Random Threads

I was in Manila for  two weeks getting overhauled in a hospital for a week, and staying with good friends there afterwards. It was nice seeing friends I never get to see and strangely. I saw more friends from Palawan there that I never see in town. Odd to run into more of them in Manila than where I live. It's always wonderful to get back home after seeing nothing but sky scrappers, except for the verdant garden at the friend's house I was staying at. But for that little oasis, I might have gone nuts. It was nice to go for a walk down the road I live in and see not one concrete structure, but the road. Here is what I like to see, not much of anything but green and verdant valleys. It help me remember why I love Palawan. I have been so upset over the approval of a coal fired electric plant and the  Ocean Park  in a marine sanctuary, I almost forgot why I live here. Mangingisda Road. This is walking back towards my house from the Mangingisda Pier. A very common...

We moved to Palawan after searching other islands for our retirement base. I liked Palawan because it was so pristine compared to other cities. I also loved the fact that earthquakes don't happen here, nor the ferocious winds of the Typhoons that strike Luzon and other islands. In 2009,when we moved here, it was a laid back town. Not much of anywhere to shop for groceries except for NCCC and the public markets. I hated NCCC because they constantly blared Christian music so loud I couldn't even think straight, much less remember what to buy. I don't have anything against Christian music in general, except I didn't expect to have it blasted in my ears at a Supermarket!!! I think that should be left to churches. If I wanted to listen to that type of music...I definitely would have gone to church to hear it. To make matters worse, at checkout, they would stop the process to pray!!! This drove me crazy and I actually had to force them to stop praying and continue to check ...

by Vince Naso 1971 It was 1971, and I was 21 when I met a lovely man many years my senior, named Vince Naso. I think he was about 36 at that time. We hit it off right away and we were literally inseparable. Not long after, much to the chagrin of my conservative parents, we bought a house together and proceeded to set up house and home. I had been raised in the Philippines with household staff and ridiculously unaware of anything as mundane as putting things away etc. It was never asked of me to do one stitch of household work or any of the cooking. In fact, it never dawned on me to even consider it. Simply oblivious. When we moved in together, I pretty much winged it.  I always was fairly precocious, if not experienced, but here is one incident that backfired on me. One day he asked if I did laundry. Thinking, Hell everyone in America does laundry, they have washing machines. I mean how hard can it be?  I was pretty smug. In the Philippines, we had laundry people, and my...