Some people are so gullible. I receive email jokes, and sometimes very hateful email, that makes me laugh so hard my sides hurt.

My blog is 99 percent nonsense and 1 percent substance. It didn't start out that way. It started out, more or less, as a chronicle of my life here in the Philippines that began in April of 2006. It quickly became incredibly boring for me. So, to liven my life up a little, I started adding extra nonsense.

I frequently visit other blogs, just to see what they're up to. Guess what? Most are better than mine. Do you want to know what blogs I find irritating? The ones that continue to tell me how to make my blog better and what mistakes I'm making. Never mind the blogs that exist only to copy the original work of good authors.

I have an opinion about everything. I don't always know how to express myself in a way that communicates exactly what I'm trying to say, but I'm improving, which is more than I can about some other bloggers. I won't point fingers, but I'm not talking about the bloggers that visit here regularly. Those particular bloggers have a better sense of humor than mine.

You have to understand my situation. I went from working full-time to working no-time. Retired all the way and at the spritely young age of 45. Well, young to some (and an old fart to others). I do not know how those who cannot work survive. I had my reasons for doing what I did and they're deeply personal. You won't read about them on this blog. I'm still adjusting to the non-work lifestyle, which is incredibly hard considering I started working at the age of 11 (even if it was off and on).

Another difference is simply being here. In the US, everything is fast-paced. Things happen every day like clockwork. Here in the Philippines, everything is slow-paced, incredibly slow-paced. Sometimes I'm amazed at how long it takes to get even simple things done.

Anyway, to make a long story short (cliche alert), I blog about everything I come into contact with — personally, by word of mouth, by television, by movies, and by reading on the Internet. You know, of course, the Internet is nothing more than a series of pipes that wind around in twisty passages, never really ending up anywhere, right?