With a little help from my friends........

Usually my first read of the day is either The Platypus,Mia or Spike....so this morning I click on over to Spike and realise he has had a posting run overnight. Including a little warning for me...I must say that up until today (even after reading the FCO warning for The Philippines and it being more worrying than the one for Jordan!)I had put the present political situation in The Philippines in a mental file marked "if it happens, it happens, I've been through worse"....now I am a tad more concerned...

My life of travelling has managed to subject me to political turmoil worldwide....coups in West Africa, hatred of non Algerians in Algeria during the early '70s, living in Sri Lanka during the height of the civil war in the mid-eighties, Jordan - twice - once when relations with Israel were at an all time low...and we were living about half a mile from the border and the second time during the height of the second intifada and then the Iraq war....and now it seems Manila may cough up a little more excitement!

Something I have learnt is that often terrible situations occur in a city and three blocks away residents can have no idea it happened until they watch the news.

A classic example of this was in Amman in December '02....my flat mate and I had taken the day off and were going to go to Madaba for lunch, having no food in the house we decided to head off to Le Meridien for an early breakfast..as I sat eating my breakfast my mother called.."Where are you?"...I told her where I was, what my plans were...all fairly chatty and then she said..."a US diplomat has been shot, I don't think you should be in Amman today"...I explained that I knew nothing about it and it was hard not to be in Amman...seeing as I lived here...anyway after assuring her that there was not much I could do to avoid the situation other than be careful...we hung up....my flatmate and I left Le Meridien and went home to pick up our things before heading off to Madaba...when we got home we switched on Sky news and watched the news about Lawrence Foley's assasination...it was all very unnerving especially as it had all happened a few streets away from our house, just as we were leaving for Le Meridien...and we knew nothing about it until someone called from the UK....

At heart I am a coward and yet somewhere in the depths of me I am a fatalist....I don't want bad things to happen to me, I don't seek out frightening or potentially dangerous situations (although anyone reading the above may dispute that!), I try to keep my head below the parapet. However, que sera, sera...I could get run over by one of those nasty little mini buses on Caine Road tomorrow and never get to see anything vaguely dangerous in Manila!

Notwithstanding, Spike....thank you....