Cebu life

It's been over a month since I arrived in the Philippines, and I've got a semblance of an everyday routine here in Cebu. We've been staying in an Airbnb apartment, which is an 8 mins' walk from Jon's office. The building is very nice and quite well maintained, has guards at the entrance (as they all do here), a swimming pool and a tiny gym, but the apartment itself is miniscule. 

View from our floor

We usually wake up around 6-7am because the curtains don't manage to block the daylight, and Jon gets up first to shower and have breakfast, because two people in the kitchen / living area would just be too crowded. I get up once he leaves for work, have my breakfast, and go to the gym for a quick spin on the stationary bike. The gym barely warrants its name: 

Two bikes and the basic weights machine is it

There is an aircon unit on the wall, but it's always turned off, and the windows and the door are open instead. It does provide a bit of a breeze, but still, after 20 mins I look like I just came from the shower!

Nice that they have a slimming mirror there ;-) 

Around noon I go to meet Jon for lunch, walking alongside this crazy traffic outside our building because our street happens to be the shortcut between two very busy streets. The motorcycles swerve around the traffic and go alongside the cards to pass them, including going on footpaths (where they exist) in rush hour when cars stand still more than move.

Our choices for lunch are: a couple of tiny strip malls by his office, with 4-8 restaurants each - some cheap and cheerful, and some pricey and with excellent quality - or IT Park, which is a business neighbourhood a 10-min walk away, and like a different world altogether. It has its own guard booth, wide streets with no potholes, wide footpaths everywhere, and speed bumps before each crosswalk, which means you actually have a chance of crossing the street promptly because the cars have to slow down. There are probably more than 100 restaurants in IT park, from multiple fast food brands to mid-range restaurants to fancy wine bars. There is also a weekend food market there, with dozens of stalls.

Eight flavours of chicken wings from one of the cheap and cheerful places

An incredible Korean restaurant just opened at the mini-mall next door

Stuffed eggplant and pork belly skewers

One of my indulgences at almost every lunch time is fresh calamansi juice, which is usually around 70 pesos (~ $NZ 2): super tart and refreshing. One place served it completely unsweetened, with a shot of sugar syrup to sweeten it as much as you like.

Add your own sugar, love it!

Sometimes we go to Ayala Mall for lunch or dinner. I think it has as many restaurants as it has shops, it's where the nearest supermarket is, plus I won't say no to an hour or two in aircon :-) I have posted a photo from a cultural performance before, and it seems that every weekend there's something going on - live music, fashion shows, or trade fairs. The below turned out to be a fashion show (I think), but we could hear it from the other side of the mall because of all the screaming of the fans, which made me think it would be some famous boy band or something...

Some of the fans were holding big signs and posters

After lunch we come back to Jon's office, where he continues working, and I write this blog, plan our next travels, and do the occasional translation job. I'm also slowly going through Harvard's CS50 course, Introduction to Computer Science. It's frustrating, but also satisfying, so I'm sticking with it for the moment. I hope that one day I won't be using the Blogger platform with its pre-set templates, but it'll be a long time from now!

We've done a couple of trips outside our immediate area, one to a beach where you can snorkel straight off the shore, and one to see Magellan's Cross:

Apparently the original cross is inside this one

It was planted here when Magellan arrived to the Philippines in March 1521, only to be killed in the Battle of Mactan a month later. It didn't stop the Spaniards from bestowing the wonderful gift of the catholic faith onto the unsuspecting Filipinos. It's a gift that keeps on giving in the form of a huge number of teenage pregnancies due to a lack of sexual education, divorce being illegal in the only country outside the Vatican, and magazines like this being sold among Newsweek, the Economist, and Vogue:

The Magellan Cross is just by the oldest catholic church in Cebu City, the Basilica del Santo Niño. There's a little figure of Santo Niño (Little Jesus) there, and if you wanted to see it, you had to wait in a long line of people waiting for a few seconds in front of it to pray. I didn't take a photo of it because it would have been disrespectful, but I took this one instead:

There's a story behind every sign.

There are images of Santo Niño everywhere throughout the city - in some shops and restaurants, on jeepneys, and on the fridge in our Airbnb:

For a bit of casual worship over breakfast

This little stability of ours is about to stop, though, as in the next weeks we're going to Kuala Lumpur, Dhaka, Poland (me), and Papua New Guinea (Jon). Exciting!