Timothy S. Carlson's Blog

[Note: This is a government shutdown related post that, for some reason, has been in my 'drafts' folder. Oops] I'd been hearing rumours that the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial (MACM) has been closed due to the US government shutdown, so we decided to take a trek out of the house and take a look for ourselves. We live in Taguig City and the Cemetery is within a few kilometers of our house. On October 7th, 2013, a Monday morning, we drove around a bit and finally found the MACM. We arrived at noon and the gates were locked. Normal business hours for the MACM are 9am-5pm, pretty much every day of the year except for Christmas and New Year's day. I saw two guards at the guard house and lots of maintenance staff on the grounds. I talked to one guard who explained that the Cemetery was closed due to the shutdown. I asked if they were running at reduced staff and he replied "No, we are fully staffed, but we are unpaid at the moment." I asked him if the ...

We’ve been painting the house for the past month. Oh, not me – I’m just the financial guy. A _very_ happy filipino gent has been doing the labor for me. Our flat (penthouse? bunker?) was dark green and ‘amazing’ green for the past 4 years. Then my sister-in-law painted her house, which is just across the way, 'amazing' green. And the Pure Gold building, that dominates the view from my front and side windows, is various shades of green. Dammit. Time to change and plus the paint was peeling due to the lovely atmospherics in the islands (read: constant humidity, occasional freakin’ heavy rain). I sure hope continue to love pale yellow / BRIGHT yellow. What started as painting/repainting the 3rd floor flat has turned into a complete repaint of the entire building – 5 floors in toto! *sigh* I hope everyone in the family enjoys their bags of sugar and cans of tuna for Christmas, because we are _broke_. Oh well, at least we are weather-proofed – sorta. Did I mention we paint...