Dear,
This is for all my friends who complained last time about my generic letter and wanted it to be more personal. So just fill in the blanks with your name, your first name will be sufficient as I am sure you know who you are.
Hey, how’s it going? Just thought I'd drop you this personal note and fill you in on the latest. I arrived here in Palau on Oct. 15th after staying about two weeks with Eric and Eddie in the Philippines. Eric (my son the dive instructor) is doing just great. Since April he has had about 80 students and has been busy every weekend with check out dives. He appears so have a steady girl friend by the name of Hanna. According to Eddie she come from a very wealthy family and her father is some big Colonel in the military and her brother owns a large security company. Eddie told Eric, half joking; to make sure she stays happy because if she "cries" Eric would probably end up "missing". But they seem to be getting along just fine. Eric asked me what I thought of her and I said "How can you go wrong? She's smart, good looking, has lot of money, But what does she see in you?" Eric started laughing and said "I don't know?" Actually Eric becoming kind of famous in he own way with all the divers and has a million friends, in fact I'm introduced as "The father of Eric"
Eddie is starting the worlds first "SCUBA CLUB" and it's going to be very big! The facilities will have a pool for Eric’s' scuba lesson, class room, restaurant, Sushi bar, dive shop and club house, and showers. He has a crew of 25 working 6 days a week constructing everything. The biggest job is the pool. The table is about 10 feet down and these poor guys had to dig this huge hole in the ground with a couple of shovels and a wheel barrel! Even with a water pump running, the bottom is about 1-2 feet under water. They were fabricating the foundation of steel "re-barb" by hand. It’s incredible to watch these guys having to cut 1" steel re-barb with a hack-saw. It takes about 45 minutes to cut through one rod. They have no power tools and everything is done by hand. I asked Eddie what his weekly pay roll for the 25 was and he said $1,500.00 dollars. That's about $50.00 each a week with the two fireman getting a little extra.
The last Friday that I was there Eddie put on a little Bar-B-Q for the crew and they decided to really live it up and went into town to find the "main course" Which turned out to be ...DOG...Yeah, I’m talking about a "Rover Fondue", a "Fi-Fi soufflé", a little "Spot" on the half shell...Actually they put him on the Bar-B-Q for about 10-15 minutes then skinned it and marinated it in some kind secret sauce for 3 hours and then ate it raw! It's supposed to give you strength or something; they even had some kind of ceremony saying that there sorry to the dog about having to eat him. I struck to my fried chicken, at least I pretty sure it was chicken!
The traffic in Manila is still unbelievable, cars going every way in every direction. If you think grid lock is bad in L. A. over here not only is it locked, but someone threw away the key! Taking a cab can be quite an adventure. Eric and I took a cab the other day and got the cab driver from hell! This guy was not going to stop for anyone or anything. He was on the horn almost continuously, sometimes he would beep the horn for no apparent reason, not only that, he had a back-up horn with a special switch on the dash which he used only on special occasions. It appeared that he was pissed off because he had been disqualified from a destruction derby for reckless driving! Only once was he driving down the right side of the road, the rest of the time we were like a salmon going up stream against the traffic. In Manila there are actual signs posted that say "NO COUNTER FLOW TRAFFIC." But he did get us to where we were going faster than anyone else so I guess it was worth the two bucks!
I did manage to get in some diving in the Philippines. The water was pretty warm and really didn't require any wet suit. The last time I dove there in February it was rather cold. We stayed in a resort own by a great guy by the name of "Boy Venus" For some reason the name "Boy" is real popular in the Philippines and even the movies use the name, in fact one of the hot Kung Fu movies (which is all the ever show over here) is call "Boy Kano". Kano is street talk for "American" (American--Kano--get it?) it's about some guy who is half Filipino and half American and some mean Chinese bad guys killed his wife or sister or maybe it was his mom, but anyway he's out for revenge and has to kill everybody on mainland China! I think it's up for some kind of award. There's another one called "Boy Recto". I'm not sure what Recto is short for but I think it's about some Half assed guy out for Montezuma’s' revenge!
Just in case you were wondering what happened to all those Disco albums from the 70s', don't worry their allover here in the Philippines.
Anyway it's been raining ever since I arrived in Palau. And I'm not talking California Rain, I talking about typhoon kind of rain with 30 to 40 mph winds, with rain pouring down all night long on my tin roof. I would wakeup two or three times a night thinking that the roof had just blown away. But yesterday the sun came out and it's just another day in paradise.
There were 4 broken windows in the house that had been covered up with plywood. Looking around I found all kinds of glass just lying around so I got my glass cutter out and cut 4 windows, no big deal until Francis comes by and can't believe that I cut the glass. Evidently no one on the Island can cut 1/4" glass so all of a sudden I've got strangers walking up to me wanting to know if I'll cut some glass for them! I really hadn't planned to get into the glass business but who knows...
My container arrived on the 21st only 3 weeks late but by Palau time that's not bad. The Samurai jeep came through without a scratch and has been the perfect car. Everybody likes it because it is built with American standards instead of the bottom of the line Japanese cars that they get over here.
Probably to most interesting thing that I have learned so for about Palau is the incredible diversity of bugs. The other night I made the mistake of leaving the window open and the light on inside the house. I went up the hill to see Francis for about one hour and when I returned it was like I had entered another world. There were big bugs flying around the room and even BIGGER ones trying to get off the ground. It appeared that the really big ones needed some sort of runway to get up enough speed to takeoff, so they were using the arm of one of my chairs as a runway! They tended to take off in a westerly direction so I wrote a big 27 on the arm of the chair, and tried to assist them by setting up a temporary tower. Most of the bugs caught on to the procedure quickly but some seemed to have problems with the radio work, and a few just didn't catch .on at all so I squashed them. Later that night I went into the bathroom and there sitting on top of the toilet seat was the MOTHER of all spiders! I'm not afraid of spiders and evidently this spider was not afraid of me, so we had a stand off with neither of us giving ground. I thought about squashing him but I had just cleaned the bath room and didn't want to make a mess. I finally got him to crawl on to a magazine and carried him outside, he must have weighed about 2 lbs. but since I don't have a scale I can't verify that so you will just have to take my word for it.
Well, it’s about time for me to go diving so I'm going to end this now. If I remember correctly you did not write back last time, so I suggest you write or else you might be taken off the list---I mean, I might not write these special letters just for you!
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