Local girl having breakfast.

Woke up early before the sun was up and joined a few friends for a sunrise on the beach. We met up at my condo and took a taxi south to Talisay City, one of the cities that make up Metro Cebu. My friends wanted to introduce me to a more local lifestyle than the condo lifestyle that I’ve grown quite used to.

Posing after my morning jog.

We arrived at the beach before 5 am and it was still dark. It was my usual jogging time, so I headed up and down the beach for my regular jog while my friends sat and listened to the waves breaking on the beach. There were already a few people stirring about – fishermen in their little canoes, a few early beach combers, and a number of beach vendors preparing meals for sale.

It was a pleasant jog up and down the beach as the day slowly began to break over the beach. As the light grew stronger, it became clear to me that this was not a resort beach community. Homes in the distance looked like a mix of middle class and shanty type homes. For a moment, I thought that I could live in one of the shanty homes as long as it was on the beach. It seemed so relaxed and carefree.

Local fisherman at work.

As the sun came up, a few of the fishermen were coming in on their little outrigger canoes. Their catch wasn’t quite what I expected. It seemed that their nets were pulling in very tiny fish, which I suppose ended up being salted and dried. Nevertheless, it was probably a living for many of them and I took off my ‘environmentalist’ hat for the day.

We went to a small beach vendor’s stall for breakfast. The beach vendor had what amounted to a small outdoor ’restaurant’ that consisted of a couple of tables. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the food because it reminded me quite a bit of food in Hawaii. For breakfast we had barbecued octopus, sweet potatoes, pickled seaweed, and rice. If I closed my eyes, I could have been back home for all I could tell … the smell of the sea, the waves breaking on the beach, the sweet taste of the octopus … all reminded me of my old life in Hawaii.

Breakfast of barbecued octopus, sweet potatoes, pickled seaweed and rice.

Except there was one big difference. I didn’t have to march myself off to work and submit myself to all sorts of pressure and basically wish for the day to end. Today, I closed my eyes and chewed on the octopus, savored the pickled seaweed, and casually ate the sweet potatoes. I lit up a cigarette and went for another walk along the beach – this time with the sun lighting the beach and snapped a host of pictures for my growing album of life in the Philippines.

Good friends, great but simple food, a cigarette, the sound of the surf. I don’t know when life has been any better for me. I think people greatly underrate what retirement can really be like. I can’t remember being so alive. I’m just sorry that I hadn’t done it sooner.