Well, I promised you a few titbits last time so now, yet again waiting for the inevitable rain to tip down (it has been really sticky today and thunder already) I had better just sit here and give you a few more musings about life in the tropics.

Perhaps I have been here too long.

I arose one day to go for morning coffee and catch up on the internet ,as is my wont and I found myself confronted with this.  Mac had decided to designate my own chair for reasons best known to himself.  I suspect a little too much St. George whisky might have had some bearing on the matter.  The relevance of the handcuffs is as yet unclear to me and Mac, even in his moments of lucidity, has yet to offer a reasonable explanation.  We'll let it pass but this was here for a couple of weeks.  Well, it meant I always had a seat.

The mighty calamansi.

A total digression here.  Apart from the weather (temporarily suspended), scenery, culture, people, food and lots of other things my favourite thing in the Philippines is this little beauty.  It is called a calamansi and is very, very popular here.  It forms a part of the sauces that you make yourself in restaurants with varying combinations of chilli vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, hot sauce and calamansi.  It is also used to squeeze over the various barbecued meats and just cuts through the slightly fatty content beautifully. 

So what is is?  Well, most people describe it as a small lime and lacking  a better description that is not a bad way to put it.  The flavour is not as sharp as a lime as we would know it in UK.  I would say it was somewhere between a lime and a lemon.  I love the things.  I have saved it's best use for last, though.  In the same way as Mexicans put a slice of lime into the neck of a Sol or Corona beer bottle, so the inclusion of a piece of calamansi into a bottle of San Miguel Light improves it's flavour dramatically.  Lets' be honest, it is lager which I wouldn't countenance drinking in UK so anything would be an improvement.

I really wish there was some way of bringing a calamansi tree back to UK, I could make a fortune at it.

Here is another random image for you, again food related and yet again I have to report that this damned site is messing me about so anything could happen here.  Damn this site to Hell, I am going to have to publish this as is and continue it immediately.  Sprry folks, stay tuned.

Genghis would be proud.