Eating "stears" in the Philippines

I went to the Philippines, by boat. (Several other people did too.) I was looking at a map, trying to figure out where I would actually make landfall. I picked the central west coast of an island (which was shaped kind of like a mirror image of Japan's Honshu island), after passing by the northwestern tip of the island where many of the other travelers were going. I arrived, swimming the last short leg of the journey to the dock. I was then in the house of a host family, sitting at their medium-sized round wooden kitchen table.

There were at least two people there. There was a "motherly" type, and a "brotherly" type. I was eating some food -- particularly, fruits that looked kind of like eggplants, or elongated mangoes without a pit. I used a large knife whose sharp edge curved towards the front end, and rather than ending in a point, the front end was broad, sharp, and slightly angled. To cut the fruit open, I stabbed the broad end of the knife straight into the middle of the fruit (lengthwise) and sliced it in half.

The brother asked me if I wanted any pizza, and I said "yes". I wasn't exactly sure when the pizza would be served (either in a few minutes, or tomorrow morning). In any case, another woman had appeared, and she was another traveler like me, possibly my leader/commander. She said I should really be eating the "stears" (pronounced "stares"/"stairs") for nutrition. The "stears" were like the other fruits, but bigger/longer with orange skin. Actually, the other fruits may have been another variety of "stears".

I think the reason I know how to spell "stears" is that I saw a flash of a news show on the small TV in the corner of the kitchen where they were talking about them, with a picture and caption.

MythBusters, rockets, and "urn-ale" climbing

Standing on a long dock/boardwalk over a small lake, watching Jamie and Adam from MythBusters shooting some sort of handheld rocket launchers (the rockets launched whereby being somewhat light and unthreatening). At first, it is more like a filmed scene -- indeed, I watch the two of them launch rockets in reverse -- the rockets find their way back to the launchers, and then the vertical smoke trail finds its way back to the rockets. Then I see them do it again. Adam's little rocket lands in the water behind him, just off the side of the dock. Jamie's lands very close to his own feet. Adam quips that this may be the first episode where they experiment on their own blood.

Seems filming has stopped now, we've walked off a little to the right, and Adam is talking to me and a friend about the background to that episode. Jamie had the idea of setting up a small monorail along the dock to which the rocket launchers would have been attached. One of Adam's assistants (not from the real show) mentioned how it would have been difficult to set up the monorail without buckling the dock because of the shape of the planks. Adam said they had actually worked out a solution to that, by fitting mounts below the railing that were the same size as the planks. In any case, the monorail idea had been scrapped. Adam also mentioned offhand that the show's photographers took way too many pictures, that there were so many photos from the show that would never see the light of day.

Then we headed off further down the dock towards land. Hopping. I hopped down the slope of the dock onto land, then started hopping towards our destination, over a pile of junk or two, and slowly uphill, with my friend (and possibly the MythBusters crew) following behind me. For some reason, the song "Civilization" by the Andrews Sisters and Danny Kaye (featured in Fallout 3) was running through my head. Possibly because of the line "They hurry like savages to get aboard an iron train" -- thinking of the monorail idea.

The ground was grassy and was pretty wet. As we got further up the hill, the wet ground changed to snowy ground. Then we reached a part of the slope that was too steep to hop (or walk) up. My friend (I think a girl, but not particularly feminine, just sort of a pal) and I started grabbing tufts of snow-covered grass with our bare hands and slowly lifting ourselves up the slope, bit by bit. We were laughing and having a grand time. I was surprised every time I grabbed the grass and it managed to support my weight and not break in my hand. My friend said this was great "urn-ale" climbing. I told her this was the first "urn-ale" mountain I'd ever climbed. We continued to climb and grin and laugh.

In the background now, the music had changed to something Celtic-sounding: It was fast-paced, 6/4 time. Every beat had a high-octave major chord on piano keeping time, and there was a pennywhistle which started on a major third, and every half measure it flourished to a different note.