updates will come with more wifi.

…in Morton, WA!

On Thursday we had our first high school swim meet of the season, against South Salem. I swam the 100 fly, the 500 free, the fly leg of the 200 medley relay, and the lead-off in the 400 free relay.
I won both my individual races, and we won both our relays. In fact, our boys won almost every event there was… But South still won the meet. How? Because while we were getting 1st, they were getting 2nd, 3rd, and 4th! Ahhh! It’s not fair, but they won because they had more people.
But regardless of which team won, this was a really fun high school meet. I broke the school record in the 500, although that’s not saying much because the record was a 5:17. Oh well, now it’s a 5:15 - even though I was 12 seconds off my best time. Gotta love high school swimming.

After the meet, I had plans to go over to Iza’s house just to hang out before I leave for the Philippines. But as soon as the meet was over, I got a text message saying to meet her at Applebee’s instead. So 10 minutes later, I showed up at Applebee’s, and BANG! I was amazed to see not just Iza, but Adam, Amber, Sammi, Tori, Hannah Braun, and Mihato. They had planned a surprise party/gathering since I’d be leaving in a few days. I might not see everyone until “next year” (since I’m coming back on the 28th), so this was a very welcome surprise. Thanks, y’all!

At the moment, we’re staying in Morton, WA with the grandparents for a day, before I’ll ride with them up to Seattle tomorrow night, where we’ll meet up with my cousin, and then fly to the Philippines at 1:00am.
I’ll be sure to blog a lot while I’m there. And if anyone really needs proof that palm trees exist even on Christmas, I’m bringing my iSight webcam along, so video chat me and I’ll show you myself. (Just remember the 16-hour time difference!)

Last Friday, Adam, Andrew, Amanda, Mihato, my guitar, and I all went over to Iza’s house after practice as a preliminary party to Snoball, which was the next night. We gorged down on pizza, then watched Wedding Crashers while eating brownies.
After the movie, a guitar face-off took place between Iza and myself, with Adam, Mihato, and Amanda in the “audience”. This is how you really play Guitar Hero… with REAL guitars!

The next day, I went with Iza and the same group of four to SnoBall, Salem’s annual high school dance. We first all met at Iza’s house to take photos, then we all went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Afterwards we went to the dance, which lasted from 8pm to midnight. It was crazy (fun): there were 2,800 people there, and it took place in a huge arena.
Some of us even went moshing, but after the first 30 seconds we gradually realized that it was about 20° hotter in the middle of the action, so we retreated to the outer reaches of the floor.
I saw a lot of people I knew there, from high school swimming, Bearcats, and even across the lake.
The only problem was the music: rap, rap, Numa-Numa, rap, hip-hop, rap, YMCA, rap, hip-hop, rap. Fortunately, I was prepared for this madness, thanks to - or shall I say, by fault of - the radio we listen to at morning practice. But just because the DJ had a less-than-quality iTunes library didn’t mean it wasn’t fun.

We ended up taking four people home afterwards, so I didn’t get home until about 1:30am, and didn’t go to bed until about 2:15. Luckily there was no morning the next day, because if there had been, I probably wouldn’t have gone to bed at all that night.

Like any party with 3000 people, this was all great fun. So, if the photos below aren’t enough, I’ve uploaded 115 more to a gallery. Enjoy.

Sorry my blog has been down for several days. I won’t go into extreme detail, but as with most problems, it started with Windows…

Warning: Geeky Section Begins
I was trying to install Windows using Boot Camp on the iMac. In the Blue Screen of Death installer screen, I selected what I thought was the right partition - and what turned out to be the wrong partition - to format, then hit “Continue”.
But don’t worry, I didn’t format the wrong partition… worse. Windows being, well, Windows, it gave me some sort of a confirmation screen before formatting, which had a “Continue” button, but no “Back” button.
Realizing it was the wrong partition, I had no choice but to shut off the iMac using the power button, and try to start over.

But when I tried to start it up again, it got stuck on the gray startup screen. I tried booting from the Leopard install CD… no luck. Booting in Target Disk Mode… nope. Every possible reset button or startup option… dang. It appeared that Windows had, without telling me, done something Terrible to the hard drive, rendering it useless.
End Geeky Section

So we took the iMac in to the Mac Store for repairs, and it turned out the logic board was fried. Don’t ask me how some funky (Windows) software could kill the logic board… but it did.
Luckily, the iMac is still under warranty, so we get it repaired for free. Unfortunately, we won’t get it back until about Monday, and I’m leaving for the Philippines this weekend!
So in the meantime at least, I’ll be using this WordPress blog to report from across the Pacific.

But now that I think about it, I think I’ll just use this permanently. Hosting a blog on my own server has been fun, but it’s gotten to be too much trouble having to babysit my blog.
Have no fear; I’ll import all my old posts to this blog, so I won’t have lost anything, though I’ll have to wait till I get back from the Philippines to do it. But you can live for a month without my old blog posts, can’t you?

So the conclusion is: update your bookmarks for my blog to www.eamon.the-byte-factory.com, because that’s where I am and that’s where I’ll be.