You Can but Can't

I recently stayed in a hotel in the Philippines (Davao) that wasn't exactly a budget type.  They provided a kettle so you could make yourself a cup of coffee or tea.

Spot the deliberate mistake . . .

Attention to detail?  I suppose that's one way to save electricity.

New Additions to the Family

This is a (friendly) feral cat we call Four Eyes on account of the two dark patches by her ears on the top of her head.

She's only just weaned her last litter and now she's given birth to a litter of four in a dustbin (where else to put a litter?) that we use for collecting leaves in the garden.

Poor Choice of Words

Seen in Raffles Hotel arcade in Singapore.

Perhaps someone should tell them that the word 'stool' has more than one meaning!

Typhoon Matmo (Henry)

Back in July we we hit by Typhoon Matmo (or Henry in western parlance).  We were expecting it overnight but in the morning it was a case of "Well that wasn't as bad as everyone made out it was going to be" and so went to the supermarket.

In the hour it took to stock up on a few essentials and a couple of goodies all hell seemed to have broken loose whilst we were in the store.

Trees were down, roads were blocked and power lines down.

Here are some photos:

Three days without power certainly concentrates your mind about how dependant you are on electricity.  No internet, no computers, no TV, no lights and when it gets dark at 6 pm the evenings suddenly seem so long.

I bought some battery powered LED lanterns from the local hardware store to provide some light in the evenings.  These things were Php 120, a whopping £1.71 each.  The batteries to put in them were more expensive (the girl on the till suggested rechargeable batteries - er, hello, there's no power, how am I going to charge them?!).  

The lanterns were made in China (of course) but when you think about the actual raw materials, which was mostly plastic, but with the array of LED lights, a bit of wiring and battery terminals and then add to that the assembly and wages, transportation to the port, shipping to the Philippines, customs and duty and then distribution to the store, how on earth can they only cost £1.71? And, AND still be sold for a profit?

And you know what?  They may have been cheap in both cost and quality but there was nothing wrong with the amount of light they produced and being LEDs the batteries last for ages.

Mind Your Head . . .

Why would you have a "Mind Your Head" sign on a shelf beside the toilet??

You Can't Make an Appetizer . . .

. . . Out of a Pig's Ear.

Suddenly I've lost my appetite.

Naughty Coal

There is a proposal to build a coal fired power station in Subic Bay, which is being vociferously objected to by residents and members of the local authority.

Putting aside for a moment the possibility that some from the local authority may be objecting to the project on the basis they don't have their fingers in the pay-off pie, the crux of the resistance to the plant is due to the fact is it coal fired.

Personally, I don't think it's a particularly bright idea to locate a power station on the bay.  As I see it, the Subic Bay Municipal Authority (SBMA), the local government body responsible the management of the free port since the Americans were unceremoniously booted out, can't seem to make up their mind or find the balance between whether they want the place to be a tourist destination or a industrial zone.  Unfortunately, as most reasonable people would understand, not many tourists when on holiday would want to sit on a beach looking at a massive ship building yard, a container port (despite the fact it's empty 95% of the time), warehouses, factories or a power station.  As the Philippines has a seemingly endless supply of coastline (some 18,600 miles) you would think that all this industry could be located away from the beauty spots and tourist areas.

The aesthetic impact seems to be largely overlooked.  When people hear that it's coal fired, and thanks largely to a green biased media propaganda, I think they imagine a dystopian hell, of a Lowry scene of chimneys belching out thick, acrid, black smoke; building and babies washed away by acid rain; the seas void of all life; children with black faces being forced to shovel coal and up the chimneys to clean like like some Dickens Victorian hell and mankind being washed away by rising sea levels and being eaten by polar bears due to global warming (sorry, climate change as the greenies have acknowledged that the planet isn't actually warming).

A vision of Subic Bay's new coal fired power station

The truth is that coal fired power stations produce no visible smoke. With the introduction of FGD (flue gas desulphurisation) and scrubbers what comes out of a chimney on a coal fired plant is invisible (apart from heat-haze) and most people wouldn't know it was operational.  Admittedly, the contents are not very pleasant but dispersion rates based on the chimney design mean that you're not going to have to keep all your windows shut to avoid being gassed to death. 

Coal is also a relatively inert and naturally occurring material.  It exists at the surface of the planet, whether on land or on sea.  A spillage of coal isn't going to cause the environmental chaos that a refined product like diesel or heavy fuel used in oil fired plants will. There is an argument that coal spillage, which is only likely to occur at the dock reclaimers when off-loading barges and ships, will destroy the marine life and coral in the bay.  Ha!  As anyone who dives in Subic Bay will tell you, the huge volumes of silt washed into the bay from the rivers, in addition to the vast quantity of rubbish and litter washed down from the towns and villages upstream, are in the process of destroying what coral and marine life that exists in the bay that hasn't already been wiped out by dynamite fishing, the release of untreated sewage and industrialisation.

Also coal is relatively cheap way of producing electricity and in a country as poor as the Philippines, where the cost of electricity is some of the highest in Asia, this is a major consideration.

So what are the alternatives?  Well, in the not too distant future there the distinct likelihood of power cuts, or brownouts as they're called here, as power becomes increasingly in demand.  Subic Bay seems largely to be able to avoid this but I think this is because the power is supplemented by a diesel fired power station that was left by the Americans.  But this is an old plant and may not have much life left in it.  Also, diesel exhaust fumes are largely acknowledged to contain toxic air contaminants and are listed as a possible carcinogen. I'm sure the plant in Subic Bay is properly maintained to minimise this as the photos below will testify:

But I suppose as an alternative wind turbines could be installed instead and then we could all sit in the dark when the wind doesn't blow.