On November 29, about 10:30 pm, in Dasmarinas, Cavite, I was crossing the highway from where I was living there to the 7-Eleven on the other side. A big truck came by and that was the last thing I remembered. No, I wasn't hit but I had a minor diabetic stroke. For the next three weeks, I did nothing but sleep for 16-20 hours a day. Mind you, I didn't have high blood pressure (which the Filipinos call simply "high blood") this was a tension stroke.
After my in-house recuperation, I took the ship down to Mindanao, where I stayed with a widow whom I had been wanting to know for many months. A widow with two children, I hit it off immediately with her family. I was not allowed to go back to work for two months. But when I got well, I left the tiny town of Lugait, to the green pastures of Cagayan de Oro, where I proved to the Filipinos that Americans can look shabbily poor (a real shocker for most of them). I took a job as a Financial Consultant with the Asian Life Financial Assurance Company, which is what I do today.
Eventually, I have a dream of starting a language school in Lugait, probably in June-September. It will be working with English teachers from Vietnam to force them to speak English in a way everyone can understand. My present employer actually looks forward to the day I no longer work with them and they are the school's first corporate backer.
Lugait, Misamis Oriental (population 17,000, but it has an area of 1,200 square miles!), is next to Iligan, Lanao del Norte (population 300,000 with 900 square miles), which has a very famous professional band (with whom I will be playing once I get back to Lugait).
For the believers in the TubeNet community, I earnestly covet your prayers in everything I do. I'm engaged to be married (the woman in Lugait) and I try to do a good job with the insurance company here in Cagayan de Oro (population 560,000 with 190 square miles--ever notice how the area has very little to do with the number of people who live in a place?)
I'm now back on the block, so do stay in contact...
