So we now have a car we are renting from a friend at Jeff's work, and he is thoroughly enjoying the video-game like experience of driving. One person explained the traffic as a river....everyone just flows where ever they want, and it all works. All those years of driving into Toronto have paid off for Jeff. He is enjoying the freedom of not having to find taxis. Now when you come visit, we can drive you around! Will I drive???? Doubt it - mainly because Jeff has the car at work every day, and any other time I travel I go with him! And really, the nutty traffic still slightly terrifies me and I am quite content to leave the driving up to others.
An example of the sort-of-English spoken here: a reporter on the radio said that something "really grabbed the goat inside of him" - we are assuming that he meant "it really got his goat", not that he had a goat in him.
We are looking for suggestions of the reason they cover mannequins at night....you see, if you walk by clothing stores in the evening, the mannequins are wrapped in white sheets. All you can see are their heads. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of having mannequins wearing clothes in the windows? (unless you are window shopping for a white sheet to wear out)
We splurged the other day....see how happy I am?
Yes, it is a beautiful, green, vibrant, crunchy stalk of celery. We have only found this in our local deli, and often pick one up, smell it to bring back memories of fresh celery from the Waterloo Market, look at the price, sigh, and put it back down. Last week we could resist no longer and paid the 567.75 pesos for this green goddess. Ah, that is about $13 Canadian. And yes, it was VERY worth it!!
We met a man the other day who heads up security in the German embassy in Manila. He was sharing that he had one year left in his rotation here, and it could not come soon enough. In most places of the world, the German government has their embassy employees work there four years and then they are moved elsewhere. However, the Philippines is one of the very few countries in the world where it is only three years because life is that much harder - health, pollution, pace, congestion and the fact that everything is hard. Even his last posting in Kuwait was four years! Makes you go hmmmmmmm - glad we are here for two to three years only.
To finish off these random observations, here is one for discussion. Please add your comments and we will see where the discussion goes. Jeff (before the car) was in a taxi, and he commented on how light the rainy season was this year and that there had not been the typhoons like past years. The taxi driver said it was because Pinoy was now the president and he was a good man, and therefore God was blessing the Philippines. Jeff was quite started by this man's comment which he stated as a fact. It all seems rather Old Testament. Weren't all the prophets warning the kings and people of Israel to turn back to God and obey him (be good people) and they would be blessed? Didn't they disobey God and therefore were destroyed over and over again? (just one example is found in Zec 7:8-14, or read all of Isaiah!) Do you think God still does this today? Where does that leave countries that are struggling? What do you think?
I look forward to any comments....theological reflection is always important (even if it is hard).
Enjoy the fall, and if you have a moment, sends us pictures of the colourful leaves...miss them very much.
Love you all, Linda and Jeff
