Manila Stories

I know some of you are wondering why I haven’t written since I arrived in Manila, and mostly the reason is that there’s not that much to write about… My life here is pretty much work and sleep, and my weekends are generally spent recovering from the week.

Not to mention that Manila is kind of a dump. There’s not much to see or do here. There are, however, more malls than you could possibly ever shop in. There are four – FOUR – within less than a ten minute walk from my hotel. That’s all people do here – they shop and they eat. I have made a bit of an effort to go out and see a bit of the city – I went on a walking tour of the old city, which was very interesting and entertaining, but also really depressing. Manila has a very sad history, and I was unaware of most of it – the oppressive Spanish colonial rule and the horrific bombing it received in WWII. Little-known fact -- Manila was the second most destroyed city in WWII after Warsaw. As a result, the city itself is not particularly scenic, and a lot of the old, charming buildings were destroyed many years ago. Manila is one of those capitals that, as a traveler, you arrive in and promptly want to leave. It’s a city of brutal traffic, massive billboards, horrid pollution, and that unsettling juxtaposition of slums and “million dollar” houses.

However, I am going to continue exploring it and see if I can discover something that redeems it…some hidden charm I haven’t found yet. But I’ll probably expend most of my planning energy (which, incidentally, is very low right now) on getting out of Manila.

And I have managed to get out of Manila a couple of times. When I was in Vancouver, I ran into an old housemate, Melissa, who told me a good friend of hers was in the Philippines on a Fullbright scholarship. So she put me in touch with Jenny and we emailed and met up in Manila a few times and a couple weekends ago, I went down to Los Banos, where she lives, a couple hours south of here. It was a great weekend – decadent really. We went for massages at the local spa, had a super yummy/spicy Korean meal, and finished off our packed day with soaking in some very aesthetically pleasing geothermal hot spring pools. We went for a hike the next day to balance out the decadence.

This most recent weekend, I met Jenny and a group of her friends and colleagues in Puerto Galera, one of the top dive spots in the Philippines, on an island two hours south of here. I took the local bus and then a ferry – had forgotten what traveling in Asia is like – I think I’ve gone soft after my years in Europe! We were on Sabang Beach, which is a little seaside village full of cafes, restaurants, hotels, and innumerable dive shops. I did three dives – two during the day and one at night. I’ve never done a night dive before, except for one time in Hawaii when we saw the manta rays, but that was basically descending and observing. This one wasn’t a great dive for me, as I couldn’t get my balance and spent most of the dive adjusting my weight belt, tank, and BCD. I kept tilting to the left, and was trying not to bump into anyone, which kind of detracted from my enjoyment of the dive… And we saw some other divers and I was nervous that I would end up following someone who wasn’t from my dive group, so I kept my eyes glued to my Divemaster’s fins, which were very scenic:) But the day dives were both great – we saw a turtle on the Sunday morning, which was a stroke of luck. It was a weekend of great diving, fun people, and yummy food.

The food options in Manila are a vast improvement over Dublin – I’ll give it that! Mostly it’s just that there’s huge variety – I can eat sushi or Indian or Korean or even Mediterranean. Every Friday night in front of our building there’s a huge street market where you can get rice and bbq and just so many yummy things. And lots of weird things too, that I’m not that interested in trying. For those Survivor watchers, you know there’s always that inevitable “eating” challenge where they have to eat local delicacies like fish brains or something along those lines…well, the Philippines is home to one such delicacy – and really it’s a mainstream food here. There are stalls in food court malls selling “balut.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balut_(egg)

I do consider myself a relatively adventurous eater, but I’m not going to venture into this one.

I’m really enjoying my job here – finding it really engaging, interesting, and rewarding. I spend some time doing a lot of logistics management – making sure details and instructions get properly disseminated, and supervise some of the team leads. I do quite a bit of 1-1 coaching and observing, which I really enjoy – they’re always enlightening sessions, and it gives me a chance to get to know some of the staff better. It’s pretty cool to get to contribute to an operation in this kind of way, to really see a difference as a result of the work I’m doing. I do a bit of documentation work, but I quite enjoy it because the projects are either new documents or major re-writes – none of the tedious updating and maintenance that comes with full-time tech writing.

Culturally, it’s been a very interesting experience. The work culture here is totally different from any Canadian office I’ve ever worked in. The people are very generous and kind, but are also very young and generally immature. I find a lot of the office politics kind of high schoolish. However, there’s great “spirit” here, as evidenced by the totally over-the-top Christmas decorating that went on for over a week. I will take some photos, because words just aren’t enough here. It is quite refreshing to find people so – what’s the opposite of apathetic? That.

I am really looking forward to a couple of weeks at home for Christmas. I know no one will have any sympathy for me, but I’m finding the weather very hard to deal with – it’s so hot and humid and uncomfortable. Everything indoors in air-conditioned, so you can’t dress for the outside weather or you’ll freeze inside, and vice versa. And Christmas just isn’t the same without snow and winter jackets and fuzzy mittens and hot chocolate by the fire. None of which exist here. There is however, plenty of gaudy decoration!

That’s all for now…