Arrived in Manila

Woke up early in the morning to the sounds of roosters crowing back and forth. It's still quite dark outside, but my body insists that it's time to be up and about (according to the world clock on my computer, it's about 5AM). I slept a total of about 2 hours on the two flights over here, and probably not much more than a few hours last night, so I have a feeling this is going to catch up to me pretty fast in the next day or two.

Weather in Manila is as expected – hot and humid. Since our plane arrived last night at around 11PM, I didn't get to see much of the city as we drove to our present location (a rental house in southern Manila, owned by one of Joahnna's relatives). However, from the airport and what I did see, it reminds me very much of the Yucutan. Most houses in this area are walled and gated, with a small drive in front where you could park a couple cars, and a decent size back yard.

So far cell phone operation is a complete bust – it's able to come up and detect several local service providers, but registering with one of those providers doesn't seem to have any effect. I get no signal, and attempting to dial out produces an error message. There is no internet access at the house we're staying at, but some experimentation last night picked up a weak wireless signal. Since this is a pretty nice area, there's a good chance of finding an open access point around somewhere.

My plan, prior to departure, was to have dinner with Alex, my old college roommate, either today or tomorrow, somewhere in the vicinity. I had disucssed it briefly over email and chat with him prior to leaving, but had planned to figuring out the details today. My current lack of communications ability puts me in something of a bind. One of Joahnna's aunts took down his phone number and said she would give him a call, which sounds like a setup for epic confusion, since she has no idea who Alex is, nor he she.

Somehow it will all work out, I'm sure.