Funny Philippines Things

NO I am NOT pregnant!  I am just excited about good sour dill pickles.  Apparently not many people in the Philippines like dill pickles.  In spite of a whole aisle at one of my regular grocery stores of olives, capers, mayo, mustard, bread and butter ones of all shapes, sizes, and brands, I have not bought dill pickles since we have been here.

I was having lunch recently with a group of ladies and one mentioned buying dill pickles and I asked where and what brand.  I was finally at this store looking for them and came home with these 3 huge jars-just for me.  No one else in the family likes pickles!  At McDonalds I tear the children's burgers in half and eat the pickles out of theirs.

Then the even funnier thing was that I put one jar in the refrigerator because I wanted my pickles to be cold.  They were in there for several hours and I tried to open them-I couldn't.  So I called Greg, he couldn't either.  We ran the lid under hot water, tried to heat the metal lid with a lighter, let it sit out over night to warm back up.  I tried several more times this morning and finally after a lot more hot water and effort got to eat some pickles and they were delicious!

I also have to tell you where I found the pickles at the grocery store.  This is not a store that I go to regularly so I was wandering a little and looking around to see if they might be hiding anything else that I would get really excited about.  Here in grocery stores there are always shelves above the open freezer cases-they are usually horizontal,not many are vertical with doors like in the US.  I think the stockers hunt for the most random things they can find and put them above the freezer cases because that is where I found my pickles!

A couple of other funny things because I know everyone is tired of reading about pickles by now!  TV shows begin and end at the weirdest times here and NEVER on the hour!  There are fewer commercials in general which I assume is the cause of this but it is still weird.

Also, every digital clock that we have bought here is fast and gains time-EVERY time you set it correctly!  In about 2 weeks they are all about 15 minutes fast!  We just find that extremely ironic since it is a big joke among expats here about "Philippine time" because that means that you never know how long something is going to take and usually double or triple the length of time a person told you it would take.  I try to keep my watch set to the time that the bus driver has so that the boys don't miss it in the mornings-so far we have been lucky.

Hope I have made you laugh today!