2 weeks to go! Huh?

With 2 weeks to go in Manila and the Philippines, it’s a shame that I’m not feeling 100%! I’m sure I have written before that when you are healthy, Manila can be a bit of a challenge, but when you aren’t feeling great, the city is very effective at magnifying that yucky feeling and making you feel downright awful. I guess it is just a typical stomach big that I’ve got that’s making me feel bad, but unfortunately it has completely turned me off wanting to eat Filipino food of any type (I’m even off JT’s Manukan – a really delicious locally barbequed chicken – and given that we are hosting a despedida (going away party) and a belated birthday party on Friday night with JT’s provide over 50 BBQ chickens, I hope I get over this one quickly!)

Normally at work we eat at turo turo stores where food is cooked in the kitchens of local residents. For the most of the year this has been a decent, cheap way of eating at work. It can get a bit repetitive, but it’s ok most of the time. But sometimes the veggies taste like fish (from having a local flavoring – bagoong – little shrimps added), and you know that sometimes it’s been sitting out for a bit letting the bacteria grow in the nice Manila humidity. No HASSP food standards here . . .but like I say, apart from a couple of bouts of feeling yuck and the Manila belly, it has been ok. So it’s a shame that at the moment, with only 2 weeks to go, just thinking of some of that food here is making me feel really ill!

Only 2 weeks to go! Having spent almost a year here what do I have to say about it? Not sure yet – of course it has been really great but I think I will have to record my reflections when I actually arrive back in Australia. I’m busy busy at work (of course, the busiest that I’ve been here all year!) trying to complete the development of a couple of Directories and a monitoring database, devising and doing some basic database training, writing a Manual as well as some Quick Reference Sheets for the staff here to continue some database enhancements after I go (that IHSS database knowledge has come in handy here Glenn!). In any case, I’m sure I will miss my little work room with my great NCRFW colleagues, the chikka chikka, daily meriyendas and even the multiple ‘hello maam’s, and strange things that happen everyday on the walk to work everyday (including questions from the local Malacanang guards ‘Saan po kayo ma’am – Where are you ma’am? – ‘right here sir . . .’).

I know I will miss the lifestyle (we bought a 1 litre of vodka for 180 pesos last night for our party – about $4.50 - and can afford to eat out a lot), the ability to travel in a diverse country, no winter!, and the fact that I’m still learning new things about the culture even after having spent a year here (like why aren’t there Easter eggs in the stores 3 weeks before Easter when Christmas starts in September? Because Easter is a solemn month where many Filipinos, who take Lent seriously, only really celebrate after Easter Monday in honor of the resurrection).

Getting to the end of my time here means getting to the end of the blog – another sad thing - as I enjoy recording my experiences and having an excuse to take lots of photos all the time! Even when I was younger I enjoyed keeping travel diaries of my experiences with bits and pieces of other places. And this blog has served the purpose extremely effectively in this electronic age. So I hope to post a few more entries before I leave, some reflections of my time in the Philippines when I get back to Australia, but I’m also thinking about writing a bit more about some of the people that I’ve spent this year with here. I hope they don’t mind and I am well and truly willing to amend anything I’ve written if I cause offense – it won’t be intended because in many things Filipino I know that I am still a little culturally ignorant!

posted by batik billy @ 12:38 pm