CheetahhhhhhhBlog Mark III

First of all the Cheetahhhhhhh has been suffering without his wife and son. I miss the little guy a lot, sometimes I feel really sad he’s gone. (Yes I miss my wife too but we SMS all the time so we’re still in touch.)

Today I opened my Facebook for the first time in months and now have 18 friends, and caught up with an old classmate from Edgewood High School. Then I discovered the class of 88 has a web page and we have a reunion in August which I will certainly attend. Blast from the past. I loathed high school at the time, but now I suppose it has all settled into a blur of pleasant memories, which is Father Time’s nice little gift to us I suppose. I don’t even remember why I loathed high school. Maybe I just had a bad attitude at the time. Probably so. Most teens do. Looking through the class of 88 webpage I now feel a warm glow of memories I’d forgotten I had for 20 years.

My God, has it really been 20 years?

Countdown: 27 days to go and the Cheetahhhhhhh is on summer vacation. Also 27 days more in Saudi.

Vanessa is taking the Bug to seaworld in the Mall of Asia in Manila today. The Bug really likes fish for some reason.  “Fish” was one of the first words he learned for some reason. When we go to the supermarket, he wants me to take him to the fish section so he can look at all the dead fish lying on the ice. So anyway I think Bug will be having a ball today, and I wish I was there.

My mom is in my favorite city, Madrid. I’ve been to Madrid 5 times actually. It’s really “my” city, and if I could live anywhere I wanted, Madrid would certainly be one of the choices. A lot of people seem to like Barcelona better, but I prefer Madrid. And I’ve actually travelled quite a bit around eastern and southern Spain, but always return to Madrid. So I’m a bit jealous of my mom at the moment.

Very little going on with the Cheetahhhhhhh otherwise. I’m just biding my time left here in Saudi, reading a lot, watching videos, and playing Total War.

Well it’s a little quiet in Cheetopia. Vanessa and The Bug are in Manila. The Cheetahhhhhhh has been eating a lot of cheese sandwiches and watching a lot of TV downloads.

Vanessa says that she’s not used to Manila any more and it stresses her. I’ve actually told her many times that I don’t really care for Manila, and she has always thought I was crazy. Now I think she understands. Sure, Manila is the center of the Filipino world and you can get anything you want there, which for me means Italian food and English books and nicorette (very difficult to acquire commodities in Asia, generally speaking). But Manila has a lot of things I don’t like. It’s ridiculously overcrowded. You get used to the crowding in the Far East but the bottom line is there’s just too many damn people squeezed into a small space. Manila also lacks the things that (for the Cheetahhhhhhh) make the Philippines charming, by which I mean, tropical isles with palm trees and water buffalos in the rice fields. Anyway Vanessa’s going to Capoocan in a few days and she says she can’t wait to get there.

Not a lot going on with the Cheetahhhhhhh otherwise.

I sold Missy (my car) yesterday. Got less than I wanted but my alternative was to drive her to Dubai, and I really didn’t want to spend 3 days driving across the desert. We’re going to miss Missy, she’s a good girl.

We looked into shipping our stuff to the Emirates, but it turns out to be outrageously expensive. Much cheaper to ship it all to Capoocan. I’m not going to spend a fortune on shipping for the simple reason that I don’t buy anything expensive, given the knowledge that we’re only here temporarily. Our household is mostly from Ikea, ie, semi-disposable if necessary. In any case my new job provides us with AED20,000 to buy household things and a shipping container to take it all home after 3 years. Vanessa already downloaded the Ikea Dubai catalogue and is starting to think about decorating. I told her she’s got an AED20,000 budget which is actually quite a lot for Ikea.

Vanessa leaves on Tuesday for the Philippines. And for me, I have 5 weeks to go and it’s summer vacation.

The Bug finally said “mommy” for the first time yesterday. He’s been saying “daddy” for months. He’s kind of a daddy’s boy. Indeed he doesn’t appear to like girls very much, he just ignores them. But yesterday he said the magic word.

We had a family meeting today. Vanessa and I have been discussing what is the best course for our future. We decided we should go to the Emirates, primarily for reasons of stability and financial security. Bug agreed this was best. Actually he didn’t have much to contribute to the family meeting, which is curious because he usually has quite a bit to say. Indeed he’s yapping away right now as I type.

So we need to make some changes, ship all our stuff to the Emirates, and I need to arrange to drive my car there.

I guess part of the thing is, Madison will still be there in 3 years, whereas, we will be a lot less mobile as a family in 3 years. Bug will start school.

That’s the update and it’s pretty momentous for us. Actually it has been brewing in our heads for quite some time.

We will still be coming to the States for the summer.

Van wants me to tell why we made this decision. One, we will have a lot more money. Two, we will be able to travel a lot more. Three, we will have a lot more security. And four, we will be more able to invest in a house in Makati (Manila).

My mom is on a pilgrimage in Spain. I find this a bit eccentric, personally, because she is an avowed atheist. However she’s on pilgrimage. I advised her to be respectful of Roman Catholic beliefs (she’s not RC and is occasionally a tad flippant) because Catholics who will go through the trouble of pilgrimage (ie, it would never even occur to me and I’m RC) are probably the very devout type. Anyway several of my colleagues at work are very into religion and I mentioned she’s on pilgrimage. They got all excited about this. They hope she’s working off many of her sins and lessening her time in purgatory. Apparently Muslims have the same belief. So anyway via con dios (go with God), mom.

I’ve been using my new computer for several days now and I like it a lot. I can’t see an appreciable speed difference with the fancy Intel Duo chip though. This is the first time I’ve worked with a Duo chip and I was expecting blazing speed. Perhaps it is a little faster when running multiple programs. As I understand it, the major barrier to computer speed is not the processor, but rather the bus speed. My new computer has a fingerprint reader for security which I quite like. It has been my nightmare for about 5 years now that my laptop would be stolen by somebody unscrupulous. This is a nightmare because I conduct all my business online. I don’t even deal with companies, banks, etc that require you to go to a store or use snail mail. Haven’t for more than 5 years now actually. I literally do everything online. And I have to record passwords etc somewhere, and that’s in Outlook. So if somebody were to steal my laptop and get past the 4-digit logon password (which I believe is a simple matter for a computer nerd), then they could literally steal everything I have. So anyway I like the concept of the fingerprint reader and I haven’t had a nightmare for about 4 days. My only caveat here is it doesn’t seem to work very well. Sometimes I have to swipe my finger 10 times.

We’ve packed up a good portion of the apartment. Couldn’t go ship out the boxes because I realized they won’t fit into my car. A friend will transport us in a day or two to the shipping company. Have had a couple people interested in my car, including one offer, though it was rather low. If he comes up with the cash pronto I will take it just to have a big headache out of the way.

I bought a new computer and like it a lot. HP6700. I could have waited 45 days and got it for $200 less in the States, but I was really getting mental with my office laptop. I played Rome Total War again today for the first time in months and loved it.

Bug and Vanessa fly out to the Pearl of the Orient in 10 days.

We’re packing up. We’re shipping everything to the Philippines, to Capoocan, partly because we have a shipping company that ships to Phils for cheap, and partly because that’s where we own 30 square feet of tropical soil. We got a lot packed–stereo, mediacom, books, about 500 DVDs, etc–and are shipping out the first few boxes tomorrow.

There’s really a lot to worry about with moving out of a country. It was a lot more simple when I was a bachelor. I’m being organized with my Microsoft Outlook to make sure everything gets done.

I’ve been watching downloads of my favorite show, Entourage, and am reminded of how I love Cali… I said to Vanessa this afternoon at lunch, “Maybe we should go to Cali.” I’m only about 20% serious.

It’s about that time of the year at the uni… only 3 weeks left of classes. This means attendance is very poor and I’m actually not teaching a lot lately.