Letter from Manila - Santol - of course!

Colin, we could really do with a dull moment!


Firearm carying is widespread here and many shops, banks and bars have signs saying either no firearms or firearms must be handed over on entry. Like it or not, I chose to live here so I guess it's all part and parcel.


Thanks, I'm looking forward to that.


Thank you.


Sounds about right! Trust your man makes as good a recovery as Madam seems to be doing.


Funny you should say that. When I was on a job in Kalimantan on Indonesia, steam was suggested and even better, using wood! Indonesia is the largest producer of palm oil in the world and the trees have a finite life so are constantly being renewed, so tons of wood goes to waste. Only problem is that palm wood burns all wrong, it's far too fast when dry and gives off little heat when damp. Shame though, a nice idea.

Yes, I don't think any of us can get over how little damage was caused. Thanks for the good wishes.

We have a military operation planned for this morning as the 'family' were camped outside the hospital again yesterday.

Basically a dawn raid at 07:00hrs to extricate Madam, before any of the cockroaches are awake and active. Then she'll be home, safe and I can stop worrying.

Probably wanting to return stuff already taken

Sorry - poor humor - no idea why they'd be camped out - I'm sure George will put us right

The convoy slowly negotiated the mean streets of Tondo, Range Rover leading, it's muted V8 throb bouncing off the houses on either side. It was H-hour - 5 and the target was in sight. The whole plan revolved around speed and stealth. In and out, minimum fuss. Everything was arranged with agents on the inside to ensure no foul-up. If enemy reinforcements could be mustered before they could get clear, the results could be catastrophic.

"Ah, doctor not here. You wait one hour" Well that's the end of that then!

Having arrived at seven on the dot, it was ten before we finally got away, carrying Madam back to the safety of Malate. Fine Philippine planning.

Anyway, she's home, along with over 140 tablets of various shapes and sizes. I reckon if you shook her, she'd sound like a baby's rattle.



I have to be honest in admitting that I really don't have a clue.

When the accident first happened, they were full of unrighteous indignation at the driver. I reckon that was to make them feel better about going into the house and stealing stuff, rather than from any concern for their sister. History shows there's been little of that down the years. But over the days, that seems to have transmuted into something more sinister entirely. We've received SMS accusing madam of having an affair, me of having an affair, the driver being a drug addled rapist and all sorts of other pleasant stuff. This, coupled with hanging around outside the hospital, often nine or ten at a time as led to a bit of a tense few days, hence the dawn raid. That wasn't!

But I just can't see what they are hoping to gain and let's face it, they'll be money at the end of any motivation, but I'm puzzled as to how they see this happening. Madam has put the Tondo house and another property she has there on the market, so they'll never get to go back and live there. I admit to being completely stumped.

The eldest Bottle Opener got an SMS (bizarrely via my mobile) from her father, Madam's brother, on Friday saying how much he really loved her and that she should come back to live with him and he'd look after her (he can't look after himself without nicking stuff) and she should leave these evil people. He said he wanted to meet her outside the hospital, "To talk" and, as you can imagine, this set me on edge a bit, although I've always said that it is her choice to live with us and that if she were to change her mind, although broken hearted, I would understand. In this case though, given what was going on, I had a funny feeling it could go a bit further than "Talk", perhaps as far as "Grab". So I showed her the SMS without saying anything, she smiled and immediately responded with a long reply that seemed to revolve around the premise of F.R.O!

But you can see why I was keen to get everyone away.

Anyway, now Madam's home we can set about dealing with them.

Moving along, I've got a meeting at eleven this morning with PNR and DOTC which hopefully is the last, last one before they put pen to paper on the track access agreement. I've just got to talk them through the payments so they can see they will have a financial benefit from us running on their tracks - although why they can't work this out for themselves defeats me a bit. Let's see how that goes

Glad you've got madam home ok George.
Best of luck with phase 2 of top secret stealthy plan of planningness

Never a dull moment eh!?

George,

Excellent news about Madam but I'm waiting with bated breath for Episode II : Revenge on the Relatives. Not so good news on #1 Daughter's loser biological father but she seems to be a sensible lass. He might need to be warned off though. Just finished watching the rest of 'Metro Manila' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1845838) and I still think you need a medal for living in such an 'exciting' society. Every time you add to the story I think 'Blade Runner'! Round here we've had a shed broken into, attempted sheep rustling and a push bike stolen. Guess where I prefer to be living?

Cheers,

Ian

Ruddy 'ell George, you've been through it a bit!!! Best wishes to Madam and I won't whinge about my broken tooth so much now...

Don’t really know where to start with this. It’s certainly not how I’d have liked my 2001st post to kick off for sure…

You may remember me being a tad disparaging in the past about the glorious Philippine Department of Transport and Communications? Well I stand by every word and then some!

There we are at the PNR board meeting yesterday with their GM and my client fully expecting to sign up the track access agreement. This would be followed on Friday by a contract between ourselves and the port to haul their containers. In around 26 months, the first train would run.

Then the DOTC guy, who sits on the board pipes up along the lines of, “Oh no, we’ve got a far better idea. We’re going to take this over and do it a completely different way that will add at least five years to any programme, if indeed it ever gets that far. More likely we’ll cock it up so badly that it’ll never happen at all” and sat back satisfied. Obviously, he didn’t actually say that, I’m giving a rough translation.

So that’s that. Job stopped. The port will continue to struggle to operate efficiently, the Philippines will become less and less attractive commercially and Manila will remain gridlocked with crappy, broken-down container trucks for the foreseeable future.

All I can hope for now is that some serious pressure can be brought to bear on them, enough to get this half-wit to either resign or at least back off (seeing sense isn’t an option here), otherwise that’s two years of my life down the drain and a superb project, with huge positive implications by any description, bites the dust.

I really can’t convey how pi55ed off I am at the moment as the second the DOTC get involved in anything, it crumbles to nothing (I’ve seen this on several other projects I’ve worked on here – so I know whereof I speak) yet they still have the arrogance to think they actually have a clue, when recent history tells a very different story. They’ve fouled up project after project and there’s no reason to think this will be any different.

Let’s see what the next few days brings, but with recent events and now this I'm very tempted to up sticks and join my son in Cambodia!

Thanks James, but maybe all is not lost. I've seen the first few opening e-mail salvoes of a counter-attack.

Knives are being sharpened and it appears a lot of quite powerful folk have become a tad upset at yesterday's stupidity. There's an extraordinary meeting been called for next week, so fingers crossed.