I copyright this usage type of carbon credits note right godamn now.

Annnnnnd….brownout, just as I step outside. No bother, not going to be home anyway.

Out swimming around was pretty good although visibility was poor. Got about 1.5 kilometers out and saw many schools, large schools of sea catfish both juvenile and young adult. Things should never be left alone so I dove down five meters to wave hands thru them. I’ve done that a hundred times and touch them always but never once getting pricked by the poisonous spines.

Turning south, I had to keep more aware of the surroundings because it was now the boat traffic lane closer to Angol coral gardens than shore… Whats that, 2 or 3km out? I keep looking up for jellyfish that’ve been edging in and I was glad for my long hair growth, half stuck under the mask like some cheesy 1975 yearbook picture.

It was out here that I saw some strands….then wiggeling strands… then small darts… then WTF is this trying to rape my mask?! In hindsight, it was a beautful example of a black/white flatworm about an inch long. Now, this was about 10 meters up and it was undulating wildly like a damselfish and seemed intent to land on my mask….but damselfish have tend to have fins, tails, heads, eyes….everything this didnt. Had to look it up later.

There use to be a lot of brain coral down on the south end but now it looks like its been used for construction platforms, not just dead on top from COT but also crushed and flattened like a standing platform. The new resort down there ripped out the cliff a year ago and now seems to have sliced into the cliff face and ground to hide a buried pipe that extends into the sea… tried following it but there’s all sorts of sand out there (where it was a rocky area before) and the fine, angelhair moss growing dead-centered in the sand. A type of moss that I’ve only seen growing around high phosphate areas like stagnant waters or drain pipes. I’ve never seen this type of moss/algae grow in the ocean with moving water, honestly I’ve only seen it in freshwater runnoff.

The surface over there had a nasty foam floating all over and it burned my eyes a bit. A small cut on the hand got infected pretty fast and still hasn’t healed many days later.

It was a good swim, almost 3 hours but when I came back we still had a brownout. Power came back about 9am and went out at noon again for 7 hours. Then out again at 8pm and back shortly before midnight. All total, Boracay had 15 hours of poweroutage in a single day…..again.

A Korean national drowned while snorkeling at vicinity waters of Coral Garden snorkeling area at Angol Point, Barangay Manoc-Manoc, Boracay Island, Aklan on June 13, 2010 at 10:30 AM.

Personnel of Coast Guard Detachment Boracay received the drowning incident report from a certain Mrs Sojen Lee of La Isla Hotel Beach Resort, Barangay Manoc-Manoc, Boracay Island.

Immediately, Coast Guard Detachment Boracay personnel proceeded to the said area onboard a Coast Guard rubber boat to conduct search and rescue operations and were able to recover a floating body approximately 250 meters off the shoreline of Barangay Manoc-Manoc.  The victim was identified as Chang Hyun Lim, 20 years old single and guest of La Isla Hotel Beach Resort.

According to investigation, Lim was with a group when they rented the motorboat Biha MPC-2 which is owned and operated by Boracay Island Hopping Association. While snorkeling at the said area, Lim had difficulty in breathing and fell unconscious.  

At 11:30 AM, the Coast Guard team immediately brought the victim to Caticlan Baptist Hospital Barangay Caticlan, Aklan but was declared dead on arrival.

  Copyright (and thanks) to the Philippine Coastguard for the press release as retrieved 2010-06-20T17:11:38. Future corrections and edits will not be reflected here unless specifically annotated.

I’m posting this as general news for clarification since the islands coconut telegraph had a few different stories.

Nothing says culture like communal hand ripping of animal flesh from the bone. Why bother with a plate to start with? I would shit a water buffalo if one of these people bothered to use that spoon or fork after lubing up with pig grease.

I went for a change in diet and boiled up a handfull of eggs from the sari sari store next to Red Pirates. Being drunk at the time, the numbness didn’t surprise me as much as it should have so I lost interest after Googling turned up mostly food allergy issues.

Next day, before having the breakfast rum, I chowed a leftover hard-boiled egg from the fridge and was shocked at the numbness that I’d forgotten about. It was distinct and strong.

Does anyone know of chicken farming practices here involving chemicals? They still use cyanide for fishing around here and I know this because several fisherguys told me, but I cannot fathom the usage of cyanide around chickens. Egg shells are very porous and pretty much anything gets absorbed…. I wonder what it is?

My whole point in leaving is the frustration of daily brownouts lasting anywhere from 30 minutes to 7 hours and during my jolly plan making and bag packing, a new outage befalls me: Water. Water outage. No water.

This one pissed me off so bad I took a light and the baseball bat to see if someone had turned off the wrong meter again…. which happens here. Why a baseball bat? In case some old ladies try jumping me from the shadows, you gotta problem with that?

They’re prone to turning off waterlines until getting the correct one, failing to restore the others. While I didn’t see the malfunction at the time, they managed to outdo themselves by simply shutting down the main for the entire complex rather than a single line. Great. Time to drink.

Now I’m grumptimacatin’ and decide to catch an early flight outta this hillbilly paradise; earliest as possible. Hmmmmm, oddly all of the airlines have changed their numbers once again. Soooo now I’m about to get online to look them up when….. Go ahead… Guess….. BROWNOUT ! now, where did mama hide them corn squeezin’s…?

We can summarize from here:

Inebriated
Water outage
Power outage
Up all night
One airline says no seats exist (in low season) and the others dont answer phones
Hot and windless before sunrise
Generator issues where they run it but dont throw the switch

I spent the entire electrically-challenged day plastered to sweat-soaked towels on a sweat-soaked bed that had fresh sheets just a day before. At some point the water came back in time for Montezumas Revenge to stress test the porcelin fixture I hold in such high regard.

We did not leave Boracay that day, or the next, or the following. Two days to recover from feeling like a wallbangin’ diving dolphin so now the aircon stays on high to keep a nice chill on the walls….a little meat-locker effect to pre-empt a brownout.

Presumably, we will also possess these capabilities in the future. Sooner or later, the easy availability of such intersteller transport will fall upon the likes of ourselves whose moments of greatness were spawned by the drunken utterings of such phrases as “dude, watch this…”

Watch your ass, everyone else is.