Cebu: non-day 1
11:53 on Friday, December 19, 2003 • Comment
My stay in Manila was short; the day after I returned I booked a ticket to Cebu, the Philippines’ second largest city. I arrived just in time for the tropical depression / typhoon / depressed typhoon to hit this area. I’m hoping to get to the island of Bohol via ferry in a few days; hopefully the weather will cooperate.
I’m spending the little that’s left of the day in my hotel, catching up on some work and answering some questions I’ve been getting via email. It’s a good day for this—it’s raining very hard outside, it’s ridiculously humid and warm, and as a result, I’ll be catching up on some sleep (I’m going on four straight days of 3-4 hours a night) and some work. With one or two [notable] exceptions, weather hasn’t been cooperating very much. The sky is either darkened by rainclouds or by pollution, making it difficult to take photos.
Anyway, more than a few people asked how I’m posting from the Philippines. There are countless internet cafes and bars, but I haven’t availed myself of their services. My aunt and uncle happen to have an older iMac, and all my posts to date (save this one) have been made from that. I write my posts on my Palm Tungsten T3 using the Palm Wireless Keyboard.
My email checking and resource-finding takes place on the road using my Palm and one of a number of connectivity options. This post is coming to you via a used, unlocked bluetooth cellphone and prepaid SIM card which I picked up for cheap at a market in Manila. All of my photos have been taken with my 10D and are stored on an X’s Drive II, a portable storage device which copies photos from card-media such as CF and SD. Once the images are copied from cards to the Xdrive, I can reformat the cards, and this process gives me all the storage capacity I need. I used a similar setup during my trip to Spain and Morocco in 2000/2001.
So far the setup has worked flawlessly. While my desire to be this connected to the website and people I know could certainly be termed pathologically obsessive, I am able to jot down my thoughts and memories in a much more convenient and productive way than having to rely on spending hours in internet cafes. This way, I can write in my journal (which is separate from the etherblog) while waiting at the airport or in traffic—two things I’ve spent many hours doing since arriving in the country.
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