Last Evening In Iloilo

Four weeks down, two to go.

A hot day and a rest day, but also a lot of messaging in connection with the next two weeks.  For example, my goddaughter wants to have an evening with me, together with her husband and son, so I decided to return early from our last stop, which meant mailing the local travel agency to advance the date of return.  At the same time, had to ask same goddaughter to help arrange for the accommodations for the last three nights.  As it turns out, I'll have to go to the travel agency myself on Friday, but then that meant messaging the friends who we were going to join for dinner on Friday evening, to find out the venue so that I could decide what time to go to the travel agency.

Another issue of discussion today was goddaughter's dad, stepcousin B.  Suddenly, he's often in need of extra cash and I think I've reached my private point of no return, so hubby and I had to talk about how to deal with that problem.  The discussion lasted quite a while because it included an analysis of our own financial situation.

Yet another topic was the political situation in The Philippines.  Anyone following the news will no doubt have noticed that things aren't exactly going well here and we have had to come to the painful but clear decision not to visit here for a good number of years, or at least until things improve.  The attitude of the leadership encourages an atmosphere of disrespect and distrust.  It's a complicated web of contributing factors -- lack of education but also a growing disinterest in learning in some segments of the population, rising inequality, poor chances for personal advancement, clear indications of dissatisfaction, hopelessness, desperation, and despair.  All these have been clearly recognizable in the past but are even more present today.  It's a beautiful country but it has to deal with monstrously ugly problems.  No, this isn't a unique situation, unfortunately, but what we don't fully understand is why it had and has to get worse than it already was.

We are thankful for our 10-day sojourn in Iloilo because it was a bargain, because we got to see a gorgeous area of the country, and also, last but not least, because neither of us had any tummy problems.  We did get to see. though, a side of society that convinced us that nothing much had changed since the 'old days', that the issues of the past had not been resolved, that the 'old society' was still very much around with its old habits and vices.  It's not that it didn't live up to our expectations, but, rather, that we had any expectations at all in the first place.  This is difficult to put into words and don't worry, I'm not depressed or anything, just kind of deflated and perhaps a little embarrassed, not least of all to myself.  Indeed, what was I thinking?

And just what did I spend most of the day doing?  Exactly! -- post-processing shots.  Now that was a fun thing to do!  It was way too hot for a swim so hubby stayed in the cabin twiddling with his phone.