Small, silly, irritating things

Living abroad is an amazing experience, but soon you get to realize that everything is not as "hunky dory" as you first thought. You soon realize that some small, silly, unexpected things can and do lead to big irritations. Nothing that'll kill you, but irritating nonetheless:

1. TV - if you can't understand Polish, TV choices become very limited. You are basically stuck with two English channels: CNN and BBC. I accepted this as a fact of life abroad - for several months, I tried to stay entertained with looping news stories about the weather, Iraq, football, and whatever the hell some crazy dictator was doing halfway around the world in Africa. And then I discovered the special "+" button on my remote - it was the language option! From there, I figured out that "Angnielski" meant "English." As soon as I selected that option - voila - the language changed from unintelligible Polish to understandable English! I could now watch the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, and a bunch of other sports and movie channels. You cannot imagine how happy I became because of this.

2. Toenails - a manicurista goes to the house every 2 weeks to cut the nails on my hands and feet. I obviously have to cut them myself here. This normally isn't such a big deal - I mean how hard can it be. The problem, however, is that my toenails like to grow in a strange way. In fact, I even went to the hospital emergency room once for an ingrown toenail. It isn't that easy either - with a belly like mine, its a struggle to bend down and reach for those toes. I compensate by prevention - before I left, I had them cut so short that they were sore. For maintenance, and to ensure I don't forget, I set my cellphone calendar to remind me every Saturday morning (at 10am) to cut those damn nails down. It has worked so far, I did see some blood a couple of times though hehehe.

3. Laundry - I talked about laundry in a previous post, however, I would like to add one small thing. Everybody knows that you have to separate white clothes from the colored clothes when stuffing the washing machine. (Well, not everybody - I didn't know about this last year, and that explains why some of my white socks are now bluish-white hehehe). The funny thing is that, apart from my underwear and some socks, I didn't bring too many "whites." As a result, when my supply of clean "brip" is running low, I start to consciously wear my white shirts to the office. This is so that I can wash them later that night, thereby increasing the load of whites I need wash. Dagdagan ang puti, para di sayang ang labada. Hahaha - ang weird ko!

4. Coffee - My apartment came with a crappy coffee maker - a 1 cup percolator. Because I am a bit of a coffee nut, this was a very big problem. This device didn't work so well - it was slow, only made 1 small cup at a time (if you were lucky), and leaked like a Nursing Board Exam. This crappy situation was the reason why I finally decided to buy a French Press - it cost about 60 PLN (about p900) - and it surprisingly makes good coffee! It is also perfect for traveling - all you need is hot water, coffee beans, and a coffee cup (well you can skip the coffee cup if you're really desperate, and drink coffee from the spout). Now I don't have to suffer from coffee deprivation anymore - yehey!

Reading this, I cannot imagine how spoiled I was in the Philippines. All TV shows (at least all the interesting ones) are in English, I don't cut my own toenails, I don't do my own laundry, and I don't make my own coffee (in my hometown, somebody else does it for us - even puts in my preferred amount of sugar hehehe). I guess these conveniences make up for the everyday hassles we as Filipinos have to deal with (i.e. traffic, crappy public transportation, pollution and litter, and corruption). Bawi bawi lang.