BAD DREAM, BAD DREAM

When you see a line of pale gold women resolutely heading toward you, it is time to bail out. Possibly hispanic, most probably Filipina. Is this one of those town fiestas somewhere in the islands? Maybe it's Saint Gudrun's Day in Paso Makalaayan, somewhere in the Visayas.

Many towns there celebrate their saint's days, often with colourful marching bands preceded by majorette troupes with shapely thighs and twirly-girly routines. For reasons which I have never understood it's always on the hottest day of the year. Or decade. Great food, lots of desserts and sweet drinks, and buckets of sweat. Buckets. Of. Sweat. Buckets.

Filipinos do not sweat. White people sweat. I feel that I really need to clarify that, because we Caucasians over there also have a reputation for smelling a bit in hot weather, much like a refuse bin, rabid dog, or rotting corpse. Or at least faint whiffs of death.

Do you really want to be surrounded by thousands of jovial people hepped to the gills on sugar while you are perspiring like you've never perspired before? Possibly not.

Fortunately it was a dream and I left it before it became insufferable.

Filipinos have a great capacity for joyful giddiness.

I myself can last one or two minutes.

When you are in the Visayas you will often hear about mangoes. Cebu is famous for it's mangoes. I once described the snookiepoo of a coworker as having breasts like ripe mangoes, because I didn't like her, and I never heard the end of that.

I have a talent when I'm peevish for saying precisely the wrong thing, deliberately.


In Bacolod, Bulasong, Ilo Ilo, and Cebu City itself it will be over eighty degrees during the day at this time of year, and very humid. Whereas in San Francisco, California, where I presently am, it might hit seventy five. The next few days will cool down gradually, to high mid sixties, which is bearable. Those other places I mentioned will still be in the eighties, and because of the mugginess will feel ten to twenty degrees warmer. It's much like parts of the United States, but with better food, far nicer people, and mangoes.

Out in the Sulu Archipelago many places will be well over eighty.
Bongao, Lugus, Pangutaran, Parang, Sitangkai.
Ninety in Jolo.



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