Riverbend Journal

While I am likely still sleeping, jetlagged from my return yesterday from the Philippines, I will post one more old blog post from a prior trip. Here is one from from a trip back in 2003.   Going Back Home Typhoon Harurot was the worst typhoon to hit the Philippines in the last five years and the outer bands of it as it departed for Hong Kong were still lashing out at us as I made my way to the airport. Huge rollers coming in from the South China Sea would hit the barrier wall separating the ocean from the van I was riding in not twenty feet away. The resulting twenty-foot wave carried on heavy winds would engulf the road, our van and all other traffic even just a few feet away, giving the illusion that we were just a bubble in a washing machine. Though we were underwater about once every ten seconds, are driver kept going and only turned the windshield wipers up to medium speed as if it were all a mere annoyance. Such is life on a typhoon prone island.   I felt lucky to even ...

While I am away in the Philippines for the month, I will continue to have my blog publish some old posts from previous trips. Here is one from from a trip back in 2018.   One of the reasons we went back home was for the wedding of my brother-in-law. I was named as a Godfather by the couple, one of many so honored. In the Philippines, it is tradition not only to have godparents of children but of married couples too. It was held in a very old church in the old part of Manila and apparently has quite the revolving door for the marriage industry. Just as we were arriving at the church, another bride ahead of us was just entering the doors and getting walked down the aisle. Less than five minutes after she walked out of the church, my brother-in-law's bride was walking down the aisle. Five minutes after they exited the church as husband and wife, another bride was lined up to walk down the aisle. My brother-in-law looks to be 16 years old but is 30 and is a very successful CPA in Manil...

While I am away in the Philippines for the month, I will continue to have my blog publish some old posts from previous trips. Here is one from from a trip back in 2018.   The tradition in my wife's family is to have a New Year's Eve celebration with all her mom's brothers and sisters (there are five siblings total) and all their descendants. On New Year's Day, the tradition is a family reunion that includes the brothers and sisters and descendants of my wife's grandparents. This year that amounted to about 150 to 175 people. On more lightly attended years, we hold it at the same place as the New Year's Eve celebration in the courtyard of my wife's uncle's house. But it just wasn't big enough for 175 people so a first cousin of my wife who works in Saudi Arabia, let us use his farm. He bought the farm only about four years ago with absolutely no improvements made on it and has since put a lot of work and money into it. Above is the house he is having ...

While I am away in the Philippines for the month, I will continue to have my blog publish some old posts from previous trips. Here is one from from a trip back in 2018.   Christmas in the Philippines is a much different experience than here in the States. In prior trips at this time, the air has been full of sulfur fumes as millions of pounds of fireworks were set off in a non-stop stream from sometime in the week before Christmas to the day after New Years. I have always struggled to explain but it is like being in the middle of the fireworks display for the fourth of July at any major city on the east coast and by middle, I mean the middle of where they shoot them off. Riding through a city on New Year's Eve in a motorized tricycle, I could hear the cherry bombs bouncing off the metal enclosure around me a second or two before they exploded. It was spooky and dangerous for sure but that was the Philippines where the birth rate far exceeds the death rate. This time was different a...

While I am away in the Philippines for the month, I will continue to have my blog publish some old posts from previous trips. Here is one from from a trip back in 2018.   Itsy Bitsy Spider For the most part, bathrooms in the Philippines are stripped down versions of the ones here in the States. Many of them contain only a toilet and a sink. They are fully tiled with a drain in the floor and if you shower, you do so with a tabo or dipper which you use to poor water over you. As the country becomes more affluent, houses are starting to install at least one actual shower in the house but these are plumbed up to inline heaters with lots of dials, switches and scary looking electrical plugs plugged into sockets right in the shower with you. All this is leading me away from my main point which is that most bathrooms are very tiny compared to those here in the States.   The one where the above picture is taken was about three feet wide by about five feet deep. In order for me to use ...