Reach the poor

We haven’t had internet access in home for two days until now. We still don’t have a working home phone. PLDT is horrible. Yesterday upon return from Baguio City, where I didn’t visit an internet café, I took down to Baguio Gold some grocery odds and ends, student supplies and money. Today Mack came up to this apartment, then he an I went into the city for lunch, a ten-minute visit to an internet café and grocery shopping. We returned home before rainfall. Dominic took Nikko and Dennis into the city for a meal and haircuts. Tomorrow Dom will go with Mack to a dentist office after he leaves school.

We’re getting more blowing rain as Tropical Storm Jangmi approaches the Philippines on its way to Taiwan. Typhoon Hagupit passed Luzon days ago on its way to China, and eight people in this province died.

Typically, due to excessive rainfall and inadequate preparation of Filipinos, people drown in swollen rivers, die in mudslides/hillslides or get crushed by falling trees, houses or rocks. People reside in hillside shanties which wash downhill, and some live at the bases of slopes where tons of mud and rocks flow and crush them Other people wade into rushing rivers, are swept away and drown. I read of one man who waded in deep water covering city streets, fell into an open manhole (uncovered sewer) and was never seen again.

It’s sad. I pray for the souls of these unfortunate people who perish without preparing to meet their Maker and for their loved ones left behind to mourn.

Charisse, Toni Rose and I walked uphill from Baguio Gold to Tuding Road to ride a jeepney to the big city to go to Holy Mass in the cathedral, eat lunch and ride tricycles in Burnham Park.

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$4.09 per gallon for diesel fuel

$4.229 per gallon for Caltex Silver

$4.289 per gallon for Caltex Gold

$4.08 for Caltex Regular (unleaded)

$4.369 for kerosene

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No dial tone. Our home phone is dead. What can we expect from PLDT? I apologize if anyone (Lisa? Nelly?) has tried to phone our apartment in Tuding. You know, the good news is that we’ve had electricity continuously for six weeks. We may have had an outage while I’m out of the home, but I don’t know. We have lost our internet connection twice, but we’re surviving. We’re far more fortunate than the poor Filipinos below us in Baguio Gold who don’t have electricity and indoor plumbing.

Today I read in a national newspaper the findings of a study conducted by the U.N.’s World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and the Republic of the Philippines Department of Health. About ten thousand Philippine children die each year from diarrhea. Can you believe that? That’s preventable childhood mortality!

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Today Nikko (12) brought his sisters, Charisse (8) and Toni Rose (6) to the apartment, and after I ate breakfast and drank a cup of tea while they watched cartoons, we headed to Baguio City. I expected that we’d ride a jeepney, as is customary. But every jeepney that passed us as we stood beside Tuding Road was full. The folks out in the country like to go travel to the big city for shopping, churchgoing or selling their wares (handicrafts), produce and livestock. So we couldn’t get a jeepney to stop for us. We boarded one of the several taxis going toward the city whose drivers wanted a paying passenger.

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Yesterday I paid UFC Taekwondo in the Porta Vaga Building for another month of taekwondo training for Nikko. This morning he came to the apartment to get money for jeepney fare so that he could go to train today. Dominic, Mack and I went to downtown Baguio City so that Dom and Mack could get haircuts and we could eat lunch. more →

Don’t buy anything expensive in a Gigahertz Computer Systems Store unless you want to be stuck with defective merchandise that you’ll have to argue at length to return for a refund. Buyer beware. You might buy something cheap like a mouse or muffin fan or USB cable, but don’t buy a Microtek ScanMaker 3880. more →

Have you been in a dog pound, an “animal shelter”? Do you remember the barking, yelping, yowling and yapping? That’s what this place sounds like, although lacking the reverberations off a shelter’s cement block walls. I don’t know how many idiotic dogs are competing to be the loudest or most persistent noisemaker. I can’t believe that their throats don’t become sore from continuous barking! more →

AidtoChildren.com has a very easy vocabulary game in which one selects from four supplied choices the correct synonym for words such as beverage, student, guardian, doubtful, triumph, fate, gratitude, deadlock, sanitary, functional and fumble. If the FreeRice.com vocabulary game is too challenging for your children, steer them to AidtoChildren.com, where each correct answer nets a quarter of a cent for children in poverty who’re beneficiaries of World Vision. more →