Week Two

On Monday I set off to explore a little more of our local area, my aims: to order drinking water, to walk to the supermarket at the other end of the main street (Lopez Avenue), and to find a coffee shop with decent coffee and WiFi.  The water was easier than I expected - first I asked the guard at the entrance to our community about the address I needed to give the water man, and the guard was immediately on the job - he banged on the entrance gates to a couple of the first houses in the compound, called out loudly, and Lando appeared.  Lando, it seems, is the water delivery man (well…..one of them, but he just happens to be right here - perhaps working for one of the house owners), and he disappeared into the house and returned with a 20litre (?) container of drinking water…….hopefully this container doesn’t belong to the owners of the house, but anyway…..he’s the man to call when I need a refill, too, apparently!

The supermarket took only half an hour to walk to, and seems to have enough things to keep us going - not nearly as much as a supermarket in Korea or Australia, and we will have to adapt, but I’m sure it’ll work for us.

A coffee shop wasn’t too hard to find, but they forgot to put the coffee into the latte I ordered, and I drank quite a bit of it thinking to myself “this is really strange coffee” (and blaming it on….not sure), before realising, then deciding not to tell them since I’d drunk so much of it…..hmmmmm. So, I had hot milk. But…. they DID have WiFi (I asked before I ordered the ‘coffee’).

Monday evening was a Hail and Farewell party, organised by IRRI to welcome new staff and, more importantly, to say farewell to those who are leaving.  There were 150-200 people there for cocktails and dinner, and it was a relaxed, informal time to meet others.  It highlighted to me just how widely “international” IRRI really is, far more than any organisation I have been a part of.  Fairly daunting for me, too, being surrounded by scientists….. my repertoire of intelligent scientific conversations diminishes significantly when those around me know exponentially more than me about science (and this in no way puts down my scientific knowledge…..just highlights theirs….).  Despite this, we met some wonderful people, all of whom are very welcoming and happy to see us.  

On Tuesday the electricity went out, mid morning.  I had heard someone downstairs, and knew the owner hires a gardener/handyman and another helper to keep things tidy outside the house, so I went down to see if they could shed some light on the power issue.  There I met Nico, the gardener, who looks about 14years old, but is perhaps older.  He was just as baffled by the power outage, and told me to just wait and see……. hopefully the power will come back on….. a great example of the Filipino’s level of patience and ability to take what comes.  

Shortly after, my landlady, Dr Rose Garcia, arrived and came to introduce herself.  Rose isn’t very tall, but has a presence that endeared her to me immediately.  She was dressed up, including a hat, and I have since learnt that this is her normal attire.  She was extremely friendly, and promised to find out the problem and get it fixed…. which she did! The whole community of Sacay Villas was without power, but when I returned in the afternoon all was restored.

Rose was telling me that the house we are living in (split into the two apartments) is her ‘dream home’, which she and her husband built a number of years ago, but now he refuses to move in from their current home…… “So….what can I do?” she said to me! I’m going to enjoy seeing her from time to time.  She arrived again on Wednesday with two bags of corn (on the cob), one for us and one for PierPaulo, who lives upstairs - she really likes it, so she bought some for each of us to have…… again, she was impeccably dressed, including her hat! I’m really liking this lady!!!  

On Wednesday morning I noticed what looked for all the world like a garbage truck outside our house.  This surprised me since I was fairly confident that the garbage truck comes on Thursday…… after a long, drawn-out process, during which I was told the service came Monday, Wednesday and Friday, then this advice changed to just Tuesday, then changed again to Thursday, I thought I was on top of it. So, deciding to just run with what my eyes were seeing, I grabbed our garbage and ran out to the truck.  The men had emptied our bin and others across the road, so I was confident I had it right, especially when the man in the back of the truck happily accepted my bags. Wanting to confirm this, I questioned him about the service, explaining that I thought the correct day was Thursday.  He told me that the service is normally ‘tomorrow’, but today was an ‘emergency’ so that’s why they were here.  They won’t be back tomorrow…...I think…….

Both Russell and I hit a bit of a wall towards the end of our second week here.  Russell’s new phone wasn’t working, we still had no phone reception, internet or landline phone at home (effectively meaning we couldn’t contact each other, others here, or our family in Australia) and no car. On Thursday we decided on a plan, and were hoping for just one thing to improve…… well, it did.  Russ came home with the long-awaited-for car….. I can’t tell you how much this did for us psychologically!!  The next day he came home with another new phone….one that works!!!! So, the week ended with some positive events!!

Socially, things have been going quite well.  We continue to be looked after by our ‘hosts’, we attended a Thanksgiving dinner at the guest house on Thursday evening, and I joined a group on Friday afternoon to play bridge - yes, you read that correctly!!!  The dinner was very pleasant (and filling!!) and the bridge afternoon was fun - more people to meet and re-meet.

On Sunday, we had a drive around our local area, and visited the local botanic gardens - had a very nice wander through the gardens, and will leave you will some photos Russ took while we were there.....