I realize today that I much prefer to sit in my PJs and watch dvd than to go out on a date, or to a club. I must slowly be turning into an old maid.

Man cuts off penis, eats it
July 13, 2003

A MALAYSIAN man sliced off his own penis, then fried and ate it after taking hallucinatory pills that caused him to hear voices urging him to mutilate himself, police said today.

The 34-year-old man claimed he only realised what he had done when he saw blood oozing from his crotch, said a police spokesman in the town of Sitiawan, 300km north of Kuala Lumpur.

The man had taken hallucinatory pills before sleeping on Friday and awoke hearing voices telling him to chop off his penis and devour it, the spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity.

He was hospitalised in stable condition, the national news agency Bernama reported.

The man had recently been released from a drug rehabilitation centre, Bernama said.

I am back in San Francisco. Am really happy to be home, and also realizing how much this is now home to me, as compared to other exotic cities in the world.
Was in Manila for 3 and a half weeks before taking off to Singapore to see my folks. All in all, have been gone for about a month. Am pretty jet lagged, but am hoping to make it to 5 in the evening before hitting the sack. I can hear my Singaporean accent very strongly, and wanting to say things like "utter nonsense", "rubbish bin" and " car park" but have successfully curbed it so far.
Manila was an experience unlike any other. The rampant poverty, the strength of her people to keep going, and just the sense of utter chaos resonates in my memory. I never saw so many religious messages in my life. "Have you thought about God today? ", "God is great", "Where would you be without God". When I visited some of these families, I guess I understood why. God is the only thing/ entity/ being/ sense of hope that they have. They make do with so little. I'd have to be on prozac 24/7 to put up with what they do. It's sad that most people who go to Manila will probably only see the resorts and Makati, which is the Manila equivalent of New York City. Where everyone else really lives is on the sidewalk in wooden board huts, or makeshift homes along the gutter.
I did get my 200 respondents. In fact I think I might have had more than 250 respondents. Hopefully the data is useful and that I'll be able to make something of it. There were certainly mistakes in the survey but it seemed too late to correct it by the time I realized it.
Went home to Singapore for 5 days. My beautiful god-daughter looks more like a teenager now than she did 6 months ago. She grew about half a foot and her feet are about as large as mine already. And she's only 10. Have a feeling that I'll be the shortie between the two of us. Someone very dear to me also visited Singapore so that made the trip very special.
Am excited about August because there'll be a reunion of friends in town. Here's to good times. It's good to be home.

Today saw the worst squatter ever. Went to a squatter area under the bridge. There are about 20 families that live here, next to the river. No wonder diseases start. People live amongst trash and animal poop. Cats and dogs not neutered so there are kittens and puppies all over but really really unhealthy ones. Skinny, hairless. Can't blame the people cos they just don't have the money. But can't blame the animals either.
People simply use zinc and wooden boards to make a house. Although the interior is pristine, there is no concern for the surrounding area. Trash is thrown into the river, where their children swim in. There is a rancid smell of sewage everywhere. Flies are all over.
Every time i think I see the worst of places, I realize I'm wrong. Today's was the worst I've ever seen. There are squatters and then there are worse squatters.

It's been a week since I arrived in Manila. The city is hard to describe and much of it depends on my mood. It would suffice to say that I'm undergoing severe culture shock. The food, the people , the place. It's been difficult trying to deal with living with another family and eating food that I'm not used to. Have been treated like a queen, but would rather not. And the daily diet consists of nothing less than eggs, shrimp, mussels, oysters. Still, I eat only bitefuls. There are so many people living in a single space, I feel encroached upon all the time, which is an irony, since I am the one encroaching on their space.
Field work is hard work. Hard because there are so many research disciplines that you want to keep to but simply cannot. It's impossible. There is no map of the place where I live because squatters are raised and razed within a day; no demographic information of the people who live here, because some are legally here, some are not. I visited a family of 7 tday: 2 adults and 5 kids, living within a space that's about 6 x 8 feet. There's that sense of guilt as I interview them, beacuse all I can think about is how my $70 pair of shoes will feed this one family very well for a month.