Sinagag Express

Lahug, Cebu, Philippines. I love cheap tasty food. A great fast food chain here in Cebu is Sinagag Express. My Cebu friends make fun of me because I call it Synagogue Express. The food served here certainly is not kosher. Sinagag refers to fry, as in fried meats such as pork, chicken, or beef “tapas”, or sausage or hotdog “salogs”.

I skip all the gut lining red meats and order the tanigue salog. This is a slice of tuna served on a sizzling plate with rice and an easy over egg on top of the rice. I like to flip the egg over onto the hot iron plate to cook the nearly raw top. Then I eat the egg with some of the rice seasoned with a dash of soy sauce. Yummy. I then proceed to the tuna.

All types of Filipinos drop in here to eat, or walk past on their way to somewhere. This is a great people watching spot, the equivalent of a doughnut shop in America. There are taxi and truck drivers, construction crews, telemarketing girls, policemen, late night disco dancers, and midday uniform wearing schoolmates. They all come for some fried meats & rice. This is the basic staple of the Pinoy diet.

The guys working at the Lahug franchise are friendly and competent. They want me to buy my own franchise (for which they probably get a commission). They claim their 24-hour Filipino cheap eats spot grosses at least 20,000 pesos a day. I told them this chain would do well in USA. They want me to hire them to work in America. I told them ok and worked thru the numbers with them. I converted minimum wage from US$ to pesos and they were so excited to get paid so much. That is until I also began to convert the normal expenses in USA for rent, utilities, food and transportation. I ended with their expenses totaling within 200 pesos of their theoretical USA salary. The conclusion was that they would have to come back to Philippines to enjoy a higher standard of living.

Yep, that’s why I’m here. To enjoy the cheap eats and higher standard of living that everyone can afford here in SE Asia.

LCP Revisited

Dumagete, Philippines-. I was curious to find out how much of the Landmark Forum my friends at Little Children of the Philippines remember and use after 5 years.

“Hello dong!” was the familiar greeting I received entering the administrative office of Little Children of the Philippines. The head administrator, Carmenia Benosa, welcomed me into the air-conditioned office. We talked and caught-up and she rounded up most of the 8 Landmark Forum graduates that I had sponsored to fly to Manila, stay in a hotel, and take the Landmark Forum in May and September 2002.

After our group photos, I expressed my interest in checking on their use of their Landmark Education. Some agreed to meet with me for dinner. Thus began a series of mealtime lectures and informal seminars that I lead over the course of the next couple weeks with them on the island of Negros in central Philippines.

In my 1st dinner meeting it seemed they remembered the nice hotel room, the meals and discussions together. So I arranged a 2nd meeting to review the Landmark Forum syllabus with them. Only a few came to this review.

I quickly came to two conclusions. One, that it does not work to 100% sponsor people to attend the Landmark Forum; they have nothing at stake for their lives and so do not listen deeply enough to apply the Landmark Forum to their lives. Two, that without a follow-up 10 session seminar series structure, people will not expand the distinctions of the Landmark Forum in their lives, and that their past will simply come back and displace their Landmark Education.

I also began my awareness of the gross lack of Integrity inherent everywhere with everyone here in the Philippines.

Ultimately I came to see where I failed to be Responsible for causing their Landmark Education to persist for them. I gave-up on them, rather than persisting to find a way to represence them to what they had learned during their Landmark Forum.

So I arranged another meeting. I offered to take them on a weekend vacation where we would have serious discussions and inquiries. We went on a series of long bus rides, and short stays and finally I arrived at the realization that they were tolerating me so they could have a nice vacation. They had no real interest in Landmark Education, and were not enrolled in me as a Leader of Landmark Education. Enrollment was missing.

We meet at a shopping mall food court where I took responsibility and put in Enrollment. I apologized for leaving them without a 10 Session follow-up seminar and abandoning them after the Landmark Forum. They were touched and finally listening. I continued with a couple shares of breakthroughs I have gotten using my Landmark Education. I asked them what would they like to revisit or what aspect of their life they wanted to discuss. Carmenia was interested in Integrity as a way to improve communication and results in their organization and in dealing with low Integrity families. I gave a short direct discussion of distinction Integrity using bicycle wheel example. They were really interested. We discussed real examples in their inter-staff communications. They saw the value in usefulness of this distinction. We agreed to meet again.

In our last Seminar dinner meeting we met at Food-Net a favorite restaurant and found a nice table outside. I began with the Not Listening exercise from the Advanced Course and the Communication Assess to Power course. They were so astonished and excited. I then gave my personal focused practical basic seminar so I would leave them with some tangible useful distinctions. 1st I briefly revisited Integrity as a foundation for workability. Then I gave them my killer communication distinction I got from GK a Seminar Leader in Malaysia, that it is Communication that Causes Workability. Finally I gave them the ordinary reasonableness thinking vs. unreasonableness. Ordinary thinking is:
Good Reason + No Result = The Result. Versus being extraordinary requires Being Unreasonable as access to producing breakthrough results.

So I left that final meeting Empowered that I had been a Contribution. They were empowered with new distinctions. And we all had fun inquiring into the Being part of being human.

Fisherman’s Net

Lahug, Cebu, Philippines-. I love outdoor dinning. Seems to me there is never enough outdoor dinning, especially here in the tropics. One place I found with friendly attractive girls, ok affordable food, best value fresh fruit shakes, and live entertainment is Fisherman’s Net. This place is actually 3 places. There is the street front covered grill area; the indoor fancy aircon restaurant, and the back garden setting area. My favorite is the street front outdoor grill. It has a cover band of 3 young babes and a big guy that play a couple nights a week. The girls are sexy but the sound system sucks (too loud & drop-outs) as is normal here in SE Asia.

“Hi Sir”, is the greeting I always get from the single guy there. But it is the big sexy smiles I get from my waitress Catherine, the enthusiastic fruit shake girl, and the cashier girls that keep me coming back. They are so cute, have young vibrant energy, and actually provide pretty excellent service, which is a not so common combination.

I was first infatuated with the fruit shake girl because of her bubbly personality and her excellent mango or avocado shakes. Then I fell for the great body of the young cashier from Bohol. Finally the broad smile, dark skin, slim body, and bright mind of Catherine intrigued me.

I was hanging out across the street at the Sinagang Express late one night. I like the inexpensive meals and the friendly workers there. Suddenly I see Catherine approaching. It was after midnight and she had finished her shift and was walking home. She came in and sat next to me with her broad sweet smile. We began talking. “What is your passion, or hobby?” I ask. “I don’t know”, she lies at first. I notice her hair is down instead of bunched-up in the hair net at her work. Wow, thick long black wavy sexy hair! Then she begins to open up. “I like Chess”, she admits. “Wow you must be smart” I reply. “I have a friend in America who is a Chess Master”, I exaggerate slightly. Actually Larry was listed as some level of Master at one point in his long years playing chess. “Are you good at it”, I ask. “There are guys that play where I walk past on my way home. I stopped to play them and won all five games”, she offers to illustrate her prowess. “I like to play chess on the Internet, I won 3 of 4 games last time. But I don’t have time or money to play.” I discard my dirty thinking about chest and playing on the Internet, and proceed in a normal conversation.

We talk more and agree to a date to go disco dancing. I gave her 100 pesos and told her to play chess on the Internet with it. She smiled and took it. Next time a saw her she said she had won 4 of 5 games on the Internet with the 100 pesos.
We had a great time dancing at 2 discos with her friend. Dropping her off late at night, the taxi took us to her shantytown neighborhood in middle of a field a half-mile from the main road. I asked to see her house. She seemed embarrassed but agreed, but would not let me inside. I enjoyed seeing the simple bamboo, plywood, & tin roof structures under the clear night sky.

I told her I liked her and she then replied with the words all guys hate to hear, “I like you too but only as a friend”. Ouch! Ok, well she is smart and young and saving herself for college and her ideal husband. And whatever.
I eventually moved to another part of town, so don’t see much of Catherine or her restaurant anymore. Still sometime I make the effort to stop by and get those smiles, visit my “friends”, and have a tasty mango shake, and get caught in the simple charm of the outdoor grill at Fisherman’s Net.