So Near and yet So Far

The planets must have aligned somehow!!

I got a call from new found buddy John Andrade from SFELAPCO saying our 110V line will be hooked up and yesterday a small pickup truck pulled into the site and indeed we now have 110V and 220V both! We plugged in the fridge. IT WORKS! We plugged in the piano and I played a little bit - it and I are rusty both but it works!

September 15, 2006

Today I signed the contract to have our air conditioners installed. We finally found an outfit that we thought have fairly reasonable prices. They will be installed by early next week.

We've been buying plants and trees here and there. Next week, we'll probably start planting them around the house.

The bad thing about all this is that the rest of our windows and window screens didn't show up today as agreed. Sadly, our move in date will have to be postponed till next week. So near and yet so far!

Tuesday, Sept 12, 2006 - Good and Bad News

Excitement is up in the air. Donna has officially started putting stuff away today. She opened several boxes of glasses, vases, china, etc and stuffed most of our kitchen cabinets. We were able to clear up most of the living room to make room for our furniture. For those of you who've been in our place in Norwalk, do you remember how crowded the living room seemed to be with all of our huge and bulky couches?

They looked just perfect here!

Tomorrow we're supposed to break out her elephant figurines and put them up in our old curio cabinet. It's definitely looking like a home.

That's the good news. The bad news - we still do not have our 110V power line hooked up. Today they officially connected our 220V but as you know, 95% of our appliances, lighting, etc need 110V. This may delay our move in target date of Sept 15. We've already invoked the powers that be, namely Marny Castro, our next door neighbor who's supposed to be tight with the higher-ups of SFELAPCO, our local power company. Tomorrow I've told Donna to call John Andrade (she knows him from high school) who works for SFELAPCO and find out whether he can help expedite things a bit.

Last week, we went to the Swap Meet of Apu in Angeles City to hunt for our music room curtain material. We found some that we liked but the guy didn't have enough and we had to go to his place with a big warehouse in Sta. Rita the day after. We're having Beth David (a high school classmate) fabricate our curtains. The original idea was floor to ceiling carpet on the wall of the music room but it proved to be too expensive. Labor and material on curtains is about half the cost of carpet. We've also decided to use roof insulation for the ceiling instead of cork for the same reason.

This week we're going to try to lock out prices for the granite counter tops and the air conditioners. I'm going to try and attend a meeting with the homeowner's association tomorrow to discuss my lack of telephone lines, among other things.

Mina, my niece from Sunnyvale, Ca has inquired about our South Beach diet. Hi Mina!

Well, let me put it this way, my 30" sized jeans still fit. That's the good news. The bad news? I think I'm starting to have a gut again! Let's not even talk about Donna! All the daily trips to restaurants for lunch and dinner don't help, not to mention our nightly 'fruit' sessions! You see before we go to bed, she hogs on lanzones, atis and chico while I pig out on buko and chesa (whenever they're available). And then there are the weekly visits to Razon's Halo-Halo and sometimes the 'pick ups' from street vendors of corn on the cob, banana or camote cue. And then there are the birthdays and Fiestas every so often! I'm telling you, it's rough here!!

We promised each other, when we move in to the house, we'll be back with our routine of salads and all good stuff. It'll be kind of hard because they don't really have turkey here, nor Egg Beaters to speak of. We'll just have to improvise somehow. We probably should go and have some kind of exercise routine also. I've developed some shoulder and abs workout which I try to do in the morning and at night but that's just to help prevent my '50 year old shoulder syndrome' from recurring.

Virgen de Los Remedyos, San Nicolas

The Philippines is a predominantly Catholic country and having said that, in celebration of the Virgen de los Remedyos' 50th anniversary canonical coronation last Friday Sept 8, there was a Novena each day, for nine days before. Donna who has not attended a Novena in a long time, decided we ought to go. Virgen de los Remedyos is the province of Pampanga's patron saint, by the way. So last Friday was declared a holiday for the whole province. Anyway, for nine days Donna and I went to the San Fernando Cathedral at 5 p.m. to join in the Novena. We usually parked at the nearby Jollibee parking lot or if we have a few minutes to spare - because we have to go around by the old Essel supermarket, the parking lot right in front of the church. After the Novena, we sometimes walk around the old palengke, look around and try to recognize the old establishments that we used to know: Bundalian and Liberty are still there so are Ignacio Trading, Apung Gari and Miranda's Hatter. Gone are all the theaters in town and so is Kit's Restaurant. I was going to park at the church lot one day but it was full so I told Donna to get off and I'll just go around and park at Jollibee's. Big mistake! I made an immediate left after the church and I was met by a throng of people! Talk about a crowd. I used to remember this happening only during the town Fiesta but this was an ordinary day! By the way, they've closed the street by the old St. Scholastica's to traffic and built tents on the street instead for stalls because they're refurbishing the wet market.

Yesteday (Sunday, Sept 10) was the feast of San Nicolas. Every town and barangay in the country whose patron saint is San Nicolas celebrated their fiesta. We went to Masamat for lunch, yes San Nicolas is their patron saint. The day before, we got a call from Dan Garcia inviting us to their town fiesta in Macabebe, yes San Nicolas is also their patron saint. So I called our friend Mike Estacio, who's going to have lunch with a friend in San Nicolas - the barangay in front of Camp Olivas, who's patron saint is, you guessed right (!) San Nicolas.

Kong Naring rented a Videoke so after lunch, I sang a few songs. That was fun! After lunch we went back to the site to check on a guy we hired to hook up our home theater system. He finished it and he wanted us to be there so we can test it. We do not have our 110V hooked up yet so we had to use a small transformer to plug in the DVD player, the sub woofer and projector. Another mistake. A few minutes after plugging everything in, we smelled something burning. It turned out the 50w transformer could not handle everything. But we were at least able to test the speakers and they were indeed hooked up correctly. It didn't seem like the sub woofer was working properly though, I figured because of the transformer's low wattage. We'll just have to wait until we have our 110V hooked up by SFELAPCO, which incidentally may delay our targeted Sept 15 move-in date.

Later that afternoon, we went and picked Mike up and headed on down to Macabebe town. Traffic was horrible! Mike had to get off when we got to town while I was inching literally through traffic and notified Dan we were close by. Donna got off as well and Dan's son Jonathan and I went to park a mile or so farther up.

When we got back to their house (above Dan's huge grocery store) they were actually viewing my blog in Dan's PC. We had dinner and did some Karaoke afterwards.

Let me tell you about this scenario: Dan's wife Agnes was there along with three of her sisters. After hearing me sing a couple of times, these women decided, as far as they're concerned, I'm good enough to be listened to just like a regular celebrity! It's so cute the way they designated each other as president, vice president, etc. of my fan club!! Mike has had a few by that time and he was egging them on. I had a feeling they themselves were having tequila shots when I was not looking! Before we knew it, it was already past 10 at night and I was still howling my lungs out!

Dan - tell Agnes and her sisters, 2nd only to my Alaskan Cruise's 15 minute of fame, this was the most fun I had doing Karaoke!!

Thanks a bunch to you and Agnes for a most enjoyable evening, not to mention the sumptuous feast you served!

Ed - thanks for your comment on the trough around the house. We've taken the water collecting in it into consideration so yes we built it on an angle so the water will freely flow down the storm drain. Thanks.