My Published Articles for ViewsHound: Only in Marinduque, Philippines-An Update

Sunday, August 28, 2016

Only in Marinduque, Philippines-An Update

Chateau Du Mer Main House, Amoingon, Boac, Marindque,Philippines-Our Winter Retreat

Just recently, I posted in my blogs an article written by a friend discussing his recent trip to the Philippines as a Senior Citizen. The article reminded me of my own experiences as a snowbird resident in our second home in the Island of Marinduque. The following is the article I wrote more than two years ago March 3, 2014 to be exact just in case you have not read it.

"This morning a door to door service woke me up at 4:30AM. I was in deep sleep when I heard the newly installed buzzer in our front gate. I thought the kids in the neighborhood were playing with the buzzer as in previous years. The bell rang two more times and I realized is time to wake up and see who is ringing the door bell . I walked barely awake to the front gate about 20 meters and asked what time is it and who is ringing the buzzer in this early morning hours.

I heard an apologetic response, door to door service Sir. What time is it? 4:30AM Sir. Why so early? Please be patient with us Sir. We are still delivering to Buenavista. Our load of fresh vegetables are rotting, that is the reason for this very early delivery.

I opened the gates, 4 small boxes and a long side table with glass top was delivered in my back porch. After checking that the glass top was not broken, the door to door service with another apology went on their way to Buenavista about 45 minutes away. The delivery was part of the mop and pail package that my sister in-law purchased for me in Manila. It cost 600 pesos. It is needed to clean our marble floors in the main house and the tile floors of the conference Hall. The glass top side table and other boxes were for my sister-in-law beach house and cottage.

Thank you dear sister-in-law for ordering the mop as well as my new PC and monitor, but hopefully the next delivery will not be early in the morning as this one.

Another item I want to mention is the dental service in this poor island with no air service from Manila. In general the dental services here are comparable to US standards and are much, much cheaper than the dental cost in California. I had ordered two new dental partials last year. The other day, one of the teeth in my lower partial broke after I eat a small piece of lechon skin ( roasted baby pig).

I tried to call my dentist in his land line several times. His telephone kept on ringing but no one is responding. I got tried ringing his phone, so I decided that my driver and I just drive to his office. Luckily, he was in his office and was able to fix my partial after leaving it overnight. I realize he does not answer his land line. He only respond to his cell phone that I did not have at that time.

Update: Just recently, Macrine had her teeth fixed ( a crown) and it cost us a fortune. As they say when you open your mouth to see a dentist here in US you also open your wallet. Like most Americans, we do not have dental insurance.

The third item I observed that is only in the Philippines is the special check out line for senior citizens in the grocery stores. During our 4 day stay in Manila prior to our land and sea trip to Marinduque, we purchased about a 2 weeks supply of grocery staples, fruits and vegetables. I was accompanied by my sister-in-law who has a senior citizen card and booklet. I was surprised to see a special check out line with seats for waiting only for senior citizens. I believe we got a 5% discount for certain basic food items, but not for alcohol and tobacco. Not much discount, but every penny here in the Philippines counts. There is no such line in the US.

Finally, I want to emphasize that I am really enjoying our 90 days snow birding time here in Marinduque so far. The mornings are cool but in mid day it is getting hot and humid- a sign that the hot summer season in the island Paradise is getting near ".

Update: The weather here in Northern California had been beautiful this past week. Cool in the morning ( in the 60'S and not too hot in the afternoon), sunny and not a single drop of rain!

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Guest Article from Susan Creamer Joy

In The Silence, by Susan Creamer Joy.

Today's guest article is from Susan Creamer Joy. Susan is one of my favorite authors in the ViewsHound community. Susan writes, draws, paints and cobbles together art from found objects making a variety of creations from jewelry to religious shrines. She frequently sports burns on her fingers from her soldering iron, paint on her palms and ink under her fingernails, but her hair is usually combed. When she is not losing time in the creative vortex of her studio, she is likely to be putting her knowledge of metaphysics and esoteric principles including Tarot, numerology, astrology and graphology to good use in consultations. Her children are grown, her husband still works and her four dogs believe she needs serious help. The title of her article is "A Matter Of Love And Death". Thank you Susan.

By the time they reached my bedroom door, I was already sitting up – my stomach ratcheted in the tense grip of an unnamed anxiety; my pillow, unburdened of my drowsy head.

To this day I cannot explain how I heard them coming up those stairs in their bare feet or how I knew that my father struggled to hold his composure as my mother unnaturally clutched at the folds of her dressing gown and followed him through the dark just a little too closely.

As the wooden groan of those old stairs tore into my bones that morning like a hacksaw, all I could see between the predawn shadows was the letter I’d written just hours earlier to my boyfriend, Chris, propped against the lamp on my desk across the room awaiting an envelope.

I had not slept well. It was late November and there had been so many changes since the middle of August when he left for the Air Force in Texas to begin basic training and I began my third new school in as many years.

The conspiracy between fate and the last surge of the Vietnam draft had broken apart the every-waking-minutes of our two-year union with unceremonious indifference. All that night my sleep had been infested by difficult dreams and by the illogical fear that truth and reality were merging into a darkness only a martyr could grasp; and at sixteen, martyrdom seemed reasonable only for the nuns among the poor in Bangladesh

I tried to remind myself that he would be home on leave for Thanksgiving in another few days. It was the only tether to calm I could find, but reviewing the facts offered little relief from my baseless fears.

Chris had been girding his pacifist sensibilities preparing to fight in an unpopular war that had not yet slaughtered its last innocent. I was hovering just over the line of inclusion at an exclusive girl’s school – missing him – and finding myself at odds with these young women and their attachment to propriety and with the prep-school veneer that blinded them to the fact that they were no better than anyone else.

Neither one of us was coping well with the worlds into which we were respectively summoned, and although we both knew that the best hope for any future together depended upon our individual successes apart, it was far from comforting most days.

But in spite of our discomfort, we each did our best; and, of course, there were the letters: Thin, plain-paper sheets with row after row after row of inky blue words penned with the intensity and awkward locutions of a love learned too soon. It had come down to just that little, but without them, I would have had nothing.

Chris was learning to fly. I was learning to drive, and both of us were aching to transport our souls to an earlier time through the hallowed intercourse of memories and dreams. Of course, as with all progress, there was the positive element: We were both clean and drug-free for the first time in years.

Now, without pretense, both healthy cognition and sincere motivation surfaced regularly in my psychology and prompted me to care about myself and to arbitrate against all temptation for a better standing in the world, in school and in my own eyes. I even did my homework.

No longer was I escaping today but, instead, living for my day of escape. Lying still in the dark of my room, I listened to the slow, padded footfall of my parents approaching and looked to the floor and to my history book half hidden beneath the nightstand where I’d tossed it the night before. Even in this early morning dark I could make out the swirls and stars in colored marker and the bubble-formed letters that spelled C H R I S in soft, juvenile curves on the torn book cover I’d fashioned out of a brown paper grocery bag.

I vaguely remembered throwing it there somewhat hastily. I had been doing my homework when a sense of urgency struck and I realized I had not written him as I promised I would and glancing at the clock, I noted it was nine-twenty-three. Why that mattered I had no way of knowing in that strange moment, but within hours, it would be one I would never forget; and although I was becoming drowsy and still needed to finish my work, I felt beyond reason that my letter to him could not wait.

So, I wrote. I would always write. I would always be there. He would always be there.“Suzi."It was my name spoken in the smooth and familiar voice of my mother, although weighted and slow, her head bowed to her chest almost as though she were speaking only to herself.

"Suzi.” She said it again, this time with sharp gravity, like a chisel against stone.

As if on cue, I leaned forward, flanked now by my parents who were sitting on either side of my bed.

I had been waiting for them. I don’t know how. I didn’t know why. The lights in my room remained off, but it seemed that the darkness clung more to them than to me, as though they were holding it there – away from me to give me enough light to see through the next moment. They were crying. My father was crying. My father. “Suzi. We have something very, very bad to tell you." Chris has been in a car accident." And he was killed."

If the world moved forward from that moment, I could not know it. f there were air around me worth breathing, I could not take it in. And if there were another sound beyond the leaden bellow of my own raw grief, I could not hear it.

"Who am I going to talk to? Who am I going to love?” I wailed. Who will love me? In that sodden moment violated by the intrusion of a predawn light that had no business rising, everything I ever believed about happiness, hoped for in life, trusted in or held as my own was annihilated.

After that – there was no after that. After that came months of hollow redundancies that would inform my way of being in the world for years to come. A serial commitment to waking up each morning, remembering he was gone and dedicating the remaining hours to forgetting. To that end I would try anything, drink anything, ingest anything, inject anything. It was a slow and arbitrary suicide by indifference.

Many years later, at 25 years-old and in the midst of a pharmaceutical free-fall leaning dangerously close to terminal, I discovered that I was expecting a child, and after a decade of forgetting, I remembered. I named him Griffin after the legendary winged lion, a symbol of the divine because what he inspired and the miracle that he was, were nothing less. I remembered and I loved again, and I went on to marry and to the gift of two beautiful daughters.

Today my son is struggling not to drown in the same well of drug abuse and apathy that almost swallowed me – his great, divine wings clipped by his own hand; and while it is up to him to restore his place in the sky, I will do my best to help provide an open runway.

In the meantime, I will continue soaring for both of us; bequeathed as I have been, with a determination to fly from a boy whose ragged fate precluded that dream.

Death took one young man from me once upon a dark time. If it has any intention of coming for this one, it will have to go through me. And trust me, it will be in for one hell of a fight.

Note: If you enjoy this article, please let me know.

Sunday, August 28, 2016

Only in Marinduque, Philippines-An Update

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