My International Music Career

For the first time since the glory of days of KC and KT (Kansas City and Kevin Taylor) I’m in a band. We’ve had many names: The Whatevers, Powergrade, Sexpatriots, etc. I encourage you to offer suggestions. It is made up of my fellow colleagues and me. (Soula, James, Tricia, and Jen Smith) This is fitting, since my social life strictly revolves around colleagues. Good thing it’s a big school, and filled with great people.

So far we’ve had two gigs. The most recent will perhaps explain my school. It was a foam party held at the high school. If I had suggested “foam party” at any public US high school, everyone would picture some freaky-deaky scene from Cancun, and answer with a resounding “No.” Not at ISM my friends.

Not only was there a foam machine, there was also a stage, a slip-n-slide, 4 gazillion dollars worth of sound and light equipment, inflatable decorations, and roadies to set it all up. I’ve never had anyone installing microphones on my drum before. It was the definition of crazy.

Plus, from what I could tell, everyone was sober. And they remained fully clothed. I’m pretty sure that in the US, neither of those two events would have happened.

Crazy.

Anyway, we played cover songs and it was awesome. We did No Doubt, Jet, Green Day, and my personal favorite, Presidents of the United States of America (Peaches). I’m going to celebrate their entire collection. I recommend you do the same.

Trivia Night and the FPA

Assuming we are not on strike or taking shelter from Typhoons, Tuesday’s are trivia nights. Our team name is the FPA. As you should know, that stands for Fist Pumping Action. Which obviously means whenever we get a question right, that we exhibit a ridiculous amount of one handed pumping action. Sometimes both hands if we’re especially riled up.*

This would normally cause us to be hated by other teams. Fortunately for them, we don’t get to fist pump very often, as we are not very good. At least not very good at answering questions. However, we win the costume contest every time. We award this prize to ourselves. This is easy to win since no one else dresses up.

Just in case someone decides to challenge us for the costume prize (hard to do since we are also the judges), we switch up our costume weekly. We have also gone as Golf Pros and Tennis Hos, and The Whig Party to name a few.

action photos!

* I have to give citation to the KC based group known as the Boss Tweeds for giving us the idea of turning trivia into a costumed affair, and specifically to Aaron for bringing fist pumping action back into my life.

Why I Live in Manila

One of the best things about moving to a new place and making new friends is that you can recycle some of your best material. When looking at the picture above (assuming my internet allows it), those of you in the States are probably thinking, “Ho hum. Ringo’s in the astronaut costume again.”

However, at my friend Steve’s 30th birthday, people actually broke into applause for the astronaut costume. The theme of the “fancy dress” party was 60’s and 70’s, but no one expected Neil Armstrong to show up.* Jen and I were immediately facing a half dozen flashing cameras. Sort of like facing the paparazzi for about 30 seconds.

I fully understand if you readers are questioning the part about “applause” and “flashbulbs.” I tend to believe that people are always applauding my actions and taking photos. However, Jen confirmed it. It really happened.

* "Fancy dress" means "costume party" if you hail from the British Commonwealth. I'm not really in the habit of using that term, but i like to sound of it. Almost as much as "Aluminium."

Motorbikes

I ride a motorbike to work every morning. So does Jen.

If anyone such as Kevin, Dre, Gants, etc is reading this, they’re probably laughing their ass off if they can see the picture. These people either own, or have previously owned a legitimate motorcycle. Mine is certainly not a motorcycle. It only has 110 cc’s, whereas I think a real motorcycle has something like 4 x 106 cc’s. My bike in the US would probably be classified as a “scooter.” I’m ok with that. It is at least shaped like a motorcycle.

Actually it’s shaped like a dirt bike. I know this because the guy who sold it to me, said, in broken English, “This not dirt bike. It look like dirt bike, but if you jump…….” At this point he made a symbol with has hands as if breaking a large branch over his knee. I promised him I would not pretend to be playing Excite Bike.*

It doesn’t really go very fast either. But that’s OK also, because neither does Manila traffic. In a taxi, I could spend 40 minutes traveling 4 miles home after work. Most of this time you are stopped. With a motorbike, you are allowed, actually expected, to simply ride slowly through the stopped cars to the front of the traffic light. It’s a pretty great system.

Jen and I also have extremely large helmets and padded motorcycle jackets. The padded jackets are probably a bit much, especially since it never drops below 75 degrees here. But having big elbow guards makes me kind of feel like Barry Bonds, minus the part about being a douche bag.

* I used to make some pretty rad courses on that game.

Monkey Sex and Cardinal Victories

After observing monkey sex and lizards in the underground river, we boarded an outrigger boat and set sail for an island paradise. (This is the best opening I’ve ever written.)

Eventually Jen and I arrived at the island paradise resort of El Nido. You can only arrive by boat (although I guess parachute would work as well), and the best part is they play a welcome song for you on the dock as you arrive. Once arrived, your “activity director” sits you down to plan out the following day for you. Then you are shown to your air conditioned room that receives electricity 24 hrs a day (quite a luxury in island paradise). Afterwards, you are allowed to graze the giant buffet lunch served 3 times a day, every day. Then you are allowed to meet with San Miguel, which for you non-Philippine dwellers, is like meeting with Auggie Busch or Pete Coors.

Jen and I were interrupted from our building of true Philipino friendships* by another welcome song. Our colleagues (JB, Tara, Fred, and Sandy) had just arrived. I put their names down because they might read this, and people like to read about themselves. My 4 colleagues promptly told their activities director that they did not want to do any activities except “building true Philipino friendships.” This greatly hurt the feelings of their activities director, which meant the resort disliked my colleagues, but liked me and Jen. We all spent a lot of time with San Miguel on the beach, and even played an ingenious version of bocce ball throughout the resort’s restaurant and bar that involved coconuts and some acrobatics. I did not win, but I heartily thank JB for enlightening me on that game.

Jen and I used our pull to convince the resort to point their satellite skyward every morning, and set up their one television to watch the Cardinals in the World Series. Unbelievably, I was able to watch the final 3 games of St Louis’ greatest moment in sporting history. I fully represented America with a great deal of profanity, high fives, and humping the air in jubilation. You also know that the fist pump was in prime form.

We stopped scuba diving in plenty of time to fly to the next island paradise. (This was key so as not to explode on the airplane.) However, I was a little disappointed in that Sangat Island reserve was no where near as posh as our last home. I sat in my powerless, dark, sweaty hut with dejection. 30 seconds later the monkey parade began! No more than 30 feet from our hut! And what do you think those monkeys did as soon as they realized they had an audience? You guessed it. Monkey sex, Act II. These monkeys (and monitor lizards as well), were around throughout our stay. Pretty awesome until I tried to approach baby monkeys for photograph and the male leader nearly attacked me.

In all truthfulness, the highlight of this island was the scuba diving. Jen and I dove down to see half dozen giant Japanese ships sunk during WWII. Some of them over 2 football fields long. It was crazy shit.

No we are safely back in Manila. No monkeys here, but still plenty of opportunity for building true Philipino friendships.

* This is what every bottle of San Miguel says on it

PS: the picture seen is what happens if you google "monkey, cardinals." It is entitled "Boots the Monkey." I don't know what it is, but I can't stop laughing.

Those Crazy Monkeys

My apologies on my absence from the world of blogging for several weeks. I have no one to blame but myself. And my shitty internet connection. And being overworked. And power-outages.

Jen and I just returned from my new favorite holiday at International School Manila entitled “2 Week Fall Break!” Unbelievable how awesome my life has become.

We decided that instead of exploring other exotic countries of Southeast Asia, that we instead would explore some of the 7000 islands of the Philippines. This decision was aided by the fact that some member of the Philippine Work Visa Committee actually has our passports still, and I did not know who exactly to bribe.

We headed south to the island province of Palawan for tropical island paradise. It did not disappoint. Our small plane touched down in the province’s capital, Puerta Princessa. The main attraction here seemed to be the bizarre fact that there were 8 tricycles (local taxis) per every one traveler. A real buyer’s market. I used my slick negotiation skills and non-existent Tagalog to obtain a tricycle ride to the next town, which we all agreed was about 12 km away. The driver promptly drove us exactly 12 km into the middle of a rice field, pointed to his odometer, kicked us off the trike, and drove off. Great. Undaunted, we flagged down a giant jeepney (the Philipino equivalent of a bus) and made our way to the town of Sabang.

In Sabang, one could take the 6 km “Monkey Trail” to the Underground River (a World Heritage site!). This trail involved little more than sweating my balls off until we found ourselves surrounded by about a dozen monkeys staring at us hungrily and waving their opposable thumbs around to show us they meant business. Being accustomed to stupid tourists, the monkeys remained focused on our hands, since in all their past experiences, food occasionally was produced from hands. We did not fall for this. The male leader monkey quickly got bored of us, walked over and gave the business to the female monkey of his choice. I nearly fell over.

I do not have photos of this spontaneous act of monkey sex. Don’t even ask. Even if I did, what sort of blog would this be if I published that type of imagery?

Then we continued along the trail and I nearly fell over again when I saw a leopard about to be eaten by a Komodo dragon! In reality, it was only a sleeping housecat, and a giant monitor lizard.* But these crazy lizards were about 4 feet long and did not even notice me. They had no opposable thumbs, but they also had no natural predators. So they just stared at me and walked past. Thank god no one was giving those goddamned animals any booze!

Eventually we took a boat trip through the Underground River. I don’t remember much about the river though. I couldn’t stop thinking about what horrible things were going to happen when those crazy monkeys got a hold of those god-damned reptiles.

The pics of the craziness

* No housecats were harmed in this blogging episode. I honestly don’t know why.