I see what you mean Johnnie. Completely different. He is Johnnie Johnson alright. But I have seen your pic and seen his and you are definitely not the same people. LOLOriginally Posted by Johnnie
Fred
More difficulty. My facebook entry shows a completely different chap. ITo right the matter need to contact the Site Owner. Where is his address? Grateful for any help.
I am not certain how you would rectify this but I appreciate your concern. One of the admin folk can no doubt help.
More difficulty. My facebook entry shows a completely different chap. ITo right the matter need to contact the Site Owner. Where is his address? Grateful for any help.
Sorry for tardy reply johnnie..I was in transit..
Looking into it now..
edited by Fred: post 64 duplicate.
(The italicised text in the following article is taken directly rom A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES.)
What is so noticeable in the Philippines is the positive strength of the family. It’s uplifting and I only hope that this will continue. Let me here just introduce you a few of my family’s members.
In February 2011 I wrote the following:
Our house is built on the site of the chicken farm that Fay's father owned. Beyond, further away from the road is Diko's bungalow and Diche, Fay's elder sister, lives in a neighbouring house which she shares with her son, Eddie and his wife Ellen and their married son Eugene and his family. It's all so complicated, these family arrangements. But it only emphasises the strength of the family. No nursing homes here. The Filipinos would not want them.
Eddie who is in his mid-fifties is a slim, rather handsome chap, though he has a slightly sad look about him sometimes. He is always like that, Fay says. He is not miserable: it's just the way his face falls. I cannot help but think of him as Morose Eddie.
So Eddie is Fay’s nephew and so he calls me ‘Uncle’ as do Rody and Lito, both of them 60 year olds married to Eddie’s sisters. They are therefore Fay’s nephews by marriage. (I know it’s complicated but I need to straighten things out.]
Last night, we had a quiet drink, four or five of us, all males, at Morose Eddie's place. We just sat in the yard and nattered and sang. We touched on the subject of the sacred bond of marriage and the restraining bonds of matrimony and mused - at least Rody and Lito and I mused - on the setting up of an Escape Committee, a forum where we might discuss plans of how we three might get away just for a night or two. Sounds good but it'll never happen. Usual married men and their imaginations kind of stuff.
I later appointed myself Life President of the Escape Committee. And we eventually get away. At least Rody and I persuaded our wives that it would give them a rest, a well earned break, if we were to go off. I inserted the next passage into the narrative this January
[In January 2012 Rody and I got away to Subic Bay for a couple of nights: Lito didn't make it. Nevertheless, we had two very good days, seeing much of the countryside. We visited Corregidor and the National Museum on Mount Samat where the Death March of thousands of Filipino and American POWs is commemorated.
The only irritation came when at the XYZ Hotel at Subic we were found not to be acceptable as guests.
'It is company policy, po,' we are told.' Two gentlemen may not share a bedroom.'
Rody is 65 and I'm nearly twenty years older. It's ridiculous.
'This gentleman's wife is my wife's niece,' I say. 'He is my nephew.'
'And this gentleman's wife is my wife's auntie,' Rody says. 'He is my uncle.'
But I think what clinched it was the common Filipino difficulty with the personal pronoun. No matter how fluent they are Filipinos occasionally get their personal pronouns in a twist. So it may be that Rody's twice referring to me as 'she' told against us.
And maybe my wearing the pink polo shirt didn't help.]
When I reflect upon it this was no more than a minor inconvenience and I can understand, though I cannot support, the hotel’s point of view in this instance. Sitting in the bar of this hotel some months earlier I had been moved to record my thoughts because it did suggest a certain inconsistency in their policy.
I notice a number of English-speaking men here, men of middle age, the type who wear loose vests, ill fitting shorts and who have beer bellies and white flabby arms. Several have Oriental ladies, some are possibly married for they have children with them. Others seem to be accompanied by less permanent companions, not that I am being judgemental. I'm just creating a picture of some of the clientele because what's the point of going to a hotel if not to try to weigh up your fellow guests?
To give you a savour of what I mean – and they are not great in number, these types – here's a couple of examples. Last night, when we had our first meal here, there was a rather loud Australian, a sixty-year old I’d say, wearing khaki culottes to complement his over-long white vest and his bushy armpits. He had an unlikely-to-be-legal-possibly-under-age female companion in tow. His voice rasped across the restaurant as though he was herding cattle. She actually was a pretty little thing and it seemed sad that she should end up in such an old boor's company.
And as I write this in late afternoon, there’s a beachcomber manqué with a tangled beard, sitting over at the bar with a sultry child-woman with a rose tattooed on her leg. There are also two-shaven headed sixty-year-olds who get up from their seats in the bar and walk over to the lobby where two young women are waiting for them. The women are carrying cases and look from the paint and powder as if they're a newly arrived express shipment straight from Manila. Of course, I may be entirely fanciful in my summing-up and very unfair on all of these fellows who may in truth be men of the cloth meeting their god-daughters home from boarding school.
Okay, I am unreasonable in my assumptions.
Johnnie,
I understand that you are not 100% familiar with posting here, but please try to find the last thread you posted on, instead of making more threads of the same name.
thank you
Steve
If you want your dreams to come true ...... first you have to wake up
Steve
Dreadfullysorry.
I have put the latest corrected one up and I shall do anything later on that same thread.
Is there a way ridding myself of the defective threads?
I will try to merge them all
If you want your dreams to come true ...... first you have to wake up
Ok, all threads merged now. Just find this thread again and add to it by hitting the '+reply to thread' button
If you want your dreams to come true ...... first you have to wake up
edited by Fred: post 64 duplicate.
Many thanks, Steve. I'm most grateful to you. I'm sorry to have caused so much bother.
Tuesday 15 February 2011
Papaya
Papaya? Don’t talk to me about it. I’ve had enough of it. The mere thought of it
is enough to make we want to throw up.
Not the town. I don't mean that. That’s fine. It’s the fruit.
On Sunday night I finished up the evening meal with a bowl of papaya and banana and woke up yesterday morning rather 'inconvenienced.' But nothing that a shot of Immodium wouldn't clear. So I was confident after the reassurances of Nurse Serrano and set off with her and Josie for another trip to the dentist at Jaen and yet another trip to Cabanatuan in search a suitable lock for the welder to put on the front gate and possibly even a lavatory seat
We’d only gone a hundred yards or so when we were passed by a convoy of perhaps forty lorries, pick-ups, cars, tricycles, motor cycles, each vehicle packed as full as it could be with what looked like primary school girls and boys. But they were all tarted up, the boys, every man-jack of them, conservative in white shirts, some even wearing unheard-of jackets and ties, and the girls, their faces made up, wearing long silky dresses of the home-made variety. It was a cut-price, junior-level beauty parade. Some of the simpering girls had sashes announcing their title. I thought it pretty awful but of course, I should have remembered. It was a saint’s day.
'We always have parades. Filipinos like parades on saints' days,' I was told.
But that was not the point. I was explaining to her and Josie that the whole modern nonsense of St Valentine was nothing more than the corruption of young minds, that it was a commercial racket, that it was demeaning to women, that it was the exploitation of children and that anyway, in the days of Eric Morley we used to have much better beauty contests than this, world class contests… but then there was a sharp twinge and I got no further
'Please turn the car. I need to go home,' I said.
This was ignored. Both women had clearly switched off when I began my observations on the parade and I had to repeat my request with a greater urgency.
We reached home just in time.
Selflessly, I said I'd be all right and that I'd stay in the house all day. 'You two go off. Don't worry about me.'
Dammit, they didn't worry about me. I half-thought they might stay - or at least offer to stay - to ensure that I was not seriously ill but they went off without a backward glance.
I spent the day reading and writing and gradually felt better. The only interesting thing that occurred was cutting my foot when I tripped on one of the outside steps (but it's better now, thank you)
By five o'clock I thought that I'd open the garage door for their return, try to show that I'd coped in spite of their desertion. I couldn't open the damn thing from the outside so went through the house and into the garage via the kitchen door.
There was an open lock holding the garage door down in place and my practical mind immediately knew what to do. I removed it. But then when I tried to raise the door - it's a big metal shutter - it wouldn't go up more than a foot.
I tried and tried with no success to open it and I was becoming increasingly annoyed with myself. Little Josie, all five feet of her, manages to open that door every day without any trouble. But try as I might I couldn't raise it any higher. Then I began to fret that if I continued my struggles I might damage the door irreparably. Why does machinery never work for me? This is a simple door. A small uneducated woman opens it each day. Has she some undiscovered technological skill that I haven't been aware of? I gave up in disgust and retreated.
But not far. Now I found that I couldn't open the door back into the kitchen. It had automatically locked itself and all my pressing and pulling failed to open it.
I felt so humiliated. How was I to explain myself? How could I persuade them that I was not just incompetent but irredeemably stupid? I began devising a strategy, making a plan of what I might say when they found me locked in the garage because who wants to admit to such ineptitude? I could wait till they came back, I told myself, and then when Josie came through the house and emerged through the kitchen door into the garage, I could pretend to have just got there before her. I could be bending down at the door and say something like, 'Ah, there you are, Josie. Give me a hand with this blooming door.' I‘d give a little laugh and say something about it taking a woman to do such a job. Not that such remarks would have helped greatly as Josie's English is quite limited.
Anyway, I settled down for a wait. It was about ten past five and Fay had said they expected to be back by about five. Well, this is the Philippines and when they turned up just after six-thirty, I was sitting in the early evening darkness, batting off mosquitoes. I didn‘t bother with any charade or pretence. I was too fed up.
And they laughed at me. Especially when I showed them the bites on my leg and elbow. It took ages before anybody got round to asking about my internal problem.
If a day starts badly, you can be sure that it will go on like that.
You did it Johnnie, well done
If you want your dreams to come true ...... first you have to wake up
Johnnie, you have a wonderful way with words and from what I have already seen, your book sounds like a great read! Just wondering if it is also available in hard copy (book) format as I'd like to purchase a copy?
Thank you
Rosie
Many thanks for your kind words, Rosie. It's always nice to have a pat on the back.
No, this book is not in hardback or even paperback. Fact it that when I went to The Phils this winter I had no intention of writing another book. But I was sending nack emails to various friends and had a collection from the previous winter and so I thought I'd bundle them all up into a short book - 40,000 words - 120-ish pages. But I can't be bothered hawking stuff round to publishers these days because it's so time consuming and I'm not getting younger. So it's an ebook only. I can send one to your screen for &1 or Amazon can deliver one to yuor Kindle (from which I make the magnificent sum of about 40p!).
Anyway, I do hope that you'll buy a copy because it's going to be devilsh difficult tosell. It's not very marketable - who wants to know about the Phils? how many Phils have Kindles?
Whatever you decide, thanks for the boost to my ego! And tell your friends!!
D'you know, Steve, I feel quite proud of myself. Again, thanks for the support.
Johnnie. Can it or does it reach the American market and if so will that help? Potentially many more buyers.
Well, it's on Amazon.com, the US wing but being on Amazon only counts when people know it's here. To be brutally frank I rather hope that I'll get sonwme sales from this present connection and I've looked at some US/Filipino sites but I've done nothing further. My problem, as you may see from the correspondence, is trying to work out how the site functions. That's time consuming. Others may ind it relatively simple but I feel that I need a thermos of tea and rucksack of sandwiches before I embark on entering anything here. I find it so complex and the thought of engaging with another site at present is overwhelming. That said I'm quite enjoying this site because there are so many interesting people and items. Enough...
Interestingly someone wrote a book entitled "Dont Tell Mum I Work on the Oil Rigs" " She Thinks Im a Piano Player in a Wharehouse" a few years ago. Tailored to a potentially limited market. But I do recall he kept his prices up. Paul Carter is the Author.
Johnnie..You may find that people that read your book will often post a link to these other forums for you.. Lets see!
Links and hyperlinks which I'm supposed to set up but after nearly 30 years with a computer I'm still in a strange land!
But what wd help, Fred, wd be info on what you can see when you tune in to my thread. I find that the only way I can get an up-to-date model of the thread is by following the instruction to 'View Forum Threads' and even here on this particular thread I'm missing my first contribution. (It's all because I've cocked it up massively). But when you try to see my posts can you locate them all on one page? It may be that you get a different page from me. And do you have to go via 'View Forum Posts'? If so possibly I shall have to make this clear. Otherwise people may find it difficult to locate me. As things are I find it difficult to locate me. And finally, the annoying thing is that I'm normally efficient and organised though it wd take very special pleading for anyone on FilipinoUK to swallow that claim.
Yes, he is prolific as a writer and worth reading, it seems. May give him a try. Of course I don't think he is setting his prices. I think his publisher is doing that.
Oh yes, and by the way, he is not in a warehouse but what we old coves wd call a whOrehouse! Unless of course the wHorehouse in a warehouse.
Johnnie. There are several ways to find your thread. One easy way is to simply go to the top right and type virgin in the search bar (about an inch from the top). The first thread that comes up is yours (unless a heap of folk start a load of posts on virgins then this should work for now).
Remember it always defaults to your first page so if you want the current page then you will have to select for that.
Hehe. I deliberately selected an a and not an o to keep within forum rules
Rosie
For &1 read £1.
Sorry for being so careless.
Johnnie. You could combine the two books and have "Dont tell Mum I Work on the Rigs" "I am a Virgin in a Philippine Warehouse"
Rosie
Whatvlooks like another error. Think I've sent a message to someone else. Just to say that in last night's message for &1 read £1.
Hi Jonnie
I haven't received a message from you but I've managed to find your website and I have sent you an email about payment. I'm looking forward to reading your book
Rosie
p.s. Also wanted to make you aware that it appears you do not yet have the necessary "permission/ access" to email members directly on this site as you haven't been here long enough. I'm afraid it is the same for all new members due to the email system being abused by others in the past.
I'm beginning to think that I ought to write as 'Confused', Eastbourne, because I really seem unable to cope with the niceties of this site. It's absolutely chaos though it's all down to my innate incompetence in these areas.Worse still, I haven't recd your email. The reason is that my Outlook Express has hit a snag. (Naturally)I've just tested it again and had it Mailer Demon'd. Impasse? I email on btinternet but don't wish to reveal it publicly.
Why not phone me? I'm in the book, the only WH Johnson in Eastbourne. We cd text, actually, as my wife has such a machine but I've never used it and on reflection it isn't good to broadcast these numbers. Anyway, pity you didn't get my message because it's on the site (somewhere).
If you don't object to phoning me that wd seem to be the solution. I shall be in all evening and really don't mind the interruption of Man Utd v Blackburn match!
Or don't tell my mother I'm a virgin.
Hi Johnnie
It was lovely to speak with you on the telephone this evening and now that you have my email address, I look forward to receiving details of where to send the payment for the E-book.
As promised, I will try and call you again tomorrow evening to attempt to give you some help in navigating your way around the website and posting replies/ new threads.
I hope that you enjoyed the match!
Rosie
There are currently 3 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 3 guests)
Posting Permissions
