Tuesday 9 August, 2005

Just chucking something quick in here so you don't think I have died or something. We will be off-site at a planning session for the next three days, and then it is the weekend, so I am not sure when I will get internet access again.

All is well here in Manila. The weather has been a bit cooler over the past three days, as it has been raining - that is a lovely change (and I have managed to be indoors during the driving rain and only been outside during drizzle). Ange and I continue to set up the new flat - it feels more like home now than it did a week ago, although it is still a little devoid of decorations and I still have some boxes and bags to unpack (didn't have much free time over the weekend).

I have been tackling the washing machine which has to be one of the most frustrating experiences of my life, I think! It is a twin tub and if you don't know what that is, don't stress because neither did I before moving here. Basically it means that you have a machine with a tub that fills with water and washes, and then a separate tub for spinning. So the process for washing clothes is this:

1) Put your clothes in the tub with the detergent. Turn on a tap until sufficient water fills the tub and then let it wash.

2) When the incredibly loud buzzer tells you the wash has finished, you go in and grab the hose that releases the water and let enough out of the tub onto the floor of the laundry so that it is almost, but not quite, flooding into the adjoining rooms. Five minutes later, when enough has drained/evapourated to clear the floor, you repeat this process. This continues for about half an hour to an hour, until the tub is empty.

3) You then repeat step one except for without the detergent - this rinses the clothes (more or less!)

4) Repeat step 2 until the tub is empty.

5) Repeat step 3 with fabric softener.

6) Repeat step 2 - however, sometimes you can pre-empt this a little by taking some of the garments out of the tub and putting them into the spinning tub. You can only put a few in at a time so this becomes a juggling act - go and take some clothes and transfer them, then let the water out (while keeping your shoes dry) and then leave it for the five minutes it takes to spin. Then you go and put more in to spin, hang up those that have finished spinning and then let out another bit of water.

It takes quite a few hours to get through a load and is a massive pain in the backside!! Also, the spinning is quite vigorous and I didn't want to subject some of my more delicate clothes to that. So I have clothes hanging up in the laundry that have been there for four days and are almost dry now, after I just hand-wrung them out. I am hoping that I will work out some of the kinks as the weeks pass! I tried to be a smarty pants and put the draining hose down a drain, but only wound up giving myself a (small!) electric shock, so abandoned that solution.

I am also doing boring things like cleaning out cupboards that are a little grubby and getting rid of an accumulated store of marmite jars (with quite a bit of marmite in them - unfortunately we couldn't think of any local Brits we could palm them off on to...)

Also had a hilarious (and frustrating) trip to mega mall to buy some household supplies like a fan and placemats (Ange will never know how close we came to having Donald Duck placemats in our house!) that resulted in me lapping mega mall in a taxi for half an hour while Ange had our groceries checked through (the check out kept scanning our p19.75 (AUD$0.49) stubbies of beer at p160 (AUD$4.00) and then they had to take her credit card and phone some bank. As you queue for half an hour to an hour (no exxageration at all) to get a taxi coming out of the supermarket, I went on a hike to secure one (dragging a trolley up and down these massive curbs and being propositioned left right and center) and finally found one but had to go around and around waiting, listening to the poor cabbie's sob story about his Canadian 'girlfriend' (later revealed to be a one-night stand, which demonstrates a different level of commitment from what I am used to, but I am open to cultural differences of opinion!) who promised to get him a visa and take him to Canada, but then of course vanished... Most taxi drivers are extremely talkative and often seem to expect you to be able to get them into your home country! Or else you just listen to their efforts to migrate - it is a fairly common theme for anyone with nearly enough money to do so - quite sad.

Anyway - it's eight o'clock and I have a lot of papers to read for tomorrow so I am going home (well - to the gym, but that's just semantics)

Toodlepip