Dusit Thani Manila, Philippines Makati

... be handing out health questionnaires to each passenger and we were required to fill them out before landing. Also, once we did land and get to the gate we were not to leave the aircraft until the Japanese Health officials had come through the plane taking Thermal images of each of the passengers and had picked up the questionairs from us. The forms asked whether we had been to Mexico lately, if we had a runny nose, were ...

... have a little insight into this world.  In BKK it is not uncommon that the big expensive hotels open their pools to non-guests for a fee.  We thought we would try this here.  Our first try was the Hyatt where we encountered either pure snobbery or the Twilight Zone effect.  I stood there while two staff chatted with each other and I was invisible.  We then tried the Diamond Hotel, and this time the Twilight zone seemed to work in our favour.  "do you have a pool ...

... is that there are very few westerners. Unlike Thailand where whole parts of the city seem to be set up for travellers, here you really stand out as different. I saw one other couple of anglos in the market and everyone else was local. The market specialised in cheap electronics, DVDs and various weapons (including those stars Ninjas throw), knuckle dusters, police batons and BB guns that look real. There is also an abundance of the real thing, in the form ...

... Santiago. The fort guarded the mouth of the Pasig River. Inside the fort there is a shrine dedicated to Dr. Jose Rizal in the building where he was incarcerated. It started to rain when I went into the fort but stopped by the time that I left. After I left the fort I walked around some more. Two older Filipino ladies started talking to me on the street and it turned out that one of them was a history teacher. They were checking ...

... blue glaciers that make up Southern Patagonia at the end of the Americas. Opportunities for outdoor fun abound. Fancy climbing an active volcano? There are 50 to choose from. Prefer running white-water rapids or paddling through ice-carved fjords? You'll be spoilt for choice. Come looking for adventure and you could hike, bike, ski, surf, swim, horseback ride and even paraglide ...

This will be a very important Presidential election for the U.S. So, with everything else going on, we still made it a point to figure out how to request an absentee ballot from New Jersey and cast our vote. It wasn't really that difficult to get the ballot but the process was more cumbersome than we hoped. Even though we were able to receive the ballots by email we still had to request them by FedExing forms to the county clerk's office in NJ and even though we were ...

... scared. I just concentrated on the sight above me - a most impressive landscape of ocean and mountains surrounded by a lush verdant carpet of greenery. It was so cold, that I have to put my hands on my coat's pocket as I forgot to bring my winter gloves. When we arrived at the mountain peak, I couldn't see the view anymore since the chilly fog and clouds covered the whole scenery. Somebody handed me a hot tea on a paper cup and I held it for as long as I could to keep my hands warm ...

... mobile signal to call the feisty students to organise a meet in Bontoc. No mean feat considering some wise guy from the NPA (New People's Army) rebel group decided to shoot the mobile antennae out with his automatic...blew it to pieces. Back at base had a coffee and watched the story of a little piglet unfold. It started with a small boy chasing a piglet through the village and throwing big stones at it. When he reached the owners house he tossed a small carcass at the feet of ...

... of the national hero Jose Rizal. He was an early Filipino nationalist in the history of the development of the independent Phillipine nation. Streets are named after him everywhere (including the next street over from the internet cafe I'm in now). Inside the museum are Rizal artifacts; a coat he wore, his set of surgical tools (wasn't nearly every revolutionary also a poet-doctor?), paintings of moment in his life and execution, and along one wall a collection ...

... of 16) because we will be flying into headwinds. Plenty of time to sleep and to reflect... to gear up for the hectic pace of work, and back to a world where few if any people cater to your comfort (something I've grown very comfortable with here in the Philippines--being spoiled!) Back to America.