I still don’t have a card reader, but a friend of mine took this picture of Amy and I. Hopefully this will serve until I get into the city.
BTW, it’s been almost a week and my pants, shorts and socks are still not dry. Fortunately I got most of my shirts yesterday, so at least I can look like I’m changing my clothes every day.
Yep, don’t worry, there will be some photos up soon. I lost my card reader so I can’t upload any pictures at the moment. I’ll be in the city in a few days and I will buy a new one.
This time around I brought small gifts from America to give to almost everyone I know here. Most of the girls got brand new clothes, and most of the guys got pocketknives and multitools.
I gave a Leatherman Wave to one friend here, and I saw him wearing it on his belt a couple of days later. I asked to see it (because this was a newer model than mine, and I didn’t have the chance to play with it before I gave it to him). He handed it over, and I started opening up the various blades and tools while he looked on. But his eyes kept getting wider and wider. I don’t think he realized that it was anything other than a very heavy pair of pliers up till that point. Perhaps he was wearing it on his belt just to make sure I saw him wearing it.
I gave a Gerber Clutch multitool to another friend of mine here. A few days later I walked up to him with an unopened bottle and asked if he had an opener. He started to walk home to get a bottle opener, but I stopped him and asked if he had his Gerber on him. He said yes and gave it to me. I fiddled with it until I found the opener attachment and then opened the bottle. I handed the Gerber back to him, and just then realized that he had no idea there was a bottle opener in there. He spent the next 20 minutes playing with all the gadgets in the multitool. 
That’s life in the Philippines. Everything that is hard in America is easy here. Everything that is easy in America is impossible here.
I’m sad to report that it was too cloudy here to see the eclipse last night. Oh well, there’s another one in 4 years.
Everyone is asking how long I will be overseas… So I’ll go ahead and address it here: I don’t know.
I have a return ticket for some time in October, and I’ll probably use it, since I’ve already made business commitments to be in Seattle around that time. But what do I do after that? As soon as I figure it out, you’ll be the second to know. Check back here often. 
I’m finally back in the Philippines and it feels good to be settled here again.
The weather has been great but every night at around 9 or 10 we’ve been getting some rain (we are just now entering the rainy season here). That’s good because it cools things off somewhat, but it’s bad because they don’t have clothes dryers here. So my clothes are out on the clothes line getting rained on and taking forever to dry. You would think in a hot climate they would dry in a few hours, but they’ve been on the line for a couple of days now. If it looks like rain again tonight I’ll have someone take the clothes down and hang them inside the house.
Speaking of which, I’m really hoping it will be clear tonight so I can spot the total lunar eclipse around 6:30pm local time.
I’m Steve White, and this is my blog.
At the moment I’m living in the Philippines. I own real estate in Vermont and I spend a lot of time doing business in Seattle, Washington. I speak four languages (English, Thai, Lithuanian, and Visayan, a rare dialect of the Philippines). I speak all of them well enough to get into trouble, but not quite well enough to get back out again.
Sometimes I build log homes or teach others about building them. And sometimes I dabble in photography.