I was sitting next to about 50 gallons of gasoline, stored in uniform plastic containers that each held about five gallons. Many people on the boat were not smoking.

We were aboard a ferry from the Port of Tacloban to the far island reaches of Samar Province, in the Eastern Visayas Region of the Philppines, sitting in a crowded harbor on a late December morning that was not hot by local standards and threatened rain.

I had my little netbook with me, a machine I will value long after netbooks are manufactured. It works for me.

I was worried about how well my Internet connection would work once we arrived in our provincial village. These worries were not unfounded, it turned out. More on that in a second.

Prior to our boarding the ferry, we had loaded a new refrigerator, mattress, a couple dozen bags of food, several more luggage bags, and 500 feet of garden hose, following a brief negotation with the pilot. Later, the eight of us walked the narrow plank to the boat's bow, joining the other families making the final step on their journety home for the New Year's holiday.

What's Known as Infrastructure
If OSHA were in the Philippines, the question would be whether any regulations were being followed, rather than how many were being violated. But life for the massses here is hard, reminiscent of a much earlier time in the US when you lived or died by your own wits, without help or protection from the government.

I wasn't worried; I'd ridden smaller boats than this many times in this country, with no drama. Even a moderately sized ferry like this one was locally owned, and I figured the pilot didn't want to die any more than I did.

Our village, like so many in this country, had cell phones and Internet access via 3G networks long before it had electricity, which arrived just last year. The occasional generator would be fired up to recharge phones and laptops, and provide lighting and videoke during fiestas and other holidays.

During this visit, the new electrical grid was fairly steady, with just the occasional short brownout. The egregious aspect of it is the lack of circuit breakers or proper grounding into the small houses. The lights dim if too many watts are applied to the loop, and the local junction box is a fire waiting to happen. Circuit breakers have been put on the agenda for this month.

The Internet access was abysmal, however. I tried 3G access from two of the three major telcos; one had no signal and the other was coming in at something that must have literally been about 300 baud. I have no illusions about the glamor and status of being able to use shiny toys in the far reaches of the world; but as a self-employed writer and entrepreneur, I need to work as often as possible to keep the ship upright. My efforts to develop small business in this remote corner of a developing nation depend on it as well.

Buhay (Life)
You kill your own chickens and pigs here, without ceremony or sentimentality. The fish and squid come straight from the ocean at your doorstep to your plate on your table, and the water used for showers and other personal matters gathers in cisterns from the rain and via that new garden hose from the small mountains that surround the village.

Rice is the big expense; its ever-rising cost of rice is a major topic of discussion each day, on a par with the ceaseless talk of gasoline prices in the US. A 50-kilo bag of rice costs about US$40 now, and will feed an extended family of 20 for about a week.

Much of the rice is imported from Vietnam, a topic of economic debate in the Philippine government. Is it a matter of national shame to have to import this staple, or is it smart to do so? The latter argument notes that continental Asia, with its massive river deltas, is much more suited for rice development than the Philippine archipelago. Better that the Philippines concentrates on higher value use, the argument goes.

Back in the province, my day-to-day efforts to create local business and opportunity is threatened ceaselessly by heat and humidity, a lack of local educational infrastructure (the schools are far away), and the difficulty in getting across abstract concepts like profit-and-loss, stock, market size, and all the rest to a society that lives moment-to-moment in addressing and solving its immediate problems.

It's tough to weave an entrepreneurial vision when two of the babies have just come down with a high fever and the nearest doctor is a two-hour boat ride away.

But there's always hope. I'll write more about specifc examples as the year progresses. Families are strong here in a way most of the US has forgotten, people persevere to attend those distant schools, and life, though very hard, is vibrant, full, and often joyful.