DJ Shamus- Somewhere in Cebu

I've been here six weeks as of yesterday afternoon. I've learned a lot, but have a lot more to learn too.

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We had the reception last night at the Royal Concourse, which is like a 13 Coins or Royal Fork but with Filipino food. They even had some lechon, which is the Cebuano specialty: roast suckling pig with a crunchy skin. We'd had a green salad with tomatoes and spicy tuna (mayo for dressing) for lunch in order to save room for the goodies at the restaurant. I ate mostly meat dishes, not much rice.

Karen's mom talked us into getting a cake, or rather, she suggested it but as head of the family (Mr. & Mrs. Mottern) it was my decision. That's going to take some getting used to: we discuss things together and more or less decide together, but the ultimate decisions are mine. That's how things are done here. It was chocolate with white frosting and kind of creamy marshmallow trim. We gave the leftover cake to families that have kids as neither Karen nor I are much into eating sweets and our fridge doesn't have room anyway.

Some pictures may be seen at http://gallery.shamusland.org/main.php/v/reception/ . There are more on Karen's camera but she took it to work with her. I'll have to get her to upload hers to our gallery.

Wedding photos. We went to the courthouse today to find out when the event was scheduled for, figuring it would be tomorrow but taking our wedding clothes, rings, etc. along just in case. That turned out to have been wise as they scheduled us for 2PM today. We're officially Mr. & Mrs. Mottern! We'll be holding a reception tomorrow at 6PM at the Royal Concourse buffet restaurant in their private banquet room. It will take ten days before our wedding is officially registered, at which time we return, one last time, to the Mandaue City registrar's office to get the registration number and documentation.

I got the feeling that the judge enjoys doing weddings a lot more than sending poor blokes to gaol. He seemed happy about it, and gave us some fatherly advice about remembering the vows when things get tough, that communication and sharing are the keys to make a marriage work, and that marriages are forever in the Philippines. This is exactly what Karen and I discussed when we first talked about marrying!

First leg: SeaTac to LAX:
I made it to SeaTac on time (4PM), got my suitcases checked and got my United boarding pass. Went through stupid secirity checks. Tried and failed to find a working, free wifi hotspot. Boarded at around 6:45 and was surprised that the walkway ramp thing led down and outside to the ground, where a painted pathway took us to a small, parked jet, a Canadair Regional Jet Aircraft model CRJ700 made by Bombadier. It has two seats on each side of the center aisle and was so small that I could press on the cabin roof with the top of my head just by standing up straight. People with larger carry-on bags had to check them at the last minute, then after deplaning at LAX we had to wait while someone carried these bags two at a time and left them in the walkway. I got a good seat: aisle seat by a wing emergency exit and no one beside me. There was no meal service, just a beverage service. The airlne was something called United Express, which is actually run by SkyWest Airlines (whoever they are).

Second leg: LAX to Hong Kong:
I made it to LAX OK then had a challenge to find Cathay Pacific's terminal. I ended up having to go outside, ride a (free) shuttle bus to another part of the airport, then go through security all over again. At least LAX airport staff and Cathay Pacific's people were very helpful. After getting my boarding pass I ws that hungry that I ate a "Southern style" chicken sandwich at the McDonalds at the airport (the only other things open were a sushi bar and two regular alcohol-type bars with expensive food items).Was that ever a disappointment! $3.49 bought me a piece of crispy fried chisken on a bun with two dill pickle slices. Nothing else: no mayo, lettuce, tomato, or anything! I coughed it down and headed to the security check area then to the gate where my flight was boarding later.

Was security checking ever a real zoo at LAX! These being the International gates for mostly Asian carriers there were hordes of (mostly) Chinese people, trying to have themselves and their carry-on luggage checked bu a bunch of (mostly) disgruntled (mostly) Mexicans. At the risk of racial stereotyping, imagine a blend of a Chinese fire drill and a Mexican standoff. :) People kept crowding in front of me when I was trying to remove my laptop from my bag and place it in its own plastic bin; remove my belt, shoes, hat, jacket and all pocket items and place those in another bin; load my bag onto the conveyer belt; all while having my passport and boarding pass ready in my hand and visible at all times. I was getting impatient at their rudeness when I remembered something: in China it's not considered to be rude to just cut in front of someone if they're obviously not ready or just aren't quick enough. So I smiled and cut in front of someone myself, and old Chinese lady (or Chinese-American, or Chinese-Australian or Canadian or Singaporan or whatever) and she just smiled back and made a "go ahead" gesture. :)

The LAX-Hong Kong flight was on a newer Boeing 747-500, a two-decker with economy class (read: steerage) below and first and business clases upstairs. There was supper and breakfast service as well as beverages at various times, plus snacks available any time just by asking. Every seat has an information/entertainment console located in the seat back of the seat in front of you, stocked with several dozen movies including recent first runs pluolder classics, favorites, art films and whatnot; a few episodes each of various TV shows, music CDs, radio stations (archived show playlists in various genres) and even video games of various sorts. You could even make phone calls from on board, but those cost $8.80/minute.

The food was great: dinner was a small green salad with smoked salmon, a whole wheat roll with butter, a piece of chocolate marbled cheesecake, and your choice of one of three main courses: pork medallions in a mustard sauce with potatoes and vegetables, salted 5-spice chicken with steamed rice and oriental vegetables (that's what I had), and for vegetarians there was ziti with asparagus in marinara sauce. Breakfast was yoghurt, fresh seasonal fruit, choice of fruit juices, choice of tea or coffee, and either a ham-eggs-red potatoes scramble or seafood congee (which is what I had).

There was plenty of leg and arm room in the seats but sadly they didn't recline, and I just can't sleep whle sitting up, so I was awake for the entire flight.I watched The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, a movie caled Australia, and listened to some Filipino popular music. I spent most of the trip watching the flight's progress on the console screen and just waiting. I accepted any offered beverage to stay hydrated, took a couple of whiffs of mentholated snuff from a can I'd brought with me to satisfy he nicotene urges, and got up to pee a few times. I have terrible nighttime vision so I didn't try walking around on the plane that much, just to the (nearby) restroom and back.

The seats were three wide along each side and four wide in the center. I got to chatting a bit with a friendly, plump, round-faced, middle-aged man that was seated near me and traveling with his aged mother (who spoke no English). I thought they were filipinos but wasn't sure. It turned out that they were Cebuanos! Rod and his mom were flying from LA to Cebu on the same flights I was, headed home for a fiesta celebrating Rod's godson's wedding. He told be about places to see and things to do on the island of Cebu.and corrected my pronunciation of the few Cebuano words I have: "salamat" (than you) is accented on the second A, not the final one, making iit sound something like "salami". :) Banawa, where we live, is likewise accented on the second syllable (Karen told me later that most words are). He mentioned that Cebu City is the safest city in the Philippines with regards to street and violent crimes.

The airport at Hong Kong is huge, has amenities that SeaTac and LAX lack including free wifi kiosks and indoor smoking lounges! Damn Vista all to hell! I never could get a wifi connection that gave me Internet access: just a local connection that did me no good. It's gonna go bye-bye within a couple-three days. Swine flu is a major concern: all airprot personel plus many travelers wore face masks, and everyone was screened at thermal imaging stations to check if they were feverish. The airport was uncrowded and everyone I spoke with was very helpful and friendly enough even if they didn't understand English, such as th Chinese man that gave me a light in the smoking lounge. I had a devil of a time finding the gate where my HK-Cebu flight was departing from. Finally did though.

Third leg: Hong Kong to Cebu:
This flight was on an Airbus with a single-deck two-three-two seating arrangement. Half of the pasengers were what Karen calls "foreigners", who either lived in Cebu, in the nearby provinces or had done so and were returning to visit (filipino) relatives. One who sat acrss the aisle from me plus one seat ahead was and older, rotund, bearded "kano" (short for Amerikano) that tried to give me a few tips and pointers about living in Cebu (most of which I'd already read online). The man in front of me was an even stouter, older, bearded kano who was the type of person that loudly offered informatio to all and sundry whether they wanted it or not, read a newspaper with one elbow out in the aisle interfering with the flight attendant's movements, jammed his seat back a far a it would go (squishing my legs in the process) then trying to force it back further when it would't go (I almost said something but Karen has tought me great patience, so I said nothing), and, of course,ordered a couple of beers for his beverages, got up and stood up front near he rstroom door interfering with foot traffic, and kept smirking at everyone around him. In short, a boor.

Arrival in Cebu: it felt like a bathroom after three people have just taken consecutive hot showers. Really muggy! I sailed through Immigration and got my pasport's visa pages' virginity broken with my 21-day tourist visa It took quite a while for my suitcases to be unloaded, but there they were! The custom's agent took my papework (handed out and filled in on the airplane), asked if I had anything to declare, and after I answered "a latop computer with some accessories, two digital cameras and five packs of cigarettes" just stamped my forms with an OK and said, "Welcome to Cebu".

One of the things that I lost when moving was, sadly, my copy of The Impoverished Student's Book of Cookery, Drinkery and Housekeepery by Jay F. Rosenberg, published by the University of Oregon Press (at least my copy was: I saw something online mentioning the Reed College Alumni Association) and now out of print. I went looking for a copy online last night and found one on Amazon, for sale as a collector's item, listed at over $200! Yikes!

This thin volume was written in 1967 and was intended for boys/young men who have left home for the first time to go off to college somewhere, moved into a dormitory, and found that the cafeteria food served there was awful. It assumes that a small group of these Impoverished Students have decided to rent an apartment together and explains how to fix the place up, how to learn how to cook (rather than just attempt to follow recipes) and feed themselves well for lest than cafeteria meals cost. It has a small section about beverages including making your own beer, and one about housekeeping and budgeting. It's basically a boy's Home Ec primer, written by a guy. It's written in a very funny, very readable style.
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I stumbled upon this archived page titled Minimum Wage Eating that offers a very insightful discussion of feeding yourself and your family when you're poor. The author mentions that buying convenience foods vs. cooking things from scratch is a trade-off between time and money: someone earning the minimum wage often has to work two and sometimes three jobs to be able to keep their kids fed, clothed, shod and healthy, so they just don't have the time to bake bread and things like that. She says a few things that I beg to differ with, such as her response to this excerpt from an old New York Times article about a pregnant, homeless teenaged girl who is grocery shopping, paying with food stamps:

"I stood, stunned, as she reached for the individual-portion cartons of juice -- with their brightly colored miniature straws -- ignoring the larger, economy-size bottles. No calculation of unit price, no can'ts or shoulds or ought-not-to's, no keen eye to the comparative ounce. By the time her stuffed cart reached the checkout line, my unease was turning into anger. Didn't she know she was poor?"

The author's response, in part: "Trust me on this if on nothing else: Poor people know they're poor. What's missing here is an education about choosing food wisely. I know; I was on food stamps for several months. It took me awhile to figure out how to stretch them, because I had no education in that. (I know how tempted some of you must be right now to add, "And, you were dumb." Fine, I was dumb.) My parents had generally (that I could remember, at least) bought whatever they liked, with price being secondary." (This is followed by an anecdote about her buying a four-pack of boneless, skinless chicken breasts rather than getting regular ones with the bones and skin, because she simply didn't know any better.)

She, and the NY Times author, are missing a point: the girl is homeless. Homeless people don't have anyplace to store large containers of juice, foods bough in bulk such as by the case, or staples such as sacks of flour and sugar with which to bake things from scratch. Someone living in a car, out of a backpack or crashing on different friends' couches for a few nights at a time lack the wherewithal to cook much beyond perhaps heating up a can of soup or pork and beans. Those small boxes of Capri Sun juice that girl bought were probably all she had room for.Trust me on this. I buy a lot of frozen, canned and packaged foods simply because I have nowhere to keep fresh foods and prevent them from going bad, nor do I have a regular oven. So I eat frozen fillets of pollock, not fresh salmon. I buy frozen meatballs, not hamburger, breadcrumbs, etc. and make my own. I buy canned soups and stews rather than making my own by the crock pot full (no fridge in which to keep leftovers).

I do like one thing she said, though: that no one who hasn't had to go shopping with a calculator (or keep a running total of their purchases' prices in their head) has any right to discuss the evils of the minimum wage or raises in that wage, nor to criticize the poor for their "bad shopping habits" or for anything else for that matter. Like Ronald Reagan's favorite anecdote about the mother who drove a Cadillac to pick up her welfare check: it's very probable that an older Caddy was the only car she could afford, in those times of fuel crunches when large cars' resale values dropped dramatically and smaller, economical cars were in demand. He never had to try to raise kids on welfare and food stamps, he didn't know what her personal situation was like, and he had no right to criticize her.

The archived article ends by asking others who have been in the low-income bracket to share some of their favorite "poor recipes". I've already shared many of mine. What are some of yours? (No ramen noodles, please: we all know about ramen noodles and packaged macaroni and cheese already.)

I wish I could make this sticky on my front LJ page.

And OK, I swapped out ice containers and hauled water, but that's all I'm going to do today. Shower and laundry will be tomorrow's chores.

I had a kind of a bun thing with a bit of chicken salad inside, plus a small serving of snottage cheese. And those marinading lamb chops smell so gooood when I open the fridge!

A Google ad:

Infertility Forum

"We are just getting started Help build a great community" (sic)

I don't think so! :)

We interrupt the scheduled Livejournal drama to bring you this important public service announcement.

English people: The consonent "r", when present, is always pronounced. When not present, it is never pronounced.

We now return you to your regular programme.

:)

First we have Snowmageddon 2008, then immediately on its tail we have a Pineapple Express. For those of you that live back east (east of the Rockies), that's a tropical storm system that originates in the area of Hawaii then moves NE,  following the jet stream, getting narrower and more concentrated, pointing right at central Puget Sound and dumping a deluge of rain, usually accompanied by high winds and warm temperatures. Coinciding with the snow melt, we have some record-breaking flooding going on right now. Not only flooding, but avalanches in the mountains and mudslides elsewhere. This is like a 10-year flood, but is occurring faster than most others have. See the video on http://www.komonews.com for more info. Amtrack has suspended train service between Seattle an Portland due to mudslide danger, and Interstate 5 is scheduled to close between Olympia and Centralia at midnight due to expected flooding.

Wheeee! I'm just glad I live on a hill.

Edit: now they're saying it's the worst flooding in generations. I-5 is still closed down south, and Sounder train service between Seattle and Tacoma is suspended today due to water on the tracks. Over 30,000 people have been evacuated from their homes.

I went over my packing list again, and made a separate daily to-to list. That was this morning whilst drinking tea and putting off actual labor. :) I felt that I was still being somewhat productive that way, even if not actually packing.

I packed the last of my books, two more boxes worth and one of them a largish one, and heavy (and after taping the box shut I found another book- it's always the way, innit?) and my cookbooks except for one that I couldn't find (it'll probably turn up).

I went through my laundry porch and bedroom closet for stuff I want to save.

I went through the accumulated junk on the loveseat in my living room and found more stuff, including the lost title form for my old, dead VW Rabbit pickup (a guy down the street has a friend who wants it, so I'm going to let him have it for one dollar), more books, more SCA stuff including my telpek (fuzzy Turkmen-style hat), a chapan (central Asian robe), and a beeswax-lined leather flask.

I hauled several boxes of paper out to my big 70-or-so-gallon recycling bin and filled it up, then put it by the curb for next week's collection.

I filled up half of another big garbage bag with junk. When it's full it'll go to the basement where the rest are. That was to make room for more packed boxes. I also set a TV stand/cart/thingy out on the curb at the corner- hopefully it'll survive the rain OK (it wasn't raining when I set it out). If anyone wants it, cruise by 73rd & Mary in Ballard and help yourself. SW corner. It was a bit dusty but probably not anymore, and is otherwise in good condition. I used it for my stereo gear.

Left to do today: pack my remaining clothes (that are piled on my bed right now), and get stared on packing my kitchen pots and pans and whatnots. Then soak my aching back in a hot bath.

I hate packing and moving. I so look forward to getting rid of much of my stuff. The rest can stay in its boxes until my next move. I had an idea today: if Dave isn't cool with me leaving so much furniture behind for him to deal with, after he gets rid of most of the remaining junk in the dumpster bin we can load it and do one more run to Enumclaw. I talked to my sister and bro-in-law today and their entire garage is at my disposal for storage.

I also found out that the RV is without water due to a frozen and burst pipe. Tim's been working on that but having a hard time finding the pipe fittings he needs. RV plumbing is a different size than is standard house plumbing. He hopes to have it fixed by Saturday though. If not by then, it will be in a few days afterward. And the fridge in the RV is bigger than the dorm/kitchenette sized ones and has a small freezer compartment, and they also have an extra freezer in their garage I can use. And all their snow's gone! Yay!

I made a run to the little corner store on 70th & 15th this afternoon, got to the counter and no wallet. I had to go back home and get it, then go back to the store again. So I got a bit of a walk that way.

That was my day. And it's dark and rainy, but comparatively warm (51 right now).

I have all of my stereo gear packed except the speakers which I'll leave behind for Dave to put out on the curb, all of my books except for maybe one more boxfull as I find a few scattered around, my two wall clocks and my barometer, that painting I bought from Jude, some of my bigger camping gear items, and all of the clothes that I plan to keep, plus a lot of other miscellaneous stuff. I think I'm done for the day although I may change my mind and do some more later. My back is sore! :)

I'm thinking of leaving the TV and my bed behind. I was planning on probably just giving the TV away anyhow as it's around 20 years old and not really worth much money nor the hassle of trying to sell it (though I turned it on today and it still works), and the bed's mattress is too soft anyway and bothers my back. I've been intending on getting a different one. Other remainders will be the sofa and love seat (which are to be thrown away), TV and stereo stands (which don't look that bad considering that they were kits from Best Buy), dinette set, computer table, and a 17" CTX monitor (it works, but it's starting to go wonky: the screen flickers sometimes in a not-good way). Oh, and there are two or three 56k external fax/modems, an ancient Mac SE-30 that actually still works, some ancient Commodore C-64s and C-128s, some of which work and some of which don't. I was into collecting and playing with old hardware at one time. Locals, keep an eye on the corner of NW 73rd and Mary Ave NW during the next few weeks or months. Also, if you want a nice stereo receiver, CD player and a cassette deck keep an eye on Craigslist in the next few weeks. You'll have to go to Enumclaw to get them but the gear's great for a second stereo in a rec room, or even as a primary system on the cheap. The receiver is a JVC JS-400: 100 watts RMS per channel and a five-band equalizer rather than just treble and bass adjustments, slide-rule tuning with a weighted flywheel tuning knob (just give 'er a good spin to move across the dial in a hurry), and real wattmeters rather than just VU meters. It's flat black with a brushed aluminum front, big heat sinks on the sides, and dates from the 1970s. I bought it from a friend of mine's brother way back in the 80s, and the brother bought it in Japan when he was there in the Navy, These aren't pictures of my unit but they give you an idea of what it looks like: http://gallery.shamusland.org/main.php/v/forsale/stereo/ I'll add pics of the CD player and casette deck later. The first one is a Denon with a remote control and a removable 6-disc cassette (the CDs go in label-side down), and the second is an ancient Teac with wood sides. Edit: I forgot, there's also a Pioneer direct-drive turntable. It works but could use a new stylus (needle), which I believe you can still get from Radio Shack if nowhere else.

I'm going to have several more loads to go into the basement, too. This is going to be nice, getting shed of almost 20 years of accumulated crap. But, boy, is it ever work! This is why I have so much junk here, because I've always put off doing my spring cleanings. I'd much rather play. :)

Brrr! It's snowing again, and sticking here. We already have about an inch or so. It's supposed to turn into rain at around midnight though, and wash it away again.

I've been making headway on packing. I've hauled 3 or 4 garbage bags full of junk (mostly old home-recorded videocassettes of movies from TV, and old printed documents that I'd saved from past jobs but never looked at again) down to the basement, which was Dave's suggestion: putting stuff to be thrown away down there. I have enough room in the living room for packed boxes.

Last night I slept early, at around 6PM, and woke up at around 11. I took a bath, read, and tried to go back to sleep- no luck! I was worrying about moving and that I'd forget something I wanted to keep. S I gave up and got up at around 4:30 and started packing again, then took karwren's suggestion and sat down an made a list. Yeeks! It's going to be a busy week here! But at least now I have it all written down (or typed, actually, saved as an RTF document).

I went up to the Safeway to get some foods and toilet paper just at sunrise. It was beautiful, and quiet. Hardly any traffic that early on a Sunday. It didn't feel that cold either, although I wore a heavy flannel shirt with a sweatshirt over it, my winter parka (one of those surplus Dutch police officer's Gore-tex coats that I got on eBay some years ago) and a wool balaclava. But my hands weren't particularly cold (no gloves).

Then I came home, worked on the list some more, then started packing again.I actually ate lunch for a change, at around noon, then took a brief nap. Got up at 3 and packed books. I estimate about 4 or 5 more boxes of books to go, which I plan on trying to get packed before I go to bed tonight.

Then I have to go through my clothes and pack the ones that I actually wear, pack my pots and pans and other kitchen stuff (except what I'll need to use this week), spices. Then a bunch of radio gear- a ham rig and a couple of portable shortwave receivers, a boom box with its remote control. Musical instruments (most of which are in cases so no real packing is involved there), a box of old board games from my basement that I want to save so Karen and I can play them, stuff from my bathroom except what I'll use this week, my SCA garb and gear, my records and CDs (half of the latter are already in a box), my two wall clocks and a barometer, a set of cheap luggage (which will contain my clothes, probably), camping gear, etc. etc., and lastly my computer stuff on Friday. I have ten major categories of things to pack If I get two done a day I'll be ready on time. The books are the biggest thing and I'm already about 2/3 done with those. Then on Friday I'll make phone calls and get my Internet and phone disconnected, and my utilities transfered over to Dave.

So, the rest of my books, a hot bath, dinner then beddie-bye. Tomorrow, more bloody packing!

Snow pictures from my house.We got something like 3 or 4 more inches last night, and it's supposed to continue through Tuesday. So much for moving soon, unless it melts by next weekend or so.

karwren bought a wig! She wanted a new hairstyle without the maintenance and hassle. It's made of horsehair and is a bit too shiny, so you can tell it's a wig but it looks cute on her anyway.

My new look. I chopped the old beard into a kind of goatee thing yesterday, just on a wild whim.

At 3PM EST/noon PST/9PM Swiss time I'll be doing my farewell show on Party FM. I'll be on hiatus for a few weeks, possibly longer. I need to spend time packing and trying  to move, then finding my own place after that. I'm not 100% sure about the Internet situation at my sister's, and don't really want to mooch so much of their bandwidth by streaming music for12+ hours a week. If nothing else, I hope to "borrow" a cup of bandwidth now and then from a nearby, unsecured wifi connection just long enough to check email and maybe chat with people now and then. I think there's a coffee shop a couple of blocks from them that may have wifi, for instance.

I put on a crock pot full of minestrone soup last night, based on a packaged, dry soup mix by Bear Creek which dasmonkeygirl turned me on to. I decided to soak some dried beans (mixed variety) and add those. I soaked them for something like 10 hours and added them at around 2:30AM. They should be cooked by the end of my show at 2. There's nothing like a bowl or two of thick, rich "homemade" soup on a cold day.

Happy Solstice, everyone!

I came down with a cold or flu early Sunday morning. Probably a cold: I don't feel like I have a fever, though I can't tell for sure since I don't have a thermometer. It started as a sore throat and sniffles: "sinuses", thinks I, but no. Next thing that happened was that my right ear plugged up. I have smaller than normal eustachian tubes so I'm still liable to get "childbood" middle ear infections if I'm not careful. I went out yesterday and bought some Afrin nasal spray, and have been squeezing my nose shut and blowing to make my ears pop, like a doctor once taught me. I also bought chicken soup and sandwiches.

House-hunting continues, more or less. I don't remember whether or not I mentioned it but I'd found a mobile home for sale in Federal Way, just around the corner from the park and ride there and across from a mall and shopping center. My application to rent the lot that it's on was denied, though. It's kind of an exclusive country-club mobile home park built around a 9-hole golf course, and green fees and use of the clubhouse are included- not that I play golf anyway. I just want a place to live.

Friday I spotted a one-bedroom apartment on 15th Ave NW, only a couple of blocks away, for $625. It's just been painted, has new carpet (just installed), kitchen cabinets, appliances, electrical wiring. There's a laundry room on site. It's a small building with only 6 apartments, and seems fairly quiet. I looked at it on Saturday, and am waiting for the owner to leave me an application. I just phoned him again this morning as he was going to leave one in the unit for me yesterday (it's unlocked pending the delivery of a new refrigerator and some other workpeople that need to finish some things) and there wasn't one there. The apartment's kind of small, 525 square feet, and doesn't have but one closet, part of which is taken up by the little water heater, but it'll do. I can move most of my stuff there in boxes myself, and get neighbor Dave to haul the larger things in his pickup truck.

My love life continues well. I visited an immigration lawyer on Friday (which is probably where I picked up the cold germs, from riding the bus into town and back- I also stopped in the building where I used to work to pay my electricity bill).

So here's the plan:

1) I get new digs then get the address on my state ID card changed.
2) I apply for a passport which takes 3 to 4 months to be processed.
3) I fly to Cebu in June or possibly July. Karen and I meet in person and have pictures taken of us together as evidence that we did so, along with my used airline tickets and hotel receipts. We'll go shopping for an engagement ring and a set of wedding rings there- also some sort of dress for her and a suit for me, since all that's cheaper in the Phils than here.
4) When I return, I apply for a K-1 visa for her. It takes around 6 months for that to be processed here, at which time it's forwarded to the Philippine embassy for further processing on their end, which takes another 3 to 4 months. It also entails Karen flying to Manila, getting a medical exam, filling out paperwork there, etc. which will take from 2 to 4 days.
5) When she gets the visa we fly Karen here. We have 90 days in which to get married. As soon as that happens we apply for her green card so she can stay here as a resident alien. Per the lawyer, she'll be allowed to stay pending the arrival of her green card (which I think we actually have to go and pick up in person). That first green card expires in two years, and after that the renewals are all good for ten.

So we're looking at spring of 2010, I figure.

Hi, it's me again! :)

karwren bought herself a small, flat, single-burner propane stove so she can do a bit of cooking for herself (the room she's renting doesn't have a kitchen). She's been after me to send her some recipes, but I thought it would be a good idea to post them here so others could try them, as well as share their own ideas with her.

She'll have to buy small amounts of food, then cook and eat it right away (no refrigerator). She also lacks a lot of storage space for pots and pans, dishes, cooking implements (spatulas, knoves and so on). I suggested she get a steel wok with a lid and a wok ring to hold it upright, two medium-sized saucepans with a lid for steaming rice in and making soups, a large slotted spoon of something to stir and serve with, some cooking oil, sesame oil, dark soy sauce, dry white wine, corn starch, salt, pepper and sugar, as well as plates, bowls, spoons, forks (or chopsticks!), and a large sharp knife or cleaver to cut food up with, a measuring cup, measuring spoons, small containers or saucers to hold spices in readiness to add them quickly, and do some strir-frying. With that stove she can even go outside to cook, eliminating the problems of smoke and odors in her room. She can probably find a small scrap of heavy plywood where she works to use as a cutting board.

If you have any other ideas for dishes that she can easily prepare for herself with her somewhat-primitive means of cooking, please share them. Recipe amounts should be in metric for her: I've found a website that has cooking measurement conversions.

Basics:

Always preheat the wok until very hot.
Never preheat the oil or food will stick. Add the first ingredient immediately after adding the oil. Professional Chinese chefs call this technique "hot wok, cold oil".
Stir by folding food from the outside edges toward the center of the wok.
Add spices and seasonings at brief intervals, not all together at once.
All ingredients must be pre-measured, pre-chopped, etc., handy at hand and ready to add. Stir-fried dishes only take 2 to 3 minutes to cook and you need to keep stirring so nothing burns or scorches, so you won't have time to measure things once you start cooking.
Corn starch is used to make marinades cling to meat as well as for thickening sauces. When used to thicken a sauce it should be blended with about twice its amount of cold water with any lumps broken up with a fork.
Sugar is used to "harmonize' the flavors rather than to sweeten.
If you can't find dark soy sauce you can take some light soy sauce like Kikkoman brand and darken it with around 1 teaspoon (5 ml.) of Kitchen Bouquet per cup (237 ml) of soy sauce. Pour the bottle of soy sauce into a measuring cup with a spout, add the Kitchen Bouquet, stir, and carefully pour it back into the soy sauce bottle. Take a marking pen and write "dark" on the label. If you can't find Kitchen Bouquet you can make your own by heating 2 tablespoons (30 ml) or granulated sugar at high temperature until the sugar melts, then turn the heat to low and cook, stirring, until it browns (don't scorch it). Add 1 cup (237 ml) of water and store it in a bottle or jar with a lid. This should be enough to last you a year or so.
Sesame oil is used as a perfume to give a nice aroma to food. It isn't used to cook with, and Chinese chefs never even bother with stirring food after they add it. Just a few drops right before serving do the trick.
Chinese never use ground meats- they say the meat grinder ruins the texture. If you have to dice your own meat you'll need two sharp kitchen knives or cleavers with thin blades. Hold them close together and cutcutcutcut. Rotate the cutting board 45 degrees (1/8 of a turn) and cutcutcutcut. Repeat until the cutting board has made a complete circle. Or just lower your expectations and use ground meat. :)
Amounts given are approximate. Use your best judgement. Get the closest-sized metric measurement of the ingredients that you can. If it doesn't come out well, try again. Learn from your mistakes just like you do when you learn anything new. :)

( Two chicken recipes )

If you don't have an AmEx card click Share With Others to add this widget to yor own LJ and spread the word.

http://www.meandeviation.com/tutorials/learnphp/php-syntax-check/ an online PHP syntax checker- lets you browse for a local PHP file on your hard drive then checks it. Handy for checking your syntax for errors before uploading an edited script and breaking something on your site. :)

http://instant-eyedropper.com/ Instant Eyedropper, a free Windows utility that lives in the system tray. Left-click on it and, while still holding down the left button, drag your mouse cursor to any point on your screen and it will show you the hex color code there. Release the mouse button and it copies that color code to the clipboard. Great for editing things to match colors, like CSS tweaking or selecting a fill or background color in a graphics program.

http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html Online color scheme generator, lets you enter any hex or RGB color values then renders a small rectangle in that color. Has options to lighten or darken it, also to select colors from a palatte then tweak them.

http://www.crimsoneditor.com/ Crimson Editor, my favorite text editor. It has optional line numbering, can open large files, and PHP/CSS/HTML/etc. code is color-coded.

http://www.getpaint.net/ Paint.NET, a higher-powered replacement for Windows' Paint. Adequate for many graphic-tweaking needs, for those of us who can't afford Photoshop nor want to take the time to learn their way around in that or in GIMP. There's a plug-in for it that lets it open .PSD files, although it's rather limited in what it can then do with them. I think Paint.NET was written by some programmers at Microsoft on their own time, just as a general freebie.

***

A few years ago I posted on here about a PHP/MySQL/Apache development environment that runs all those inside of a kind of virtual machine inside that program, rather than just installing those on your computer as stand-alone programs (and stomping on my MySQL installation for SAM Broadcaster). A few people posted comments expressing interest in it. Does anyone remember what that was? I'd like to get it again but can't find it. No thanks to LiveJournal who still doesn't give us the ability to search our own journals within the contents of posts, like a Google search engine for instance..

***

I edited that now playing PHP script so that the song history no longer displays the current track at the top, just the previous X number of tracks, and also added some code so that the current show and current song fields go blank when the station is offline rather than remaining at whatever was there when the stream dropped. I haven't tested it yet: I need to get Echo to drop the streams for a minute when he gets home later this afternoon so I can see if it works or not. I also added the stream status info at the top so it shows if it's online or offline.

***

Does anybody know if one of the following exists for Windows?

1. An FTP client that can upload a file into every selected directory on a server along with its subdirectories, recursively?

2. A Windows utility that can copy a file into multiple directories and their subdirectories?

3. A windows or command-line utility that can compose a full diectory/subdirectory tree and save it to a text file, so I can edit it to turn it into a batch file to copy the file into all those?

The aon-network.com's webhost's PHP configuration has magic quotes enabled, and I'm pretty sure this is what's causing slashes to be added in front of apostrophes and quotation marks. I read that a work-around, if you don't have access to the server's php.ini file, is to create your own php.ini that turns magic quotes off then upload it into every directory in your website, and Joomla has dozens of those. I could have taken an hour or so and uploaded by hand, but after a while of doing that I thought "There has to be an easier way", and I've been trying to find one for a couple of days now. (Yes, I tried editing .htaccess to disable magic quotes, but that syntax has been depricated in PHP5 and breaks the whole website from loading.)

***

God, I'm tired. I had to set my alarm and get up at 6 to have a Yahoo IM conference with a guy in Uruguay and one in Romania. They're trying to help out getting Campsite, an e-magazine publishing CMS, working on islamtribune.com. At least they tell me that I have Apache configured correctly for vhosts, so I done good. They don't know why Campsite won't work. The Romanian is installing Fedora Core on a PC and is going to try and duplicate our server environment then see if he can make Campsite run. That and watch some soccer championships on TV. :) The seem like nice guys- Leo and Andrei, who are both in their young 20s and have been online friends for years. I have no idea where Dianne found them. :) Which reminds me, I have to post a project on GetAFreelancer for her, to have someone modify a Flash media player Joomla module that we have so it can play a live Shoutcast stream. The person who wrote the player came down sick and can't continue that project. I almost forgot to do that- I'd better go and post it before I forget again. Ta.

Relating to http://www.aon-network.com/now-playing.html . This is a PHP script running inside of a Joomla (1.5.6) wrapper.

In Firefox, Safari for Windows, Chrome and Opera it shows a transparent background so the Joomla template's wallpaper appears behind the text. In Internet Explorer 7 (and Avant Browser, which I assume is based on IE) the background appears white unless I add the  "if" conditional code to set the bk as dark.

What I want is for IE to display the page the same as the other browsers, allowing the wallpaper to show underneath the text, but IE being non-standards-compliant (gee, thanks, Mr. Balmer) I can't figure out how to get it to play nice with transparencies.

The other thing I'd like is for the text "(Automatically refreshes once per minute) " to remain in place at the bottom of the page and allow the song history above it to scroll out of sight, if the song titles are way long, without carrying that text with it. I suppose to do this I'd have to create another table containing the text?

Here's the PHP script:

<?php
header("Refresh: 60;");
?>

<head>
<style type="text/css">
html,
body {
allowtransparency="true"
background-color: transparent;
}
</style>

<!-- ... -->
</head>

<?php
include("includes.php");
?>
<HTML>
<TITLE>AoN Network Radio Status</TITLE>
<BODY bgcolor transparency="0">
<!--[if gte IE 7]>
<BODY bgcolor="121212">
<![endif]-->

<TABLE align="center" width="95%">
<TR><TD><font face="Arial" color="FFFFFF" size="2">
Current Show:  <b><font color="89A5C8"><?php echo $server[0]['desc']; ?></font></b><br>
Current Song: <b><font color="89A5C8"><?php echo $current_song; ?></font></b><br>
Current Listeners: <b><font color="89A5C8"><?php echo $listeners; ?></font></b><br><br></font><TD><TR>
</TABLE>

<?php
$i = 0;
echo "<table align=\"center\" width=\"60%\">
<tr>
<td rowspan=\"".sizeof($lastsong)."\" valign=\"top\"><font face=\"Tahoma\" color=\"CCCCCC\" size=\"1\">Previous ".sizeof($lastsong)." Tracks:</font></td>";
while ($lastsong[$i])
{
 if ($i != 0)
 {
  echo "<tr>";
 }
 echo "<td><font face=\"Tahoma\" color=\"CCCCCC\" size=\"1\">";
 echo $lastsong[$i];
 echo "</font></td></tr>";
 $i++;
}
echo "</TABLE>";

?>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<p style= "text-align: center; color: #89A5C8; font-face: arial; font-size: 12;">
<b>
(Automatically refreshes once per minute)
</b>
</p>
</BODY>
</HTML>

I guess I need to add learning CSS to my To Do list. Guess I'll have to order a copy of Cascading Style Sheets for Dummies. But meanwhile, help!

On http://aon-network.com/newschedule.html there is a table. I would like to change the text color, in the "Show" column only, to #89A5C8. I can't figure out how.

Here's the relevant CSS code I'm working with:

div#eventlist table.eventtable
{ margin: 1em 1px; width: 99%; font-size: 1em; border-collapse: collapse; border: 1px solid #E5E5E5; }

div#eventlist table.eventtable th
{ background-color: #1f1f1f; font-weight: bold; color: #89A5C8; padding: 0.4em; text-align: left; border-bottom: 1px solid #e5e5e5; border-right: 1px solid #E5E5E5; }

div#eventlist table.eventtable th img
{ margin: 0 0 5px 5px; vertical-align: middle; border: none; }

div#eventlist table.eventtable td
{ padding: 0.4em; border-bottom: 1px solid #e5e5e5; border-right: 1px solid #E5E5E5; vertical-align: top; }

div#eventlist table.eventtable tr.sectiontableentry2 td
{ background: #1f1f1f; }