My morning started with an email from Cebu Pacific Airlines telling me I was fucked. Well, the way they worded it was that they were unilaterally changing my flight times to and from Hong Kong, which screwed over my best-laid plans for a week in Vietnam. Instead of departing Clark airport in Angeles City on July 6 in the morning, I was now scheduled to leave late in the afternoon on July 7. So, I had an expensive non-refundable hotel room booked for the 6th in Hong Kong that I couldn’t use. However, the real kicker was that my flight to Da Nang departs on the 7th, before my newly scheduled arrival time on Cebu Pacific. Additionally, the new return flight from Hong Kong on the 13th was scheduled to depart for Manila, not Clark. So much for leaving the car at the airport.

After consulting with my fellow travelers (we’re going with another couple), we came up with a brand new plan. The whole point of booking with Cebu Pacific in the first place was to avoid the dreaded trip to Manila. So, given that there were no other flights from Clark that met our timeframes, we booked with AirAsia out of Manila. We’ll arrive in Hong Kong on the evening of the 6th, which spoils our plans for a full day to explore the city, but allows us to catch our flight to Da Nang as scheduled. I’ve requested a refund from Cebu Pacific, and we’ll see how that works out for me. What a pain in the ass dealing with this was for my frazzled old brain. Here’s hoping the rest of the trip goes hassle-free.

The remainder of the day went better, comparatively speaking. Starting with the Saturday Sweets Stroll.

Swan surprised me yesterday morning when she asked me if I would cook for her. She’s pretty much taken over kitchen duties since we’ve been together. I asked what she was hungry for, and she replied, “beef stew.” Okay, then. Ask and you shall receive!

We didn’t carry umbrellas when we headed into town, and thankfully, we didn’t need them. But shortly after our arrival at Sloppy Joe’s, the skies opened up and the rain poured down.

The nice thing about the Maze is you have six bar options under one roof, so when we were ready for a change of scenery, we went next door to the Alaska Club. Did the usual: lady drinks for our favorite waitresses, a 50 peso tip for the six dancers present, and an order of lumpia from Sit-n-Bull for the staff to share. Then we moved on to Wet Spot for our nightcap. We headed home from there, and Swan was looking forward to a helping of leftover beer stew when we got there. I need to cook for her more often.

In sad news, a longtime mainstay in Angeles, Jimmy Dale, also known as Harry the Horse, passed away yesterday.

Jimmy wrote a newsletter for many years about the nightlife scene in Angeles, and that’s how I became one of his followers. He also owned the Blue Boar Inn, where I had the pleasure of meeting him in person and playing a game of darts back in 2010 during a visit to AC.

He sold his original Harry the Horse newsletter many years ago and had a seldom-updated replacement. He left us with a final post, saying goodbye to his many fans. I hope I get the chance to do something similar when my time on earth is over. Rest in Peace, Jimmy.

I’ve progressed to January 2010 in my journey through the LTG archives. January 4th was a snowy day in Seoul, and the Army sent non-essential staff home early. I walked home and did a post with a lot of photos of a snow-covered Itaewon. I doubt I’ll ever see snow again, not that I miss it.

Today’s YouTube video is from a vlogger I’ve never watched previously. She does a great job laying out the reasons the Philippines remains a poor country. She confirms what I’ve long suspected. And as she describes the government corruption that led to this sorry state, I couldn’t help but think it had a familiar ring to it. Yep, the good ol’ USA seems to be going down this road as well.

Now we’ll get to the funny stuff:

Another day of being alive is in process. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow.