Well, I’m certainly failing at my plan to keep this site regularly updated — and probably failing at my resolution. Maybe I should just accept defeat, perhaps it feels too much like ‘work’ at the moment. Still I have 26 posts sitting in my drafts folder, and while most of these are just a one line idea, if I just finished half of them I’d be well on track.
I’ve been back over a month since my last jaunt to the UK. I had a great time there but this time it definitely felt more like I was coming back home. Although my homecoming wasn’t helped by an unfortunate drunken run-in with a wall a few days before, that left me returning with a corker of a bruise on my forehead and no small amount of shame. It does look like I’ll have a nice scar on the middle of my forehand, although not as bad as it might have been save for some expert patching up (cheers, Steve!)
As well as that I’d been feeling run down and generally under the weather in the UK, a cold that virtually disappeared the minute I stepped back in the humidity outside Manila airport. And so followed some long needed early nights and lazy weekends. Although I’m starting to get out and about again the weather here puts me off any longer trips — well that and the fact that I can’t really face getting on a plane again for the time being.
But the weather … the weather is insane. My first weekend I was back the skies opened and dumped rain on the city, complete with thunder, lightning, the whole works. The word I used at the time, explaining why I wasn’t venturing out the apartment to the pub, was ‘biblical’. Then, an hour after it started, it stopped. And it’s been like that ever since, most nights I can see lightning somewhere in the distance. Occasionally it move’s over where I live and the lightning starts hitting the conductors on the top of the buildings — which is pretty loud if you’re looking out the window on the 26th floor. Still it’s over quickly at the moment, no sign of the massive typhoons that battered the country last year, but it’s not quite the season for that yet. And while it’s not raining it’s just stupidly hot and humid, one place was showing 35C at the weekend. It’s no wonder everyone is feeling tired and wiped out all the time.
So what else has been going on here? Well not much. I did miss writing about one major milestone: on May the 12th I had lived in the Philippines for one year! Although given my previous visits and my frequent travelling maybe I can just call today roughly 365 days of non-cumulative Manila life. Over halfway through my official contract, time to start thinking about what I want to this time next year. To be honest I’m fairly sure I’m going to stay in Manila for a while longer, the reasons I took the job haven’t changed, the UK economy is still mostly screwed, and I hope there’s still lots of things I can contribute here. I guess I have to see how the rest of the year pans out — there’ll be far less travelling so I’ll have more chance to really see what long term life in Manila is like.
Still, lots to do before that, not least deciding if I want to move apartment again. But this post is already too long, and it’s too hot and too late here to get into the pros and cons of moving elsewhere in the city. Maybe next time.