So we went to the Philippines...

I know.  I haven't even begun writing about Mekong Delta, and now I'm all full of Philippines stories, and I've left you all hanging there thinking about my maids and how I probably need to get a life for three whole weeks.

Oh well.  Suffer in your jocks, I guess.

Anyway - I thought I better write some kind of update before the blog starts growing cobwebs, even though today I have quite a bit of stuff to do, actually.


My projects for today include:

• Taking a bolt of fabric to a dress maker.  It's project runway time!
• Writing some marketing material for Helping Hands Saigon. We have set up a really neat project which is all about providing scholarships for disadvantaged children so they can continue to attend school. Now, we just need to make sure we can continue to get funding for them, so that we can give the same scholarships next year, then the next and hopefully all the way until they go to university. 
• Prepare some material for a course I'm giving in June about writing. It's called "Saying What You Mean" and I will be leading some workshops with a bunch of bright young people about organising ideas to write effective documents for any kind of audience. 
• Cooking!  On the menu tonight is Merguez sausages and mashed potatoes.  The very first potatoes I have cooked in Vietnam - despite the best efforts of the sellers at the market who try to get me to buy potatoes every time.  Actually, I don't have a masher - so it's going to be lumpy!  Maybe I should just call it hash and mix some fried onions with it.

But back to the Philippines - or as we are now calling it - the land of meat.  It seems that meat was all that was on the menu in the Philippines and though it was delicious, we were dying for fresh vegetables when we got home. We went for 3 nights as part of a company trip - Mr Martin's whole office gets taken on holiday once a year for free. And the prospect of holiday made me slightly more forgiving of the long hours and never a weekend totally free ...  for about five minutes.

I will write more about it later, but to keep you happy - here's a photo (click on it to see a bigger version):