it helps when tim "testisexual" tayag lives a luxurious lifestyle that you can pass off quite easily as your own. on more than one occasion, i've duped women into believing i'm a wealthy expat with a paunchy filipino male maid. sorry to you use as my prop, tim. by the time they'd figured out the truth, i'd gotten what i wanted promptly kicking them out into the street as they whined for their 45 pesos¹. (56 pesos = $1)

in manila, there are easily 2 starbucks at every corner and a mcdonald's to filipino female ratio of 2:1. the best thing to come out of this is i've so far managed to avoid adobo, bangus local cuisine by rotating through a series of fast food joints starting with outback steak house on monday then rounding out the week with a quiet sunday dinner at taco bell. the pounds i've shed in the past few months are certain to return but it's a small price to pay for delicious D-grade beef wrapped in a soft tortilla.

tim's got a good thing going here (if you consider being marginally obese and hooked on opium suppositories a good thing). he stays at home all day and performs stand up comedy in the evenings. who knows how long tim can keep up his hobo ways. you can speculate as well as i can but if the gods of schadenfreude have anything to say about it, he'll end up like this guy:
figure 3. a glimpse of tim in 3 years... make that 2 years.

in terms of the philippines, i have no set plans except to slowly see the entire country heading north some time this week. the filipino government is generous with its visa extensions so in theory, i can stay until i turn gray(er) or until i meet my ideal filipino bride; the web-site warned 3-4 weeks delivery. add 2 weeks if she's over 50. but until i leave manila, i'll enjoy the cheap floozies and marathon dorito eating sessions by tim's apartment pool.

footnote:
¹look, i kid. even though i beat it to death, i've never paid to do it with a hooker before. i swear it on my dead hamster's life. well, not to get too much into semantics but technically speaking i've never handed cash directly to someone in a bargained exchange for an "encounter". then again, there was that one time i was drunk in the tenderloin district of San Francisco. you ask me where i went with that overweight vietnamese prostitute and i wouldn't have a reasonable response. at the same time, i'd also be unable answer how i ended up 75 miles away in los banos... naked... bloodied... with a picture of celine dion tattooed on the underside of my penis that same night. great times.