Strange Times

This installment of Life in the Philippines should be less depressing than the last, where I lamented over a tedious travel schedule and housing confusion. I want to now highlight some differences (cultural or otherwise) between living in the US and living over here. Some of these are funnier from a distance, but should nevertheless prove insightful (or entertaining) to my readers.

Modes of Transportation

Back in the states, I got around only by car. We drove everywhere, including the epic 0.5-mile journey to Publix for groceries. Here in Boracay, the mode of transportation is located at the end of your lower legs. Walking is how we get around. We walk several miles a day just to get groceries or buy household items like toilet paper or toothpaste. We have to be careful how much we buy at any given time because we’ll be carrying our bags all the way back home. This is especially arduous when buying big jugs of water, which happens every 3 days or so.

There is one other mode of transportation here, which we use mainly when the weather turns sour: the motorized trike. This is basically a motorcycle (dirt bike, more properly) with a metal sidecar attached. The sidecar seats up to four people and is enclosed, which is useful during a sudden rain shower, and often they mount subwoofers underneath the carriage to supply thumping renditions of “Call Me Maybe” and other top-40 tracks during the wet commute to Budget Mart.

Doing so much walking has proved beneficial (and healthful, if one avoids the congested and polluted main thoroughfare) as I’ve lost buckets of weight without doing any scheduled exercise. Although I haven’t stepped on a scale, I’d estimate a good 15 pounds have been shed in the first 3 weeks. I attribute this to the volume of walking, as well as the next topic.

The Food

One reason we chose Boracay Island is the heavy influx of foreign visitors. Being a popular travel destination for Europeans and Asians means more variety in the type of food offered on the island. There’s Italian food, Filipino, Korean, American, etc. And while I don’t wish to offend anyone, my opinion of the food here is that it’s the worst of all worlds. Most of the population here consists of foreigners but all of the cooks in these restaurants are local Filipinos who have never traveled to those other regions to discern what these foods and dishes should actually taste like. This means everything you order will taste more than a little “off.” That’s not to say I haven’t enjoyed some meals here, it’s just a surprising event when it happens. There’s a place called The Pancake House that serves up good grub, and you get what you expect there. It should be noted that in Boracay, nearly all restaurants are outdoor types and run along the beach. Most have concrete floors covered in sand and have mounted fans on the walls in lieu of air conditioning. The cheapest is Andok’s, where you can get chicken and rice for about $1.50 US. Pretty tasty too.

So that covers the restaurant scene, but what about just buying your own groceries and cooking at home? Well, that’s mainly what we do. There are three small groceries on the island, (Budget Mart, Crafts of Boracay & Price Lite) which are each about the size of a gas station back home. The selection of products in these establishments is quite limited, and even by US standards, severely overpriced. We’ve learned (the hard way) that Boracay is very expensive for a Filipino province. They mark up just about everything due to all the foreigners vacationing here. Once you’re on the island, you’re kind of stuck and are forced to pay whatever is required to get by.

There are two main wet markets (both confusingly called The Talipapa) but by western standards, these are huge letdowns. The meat and fish lay in the open sun without ice and everything is covered with flies. Now I have eaten that meat (once, because we were desperate) and haven’t fallen ill so perhaps God has fortified my intestinal tract against such unsanitary practices. Even still, I wouldn’t wish to press my luck. So what do I eat here? Just about everything so far, but lately I’m sticking to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and rice with chicken. Melanie and her brother Brian do the cooking, and they do a great job with the limited supplies we have. The food situation should improve greatly in the coming weeks, but that’s going to be another blog post.

Weather

This is a fun topic. I’ve been very surprised by the mild temperatures here in Boracay. It’s generally not very hot most of the time and stays between 75-80 every day. So while that was a nice surprise, the humidity is what some might call “ridiculous.” Even early in the morning, when temperatures are very cool, you can’t walk outside without sweating profusely within minutes. There’s really nothing like it. Back in the US, and especially in Tennessee, we have a specie of humidity, but what I’ve experienced in Boracay is much more difficult to describe to westerners because it simply doesn’t exist back home. I don’t leave home without my “face towel,” which is what locals call a washrag. And by the time I return home (even in cool weather) the towel is completely soaked. At this stage, I think I’d prefer the heat over the humidity, which at times is so thick that it’s hard to breathe (I mean that literally).

Chores

For those who are wondering how Melanie does laundry over here, we use a plastic washing machine and a clothesline out on the balcony. The washing machine is a tiny thing and attaches to the outdoor faucet with a tube running out the other side (you drain it manually, using gravity). It only has one function really and that’s to gently tumble the clothes around after Melanie fills it with water. She then wrings them by hand after rinsing and hangs them up to dry. Pretty old-school setup but it works. Our kitchen is also outdoors, although the sink and fridge are inside. The air conditioner return unit is mounted on the balcony wall so when it’s running, the entire kitchen area is bathed in stifling heat. So the general rule is avoid running the AC when someone is cooking to avoid giving them a heat stroke. Mosquitoes have not been a problem yet, although I’ve killed two giant cockroaches and ants were loitering a bit before we put down some chalk. The main pest is the lizard, because they’re hard to catch and just pop up without warning. I was showering the other day and reached for the soap to find two black eyes staring back at me. The lizard then opened his pink mouth and stuck his tongue out. I think he was mocking me. At least they have a sense of humor over here. The cockroaches are harder to get along with. Everyday chores are a little more difficult (and physical) over here. I have to brush my teeth with bottled water because the tap water is not safe. You have to carry everything as well, but I already covered that one under transportation.

Housing

Apartments are crazy expensive in Boracay, around 3X higher than the other big cities in the Philippines. We stay in a 50 square meter one-bedroom apartment (newly built) that’s $750 US per month, or 30,000 pesos. Our place is a two-minute walk from the beach, which accounts for the higher price. But it’s the only place we could find with a vacancy (we took the last unit they had too). Our unit is called a “basement” apartment because from the street, it’s just a gate. You open the gate and walk down a spiraling staircase to the landing, which opens into the unit. I was worried about the place flooding but after several heavy rains, it hasn’t been a problem.

Some other surprises (to me) about Boracay:

-       The population here is about 90% Korean. Not sure why.

-       If you order a chicken sandwich and ask for fries instead of mashed potatoes, they will tell you “no.” You can’t make substitutions. You can only have the side dish that’s prescribed on the menu.

-       Late night talk shows like Leno, Letterman and Conan are broadcast in the middle of the day.

-       The UFC is really big over here and events are broadcast on regular TV, opposed to expensive pay-per-views back home. The main sports network, on which they are shown, is called “Balls.” So yeah.

-       The main road floods every time it rains and no one cares. They just walk through it. Back home these roads would be considered impassable, but no one bats an eyelash over here and they might even look at you funny for hesitating.

-       Security guards carry firearms. Even the ones walking around grocery stores. We have two security guards for our apartment building and they both carry guns (nice fellas too). Back in the US guards carry walkie-talkies. Over here they’re like secret service agents.

So that’s it for this installment. Hope you enjoyed it.

The Lamp Wins IBD Award

Woohoo!

Getting There

Sometimes you make plans and things go pretty much accordingly. Other times, those plans collapse moments after takeoff and you’re left scratching your head and saying, “What the heck just happened here?” That latter scenario definitely mirrors to our initial move to Boracay Island. I promised early on that I’d chronicle the good, the bad and the ugly. This installment, my friends, is the ugly.

We knew the trip itself would be daunting. 36 hours of connecting flights from Nashville to Chicago to Tokyo to Manila to Kalibo. Then tack on a rugged 2-hour bus ride and a boat trip to get to the Island. Now add lugging around heavy baggage (including a desktop computer) by hand through each leg of this journey. I expected those things to suck, and they did.

However, there were some frustrating surprises right off the bat. When I went to get my boarding pass at Nashville International Airport, I was told that they wouldn’t let me board the plane. The American Airlines rep said that they’d recently been fined for allowing a foreigner into the Philippines on a one-way ticket and due to these stricter regulations, couldn’t honor the ticket I had already bought months prior. This was a tad irritating. Here we haven’t even left Nashville yet and I’m being turned away at the counter? I explained to the airline rep that there’s no return ticket because we’re moving there. I was told they still wouldn’t let me board the plane. The solution was not a pretty one. I decided to plop down $1300 additional (that we didn’t budget for) to buy a refundable return ticket that I’d never use. Incidentally, when we got to Manila, my wife asked the person issuing visas if they’d stopped allowing foreigners entry unless they had a return ticket. The guy said it wasn’t true.

The other surprise awaiting us in Boracay was a heavy monsoon. For those in the west, that’s a big rain and windstorm. The boat ride from Caticlan Port to Boracay Island was very choppy. The waves were strong and the rain unrelenting. The boat docked, not in the port, but on the actual beach by dropping anchor and extending a wooden plank. Hmm. Ok. So we carted off all of our luggage and computers, trying our best to keep them dry. By this point I was going on 2 days without sleep and just needed to get to our cozy apartment and just collapse for a few days of R&R.

That would not happen.

Once we made it up the sandy hill to the main road (there’s only one highway on the island) we hired a small metal truck. We tossed our luggage inside and sat down in the back and rode around in the downpour, looking for the apartment we’d booked months earlier (and for which we’d already paid a deposit). It took a while to find the place, as it was located up a muddy hill, situated between narrow alleys. The place was a dump, unlike the pictures we’d seen. My spirits were crushed as I stood in the rain in front of a rusty gate with a monstrous tangle of cables overhead, hanging low from a haphazardly erected pole. When the driver and me shouted for someone to help us (the woman knew we were coming) it took a good ten minutes for a woman and her angry pack of mud hounds to come out and open the gate.

She asked if I was Jason and then apologized for the misunderstanding. That misunderstanding of which she spoke – she was referring to the issue of her renting our apartment to someone else and not telling us. Wonderful.

I apologized to the poor driver who was getting soaked with us and told him to just take us to a hotel for the night while we sort out our living situation. The first few places we tried were already fully booked, but we managed to find a little hut on the beach with a shower and air conditioning (two big pluses to my mind) for around $70 a night. It was pricey but we could get some sleep and reassess.

The next morning began a weeklong trek (from sunup to sundown) in search of a new place to live. The owner of that initial apartment e-mailed me back and told me what had happened. While he was away in the UK, his wife had returned to drug use (meth, no less) and was letting her druggie friends shack up in our apartment. He was grievously sorry and promised to return our deposit when he gets back.

Long story short, this island is very expensive if you’re staying long term… much more than we’d estimated. We did manage to find a little one-bedroom place but the monthly rent is about double what we’d budgeted. But since it’s so hard to find a longer-term rental here, we went ahead and signed a 6-month lease. If you’re wondering how we’re going to work that out… I’ll let you know when I know.

New Home

God willing, this is where I'll be writing my next few books.

See you in a month, Boracay!

Tebow knows what's up. ;-)

Advertureland

This is a difficult essay to write. I’m a rather shy person and don’t enjoy talking about my personal life in general. There are two reasons for this: it’s embarrassing to showcase one’s screw-ups and on those rare occasions that I get it right, it sounds like bragging to me. So I will preface this article with a disclaimer: I wish to neither embarrass myself, nor to brag. But I feel this topic is important enough to warrant the inclusion of some personal details. So let’s get on with it…

The Real and the Counterfeit

“Freedom” is an interesting word. Those of us not living under dictators and military regimes have the luxury of a certain type of freedom, and a valuable one. But personal autonomy carries with it a notion of freedom which really isn’t. Let me explain.

I have the freedom to live beyond my means, financially. Most middle class people do. I have the freedom to get addicted to a certain standard of living or get hooked on any number of legal vices, ranging from technology to fast food. But for those of us whose happiness depends upon a certain standard of living, are we really free? I’d like to argue that the answer is “no” because one wrong turn of the economy, one layoff, or one desperately sick child or parent can put that lifestyle into serious jeopardy. If such tragedies actually occur, then we fall into anger and depression. If those things don’t occur, then we live in the fear that they might. Either way, we have a tight grip on something we can’t control, like trying to seize water with our bare hands.

Rather, I would argue, freedom is not simply trading in one form of oppression (that of a militant state) for another (the pressures of society). Nor is freedom living in fear that something bad might happen and we’ll lose it all. Freedom, I would posit, is simply being content. Now granted, that’s not a new concept (I stole it from Saint Paul myself) but it’s one that’s rarely practiced.

My wife grew up poor. She lived a simple, contented life in a third world country, working her way through college and earning an accounting degree. And without that accounting degree, we never would have even met each other. So I’m thankful for that. But after ten years of being married to me, she found herself (along with me, of course) completely corrupted by the American lifestyle. We had a house in the burbs, two cars, and good credit. We also had a mountain of debt from a bad business idea (that was mine) and countless unplanned emergencies, some of which were our own making, and often someone else’s. And then that mountain began to crumble and bury us underneath it. We had to earn more and more money, working longer and longer hours to keep up. For a stretch of two years, my wife found herself working two full time jobs, averaging 80 hours a week.

Now I want to point out something here: neither me, nor my wife, have anything resembling extravagant tastes by American standards. But it didn’t matter, because we still clung to our scraps. Did we feel free? Nope. Did we feel happy? Nope.

I remember a defining moment that happened last fall. I was having lunch in the car with my wife on our lunch break during a particularly stressful day for us both. It was one of those days when you can’t even articulate your frustration, you can only groan. I remember turning to Melanie and saying, “Can we just be poor?” I saw a sudden glimmer of hope in her eyes and she said, “Really! Do you really mean it!” Her excited response made me laugh. She acted like I’d just offered her a cruise to the Bahamas.

Of course, I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek. I wasn’t really talking about being poor per se, but the hope of a more simple life. And she knew what I meant. A little backstory here… Melanie and I have been trying to adopt a little boy (her nephew). U.S. adoption law states that unless the foreign child is an orphan, there’s a requirement that the adopting parents must live with the child for two years prior to filing paperwork. I contacted my two state senators to get clarification about this strange rule, but never heard back. Your tax dollars at work, folks!

So we made the radical decision to sell everything we own and leave behind the comfortable and the familiar… for a simple life, and for a kid named Andrew. We have our tickets. We’re leaving in a month.

Now having said all this, there is the possibility that none of it will work out. It’s possible that everything could go terribly wrong while living overseas with a meager, uncertain income and a jumbled adoption process. But I’ll confess something (and Melanie feels the same way)… we’re not the least bit afraid. At all. And it’s not because I’m terribly brave because that’s certainly not the case! We’re not afraid because we’re not clinging to anything. There’s nothing to lose because nothing is certain in life anyway, and knowing that is helpful. And knowing that allows us to be content.

There was a time when we were self-sufficient, and there was a measure of pride in that. Never having to ask for help puffed us up. It made us feel important, and even better than others. Now we will have to humble ourselves and ask for help at times. Probably often. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s actually good for the soul, and dispels the illusion that we don’t need other people. The truth is, we do need them, and they need us. That’s how it works. We Americans are good at so many things, but we’re really bad at this. Community is a word we don’t recognize. When Melanie and I return to the U.S. (whether that’s in 6 months or 6 years) we will be bringing the island back with us.

Islands, Addicts & Lamps

Personal News:

So my wife and I are in the process of selling everything we own before we leave the U.S. and it’s been both fun and challenging. Getting rid of everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, feels strangely liberating. For those who haven’t been informed, we’re moving to a tiny island in the Philippines called Boracay. In a turn of irony, my first novel was about a guy who packs up leaves everything behind to live on his own island in the Philippines.

Some differences here between our lives and what happened in that book… we’re going to live modestly and it’s a heavily trafficked tourist spot. Also, we’re hoping to adopt a child (my wife’s nephew) as her brother is unable to care for him. Things might get tricky or change along the way, but that’s the plan anyway.

We are not planning to live in Boracay forever, although I’m not opposed to the idea either. It’s a decision we can only make after settling in and then deciding if island living is for us. Either way, I will continue writing fulltime whilst in Boracay.

Book News:

First of all, I’d like to thank everyone who continues to read my work. Some of you have contacted me personally and shared your enthusiasm, which is a great motivator. On the horizon, I’m looking at a fall/winter release for “All American Addict,” which is my foray into literary fiction. For those who enjoyed my first two novels, this one WILL NOT disappoint.

Regarding the title, the book is actually not about drug addiction although you’ll understand the title when you read it. It’s about the dysfunctional teenage son of a prominent New York family and how he turns a very unfair situation on its nose.

It’s a story packed with humor, love, tragedy and hope. My fingers are burning… I can’t get this one out fast enough.

I’m also working on drafting the second and third installments of “The Lamp” series.  I’d planned to make The Lamp a trilogy early on, but then opted for it to be a standalone title instead. After finishing the book, I realized that there was so much more story to tell with these characters and that my original idea of making it into a series was the best option.

I plan to launch both the second and third books at the same time, sometime early next year. There will also be an omnibus edition for those who hate purchasing individual books in a series.

Works in Progress / Life in Progress

According to that progress bar on the right, I'm about twenty percent finished with my teenage dramady, All American Addict. I truly love the story but got a little bogged down in the first act, which is always the hardest for me. I ran into the same issues on The Island of Ted. I decided to just plow forward and keep re-writing but frankly got a bit burned out. This is the advantage of having more than one book in progress.

So I switched gears and started working on my other project, which is a novella (that's a short book) called Stuck In A Moment. Right now I'm more excited about working on this story so it's flowing much more easily. And when I get burned out or bogged down on this one, I can flip back and work on All American Addict. I've even thought about bringing a third story into the rotation but that might be too much for me to juggle. We'll see.

On a non-writing note, I'm contemplating the idea of doing video blogs and posting them here, linking back to youtube as well. Although I may talk about writing, that wouldn't be the focus of the video blogs. Some of you may know that I will be experiencing a pretty dramatic life change soon (actually several will converge all at once) and I'd like to document everything, video-journal style because it should prove interesting. I'm not 100% settled on this idea since I hate being in front of the camera, but I'm considering it anyway because doing this might, in some small way, be of benefit to those who read this blog.

Honest moment here... what scares me the most about documenting these life changes is the fact that we've (my wife and I) made some plans, and have told those plans to people, and those people are probably hoping for the best, and.... things never quite go as planned. That means we may have to, at times, show the ugly side of making this decision. Hiding such things, for the sake of just pretending, is not an option. If I'm going to document something, it's going to showcase the good, the bad, and the dull moments in-between. For those of you who are not clued in, we're moving to a new country, without those creature comforts we're used to, and adopting a child (who is now a 4 year-old) and attempting to raise him in said country.

However, a martyr I am not... we'll have internet access and indoor plumbing, with white sand beaches a short walk away. But there will be heat, and mosquitoes, and a language and culture barrier, and the fact that I have no idea how to be a father. BUT! If I decide to document these things, it could actually prove beneficial to others. And for that reason, I'm giving serious thought to it. Stay tuned.

Feedback

Does anyone want to read the first act of my work-in-progress, titled All American Addict? I'm throwing it out there for some initial feedback to find out what people think. E-mail me or post something in the comments section below if you're interested.