Thanks for your concern.

It's Saturday morning now and we're in Baguio, about an hour away from Burgos.

We recieved a text message at 4am that our ponds would soon overflow with the heavy rains.

We left Burgos last night at 5pm under heavy rain with the expectation to return after the storm.

At that time our large breeding pond was at about 5% of capacity and the smaller segregating ponds were at about 80%.

My concern at the moment is for the soil to give way around the perimeter of all the ponds. The worst of the storm is scheduled to arrive today and we'll return tomorrow, Sunday.

As for Manila, yes it is truly a mess there. Our old house is under about a foot of water and will surely be rising.

Manila is a very old city with bad drainage in all but the newest most expensive neighborhoods. Imagine 300 years worth of built up cockroaches and rat crap flowing through your front room. That's what I'm expecting in the coming 24 hours at the old house.

I'm looking at the whole situation there at the old house with a certain amount of satisfaction as we left under strained circumstances.

My experiences with these people have changed my entire experience here and not for the good.

Maybe it was the downturn in the economy that changed them into greedy envious people but they changed completely. That's a big disappointment to me personally but better to see their real intent now than later.

I'll be saving my single peso coins to donate to their recovery at the old house.

Life's a bitch. Sometimes even when you lie and cheat to get something nice it turns out be just dogshit. Just what you deserve. :)

I'll keep you posted.

Whoa, that's a strange twist in your journey. That relationship seemed to be pretty stable and generally cool.

Well I'm glad you're OK, anyway... and hope you survive this rain with little damage. Take care.

Good to here from you man. Are the ponds well designed?

were both ok but wow what a storm.

I've never seen anything like it. We have a lot of photos coming but it's been more trecharous than expected.

Our fish pond overfowed and I don't know if there are any fish left.

The mudslides have been incredible. They're everywhere and much more dangerous than I had imaged.

6 days of continuous monsoon rain with high winds.

I'm exhausted from hiking around the mudslides to get to naguilian.

More soon.

Welcome to the Jungle.

I'm glad you guys are ok. It sounds rough.

I'm numb from the whole experience.

flickr is loading now. More tomorrow.

We are ok.

I need a shower, shave and a proper meal.

Daym !!! I been looking at some of your Flickr Pics ! Daym !!!!!
Glad to hear that you guys are ok ,
this is just a Bump in the road , there Will be Many !!
Keep on sloggen , and Keep on Posting .

That was a strange twist. We were in pretty good.

The combination of hard times from their US income source ( California ) and a reduction of what was normally 500 or so a month to zero and the death of family members with valuables turned into bad blood with us.

Anyway, we're into a new adventure and location. Those folks are not anywhere near us now and that's good.

They are only dug into the ground with no reinforcement. The soil has a claylike consistency that holds a shape wet or dry.

Our problem this time was not having grass growing on the newly created sidewalls of the pond. Without a lot of erosion the damage would be less.

We're not talking about tens of thosands of dollars though, we're talking a few hundred for repairs.

During this entire storm my main worry was to meet up with a snake flooded out of its home just wandering around looking for a dry safe place to stay.

Mudslides or BIG snakes? I'll take the mudslides. :)


Thanks for the encouragement Zip. The project will continue and I have some more photos on Flickr.

Luzon Typhoon

Maybe now I can get this big solar collector assembled and working.

Picture 100_0838, is that footbridge because the water normally flows over the road there?
This was the first typhoon, wasn't it? How did you make out in the second one?

Wow. Burgos is trashed! How are you able to travel around? Are most of the roads damaged that bad? You must be walking everywhere.

There are several other places with water flooding the road, some with more volume but without a footbridge.

For all I know that bridge may connect some native VIP to a nearby source of gin or goat meat.

These are all taken during and after the second storm about Oct 5 or 6.

The first time we tried to get out we were told that passage through the mudslides was impossible at the moment but once the rains stopped someone would make a foot path so that you might walk to the main road but surely not ride.

We stayed one more night and the storm passed, we had some local assistance carrying our gear on the footpaths and we made it out to walk another stretch of road to get to safety.


These photos are a few days old now. The National Guard ( of sorts ) was shovelling and digging when I left Burgos. We have seen heavy equipment, bucket loaders, graders and the like, traveling toward Burgos. I believe that was the worst area from the storm.

The secondary roads didn't seem to be as bad. Most of the backroads were blocked with mud but not the huge boulders you see in the pics on Nag road.

Walking was a pain in the ass. More so than usual I should say. Where was the mud that you could walk on? Where was the "quicksand"? Yes, it's fine when there's a line of folks coming your direction, you can follow their footsteps.

By the time we arrived out to the road it was a pain in the ass but not really all that dangerous.

Before we made it out to the mainroad, that was dangerous AND a pain in the ass.

You need horses or donkeys for that shit.

I'll be sure to pack a donkey in my laptop bag the next time I see typhoons on the radar. :blush:

Someone with a good boat to transport people a few miles on the river sections where the road was washed out could have made the whole situation better as well.

Fresh out of rescue boats too.

Most people walking in those photos were in pretty good spirits or silent and just concentrating on getting to point B.

There were more than a few small men carrying large medical oxygen bottles, scores of bags of rice, junk foods, people herding goats through the mess and people assisting elderly.

By that time I was wet, sunburned, fatigued, irritatted at the entire effing mess and was in less than good spirits. That seems to be when people ask me dumb questions ( or icebreakers ) and I have to politely say "I've got mud from my feet to my rear...all my gear is muddy,have not shaved-showered-or changed clothes in 3 days and not consumed an adult beverage in two. Meet me in Naguilian and we'll laugh about all this over a 4 x 4." :)

A 4 x 4 here is a bottle of gin 4cm by 4cm, 750ml

The sunburn seems particularly unfair.

Agreed.

The mud in the underpants was not fun either. My wife wouldn't let me change them on the road. :blush:

Are you sure it was just mud? ;) That storm looks a little scary...

Aussie soldier in Vietnam: "Only place in the world you can be up to your [ears] in mud and still have dust in your eyes."

Yah, here comes another one dammit!

Some misc shots here

Native pigs are better tasting but take nearly twice as long to grow to market size.

How in hell did they get that hog in the sidecar? :eek:

A small bowl of chicken feet for a snack while we drink a 4 x 4 of gin.

I've put forth serious effort but still have not become drunk enough to try the chicken feet.

The alternate booze of choice has recently been Bacardi 151 Rum. It's a boatload more expensive but the locals try to drink it straight as they do the Pinoy gin and it hammers them amazingly quickly. :)

Good question.

The first time I noticed pigs in the sidecar I had completely missed the shot.

Then after snapping every passing vehicle for a few hours stumbled across this one.

That one that I missed had 2 pigs about that same size in the tricylcle which would have made it a much better pic.

Maybe they get the pigs a little drunk to soften them up for the trip to market? I'd surely like to talk to one of those drivers.

Here are the clouds as seen from Naguilian road approaching Baguio.

Now that the road is passable doesn't mean that it's back to normal. Somehow I imagined that everything would be fine not just passable but the roads are still very rough in areas and you can look out at the mountainsides and see plenty of mudslides that didn't affect homes or traffic

These are from Dennis, my US pal from Cali.

The two pictures were taken one day apart.

The area shown was flooded because a large drainage tunnel ( which would fit 2 buses side by side ) was plugged full with garbage.

Preventative maintenance? No one saw this coming? What a shame for those that lost property.

Not much positive going on here lately so I've not posted here because I don't like to whine and or cry in public.

Aside from the fallout from the storms there's other bad news for our family here.

Last week my sister in law lost her unborn baby at 7 months. The good news is that my SIL is ok after a few days in the hospital but the entire family is saddened with the loss.

The doctor reports that the baby's ambilical chord was wrapped around it's neck not once but twice, which in itself is far beyond rare. The facts as we are being told are that even if the child had survived to be born that the lack of oxygen during the term would have produced a baby severely retarded and in need of much medical care.

And in light of the continued El' nino in all the surrounding areas, including our farm lot, I've accepted an offer from DePuy JnJ to come back to Indiana to backfill the spot that I left.

I'm not happy to report that circumstances have degraded so far beyond what we could have imagined. My efforts in the US will be much more productive to our life here in the Phils than me staying there to attempt to cope with the situation.

The last straw was the crop yeild of our mango trees which normally produce approximately $2000 USD but with the extreme weather yeilded just a pitiful $25 USD.

If not for a generous offer from DePuy I might try to fight it out here but given the opportunity, which I greatly appreciate, to go back to exactly the spot that I was, I can't pass it up. Especially with the particularly difficult job situation there in the US now.

I've also seen the suicidal death of a close relative that I've not posted about here but the difficulties and bad news over my stay here have been high.

With another cylce of me working and coming back to the Phils the farm lot could very well be developed to be productive. We have the connections now that I can have work done there while I'm in the US.

Stay Strong Dude , Good to hear from You , it'll All work out in the end

With what you can make over here you can hire a number of people to get a lot done over there. That helps you and them, so it's win/win, except you have to put up with the corporate for awhile. It's easier when you know it's temporary, though.;)

You can't control what the world is going to throw at you, but you can control how you react to it. You've got a good plan for dealing with these setbacks, and you WILL succeed.

Sorry for the bad, but happy tat you have the resiliency to adapt, act and overcome. Go Slang - Kick some Indiana ass!

OH and check your PM.

Thank you all for the support.

My flight back to the US is Apr 28.

The contract is actually a pretty good deal. Slightly better than last time but with a bit more freedom to get involved more with manufacturing.

And yes, it is temporary and that's great. There are a few things that I don't care for there but overall it's a great place to work.

They have assigned me the same dark cold office with no windows to return to as well. That might be a negative to most people but it keeps my chronic four letter bitching contained within "the cave". That allows me to effectively vent before I have to go talk nicey-nice corp speak to someone who is most likely on campus but in another department.

Most of the folks there are truly even tempered and easy to get along with. That's not sarcasm. Up and down the chain of command the staff are great. Staying cool and relaxed while also pushing to get tasks completed is much more difficult for me.

Management knows how productive I can be in the right environment. :blush:

The Slang Cave , I Like it !!!!!

There are many events and experiences that I'll be writing about here in the coming weeks. The circumstances have just not been good for posting on the cellar for a number of months but there are some topics that you may find interesting that I've not written about here yet. Some of the subjects will be:


* Big city versus small city living
* Ex-pats. Who-where-why
* Philippine status symbols
* Buying land - how to and how not to
* Hospitals here in the Phils
* Pinoy exedus vs expat invasion
* Third world business - why bother (from a western perspective)
* The Korean influence in Baguio
* My experiences with the natives in Burgos: good-bad-indifferent
* Wasting away again in Filipinaville
* Building a life outside of the US