..And here comes Week 8!

I got invited Tuesday, April 25 to Dila-Dila, Sta Rita barrio fiesta by Tan and Amanda. I got the text message to come early and bring friends so I thought of taking Myrna and Vir with me. I sent Myrna a text message and told her I got invited to have lunch by a ‘friend’ from Sta Rita and I don’t want to go by myself. So she agreed to have an appointment postponed till later. I told Amanda and Tan I’m taking a ‘friend’ with me.

For those of you who are not in the ‘know’ Amanda, Myrna and I all went to the same grade school and high school.

As you can imagine the surprise between the two was just great to say the least. It so happened that Myrna had this old class picture when we graduated from the sixth grade. Between trying to identify who’s who from 45 years ago, I tried to explain to Tan and Amanda on how we came up with the difficult decision to retire early. Since they had other guests to entertain, I couldn’t really layout the plan to them in detail but we promised to meet some other day before they leave for the States next month.

Thursday, April 27, 2006
Today I got the shock of my life. Mid afternoon, I was sitting in the shade of the house across the street, dozing off, when all of a sudden I heard a yell and big ‘thud’ of someone falling! Anghelo, one of my co-workers was on a scaffolding and was hanging on to a piece of wood when the nail came off. He fell on his left side. He was complaining of pain on his elbow. We were going to have him x-rayed but he refused. So I told him to just sit back, relax and quit working for the day. In the meantime I was talking with him, he seemed lucid enough, not feeling dizzy or nauseated. I told Kong Naring to give him Friday off and we’ll pay him.

Construction this week has slowed down somewhat because we’ve already started the early stages of ‘finishing’ although we’re at the tail end of trying to complete the ‘structure’ of the house. I felt bad that we had to ‘lay off’ some of our workers. I told Kong Naring to invite everyone of our workers – past and current, and their families for a dinner after work in Masamat this Saturday to celebrate my birthday and our 30th Wedding Anniversary. I also had a videoke machine rented. I’m not sure if I’d be able to sing yet, still nursing this cold of mine which doesn’t seem to want to go away. We’ll just have to see I guess.

Friday, April 28, 2006
Today after lunch I went to Masamat to pay Anghelo a visit. On the way we got some apples and tangerines for him and his kids. I got to his house and he was dozing off. It was too hot to sleep anyway so I woke him up and asked him how he’s doing. His elbow was a bit swollen and he has a fat lip. Other than that he’s OK. He’s more worried about getting laid off so he wanted to go to work tomorrow. I told him to take the rest of the week off and he’ll get paid for it and I more or less guaranteed him work just as long as there’s something for him to do. Actually he’s one of the hardest working of the guys.

Week 7 Updates

Quite a bit has happened in the 7th week of construction. Check out the attached pictures.

Monday night, I took Jack and the gang (it was Thelma's birthday last Saturday) at Jorma's for dinner and a couple of hours of videoke. Dinner was ok. We had to take the upstairs room. Downstairs has already been reserved by someone else. There was only one other table occupied when we got there. We were able to sing a few songs after dinner. Two sets of dinner customers came and all of them were smokers. I had a hell of a time finishing 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' due to the cigarette smoke in the room. When I got home, I had a sore throat and I've been nursing this cold since. Donna told me to get some antibiotics from the drug store. Yes, we can get them without doctor's prescription here. I'm feeling much better but I'm not a hundred percent there yet.

Thursday I borrowed a car from Francis and with Kong Naring's son Jay-jay driving, we went to Manila to see Kong Naring's compadre who owns a glass and aluminum outfit to check out his prices on windows. He quoted us around P96K for everything as compared to over P120K from a couple of sources from Angeles but I think the latter offer vinyl instead of aluminum.

As of yesterday, all the outside of the house has been paved - finished and ready to be painted. In fact they've started paving the walls of the music room and one of the master bedrooms. That means these rooms' electrical installations have been completed.

We've also picked up the precast window borders and the round colums for the porch and garage posts. They've installed the 'footings' for the four posts.

Ronnie and his guys have put up a few of the steel trusses. They got delayed a little bit because of faulty measurements and they had to cut a couple of assembled trusses.

I received a text message this morning after church from, of all people, Dandy! She's saying that she and Tan are on vacation and are inviting me to their barrio fiesta in Dila-dila, Sta Rita on Tuesday April 25.