laughing all the way to balicasag

i went to balicasag island for a measly 200 bucks! i am such a cheapskate. Ha!

thanks again to my host (who pulled the right connections at the right time), i hitched a boat ride with german divers going to balicasag. wheeee!!! and i always thought that the word itself: Balicasag, was so intimidating, mean and so hard core meant to be ventured only by true-to-life, licensed divers who know what they're doing. and then there's me, silly me who cannot even swim. oh, but a non-swimmer can get lucky sometimes.


during the ride, i pretty much kept to myself, happily clicking away on my camera, feeling like a pro, changing lenses, experimenting with filters, you know: pretending. a few hundred meters off the shores of balicasag island, the divers silently put on their gears (they never really talked much. all i heard mostly were what sounded like grumbles). but they were nice to me by not taking notice of a little brown stranger aboard their boat. so long as i went out of their way while tanks and regulators and suits were being passed around, i was fine. while they were busily preparing for their dive, i was almost tempted to start taking pictures but was afraid someone might not like it and think i was intruding and perhaps beat me to a pulp with his fins and i would have never lived to tell the tale and gloat among my friends to drool with envy that i got to balicasag for a measly 200 bucks. so i kept my lenses glued to the shoreline.

when all four divers and a dive instructor have finally jumped off the boat, i took out my mask and snorkel. gawd, i felt like a baby with my devices compared to all those "diver gadgets" -- for lack of a better term because i don't really know what they're called anyway. (heehaw!) i started snorkeling around near the shallow area and was amazed of the profusion of marine life. oh but wait, there's more! one of the dive instructors snorkelled around with me (perhaps he was forewarned that i could not swim so he stuck by me and never left my side) and led me to deeper waters. i panicked when the water started turning a deeper blue and could hardly see anything beyond. i learned that it was what divers call "the drop," like a cliff. scary it might have been but i would later find myself swimming over to that portion if only to see more fish, schools of them! forming a myriad of underwater rainbows -- sigh, i can't even describe it. i took comfort much later when i saw some divers far below me (yeah! signs of human life! i'm safe!) and just swam ahead.

around lunch time, we hit the shore of balicasag. i was told that i should have brought packed lunch because the only resort in the island offers pricey dishes (hello, monopoly). i was told that i could buy fresh fish from a vendor back in panglao and have it cooked, then share it with the boatmen, who would always bring the cooked rice. eff it, the fish vendor peddled early and the early bird catches the fish (eh?) and i was not a bird, neither was i early so i didn't catch the fish. ergo, no packed lunch. so i ended up buying kilawin and adobong pusit from said expensive resort and shared them with the boatmen. my friend was not kidding when he said that the boatmen would always bring the rice. because that was all they brought with them. they simply didn't have any viand and was depending on their passenger to provide for them. i gamely sat with them over lunch, shared my food, and ate with my hands, just like they did.

tanning in dimaluan beach

if you want to catch the last rays of summer sun, do take heed of a valuable lesson on tanning. before peeling off those articles of clothing to reveal that fantabulous and pricey FHMish two-piece swim suit, do check that the label is discreetly tucked. people don't give a fart's ass if you flash that celebrtiy-priced billabong, heck it will be out of vogue next summer anyway. and chances are you're never wearing them again in next year's company outing and be photographed in the same pair as this year's. or worse, egad, post photos on your friendster account wearing (god forbid) the same pair. that is just earth shattering, isn't it. (excuse me while i barf).

so, keep those labels in check and tucked. why?

beacuse, deary, if you fancy rolling on and off your back under the sun trying to bake your skin like a roasted Kenny Rogers to achieve that oh-so-in-thing glorious tan and bronze-as-a-statue skin complexion, you wouldn't want to have that unsightly little pale patch, couresty of said label, sticking out of that tan line. picture your behind looking like an envelope flap with a misplaced stamp. hardly sexy, i know. and the sad thing about it is that annoying little pale patch will take time, a looong time, to blend in with the rest of your skin color. not unless you hit the beach again and bake you skin all over again and wear a lola-sized bottom to cover up that patch.

how do i know this? go figure. :p

shaved (duh?)

first night in tagbilaran, sharing a bottle of wine with my affable host and his dentist friend, three of us lounging around at the sala. small talk, blah blah. it was actually a continuation of the dinner conversation from a place called odysseus, a german-owned restaurant which serves verrrryy spicy bratwurst. anyway, dinner conversation centered basically around my little trip and what touristy places and some nooks and crannies i could possibly explore in bohol and how to get around on public transpo without looking like a lost, over-aged girl scout, with an oversized camera bag in tow.

anway, so back at the home base, drinking wine, candles lit, music is up and somebody says something -- or may have indirectly ask me (it's a blur now) -- if if i shave my privates.

huh?

it's more of a slight jolt of shock, but a tad amusing, because he threw the question at me so off-handedly and matter-of-factly as if he was asking such a mundane question as whether i wash my hair everyday. and considering i have only met this dentist person -- er- 43 minutes ago. and he goes on to say that, well, one of their female friends has been so candid about it that she once volunteered the information, complaining about the difficulties of maintaining 'em, well, trimmed. so i say, "well, maybe she was referring to her legs."

"No!" my two companions countered in unison.

Okay. next topic please.

airborne

[mood] bored
[music] nada
[season] of anticipation

One year of planning, four hours of sleep, and I am finally flying over to Bohol, stuck between silly airplane games and airline souveneirs that nobody is buying. I'm trying very hard to hold my pee while the lavatory hovers about 20,000 steps away. Well, just four rows to the back, actually. Don't you just hate it that lavatories are (sigh) communal? Up here, they don't seem to recognize the physical difference between the two genders and the female's dire need to sit on a clean seat.

"We're on time, 95 percent of the time." Nice. and i had to be so lucky today to figure in the five percent of delayed flights.

About half an hour later:
Just like any other domestic airport, expect the usual entourage of tour operators haggling at your face the moment you step out: "Ma'am, Alona Beach??" / "Ma'am, Panglao? Panglao? Panglao Island?" / "Ma'am Loboc River cruise? Tarsier?!"

Great. I feel so welcome. Speed dial to my friend who promised to pick me up at the airport.

"Could you wait by the cafeteria? I"ll be there in ten minutes."

It's hot in Tagbilaran. I have never really basked in this kind of heat for a long while now, not since I've been burying myself in The Deep Freeze (read: The Office). But I like it, despite the little annoying rashes that have started popping on my chest. I think my cholorphylls are reacting.

Seems like any other small city in the country where cars, tricycles, bikes, people, and animals all share space on a narrow road. It's noisy, typically chaotic, and very, very hot. And so my five-day journey to being lingiustically marginalized begins.

Reluctant Blogger

Ha! I have finally succumbed to the call of blogging, despite my year-long reluctance to spill my guts out and allow the plugged world do a voyeuristic one on me. What the hey, I'm sitting my ass on my pretty little chair, straining the veins in my eyes, waiting for the people at the office to decide where's the best place to have dinner. What better way than to while away the after-office minutes by coming out of the proverbial shell and blog it out.

... And I think somebody shouted Red Crab.

...And my 25-year old colleague is beyond herself when I tell her "I'm blogging!" And she throws invectives at me: "Blogger!"

Oh, Eff It, deary, I have arrived.

++//

Fast forward to tomorrow morning. Dinner last night was nice, lots of -- you guessed it -- crab!! and they’ve been pre-cracked, hence we were spared the agony of pounding and splitting the shells just to suck out the flesh. And I learned that male crabs had less fat than female crabs. And I thought the injustice applied only to humans. Dang.

Flashback to Drinks After Dinner. The rest of my colleagues went home and four of us pretty young things were left behind to lug it out on alcohol. We waited for our boss, Kami, who had to go back to The Bat Cave (read: office) to make a conference call and come back to join us. The man must be put out with work. He’s been in Manila for more than a week and will be staying for about another week plus a few days before he flies back to the Washington D.C. office. And I think he wants to socialize. I think he needs his alcohol fix. So we had a few bottles - uhm, two actually – one light beer for Tanya and a Vodka Cruiser (melon flavor that tasted like green mango shake but a bit more bitter) split among Diane, Aireen and myself. Yep. We sure can hold our alcohol on a Monday night.

Half an hour later, Kami sends an SMS.

“Ok, wer r u?”

I reply: “2 tables away from red crab. In front of boca boca bar.”

He replies back: “Lots of progress. C u in a while.”

It was a Monday night.

++//

Fourteen years ago today, we saw my first nephew see the world for the first time. He was the cutest boy I’ve ever seen. One minute I’m holding him in my arms, changing his diapers. I blink and fourteen years pass by and he’s going to the prom next year. Breaks my heart. When he was about 5 or 6, he and his younger brother were so into syndicated Japanese action tv shows. Young as they were and with such impressionable minds, they have practically memorized the lyrics to the theme song of the show “Five Man.” It was in Niponggo. I can still sing it in my head:

Bong bong bong bong mayseska
Almosoayden Aysisilakikamo
Paesi suna bobobiyang ito
One, two, three, four, Five Man,
One, two, three, four, Five Man!

And you wished you can hold them in your hands forever.