Homeless Diver

It was looking to be such a nice evening with the lessening of my cold. What the hell, lets go see what the guys are up to in the Blue Mango dive shop!

Nice weather, topless French girl on the beach, good breeze…man, that was a good decision I think to myself. Even though the new staff in the hotel can’t figure out the simplest task of taking a food order and drink order from me, its still OK. I’ll just wait for that rum and coke, the one that she repeated back to me. Twenty minutes later, still no drink. BAH I think…I’m not gonna dwell on it and let it ruin my unusually good mood.

Sitting there watching TV, chatting with friends, and sipping on drinks brought from the Bar next door (CocoLoco’s), and the lack of food…’C’ decides to on a trip to Arwanas for some fajitas and we’re taking a visitor. His first day on the isle and soon-to-be Army cadet/officer. A guarantee of good conversation for all of us; perpetuating the good mood. I like.

Arwanas, for some reason, has shut down the kitchen at around 6:30 PM. Really odd, so we ask why. This guy says its because there weren’t any customers….hmmm..then why the hell is it still open with music blasting downstairs and a full staff around? oh yea, there’s no customers because your dumbass keeps turning customers away!

Nextstop - Crafty’s Rooftop! Yes, good call. The food was good as always, the staff cool as hell, the drinks always perfect. Steve didn’t recognize me but what the hey, I haven’t seen him in a few months. Yes, definitely a good call to eat there.

Leaving there, I stop in at Hey Judes! You cant call it a night out unless you have stopped in at Hey Judes at least once. They keep on down the beach while I get a drink. They already have it ready for me in the 10 seconds since they saw me…thats what I call service!
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Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch….

I was doing much better this morning but now I almost wish I could hurl. Some salty soup didnt do the trick like it should have. Some pickle juice had me feeling better for a while and the body was responsive too but that was short lived. It didnt help that my lower back was killing me from the start. The only thing I was lifting was a foam mattress but I guess that did it.

And damnit! Why the hell does it smell like piss and milkfish all around the place! Urine oder is wafting around the hillside. The people downstairs are cooking with scrap construction wood again and the smoke is coming inside thru the balcony. Milkfish! I don’t know if thats what it is but Filipinos eat that stuff all the time and it smells like rotting flesh in a garbage dump. Cooked or raw, stinks to high hell. But they like it.

On the bright side, the stormy weather season is early this year! They call it “Habagat” which is when the winds change direction and start coming at us from the west. Even when the typhoons spin up and arrive from the eastern side, because of the rotation of them, the wind actually hits on this side of the island first - directly from the sea. This time, we are up on a hillside with two balconies facing the sea so this should be really sweet! And the wind!  Oh man, it’s gonna kick up and be almost constant for a long time meaning we can kill the aircon pretty much. I can’t wait! I just might jizz right now while typing!

Usually, its a pain to walk about the house with the heat. Soon the rain will start as well. Even though this place is impossible to shutter-up, it still has poor air-flow qualities. But now the wind will come directly thru the house! And much cooler too! weeeeeeeeeee!

Lets start from the beginning, around midnight or so. I was still sick and pissing from my arse. Ole girl was pissing me off with silly little stuff like making childish whining groans and saying “baybeeeee! I’mmmm sooo hungreeeeeey!” Couldnt opt for a simple “do we have something to eat?” or even “I’m hungry”. No, she has to do it in that so fucking annoying voice like a child wanting candy at the supermarket checkout line.

Then the power goes out from 01:00 until almost 03:00 am. No where even close to peak usage/consumption times. Sleep until around 17:00 in the afternoon. Get up and clean some more, going after the kitchen that time. Find a spider in the bag of carrots that I’ve been bitten by before. I really hate them - look mean and hurt like hell. Then an army of ants come out to eat him.

Shave my head again because this cracker just isnt doing so well in the heat these days. But for today, the weather was really nice. Opened the windows to let the wind in.

Our guest stops by and we had a good discussion about biology and genetic sequencing. Quite refreshing since it’s a rare treat on Boracay to have conversations about anything more complicated than sports on TV. Imagine the school geek being sent to a football/baseball summer camp. Thats me, here. I’m not saying that diving is anywhere close to being a ham-fisted knuckle-dragging sport like american football, but lets just leave it by saying that I really enjoyed the hell out of the conversation even when he was way over my head, (he’s a University Professor).

We had a few drinks, he sprite and coke~cola, myself coke/rum and a bottle of 2003 something white wine from Napa Valley. Started on hot-gluing the framework of a paper-mache’ lampshade project hobby of mine. Sealed a floater-jar as part of my personal artificial reef that I’m putting together without telling anyone. Its gonna be small and, erm, well odd. I guess it would more readily fall into an Art category. But by calling it an artificial reef addition, it becomes legal to put it where I intend on putting it. Screw it, if the Rotary club here can get away with dropping a bronze plaque of their chapters seal and call it reef restoration, then I’ll use their excuse too.

ole girl starts cooking a ton of bacon and ham while were talking and fills the kitchen with grease smoke. Talk about a non-cooking person. I cleaned the HELL out of the kitchen during this time. Manage to put a bloody fingerprint on the wall again. Drops of blood on the floor. Don’t know how I cut my finger so deeply.

This whole time, the weather is so nice that I’m not using the aircon and don’t really stand in front of the fan either. Apparently I told him that I would go snorkeling with him in the morning. He leaves around 2 or 3 or 4, I forget. By this time, I’m drunk and take off walking to get some cigarettes. Came back and for some reason, decided that it would be a good time to fry some ham slices, poach a few eggs in hot oil, slap it on a sammich with cheese, and grill the whole damn thing! I barely remember eating it. But my nicely clean kitchen? no more.

It’s bad enough that I partied too hard, but is it really necessary to punish me with more power outages? A lack of aircon during the hot season while I’m dehydrated and in agony, this stuff is not what happy-times are made of. Brownout. I don’t much like them. Once again, I closed out Sumer Place. Gawd was I trashed.

Oddly enough, it was nice hanging out with all the ‘working’ freelancers. I think I know almost all of them by now. Even Pocahontas was chatty with me about how slow the night was. I don’t really like using the term prostitutes anymore. Perhaps ‘entertainers’ or even better, the one that Club Med used to use… GRO for Guest Relations Officer. I had more fun hanging out with them than last time I went out with a bunch of crackers.

I think it started out poorly since I didn’t even leave the house until about midnight, after half a bottle of Tanduay rum. I recall Red Pirates closing down and moving in a northern direction. I ended up everywhere and nowhere. There was Isla Bayla, Bamboo, Juice Bar, some other place I don’t really remember much about except everyone there seemed preoccupied with acting like aristocrats but still managed to use the body language of trailer trash. I got the distinct impression that they were all uneducated people in nice clothes. So I staggered onward. Boracay party places needed my presence.

Once I headed to Station 2, one point was reinforced last night: being nice to people has its benefits. I got free drinks everywhere I went except for Summer Place, (not only will this NEVER happen, but they’re some of the most expensive around). Bartenders and managers that recognized me were like, forget it and give me some dap! (dapped)_ I only mention this because there were a few people I know that were snotty towards the staff at a few places and have since had their bills padded by other peoples drinks and almost always full-tourist price. Normally, my drinks are discounted to a more local rate, which is pretty cool.

There was Summer Place, Hey Jude, Sumer Place again, Isla Bayla again, and I forget where else I was at but I do remember closing down Summer Place and my body chemistry was fairly toxic by then. Is it bad that I’m straight but still know most of the ladyboys working the crowd? I found out one thing though: the professional transvestite entertainers that work at the Amazing Show, well, they don’t mix with regular ladyboys and seem to look down on them…well, I shouldn’t say ’seem’ because thats exactly what one of them told me. They’re still cool as hell, but I guess I never realized there was a classist mentality in that group.

I ran into a party girl I remembered from my early days here. She seemed coked out of her head and couldn’t stop talking for more than a few seconds. I assume thats what it was, but I didn’t ask.

I found out that Andoks had bottles of Red Bull. Whoops. They should have kept that secret from me.

I even stopped into a few places at daybreak to hang with some of the working girls that didn’t get any business…kinda like all the drunks going to IHOP in the states, only this was with prostitutes at bar-lounges that don’t close, so yea, more drinking.

I didn’t get back to the house until around 7:30 this morning and tried staying awake but that was a lost cause. I started freezing for some reason and killed the aircon around 0830. Very fitful sleep, stomach was having a twinge. My phone started blowing up with calls and text messages from a girl out here and finally I texted her back to leave me alone to sleep and turned the ringer off. She wanted to come over at noon.

Finally I woke up around 20:00 tonight and found a lot of texts and missed calls on my phone. Damnit! My good friend was having her 21st birthday party down on the beach and I missed it. Other people even texted me to say how good the BBQ and beer was and to get my ass down there. Honestly, even if I had been awake early enough, I don’t think I would have made it…it’s now 1:00 am the next morning and I’m still feeling like crap.

Damn–there went a power surge and drop…airconditioner is making funny noises now. See? just how the hell are we having a brown-out at 1:00 in the morning? It’s not even hot out tonight. What the hell?!?! I went to unplug some appliances and come back to find a cockroach on my floor - I friggin hate those things and we rarely ever see them here. I keep the house nice and poisoned.

Anyway, I’m still feeling ill and am sipping on a salty chicken-ramen soup while at the computer. Thats my big Saturday night. What the hell was I thinking! I could have partied like a rock-star tonight with my closest best friends but noooo…I had to go out last night by myself and just meet friends along the way.

I was putzing around all day yesterday…trying to rehydrate and settle my stomach when the internet went out just as I sat down to do my already-late assignments. But on the bright side, I got some really good sleep in. My only problem now is that I’ve been in the air conditioning for 2 days straight so it’s not going to be easy getting back outside.

I have some new advertising stuff on the sites. Go ahead, click thru and make me rich!

UPDATE 21Mar2008: Sorry, I cannot recommend or even ask a third party to click on the google ads because I stand to gain financially from it. I did not know this until I logged into my account today and theres a whole new (and huge) terms of service I had to agree to. Presumably they would too but I guess they’re looking out for the interest of the ad-owners….I think….to be honest I’m not really sure. But they said so, and I’m sticking to it.

99.5 degree Fahrenheit. Yuppers, I’m a little toasty.

I went out and managed blackout drive pretty quickly. I do remember being a bit drunk and coming back to the house. I remember Chad coming up behind me saying 6 girls were going to drink the ‘Fuck You Archie’ so he was getting the video camera.

Then I remember being at Summer Place pretty late chillin with a friend. I remember getting a motorcycle home.

I woke up hungover and really shaky as they told me about a friend that got the bends pretty bad on a morning dive. I tried sleeping again and didnt do a good job of it. I got up around 15:00 and noticed that I had lost a pillow and somehow, gained a mystery bag of Andoks fried chicken. There was a plastic bowl with about 5 eaten pieces in it and another bag with 6 more pieces hanging on the back of the chair. I dont remember any of it.

Now…what people told me is that apparently I went back down to the Red Pirates and hung out with them drinking some more on the beach(?). They say there was fire dancing and video(?). There were girls drinking FU Archies(?). I was telling people that I was waiting for someone(?). Gaz was wearing short-shorts and his nads were hanging out(?).

I remember none of it. I do remember thinking that I should have some Andoks but I dont remember going there or back or even eating it. I dont remember getting home or why my shirt and boxers were on the bathroom floor soaking wet. I also dont know why there was sand all over them or how I even got sand up to the house.

And I have more coursework to do tonight. Jeeze.