When we were in Bothell, I would go down to Bellevue on early Sunday mornings sometimes to take Buildings photos. Yesterday, after running some errands in IT Park, I did a short buildings photo walk. The Cebu IT Park is a business park here in Cebu, with mostly banks and IT companies. But their are some very cool malls as well. One of our favorites is a new extension of the Ayala Malls - the Ayala Malls Central Bloc. It's opening up slowly, with Covid and all, but my current favorite store is there: their Daiso Japan store.  It's fun, and I never leave their without a bag of stuff in my hands. Good stuff! I'm thinking how exciting it's going to be when we visit the real Japan in April/May of next year. Assuming Mr Covid let's us do that...

They begin celebrating xmas early here. Xmas music everywhere, even when we arrived on 4 Nov. The Santa with a pink guitar is by our elevator, and yesterday, Mr Snowman and his little buddy were watching the world go by with me when I took a break. ps - we don't use umbrellas here just for the rain. We use them for the sun as well...

I went on my first solo cross city excursion yesterday, a bus ride from Fuente Osmena Circle where we live, to the Montebello Villa Hotel in Apas. The Visayas Art Fair 2021 was in the last day of a 4 day exhibition, and I had to go. I plan to share some photos soon.

Re my bus ride, they introduced a step up from Jeepneys in Cebu transportation during these Covid times. More space, some w AC and music, and bigger windows - unlike the Jeepneys where I was hunched over and could only see the curve in the roof at eye level :) One last note though, was their lack of hearty shock absorbers and suspension springs :) Oh well...

Weather changes...Friday evening we had a lightning storm pass through Cebu. Bright flashes of light, followed by loud claps of thunder. Looking to our SW, we saw a fire several miles away (photo center), and we assumed it was a lightning strike. The lines of colored lights on the left are from the Crown Regency Hotel next to our building. Not far away, we saw a gushing stream of water shooting out from the top of one building onto a smaller building next to it. I think a water tank was hit. We closed the windows, turned off our electronics, and watched the show. Fairly dramatic stuff.

In the news Saturday morning: https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/regions/812501/5-hurt-1-000-residents-left-homeless-in-cebu-city-fire/story/

Sad, but an all too common happening in some of the more densely populated areas.

27Nov2021...Miscellaneous

some more SM Seaside Mall shots...

From my walk on this date in 2018, from our house in Tukwila to the bridge over the Green River...

I like how this taxi driver put a special sunscreen frame thing on his windows...

I like taking photos of Cebu's night lights. I also like the window reflections.

 I decided to go with my "Bohjour" coffee cup this morning :)

I might need to get myself a utility belt, for all of my phones! We signed up with T-Mobile before we left home because of their "over 55" and "International" Plans. Besides keeping our US phone number, which is handy for our US banking, bills, etc, they use the GSM network standards which most of the world uses. Good call.

Just like with my instant coffee research, figuring out how to communicate here has been interesting.

From left to right, these phones are my iPhone SE, our budget LG we bought here in 2018, Indays older iPhone Max, and my new Samsung A52s.

I should have taken notes when I was experimenting, but this is what I remember. Even though the iPhones are not on any Phil plan, their GPS maps work great, and I receive most text messages in real-time. I can text and call back and forth between the iPhone and the cheap LG, which has a new sim card and a small amt of data. This is handy when we split up while shopping. I needed a Philippine phone number for things we're doing here in Cebu, and the Samsung is my first new phone in several years. The SE was a Refurbished model. The Sansung is handy for signing up for things like Home Wifi, etc, and it was convenient when the Bed salesperson called about our delivery on Tuesday. I can receive texts on the Samsung, but I haven't succeeded in Replying to texts yet. I'm getting a headache. Haha.

On my comment yesterday about British accents, I just remembered that our Company Clerk in Vietnam was a Brit. I have no idea how he ended up in the US Army, let alone Vietnam. I got off overnight guard duty one morning, and as I was getting ready to sleep for 4 hours, he handed me a cup of coffee mixed with some kind of alcohol? He said "here! this'll pick you up and lieee you down..." It did just that.

We took the free "MyBus" to the SM Seaside Mall yesterday. Love the malls here, and I think Seaside is my favorite. We can see the Cebu City skyline from there - our building is next to the tall pointed tower in the middle. We're planning on going to the il Corso area soon, which is not far from Seaside. They have a long pedestrian and biking lane along the water.

They like the British accent here...the female Google Assistant on my new cell phone, our Elevator Lady audios "door is now closing...Floor 16". It reminds me of Japan. Thinking back to my English Teacher days there, I remember how the private schools like mine preferred American, or non-British English accented instructors. However, the Instructor they hired for the Ube School district was British, with his very British accent.

Interesting...

ps - I just clicked on Live News, being a kind of news-aholic. Up pops BBC World News America, a "U.S.-targeted nightly newscast". Like! Again, the British accent, an interesting mix of news from a "foreign" perspective, and less of the embarrassing D.C. political drama.

On K-Dramas I watch, I've always chuckled when someone would say "ahh, that's good coffee". They had just emptied a little packet of instant coffee and added hot water. I'm thinking C'mon..., that's not real coffee! Well, I changed my mind. A good coffee maker, for example a Keurig, is not on my shopping list anymore. There are many options, and I'm refining my perfect combination of what is offered here.  These are shots of the coffee section in a small mini mart. The regular supermarket has a whole isle dedicated to these coffee choices.

 Sunset, Moonrise, and today. I liked the band of mist in the foothills this morning...