Doing something - exploring

Road leading from my house to the water

I woke up at 6:15 AM which is usually early for me. I’m somewhat stuck in a cycle where I get tired by 9 PM, sleep, and wake up at 6 or 7 AM. It’s kind of nice actually waking up early. I feel more productive. I spent the morning studying for the IDC - in particular, diving physics. Most of the reading involves pressure and physical properties of water (heat transmission, light, and sound). It’s not to hard to understand but there’s a lot of memorization.

I took a break around lunch time, made lunch (pork and beans, ground beef, and rice). For food, I’m going back to the basics similar to how I ate in college; as opposed to how I ate before I came to the Philippines which was a lot of wine and steaks. I don’t mind, and frankly, it tastes good to me. While eating, I turned on the television which is rare for me to do since I don’t watch a lot of TV. I thought I only had a few stations but I actually have cable with 40 channels including Discovery, National Geographic, HBO, and Cinemax.

Watching TV was okay at first, but then it got boring because I couldn’t find anything interesting on any channels. I was stuck in a viscous cycle of flipping through channels hoping to find something interesting. I went through all the channels several times not settling on one of them. It was depressing. Thinking back to Steve Job’s inspirational commencement speech “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do
what I am about to do today?” No.

I decided to get out of the house and explore around my neighborhood. I heard there was a beach nearby and so I set out to look for it. The road that passes my house continues towards the water and so I followed it. It was a dirt road lined with brush and on one side there was a lagoon with mangroves. I could hear lots of animals in the brush which was a little scary. A bird I’ve never seen before ran across my path. When I came to the water I was a little disappointed to just find rocks and no white sand beach I was hoping. I turned around and walked back towards my house. Along the way, a large monitor lizard crossed my path. Wow, that was cool.

It was hot so I decided to take advantage of my landlord’s swimming pool. It’s a freshwater pool filed with purified mineral and rain water. Heated by the sun, it was a refreshing comfortable temperature. After the swim, I dried off and decided to explore more. I got on my motorbike and went to the local town Panglao.

Mangos at the local market

In the town, there’s a central market, a gas station, internet cafe, and several small convenient type stores. Unfortunately, none of the stores sell meat -- mainly grains, vegetables, and fruit. I ended up buying 6 eggs, 4 mangos, 3 garlic cloves, ice cream, and a large water. I was happy to be able to buy things I thought I could only get in the city of Tagbilaran.

The rest of the day I hung out at Alona Beach. I went to Coco Vida for internet where Sander eventually joined me. I talked with a guy that was from Spain traveling the world. He was in his late 40s and regretted not traveling more when he was younger. He was very nice and very inspirational to what I’m doing. Later in the evening, I went to Oops bar where I showed the Oops girls pictures on my laptop from Vilma’s birthday celebration. They loved it and so did one of the owners of Oops. He liked it so much he gave me a few complementary drinks.


- jason