My view now- Blue skies, clear water and empty white sand beaches
As I took Chester for a walk along Nagtabon beach on a warm sunny November morning in 2023 I reflected on how different my life was as a retiree in Palawan to when I was a Senior Management Development Specialist at the Oil and Gas Academy in Bahrain!
My view back then- we did not even have a window in the classroom to see outside!
A while back one of my friends asked if I could lend him a tie for his graduation and I told him I donated all my ties to a Charity Shop in Bahrain before I left for the Philippines. My "uniform" now consists of shorts, sando and Tsinellas ( slippers)
My Uniform back then consisted of a suit , black leather lace up shoes, Black socks, Cufflinks, Lanyard, ULM Badge and a tie - this one was donated by Keith when he retired ( He used to tell me off if I did not wear a tie and cufflinks!)
2023- I appear to have gained a chin or too and my hair is greyer!
Of course back then it was the height of COV19 so masks were mandatory and for a while I only delivered courses on line as face 2 face training was banned.
Out for a walk in Bahrain during the pandemic
Back in Bahrain , due to the heat and the fact that the refinery was operating 24/7 on a 3 shift basis we worked from 6. 30 am to 3 pm with a 30 minute lunch break. I would get up around 5 am and have breakfast , shower, shave and drive the short distance to work and get ready to start running a course at 8 am. We had a 30 minute lunch break ( usually salad at my desk as I caught up on emails) and then finished training at 3 pm. After clearing up and doing the post course admin I would mark some assignments and head for home around 5 pm juts before it went dark , and after cooking dinner fall asleep in front of the TV!
Breakfast in Palawan at the Golden Hour Cafe ( as a Muslim country few restaurants serve Bacon in Bahrain!)
Here in Palawan Chester ( the dawg) wakes me up for his breakfast at 7 am and then we head out to the beach stopping for breakfast at the Golden Hour Cafe, about an hours drive from home. The food is cheap and freshly and quickly cooked and you sit in the garden to eat which is very relaxing. Then we drive to the beach and go for a long walk ( about 5,000 steps) - Chester loves to run free and swim in the sea and I enjoy topping up my tan and thinking about my next blogs and listening to the sea . By then its around 10 am so we have meryenda ( a snack in Tagalog). Today it was Mango shake, but at home I have cassava pie or Bilo Bilo or fried Bananas or Halo Halo. We have lots of fresh fruit here like coconut and bananas.
My Mango shake on the beach
Back in Bahrain I lived on water and black coffee ( up to 10 mugs a day, now its rare that I have one cup!) - stuck in the classroom, here delivering and on line ILM programme
Here in Palawan there are plenty of white sand beaches to walk on, free of charge
Although Bahrain was also an Island it was very small ( 22 km wide and you could drive from one end to the other in an hour on fast roads). Palawan is much bigger ( although also long and narrow) and it takes 14 hours to drive from one end to the other - mostly on 2 lane roads. Bahrain's best beaches were artificial ( built on reclaimed land) and mostly at the 5 star hotels and resorts ( Sofitel, Ritz Carlton etc ) where you had to pay an entrance fee. Here in Palawan most beaches are free ( sometimes you have to pay a token fee for parking or for a covered table to sit and eat or have a BBQ at ) and there are several long white sand beaches within about an hours drive of my house ( Nagtoban, Napsan, Tala, Tagkawikan etc)
Walking around a tidal Bay at Arad in Bahrain- when the tide was out it was covered in green slime and did not smell very pleasant!
Chester loves running on the beach here and is allowed in many restaurants and hotels
However in Bahrain dogs were uncommon - often living in a kennel outside the home and totally banned where I lived in Awali and in many of the parks
There were also signs for No smoking, No fishing and No swimming at this park!
Back in Bahrain I ran the same 14 day programme 30 times!
Don't get me wrong - we had a lot of fun with experiential learning exercises from MTa and I worked with a wonderful team like Ate Hazel and Zainab, and we updated the programme each year. We also ran other courses like Customer care and Team Building, Time Management and the Workplace skills element of the Diploma in Oil and Gas operations as well as special programmes for Students from the University of Bahrain ( Belbin team types and so on).
Explaining the Belbin team Roles to 30 students at UOB online
The " Over the bridge" exercise which Hazel ( left) and I ran over 50 times
Our schedule was planned a year in advance to fit everything in and as many of our delegates worked shifts we often had to run workshops at the weekends so everyone could attend.
Here in Palawan life is dictated by the weather. I check each morning what the weather forecast says and look out of my bedroom window at the mountains in the distance to verify the online version is true. If I cannot see the mountains rain is imminent! If they are visible but covered in cloud, rain is on the way, and if they are clearly visible and bright then its time to get out in the sun. The temperature here is 30 degrees all year round ( as opposed to 18 in the winter in Bahrain and 40+ in the summer) but we have a lot of rain ( a 3 month wet season and a lot of Typhoons) whereas it rains in Bahrain about 5 days a year . As a result the scenery here is spectacular with green trees and forests, and mountains , waterfalls and lakes. In Bahrain it was a flat barren brown hot dry dessert , sometimes with sand storms.
When I saw this on November 17th I gave Chester his dog food and we got in the car at 8 am to drive to the beach returning at 12 noon. The sky clouded over but it did not rain. Chester slept and I made lunch ( salmon and Fuseli with a cream sauce) and wrote this blog ( which I decided to write while I was walking on the beach and thinking how different my life was now compared to my 12 years in Bahrain!
A more relaxed Neil in his final year in Bahrain presenting gifts to two of his favourite delegates
So that's another big difference between Palwan and Bahrain. There the afternoon was spent in the classroom teaching, or in the office marking assignments or attending meetings. Here after lunch I have an afternoon nap and then while Chester has his second can of dog food at 4 pm I have my second Meryenda ( Ice cream, frozen fruit salad, an apple, Sprite, Orange juice etc. ). I do love the relaxed Pinoy lifestyle- eat , sleep, snack, sleep, snack, eat and sleep. Where the Pinoys and I differ is that they go out at 7 pm to party- it's always someone's birthday, anniversary etc celebrated with loud Karaoke and lots of alcohol. By 6 pm Chester is fast asleep and , now I have no TV and do not drink, I go to sleep around 7 pm - yes 12 hours seep a night ( well I will be 64 year old next year!) nearly double the amount of sleep I had in Bahrain.
Another thing I love in the Philippines is getting a free bottle of cold "Service water" with your meal. In Bahrain if you wanted water you had to pay. In some of the hotels ( the Ritz Carlton comes to mind) they did an all inclusive brunch ( very expensive) where you could drink as much alcohol as you liked but if you wanted a bottle of water you had to pay extra!
Just before I thought I was leaving Bahrain for the Philippines I worked with Chester ( the Hooman) to prepare a series of posters with a countdown to my departure ( My colleagues at the Academy kept asking when I was leaving). He then made it into a slide show , so you can see that on my You Tube channel by clicking the picture below:
Sadly I did not leave Bahrain, just Bapco and Awali, when the countdown came to an end due to the fact that the Philippines banned Foreigners for a year to prevent the spread of COV 19. That gave me a year to transition from the world of work to a world of Leisure. I spent time in Dubai ( in an apartment on the 24th floor of Adagio by Accor in Al Barsha) and in Oman ( Muscat and Salalah) and had a flat on the 14th floor of Nooh Tower in Hidd in Bahrain.
The view from my apartment on the 14th floor in Hidd after I moved out of Awali
In that year I started walking more, by the sea , cooking and visiting places I had not been ( like Global village in Dubai) . I also ate out a lot ( see the series of Vlogs called TBK Eats in Dubai where we went to all the restaurants at the Sofitel Obelisk as well as Indigo by Vineet and Gary Rhodes restaurant amongst others. ) I also caught up with all my friends ( Corleen, Joshua, Thang, MK, Jeboy, Jake and so on) and practiced my Pinoy and Thai cooking skills ( and had lots of massages!) . I even went to the gym 3 times a week for the month I stayed in Dubai. So by the time I finally arrived in the Philippines I was already very relaxed.
People often ask if I miss work and of course the answer is no! However I do miss the people I worked with and some of them I still keep in touch with to this day ( one has even been to stay here for a week!)
Neil with Ate Hazel who gave me so much advice on my vacations to the Philippines ( places to visit, things to do, things not to do etc)
Hopefully I will be able to welcome more of them here in Palawan in the coming years and explore more of this wonderful Island ( I still want to go to Cuyo, Coron and the Balabac Islands.). I also have lots more things I want to do here like go diving again ( I passed my PADI open water course in Salalah a couple of years ago but have not dived since) and get my Drone to improve my Vlogs, and work out how to use my kindle and read the 60 books that the Gregories gifted me for my 60th Birthday.
Maybe Chester ( the Hooman) will even teach me how to do all the things he currently still does for me for the TBK social media accounts (Like add the interactive footers to these blogs) and Elay will teach me how to add load ( credit) to my phone and Wi-Fi. I now do all my own shopping ( for the first year Jhoanna did it all for me) apart from my online shopping , and I am still trying to get a credit card. I did manage to renew my Retirement Visa online ( apart from the fact that LBC tried to deliver it while I was on the beach this morning!) but I still need Mikes help to transfer my cash from the UK to here ( Lloyds still will not give me the POP codes they require for me to transfer my own money and Andy, Mike and I failed to set up a UK WISE bank account for me online . So I think it will be a long time before I run out of things to do here!
Over to you, Chester, to add the footer! the good news is that Luis has made me and Chester:
Hello, I am The British Kabayan! Feel free to read my stories.
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