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.