… and we are live

My brand-spanking new ultra-geeky version of this blog finally sees the light of day. Spent a couple of free hours fiddling around with Octopress, that blogging goodness for developers. Not IE-proofed yet, just taking this baby out for a spin.

Note to self: add more eye candy, more zing. And soon.

Two if by Sea

“Cooling hall dick ants, cooling hall dick ants. Manure stishons, manure stishons. Poor ward enough, poor ward enough”.

Groggy from being awakened by such bad diction, it still registered in my mind that I was indeed in Cebu City. Or approaching Cebu City.

We had driven the car the day before for 6 hours from Davao to Cagayan de Oro on a beautiful sunny day, the kind you remember for years, and had boarded the ship that night with the car in the cargo hold holding its breath next to a pig pen. Having spent a sleepless night being battered by big waves in an old piece of floating metal, I was just glad to see land, calculating the swim time to the nearest shore. And whether I could save my three kids all at once. My wife is a good swimmer.

What should be regular vacations in other parts of the world are occupational hazards here in the Philippines. You ride a ship, don’t expect the Disney Cruise version, because you are just traveling by sea because the risk of drowning has been overcome by the lack of money in your pocket. Or you are just a sucker for worry and danger. Riding a bus means having to endure three Fernando Poe movies in succession (if you don’t know who he is, it’s better you didn’t). That is, if your eyes haven’t teared up from the vapors emanating from various sweaty armpits because of inadequate air conditioning.

But our little combo trip isn’t what this article is about. It’s about our coming home to Cebu and being greeted with a classic Cebuano line, about my adopted hometown where my kids will grow up to be decent people, where drivers still respect a stop light at 2 am and where waiters will actually recommend the best-tasting meal on the menu. This trip was back in June, but the various friends I have sent text messages of the boat announcement to still remember waking up and laughing at my early morning text message.

The actual announcement sans the local flavor: “Calling all deck hands, calling all deck hands. Man your stations, man your stations, forward and aft, forward and aft”.