^lightening storm from evening before ^
Thursday arrived and we didn’t have much planned for the day , I had set aside the morning to get up-to date and we had also extended our accommodation for one more night.
The hotel didn’t have the same room available so we got an upgrade to the White House (different kind to where the President sleeps). at the most northern end of the property sits a 2 story building with white columns and ping granite floors . Each floor has two rooms and a hood sized bathroom.
At 11am the hotel staff let us know that we can change room and as we gather our things. there is a middle aged couple who we presume are taking the room we have been In.
Our new room in the White House is much nicer and I wonder why they couldn’t give it to us in the first instance.
Marge has been texting Tony’s girlfriend Tess arranging for us to head over to there apartment to meet them at around 2pm. I have made note that we need to fuel the scooter before we return it tomorrow and I also need to find a pharmacy as my sickness, although is not showing any positive results on my RAT tests , I’m just a sweaty mess all day and night. It’s not a cold, it like lethargy with slight fever…. My guess is malaria! Or some dirty food I have eaten ….. or I’m just a big pussy
The town is quiet today and as we leave the accommodation on the scooter the streets are quiet and uncontested. We have to head down to the port area to fill the scooter up at the Shell gas station. The tank is about 4L and we guess how many peso’s it’s going to take to fill the guesses we’re 310 and 417. Marge won as the total was 362P. The rental bikes here aren’t particularly well maintained and I had Olaf the gas guru check the pressures as well as the bike felt like a soggy sponge heading down to Calapan on Tuesday.
The tyres were at around 17psi so Olaf did his magic and got us back up to the 30 mark , we should now get better fuel efficiency as well as handling!
We headed back from the shell down into the town of Puerto Galera and found the Mercury Drug store …. The same drugstore that has nothing for covering tattoos…. Or sunburn as how your body interprets the damage from a tattoo needle. I let Marge go in and grab the paracetamol and ibuprofen to try take the edge off my sweat.
Tess and Tony’s place is located 1 street back of the Main Street behind the local supermarket. Tony retired 3 years ago and decided to move out to the Philipines and met Tess on Facebook. They live in a modest 3 bedroom apartment which has good sized living area with kitchen attached. The house costs him 250usd per month.
Tess has 2 children from a previous marriage and they also live in the same house, Tony spends his days crusing on his scooter around the island and tinkering with new toys that he has purchased online from China , however according to Tess most of the toys from China are junk and end up braking … sometimes before they even arrive at the door from the courier
At around 2:45 it starts raining heavily so we delay our trip down to the bikini bar as riding in heavy rain is just no fun , it’s not cold but just not comfortable. Tony spends this time telling me about some motorcycle he has be reading up on. I don’t know much about motor cycles but from what he describes, this is a motorcycle like no other.
The bike is called Y2K and as per usual a group of Americans who were bored one day decided that putting a Rolls Royce helicopter jet unit in a bike was a good idea. The bike produces 420bhp and can be run of almost any fuel you want to throw at it… petrol, diesel, kerosene, aviation gas. Further more it puts out 2000btu’s of heat put the exhaust pipe which could easily swallow a football. The bike is pretty and sleek and he tells me he has found a second hand one in Ontario that is selling for half of its original retail …… which is still 110000$
At 345pm the rain is easing so Tony shows me on a map where we are heading. It’s a short ride of only about 20 minutes over at Sabang beach
Sabang beach is a main tourist area of the Puerto galera area , it has a lot of dive resorts scattered around the bay. Tony tells us that after lights out the lady’s of the night come out to try get there next victim at the local bars. It’s just on 4:15 so we are safe he tells us ……. Tess shoots Tony a look of “how do you know” and Tony casually wanders along the esplanade pretending like he didn’t just get pulled into line. The bike parking is at one end of the beach and the walk to the Bikini bar is about 300 meters. From there you take a free boat out to a pontoon that is floating in the bay scattered in flags from different countries.
The bar has about 10 tables on the first level and another half dozen on the second. The bar encourages its patrons to have fun and relax…. And if you want to swim just dive off the edge and relax. For a free boat ride to the bar I assumed that the drinks are going to be expensive but they are no more than buying a drink at the bar on shore which is surprising.
Our time on the floating bar passes buy and there is a gentleman sitting opposite to me in his late 40s reading a kindle, I ask him what’s flavour of the week and he turn it around and shouts out “Tokyo Vice”. It’s about an American reporter on the police beat in Tokyo Japan.
The gentleman reading the book is names Stephen and he is spending time in Puerto Galera staying on the beach and diving every day to get his dive master ticket , which from what I gather is 3000 dives.
Stephen is a 49 year old Caucasian male who is British by blood but grew up in Honk Kong as a child, he studied civil and structural engineering and that job had take him across most of Asia’s main city’s managing construction of everything from apartment complexes to shopping malls and sky scrapers. Due to the pandemic his employer figured out he could get 2 mangers for the price 1 salary and Stephen was overnight no longer in the lime light
Stephen has been in Puerto Galera and last time he was here was when he was 12 years old in holiday with his parents. Stephen like most dirty old men is dating someone half his age that works at the bar here and weirdly just hangs at the bar while she works in her bikini …. which seems yeah just odd.. but each to their own.
Stephen has a plan that for his 50th in September on the day he turns, he will have completed his 3000th dive to become a Dive master, Turn 50, and a few of his old friends are flying out yo get rotten drunk on the Bikini Bar!
Stephen is also involved in a startup company called Tidal that he and a friend came up with on a men’s mental health forum in the UK, they make crickets that have Ocean Plastic in their construction, further more they have also got the Jamaican Cricket teams contract for their gear to help promote the brand which cost them a little over $5000.00GBP to secure the deal for 3 years which sounds relatively cheap.
tidal will also replace any broken bat up to 2 times no questions asked….. after that you have to buy a new one… but this however is a benefit very few Bat Manufacturers offer . father more they are trying to strike a deal with the UK Education office to supply all the cricket gear to schools at a cheaper rate than their current contract…… in all of this i don’t think he realised i was actually absorbing this like a sponge.
The second Business he is involved with which spurs of the the first idea is the creation of Tyre Compounds with Parelli in Italy. through the contact for the Tidal brand creation he got put in contact with a Tyre engineer at Parelli and with Stephens Contact at Oxford University doing research on recycled Rubber for tyres have come up with a special Bonding molecule that allows 30% recycle rubber to behave like a new Tyre compound. this in turn had been shared with his contact at Parelli and in his words is a Eureka moment as Parelli have been trying to make a 100% recycled rubber tyre that just doesn’t hold up in real world testing.
in Stephens words the patent has been filed and the first step is trying to get it into the FIA F1 Regulations for 2023, Stephens contact at Parelli is in F1 Tyre module development but the technology will be sold to the rubber manufacturers rather than the tyre companies themselves. they way they can supply at a Base material (wholesale) cost opposed to a manufactured goods royalty per unit….which makes’ sense …… ill probably be sued now for posting this…. but oh well.
after my long chat with Stephen. Tess and Tony were hungry so it was time to leave the bar, the bill came to 840 Peso’s which was for 4 people having a good time for 2.5 hours which equivalates to 26.25NZD
and further more for my Scottish father and his love of value for money ….0.1766 Cents per minute.. which i think is better value for money than a Leonard Cohen concert in Christchurch that had 3 encores
!
Tess and Marge were feeling like Korean and Tony was in a Sassy mood about it as he doesn’t like Kimchi…. which i said i could agree but then their is kimchi and…. really old gross fermented kimchi and the fresh stuff was nice , but only a garnish for the food… you don’t really eat it on its own.
we found the most expensive Korean restaurant in the bay area (by accident i may add)…. which actually had customers and sat down. as a group we ordered
– 1 Plain Ramen
-1 Spicey Ramen
-1 Chicken Feet
-Fried Squid
-Fried Prawns
-Rice
Let me start by saying the Chickens Feed was purely ordered out of curiosity ….. Let me also tell you…. there is no flavor or pleasure in eating them…. they are….. and excuse my cultured language on this topic…
FUCKING DISGUSTING AND SHOULD BE ABOLISHED AS A FORM OF FOOD…..LEAVE IT FOR THE DOGS!.
glad that is off my chest…
the Meal cost around 2500 for the 4 of us so on a Per-head basis it worked out at 600 Peso’s which in calculations is 19.53 NZD each…. bank breaking !
we thanked Tony and Tess for the nice Afternoon and headed back to the carpark.
on our walk back the ladies of the night were coming out in their Red Satin Dresses to suck the life force out of what ever white man they could find walking the streets or sitting at the bar alone, funnily enough tony points out that the Red Dress clad walking tuna Cans will give his Partner the Evils as for her to have a white man is a topic of huge jealousy… and by his comment… he was right.
the ride back to the resort was cold and wet but we did not get drenched however the weather for the first time was getting cold.
upon returning to the white house and getting back to the room to dry off i felt cold to the core…. this is the first time i have been cold in 4 weeks and at this point i have to i have to put my track pants on at my Ice Breaker on, because I’m still wet what i don’t know is that i also have the Sweats and a temperature that I’m burning up from…..Great full blown sickness.
my Sleep for the evening was broken and i woke up almost every hour on the hour. Shivering and exhausted…. Naturally as I couldn’t sleep and was passing in and out of a disorientated dream land I finished the 5th book in the John Corey Nelson demille series……and googled my symptoms on webMD
Naturally WebMD said I have some form of debilitating cancer that needs medical attention ASAP… It also had this as the top 3 options
-Malaria
-Dengue fever
-Typhoid Fever
all of which have similar symptoms but yes… Never use WebMD as it will not help you sleep one bit.
on that note I will leave you a note from sir Charles k. Kao. The vice chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and developed the Fibre Optical network cable that I allowing the world to interact from thousands of miles away.
“ideas do not always come in a flash but by diligent trial-and-error experiments that take time and thought.” -Charles K. Kao-1933-2018
Quantum Entanglement 