omg rooster tilt…

I am not a country or farm person. I love cement, highways, malls, highrises, cafes and clubs. I get excited when I see skylines of 100 floor highrises and complex overpass highway systems like this:

I also love bridges and cities overflowing onto rivers like Brisbane:

I live right in the heart of Makati in Manila, Philippines. There are lots of highrises here:

So, why, in the name of Buddah, do I get waken up EVERY FREAKING MORNING by the sound of dozens of roosters crowing? Why Buddah Why?!?

If you haven’t heard a rooster crow, and I’m not sure I ever had until I moved here, it is close to the most annoying sound on the face of the planet. Every morning, at 5:30, dozens of roosters that people must be keeping as pets in their highrise apartments all start crowing and don’t stop for 45min.

There are some situations I can think of where I might find the sound of a lone rooster crowing quaint or cute, maybe if I was in some lovely country getaway with a very cute girl in my arms and the rooster woke me up to the crisp smell of a fresh, wonderful day. But there is never a girl in my arms, I live in the freaking city, and I’m usually hungover and waking up to the bleak, depressing prospect of getting battered and punished on the poker tables yet again.

Six months of this and I’m ready to go out and buy a sniper rifle and start taking out these freaking roosters. It’s ridiculous. I can understand that some people might keep hens in their inner-city apartments if they are free-range egg loving hippies or perhaps they spend all their money on rent and need to grow their own eggs, but roosters? WTF? Why are there DOZENS of roosters crowing every morning outside my 18th floor inner-city apartment?

I am a sensitive-type person who doesn’t enjoy killing animals. I like to shoo bugs away or trap them and release them outside, etc. I would feel terrible if I accidentally stepped on a lizard or whatever and killed it. When I was a kid living in Bangkok, my dad took me to the markets once and I saw some chickens getting killed and it scarred me for life. First they slit their throats and drain the blood out while the chicken is alive, then they throw the poor things into a huge pot of boiling water as it flutters around with a slit neck…and that’s all I can remember. I think I passed out when my one of the chicken-killing ladies offered me a bowl of the chicken blood.

But if I could find these roosters, I would wring their freaking necks and enjoy it. I wouldn’t even be killing them for their drumsticks, I would be purely doing it for the fun of it. I spend most mornings fantasising about killing these roosters. It’s becoming an obsession. I think about crafty plans to seek the little buggers out and think up ways to murder them slowly. I would like to collect all roosters in a 100m radius of my apartment and fly them to Bangkok for the chicken-slaughterer’s to get their grubby hands on them and I think I’d enjoy the process this time. Arrggghhh they just won’t stop!!!!!!!!!

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bored update…

I think Rachel Bilson is the cutest girl currently alive. I am considering stalking her. From now on, I have decided I will only have Rachel Bilson pics on my blog.

I have almost no more cash here in Manila which is a big relief, as I’ve been a bit stressed, having some large amounts lying around as I still can’t do banking here. I shipped off my cash with some Australian guys so I am now living stress-free. So to any prospective thieves, there is nothing of value to steal anymore except maybe my awesome 9:1 printer/fax/copier/scanner/phone/etc which I almost never use, but which I will guard with my life.

I had to fire my maid this week after she stole $100 (about 5000 pesos) from my desk. Whenever I asked her for it back, she would make classic manila style excuses and denials, and then she broke down last week and admitted she “borrowed it” and spent it. She promised to pay it back and I said she can simply work off the debt quickly (I pay her about 2500 peso a week for 15hrs per week work effort, but she only ever does about 3hrs a week) so it would only take her a fortnight. I sent her a message on Wednesday last week telling her she could take the day off and pls show up on Friday. She has not shown since then so I messaged her today (the following Tues) and she responds “You said I could come in on Friday so I will come in next Friday.” She’s shown up for work about 1 day a week for last couple months and I kept on paying her each week and pleading with her to pls attend her job more, but obviously she picked me for a sucker and I decided I had enough of being a sucker so I had to finally let her go. If she ever shows up with the $100 I will let her keep it, but if I was a bookmaker, the odds of her returning that $100 would be something in the range of South Africa winning the RWC, so like 150:1.

There is a funny pattern sometimes here in Manila where it seems the more generous you are, the more you get screwed. I had a massage the other day for my peddlar shoulders, and it was a really good massage so I gave the girl like 5x what she asked for, which wasn’t all that much - she definitely deserved it. She immediately realised I was some kind of generous fish moron, so she grabs onto me demanding more, refusing to let me leave. I was not impressed as she was hanging onto my arm dragging me to the ground, her eyes glazed over with manic greed. When I spoke to the manager later, I was told the girl claimed I never paid her. So sick.

When I bought a TV when I got here, I tipped the salesman $50 as he was really competent, professional, gave me good advice and made sure the TV was delivered on time, which for Manila, is nothing short of a freaking spectacular miracle. Rather than be grateful for the very generous tip, he then screwed me a number of times before I wisened up. The cable quality here is really crap, so he advised me to hire his friend at VERY expensive rates to illegally install something to increase the cable signal. When that didn’t work, he advised me I needed a $100 adaptor or something (I don’t know crap about anything technical) so I bought the adaptor off him, but was concerned when he arrived with this little plug which was not packaged. He “installed” this plug which, of course, did not improve the signal in the slightest. In the midst of all this, I had promised him $5 a VCD if he brings me a list of TV shows I really wanted (I had no internet at this stage and was going stir-crazy). The VCDs sell for something like $1 or $2 so I was giving him good markup on his promise the quality would be excellent. I bought the VCDs with the adaptor and 90% of them didn’t work or were in Chinese or whatever.

I have many more stories like this, and its pretty sad, but I guess that’s the way it goes.

I learned a valuable lesson about why my bribes weren’t working this week. Previously, I have stood dumbfounded as people just ignored me when I offered huge bribes for things I needed desperately, like offering 5000 pesos for this guy to send a fax I needed sent immediately. I could never understand why this was, but I now think they just thought I was crazy and therefore didn’t take me seriously. My gym hours in the building are 10am-10pm and I wanted to go to the gym at 11pm the other night. I asked the night receptionist if he could open the gym for me and he said “sorry sir that’s impossible after 10pm”. I tried offering a tiny bribe, I handed him 50 pesos, and he beat me to the gym doors to unlock them.

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and people say blondes aren’t smrt…

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appt

Ear drum much better, healing already. Doc said will heal on its own in a month. Still a bit painful though when swallowing or yawning.

Went out night before with all the Aus boys, got pretty drunk, dropped/lost $2500 usd somewhere as I was so wasted. Was pretty tilted from that, hate stupid expensive mistakes like that.

Slept a lot last night, woke up, felt like crap. Put up with 1 hour taxi ride in heat to Hyatt through Manila traffic moving at about 10km an hour. Sick tired and tilted by time I arrived.

Tournament very well organised, except absolutely no drink/food service for first 2-3 hours. Went to pick up food in the middle of level 2, spent 15 tilted minutes running around Hyatt dealing with endless morons. Returned to table with no food. Beyond tilted.

Super donkey next to me won’t stop talking to me. Trying to tell me about his poker energy drinks company. Asks me whether trips beats 2 pair. I put in my headphones. He pulls one out and asks if he can share my iPod. He touches me on arm twice to get my attention as I’m ignoring him. I pray for his death. He doesn’t die. Beyond tilted.

It’s freezing in the poker room. I’m shivering and yawning. Ear drum feels like its about to explode every time I yawn but I can’t stop for some reason. Forgot to bring jacket. It’s 35 degrees outside and humid. I forgot that in every hot city, they always make it freezing inside any closed area.

Had KK twice in first level (25/50). 1st KK, I raise after early nit limper, he calls. Flop 9-6-5 rainbow, he checks, I bet pot, he calls. Turn 5. Check/check. River 2 he bets 75% pot, he wants call so bad, I figure I can muck here and save myself some money but I call. He has 99. Alec Traheo on my table can’t believe I didn’t get it on turn, I say I figure I could have saved 1500 by folding river. Alec doesn’t believe me.

A few hands later, I raise with red KK, fish calls, another guy calls. Flop J-9c-8c. I bet, both players call. Turn 4h, I check, fish bets, other guy folds, I call. River 8, I check, fish bets small, I call. He has K8 no draw. I’m down to 4k. I peddle off some more calling with pairs, missing flops, down to 2k, I openlimp AA in MP, folded to Alec who puts me in with AJo, I giggle like a live poker loving fag would and double up to 4k.

Old guy on my other side who snapped my KK with his 99 wants to talk about a recent bad beat he’s suffered. I try ignore him. He won’t stop. I ask him to stop. He won’t stop. I beg him to stop. He won’t stop. I pray for his death. He doesn’t die. Beyond tilted.

Alec raises a guy in a big pot, and the guy just calls, leaving himself about 2500 (pot is about 15k). Alec bets 1500 on river and the guy thinks for 6 minutes before I call clock on him and he folds in pretend agony. Beyond tilted. Want to scream. Thinking violent thoughts. Consider throwing remaining chips at villain’s head. Decide to peddle my short stack instead. Regret decision in hindsight.

I peddle down to 2k calling a few more pairs that miss flops, button openraises, I push AQ in BB, he has AA, game over.

Tournaments are fucken retarded.

Full ring is fucken retarded.

Live poker is beyond fucken retarded. We were doing a racy 15 hands per hour.

Live poker players are fucken retarded. I hate them so much. I hate them more than is reasonably sane to hate human beings. So awesome when you’re pumping along at 15 hands an hour, and a live player takes 6 min to pretend he has something when he’s ALWAYS going to fold. And then he folds.

I will never play live poker or a live tournament ever again. I know I say it all the time, but I really mean it this time. I don’t know why I put myself through that tilt. It’s sick.

After Alec busts out with full house cooler, I peddle 1k off him playing Russian on sick upswing. Get off tilt marginally. Swear once again to never play live poker or tournaments ever again. Go home, write this, sleep.

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manila hospital adventure pt 2…

So after a couple hours, the pain in my ear starting increasing and I dropped my bravado and raced for Makati Medical Emergency after being unable to reach them on the phone. This was after 11pm so the normal half hour taxi ride took about 3 min. I ran into the emergency room looking forward to the prospect of cute nurses showering me in sympathy but this was not to be.

It’s a Monday night so things were pretty quiet and there were lots of staff around, just chilling and chatting. Unfortunately in Manila, this doesn’t translate into quick service. Eventually, one nurse broke herself away from her relaxed conversation with the receptionist to see this annoying foreigner who had incoveniently wandered into her emergency ward.

She takes my blood pressure and temperature after I explain to her that whilst I would like to keep the ear, if she needs to cut it off to stop the pain, I will sign the papers right then and there. In my entire life, whenever someone takes my blood pressure, they always go “wow that’s high.” They then always move on to other things. I should probably ask someone about that someday. Anyway, tonight, the nurse said, “That’s high!” and then begins to ask me how many cigarettes I smoke, and how much alcohol I drink. I said “maybe 4-6 glasses a day?” and she says, “Is it closer to 4 or 6?” I would yell at her, but I’m too dizzy from the pain to be boisterous. She eventually gets the hint that maybe she should be worrying herself with my ear and not my alcohol consumption and shows me a cute “Pain Scale” with smiley faces measuring from 1 to 10 and tells me to point out my level of pain. I said “TEN!!!” and I swear to buddah she writes down “4″. I yell “TENNNNN!!!” and she changes it to “5″. I kid you not.

She then leads me to the emergency waiting room where I discover things are not actually as quiet as they seemed in reception. The staff all seem to be pretty relaxed though, laughing and talking, and exchanging flirtatious remarks with each other. I’m told to take a seat: “For awhile Sir, for awhile.” Filipinos love saying “for awhile, for awhile”. There are few phrases more frightening when you are in a hurry or, for the sake of argument, your ear drum is about to burst.

I am too broken from the pain to fight, so I crumple into a chair in the middle of a variety of Monday night emergencies, broken arm here, feverish looking lady there, old person drooling and muttering next to me. Old person asks me where I’m from. I say “Makati.” She says, “Oh, you are Filipino?” I think about my pasty white skin and answer “Yes.” She then asks me something in Tagalog. I reply “Segay segay (ok, ok)”, the only word I know in Tagalog. Apparently, this is not an appropriate answer to her question and I realise the jig is up. She looks confused and leaves me alone. I figure I am done for, and I wonder if I’ve lived a good life. The answer was not comforting.

I sit there for about half an hour and no one seems to be getting treated. Across from me, in an empty stall, lies a man on a stretcher who isn’t moving. I took a photo to prove that I’m not making it up. I try to convince myself he is alive, with limited success.

No one attends to his inanimate body (or corpse) the entire time I sit there, or attends to anyone else it seems, for that matter. I decide I cannot die in this emergency twilight zone of inactivity and think “WWJAZCD?” (What Would James Alexander Zero Cox Do?) The answer hits me in a flash, Zero would find where they keep the morphine and self-medicate, and I shoot a silent prayer of gratitude to Zero, wherever he is (probably in some gorgeous model’s arms), for the inspiration.

I scramble to my feet to find the morphine when a passing intern asks me what’s wrong. I tell her I am about to die from ear injury. She says, “Well I’d better take a look at it then.” Apparently to get treated, all I needed to do was ask. I laugh to myself as I pass all the dying people who aren’t smart enough to ask for treatment in the emergency room. And I say a silent prayer for their souls. And for mine, for skipping the line.

The young intern has to wait for a specialised piece of equipment to look at my ear, so we sit chatting for about 15 min. Racked with guilt at skipping the line, I ask her if perhaps she wants to treat some of the emergencies whilst we wait for the ear scope or whatever to arrive. She changes the subject. She tells me that I should not allow people to clean my ear like the ladies do at Bruno’s. I thank her for the advice and promise to keep that in mind in the future. She tells me that its dangerous. I ask her where she was with this advice about 6 hours ago.

The tube or whatever finally arrives, and she takes a painful look at my left ear, then my right ear, and says: “Which ear did you say was hurting?” I groan: “Left, my left!” She says, “Hmmm, I don’t really know what I’m looking for.” I groan again. She says, “I’d better give you something for the pain.” I tell her I love her. She shoots me up with something, and I feel pretty damn good now. She then gives me a script for Hydrogen Peroxide, which I’m supposed to pour down my ear. The name of this product sounds vaugely familiar to me, but I can’t place it. I buy the stuff at the pharmacy, take it home and pour it down my ear. It bubbles furiously for about 3 minutes. As it’s bubbling, I remember where I’ve heard “Hydrogen Peroxide” before - I used it to bleach my hair when I was 17. Wonderful, I’ve just poured this bleach down my ear. The instructions say I need to wash my ear out with rubbing alcohol like Dettol after to rid the ear of the Hydrogen Peroxide to avoid infection. The instructions say if the alcohol burns or stings, its a sign of a perforated ear drum and that I should seek medical help immediately. I tentatively drop some Dettol down my ear, which immedaitely explodes into burning, stinging pain. Uh oh….

Hopefully, tomorrow they will staff the hospital with someone who “knows what to look for”…..

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manila hospital dilemmas…

There is a chain of men’s barber shops in Manila called “Bruno’s”. Bruno’s is a magical place of relaxation and peacefulness. I could easily spend a couple hours every day in there getting facials (the manly kind), massages, pedicures and the like. But in the interest of getting stuff done, I limit myself to only one visit a month to get a haircut, facial, massage, and general much-needed improvement in presentation.

I gleefully cross off the days on my calendar until I’m allowed to visit Bruno’s again, and today was the day. I woke up excited and raced down to my barber (Boyet) at Bruno’s @ Greenbelt to have my monthly 3 hour session.

Everything was going wonderfully and I had drifted peacefully off to sleep with my hair dreched in some sweet fruity conditioner of some kind, a layer of soothing cream plastered on my face, cucumbers on my eyes, my feet in a warm tingly pleasant foot bath, and a masseuse working out the knots in my legs when I was rudely awoken by a sharp pain in my left ear. I ripped off the facial mask to glower at the lady who was cleaning my ears. It was a new girl I had not seen before, obviously just out of Ear Cleaning School, who almost certainly graduated at the bottom of her class, judging by her technique. Boyet rushed over in a panic to see what had gone wrong, but he was on my left side so I couldn’t hear what he was saying - all I could hear from my left ear was a low buzzing sound as my ear radiated in pain.

In a panic, and with Boyet staying on my right side to calm me and communicate with me effectively, I rushed out of Bruno’s with a plan to head for the nearest emergency room. As I run out of Bruno’s, Boyet yells “I hope you come again.” I love Boyet, but I did not appreciate his sense of humour at that moment. As I wandered the streets of Makati in a buzzing daze of confusion, I slowly came to my senses.

The only emergency room I am aware of is at the Makati Medical Centre, a big hospital. As I made a beeline for Makati Medical, through the buzzing and the pain, I remembered the last few times I had been to Makati Medical and my fervent oaths never to put myself through that pain again. I decided to “sleep on it”, if I could, and revisit the decision later in the night, if the buzzing and pain did not decrease.

As I arrived home, all out of Valium and desperately in need of a pick-me-up, I decided to end my boycott (2 days and counting…) of Jethro’s blog as Jethro is a proud and stubborn man who will never apologise for his speedist bashing of the other day, even if he knows that Speed Readers are people too. And I shouldn’t hurt myself with a boycott that won’t achieve anything. As fortune would have it, just when I’m toying with this idea of flirting with the Makati Medical emergency room, I read all about Jethro’s adventures at Makati Medical today. You can read about it on his blog, but it brought back all the painful memories for me of my three experiences at that wonderful madhouse institution and the reasons for my solemn oaths to never visit that house of horrors again.

When I first arrived in Manila, a friend of mine had to visit Makati Medical to get some stiches out of his head (he rolled his car). He said, “I’ll just be 10 minutes.” Now, I was still somewhat naive in the ways of Manila time, but I wasn’t so stupid as to not realise that his 10 minutes would really be something more like an hour, so I decided to see a doctor whilst I was there as I’d been getting some cramps and hot flushes and some morning sickness, and I thought I’d better rule out pregnancy. I sweet-talked a nurse into giving me directions for a doctor’s office, and she ushered me into a little waiting room, where I waited patiently for about half an hour but no one arrived. Realising my sweet-talking was not of the James Alexander Zero Cox quality, I emerged from the waiting room to try again. I was ushered into another waiting room by another nurse, and still no doctor arrived.

I bumped into my friend when I emerged again and he told me he was having no luck finding a doctor to take the stiches out. I told him to stop bothering me with details as I had my own concerns. We had been in Makati Medical for over an hour when I decided to go straight to a doctor and not waste time with these nurse middlemen. I wandered the halls and grabbed the first doctor I saw. He ushered me into a waiting room that may or may not have been a janitor’s closet, and told me he would be back in a few minutes. 20 minutes later, my friend had gotten his stiches out and told me we had to go. The doctor never returned to the janitor’s closet.

I realised I may need to make an appointment should I wish to visit that place again. The next day, I made an appointment for 4pm and went to see a doctor. I arrived at Makati Medical with a room number at 3:50pm. After much pain and wandering, with many false directions given to me by staff, I arrived at the doctor’s room at 4:15, apologising for being late. I needn’t have worried. At 4:45, after some enjoyable small talk with his receptionist, the doctor wandered into his room for our appointment. After some examination, he informed me I was not pregnant but merely had some mild food poisoning and he gave me some scripts. He also told me he wanted to do an endoscopy (?) and stick a tube down my throat into my stomach to check for some stuff. I would need to go under for the mild surgery at 8am the next day. As I had been under a lot of stress, I thought I would get a Valium script off him whilst I was there. He said, “No problem, but I charge a personal fee of $50 for every Valium script I hand out.” I asked what the fee was for. He said the fee was for him. I asked what happened if I refused to pay the $50. He said he wouldn’t give me the Valium prescription. I said, “Oh, so this is like a bribe then?” He said, “No, not at all.” Vastly confused at this stage, I handed him the $50 bribe for my Valium script and went downstairs to the massive Makati Medical pharmacy to get my scripts filled. After waiting in line for 20 min, I reached the little window, and the lady told me they didn’t have the 3 medicines I had scripts for. I left in disgust with a plan to return for my procedure the next day.

I filled my scripts at 3 different pharmacies that afternoon. I visited 7 pharmacies in total.

I followed all the strict directions (couldn’t eat or drink for 8 hours or something before the procedure) and, after setting my alarm to wake up in time to account for the half hour taxi ride in Makati peak hour traffic (Makati Medical is about 1 km from where I live), at 8am the next day, I was waiting bright and early at the surgery for my procedure. They didn’t have me scheduled. I called my doctor, he said he definitely scheduled me and he came down to yell at the nurse in Tagalog. The nurse yelled back, showed the doctor her scheduling list, the doctor looked embarassed and admitted he must have forgotten to schedule my endoscopy. He told me to wait for a couple hours and they would *try* and get me in if someone doesn’t show. I decided I did not want these moronic fools putting me under anaesthetic as I may never wake up. I left Makati Medical in disgust, vowing never to return.

My ear is still buzzing, the pain has subsided some, and I think it may be safer to walk around with a buzzing ear than risk a mental breakdown or a leg amputation at Makati Medical. I’ll keep you updated with this situation as it develops….

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