4ensic

The prior owner of my house in St. Louis married a woman originally from Hinunangan.  They asked me to go on a medical mission there (both are MDs) to run the back end of the pharmacy and manage the supplies we brought over.  I liked it and went back yearly on vacation with them.  The wife is from a family of medical people (Her nephew is the town dentist and my next door neighbor) in the town.  
She owns some lots in town and said her niece in Cebu (a commercial contractor) could build a house.  The doctors had already built their retirement house there a couple of blocks away.  For a very reasonable cost she built me a 4 BR 3 BA, 2 story house made of solid reinforced concrete.  It's withstood a 6.9 earthquake and Typhoon Yolanda (a Cat 5 hurricane that killed over 5,000 people in Tacloban - about 100 miles North) without so much as an insurance claim.  That's my story.

That could also be the @twangsterbot...no one knows...he's our resident photographer and international man of mystery. lol
If you go to "periscope peeps" in the forum here, there in a great write up Twangster on how to get started for Periscope. Also, if you are on FB, the actual Rcperiscopers group is run by @CruisingKat(Kathy), so make sure you join the FB group.  And I'm pretty sure they have FB groups for each of those sailings too.

Cruise emergency pakage to take on board

There are tons of people from the RCBlog community and RCperiscopers community on both those cruises with you!  So lucky!  You're going to have a great time!

I have felt for many, many years that the 2 happiest cultures on the planet are the Filipinos and the Cajuns.  They just love life and love everyone.  I am very envious.  How in the world did you end up there ?

Thanks.  Living in the provinces (as opposed to Manila or Cebu) is a lot like living in a small town in the Midwest, but in the 1970s. Hinunangan is the equivalent of the County seat and has a population about 1,000.  There are 3 hardware stores, 4 bakeries and dozens of sari-sari stores - the Quickee Marts of the Philippines. Some so small you stand on the sidewalk and the owner fulfills your order.  Prices are also about the same as the US in the 70s.  If you eat local foods, you could spend $3.00 a day on food, all of it fresh.  Rum is the local drink. A 700ml bottle is about $1.75.
The best part - it's full of Filipinos.
And the worst - While the Philippines is known for supplying the world with nurses, the hospitals outside of Cebu and Manila might well have equipment used in US counterparts in the 1970s.  I bought some pulse oximeters (noninvasively measures Oxygen content) for our hospital.  They are reusable and cost about $20 each in the US from eBay or Amazon, but the hospital was still doing arterial punctures (ouch!) to get oxygen levels.  This was a bit self-serving.  I wouldn't want someone sticking my arteries a couple times a day if I ever ended up there.

Welcome, @4ensic!

Welcome, Brad.  You MUST share some of your stories about life in the Philippines. It sounds so exotic !

Welcome Brad!

Hello.  I'm Brad, a Technical Special Agent who retired part time to a small town in Southern Leyte, Philippines and part time to St. Louis, MO.
My first cruise was a T/A  from Port Everglades to Amsterdam on the Rhapsody in 2004.  We paralleled a weak hurricane for 2 days.  There were 90 knot wind gusts.  A third of the crew was ill and the MDR was more than half empty. One of the variety acts was a unicyclist whose rather epic fall was replayed throughout the next day on shipboard TV.   This was a real life Fellini movie.  I was hooked.
Doing stage photography is my favorite activity onboard.  I'm the one with the odd-looking white lens.

Geez, that never happens.  

The cost of Surf and Stream has dropped for at least 2 cruises.
For the President's Cruise (09-29) on the Harmony, Surf and Stream is down to $10.79 a day.
The Symphony T/A (10-28), Surf and Stream is $11.99 daily.
 
Check your Cruise Planners, fellow propellerheads and save some coin.
 
Update:  Still active for these cruises, possibly more, as of August 24.

Yep, that works.  Still the same base price of 19.99 for the GC.  But 20% off right now so $15.99.

The cost of Surf and Stream has dropped for at least 2 cruises.
For the President's Cruise (09-29) on the Harmony, Surf and Stream is down to $10.79 a day.
The Symphony T/A (10-28), Surf and Stream is $11.99 daily.
 
Check your Cruise Planners, fellow propellerheads and save some coin.
 
Update:  Still active for these cruises, possibly more, as of August 24.

It’s fine ... the captain is your DD!!!!

Discarded right into my mouth

Sounds like you should try an old fashioned at each bar on the ship. With the package, any that aren't to your liking can be discarded.

<Me, holding a deep conversation with an artificial plant> "But I only had one glass of wine, Osifer".

<Me, holding a deep conversation with an artificial plant> "But I only had one glass of wine, Osifer".

Genius!!!

Wine tumblers similar to this also hold around 1/2 bottle of wine if you're going on an extended walk outside your cabin ?

Thanks!   The username is authentic.  I'm a retired Technical Special Agent turned stage photographer.  It was quite a change, the subjects don't have chalk outlines or markers and they keep moving.  People either kept a sense of humor or went back to working on a regular squad.

The Rolling Stones, especially  "Start Me Up" real LOUD!

Thanks!   The username is authentic.  I'm a retired Technical Special Agent turned stage photographer.  It was quite a change, the subjects don't have chalk outlines or markers and they keep moving.  People either kept a sense of humor or went back to working on a regular squad.

Updating over 2,700 cabin doors plus the computer upgrades to work with the new RFID locks, plus adding hundreds of POS terminals to read them is easily a million dollar investment for hardware alone.  The labor to retrofit a ship is probably another half that. 
You can't put $1.5M to $2M into a ship upgrade without increasing fares.  Wow bands aren't going to generate new revenue that didn't exist before, they are just 'cool'.  To recover the cost fares would have to go up.    
It's one thing to build new ships with new tech.  The incremental cost isn't that much.  Retrofitting existing ships to add them would require downtime.  Every minute of a dry dock is precious, extending a dry dock to perform a Wow band upgrade causes more money to be lost.   
I agree wow bands are cool tech but not so cool I am willing to pay more for the privilege.