Family news

a low pressure area is bringing rain to the area. This is good for planting the next harvest but bad for the black rice we just harvested that has to be dried properly before we store it. And our rice drier is broken. Again. Sigh.

The refrigerator was not running well: the freezer kept things cold but not well frozen and the regular part of the fridge didn't keep anything cool at all... in the past this was because dirt was preventing the cold from going down into the main fridge from the freezer compartment, but we thought maybe the compressor needed fixing or the freon replaced.

 Our repairman had a stroke, so we called a different one, who promptly offered to sell me a used fridge, and then took the motor apart and said the circuit board needed to be replaced, and just for good luck I think he scratched it to break the circuit.

We threw him out and bought a new fridge: The old fridge was 10 years old, and things don't last long here due to power surges, brown outs, and a cook who sometimes doesn't shut the door properly.

 Oh well: There goes my budget. My savings are down due to lots of fees for visa problems and the deposit for the retirement visa and Joy's surgery and Ruby's school fees and heavy clothing for college (she only had "Vancouver" cold weather gear. She is now in Minnesota, and it's colder there in October than in January in Vancouver, so she needed to buy sub zero boots and parka etc.).

The rice business is not very profitable: You can live comfortably here, but not a lot for such "extras". And now Joy's mother has health problems, so some of her rice business profits will go to help with her medical bills instead of for our expenses here in the house.

And it's not just Joy's family: The cook's granddaughter had twins by C section (for PROM) and no husband to help with the bills. Here, that is a shameful thing but is becoming more and more common, alas. 

Dr Angi did the surgery, because she was high risk, and the "free" subsidized government hospital is not as high standards. I am helping a bit with the bills, knowing that the alternative is lousy meals because the food budget would be diverted by the cook, who has been in the family for 40 years and can't be fired, although she is older than I am and refuses to quit because she is helping support a lot of her grandkids school fees.

As for me, I am fighting off the cold that is going around. 

and one of the female dogs is in heat, meaning the boy dogs who are left out at night to keep us safe are fighting over her. 

Traffic and sometimes sirens make the night noisy: especially now that they are repairing the main road and it is diverted around out House. And the jail and one of the fire stations is down the street.

To keep out the noise, I tend to run lectures ripped from youtube, audiobooks from librivox or ripped via youtube or computer read mp3s (Balaboka is a good free program to do this), and podcasts on my tablet or small radio as friendly noise: Nothing complicated or too interesting: usually history or science stuff. I do listen to novel audiobooks from Scribd, but they don't put you to sleep: Usually I listen to them from my tablet during the day as I putter around the house.

Finally, Kuya bought something to link my computer to our TV so we can watch Youtube on the TV. We do have a lot of channels, but if the 7pm movies are something we saw or are another superhero type film, we often watch the "oldies but goodies" type movies downloaded from youtube. The new connector will let us bypass the steps of downloading to a thumb drive and hoping the film doesn't crash halfway thru because I didn't rip it properly. It also will make it easier to watch Netflix, which he has on his smart phone and computer.

the family flat screen TV is in my bedroom (we bought one for Lolo before he died) so we often watch TV here after supper.

Yes we get some TV shows, and watch the cooking/ nature/ documentary type shows a lot, but most of the regular series are on late at night and tell you the truth, I often miss parts of the series type show. I never did find out what happened in Lost, Downton Abbey was two years behind, and a lot of the shows are not relaxing. Some, like the Walking dead are advertised "the same time as US", but I'm not into that series either. 

as for news: We have CNN Philippines (not quite as anti American as CNN international), Fox, BBC, Al Jazerah, the evening news from Japan and local stations, and the local 24 hour news in English or Tagalog. But usually I get news via internet or in the local newspaper.