Homeless Diver

We were told last month about daily brown-outs scheduled for every day over the next month. I say ‘told’ but we really found out on the first day of brownouts and then in the Manila newspaper that same day. They’re finally fixing the same lines they ‘fixed’ over the last 4 months of scheduled brownouts.

At the risk of sounding critical of the infrastructure management going on here - remember this: we could routinely bypass the power for the entire Green Zone (IZ) in Baghdad with about 200x more usage…. bypassing all existing grids … and maintaining smaller loops of active current while repairing the main system.  Daily. It took a long time to finally upgrade the system but we never had outages on this magnitude and that was in warzone with minimal resources.

Schedule? Monday - Friday 0830 am to 1730pm. Saturday is halfday, their choice of hours. Sunday is off for them so we get to keep juice. The biggest irony? The only office of Akelco (power company) is also completely without electricity during a brownout. Its pretty humorous really.

For some reason, the brown outs haven’t been happening like they said. It’s not like it was a rumor mill that came up with the ideas, I personally called them and was told YES every day from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm would be a brown out for the entire island of Boracay. And it was going to last two solid months. But yesterday, it went out for 5 minutes in the afternoon and today for about 3 minutes around noon.

I’m not complaining… much the opposite. But I now suspect either they did a poor job of describing the outage (as being island wide) like they did the water issues a few months ago - which turned out o be only a few small areas and only from a certain distributor - completely unlike their public announcement that the entire island would be without water. Also, they could have put the fear of god into everyone in the beginning by making it sounds horrible (which it did) but then we would be relieved when its just a lot of spotty occasions of brown out - and no one complains much.  Yea, I think that last one would be the way to go.

now….. for a random picture:

Ole's: some of the prettiest girls on the island, just waiting for a person to serve.

It’s 07:50 am leaving 10 minutes until the official start time of the power outage. They say they’re doing a substation installation and its gonna take 2 months of daily outages. But yesterday, it only lasted about 4 or 5 hours, perhaps less. I even called them and the guy answering was audibly weary of answering that question - yes, there would be many more such outages.

In Baghdad, we supplied a good deal of power to a ton of locations and I can think of a single area that consumed about 10 times more electricity than all of Boracay. It only took a handfull of electricians less than a half day to bypass every existing substation and generator to reinstate power. But Akelco, a government regulated firm, cant get this simple task done with the might of the Philippines government behind it for a tiny island like Boracay? Not for two months? Boracay only has a few single trunks… why not locally installed 1.5 MW generators? they’re pretty much standard every where else in the world… yes, even in third world countries. (but not here apparently). They’re even designed in shipping containers for ease of transport.

Oh well, lets see if the juice goes out again today…during peak usage times.

Brown out, black out, power outage; whatever you want to call it. I’m down at Blue Mango and sure enough, the generator is running. Supposedly for 2 months, the power will be out daily.

How does this happen? After a typhoon, they can get it up after 5 days but now the entire island is without electricity for 2 months, every day, during peak usage times.

Isn’t this supposed to be the crown jewel of the Philippines? The pinnacle of all tourism efforts both local and abroad? Akelco is allowed to raise and lower its rates without notice…now the power company can simply cut off power?

I seriously suspect a bullshit decision that benifits certain fuel distributors here on Boracay, Aklan, and where ever they come from. Thats a lot…a LOT of fuel thats going to be used by the resorts. I suspect that someone noticed the increase in sales duringthe typhoon.

Brown out that never stops?  HuH?

This is what I’m hearing from a god friend of mine who also happens to own a resort here. The low-down as that Boracay power company, Akelco, is going to turn off the electricity every day from morning to evening (hottest times of the day) for 60 or 90 days.

WHAT!?!?!?!?!?!

Bullshit.  I’m not referring to his info, I’m referring to these people not being able to side step a simple substation for 3 friggin’ months. OK, so how is it that 5 electricians in a warzone of Iraq can manage it with more power output than the ENTIRE of Boracay needs… but this place cant? This is the crown jewel of the Philippines, is it not?  The entire country cant do in 3 months what takes a few electricians in Iraq only a single day to do?

We shal see if this comes to pass. Today is the projected start date. BTW, Akelco is the company I pay for electricity and they billed me for 4500 pesos for last billing period…when no one was even home! I’m sure the meter is correctly read, but someone is tapping into my line and they refuse to do anything about it. But now, I have my bat.

I dont really remember when I started but it was around 04:30 when I woke up and left for Isla Baila, which is still closed for construction, which is OK because I had a tab there. So heck, now I’m just gonna have to bar-hop my way down the beach to all those tiny hotel bars that never close - usually the Korean places. Then I moved on to the Bamboo Lounge (one of a dozen places called Bamboo) because it’s 24′hrs and a last stop for the night owls.

I ordered the usual drinks and also some chicken wings and  onion rings - booze munchies. 30 minutes later, they come out to tell me they dont have this…30 minutes after I had ordered it. Crap. OK, so what can they do? They say they can take out a frozen chicken, chop and fry. Cool. This food comes out another 45 minutes later looking distinctly like it had been choppidy-chopped randomly whilst still frozen.

Next stop, Blue Mango where I drop some stuff in a locker and commence to swimming. A few hours later I’m in Red Pirates dripping all over the place and having a few handfuls of morning drinks. Back to Blue Mango to settle a tab and slide over to Cocolocos for some redbull vodkas. Back to Blue Mango for more drinks.

Thess was packing up for the low season and invited a few people over for a ‘few’ drinks. This might not have been the best idea of the day. Shes cool as hell and the best bartender you will ever find. Great friend. But still….inviting us never ends sublimely.

Now its off to Arwanas for drinking on the roof.  I have no idea why, but the kitchen downstairs decided to close at - - wait for it - - - 2:30 in the afternoon! It’s got an independent management and tends to close during the low points of the day rather than wait for the evening rush…. So we order some Smokes (yes, thats the name of the resto).

There was an Aussie, 2 Brits, 4 Americans (1 chick), 3 Filipinas, and for a few minutes…a few watch/jewelry vendors. Other people came and went for a little while, all of them we knew.  There was yelling from the balcony. There were drinking games like guessing ‘boxers, briefs or nothing’ for each of the group. Wrong guesses involved a shot of Tanduay - which is not meant to be done in shots. It needs something to mask th taste.

The Vendors, we got 2 of them to do shots. Their boss was with em’ and told them to go-ahead. They thought we were gonna buy some watches if they shot the booze - we bought no watches after they did the shots. As they walked down, it dawned on me what kind of headdress they had on and the patch on the vest: Muslim Vendors Association.  BWHAHAHAHAA!!!!!!  I like that, people not too tied up in ones religion to take time out for a small bit of rum. I saw them today down near Tourist Center. They were laughing and pointing at me saying “No watches today sir! Tanduay time!” ; they all laughed that internal kind of laugh you get from Mexican police when you demand your phone call. I’m sure it was sarcastic but hell, it was still funny.

Anyway, back to last night: I remember the food arriving in the daylight. I remember a dude and chick going swimming. I remember someone commenting “I promise, I wont shag ya in the shower - if I do then I’ll give ya all 10,000 pesos from me pocket”. I remember her running down the sidewalk, full tilt, to her room and him trotting off behind her leisurely. I remember making a comment to a Brit about how apparently his town in England didn’t have any dental plans. I remember leaving…and getting home to find the power out. I remember trying to fight a dog - yelling at full volume that I was gonna kill it if it barked one more time. The landlord came to calm me down and had the owners take the dog around the other side of the house (they didnt speak english it seems).

Thats all I remember of yesterday. There are some rather large blocks of time missing.

Someone woke me up about midnight…and thankfully the power was back on. I asked what time did we get back?”, She replied “around 7″.  I was blacked out before 7pm..that might be a new record for me. I slept from 7pm to midnight…then from 1am to 1:30pm………..wow.

Today, I finally got back in the water again! Whoo Hoo! I had taken my gear down to Blue Mango a few days ago to get it back in the rinse tanks and check it over… re-seasoning it I guess we could say.

We had some really good friends come in the same day and spent about 3 hours in the water tossing Frisbee; myself w/o any sunblock. Needless to say, I got burnt so that after dinner at Arwanas, I was not feeling chipper enough to go out with everyone else. The next day was an ‘aloe-vera and dark room’ day for me as well.

This morning, I rolled down about 07:30 am after a 3rd night of mild insomnia. Sure enough Dustin is rearing for some morning diving - and this mornings dive is Yapak 1. Sweeeet! That’s possibly the most advanced dive site around Boracay without everyone having tech rigs and getting into a specialized dive. You can drop in around 18 meters and slope down to the top of the cave at 33 meters (depending on which direction you’re coming from). Theres another guy who is on his 99th dive for this one, just the three of us.

Starting off, I noticed a bit of water in my 1st stage of the regulators (personal set) because I had apparently tightened the dust cap too tight. Just a few drops and airflow is still good, no biggie. We start heading to the boat and right away my BCD is full-bubbling out the shoulder dump-valve where I had not screwed it back on correctly; Dustin easily fixes this w/o gear removal. Now I’m at 2 strikes.

We head out and the weather is magnificent: warm water, visibility is excellent. We drop in North of the cave, which is a first for me…and the current had already started moving. We did a hard (for me) swim for a solid five minutes against and across the current to the cave - man, out of breath. I think I actually started sweating in my mask. We head down and I drop straight to 44.5 meters while my dive computer is chirping that it no longer want to be my friend during such a rapid descent. Silly Suunto hocky puck.

I look at my air and Holy Crap! I’m sitting at 60 Bar already! I have never in my life seen anyone use a 200 bar tank that fast. Damn, looks like I’m going to be the one ruining this dive to only a single penetration. Anyhoo, we head thru the cave and out the top, get on the boat, head back - and I start feeling queasy. Back at the shop, I have a bout of Montezuma’s revenge and head to the house for some meds and a nap (dive later in the afternoon).

I wake up at 13:30pm and the power is out again, it seems to have been out for a while as my bed is soaking wet in sweat. Cell phone rings and its University of Phoenix trying to get me back into classes earlier than I wanted. While talking, I stand up to find my left ankle is really tight and sore as hell. The pain is shooting up the outside of my left calve and feels like overexerted muscle, I was like where the heck did this come from?!?

So now I’ve got the trots, Brown-out just ended, bedroom smells like rank sweat, can’t walk properly, missed the afternoon dive, and have the embarrassment of ending a dive a lot faster than it should have. All because I went straight for a hard dive after all this time off.

But ya know what? I still enjoyed today. I feel much better; beat up for sure - but definitely better.

I awoke around 04:30 with a killer sinus problem. I slathered menthol-rub all over my face, neck, chest, around the ears…practically used it like I would if it were sunblock. I even put a dollop up each nostril, and learned thats not such a good idea.

Well, it went away after a while. Now it’s after 17:00 and the sinus issues are back. Just in time for anothe brown-out, so I’ll post this when the power comes back on.

Been really humid here on Boracay recently.  Oh, my head hurts.

Ya know, theres been so much drama this past week, I’m gonna turn off the SEO entry for this one. But sure enough, I’m still not going to list the details here. In the US, we call that “Pleading the 5th”. Or drinking a 5th….or something that somehow connects alcohol and legal issues…..

Well, the nice weather is gone and the sun came back out yesterday, after raining for almost a week. That creates humidity. OK class, all together now lets pronounce humidity….” DAYMN!” I can see how the different pronunciations might be confusing…in in the mother tongue of fat-crackerese, DAYMN! said loudly is a valid expression of painful humidity.

Lets see…

• I found out my cell phone is jacked up. It sends messages out to people not intended. The clicky sound for the camera also stopped.
• I have been drinking myself stupid recently, worse than normal and I hit black-out drive before 10pm last night.
• I used FaceBook to find a long-lost best friend I had back in the Army.
• I am single again and could sell my sheets to a sperm clinic.
• I found out that I can pack everything I need into 2 bags and a backpack…not bad considering my scuba stuff is in there too.
• I also found out that I can swim in stormy water at 05:30am using a mask with no strap.
• I got my visa renewed, late as usual.
• I found out that I have been here so long that they will not let me leave when I want. I am required to now pay 500 pesos for paperwork a week before and another 1400 pesos at the immigration office in the airport. So, if theres an impending death in the family, basically I’m screwed. Thanks for visiting the Philippines and spending more money than my family makes in a year!…oh and be sure to leave your wallet on the way out. Bye now!
• I have had the feeling of hair-in-the-back-of-my-throat for a solid week now.
• I shaved my head back down; sweating in that mop was not doing me any good.
• I accidentally sent a few hundred emails to people by mixing up the merge of gmail addy books and adding people to Yahoo messenger.
• I had a deep conversation with a guy who spent 5 months in a mental wing of Philippines prison last year…then agreed to have him teach me some diving specialties.
• I cleaned the house spotless last week; now it looks pretty unsanitary.
• I spent way too much money this past week.
• I am going stircrazy on this island. I dont want to dive. I don’t want to see the same people over and over. I dont like tourists anymore. Nothing blows up here. I need to get back to work just to have something to do.
• We have had more and more power outages.
• A big part of Boracay island was without water yesterday. Apparently one of the suppliers were low on supply so they sent people to sneak out and turn off the lines to certain areas so the ‘big guys’ could have water. Small businesses, residential, public…no water. Resorts and spas and anyplace with a swimming pool - lots of water. I watched the guys fan out to turn it back on later. They denied doing it even as about 20 of us watched them. While the denial words were coming out of their mouth, they were kicking sand back over the access cover so it wouldn’t look disturbed.
• I got heartburn last night for the 1st time in months.
• Got a sunburn on my head, neck, and shoulders.
• Looks like I’m losing weight again.

As I type this, leaning on my bed, I look around and cant stand the sight of the inside of this house anymore but really dont want to got be around any one else either. That means I have to wear clothes. On the brighter side, I have a new outlook on finding a better quality of female companion. Not that this will actually happen, but hey, its a start.

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 have to roll back the date on this one to accurately capture the date of the brown-out, again. When did that one go out? Around 09:00 am and lasted until about 13:30 afternoon. Man, it was hot as heck that day. Power outage, not even in the high demand for consumption. Boracay at its best…erm, well I guess I should say at it’s average. Philippines most famous island…can’t even keep the electricity on.

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’m beginning to sound like a broken record since every post is about the brown-outs here on Boracay. Today, we had three of them. Not one, not two, but three (3) brown-outs in a single day.

Actually, I should count it as 4 since there was another one last night after I had gotten off the computer. I was down at Blue Mango last night playing with a friends new puppy and sure enough, the power went out.Bbut being a business, they have backup battery lights and a large generator.

Earlier today, we lost power a little after noonish for about an hour. Then we lost it again shortly before sunset but I was napping so I dont know how long it was. Finally, we lost it about 20:00 tonight (8:00 pm) for only about half an hour. That one was dangerous since it started with down-volting then surges - power outage then back up a few seconds later - then down aaaand then up - and finally down for half an hour.

I’m going to keep track of every brown-out that happens here so bear with me. I don’t know why no one else on the island is reporting this stuff. It definitely has to be affecting tourism. I mean, all these smaller places on Boracay don’t have generators and when the power goes out, their guests are in the same boat as myself and at the whims of the weather. (more…)

Can you guess what happened last night? hmmm…here’s a hint - it fits into a certain theme on here. I was updating a bunch of posts that I had saved as drafts accidentially and sure enough, at 19:45 pm the power went out again. It was off for only an hour this time but it pretty much threw off my night. I started watching an old movie called Altered States on te laptop battery supply so when the brown out was over, I wasnt motivated to do anymore work online.

Another thing at that I got my electric bill yesterday and it was a whopping 6,800 pesos for one month! What the hell ?!?!  I’m walking down to the meter in a few minutes to see if it really says that and to se if it looks like anyone has been getting into my line. I cant see how we could possibly use that much electricity - especially with all the black-outs! A bunch of thieves, thats whats been going on around here.