Mummy and Daddy !

Just received a text message! [Yes folks, you may expect to receive all the vital communications by text ...] It reads :

"Hi hon

congratulations !!!

u now a daddy.

Wow, I don't know how i feel!

My hands r cold knowing it's positive."

Sunday February 11, 2007

Kangaroos at Lara!.... 65KM south-West of the big city of Melbourne, the start of the Western Plains that go for ever. This dry country with vast open spaces.

And above that, you see James on the aircraft from Manila to Tacloban. A BAC 320 I think, of Cebu Pacific. Above that, the aircraft sitting on the tarmac at Tacloban, seconds before I met Aileen. -----

Aileen thinks she may be pregnant.

There is the delay, the constant headache, the drowsiness, the sensations and firmness of the breasts.

She is taking a test this morning.

If she is pregnant, we hope the baby will be born in Australia in October-November.
- It will be a surprise.
We took no precautions and were hoping that eventually a pregnancy would occur
But we did not expect anything as soon as this.

I have not attempted to dicttate to Aileen.
For her part, she has acknowledged our mutual need to enjoy time together before the complication of parenting.
For each of us, this would be our first child.
Possibly we would place the child for a year or two with Aileen's parents.

So just as i waited endlessly yesterday when Ai travelled on her usual saturday shopping trip to
Tacloban, and bought a pregnancy testing kit, hoping she would do he test urgently, so I am now waitin this morning. - the time difference during Australian daylight saving time, is 3 hours.

Am I happy if it is a pregnancy?
Sure!
I had considered myself too old to have a child, so.... it is good!
An expression of love.

After meeting Aileen on exchanges over the internet in September, we have actually fallen in love. Not just for my looks! Not just for hers either! But something deep.

Wedding

At 2pm on 8 April 2007 at the Church of Santa Rita, on the island of Samar!

The Pool

Aileen was reluctant to show herself in the pool.
Eventually she enjoyed a swim as daylight was fading.
We chose the gold bkini as something a bit different from the norm.

The Pool

Aileen was reluctant to show herself in the pool.
Eventually she enjoyed a swim as daylight was fading.
We chose the gold bkini as something a bit different from the norm.

Angeles City is Dirty!

You can do a Google search if you want to know more about this amazing sleaze city!

Why do I like the place?
My previous hosts took me there for a fun, bar-hopping evening.
We then settled into a delightful oasis, the garden and pool of Orchid Inn!

The Philippines has a Spanish streak.
The Spanish colonists changed the name, the language, changed the religion and engaged in a wholesale breeding program unlike anything the British attempted in Africa or India. It must be assumed that the conquistadores fell in love with the Philippine islands. Re-named in a supreme contempt for local cultures, after king philip of Spain.

The Spanish twist is still very much evident in family names, the names of cities, words of the Philippine languages, the national name and the dominance of the Catholic Church. Arguably it is also the Spanish element that has produced a nation riddled with corruption.

Philippinos tend to revere their Spanish infusion. No question of re-naming the nation as Pampanga or something such. A European nose is rated more desirable than the delightful squat, islander nose. Some families are almost pure Spanish by descent, fabulously weathy, and proud of it.

So in mock Spanish, there is a "Cantina" in the sequestered garden of Orchid Inn, meaning a small restaurant without walls, open to the tropical breezes and looking out on the blue water of the pool.

Hotel prices in Angeles are cheaper than in Manila. And the hotels are tuned to Western requirements.

The down side is that prostitution is at the heart of the Angeles economy. Of course, prostitution is illegal,as you would expect under the surveillance of God and the Church. The fifty or so girly bars are not permitted to sell their girls. But there is no law prohibiting the girls from negotiating a fee for service. But the bar would fire them unless they compensated the owner for their unfortunate absence. And so the bars survive on a percentage.

Frankly it is fun in a way that Paris may have been and London never was. It is naughty and indecent, but at the same time incredibly picturesque. A tumble down muddy street, lined with edifices rising in the style of ancient Egypt or other fantastic notions. A playground for the male of the species who has been fleeced in the US or Australian divorce courts and wants to try his luck with the girls.

And gleaming new in the mid-day heat just a stone's throw away is the latest in the chain of Chinese owned shopping malls, the Clark SM. Up market, aircon, financially responsible in a way that the bars on Fields Avenue never could be.

Aileen liked the hotel, liked the shopping for exotic clothes, her first, we call it "bikini, two piece, but had no interest in the bars. - Except maybe the one where she recognised a nice girl from homesville, who was attired in very little and ready to shake it around on stage....or somewhere else...

Maybe we will go back there. There is indeed a liberating feel to the place!
Aileen tarted herself up with heavy make up, but frankly that scared the shit out of me. I prefer her as the somewhat cheeky but vulnerable, simple girl!

Manila ! City of Love

The LA Cafe is open 24 hours and you pay 200 Pesos or $5 Australian for admission to the upper floor. There you get a succession of live bands ranging from good to bad.
there is an abundance of loose Philippino women and a scattering of "foreigners", all having a fabulous time.

Yes, there is much more to Manila than LA Cafe, but in my short acquainance with this risky city, I had no idea where to go. And I discovered that Ai was not keen on the loud noises and the risky sound of contemporary band music. I had played down my age by heading for what seemed a certainty to impress a twenties girl. I was wrong.
Ai prefers sentimental songs of a more sedate character. The Philippines is an old softy when it comes to soul-driven love songs. Ai will sing the lines of a love song. To do so she pitches her voice into a Mariah Carey false-soprano effect, which is
the cool way to articulate your ballad.

So... thanks to the hospitality of Dativa, in husband Michael's absence in melbourne, we had a super large bedroom in their apartment on Roxas Boulevard. Roxas is the St Kilda Esplanade of Manila. The bayside highway, thronged with traffic, running 30 km along the Manila waterfornt until it runs out of guts somewhere in that dismal end of town where the filthy river pours into the already filthy Bay.

We took a taxi to the Australian Embassy to make first approaches for a visa. - the officer on duty was a very relaxed Philippino woman.In exhange for some introductory material, she congratulted us on our good fortune in meeting , and asked how she could get some ideas on finding an Australian to marry as her Philippino husband was treating her with neglect. The chance of a visa in a hurry did not seem all that great.

In the relative freedom of Manila. Free, that is, when compared with the strictures of village life. I pursued my personal fetish of squeezing Aileen into the shortest skirts and the most alluring bits and pieces. So much so that there was a tension betwen us over how much leg should be exposed. We became regulars in the ladies [shorter than average] fashion floors of the Harrison and Robinson and Mall of Asia department stores.

Shopping in Manila is fun. The stores are usually bright and modern, greatly overstaffed with smiling and friendly assistants. But importantly the prices are some 50% of Australian prices, based on the artificially low exchange rate.

Aileen told me of a saucy incident when caught in the changing room between this or that size skirt and top, left standing in just her undies, the two shop girls looked her over and told her she looked sexy. What service!

Our time in Manila was as happy as the previous week in Samar. We were getting along famously. maybe the ceeky clothing supply was adding spice to what was already a vital curry!

If it happens that Aileen is pregnant from our couple of weeks together, we are left wondering what particular moment or position or inspiration created the child!
Was it the very first time? Or was it the time we both made it as Ai believes.

But following my pattern on 4 previous trips, I had reserved a less expensive room at the Orchid Inn hotel in the city of the angels, Angeles City, some 2 hours by bus up the North Luzon Expressway from Manila! Not expecting Ai to enjoy the bars and bargirls, but perhaps to ease a loosening of her restraints.....

The Samar resort.....

This was no honeymoon. We were not exactly a couple! Why? Because until lunchtime that first day, we had never actually met. We were two strangers brought together by some random cyber messaging systems. Who would dare hop into bed with an almost total stranger? Talk of myself first being checked out by mom and dad had been negotiated out of the window [thanks to some good advice from my pals Peter and Cynthia in Melbourne]. Yes, we were on our own out there. at this resort, miles from anywhere...in Samar. Yes, there was a tv in the room and an aircon, and the double bed had just a thin white sheet for cover. the climate is perpetually tropical there. But, it was a big success. We were able to talk endlessly. And I happened to have a long biography of the American writer Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. A big fat book smnapped up at Sydney Airport on the way through. In which Ai kindly agreed to read some pages in turns with me, or latterly permit me to read them to her!..... Scott and Zelda were brilliant young things, but their lives failed to fulfil the early promise and both died relatively young. Scott drank himself to death and Zelda perished in a fire in a US mental hospital where she was receiving voluntary treatment. the door of her room was locked for the night when a fire broke out. Apart from that, we splashed around in the crystal clear sea, had a long ride in a fishing boat, and took a bus to a neighbouring baringgay. A small village, approached on foot, with a small trading stall whare Ai purchased a hair grip. - Notably, she was wearing those trendy white long pants. But they had the effect of showing the panty line through the fabric! - Simple things please simple minds....

.... which resulted in my suggestion to Ai, that if it would please her parents, i had brought a kinda standby engagement ring from Kleins the jewellers at Werribee plaza Shopping Centre...... And Ai liked the idea! From then on, it was all downhill!