No more messenger from me, people. Only 6 or less people have commented on here but a bunch hit me up on messenger about my comments..not sure why but whatever. To each, their own.
Anyhoo, I start classes again today with the Univ of Phoenix so messenger will need to be cut to a minimum. The weather is still hot here. Havent been diving in a week but I usually get down to swim in front of scuba libre in the afternoons. Still waiting on the house inspection info and zoning laws, (its a protected forest area).
Today is going to suck, simply suck. I started waking up around 2am to what I think was the sound of cats yowling. Guess I was so tired that I left the light on and thought I saw their shadows under the door….so I get up for water and turning the lights off. Between 2am and 5am, I drank every bottle of water I had including the jars - thats about 4 liters. Started sweating in bed and then Montezuma’s Revenge kicked in. I’m trying to update the software on the phone but its telling me that its already current, even thou the numbers dont match up. Headache is comming on.
I’m beginning to believe that some people were never meant to be in hot weather. I cannot recall ever being sickly or ill in colder climates. I had energy in colder areas. I was active. And one thing is for certain, I never in my life put on this much weight until I got to Iraq. Being hot and in the sun almost seems painful and puts me in a bad mood. Its about time I left this area…..it might be cheap living but hell, thats not keeping me from being miserable.
Its not enough that Boracay has a brown-out every day but now there are these weird power surges and drops. Down in the dive shop, appliances have been blowing up. In the house here we have gone through three extension cords, an external hard drive, a camera charger, two cell phone chargers, a soldering iron, a hot-glue gun, and a set of bed sheets. All destroyed from these power fluctuations. Well, the bed sheets were burned when a drop-then-surge caused an extension cord to catch fire on the corner of a bed.
There is one good thing though, well its not so much good as it is just a lack of bad weather. By bad weather, I mean ‘normal’ hot and humid weather here. I don’t know why Filipino travel sites extol the virtues of vacations here during the summer. They use terms like escape to Boracay during the sizzling hot summer days. I’m thinking..uh-huh, its more humid here than in the cities and much clearer skies (read: hotter). But recently, there has been a lack of hot weather…oh its still hot at times but we have been having daytime and nighttime storms and the coolness has been accumulating a little bit to where I don’t use the aircon for most of the night.
But anyway, back to the power surges. A surge is always bad but most modern appliances can handle it. Even computer cords. These, however, are drops in voltage then you can hear in your fans and air conditioners that it starts fluctuating up and down really fast and finally spikes upwards before settling down. Not good.
And another thing to complain about while I’m at it: this has been going on for years from what I’m told. Do they sell surge protectors here? Not a single one to be found! I went to the only electronics shop on Boracay and two of the three staff members didn’t even know what I was talking about. Very nice people, but not very electronics knowledgeable. (dont ask them for a 200 gig laptop drive with external enclosure, they don’t have a clue what youre talking about and will try selling you a desktop IDE model).
We just can’t seem to get enough of these power outages here on Boracay these days. This one was in the daytime just as the heat was ramping up. Mind you, I only have Air conditioning inside of a few bed-rooms so the bathrooms and everything else are not cooled. During this brown out, it was so hot that most of the water evaporated from two separate toilets in the house. I wasn’t feeling so good and spent the day sweating on top of towels on the bed but managed to venture out into the house a few times….man, it is a scorcher here! A few minutes is one thing, but this one was all morning into the noontime.
Hot! Steamy! Drains every last drop of energy from me. It should be a crime to advertise travel deals during this time of season.
It floors me that the Philippines cannot get its act together and provide the bare minimum power requirements for its most famous beach resort island … all this power consumption was known well in advance from all the construction going on here. Takes at least a year to build a resort.
This same brown out kicked the refrigerator into defrost, (which it needed anyway). I went into the kitchen tonight and saw the towel under my aircon unit but traced the flow under the table and over to the fridge, which had the drip tub in the back overflowing. Hmmm….the toilets evaporate but the water spread out over a hot tile floor doesn’t. Go figure.
The weather in Boracay is pretty bad right now. It will get really cool for about 10 minutes in the middle of the night, then it will rain a downpour, then get warm again. The next day it will be massively hot and humid. People who wish to travel here for now are going to really not like the outside weather. There is no wind, perfectly calm. No breeze of any kind. Humid and sticky.
Boracay is still having power outages also. Travelers dont ever get told that their hotels might have aircon but no electricity / power. I would be upset to travel here on a vacation and find there was no electricity. Even though the modern marketing electronic age is increasing tourism, its going to also make it easier for would-be tourists to find the truth. Power outage.
The water has also been really bad lately. For people that travel here on vacation, here is the trick … be sure they don’t open your water bottles for you. A lot of places advertise free bottled water for guests but its not bottled at all. They reuse plastic bottles and push down on the cap when turning so you can hear popping sounds as if it had been sealed. Truth is that most places boil the tap water and refill bottles for cooling. My point is this, the tap water from both sources has been having silt and dirt in it lately. In the small bottles, you cant see it. In a large container, it looks downright brown.
I was starting to feel bad about sleeping all day and waking only after sundown … not any more. I would be highly upset as a tourist right now.
