The Ark
Copyright © 2020 by VeryWellAged
Making sense of it all
Birthday thoughts…1
It’s my birthday, October 14, 2013. I’m not sure why I’m writing this; no one will ever read it. Why would anyone care?
So why am I writing it down? Because, maybe, it’ll help me make sense of what I have become.
What I have become wasn’t ever something I hoped and planned for. It’s not something I could have even imagined. Not one bit.
Let’s start with the small and meaningless but still real stuff.
All my life I hated summer. It was simply too damned hot; I hated humidity. I actively chose, as an adult, to live in cold, northern desert climates. And no, that is not an oxymoron. There are such places.
So the first thing that makes no sense is that I’m living in the tropics, on an island of lush vegetation. It has the things I always disliked: heat, humidity and lots of creepy crawly things. Yeh, like cockroaches two inches long.
The idea of living surrounded by coconut, banana, mango, avocado trees and rice fields was sure as hell not on my bucket list. Rice terraces was a phrase I hadn’t ever heard of. Rice paddies, sure, when I thought about the 1960s and Vietnam. But most certainly not across the road from my house. Fields of pineapples meant an expensive vacation in Hawaii. The type of vacation that I was simply disinterested in taking.
And then there’s my interest in women. I have this thing for long-haired blondes, well bosomed, Nordic types, tall and trim. My wife was most of that, a little shorter than my ideal at five foot seven, but yeh, she had the rest of the package.
She and I split the sheets many years ago and I have been single ever since. She wanted kids; I didn’t. She wanted to travel; I didn’t. She wanted adventure; I wanted the peace and calm of hearth and home.
There are no more blondes in my life now. There are no blondes within a thousand miles of here. At least, not unless they are tourists. The gals here almost exclusively have black hair. They may be the shortest females I have ever been with. Maybe you’ve heard of the land of the itty bitty titties? This is it. And they all want children.
There will be no more dry, cold desert days in my life. Monsoon rains and warm weather are my ever-present companions now.
I don’t swim. I don’t like the ocean. I don’t like to sail or fish. I don’t even like to eat most fish. And now, I live just a couple of kilometers from the salt water of the Pacific Ocean.
I don’t speak multiple languages. I speak English. I failed at both Spanish and French in school. I’m just no good at languages. And now I’m surrounded by folks who speak languages I don’t know and had never heard of. I have no idea what they are saying.
While, where I live is safe in some ways, there’s plenty of reason to believe that just wandering around these islands will put me in danger. And so, here I’m in my comfortable home on our land; a gilded prison of sorts. But there can be other reasons to not be safe.
I’m eminently comfortable. I have all the comforts I need and desire, but outside these walls, with exception of trips to fancy malls, those comforts do not exist. Stark and real poverty is the reality that surrounds me. I have enough money. I’m not of that which surrounds me.
But before all this… The pension, savings and the Social Security checks combined, provided me with a stable income without leaving my cold dry northern desert home. Not enough to go jet-setting around the world but, as I didn’t want to be jet-setting, it was a non-issue.
I was already retired. Not working focused my mind on what I had been missing in my life these last many years. I heard about these online dating sites. Being bored and now very much aware of how lonely my life was, I signed up and tried to strike up chats with a few women from Eastern Europe. They were blonde and pretty. You know, just my type.
But they didn’t have English. I was paying for translation services. It just felt like a scam to milk me of cash. The pictures of the gals were pretty enough, but as I couldn’t talk to them, or even skype/type with them, I wasn’t sure about exactly who I was chatting with.
I gave up on it for a while.
And then, I heard horror story after horror story about these sites. Even if the gal was pretty and for real, once she got to the USA and got her green card, she would bail out on her guy.
It even happened to a guy I know.
I gave up. This was not for me.
Still bored and with far too much time on my hands, I decided to try the US based dating sites. I tried Match.com, eHarmony and a couple of others. But, after seeing those young pretty girls on the foreign sites, what I was seeing on these US sites was not working for me. The matches proposed just were a joke. I gave up on those as well.
I started drinking more than I should. I guess being bored and alone will lead to that. I wasn’t liking what I was becoming.
It was in September of 2004, I was out at a local café one evening, eating some BBQ ribs when I see a fella I know fairly well walk into the place. He wasn’t what you would call a close friend but the place was pretty busy, he’d have to wait a bit and I was sitting alone at my table for four. He was with a young pretty Asian looking gal I didn’t know.
Being a bit nosey, and more than a bit bored, I wave at him and signal that as my table for four had three unused chairs, they might just want to sit with me. Like I said, the place was pretty crowded and he could see that for himself.
It turns out that this fella had met the gal online, travelled to the Philippines to see her, flew back home, filled out some paperwork and got permission to bring the young’un over so he could marry her. They have been married for no more than a week. He’s close to my age and a good forty years older than the gal. Now that gets me scratching my head.
She is really cute. Not a knockout the way I measure gals, but way up there on the scale at any rate. She speaks English at least enough to communicate if not smoothly; she is communicating with me and able to tease in English. No translator needed. It turns out that she is twenty-three years old. The guy is sixty-four.
I’m a little intrigued… Nah… I’m more than intrigued.
The gal is offering to hook me up with one of her friends. I’m not going to take her up on the offer, but it does tell me that there might be many opportunities for me if I looked in that direction. I don’t want to be rude to the gal, so I tell her I’ll give it some thought.
In truth, I give the girl’s friends no thought at all, but that very same evening I do check out websites of Philippine women. I’m not 100% sure I want to go in that direction, but I pay a forty-five dollar registration fee on one site that looks promising and, after filling out my info, I close my browser and figure I’ll come back and look at the girls the next day. It’s late and I’m tired.
I strip down and start the shower. There’s no hot water! Damn.
I go downstairs to check out the hot water heater. There’s water all over the floor. The water heater has cratered.
I have a mess down here. The next five hours are spent shutting off the water going into the heater and then mopping up the mess as well as I can. I’ll have to get help in to take care of some of the damage, that’ll cost me some… and then there’s the cost of a new water heater.
I get to bed a little after 3am. I have no idea how long I’ll be without a water heater. Plumbers are notoriously hard to get on a moment’s notice and I’m not sure if I can find the water heater I need right away.
I spend the next day contacting my insurance company, looking for a replacement heater, looking for a plumber, and hiring a company to come in and pull up carpets and dry all sorts of shit out.
As I have no hot water, I pack a small bag and check in to a Comfort Inn for a couple of days. That night I’m too damned tired to do anything but grab a meal at the café and go to bed.
The next morning, I go back to the house, but pretty much only to let the cleaning crew in. Still, as I’m just hanging out while the crew is working, I fire up my laptop and check into the website that I had found two days ago.
Logging in I find seventeen messages waiting for me from females on the site. Twelve of them I ignore completely after just looking at their photos, but that leaves five. I look at the details of each and there’s no reason to disqualify any of these five. I send a message back to each and shut the computer down. The insurance company adjuster is here and I need to deal with him.
There’s extensive damage downstairs. I’ll need new carpeting. Some woodwork will need to be replaced. I’m on the hook for a new heater, but the insurance will cover the house repairs.
I get a call from the local Sears catalog store. The heater they said they could get me, when I was down there, is not in stock anywhere near here. It’s coming, but not for another week. Did I want to buy a different unit or wait for the one I ordered?
Damn. The one they are offering just is not going to work for me. I’ll have to wait. Damn and shit. More days at the Comfort Inn.
I contact the plumber and tell him what is up. He says he will contact the Sears store and make arrangements to install it when the unit arrives.
I go downtown to a carpet store and select a new carpet. The store will coordinate with the cleaning crew before scheduling the install. I contact a contractor. I’ve used the guy before and hire him to do the woodwork repairs. I drop off paperwork, bids and receipts at the insurance company.
Another day blown. I grab the laptop from the house, stop off at the café for another dinner before heading back to the motel.
There’s nothing I want to watch on the TV. I turn on the laptop and log back into the dating website. More messages greet me. There are responses from the five I had responded to, plus over a dozen more new messages. I look at the new ones first. Six of these are possibly OK, but the rest I delete. I send responses to those six and then open up the mail from the other five gals.
Two are asking for money. I block them. The other three continue to seem nice, but two are saying, ‘when will you come?’ They are happy to correspond if I’m serious, but each is saying I need to come or all we do will amount to nothing.
That gets me thinking. I’m spending money now just so I can have a place to take hot showers. It’s going to take at least a couple of weeks to get the house repaired.
The gals I’m messaging are all very pretty and impossibly young. They are in their twenties and early thirties. I have ignored the messages from the ones who aren’t. That they are far younger than I am doesn’t seem to be an issue for them, much as it didn’t seem to be for the girl who I met here with my friend.
So here I am, sitting in a motel room, looking at photos of pretty females who are saying, come! My house is a mess and will be for a while. What the fuck. Why is this even a question? It’s time to take a trip.
I send nine new replies. That includes the three original ones and the six new ones. To each I say, ‘I will be making plans to fly as soon as I get up tomorrow morning. I will be visiting a number of you gals once I get there. So while I’m coming to meet you, it will not just be you. There will be others. I offer no promises other than I’m coming. I will let you know details of my arrival later.’
I try the TV and give up. There’s nothing worth watching. Time for bed.
Morning comes and with it the realization that I’ll have to do a lot of work to get the cleaning crew, the contractor, the plumber, and the carpet layer all set up to be able to complete things in my absence. I call the contractor first and discuss it with him. He offers to act as a general contractor and manage all of it. It’ll be more money out of my pocket, but I decide to go with it. I give him an advance to pay the subs as needed. I contact the others and inform them of the change in plans. Everyone seems OK with it.
I stop off at my local Wells Fargo bank. I have been told that I can transfer money easily to an account in the Philippines from it should I need that. I also make sure that I can use my Wells Fargo debit card while over there. I’m told it’ll work.
I stop at the county courthouse to see if I can vote absentee before I leave. Exactly how long I’ll be gone is unknown. I can’t vote before I leave. And so, no, if I don’t make it back by November second I won’t be voting this year. Such is life. President Bush may just have to win without my support.
I log back in to the website to see if there are any problem responses. There are three gals of the second batch who are pissy. If I’m going to see other girls too, they don’t want to meet me. OK, that is fine. I delete them from the list.
Of the three of the original batch, I have also gotten replies. They are not asking for money and not balking at my last letter. Good! That leaves six. Let’s see how that works.
And now there are eight more new messages from new girls. Four of these look promising. I send an initial reply to these, but don’t tell them that I’m coming.
All in all, I couldn’t ask for a better start. I sort of figured that there must be something up with the Philippines when the gal I met here was so hot to get me hooked up with her friend. Looks like I wasn’t wrong.
I check online and find that I don’t need a visa to travel to the Philippines. All I need is my passport and I’ll automatically get a twenty-one day visa when I arrive. I already have a passport. Now it’s time to book a ticket.
There are times when, if your itinerary is pretty much open to go whenever, you can get a good fare. Mine is as open as you can get and I gather that, this being late September, it’s a good time to get lower fares to the Philippines in general.
It takes a few hours to nail it down, but I get my tickets. I’ll leave for the Philippines tomorrow. But I need to get to the airport today. I don’t want to do the three plus hour trip and then, with no sleep, fly for most of the day.
Before I leave, I send a message to the first gal I’ll meet, as she is one of two who live in Manila. I’ll message the rest of the gals I actually decide to meet after I have been there for a couple of days.
And then it dawns on me, I’m not sure how to use my cellphone over there. I call Verizon and they tell me my cellphone won’t work outside of the US and Canada. At least that is what the Verizon rep whom I’m talking to tells me. He says Verizon uses something called CDMA and over there they don’t use that. I’m going to be without a phone as soon as I leave the States. I have the guy suspend my service contract until I return. He warns me that all that does is push out the actual date of completion of the contract. Yeh, I get it, but I might as well. I decide to leave the phone at home. No sense in dragging it all over the Philippines so that I can use it at the airport.
I’m equidistant from the Portland and the Seattle-Tacoma airports. This time the least expensive flight is from Portland. It’s between a three and four hour drive to either airport depending on traffic, road construction and weather. Rather than driving my Suburban, I’ll rent a car here and drop it off at the airport. It’ll be cheaper and safer than leaving my vehicle there for at least twenty days and paying for the parking.
Am I sure I’ll be back in twenty days? No, but that’s the basic working plan. The house should be fixed by then. Still, with so many gals to visit and nothing here really pressing, why make assumptions? I have read online that I can extend my stay if I want to.
I get a bag packed, though it’s pretty light. I won’t need any heavy clothing and I suspect I don’t need anything formal. If I’m missing something, I’ll get it when I arrive in the Philippines.
I have a tablet and will take that rather than the notebook. Using that, I can continue to connect with the gals so long as I can find WiFi service. Until I get a cellphone over there, it’ll be my only way of communicating with anyone.
I get to Portland and get a room at the Holiday Inn Express close to the airport. They have WiFi and it’s working.
Logging into the dating website I find I have responses from all the gals of the first group, the three from the second and four from the third group. There are even more messages from newer ones, but I’m ignoring them.
Of the second group of three, none have dropped out. I send an ‘I’m coming’ to the last group of four based on what I sent to the previous group. We will see how many of them drop out now. But in truth, that makes ten and I just can’t imagine meeting ten gals. I can’t even imagine meeting six. I think I’m being a little, or maybe way, too foolish. I probably am.
From what I can see, the girls I have been messaging are scattered over five islands and seven cities or towns. There’s regular air travel between the islands, but not all cities or towns directly. I think it’ll be OK, but that will have to wait until I’m in the Philippines.
In truth, the idea of extending my stay is becoming increasingly attractive. There’s no way I can see all these gals in twenty days. … And, I’m fed up with what has happened with the house.
It’s not just the cost of getting the house fixed back up. It’s the hassle of it all… and for what? So, after it’s fixed, I can be bored and lonely in comfort again? No, I’m not anxious to quickly get back home at all right now.
This trip can take as long as it needs to. I’m fed up with snow, water heaters, heating bills — and they are coming again soon enough — and all the rest of it. Being retired ought to mean more than not showing up at work. Six more hours and then I need to get to the airport. I’m ready for an adventure.
I have booked a room in Pasay which, the gal I’m meeting first tells me, is part of greater Manila and is close to her. That’s where I’ll start. I don’t know much about her other than her name is Princess, she is twenty-six, unmarried, works as a clerk in a retail operation and has a six-year-old child who stays with her parents in what she says is the ‘province,’ as she can’t care for her kid alone.
All the gals seem to have goofy names. So the fact that this one is named Princess, while odd to my ears, doesn’t seem any more odd than other names.
The problem with choosing a flight based on price, is that you can get long layovers. As it is, my flight is via multiple airlines with a stopover in Vancouver and one in Japan. It takes far longer than it might have if I had paid more, but I do get to the airport in Manila at about 9pm, about twenty-eight hours after I boarded my first flight yesterday. I’m exhausted, but glad beyond words that I drove to Portland the day before!
I find a currency exchange booth in the Manila airport and get one hundred and twelve thousand pesos for two thousand dollars. I suspect I have far too much money! The largest denomination is a one thousand peso bill and not all I’m given is in that large denomination. As my credit card and debit card will work here, maybe I shouldn’t have brought so much hard currency.
Anyway, I know I have enough for the taxi! Right now, all I want to do is get to my hotel, which, I read when I booked it, is close to the airport. I need to get some sleep.
The room at the hotel costs a whopping $46 a night, and it’s supposedly a four star hotel. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Can things be that cheap here? It’s cheaper than the Comfort Inn. If it is, then this is a good start. There’s only one small hitch in my plans.
I told Princess where I’m staying and when my flight was scheduled to land in Manila. When I get to the hotel, as I’m walking up, totally beat, to the reservations desk, I find I have a companion.
Princess has a hold on my arm.
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