Letter from Manila - Santol - of course!

I think the emissions & reliabiity comments were aimed at why the rotary engine ceased production.

Sounds about right.

What stopped them was emissions !
Were never going to pass when part of the combustion cycle is to burn oil !

That said they do believe they have improved the reliability a d oil consumption and are looking to re introduce a sports car using a rotary engine in around 2020

As for the Mazda 3 nice car , if you only get the2.0 look fur tg 165 ps rather than the 120ps
Though if she likes the p38 you could look at the cx3 which is the Mazda small suv

yeag the cx3 is based on the Mazda 2
Certain countries get a cx4 which is more inline room wise the 3

Highway 1, home of my favourite road sign,

D'you know, I reckon you're right now I read it properly. Silly me!

Once again, cheers for the input. Sounds like it could be an okay little tool.

I'll be going to have a gander on Saturday morning, but given the way she's got herself worked up, whatever I say will be of supreme irrelevance, unless it's totally supportive and positive. I'll probably just stick with, "Ooh" and "Ahh". Can't go far wrong.

In other news...

Got a cheery message from Madam yesterday morning.

You may remember that a certain guy has been causing us trouble for a while now. You know, making false drug-dealing allegations, getting folks arrested, that type of stuff. You’ll also remember that, as a Barangay Chairman, he is fairly fireproof and his ability to mess both us and the police around, virtually limitless. Been getting right on my nerves, he has, right on them.

Well, as of Monday night, that ceased to be the case. Apparently, and I quote her SMS, “…he come second in losing landslide.” By which I assume she means, had his backside well and truly handed to him. This means he now no longer enjoys his little protective parasol.

Oh dear, how sad, what a shame, never mind.

Turns out a Cockroach aunt was standing for Kagawad (councillor) in the same Barangay. She was one of nine. She came ninth. Maybe this family just isn’t cut out for politics any more.

As usual, we are in delay. Initially, it was announced that official results would start to be released from Monday evening. This was then extended to Tuesday, becoming Tuesday or Wednesday. As of now, there’s still no sign. I think release will be updated to “soon” or “later” in the not too distant future.

Hi George
We've had two Mazda 3's. The first was a two litre turbo diesel Sport and we put 50k miles on it, Our present one is a 1600cc diesel and we have done another 35k miles in two years at 50mpg - No problems with either, good cars.

Took Friday afternoon off to go look at Mazdas. Madam was most unimpressed when all the sales manager wanted to do was crawl around the '38. Still looks like a goer.

And moving on from modern Mazdas to some more retro stuff.

Friday morning, I was slated to visit Philippine National Railways at Tutuban and their heavy maintenance shop in Caloocan. this was basically to show their new General Manager that we cared and to show a colleague around.

So, me and the other guy met up for eight in the morning and hooked up with a couple of railway police who were to be our guides. Having decided to take the afternoon off, and not to mess around car arrangements, I took my own.

Anyway, let's have a look at the pride of PNR's fleet.

Tutuban first...


This was parked up in exactly the same position two years ago


My mate, Steve (he's also married a Filipina and lives here - we can empathise), doing a little dance of joy by a rat look Northrail DMU (or part of one). It's been here longer than two years, Northrail hasn't run for donkeys.




Everything beautifully clean and maintained. Don't know what the wagons are for. There's nobody old enough to remember when PNR last hauled freight.

On to Caloocan...


Look dad, they've got a traverser!


This hasn't moved for a day or two either.


That's going to need more than T-Cut. As you'll have seen, the sheds are massive and totally filled with stuff like this.


Loco on the traverser after maintenance. It's about the only thing there that'll ever move again.


'cos these won't.


And finally, a bit of class amongst Toyota drudgery.

After Caloocan, I headed back into town and dropped back into PNR Tutuban to see if the GM had turned up yet. He had, so I asked if he could spare me a couple of minutes. He could, and we had a good chat over a brew about the new line I'm working on and the issues he faced. We may also have talked, subliminally, about certain port projects.

I'd only met him once before, briefly, at a meeting, so this was our first face-to-face. I was pretty impressed. He's only been in post a couple of months and seems to have a good grip of PNR's problems, which are legion. Let's see what he can do. He's already got the Department of Transport running scared, so gets my vote immediately!

Word on the street is that he's a big mate of Mr. D, so a handy guy to keep on the right side of, but what impressed me most was the fact that, on no notice, he put half an hour of his day on hold just to chat railways with some random white guy. The three predecessors I knew wouldn't have done that without a month's notice, and then they'd have been late!

That's what happens when you try and jump cars in a bulldozer. Any sensible person would use a motor bike like Evel Knievel.

Nice to see some railway content George! Life will properly go places when you become part of that nice Mr D's club. Power and influence are coming your way.