It’s almost ten o’clock. I am waiting for an eight o’clock workshop to start. I started this morning at home with avocado on toast and coffee. Since arriving two hours ago I have had three cups of instant coffee with artificial creamer to accompany the breakfast provided, a triple-decker sandwich of baloney, chicken, cream cheese and mayo.  A little later, morning “marienda” — food shared at the morning tea or coffee break, usually some sweet bread or other sugared snack — was two packaged chocolate frosting covered cakes. Lunch is approaching and I’ve already doubled my daily recommended calorie intake.

I gave up calorie counting about four weeks ago. Even with the best available internet connection, it still takes over an hour to enter my food intake and activities into caloriecount.com, on which I’ve relied for years. The experts say that of twenty-three Asian nations, the Philippines has the twenty-second best internet service. Only Afghanistan has worse. Somehow, that tidbit of information evaded my grasp when selecting the country to benefit from my volunteerism.

Mom used to call me a good eater. Put it in front of me, I will consume it. It’s a problem, particularly in a land where they are constantly putting food in front of you. Wary of this, one of my first purchases here was bathroom scales. They are cheap scales, but I judged them accurate to within five pounds. I knew this because on first use the scales told me I had lost five pounds, and there was no chance of that being true. Continue reading 09. The Pinoy Diet →