FINEST KIND CLINIC AND FISHMARKET.... Discussing medicine, culture, and the joys of cooking Pansit.
Kuya has moved his mother to the Philippines and she is still quite weak, staying in the spare bedroom. She needs a full time caregiver or two, so after three days trying to cope, he found two of our staff willing to do the basic caregiving and they have been instructed by Joy, a trained caregiver, on how to do basic stuff.
She needs a hospital bad which should arrive tomorrow.
I can't help much since I have muscle weakness as a complication of dengue three years ago.
In the meanwhile, for the last month he has hired staff to fix up the business compound (offices, meeting room, spare bedrooms for guests, and our house). things that havent't been fixed for five years due to covid when expenses lowered our profit on rice, and two years ago when the rice buyer's check bounced and we lost the money for our entire harvest. No we can't sue her: She left the country with lost of other people being owed by her too.
But finally we are breaking even and can fix up the place, and his mom's social security should cover her medical expenses here (no Medicare doesn't pay hospitals in the Philippines).
Sigh.
three years ago, an unprovoked attack by Hamas from Gaza killed and kidnanpped over 1000 Israelis, and not just Israelis: over 40 innocent Thai farmworkers were murdered too.
The western press ignores the Thai farmworkers and the Filipina caregiver murdered of course.
And the west is easily swallowing the Hamas reports against Israel, ignoring that this war would never have happened if those in charge had just arrested those who committed the murders and sent back the hostages.
Why does the propaganda work? Because the MSM stories go back only a week or two and often naively think the reports from Gaza are true reports from neutral observers.
But the real problem is that the west tends to ignore history, ,whereas some cultures, including Arab culture, keeps hatred and grudges alive for centuries.
Quick: Any of you guys who went to Catholic school would remember there used to be a name for Mary as Our Lady of Victory, but after Vatican II when militant names became a no no, the feast day was changed to Our Lady of the Rosary.
And the reason this feast day was on October 7 was to remember the Battle of Leponto.
The feast of Our Lady of the Rosary was actually instituted under another name: In 1571 Pope Pius V instituted “Our Lady of Victory” as an annual feast in thanksgiving for Mary’s patronage in the victory of the Holy League over the Muslim Turks in the Battle of Lepanto...
Coming at what was seen as a crisis point for Christianity, the victory at Lepanto stemmed Ottoman incursion into the Mediterranean and prevented their influence from spreading through Europe.
Through the intervention of Our Lady, the Hand of God prevented the Muslim victory..
The epic victory has been commemorated in literature:
Miguel de Cervantes, a Spanish soldier wounded in the battle, recovered to become a novelist, poet and playwright; and he was so inspired by this battle that he incorporated elements of it in his own acclaimed novel, Don Quixote....
a secular report on the battle can be watched here:
the reason for the rosary is because Catholics often were illiterate peasants for 1000 years, and it was via fiestas, stories, plays, and simple prayers like the rosary (which was easly for ordinary people to pray) were how the faith was kept alive.
............................
and of course, the idea that praying the rosary to Mama Mary asking for peace is also seen as a way to stop aggression, as is something seen in stories behind the fall of communism in Europe...
and here in the Philippines it was prayed by those in those behind the People Power revolution here in the Philippines where one million Filipinos praying and singing hymns and carrying a statue of Mary at the head of their procession stopped Marcos soldiers from taking over the military under General Ramos who had backed Cory Aquino after she won the election against Marcos Senior.
So when you read of riots in Europe, and think things are lost, just remember that a few days ago one million Frenchmen were out singing and praying with the Pope in Paris and later in Lourdes
I just found the most brilliant bit by @JohnCleese He explains Leftism better in 90 seconds, than you could learn from any academic in 20 years. https://t.co/xtubCcbRdi
— Dr Manhattva (@Manhattva) October 3, 2026
it isn't only about the left (the right does it too). It is actually a sign of being a true believer, needing a purpose in life and directing self hatred against others instead of actually doing something that might help others.
I saw this in medical school and I saw how very few anti VietNam war protesters bothered to help the boat people or the other refugees who fled that country when the communists took over. Nope, they were into other things: Jane Fonda for example started putting out exercize videos. About the only anti war activist who actually helped was Joan Baez...
that is why all the stress on training social justice warriors is nonsense. Are any of these folks building houses in Appalachia? working in food banks? Helping in emergencies such as helping to fill sandbags to stop flooding, evacuating people, taking groceries etc to those fleeing fires or floods?? Church groups do this all the time...
BREAKING: 5 hospitals have been closed for quarantines in Siberia due to a possible plague outbreak. The 28-year-old lab technician Darya Shipilova, died yesterday after breaking a test tube with live Yersinia pestis the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute on September 25th while handling samples. A mask mandate has now been introduced at the huge aluminum plant in Irkutsk. Some U.S. politicians are now calling for commercial air travel to and from Russia to be stopped until the situation is clarified. This first symptoms of pneumonic plague typically start about 4 to 7 days after exposure. 200 people are under observation.
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 4, 2026
,,,
physicians working in the Navajo area of the IHS see a few cases every year, mostly from flea bites. These are treated and most survive. but Pneumonic plague is highly fatal and can kill you within 24 hours, even with treatment.
my stepson is in the US planning to move his mother from her nursing home there to the Philippines where she can stay with family since she no longer could care for herself,
The bad news?
The extra bedroom is in my house.
Actually he wanted me to move upstairs to the apartment we have there, but my walking ability is shot since I had neuromuscular complications from dengue and I can't manage the stairs
So we will be in the same house.
So right now, we have all sorts of workmen cleaning and painting the aging house including my bedroom.
I am not sure who he will hire for a caregiver (he probably expects his wife, who is a trained caregiver, to do it, but she runs her own business so we might have to hire one.
Oh well. Does it bother me that my husband's ex is moving into what is essentially my husband's house? No because she is now senile and can't walk around, but needs a walker or wheelchair. So I can just lock the door and I still have two dogs in the room with me (she is a cat person and hates dogs).
My main dog died last week, and I miss him. But his two smaller siblings are now trying to take their place in my room at night, so now I have two in my bedroom instead of one....
Luckily we still have two other (larger) dogs outside to guard the business compound and an old female dog to guard the office upstairs.
so people all over cleaning and washing and painting: the place is in an uproar.
Sigh.
more here.
and here
:Starship meanwhile continued firing its own engines to reach a preliminary suborbital flight path. Near the end of that burn it lost one of its outer engines. It nonetheless reached the right preliminary orbit, but because of the engine loss engineers spent about fifteen minutes discussing whether that engine issue would preclude going to full orbit and completing all six orbits. In the end they decided to go to orbit, and were successful. The ship that successfully deployed all 26 Starlinks, all of which appeared to be operating as expected. Because of the engine issue, however, the decision was then made to de-orbit early, after completing about two orbits, bringing the ship back over the northern Pacific, likely to have it avoid habitable land as much as possible. At landing Starship successfully completed a soft vertical splashdown, but it then exploded. No recovery of this ship will take place, as occurred on the previous flight.
They were actually stopped because a farmer returning from a party noticed them and called the local cops.
So a civilian and local bobbies, not high falutin expert anti terrorism cops, stopped them..
From a UKTelegraph article that quoted the farmer mentioned in a local tabloid
“A plucky amateur shouldn’t be spotting an unusual bit of activity at 1am when the air base is on high alert,” she said. “I think it’s absolutely astonishing.”
Place conspiracy theory here.
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update: There were 5 guys arrested (the farmer said she saw 8 to ten) and then left out on bail by the judge. They were "British citizens".... and the cops claimed no viable explosives found (presumably they found dead explosives)
Conspiracy theory A: A false flag.
Conspiracy theory B: Incompetnt
Conspiracy theory C: They don't want to hurt the feelings of the Muslims in the government or have the Muslim mobs upset or the patriots upset at a time when 1000 boat people mainly military age men are arriving on their shores.
Sigh.
Trying to Be Everyone’s Pope, Tours Secular FranceAfter visiting Africa, Pope Leo’s four-day trip to France shows how he is seeking to appeal to Roman Catholicism’s original heartlands as well as to the church’s newest strongholds."
,,,,,,
Doing his thing: Multicultural outreach.
Catholicism is not European or white Anglo Saxon church.
Which is why the Pope is pushing outreach to migrants, even though in the US a lot of ordinary folk in the USA are upset on how the church used their money to help the drug cartels smuggle people into the USA along with drugs and gang members hiding with real refugees and those seeking to better themselves ,
( There is also a lot of resentment because migrants are easily underpaid and steal their jobs but that could be fixed with amnesty and rules)
In the USA, the religious revival tends to be evangelical and Catholic and partly inspired by Charlie Kirk, who was killed for daring to outreach both politics and conservative religious ideas to college students.
but in France, like in the US, the younger folk are slowly returning to church.
QUESTION: So, while you were here, the Iranian president spoke at the United Nations. And he said that President Trump’s speech “goes against the very essence… of the United Nations.” He said that President Trump “must know that the resistance of the Iranian people will only increase in the face of sanctions, increased pressure, [and] increased bullying.” And he said, “We will never bow our [heads] or bend [our knees].” Do you have a response to him today? SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah. I think slaughtering 10,000 of your own people in protests is a violation of the UN – I hope it’s a violation of the UN principles. I think sponsoring terrorist organizations in the region to attack your neighbors, attack energy infrastructure, attack civilian sites, is a violation of the UN system. So, I don’t know what standing Iran has to lecture anyone on human rights or the international system when they habitually violate it. They violate the sovereignty of every one of their neighbors by sponsoring terrorist organizations that reside within the borders of those countries. They slaughter their own people. They violate rules that were – and sanctions that were imposed by the international community against their nuclear weapons program. So, I just – honestly, I don’t know how you stand up there and argue on behalf of the international system when you are the world’s leading – the world-leading violator of the international system. That’s what the Iranian system has been, unfortunately – sadly, tragically.
the Democrats are being manipulated by the socialist/Islamicist juggernaut (paid for by whom I wonder) so Iran thinks things will change in November after the election.
And the MSM in the US are happy to publicize the propaganda of these bozos instead of trying to put things into perspective.
One little known story of the Spanish civil war was that Russia kidnapped Spanish children to raise them as communists.
the Wikipedia article frames it as keeping the children safe in a time of war (as were many thousands who were taken in by France etc) but if you read down the article the real reason is noted:
Communist propaganda portrayed them as the future political elite in a Spanish socialist republic which would emerge from victory in the Civil War. The children and their families believed that their time in Russia would be short, and in their later testimonies they confirm that they were happy with the adventure of travelling to a foreign country.
the evacuations of children during war is controversial because of the separation from family and culture, yet the alternative might be a dead child.
Yet the high casualty rate in the Spanish children in Russia suggests that safety was not the real issue.
So fast forward to the Russia Ukraine war, where again Russia is kidnapping Ukrainian children claiming they just wanted to keep them safe.
From StrategyPage:
September 19, 2026: Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia has kidnapped nearly 50,000 Ukrainian children and sent them to Russia to halt its population decline...
The Russian government developed a formal system to obtain children. The easiest method was to find young, orphaned children, from infants to 7 or 8 years old, and send them to Russia to be adopted. When Russian troops took some populated Ukrainian territory, special filtration teams were sent in to find any children they could kidnap without meeting violent resistance from families or neighbors...
What is most unusual about this use of children as hostages to pacify occupied regions is that it is happening in Donbas, which has been under Russian control since 2014 and initially supplied troops for the 2022 invasion. As that invasion went badly and got a lot of the Russian soldiers killed or wounded, the surviving volunteers from Donbas refused to fight any longer....
One underreported story about getting these children back to their families is the work of Melania Trump.
