Christmas Party for Kirley's new finance staff

We closed out 2005 with a Christmas party (12/ 22) at our house for Kirley's new Philippine finance staff. We had a ton food and, of course, a Filipino party would not be complete without a little karoake. They love karoake and most locals are quite good. They have this thing called the Magic Mic. It stores about 4,000 songs - english and tagalog songs and sells for about $150 USD. It is actually pretty cool. Just plug it into the TV and away you go.
We even got Maria to sing Jingle Bells

And I saved the best for last........... Kirley singing karoake. The machine trys to score your singing and somehow I managed to get an 85 / 100 - highest score of the night. I am not sure what type of crazy algos it uses to calculate the score, because I was by far the worst singer in the house. And, it looks like I need to lose about 10 lbs - at least.

Drive into the country

We took our first weekend drive into the countryside on 12/17 - or at least our driver drove us through the countryside. We went to a little town south of Manila called Tagaytay City. The main attraction is the Taal Lake and dorminite volcano in the middle of the lake. It was about an 1 1/2 hour drive or 25 miles. Tagaytay is located in the mountains overlooking the lake so it is a bit cooler than Manila. All the locals were wearing jackets and talking about how cold it was, which was about 75 degrees. It was great!! We stopped and had lunch at one of the nice restaurants overlooking the lake. Amy had a whole lobster to herself. Below is a photo of Maria. Taal lake is in the background. It was raining on and off on this day so we could not get a great shot of the lake because it was behind the clouds most of the day.

Fruits and Flowers are all over the place in Tagaytay. We stopped to get a shot of Amy next to a beautiful Poinsettia plant

Christmas Play at School

Maria's school organized a wonderful Christmas play. The play is a children's version of the birth of Jesus. Maria played the role as a pig, however, she did get to do some cartwheels against the stage.

Home Away from Home

By now, we are starting to grow tired of the malls especially around Christmas. They do know how to do Malls here in the Philippines. But we try to spent most of our weekend time, especially on Sunday at the Palms. It is the local country club - minus the golf course - where most of the expats are members. below is a shot from the pool area. It is a great way to spend a relaxing weekend.

Maria coming down the slide

They call this a broom???

This is a first of the many ramblings about the different things we have encountered in the Philippines. The standard US type household broom does not exist. The photo below this the typical filipino house broom. A couple of things to note. there is no flat brush edge to easily collect the dirt so you must make several passes over the same area 2) notice the height of the broom. it is only about 3 feet tall. I know most of the filipino housekeepers are shorter than the average US person, but even the filipinos have to bend over to sweep the floor. yes - it is not great on your back

Add'l House Photos

Several of you asked to see some additional photos of our house

We did bring our Christmas tree from the US. This is below the staircase in our living room / entry way.

Picture of your stairs. Catalina is on the stairs.

Backyard with shot of our pool.

Living Room - our house did come with a big screen TV - but no HD. the football game on the screen is Wash St game that was played about 4 wks ago. College football are aired tape-delayed...very delayed.

Don't Drink the Water

We had our first major sickness. Catalina was sick early last week. Followed by Amy. Amy had difficulty finding a doctor so she just went to the emergency room of the local hospital. She was very dehydrated so ended up spending two nights in the hospital. The second night was probably a bit of overkill. Unlike in the US, they are very quick to admit you here. One of my expat coworkers also had a sick daughter who spent two nights the hospital. There are a few positives come from this incident. one - a two day hospital stay was only 14,200 Php or ~$262 USD. and 2) Amy and I had a opportunity to practice our cell phone texting skills. everyone hear has a cell phone but texting is significantly cheaper than a voice call.

At this moment, Amy is not having the greatest experience, but I am happy to report she is out of the hospital and doing fine.

Driving in the Philippines

Driving is absolutely an adventure in the Philippines. my company provides a driver (Mon - Sat). sunday is his rest day. I could not resist the urge to drive. And, those who know me well, know I may a map geek so getting lost in Manila would not be an issue. To-date, I have purchased five different maps - greater manila, detailed street view, map to cavite (work), map of boracay (small island where we will spend christmas) , and map mindoro (small island directly south of luzon - the island manila is located).

You must be aggressive. Know that stop lights and painted lines (if there are any) are strictly a guide not a rule. The normal traffic flow does not seem to move much faster than 45 mph on the freeway - if you can call it - a freeway. So fear of a major collusion is low. We went down to Rizal Park in downtown Manila near the Manila Bay. Rizal Park is dedicated to one of the Filipino national heros.

Family photo in front of the Rizal Park. They always have two military soldiers guarding the monument. It is a bit like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington, D.C.

After the park, we found our way to Makati. Makati is the financial center of the Philippines. Very modern and upscale. Most of the expats who don't work in mfg live around the Makati. There are a number of very nice shopping malls around the Makati area. Below is a photo of downtown Makati from the Greenbelt shopping complex

Casa de Kirley - Philippine Style

All - we arrived in the Philippines on Halloween. Amy's favorite holiday. Halloween is a big deal here in the Philippines. Our housing village opens its gates to all of the kids from outside the neighorhood so traffic the village was insane. We got the village around 4 pm, but everyone was too tired after the long flight to do any trick or treating.

Below is the street view of our house in the Philippines. All of the homes we looked at were very nice and huugggeee. This house is about 3,500 sq. ft. by far the smallest, but it had fenced in pool. Coming from AZ - a fenced pool was important. Most of the homes we looked at were 4 - 5,000 sq. ft, all two story.