Heps! Sorry I can’t blog here for the next month. Please visit my personal blog on MySpace at myspace.com/shortfilipino.

For photos on my current trip please visit my Flickr page.

Why? I’ve finally reached the hitch in my blogging life that i’ve been dreading.

Filipeanut.com needs some changing in the backend in order for me to successfully blog on this website. Im currently writing this post from my cousin’s computer in Bohol and he has no Photoshop. In Manila, I used my laptop to transfer the template. In Bohol, I become lazy. Enough said.

The photos you see above each entry are made with a template I have in Photoshop. I’ve always asked myself what I would do if I wanted to post something without a photo, well, I found out that i’d end up posting on my personal MySpace blog (as opposed to my Filipeanut myspace that i hardly even bother checking anymore).

Plus, Filipeanut.com is not WC3 compliant. That needs to change, especially when I have plans to blog remotely even more in the future. I need to do the following things:

-Recode my site with total CSS.
-*Maybe* change my backend to Wordpress from Movable Type.
-Buy a QWERTY phone that i can take photos, video, and blog from. (Either Iphone or Blackberry Bold or even Windows Mobile).
-Learn karate

Hope to be back here in a month or two with an all new backend!

Im so damn tired. But happy I spent a whole day with 3 great kids. Lester, 10 years old with a colostomy, Marjun who is 8 with a colostomy, and Gerald with a facial deformity and who tried pizza for the first time today.

After the lengthy but very informational doctor’s appointment Tita Len asked me to stay with the kids and their parents while she went out to take care of some final errands for them. She went out to find a place for them to stay for the month while they proceeded with all their pre-surgery examinations.

I discovered that, although strangers to each other at first, they already had formed a brotherly alliance with each other on the boat ride here when I handed Gerald some tokens in the mall’s arcade area. “Na hatag pud ka tokens para ni Marjun ug si Lester???” (Did you give tokens to Marjun and Lester too?).

I’ve been splitting up tokens among children all my life. I am the token token-splitter both in the Philippines and the United States. But his question was definitely a first for me so my eyes welled up. “Go ahead young man,” as I cried tears of happiness, “go on and play like you’ve never played before!” And then he skipped off into the valley of fun and games as I sat down and cried.

That last part was made-up, but Gerald definitely displayed valor and I soon grew even more fond of the little guys and their families.

After some ice cream and checkin’ out the ladies at the mall, the boys and I went outside when all of a sudden the ground shook. We looked up and noticed that one of the buildings in the area became disembodied by what it seemed to be a HUGE flying dragon waving a tail with a huge menacing sea urchin at the end!

Ok that last part was also made-up. That’s what happens when you hang out with people who still have imagination (people without imagination just got served!)

Anyway, now that phase 1 has turned out better (and waaay faster) than expected, i’ll be going to Bohol to visit my mom even sooner. Day 3 is done and 3 kids are about to experience the time of their lives. Off to bed.

I just got back from the pier after getting acquainted with the 2 of the 3 kids who will be receiving surgeries (Gerald was picked-up early by his family in Manila before I could become a bad influence to him). It was great to finally match at least 2 personalities to the faces in photos used for my aunt’s website (warning website plug… epps too late).

The photo above is of Lester who needs a closure done on his colostomy. That photograph was taken when he was seen by a doctor last year. The photo on the right is of Lester and I annoying passengers, taken an hour ago on the pier after they arrived.

Tomorrow we’ll all meet at the Ospital ng Maynila to meet with Dr. Troncales to start getting things running at the hospital in terms of pre-surgery visits and preparations.

Im finally getting used to the weather again. Earlier today we visited the flea market at the divisoria and had some rambutan. Why does rambutan look so damn freaky? Usually living things with odd protrusions are poisonous and deadly, like lion fish or ugly-ass caterpillars. Whatever.

Damn im sticky. And tired. Ever since we arrived at 3am this morning (September 3rd here in Manila), my aunt and I have been fueled by our adrenaline. At this point I think my aunt’s adrenaline has been used up because she just KO’ed, dead asleep on her bed. 12 hours after our arrival we finally settled into our room. It’s 3pm now.

My aunt decided last week that we’d be spending our first few days at the Manila Hotel, a very old hotel with huge wood-laden interiors preserved from the Spanish-era. This place reminds of the movie “The Shining” so enough of that.

The children whom she’s been waiting to schedule surgeries for will be arriving tomorrow night. And we are very excited for that.

We spent our first 12 hours here making the usual post-arrival errands like buying sim cards, buying pesos, getting fat, sweating, and meeting our driver Alex.

As my aunt scoped the Malate area for cheaper hotels closer to the hospital, Alex “educated” me on some minor tidbits in the area. He pointed out the D.O.M’s with their G.R.O’s (Dirty Old Men with their “Guest Relations Officers”) as my aunt teased that I should look for a G.R.O myself. No, I don’t think so.

It’s been a long time since I felt I was doing something novel. Soaking in all the new information, absorbing the new smells, directions, Tagalog words, way of life, sounds, and starting a completely different diet, helped me remember that a human being can actually withstand a tsunami of information to the senses. So this how its like to feel alive. Im also guessing that this was how it was like being born.

Im still debating whether to take an airplane (an hour ride) or a boat (a 24 hour ride) to Bohol for my 2nd and final leg of my trip (the boat ride is much cheaper). If there is anything I learned from my aunt today, a person I barely even know, its that finding out things as you go is way more productive than finding out nothing as you do nothing.