There is about 14 hours time difference between Manila and Pocatello. It’s 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, April 27th in Manila and about 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 26th in Pocatello. The morning hours in Manila overlap with the evening hours the previous day in Pocatello. After being in a part of the world for a time a person gets used to the time differences and can quickly calculate them in the head. I haven’t gotten there yet and have to double-check my mental calculation quite regularly. There is a time zone converson chart hanging in the office here which I use quite regularly. Manila doesn’t change time between daylight savings and regular time, so whenver the US changes times, everyone here in Manila has to relearn the time differences.

The other interesting difference is that Manila is fairly close to the equator and the length of daylight changes very little during the year — perhaps only about a ninety minute difference between the longest daylight day at Summer Solstice and the shortest daylight day at Winter Solstice. Conversly, in Pocatello, the daylight hours difference is fairly pronounced with as much as 6 1/2 hours daylight difference between December and June. Essentially the sun sets at about the same time year around in Manila. According to the US Naval Observatory, the sun sets at 6:27 p.m. on the Summer Solstice and at 5:32 p.m. on the Winter Solstice. The meaning for me is that there is no real good light for pictures after I get out of the office in the evening! I’ve also had some late night meetings which makes getting up any earlier than 6 a.m. difficult.

Last night after I had dinner with the general manager here, I caught the 8 p.m. shuttle to a local shopping mall. I wasn’t at all prepared for how large this mall is — and it’s one of two malls within a five mile radius. The other one is supposedly the same size with a little more emphasis on restaurants. The mall closed at 9 p.m. and I learned that meant the outside doors were locked at 9 p.m. About 8:45 every store started shoving people out and closing the shutters. At 9 p.m.. all the doors everywhere were locked and getting out required a guard to open the doors. Finding a guard wasn’t difficult, however. Every entrance door into the mall had two guards on duty. They inspected all purses and backpacks coming into the mall and looked at the same going out. The entrance from the highway into the mall parking area was also guarded and the driver had to show identification to get past the checkpoint. While the security certainly isn’t intrusive and is actually fairly superficial, it is certainly more than I’m used to seeing. There has been some terrorist activity in Manila and these measures are quite OK with me if it keeps me safe. Further, whenever I go into my hotel, there’s a fellow out front with a dog that sniffs everything being carried into the hotel. Then at the front door a doorman looks inside of all bags and backpacks. Again it seems to be somewhat superficial, but it’s still much more visible security than is present anywhere in the US.

At the mall I spent a little bit of money in a drug store. My noise-cancelling headsets have a piece broken off. I bought some superglue to piece it back together so they’ll work on the flights back home. Also, the change in diet caused my system to rumble a bit too much yesterday so I also picked up some pills to settle that problem down. It turns out that pills like Imodium AD are purchased pill at a time. I could buy as many pills as I wanted at 50 pesos each (about $1 apiece — a bit pricey?). I bought five of them since one should do the trick, but I’ll be here for about 18 more days and who knows what future diet issues will cause. I’m now at work and the day is well underway. Life is OK.