Earthquake???

The Bugle woke up Saturday morning to an inbox filled with letters of concern asking if he was alright because they had heard about an earthquake in the Philippines.  Well the Bugle was a bit mystified as he hadn't felt any earthquake last night but then again that might have been from the amount of beer ingested on Friday night.  So he asked various family members if they had felt anything and the answers were all negative.  The wife stated that she saw it on the news last night but hadn't felt anything at all.  So the question goes out to our local readers, Did anyone feel this earthquake last night?  And yes I do know it was off the coast of Samar.  I am just curious if it was felt at all in our neck of the woods.

Roaming Around

   The Bugle has been walking around a bit lately and some thoughts have been coming to mind about our little area of paradise here.  One of the things that has been noticed is the lack of cleanliness overall in our city.  If one gets out to the provinces you see that the people really take pride in the area around their houses.  There is always someone out sweeping the yard and cleaning up the litter that everyone seems to just throw down on the ground.  But what the Bugle is wondering is why that spirit of cleanliness doesn't transfer to the main streets in our area.  If one walks down through Barretto you see trash everywhere.  It seems like no one cares at all about the overall cleanliness of the place.  The Bugle knows that most establishments have at least one boy hanging around to take care of odd jobs and light maintenance so why isn't the first job every morning of that boy to sweep the outside in front of their respective establishments.  I mean how many times have we gone inside and seen the boy just hanging out not doing anything?  So let's get those boys to work and get them cleaning up our neighborhood.  After all we can't expect our elected officials to do anything about the cleanliness of the public areas can we?

Olongapo Electricity

Recently, it has come out that the city run power company in Olongapo has been bought out by a new management team.  This company is set to make money by curing Olongapo's system loss rate which is way higher than normal.  You can read about it here.  What the Bugle is curious about is how this will affect us normal residents.  I am sure that we all have heard of people with illegal connections and how one can pay off the meter readers to reset their meters. Curbing these illegal activities has to be a good sign for most of us.  The Bugle wonders though how will the local political clans finance their future political activities.

Johnny Rockets

   The Bugle had a chance to eat at Johnny Rockets which recently opened at the Ayala Mall.  For those of you who like hamburgers you will love this place.  All burgers are at least 1/3 of a pound and come with a variety of options.  If you go there in the early afternoon there is a half price special Mondays through Friday.  What was really fun about the place was the dancing waitresses.  At least three times while the Bugle was eating his Rocket Burger all the waitresses broke out in a dance routine.  Was almost like eating in a Go-Go except all the girls were wearing clothes.  The decor of the place was straight out of a 50's diner with big booths and a lot of red vinyl.  The music was old time rock and roll from the 50's and the 60's and gave the place a real fun vibe.  While the prices weren't the cheapest in town the quality was high and the Bugle gives the place a hearty thumbs up.

Water Service Restored

Several readers have informed the Bugle that their water services have been restored in Sta Monica Subdivision.  While the Bugle is not sure that it is everywhere but hopefully the water pressure situation will be back to normal.  The Bugle has heard reports from several GROs working in Barretto that the local foreigners were not smelling quite right recently and that they did not enjoy using buckets for their baths when they were used to the warm water showers that most foreigners seem to have installed in their houses.

Peeing With the Go Go's

The Bugle recently got a group of females together to rate the comfort rooms in Barretto. If you have ever bar-hopped the barrio with a wife or girlfriend you have undoubtedly heard horror stories about the women's comfort rooms. This is particularly true in places where the public shares them with the employees of the establishment. It can even prompt your date to ask to leave so she can use a rest room that she knows is nicer in some other venue. Below the ratings are some direct quotes regarding the CR's.

 

Congratulations to the top rated Arizona, Flash Rat and Palm Tree. Bottom three? Wet Spot, Voodoo and Rosie's.

 

1- Arizona, Flash Rat, Palm Tree
2- The Office
3- Mango's, Bar Barretto, Midnight Rambler, Shooters, Dynamite Dicks
4- EMU, Club One, Sit N Bull,
5- Hooyah, Westpac, Taft, Sweethearts, Johansson's
6- Catwalk, Alley Cats, General's Post, 20/20
7- Hot Zone, Barretto Beach Resort, Route 69, Toucan
8- Stroker's, Rum Jungle, Dusk Till Dawn
9- Buccaneer, Lips, T-Rose, Liberty Call
10- Wet Spot, Voodoo, Rosie's

 

"Please lets leave. I have to pee and this CR is horrible."

" I like bathroom here. It smells good." (Palm Tree)

"Let's go to the Office. Their bathroom is nice."

"The comfort room (Voodoo) is crammed with dancers. Can we go somewhere else?"

"Toucan has no mirror and a bucket to flush."

"Sit n Bull is really clean."

"Never seen two toilets. Flash Rat has two toilets."

"What about Arizona? They have two toilets for ladies."

San Miguel Beer

  A while ago in one of our posts we had a little discussion on where the coldest beers were in the Subic area.  Some of the surprises in that totally unscientific poll was that some of the smaller places really work on making sure that their beer is served cold.  Contrary to most of the bigger places where it could be hit or miss as to the temperature of your beer.  The main exception to the bigger places was the Wild Orchid's inner bar and Texas Joes.  Their attention to detail is what makes them both fairly successful establishment's.  I wonder if their must be a cultural thing that keeps the locally managed places from paying attention to the small things that make a place successful.  You know what I am talking about.  Having to wave your arms like a madman to get a waitresses attention.  Having to tell the staff to clean up an ashtray.   little things like that sort of get under the Bugle's skin after a while.  But enough of that What I originally meant to rant about was the sudden popularity of those apple/ lemon flavored malt beverages that SMB is hawking nowadays.  Has anyone tried them and thought they were in the least bit palatable?  I see some of the ladies drinking them and I figure well they just don't know any better.  But when I see a guy drinking them I immediately start wondering....  Enough for now  Bugle out

New SBMA Fees

From a reader:

SBMA is slapping a new tax on residents and investors based on land area, which means that one of the only profitable ventures on the base, the Ocean Adventure theme park and resort, will see a 400 percent rent increase! Less than halfway through their 50 year lease and millions invested and SBMA unilaterally hikes the rent by 400 percent. All the employment-generating investors, like factories and resorts, are large land users. The effect is that the investors who create the most jobs are the ones hit the hardest.

These are the kind of shortsighted policies that have made SBMA the bankruptcy that it is today.

From SBMA administrator Robert Garcia:

"If you want to live and operate here, you have to pay. If we make so much money, we could provide those services for free. But in this time of need, we need to help each other out. There should be no exceptions. I will try everything in my power to keep them here. But in the end, if they cannot keep up with my program, maybe they don’t have a place here in SBMA."

A failing special economic zone threatening the few investors it has..

A link to the complete article in the Inquirer can be found here.

Dredge the Rivers

A reader has sent out a petition to get the Mayor of Subic to dredge our local rivers and the Bugle happens to agree that this is something that our readers should give a hand to.  Our reader is using the change.org website to promote his efforts to get some change in our elected officials mindset.  Mainly that they are supposed to start thinking premptively vice just reacting to whatever happens.  You can read about the founder of Change.org here and you can sign the petition here.  

Subic Water District

In a continuation of the Low Flow Problems that we reported on the other day the Subic Water District now says that the low water pressure will continue for at least another week.  It kind of makes you wonder how much they value thier customers.  The Bugle doesn't feel that it would be entirely out of line to have people working 24/7 to get this problem solved.  I mean isn't access to clean drinking water kind of important.  For those of us who would like to get updates on this situation the phone number for the Subic Water District is 232-4570.  Thye also have an e-mail address that might be interested in customer concerns subicwaterdistrict@yahoo.com.

Low Flow in Subic

       For those of you who have been experiencng a lack of water pressure from the Subic Water District, You will be pleased to know that the Bugle has found out that the water main line that connects to Naugsol was also a victim to the flood.  So it turns out that many of our readers have gone from a condition of too much water to not enough.  When the Bugle queried the Subic Water District as to when this line would be fixed he got the big "I don't know sir"   But on the good side they will be delivering water using one of the Subic trucks so be on the lookout for them.  More info to follow when we get it

No Pizza at Shakeys

From a reader:

We stopped by the Shakeys on base in Subic. I’m not a fan of Shakey’s. They offer very very salty pizza with mediocre toppings. But if you live on the base, they are pretty accessible. So I gave them a try with my kids. When we sat down, the waiter showed up with a smile and a menu and let us peruse all the various pizza options for a while. Once we decided, he of course told us that pizza was “out of stock”. We tried another variety. “Also out of stock sir.” After years of experience with this, I changed tack and asked: “Okay, you tell me what is ‘in stock’ and we’ll pick from that.” He said, they only had small pizza crust available. So I said no problem, we would just order several small pizzas instead of one big one. He then clarified that they had one single small pizza crust left in the entire restaurant. He then looked out the window and said the delivery truck was on the way, delivering more pizza crusts. That was when we got up and headed to Extremely Espresso for a pizza.

Subic Coal plant Update

Recently the Bugle came across an interesting article concerning a Writ of Kalikasan against the planned Coal power plant in Subic.   For those who are unaware a Writ of Kalikasan is a legal remedy under Philippine law which provides for the protection one's right to "a balanced and healthful ecology in accord with the rhythm and harmony of nature," as provided for in Section 16, Article II of the Constitution.  Hopefully this is the first step in stopping the planned production of this coal powered plant in our environmentally sensitive area.

No bribes in Clark?

From a reader:

On a recent visit to Clark, I made an illegal U-turn. I didn’t see the sign. I was in the wrong and was stopped by the Clark police. The police officer was polite enough but said I would have to receive a “violation” – or what we call a ticket in the United States. The problem was that he didn’t have any tickets in his book. He was radioing in to find someone who had a violation book. As I do in Manila, I rolled up a 500 peso note in my palm and tried to hand it to him. He backed up like it was radioactive and said, “If I accept that, I could lose my job sir.” I was surprised to hear that. It reminded me of Subic in the 1990s. It turned out the officer couldn’t find a violation book so he let me go with a warning. After I was off the hook, I tried again to give him something, not a bribe since I was already off, but a “thank you” tip. He declined again. Whatever they are doing up in Clark, they are doing something right. Interestingly, a friend of mine was stopped in Subic for coming to a rolling stop. The friend is a resident of SBMA so the officer let him go. My friend offered him a small “thank you” tip and the Subic officer accepted it.

Clark's Crappy Airport is Still Better than Manila

From a reader:

I traveled with my family to Hong Kong via Clark recently. I understand the complaints about people traveling out of there. The “terminal” is actually just a run-down old building with a dozen hard plastic chairs. If you fly out of Clark, plan to stand around a while or sit on the floor. The immigration officers are a snarling, angry bunch. They had no reason to hassle us but they were hassling plenty of other travelers. They have a section marked “second screening” where they are busy shaking down travelers. It’s pretty sad. On the bright side, we booked online very easily and the ticket prices were great. We paid about $100 all up (including all taxes, etc.) per round-trip ticket to Hong Kong on Air Asia booked via Tiger Airways. That $100 RT ticket included 20 kilos (44 pounds) of luggage each way per traveler. Also, as others have pointed out, it’s hard to calculate how valuable it is to be able to take the leisurely drive down along SCTEX and be at the airport 45 minutes later. My advice is that it is still worth it to fly out of the dilapidated Clark airport and stare down the snarling immigration agents, rather than deal with the hassles of Manila.