#9 27th. July 2000

Moalboal June 2000

Hello People!!

WEATHER:

About 29 degrees, sunshine and blue skies every day. You should come and visit.

ACTIVITIES:

Jesper, Neptune will give a DAN oxygen provider course this coming Sunday. Hurry up to book, there is still a few spots open.

BIRTHS, SOCIAL AND GOSSIP

Typee has done another major voyage. This time she made it all the way to Rhonda for refueling. All her tanks are now full of fuel and she's "ready" for action.

Andy's little daughter just had her first birthday.

The Swedish couple Kicki and H†kan (cockfighting addicts, thinking about retiring here) just came back for the fourth time. It's always nice when people bring Swedish food, aquavit and newspapers when they come. The Peso hit a 30 month low of 45.2 pesos/US$ in July. One kilo of mango is 30 pesos now.

Lars (Neptune) mother, Eva came just two days ago. She brought 2 kilos (!?!) of moose meat with her. I think that is the first time anyone has ever eaten moose on the beach.

ACCORDING TO NELSON (our inside man into politics here):

The sanctuary is now definitely out of bounds for divers. We were allowed to dive there before but now there is a stop to that. There are actually plans to make a few more sanctuaries along the reef. They have made the sanctuaries so that the fish can have a place to grow big before they get caught. Divers do break corals, we all know that. Nelson has tried to argue with the local counselors that even though divers do disturb the reef, itÿs so minimal that they should allow divers. The decision still stands though. They do get funding from abroad to maintain the sanctuaries, letÿs just hope that they will not make the whole reef a sanctuary.

LETTERS FROM ABROAD:

Hi! We are divers from Visaya Divers (Quo Vadis) where Greg is the instructor and Do Do the dive master (or at least Do Do was our dive master for most dives). We have been there in paradise three times and we are now visiting Sean and Suki in Hong Kong. We are so excited to learn about the newsletter and to be included in it. Send our regards to Dolores, Mona and Josephine, Darlene Faye at Emma's, Ling Ling and Jurgen and Marvin. We think of all of them almost daily. We will definitely return - just trying to figure out when our next trip will be!

Sean and Suki send their love. There baby is due on September 13th. We'll keep you posted on our plans and the arrival of their baby.

Right now we are traveling in China and have seen Beijing, the Great Wall, Tianamen Square, the Forbidden City and Summer Palace, Mini Three Gorges which will be totally flooded on 2003 (I think that is the date) and then took a boat ride on the Li River. Now we are visiting Sean and Suki and reminiscing about our times in Moalboal.

John and Kathy from Santa Barbara, California

Simon writes:
We had a party for Regula's birthday over the weekend. All of the Swiss contingent of Moalboal came, including Pierre, Stella (arrived the day before the party and staying for at least a month), Didier, Marc Kolly (all from Lausanne), Thomy and his brother Andi (Frauenfeld), Denis and Elisabeth (Geneva), Ida and Rune (honorary Swiss from Norway). We took some photos and will send a couple over once Rune gets back to Norway and can get his digital camera to disgorge its contents! It was quite amusing to see all those faces from Moalboal sitting on seats at midnight with bottles of wine in front of them, all wrapped up in thick jackets and with blankets over their knees to keep warm - it was about 13 degrees and wet which is considerably colder and nastier that any of us were used to!! Marc is hoping that his girfriend Jesfil will be able to come over in a few weeks when the perennial visa problems have been sorted out, and we are planning another get together in August or September in Lausanne to make sure that no-one will forget about the sunshine in Philippines. That's all the news from here, we look forward to hearing the next installment! All the best, Simon & Regula.

The rest of us, I'm sure, would also like to wish Regula a HAPPY BIRTHDAY. Now what we want to know is if Simon can speak SwissGerman :)

YOU MAY BE MARRIED TO A MOALBOAL GIRL IF:

*Instead of a dowry, you got the whole bill for the wedding and the honeymoon.

*You are expected to be able to read her mind just by watching her eyebrows move up and down and which way her lips are pointed.

*All her relatives think your name is Joe.

*The instant you are married you have 1000 new close relatives that you can't tell apart.

*Your refrigerator is always full but you cannot find any food that you recognize.

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.

Best regards,

Lars Starner,
starner [at] hotmail.com