9th. February 2000

Wednesday 9 February 2000

Hi all:

Something happened in January, not quite sure what but a combination of lots of friends over here, loads of parties and plenty of work to do meant that almost as soon as New Year was over, we looked up and we were into February already. It has been great to see so many old friends over this period but as a rather "non-social" animal, I have to say that it is a relief to not have a party to go to every night!

* The Weather

- Most of January has been lovely, however we did have an eight day period of very grey, overcast skies at the end of the month that had everyone giving up with washing (it wouldn't dry!) and never settling foot outside without an umbrella. Then the bad spell broke to usher in the last four days of gorgeous weather (and a frantic rush to get clothes clean again!) Unfortunately I'm looking out of the window at a completely grey sky (again) and Force 3-4 winds. Hopefully this will not last and we can go back to normal weather and calm seas.

* Activities

- Escapade Marine have opened their office in Panagsama and are offering trips/dive trips on their boat "Decoy". This is a "proper" boat rather than a banca that most of the other dive shops use and seems to offer a more comfortable, drier ride than a banca. Things are still on track for the lauch of their live-aboard "Taipee" which will be on one of the next big high tides. That will be quite an event. Contact Escapade Marine on escapade [at] mozcom.com for details.

- Cakes & Connections will be closed between 12th. and 21st. February. We're going off to Camiguin for a short holiday with friends. We'll certainly say hello to John Madden and his family while we're over there - I did my Divemaster course with Greg in Savedra at the same time as John back in 1992. Memories!

* Births, social etc. . . . .

- Lots of parties (again), including birthdays for Marco, Marilou, Elisabeth and Magnusson and a house-warming for Becky and Rolf's new house.

- We have bid goodbye to most of the people who spent the Millennium in Moalboal, including Rolf, Becky and Daniel, David, Lynlyn and Nathalie, Mike, Menang adn Emily, Johnny and the Singapore/UK connection (they know who they are!) and quite a few others. We're glad you could all make it down since it is usually far too long that we don't get to see you all. We look forward to next time!

- We will very soon be welcoming Irene who is coming from Manila to manage Quo Vadis Resort. We hope that she settles in here well and finds some time to go diving as well as work!

- Magnusson is still here, though a (mostly) changed man since he fell in love. Good luck!

- No births to report, though Lybeth is swelling day-by-day as her and Jesper's June baby approaches.

- Ida and Rune Lunde from Norway who visited us here last year are getting married just before Easter and are planning another trip to Moalboal at the end of the year. It will be good to see them again, we hope the wedding and honeymoon go according to plan!

- We just heard from other friends, Per and Carina (who were due to come here in April), that Carina will be having a Valentine's Baby and so will not be coming after all -their honeymoon in Moalboal was successful! Never mind, by next year I'm sure PADI will have a dive program that the new baby can take part in (for a small fee of course!).

* Internet

- Two more operations have now been hooked up to the 'Net, Submaldive and Sea Explorers, though both are having problems with sending/receiving e-mails. If you're trying to contact anyone down here, please be patient, they will get back to you as soon as they can. I have just updated the telephone book (including e-mail addresses) at:

http://home.netvigator.com/~moalboal/moalboal/telephone.html

so if you need to find up-to-date addresses or numbers, check here first. If anyone has useful numbers that are not included on this list, please send them over to me and I will include them.

- Quo Vadis should have their web site up by the time you get this, but the site has been promised for four months or so now, so no guarantees that there will be anything there. Have a look, it should be good. I'll update the links on our site as soon as the site goes on-line or check:

http://www.moalboal.com/

* General

If anyone has any information that they think would be interesting for people on this list, please do let me know and I will add it in.

You may check the list web site - http://moalboal.listbot.com - to have a look at the message archives for this list or to subscribe and unsubscribe from this list.

You will find some of this information repeated on the "What's New" page of the Moalboal web site. I try to update this page every week or so rather than the every four weeks of this list, so keep an eye on the page. You can mark it with web-monitoring software which will mail you when the page changes. We don't have any adverts on our site so if it changes, it's because information on or the layout of the page(s) have been changed, not because an advert has changed!

Best regards,

Simon Wright.