August update from newly arrived expat in the Philippines

So, here I am, sitting in the stifling heat of the Philippines, it is supposed to be “winter” aka the rainy season and I was expecting the temperature to have moderated somewhat, however it feels even warmer and more humid than before. Anyway, that’s my moan for the month, I have chosen to focus on the good and fun bits of living here rather than whinge on about piss poor driving etc. for a change.

I have been here for around 4 months now, and in that time I have been able to experience only a fraction of the delights available to someone as fortunate as myself with the ability and the financial backup to be able to travel around the archipelago of over 7000 islands, there is definitely a lot more to be seen and done over the next few years, I am looking forward to sharing with Kat and any kids we might have.

I have to confess that I have one major failing, that is getting confused about the price of some items, the main reason for this is that I habitually back calculate the cost locally into Sterling and then think about how relatively cheap, or in some cases expensive the item is.  I am not, however taking into account the difference in the overall standard and cost of basic living between the two nations: for example cars, mobile phones and many electrical goods are around the same price here and in the UK, which sounds great until you factor in the fact that average wages are different by a factor of at least 5 or more, meaning that the same item is significantly more expensive in the Philippines regardless of the actual price. Conversely flat panel TVs are not only more expensive here in real terms, but are also unlikely to be the latest model available in Europe or the US. This may be down to the economics of supply and demand which keep prices high.

That being said, I am still excited when I get something I consider to be a bargain for example Kat and I travelled back over to Tagatay the other week to celebrate her sister’s birthday, on the way home we purchased some pineapples, granted they weren’t the largest fruits I had ever seen, but they were something like PHP30 each, that is less than 50p back in the UK, for a fresh, locally grown tropical fruit!! Yeah, I know it shouldn’t surprise me, but it does and delights me too. And what was even better was that they were so tasty and juicy.

Over the months here, I have observed some ways of life and behaviors that interest me, some of which are described below:-

1. Cyclists and motor cyclists often ride with their jackets on back to front, I was perplexed by this for a while until I realised that it allowed them to avoid cold air and or rain penetrating through the zip, whilst allowing cool air to flow around their back, absolute genius when you think about it!
2. Pillion passengers can be seen holding open umbrellas, sometimes of awe inspiring proportions more suited to a pub garden than the back of a motor bike. These are used to either shelter from the unforgiving sun beating down, or to keep the biblical rain off, either way one strong gust of wind and it could end in tears.
3. In common with much of Asia, the motor bike is a staple mode of transport, the Guinness Book of Records would be impressed at the number of people that can fit on a 125cc Honda (or Suzuki, Yamaha etc.) even without the use of sidecars or extended seats and if you don’t believe me about the extra seats, check out habal-habal here.
4. From 3 above, you often see families on a motor bike, as the family grows there is more likelihood of a sidecar being added, but often smaller families will have Dad at the front, Mom at the back and the kids between, fortunately child size crash helmets are available (although not every child wears one). 
5. On hot days you often see men walking around with their t-shirts rolled up, exposing their abdomen, this I have found is an excellent way of keeping cool, but is not a good look on a pale, short, bald westerner with a beer belly....
6. This is one of the few places where you can still have your car refueled without leaving the driver’s seat, the pump attendants will even clean the windscreen and check the air in your tyres if you ask them to (some even offer without any prompting).
7. I was fascinated by people walking around drinking various soft drinks from a small plastic bag with a straw, again it took me some time to work out what was going on; it transpires that many of the small stores or Sari Sari shops sell soft drinks by the bottle, and if glass there is often a deposit on the bottle (much like there used to be back in the 60s and 70s in the UK) to ensure they don’t loose the deposit, rather than allowing the customer to take the bottle away, the contents are transferred to a bag and the bottle retained. This of course relies upon the integrity of the plastic bags, I am not sure I would trust those available in the UK with a drink or anything remotely liquid.
8. Security guards in most stores are fully tooled up, and by that I mean armed with 0.38, 0.45, 9mm pistols or 12 gauge shotguns; now I can understand this for banks and large shopping centres, but a book shop really?
9. The guards, however, perform what I would consider well beyond their main job function, directing traffic outside to the extent of assisting customers reverse out into traffic when leaving the establishment, which can be very helpful, picking up litter, collecting food trays in some food outlets and generally helping out.
10. On the subject of security guards, we were following an armoured truck as it exited the tollway a few weeks back, something like the one pictured here,
    
    this was plastered with the usual warning stickers, including “Driver has limited vision” and “No hand signals” so imagine my surprise when rather than using the pre-paid electronic tag lane, the driver pulled up to a manned toll booth and opened his door to lean out and pay the toll fee, now come on guys that can’t be right???

In the meantime, Kat and I are getting used to living together, we haven’t had any major upsets yet, although I guess I have skated a bit close to thin ice on a couple of occasions. 

• Kat has a paranoid fear of me going “commando” to such an extent that she has informed me that the thought of it makes her feel unwell, so you can only imagine the reception I got when she discovered that I had, indeed, been out with her one evening ‘sans culottes’ as it were; I of course was highly amused by her reaction and have teased her about doing it again, but this is being met with considerable resistance and I am being asked to promise not to do it again (I have to confess, it wasn’t that comfortable, so I probably wont anyway).
• Kat also has a phobia about dirty feet, not smelly feet (although she probably has that too) just feet with dirt on them. Now living here, I along with most of the population, tend to walk around all day in open shoes of some sort or another, flip-flops, sandals or similar. This means that my feet will collect some dust as I go around. Also our in common with many other bathrooms is what I would refer to as a wet room, i.e. it has a tiled floor with a drain and as such the floor is often damp, when I walk on the floor any dirt is washed off and shows up as a muddy footprint; Kat then insists that I have dirty feet and they need washing, something she is only too happy to help me with if she can tickle my feet at the same time.
• I have introduced Kat to a number of things based on my own experiences, these include proper roast potatoes, roast carrots and the like, which I can manage. Sadly I have also introduced her to other things, Jelly Belly jelly beans are the latest and she loves them, to such an extent that she sneaked some when she went downstairs the other night, but I caught her as I could taste them on her lips when she kissed me goodnight, when I hid the ones we had left after this, she went and bought some more from the kiosk in the mall. 
• It seems that Filipinos are dependent on regular consumption of rice, or at least Kat is. I am in charge of the cooking for the large part and therefore decide the menu from the food we have available at home, or go and shop for stuff. Recently we started on a diet which requires intermittent fasting, or at least drastically reduced calories on two days per week. Leading up to the two days, I had cooked chilli con carné served with a baked potato for dinner, we had the day of fasting where we mostly ate salad and lean ham for lunch and fish with stir fry for dinner. When I proposed a third day without rice there was almost a riot! Kat settled for bacon and fried bread for breakfast, but we had rice for lunch!!

Normal service will be resumed on the next post, where I am bound to have something to gripe about. In the meantime, I am looking forward to a possible long weekend away with Kat to relax, and maybe get some time on the beach or even diving done.

July update, after 3 months

It has been 3 months since my arrival here in the Philippines and according to psychologists, I should be in the third phase of my cultural adjustment or at least at the end of phase 2 (these are 1. Shock of the new, 2. Comparison to “home” and the things I am missing, 3. Acceptance of the new (adjusting to the status quo).

I guess this is true, as I am making fewer statements such as “back in the UK” or “in Europe we do it this way” with the exception of a few of those things that are still getting under my skin. It will be no surprise to anyone reading this that these things are:-

• Driving skills and attitudes, or the apparent lack of them, and yes, I admit that I hit a post whilst negotiating a car park a few weeks ago, damaging Kat’s car, but that is fixed now; I have no excuse for the incident, totally my fault. That being the case, the sheer insanity of some people and their total disregard for their own and the safety of others beggars belief sometimes.
• Bureaucracy, who knew it could be so hard to transact a simple application? To get my residency visa, I need to travel to Manila (Intramuros to be specific) to the Bureau of Immigration Head Office, the documentation cannot be submitted to the local office. Now this is relatively fine as we live about and hour of so from Manila and can make a trip out of it and will likely travel the day before and stay over in an hotel nearby, but what if you live further away???
• Queuing, or the total lack of it here, “Dude, I got here first and therefore should be served before you, get in line and wait your turn!!”

Kat says I am just grumpy or “masungit“ whenever I complain about things like this, but I know she feels annoyance too, but is more inured to it after living with such things all of her life. On the balance of things, I am thoroughly enjoying my life here, even not having a job at the moment is not a major concern as I am occupied enough with driving Kat around and some domestic chores, I admit I would like something a little more intellectually stimulating, but that may come in time and process improvement / management consulting may be the way to go.

I have developed a new concern, food, specifically fast food, or maybe not even that fast food in proper restaurants (‘restos’) something that I am frequently guilty of myself, because of the sheer convenience of it. There is a plethora of good, locally grown or caught food here in the Philippines, this includes many varieties of fish, rice, pineapple, tomatoes, banana, pork and chicken to name but a few. I arrived here anticipating to be able to avail myself of all this good, wholesome local produce and to share this with my wife so that we would both have a healthy diet and improve our levels of fitness and maybe even loose some weight. The progress so far:-

• I have lost approximately 7 to 8 kg since my arrival, probably due to a significant reduction in my consumption of beer. Kat is not convinced about this as she thinks a can or two in the evening and a bucket of beer (not as bad as it sounds, 6 bottles in a bucket of ice) on a Friday evening is a lot of beer, even after asking my friends when they visited about how much we used to get through back in the UK (around 18 to 20 imperial pints of beer each per week and that could be nearer 24 or 28 if there was a good party or sports event on the TV in the pub) that is a minimum of 10 to 12 litres, I can’t calculate US pints or gallons as I don’t have the conversion numbers, but it is a lot. I am now drinking maybe 3 litres per week and that includes going out on Friday night to the local sports bar for a couple of hours, if not then we are down to less than 2.
• We eat out, lunch, normally 3 or 4 times per week; this is mainly due to time constraints between clinics and hospital rounds, so we go to either the local mall or one of the other shopping areas near by. Dinner is mostly self cooked at home, a mix of Filipino or European food, cooked by either one of us.

• When we eat out, we often have either Filipino or American style food, this includes pork, chicken, steak and fish, however
• A lot of it has a fried element to it, especially things like crispy pata, sissig, and nearly all her favourite chicken dishes (see below)
• Kat loves crispy skin on chicken (so do I) so we often end up eating this, the idea of removing it, or not cooking chicken crispy is an anathema to her, the mere suggestion of boiled or steamed skinless chicken portions makes her feel ill.....
• Some of the fried food here is double fried to make it extra crispy (e.g. the pata), I have no idea what they fry it in, but sometimes it is a little greasy and even coconut oil can’t be all good. I have to confess that the best chunky chips (aka fries) are par-boiled in water, dried then deep fried at least twice to get the crispy outside, deep golden colour and the soft inside, but we don’t have a deep fat frier, so we are not eating proper chips at the moment.

• Kat is not, at the moment, encouraging me to eat street food, I think this is to avoid me eating weird things that I am not used to or may not like and there are some Filipino delicacies that I am going to avoid like the plague, e.g. Balut (Google it to find out what it is), but again a lot of this is fried too.
• We are eating way too much rice, breakfast is often rice from the night before, fried with some onion and garlic, lunch depends on where we are, dinner is often fresh white rice (thank whoever invented the rice cooker, much easier to use than a saucepan) but Kat and I probably get through on average at least one cup of uncooked rice each per day.....
• I have persuaded Kat to eat oat meal, cooked with warm milk and served with sugar or honey, this was quite a challenge as previously she had refused to eat it, but when prepared the “Gary way” she relented and has actually requested it. She is also now able to truthfully tell the parents of her patients that not only is it good for them (low GI) but also she eats it herself.
• When we don’t eat rice, we eat potato, often chips (or French fries) unless I cook them roasted or mashed, either way loads of starch.
• On the subject of potatoes, there is a lack of understanding about this wonder vegetable here, there is no availability of the many separate varieties (Maris Piper, King Edwards etc.) and the storage conditions are often sub optimal as the shops display them in daylight, which encourages them to turn a little green, which is not good. I would love to be able to select a good flourery potato like a King Edward to make mash or a slightly firmer one for chips, maybe once I have my own garden I will grow my own.
• We are not eating enough vegetables or fruit, I rarely get my 5 a day and that is with all that is available here (the orange juice is imported from Florida.....) bananas here are a little too sweet for my taste. Kat loves my roasted carrots, but we are back to things cooked using oil or other fats.
• Whilst Kat bought us a turbo-broiler, we don’t have what I would refer to as a proper oven, so we can’t cook some meals that I would like to try, don’t get me wrong, it is a wonderful device.
• It is a hot climate, so we consume vast quantities of soft drinks such as Coke Zero, Mountain Dew, 7UP and the like, these are mostly manufactured locally you will be pleased to hear at the Coca-Cola plant in Santa Rosa 2km down the road from our house (Pepsi has a plant nearby too!) we should be drinking more water.....
• I am still suffering from the affects of gout, something which some members of my family also suffer, I am not sure what the trigger is as it seems to have become worse since getting here, Kat tells me it is the beer, but really???? 
• We are often forced to use UHT milk as for some bizarre reason the local supermarket cannot keep their fresh milk cold enough in the display cabinet; the other week it was at close to room temperature when we checked which even in an air conditioned room is way too hot.
  I bought some from another shop where it seemed cooler, it lasted two days once we got it home and to be honest it wasn’t that good on day 1, the shelf life was for a further 4 days.
• A lot of Filipino food, whilst tasty is slow cooked in a mixture of soy sauce (or fish sauce) and other flavourings, many of which are highly salted and therefore can affect blood pressure. A lot of dishes also contain vinegar which lowers the pH of one’s blood (encouraging uric acid retention, see above ref the gout).
• There are far too many donut shops out there!!

On a separate note, I support the intention behind the various local ordnances which prohibit the use of plastic bags by shops to wrap items with the exception of those that are wet such as meat and fish. I quite like the alternatives to plastic that have been developed including the re-use of boxes and cartons originally used to contain the products or the use of paper sacks. But why oh why do so many of the supermarkets then insist on wrapping some vegetables in metres and metres of cling-film or ceran wrap such as carrots or tomatoes? They don’t need it.  I bought some frozen salmon the other day, it was wrapped in cling-film, placed in a plastic tray which was then over wrapped in film and then wrapped again in a third layer of film, surely one or two of these layers could have been omitted. Please provide the shoppers with bags, paper or plastic to select their own and reduce the wasteful use of a non-biodegradable material, it should be possible to recognise and weigh the produce at the check out.

• Update on the gout thing, I have been prescribed colchicine as a remedy for the latest attack, this has some unpleasant side effects which I am not going to discuss here, some of my readers will be aware of these, others are free to make use of Google to find out if they are so inclined, suffice it to say, this drug is not made available in the UK.....
  In addition to taking what amounts to a mild toxin (but honestly, what drugs aren’t) I have chosen to cut out the following from my diet until I am recovered

• Coke and other soft drinks
• Iced tea (not sure why I chose this, but it is something I have a lot of here but not in the UK).
• Oatmeal (no more porridge for me, but Kat can still have this for breakfast)
• Beans of most kinds (including bean sprouts)
• Green vegetables of the brassica family (broccoli, brussels sprouts etc.)
• Beer and other items with significant yeast content, including white bread
• Reduction in the quantity of red meat, so more chicken and fish, but not tuna so less sashimi and sushi.

I shall monitor the situation and re-introduce things one at a time to see which is the cause of my discomfort, I am fervently hoping that it is not the beer......