Homeless Diver

Almost came and sat right on top of us. Wind speed estimates were from 90 to 120 km/hr. I dont think anyone actually recorded it here in Boracay.

Apparently Fengshen means “God of Wind” in Chinese…which is odd and retarded at the same time. This wasn’t a Chinese storm and only hit Hong Kong after is settled down (as expected). And really, God of Wind? Yes, it was a lot of wind……thats normally the idea behind typhoons….its windy. I’m not knocking the Chinese, but how did they come up with this for the name? ahhhhhh….I found the answer:

http://www.pagasa.dost.gov.ph/genmet/rpnames.html and http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/jma-eng/jma-center/rsmc-hp-pub-eg/tyname.html

These names are preselected in advance and they just go down the list as the storms occur. I had not known this. The first list is for use within the Philippines only. I have no idea why they’re the only Asian country to be so obtuse about what they’re calling it - and theirs was “Frank”. Everyone else is all one the same list, which is the second link. If they had made it to 25 storms last year, the Philippines would have named it…hehe…. “ZigZag”. BWHAHAHHA!!!!! I love it, a typhoon named after rolling papers!

The main Asian list has words/names donated from most countries that touch the Pacific basin. Next one will be Kalmaegi meaning ‘Sea Gull’ donated by DRP Korea. but the USA has some entries I dont get…

I had to look this up…what the hell is a Chamorro? It seems they’re the natives of Guam. Apparently, theres a huge anti-american wave going thru there. I mean, look up their web sites…seems like they truly and utterly hate the Americans.  I dunno why we would submit their names, must’ve been a PR move.

Palau is not even an American territory, its independent.  How did the USA manage to submit those words under its name? Thats like Texas claiming a polar bear as its official animal.

Aere is Latin….and it does NOT mean storm, (that would be ‘tempest’). Its just a general Latin term for ‘air’. Oddly enough, I found a lot of references that it IS the Marshallese word for storm. What are the odds of a pacific native language having a word in general common with Latin?

“…the vessel carried 724 passengers, 111 crewmembers, and 26 sanitary aides.”

What is a sanitary aide? Is it a health care professional or a janitor? And why the term ‘aide’, are they not actually qualified in this field?  Who are they aiding, the crewmembers?  That would make 111 supervisors for 26 staffers..on a ferry that sank in Typhoon Fengshen.

I’m going to assume these are some form of health care people but it still leaves me wondering why the requirement to have so many and not even properly trained ones at that. 26 for only 800 people seems like a lot. Are they transporting a leper colony? Just how sickly are these passengers? Obviously they’re not regularly trained medical personnel or they would not be using the terms ’sanitary’ or ‘aide’. So we now have 26 people who generally can clean up human bio waste and generally keep it from like being the below-deck hold of a 1700’s slave ship. I think. Generally.

When I think of the term aide, I think of a subordinate staffer. But then again, whenever I think of the term sanitary, it’s always followed by the word ‘napkin’.

I’m not making light of this but it was odd to see this combination of words in an article about the Ferry search being halted because of toxic pesticides that werent ever supposed to be on a passenger boat:

A handful were positively identified by clothes, scars and jewellery [sic], including a policeman who was returning from Manila on the ferry after processing his retirement papers.

Wearing face-masks, relatives wept. Some fainted and vomited, at what they saw. One of the bodies, a female, was clutching a headless baby to her chest.

Across the street, music blared from karaoke bars.

Source

Sugar ants can predict typhoons - the recent invasion completely disappeared the morning before the typhoon hit Boracay. They came back at the end of the last rain and are back in force.

There is a former NASA engineer working as night-shift manager at a 24-hour bar in D’Mall….uh huh

Drunkenly walking thru a typhoon is easier than reporters make it look…either that or they’re drunk themselves.

NEVER take that large ‘emergency’ frozen bottle of water out of the freezer for longer than is necessary, it might make a difference between a little trash and a lot of rotten food.

Drunk Canadians with an accent like a drunk east Texan redneck should not be allowed in bars less than a kilometer from me.

Andoks is capable of closing; who would have thought.

Andoks does not need refrigeration: you will feel just as miserable the next morning regardless of refrigerator or not.

Solitaire by candle light sucks. It truly sucks. You cannot imagine how bad it wholly sucks.

Casual sex becomes “do you have a generator?”

Tokay geckos dont care if you just cleaned the house from top-to-bottom, they will crap huge nuggets whenever they please.

The ability to offer a clean-water shower can be traded for earthly sins.

Cocomangas never stops partying…ever.

The Baboy store will sell you tanduay in the middle of a typhoon…but only if he has a bottle left for himself.

Do not order any dishes with meat from a place that only uses generators at night time.

I can withstand being hit in the head, neck, and shoulders by flying coconuts. This is not bragging, but its still pretty damn interesting. Ok, yea its bragging.

The center of D’Mall is impervious to typhoon winds…possibly connected to the Bermuda Triangle

I am not the only person on this island that apologizes after pissing off people the night before.

The staff of Red Pirates are a dedicated bunch that let nothing stop the booze from flowing; even if that includes one of them standing on the thatch/nippa roof in sandblasting wind and rain to repair a few minor leaks.

Bags of trash are capable of levitating 200 meters and into other peoples houses.

It is possible to out-party people who have lived a party life for the last 5 years.

My neighbors do not need a 2-man-lift generator for basic sanitation, lights, fan, hotwater, cooking….no, they need it for a karaoke machine.

Having a spare and fully charged battery for the cell phone only matters when….when…. hell, it didnt matter. The service was out.

Sand can, and will, inform you of new body cracks it has found.

Rubbing alcohol is not a good way to clean the tabletop whilst using candles.

Check out the inner wall of the eye on Typhoon Fengshen (Frank)! This joker came right next to us that night my drunk ass was walking around the island! You can see the eye open up right at its peak intensity next to Boracay

EDIT: Because the embedded flash is causing the page to load really slowly, I put it under the  the page break. It will still be visible on the “more” page.

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AaaaHooo!!!!

5 Days now the power has been out on Boracay. The typhoon “Frank” (I know) came in as a mild warning on Friday…nothing special expected here and was supposed to peak around 2pm that day.

Whoops.

I have too much cleaning up to do now that the power and water are back on so I’ll post the details later. The house smells like mildew. The winds drove palm fragments/fronds all the way thru the house. Water made it from the back balcony, left turn, down the hall, right turn (and under a few doors), into the living room, onwards to the kitchen. The hillside smells like a huge urinal. Palm trees are down. Electrical and cable lines were down, some still are. I have no idea why I have internet because I can see my coax cable drooping almost to the ground under a fallen banana tree.

I had some good partying, and some bad decisions….but still enjoyed most of it. A bunch of boats were lost including the Blue Mango boat. They pulled it as high as possible to drydock, but the water came up even higher. I have video of one that broke free out front and crashed to bits a few minutes later on White beach…give me some time, I’ll post it online.