u/Specific-Month-1755

Looking at a trip I made a while ago and came across these. I love them so much.

Found this in the Philippines. Didn't buy it cuz it cost more than a 26 of rum. But now I know where it is and I might have to splurge

I'm in the Philippines and I always wake up early. I always liked afternoon cigars before but I find these early morning ones when it's dark turning to light absolutely beautiful. Everything is so quiet everything is so calm.

Enjoy the weekend!!

I sent my beautiful girlfriend to Carbon market to get some stuff and she sent me this video.

To note, there is no typhoon currently, this is just regular rain.

Regular rain that has happened for hundreds if not thousands of years.

And I'm sorry if I'm not succinct or exact in my words but I'll try to translate.

She told me that Filipinos are not as smart as other people. And I don't believe it. I believe it's a crutch, an excuse for their behavior. I believe genetically, All humans are pretty much the same and the differences are very small, although I wish that my genetics didn't have a predisposition to skin cancer. But something like that is not a guide to a whole culture.

Everyone is the same. It's not just nature and nurture, I think it's more nurture here. And I get told all the time that I am so lucky that I was born and lived where I did but why?

Recently I was at this place where there is a spiral railroad tunnel that was done by Swiss and Canadian engineers. In 1909 yeah basically 100 years ago. No computers, no nothing just imagine doing your surveying without a total station. Like read the story about how they figured out how tall Mount Everest was, those surveyors were absurd.

It's not the tools it's the people. And she blames the government but I don't think that's the full problem. It's the culture. Omg just imagine if the Philippines was filled with French people!!! There would definitely be cow manure on the parliament doorstep.

My culture looked at a problem and they figured out how to fix it, using the railroad tunnel as an example. Here, the culture just points fingers.

I really don't care if the Philippines develops more or if they decay. I can move anywhere in the world.

I know I'm going to get raked over the coals by the locals, not sure about the expats, but it doesn't matter. Just look at it without emotion and you'll see this is a blame society. When my kids were small I told them that they need to learn to be solution-based people, if they have a problem they can sit down and probably find at least four or five if not more solutions to that problem. I never experienced that here.

And for those locals pretending to be an expat and tell me to go home, I will gladly go home when all of the Filipinos leave my country.

I had a strange thought the other day.  Went to Ocean Park with the girlfriend and she wanted to bring her sister and niece and nephew. Sister was 13 the niece and nephew were a lot smaller.  10ish?

It cost p900 each person for entrance which is not a big deal for me. P4500. 

And I didn't really want to to take the niece and nephew, or even a sister for that matter, but when I thought of how they live and I knew that they would never be able to get there without me, I said fuck it.  I mean the niece and nephew, their parents would never be able to afford this, the sister maybe.

Now we're in the middle of the tour at the touch pool and the nephew is playing with starfish and sea cucumbers I was thinking how about those posts we sometimes see about some kind of simp guy that is taking his girlfriend and the whole basketball team out for lunch at Jollibee or whatever it may be, And I thought that's not me.  But maybe it is.

When I was a kid, my dad took me to do lots of things, he was a scuba diver and a woodworker and into motorcycles and all of that stayed with me.

But my uncle, he was a different guy. And I remember spending afternoons with him, he loved fishing so I learned something different from him that wasn't as important to my dad. 

And I just became that Uncle.  And I was telling the kids while we were in the Amazon area about how Arapaima are air breathing fish and there are freshwater stingrays in the Mekong River.  Ethan at his young age is excited to go scuba diving like his uncle, exactly how I felt about going fishing with my Uncle Tom.

I know there are lots of posts about that but I think for me the deciding factor is, is everyone happy?

I felt good.  The kids were happy. I got hugs and the hand to the forehead.

I'm now Uncle Tom.  A very important influence on me growing up.

This is my attempt at an artistic shot. I'm sitting here in my rancho having a beverage wearing my polarized sunglasses and it's so sweet I can see everything under the water, the rocks the sand the grass and the drop off.

Go to grab the camera and nothing because polarized sunglasses, so I took a shot through my sunglasses and then played with filters and stuff like that and it's kind of semi-decent.

Might not be that cool but what's cool is sitting here looking at the ocean waiting for some turtle to take a breath or spotted eagle rays breaching or dolphins passing by.

Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits.

Today is just sits.

Cloudy all day and it broke when it was time for sunset.

It's all good.

Pura Vida

Kids and dogs are already out in the water.

So I went to my favorite Siri Siri to get some coke. I mean Coke. Anyway she is Chinese origin so there's always something different for sale.

So she asked me if I want some mangoes and I asked if they're green and she says yes and I said no. No mango sazón, which means green mango in Spanish.

But she says they'll be ready in 3 days so I say okay and she said they're actually ready right now for mango shake which I'm not used to because I'm used to Latin American mangoes.

So I said okay, I'll take a couple, like two or three and I asked her how much? And she says no, this is from my farm.

She wouldn't take money.

Fuk I love the province. Anyone had this happen to them in Landers or Robinsons in the big city?

Unfortunately I hit the stop button before I can get the shake in.

I bought a five five cigar variety pack of My Father and I love them all especially the blue one. This one is great too but not out of the park.

I'm sitting having my coffee 8:30 in the morning and my neighbors are coming home from a night of fishing. They usually leave around 2:00 or 3:00 a.m.

Where I am the waves come from a certain direction for about 6 months of the year just because of the rotation and tilt of the Earth and all of that other stuff.

It's been dead calm for a week But now it's changed. It's the start of rainy season

Rainy season in the Philippines is coming so when I smelled that rain It was like taking a whiff of pure eucalyptus oil on my reptilian brain.

I just wish it was a Toro and not a robusto.

Went to pay my rent and was complaining about the heat again like usual and my landlord said that the rainy season starts soon, in May.

When in May?

May.

Okay there's like 30 days is it at start or the end?

May.

I guess it meant May 3rd. So good!!