Asian Hospital-15 June ---

On 14 June we checked into Grand Robert's Hotel, a fantastic find in Las Pin~as, South of Manila. We paid 1000 Pesos for a taxi from Swagman. GRH was recommended to us by Therese Loria of Asian Hospital's International Health Services (International Medical Services) office, with which I had corresponded before leaving Saipan, as well as during our stay.

We have purchased two Motorola V3 Cell Phones, very useful here. I am able to check Email on gmail for 10 Pesos, but that facility is not as useful as, say, 15 Pesos today at this wonderfully appointed WMS Net Cafe in Las Pinas, with flat screens, fast connections, and maybe even core cual machines. I'll mention that I am surprized at the lack of Linux use in Inet Cafes so far. I met Boker (member of the PLUG) at the Asian Hospital IT office, however, a seasoned GNU/Linux user.

Boker uses Fedora, SUSE, and CentOS, at least. I left a CD of Ubuntu Feisty beta with him. He helped me check my email and print. Boker allowed me to use his personal laptop to print, as the Asian Hospital open Internet terminals were not hooked up to printers. This was extremely useful to print out documentation from our Insurance company. He has helped me twice. (for all it's excellence, the WMS Net Cafe in Las Pinas does not have the advertized printing service.) This lack of service seems in stark contrast with our overall impression of the medical services at Asian Hospital.

I will have much more to post about our experience at Asian Hospital and other aspects of our trip.