Steve White.net

I swear the Philippines is home to some of the smartest mosquitoes in the world. They bite, I take counter measures, then they bite somewhere else. It has now escalated into an all-out war between the pests and myself.

For example, there’s a booth in the dining room where I sit every day to check my e-mail and read the daily newspapers. The ’skeeters figured this out, and then proceeded to bite my feet for weeks. Because I’m sitting at the table concentrating on something else, I don’t notice until it’s too late. At first I tried some OFF! repellent, but I was always forgetting to use it until after I got attacked. Next I switched to wearing socks. That worked good for a few days but the desparate pests eventually just started biting higher up.

The other day I put a fan under the table that blows air across my legs to prevent the mosquitoes from landing. That worked terrific! Yay!

But when I’m typing on my computer my elbows hang over the edge of the table. So now the mosquitoes have switched to flying up my shirt sleeves and biting my arms. They are definitely adapting to the situation like some futuristic cyborg bugs.

I’m investigating nuclear options now, I’ll keep you posted.

Yeah, I dunno what to say. As a cultural anthropologist*, I’d really like to go into more detail about the whole death / funeral / burial practices here, but anything I say might come out sounding disrespectful to the wonderful people of the Philippines. The things involved are mind-boggling to an American who is used to a nice, clean, sanitary, pre-packaged, McFuneral.

Part of the problem is simply Roman Catholic tradition in these parts, as portrayed by a nine-day novena that involves having the body laying around for nine days in very high temperatures. I suspect this goes back to a time when medical care involved sticks and stones, and having a pronouncement of death from a qualified doctor was basically impossible. So if Grandma wakes up after four days of the novena, you convert your funeral to a party and everyone who came to the island via kayak for the funeral can celebrate.

In the other corner is the temperature danger zone, followed as gospel by professional chefs everywhere. If you calculate almost any reasonable tempurature over this much time, it’s bound to be bad. And as you might know already, the temperature here is far from reasonable.

So what to do? My choice: cremation immediately after I die. If anyone cares enough to hold a novena they can have that with an urn full of my ashes and a big Photoshopped picture of me sleeping peacefully or something. Follow that with sprinkling my ashes at sea, and anyone in the world can visit my grave simply by swimming in the Pacific ocean. I’m on the record, folks!

*(Just kidding about that part.)

There’s an episode of M*A*S*H (season 9, episode Z402) in which there’s a big heat wave and Margaret Houlihan develops a case of prickly heat on her hiney. Margaret keeps running (well, sort of hobbling) over to Colonel Potter to beg for a particular medication that the camp is out of.

As you might have guessed, my butt hurts, and I suspect it’s prickly heat, mostly due to the hot temperatures and excess sweating that goes on here. Rather than going to the local doctor and showing him my fanny, I was trying to remember what the name of the medication was that Margaret wanted — it was camphor. I went to the local pharmacy to buy some but they said they didn’t have it. I looked through the bottles on the shelves myself (just to make sure) and of course it was there. It’s a green oil in a glass bottle, in case you are looking for some.

Camphor oil stings a bit when you first put it on but after a bit it cools off and it is very relieving. I highly recommend it, and it’s only 37 pesos per bottle.

My good friend Skip Ellsworth died on August 6th. We were friends, business partners and, more recently brothers-in-law. Skip was married to Belle, and I married her sister Amy.

The funeral practices in the Philippines are very unusual, at least compared to the way we are used to doing it in the states. All in the same day the body was embalmed, dressed, put into a coffin and delivered by the funeral home back to Skip’s resort. There the body lies in wait for approximately 9 days for a prayer ritual. After that will be the “official” funeral and then burial.

During the nine day prayer ritual, the family avoids cooking fried foods, sweeping the floor, combing their hair, and a few other things that I don’t understand. There are certain members of the family who aren’t even supposed to take showers. All of this is in 90-100f degree weather. In addition, this is the time when friends and family come to visit, drink coffee and play board games like chess. Oh, by the way, this is a 24-hour-per-day routine — according to tradition someone must be awake around the clock to look after the body until the burial.

Anyway, Skip will be missed by everyone who knew him.  I believe the vigil will be going until at least August 14th if you would like to stop by for coffee and chess. (I told you it was unusual).