Downtime, reflection and extortion in Manila.

A combination of lousy weather and, if I'm honest, inertia, has meant that I've spent most of the last week in Manila enjoying some downtime and reflecting on the past five months. I've also been avoiding pigs and, yesterday, a slightly unsettling extortion attempt.

I've dipped my big toe back into the 'real world' by picking my way through the news to understand what's going on before again throwing myself into London life this weekend.

My hotel's only non-Pinoy newspaper is the International Herald Tribune. I've never really given it much time but I'm really impressed by the Tribune's calm, intelligent, informed and objective news coverage and analysis.

These stories I found amusing or interesting:

- the, I quote, "raging" by the good citizens of such places as Tunbridge Wells in the UK against the phasing-out of 75 and 100 Watt light bulbs, to be replaced with low energy ones. Britain's chattering classes are apparently up in arms about it, even irate, and stockpiling. My day was made by the quote: "My mother tried them, and I said, 'Mother, my God, what have you done to your lights?". (Oh, I miss England).

Astonishingly, the article went on to say that in the US a Minnesotan Republican has introduced the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act in an attempt to overturn energy-saving legislation there. The world has gone mad.

Ironically and I'm sure intentionally, the piece was brilliantly juxtaposed with another on the same page about the dire risk to much of Asia from global warming. Whilst Pat Evans of Godstone rages about her inability to no longer buy brighter bulbs, the lives of many millions of others will be somewhat more affected by failing rice harvests, polluted aquifers and rising sea levels;

- what I can only call the global "Susan Boyle phenomenon". Her Ugly Duckling story really seems to have tapped into something in the human psyche around how we judge people today. She's getting coverage here.

No one can deny it's a great story and you've got to love it simply for generating the surreal headline 'Catherine Zeta-Jones asks to play Susan Boyle on screen'. I abhor TV talent shows but the You Tube clip makes me smile every time;

- the situation concerning the Iranian/America journalist charged with spying by the former, imprisoned and currently on hunger strike. The paper suggests she is the pawn in a complex political game that is currently playing out in the country;

- dismay (and other words) that pay appears to again be quickly creeping up at the big US banks;

- Copious coverage on economic, cultural and socio-political issues in Hot Spots like China, Pakistan, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea and Iran.

And on the back pages, a tiny article concerning the resignation of the CEO of the firm I work for. No surprise there really, and possibly some relief.

On any measure, the way I see it, the world seems rather fragile and a bit f*cked-up right now.

I'll come back to the extortion thing.