Did I really move, or was it more of a mathematical translation of location??

A friend from back in the UK who was toying with the idea of coming out to the Philippines for a visit contacted me recently, whilst I was more than happy for her to come and stay with us, it did occur to me that it is a long way to come. To help make the decision I made a comparison of Surrey, where she lives and Laguna, where I now live; I was quite surprised by the conclusions I came to:-

1. In Surrey there are Audi, BMW and Mercedes drivers who think they own the road and have no compunction in letting everybody know this, in Laguna we have mainly Toyota Fortuner (or its pickup alter ego the Hilux) and Mitsubishi Monterosport (also similarly the Stada pickup) drivers who think the same (we also have Audi, BMW and Mercedes drivers, but they are a rarer breed here, they still drive like they are entitled to flout the rules much like their British counterparts) there are some other vehicles too, I could mention the executive van style of vehicle whose drivers tend to bully their way around and of course we are forced to suffer "white van man" here too, are these a-holes everywhere?
2. In Surrey, they have “Chessington World of Adventures”, here we have “Enchanted Kingdom”.
3. Here we have Taal Lake and Tagatay, in the UK they have the South Downs National Park and the like.
4. There is a university here, Perpetual Help, which has a med school as well as the other faculties, back in Guildford, the University of Surrey.
5. There is a major road a short distance from our house, South Luzon EXpressway (SLEX), Haslemere has the A3.
6. Both Santa Rosa and Haslemere are close to the countries’ capital city in our case Manila is 60km away; Haslemere is about the same from London (although getting to London is easier as there is a regular rail connection, not so good here).
7. Although Guildford and Haslemere are close to two major airports, Heathrow and Gatwick as well as the smaller London City Airport, Santa Rosa only has Ninoy Aquino International (NAIA). I have complained a lot over the years about airports in the UK, but they are all a paradise in comparison to NAIA, which is in dire need of a serious makeover.
8. Both Santa Rosa and Guildford are centres of commerce with light industrial developments in the vicinity, taking advantage of the space to grow and the proximity to the road network, the capital and other transport links.
9. Haslemere has occasional flooding problems when it rains heavily, so does Santa Rosa.
10. Guildford has a cathedral but is not a city, Santa Rosa is a city without a cathedral.

In summary, what this means is that I haven't really moved at all, just swapped a temperate climate for a tropical one!!

In other news, it would seem that I am closer to getting back to work as the company I have been in discussions with now has a number of projects they would like me to help out on. It all comes down to the clients agreeing.

I applied for a tax number a few weeks back, the only purpose is so that I can pay tax on any earnings made if I do get back to work. There was some difficulty in getting registered, the web portal for the Bureau of Internal Revenue was, I thought, the easy way, but I was stymied by the way it works, I am still waiting for an email with a link to complete my registration and that is after some 6 weeks of waiting. Having asked Kat's accountant to assist me, I am now registered and have all the necessary paperwork. Bizarrely I am required to make a sworn affidavit for months when I am not working, since rather than make it an annual thing, tax is taken monthly and or quarterly here. What this means is that if I don't earn anything I have to pay PHP200 to say I haven't, bearing in mind a false declaration is illegal anyway, so what is the point???? 

That just about wraps it up for now, but more news to follow soon……

This was the month of the World Cup, or at least one version of it using a ‘football’; personally I am looking forward to the Rugby Union World Cup next year, which is to be held in England and Wales. Anyway despite England’s early exit it set me to thinking about why the Philippine people are such basketball fanatics. If you analyse the countries formally colonised by the various European nations during the 18^th, 19^th and early 20^th centuries you will see that the game of soccer has become the main game in most of them, this excludes the larger, former British colonies of Australia, New Zealand and the Indian Sub-continent where one or both of rugby or cricket are the main sports and sadly they are seemingly better than any of the current British teams at these games which is all the more galling since we invented them in the first place). But back to soccer, nearly all the Spanish former colonies in South America are really good at it, as are Brazil (Portuguese) and several of the former French colonies in Africa (Cameroon, Ivory Coast to name but two). So what went wrong here, after all the Spanish were here until the end of the 19^th Century? I can only imagine that, despite the Filipino being, on average, the 2^nd shortest in South East Asia, the Americans introduction of Basketball to the country during their time here, won out over what I would imagine is a much more suitable game for their physique and agility, of soccer; I mean apart from goal mouth tussles over crosses and corners, height is not really an advantage in soccer, unlike basketball, when it would seem to be almost a pre-requisite and is evidenced by the PBA restriction on the importation of overseas players over a certain height to the domestic game. But still all that not withstanding, you can see basketball hoops bolted or nailed to all manner of supports (walls, utility poles, trees) as well as free standing poles everywhere there is space for a game and sometimes where there isn’t really and this includes roadsides, car parks, people’s houses in addition to purpose built courts.

Basketball is such a way of life here, that beats anything in the UK, that even the sporting legend that is Manny Pacquiao, world champion boxer at 9 weight categories and currently a congressman in the Philippine House, that he trains using basketball and is now the head coach of the newly formed Kia team and he may even be a player coach for a season or two……

On a personal note, the month started pretty much as June had ended, quietly. Kat’s Tita Eva and Tito Bobby were still here, although they had taken a quick trip to Cebu with some of the family for a short break. Kat and I were mooching around the house, the rainy season having put a serious break on my gardening activities since the soil was too wet to dig or prepare for a seedbed. The lawn, such as it was had sprouted all manner of weeds, sadly selective weed killers are not easily available in the retail market here, so if I wanted to get rid, I had two or three choices, do it by hand myself, pay cousin Ricky to do it, or pay silly amounts of money to get a professional in to do it. Events, however, conspired to push this right down the priority list.

The night of Tuesday 8^th was momentous as Typhoon Glenda ripped its way through the island of Luzon, arriving on the southeast coast and travelling up to the northwest. I have no idea of wind speed, but the news channels all suggested we had winds of 150kph gusting to 170kph or more, but this was my first experience of a typhoon, what with the earthquake back in June we are clocking these things up quite quickly. What was for sure is that it was very scary with the sounds of the wind and things being blown around, this caused quite a lot of damage to trees, houses and utility lines. The power went out for us around 3 or 4am, there was a bright flash and a big bang and that was it, no lights and no air conditioning. The winds continued through the morning, bringing a lot of rain, although flooding did not seem to be a major problem this time at least inland at Santa Rosa City.

The lack of power to the whole area caused a number of problems, the most immediate was that, since, most of our household appliances use electricity in some form or another we couldn’t cook or keep food cold; also as the sub-division’s water is pumped from a well, using electricity and the stored water in the towers was soon consumed, we had no water, despite the solar water panel. The lack of water problem was fairly easily resolved as Kat’s parents have mains water, which is drinkable and was not affected by the storm. Cooking however was a bit of a problem, but we managed to buy a single burner gas cooker and a small cylinder of gas. The rest of Wednesday was spent tidying up where we could and mopping up rainwater where it had forced its way in through the windows. Taking stock it would seem that we were fortunate with very little damage and the whole of the local area was soon back up and running, with the exception of water and electricity to our development.

Wednesday night was our first without the benefit of water or power. I showered on the front porch using water in a bucket and a Tupperware container as a scoop (aka a tabo) this was not my idea of fun and besides the indignity of it all, the water was cold!!!!  Cooking in the dark was a challenge, although one that we rose to, after this we decided to go to bed early although sleep was a long way off as it seemed that all of the local frogs, lizards and geckos had found the pools of water nearby our house and were having some sort of an orgy, there were croaks, squawks, squeaks and whistles going on through the night, that and it was hot and humid meaning sleep was difficult.

It took a few days for things to return to a semblance of normality, the water being restored first through the use of a generator to run the pump, domestic power was a bit longer in returning, finally on Friday night around 9:30pm the lights came back on, as did the air con and the fridge!! The clearing up will take some time to complete as many old trees have been uprooted or badly damaged, so a full recovery will be some years away, the good news is that as far as I can tell, there were few casualties as a direct result of the storm and most of our friends made it through unscathed although some homes had roof panels torn off or windows broken and many people’s gardens have suffered some damage, ours included with the bamboos bent over and some leaves torn off but all in all not too bad.

I shall have more news in a few weeks, something momentous may be about to happen, but can’t say more right now……..

Our new house, first anniversary and being back in the garden......

It has been an interesting couple of months since my last post. We have moved into our new house (aka “The one with all the CCTV cameras”) and are happily if not a bit a bit distractedly finding homes for all of our stuff. We are also in the process of having the garden landscaped and a few teething troubles sorted, but more of this later.

A week after moving in, Kat and I also celebrated our first wedding anniversary; I have to confess I still find this to be a novel idea, being married so late in life. Kat arranged a week away for us both in Donsol, somewhere I had been looking forward to visiting for a while as there is the opportunity to maybe snorkel with whale sharks. Due to the relative closeness, I thought it would be easy to drive down; after all it is only 400km or so from where we live. Well, yes, you’d think so wouldn’t you; however I hadn’t taken into account the fact that the National Highway is only at best a dual carriageway (2 lane) road and in many cases is only a single lane, the traffic, including psycho trucks, jeepneys and tricycles, and it is currently road works season with traffic control mostly being either the old “he who gets there first has right of way” or maybe a guy (sometimes a youngster) or two with red and green flags indicating go or stop. I was never so glad to see some traffic lights as when we arrived in Camarines Sur. Anyway the long and short of it was that to drive the first 120km took nearly 4 hours after which we stopped off for the night at a pre-arranged hotel stop. The remaining journey took us just short of 10 more hours, arriving at the hotel a little after dark.

The resort Kat had booked was elegantly simple, no frills just what was needed. The room was basic but comfortable and this extended to the TV, which had no satellite signal with 4 channels provided by the resort, one of which was dedicated to the history of the Whale Shark Interaction set up with the assistance of the WWF. On our first day there 9 sightings were made of whale sharks with the tourists able to snorkel with them on most of the occasions. Since Kat and I were relaxing after the epic drive the day before, we had chosen to go out the next day, sadly only 2 sightings were made on that day, but we did get to see a whale shark although if you blink you could miss it. The following day I got to go scuba diving for the first time in something like 3 years. The first dive was a skills check, although once we had completed that part of the dive, we headed for a really beautiful wall, I should have brought my camera. On the second and third (both to the same place) we hoped to visit a cleaning station and maybe see some pelagics, specifically manta rays. This dive was in a fairly strong current which made it a bit of hard work, I really need to get back and work on my fitness. The plan was to swim to a rocky outcrop and then use a reef hook to rest and wait for something to come to the cleaning station, sadly I managed to clatter into  the rocks and put my hand on a sea urchin, resulting in 4 spines in various fingers, very uncomfortable. You can see my crash landing near the end of this short video clip yes, I know piss poor skills and all that.

Anyway, after a few more days relaxing, we drove home, managed it a bit quicker this time, only 12 hours in total and we stopped a bit closer to home, which gave me the chance for a Double Whopper from BK for breakfast the next day!!

Once we returned to our new home, we set about trying to sort out the house. This entailed buying of more furniture (I thought we had enough already, but it seemed not) such as book cases and bedside cabinets, a 3 piece suite for the upstairs family area and a few bits for the office. The subdivision is still far from complete, meaning that there is a lot of open ground and part finished houses, these are an endless source of dust and dirt, which is a bit of a nuisance and does cause a lot of cleaning. Kat and I are very much enjoying the  house, especially the hot water shower courtessy of the solar panel on the roof, it seemed like a luxury at the time of installation, but I am really glad we did it. Our water consumption is noticeably higher than in our previous house, and not because of the weather requiring more showers per day, but the sheer length of time we are spending enjoying the warm water. There is only one slight problem, we have horrendously hard water here, which is sourced from a local well, our chromed brightwork is really suffering with calcium deposits, I am not sure how best to treat these without damaging the finish. We are now looking to put a treatment system into place, probably a reverse osmosis membrane with a particulate filter, I am not sure whether to include UV B sterilisation as we drink largely water from a treatment station.

We have had a few guests around so far, a few of Kat’s friends came round the other day, we had a light dinner with some take out and soft drinks. After that we had a somewhat more important visitor. Kat’s aunt Eva is visiting from the USA where she has been living for many years, I know she will hate me for saying this, but she is the de facto matriarch of the family, being the eldest sister and having supported many of the family members in the Philippines financially to gain their education amongst other things. Anyway, Tita Eva, her husband Bobby, Kat’s parents and two of her sisters were coming round to tea and I was getting very stressed as I knew that not only was this the first time the family had visited, but also the first time I had met Tita Eva, and I really wanted her approval, I also knew that this was important for Kat too. I spent the day tidying as Kat had some rounds to do for patients admitted to various hospitals, and also tried to keep the landscaping guys supplied with water as they completed the lawn. I needn’t have worried as Tita Eva and I got on really well and she welcomed me to the family, I was much relieved the visit had gone well and everyone liked the house.

Another thing happening at the house right now is we are having the garden landscaped, to be honest we are being a bit conservative, no water feature at the moment, just some bamboo plants, a few small bushes and other shrubs and frog grass for the lawn area. This is a weird plant, and is not a true grass, having flat roundish leaves; the good part being that it spreads across the ground and doesn’t grow too high, and therefore needs little or no cutting, great for a lazy ass gardener like myself.

Seriously though, I am trying to grow us some vegetables, not many as we don’t really have a lot of space to do so, but a variety that I can say I grew in our garden. At the moment I have some chili peppers growing, Jalapeño, Habañero and cayenne as well as some ordinary yellow bell peppers and also trying some aubergine or egg plant as it is known here. The ground perparation for these has been hard work, as although I am only talking about an area of some 4m x 4m the soil is quite heavy here, full of clay and other sticky stuff and digging in the termperatures here is hard work for a softy like myself. I go out and do a small bit, then have to retreat to the shade whilst leaking sweat to cool down. Needless to say, the digging is taking some time to complete. The whole enterprise is further hindered by the sheer quantity of large stones, rocks and construction detritus that is burried in the soil, necessitating constant raking of the soil, collecting up of the rocks and carting them off for disposal. Kat observed that every time it rains, more rocks appear; sadly she is correct, I think I need a riddle or some sort of screen to try and capture all the stones etc. in the top few inches but that sounds like more hard work, perhaps later.
Once all of the preparation has been completed, I hope to plant some lettuce, beans, onions and once the rainy season is over some tomatoes although I may put these into pots or a planter……

A slightly more comedic aspect to all of this gardening is the need to keep all of the new plants watered. I have to confess that, perhaps naïvely, I thought that living in a tropical country and especially during the rainy season, that this would all be taken care of naturally. However, it seems that: -

•   You can’t rely on Mother Nature to provide just the right amount of rain, twice a day
•     Rain can be wind driven, meaning that the walls or the house itself shelters some parts of the garden.
•  We have an extended roof to provide shade; this also acts like an umbrella
•  Despite the heavy soil I complained about above, there are also some bits, probably with a lot of sand from the construction, where drainage is not a problem and the ground dries out really quickly.

What this means is that I can be seen at either end of the day, standing in a pair of shorts and Wellington boots (Hunter’s don’t you know!) holding a hosepipe and spraying water onto most, if not the entire garden, and yes, I do get funny looks from our neighbours and others passing by.

That’s all for now, I hope to have another instalment in a couple of weeks, at least the end of July.

April 2014 is turning out to be a pretty good month!!

Has anyone noticed how, especially in the provinces (i.e. outside Metro Manila) the majority of the people marshalling traffic, whether well meaning amateurs (and these guys can be comical) or officially employed traffic enforcers are often to be found directing said traffic in a most inappropriate place. I have noticed them standing along a straight piece of road, with no junctions waving cars, jeeps, tricycles etc on and getting quite irate if you don’t drive fast enough to keep up the flow, regardless of pedestrians or obstructions along the road.. Likewise traffic enforcers are often to be found some 10 or 20m away from a junction, sometimes in pairs or more trying to control the junction when they are unsighted of the traffic there. I do have to admit that sometimes they are trying to carry out their jobs whilst sheltering from the unforgiving sun, but come on guys, you need to try harder.

Another thing, what is with traffic enforcers, security guards and car park attendants and all the whistle blowing, I have not managed to decode the meaning of the frequency of peeps, it all seems the same whether I am reversing and they are telling me that there is plenty of space, or to slow down or I am about to hit something. All I know is I am grateful my car has a reversing camera and sensors attached so I can ignore the shrill whistles!!

Anyway, enough bitching for now…..

The period March to April this year has been an exciting time for both myself and Kat. The first thing was the application for my residency visa. We started the paperwork sometime before Christmas, using the information on the Bureau of Immigration website to guide us regarding the documentary requirements. This however wasn't quite as simple as it may have seemed. It turns out that requirements are subject to change without notice, and sometimes even if they haven't formally been changed, staff members at the Bureau can and do make up their own interpretations of the rules. To cut a long story short, we obtained a number of documents, had them authenticated by the British Embassy and then verified by the Dept. of Foreign Affairs also known as red ribboning. All of this took something like 4 months, after which time my tourist visa was a little over a month from expiring at the end of March.

We got the application submitted a little before the end of February, all the requirements had been met according to the website; the officer at the enquiries desk just inside the main doors checked them through and told us to make the first of many sets of copies of the whole set, which we did.

After this, we went to the first of the windows, only to find out that I needed to get the visa from my old passport transferred to my new one, I was asked to go up to the 4^th floor to expedite this; typically the elevators didn't work... After slogging up to the 4^th floor, I was given a small piece of paper and told to take this to a window back on the ground floor, we queued up and the BI Officer took it and asked me to wait for 30 minutes, after which he returned the paper to me, with a signature on it and said to return to the 4^th floor, and no the elevators still weren't working. After another wait I was issued with my new passport containing the transferred visa, all at no cost!!

We returned to the ground floor to start the submission process all over again with both copies of my documents, queueing up for a document check, which once completed we were directed to another window where my passport was checked for validity, both of them! Anyway, after a lot of windows and many checks to the documents I was directed to pay for the application, I queried the cost as it seemed a bit high but you can never tell if any changes had been made. I noticed on the bill an entry for the 'double express lane' which despite searching for I have not yet found. After paying I was offered the choice of two dates for our interview with an immigration attorney the following week.

A couple of days later, I received a phone call informing me that despite all of the checking that had been done by almost every single officer we dealt with, each one pouring over the documents to spot any errors, they had in fact made an error and charged me too much and they had me down for the wrong type of visa, but this had been noticed and rectified, changing the date of our interview, they would also refund the extra money. There was only one small problem with this, I had booked an hotel for the original date since the appointment was for 9am and Manila traffic is a bit tight early in the morning. I rebooked the hotel, cursing the error that had wasted the cost of the original booking.

On the appointed morning we arrived at the BI for our interview, I think we were both a little nervous as we waited outside the lawyer's office, but we needn't have been. Although the interview was scheduled for 30 minutes, we were able to satisfy the lawyer in under 20. She handed me a copy of my file and instructed me to get my finger prints and photos taken on the ground floor. 

The police report, which took so long to obtain and then to get authenticated and verified by the DFA, yeah, we didn’t need that in the end, the lawyer handed it back incase it came in useful somewhere else!!

We proceeded downstairs thinking it was almost done, however, after having my prints and photo taken digitally, it transpired that I needed to also have it done the old fashioned way using ink and paper, also two additional 2”photos of myself. Fortunately, I had a couple of spare copies, but if I hadn't there was someone available to take photos. We also needed to make more photocopies of the remaining paperwork in the file; once we had done this, I had to return to the original window to hand in the final paperwork. We were told to check on the BI website in about 3 weeks to see whether my application had been successful.

The next few weeks passed slowly, the BI website was not updated regularly, so I frequently returned to check whether the new list had been published. Eventually the first 3 week's lists after my application had been published, but my name had not yet appeared, this was both good and bad news, my name would be there whether approved or not, so not appearing was good in that respect. Four weeks after the interview, the list with my name was published for the week of 27^th March, the application was approved. I now was eligible for a probationary resident visa. The timing couldn't have been better as Kat was to attend the Philippine Pediatric Society Annual Convention in Manila, whilst she was there, I could visit the BI and get my visa and new Alien Certificate of Registration (ACR) ID card. 

Come the Monday morning, somewhat naively I thought that I could just walk in and get the visa and ACR-I card, but no, this was not to be the case. I needed a copy of the receipt for the last visa extension, which was apparently online, so why the officer couldn't look it up is beyond me. This necessitated a visit to the 4^th floor (again) and no the elevators weren't working (again). Once I had this receipt, I queued up again for the officer to yet again check through the documents in the file, fortunately no errors (I mean at this stage, really still checking....) He took my passport for verification of suitability, which took a bit over 30 minutes. I then had to retrieve my passport and take it to another window (two down) and complete another small form to ask for the visa. 

Since I was in the double express lane (still haven't found it) the processing time for the visa was 4 hours, sadly I had an appointment later, so I had to return the next day to get my passport back with the residency visa.

The next morning, I went straight to the visa issuing window, I didn't hold out a lot of hope for a quick resolution, I had brought the newspaper and some other bits to work on as I waited, however I was early and 2^nd in the queue, issued my passport and visa almost immediately, and then to my surprise pointed to window 4 to collect my ACR-I card, that was it, done. I was now legally allowed to stay for the next 12 months with a multi entry visa!!

The appointment on the Monday afternoon was arranged through a contact I had met through an Ex-Pat forum for professionals, there are bulletin boards in a number of countries and a thriving support network as well as social events going on all over the place. The guy I had made contact with is one of the main drivers here in the Philippines and he had seen my profile and passed on some of my details to a friend who was looking for people with management systems experience and specifically audit knowledge too. After swapping a number of emails and text messages over the previous week and weekend I found myself invited to what was effectively a job interview on the Monday afternoon.
Kat insisted on coming with me, and suggested that we get a driver to ensure that we made our appointment on time and in the right place. We arrived a few minutes early, which was useful as the company has strict security procedures in place. The interview went very well, although at the time of writing this I have not had formal confirmation of an actual job, the indications are that I have the necessary skills and background to be able to function as one of the consultancy / training team that the company are setting up. There are some potentially interesting clients on the horizon too and with the opportunities that exist in the Philippines for effective management system implementation there should be quite a lot of possible work out there.

As I mentioned last month, we suffered a break in at our former house, this has caused a lot of upset and we moved out and are currently living in Kat’s parents’ house. Although this is a bit tight for space, and not an ideal situation, I am most grateful that the family has made us welcome. This has provided us with an opportunity to keep an eye on the house construction as it is just around the corner. The house itself is getting there, it seems to be an interminable wait for the completion, but we know that rushing at this stage would probably ruin what has taken quite a long time to get to this stage. As of the 25th April, the windows have been fitted, all the lights have been installed. The stair treads, kitchen cabinets, bedroom and bathroom cabinets and the bathroom fittings are yet to be completed and the laundry area out back is currently under construction (sink area, hard stand for washing machine and drains etc.). The list is quite short, but there is some other detail work to be completed too. One of the major items yet to be sorted is the electrical power supply; it seems that we have to apply for a meter and connection to the local (pretty much monopoly) supplier Meralco; whilst in essence this is a simple procedure, since the development is not yet finished there are permissions to be sought to allow this to happen. Until we do the aircon cannot be fully tested amongst other things and none of the appliances will work either. Optimistically we can expect the earliest completion next weekend (the 1st or 2nd May) I would love that, but I am prepared for this date to be missed, who knows, I might be pleasantly surprised if it can all be done by then.

Update Friday afternoon April 25:-

We popped around to drop of the last of the light fittings, interestingly with something like 60 or 62 fittings in and around the house, plus a further 13 for the wall lights, the total power output using LED lamps is less than 400W if they are all on at the same time!!! I used to use more than that back in Haslemere in the living room of a small flat......
Anyway, when we arrived our project manager, Architect Ernesto Nolledo, the brother of our designer, Architect Edwin Nolledo, was just passing the house on his way to purchase the stainless steel sink unit and seeing us asked a couple of questions regarding the placement of the oven, we were able to see that progress is rapidly being made and all the appliances should be in place in a day or two, after that a bit more painting and finishing off and hopefully complete!!!

Suffered a bit of a setback when some scroat, scumbag broke into our rented house (again)

Sadly, this month's blog is not going to be the usual light hearted affair, I would like to hope the next few weeks will remedy this and normal service can be resumed, taking an askance view of the contrasts between Filipino and my more familiar western way of doing things.

I have been in the Philippines for 12 months now and today (a bit like yesterday and the week or so before) I find myself in a situation of dichotomy. Those of you who have access to mine or Kat's Facebook will realise that our rented house was broken into for the second time on the 20^th March; this time only my laptop was taken in what would seem to be a swift in and out burglary. I am really extremely angry and disappointed in the unfairness of it all, I have come here to marry a wonderful woman and start a new chapter in my life and some wicked (and bearing in mind the age of some who may read this, is about a strong as I am willing to go here) individual or group of individuals has chosen to ruin our happy little life. Kat was distraught beyond anything I had seen before, even the loss of her first pregnancy didn't seem to hit her quite this hard.

Conversely, her family and friends have rallied round and assisted us in all manner of activities getting ourselves sorted out from this horrendous violation of our space. One friend geed up the police to get them to come round and look for any evidence, although I am not sure whether it will come to much, since they didn't take our finger prints to exclude us, just took away some smudges found on the frame of the security gate we installed after that last time (seems that was a waste of money and effort). Other friends helped us to move all of our stuff over the course of Thursday night, Friday day and Saturday to Kat's parents' house, and her family who pitched in and offered us somewhere safe to stay for a while until we can move into our new home. This type of thing restores my faith in the overall goodness of the human animal, it doesn't mean I wouldn't break several bones of the person or persons who did this to us given the opportunity.

Whether there was any collusion between the security guards and the robbers is something I don't expect ever to find out, what is probable is that there is a group in the subdivision who go round and case the various houses to find opportunities for theft which they either carry out themselves or pass on this information to others to perpetrate the crime.

All this was exacerbated by the attitude of the administration of the subdivision. I appreciate that to leave a rented house, it is necessary to fulfill certain criteria so as not to leave the home owner with any outstanding bills, part of this is protection for them; however in full knowledge of the break in and having spoken to the home owner by phone and one of his representatives the admin requested a list of items we wished to remove and after this was refused in no uncertain terms they finally issued us with an authorisation to leave, however the departure of our items was halted by over zealouse security guards who refused us the right to leave and required us to check with the office first. It is a shame they couldn't exhibit such devotion to duty when it came to securing the house.....

So we now find ourselves living at Kat's parents' house, which is really great of them to take us in and look after us, putting up with yet another car in the garage, 2 more people (one a smelly male) needing to shower several times per day (it is very hot right now and quite humid too). It is actually rather nice as we are less than 1km to our new house and it is allowing us to experience life as it will be soon once we move, with the traffic etc. and trying to get to and from the clinics and I have to say that it is a lot easir than when we were in Bel Air.

The other part of me is rather happy with a number of things which all seem to be going quite well. The house construction is slightly delayed, but then the projected completion date was always optimistic and now we are so close it would be a tragedy to ruin it by rushing the last few steps. The floors are largely down, tiles are being placed on the walls of the bathrooms and the plumbing is being installed. We are just waiting for the delivery of some air conditioning units, the solar water heating panel to arrive and be installed and the final parts of the kitchen to be constructed and fitted. 

I have submitted my application for temporary residency and have had the interview with an immigration lawyer, which I believe we successfully passed. We are now awaiting the publication of the list, which hopefully will confirm that I have met the criteria for permission to stay. We shall then have to go and have a new visa stamped into my passport and collect a new ID card; the good news is that we can do this when we are next in Manila.

I have also been contacted with regards to some possible work here, either as a trainer for quality management and ISO standards or straight ISO certification work, maybe as a consultant for system implementation. Either way, I hope something comes of it as I would like to earn some money which can be used to pay for some luxuries we would like, such as a holiday to the UK in 2015 or 2016.

Kat and I are also investing in our future, we have started to pay the subscription fees for a stock allocation in a new tertiary hospital that is still being completed in the local area, although the investment will take some 3 years to fully pay, it is very much worth it as we shall then have discounted medical benefits at the hospital as well as Kat being able to hold clinics and admit patients there. The next step in our plans to secure our future is to maybe invest in a small business, but there are many questions to be answered before we take that step.

What I have learned in the past 11 months as a neophyte ex-pat in the Philippines

Let me start by saying that, obviously there are some significant differences in the culture here to what I had become accustomed to in the United Kingdom and Europe, but even knowing this and preparing for it as best I could was to prove inadequate. To be quite frank, the Philippines is a funny country, funny in a weird sense; but I love it and love being here and am enjoying the challenges even though I am sure some of these will drive me to insanity or an early grave, let’s hope not the latter…..

The language barrier: I am still struggling to learn Tagalog, this is partly due to being lazy and not having devoted sufficient effort to studying the language and partly due to the fact that nearly everyone I interact with speaks very good, or at least passable English. Adding to the mix is the phenomenon of TagLish a kind of hybrid language where the Filipino people intersperse a Tagalog sentence with English words for when there is no equivalent Tagalog phrase, or when the English is better understood. The French could learn a lot from this and not get so snooty about the purity of La Français. But honestly, I do need to apply myself more to my language lessons and to try not to pick up colloquial phrases such as “ano ba yan, ay naku!” as an expression of surprise or disappointment.

Clothing: Europeans tend to be larger than Filipinos, this is a given. Because of this I no longer find myself to be in the lower half of height at 1.71m tall and in fact am not only taller than average now, but being caucasian, quite noticeable in a crowd. Also Europeans are more robustly built than Filipinos, leading to problems when buying underpants or trousers/pants as there is not quite enough room for my well upholstered bottom to fit. Better get back on the Stairmaster!!!

Weather: it is hot here almost all of the time, in the 11 months since I arrived, I have worn a sweatshirt on less than 4 occasions, the temperature staying above 20℃ most of the time. The Filipinos however are more used to this than I am and suffer when the temperature drops. That being said a winter starting in December and ending at the end of February is not something I am going to complain about, as I was never a fan of ice and snow except on Christmas cards anyway.
There is of course a downside to all this warmth, it is often humid in the region of 60% most days which is debilitating to work in. Also the moisture can turn into rain, and we are talking of Biblical proportions when it decides to really go for it. We are also quite vulnerable here to typhoons and associate damage as was illustrated last year with Hayan (aka Yolanda) which devastated swathes of the country in the south and that was not something I want to experience personally.

Sunglasses: associated to the weather is the quantity of sunlight we get here; although the days are something like 12 to 14 hours long throughout the year with a lot less change than at the higher latitudes I am used to, the sunlight is a lot stronger, therefore many people wear sunglasses, here are some thoughts on this

Aviator style sunglasses went out of fashion around the same time CHiPs was cancelled on TV

Mirror lenses look good on cool people, especially on the beach, but not so much walking down the high street.

Politicians should avoid over use of sunglasses when appearing in photos or on TV unless on holiday and in all cases should avoid dark or mirror lens aviators as this looks decidedly sinister, especially on the old politicos with a bad dye jobs!

Trust and empowerment: these seem to be sadly missing here, I am not sure whether there is a serious trust issue between employer and employee, but the bosses boss and everyone else seems to do what they are told. I have on occasion seen situations where a bit of lateral thinking and initiative would have saved a lot of time and effort, but it seems not to be encouraged. It is also very easy to loose one’s job here if you displease the boss, which probably doesn't help matters. I know I react well to empowerment, I prefer to understand what is needed and then be left to make it happen, within certain strictures of course.

Shopping malls: the country, at least the bits I have been to, is awash in shopping malls, these vary from large purpose built structures housing many shops, restaurants, bars and cinemas to more spread out developments with an open air set up, examples of the former are managed by SM, Robinson’s amongst others, the latter can be seen at Paseo de Santa Rosa, Nuvali or Solenad in Santa Rosa. These are a great attraction for families who often just go there to hang out (in the case of the large indoor malls, to keep cool or out of the rain) with very little actual purchasing going on.
I have noticed that many of the malls also have some highly aspirational shops or items for sale, including the latest gadgets at prices similar or higher to those I am familiar with from Europe e.g. 86” TVs and larger selling for considerably more than the average Filipino earns in a year; still, it’s nice to dream..

Receipts: these are very important pieces of paper, rather than discard them as I am accustomed to, I have been told to keep all of them and only weed out the trivial ones later. Receipts are used by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to keep tabs on who owes what tax, especially from businesses like shops, restaurants and professional services, more of which later.
These are so important that the process of buying something can be significantly complicated and time consuming by the generation of the necessary paperwork, interpretation of the requirements varying from vendor to vendor, but till generated receipts are not sufficient according to some.

The Notary Public: I am not sure whether it is a function of most politicians being lawyers or former lawyers or something brought by either the Spanish or Americans, but you can’t do anything official here without having some documents notarised, which involves embossing with a stamp and the signature of a lawyer, for a small fee around ₷300 depending on the number of documents or pages to be notarised. Now I don’t resent this for important transactions, but I often cannot see the value add in this step, it seems a needless expense, but a good earner for the notaries.

Staples and adhesive tape: If the need for receipts makes shopping a trial, the sheer number of staples and sticky tape used to affix said receipts or close bags and seal wrapped items boggles the mind. I am convinced there is a business opportunity in being the supplier of these to the shops. The whole is exacerbated by the banning of plastic carrier bags and the lack of trust / level of shoplifting that is endemic requiring purchases to be sealed before leaving the shop, it is a bit like the good old days shopping in duty free.

Queuing: not a popular concept, which goes right against my British sensibilities, we may not have invented the queue, but the Brits turned it into a national institution. Filipinos seem to be very impatient and hate waiting, this is especially noticeable when driving and in any situation where waiting one’s turn would seem the norm. The problem is perceived to be so important that a politician has recently proposed legislation to make cutting in line an offence, punishable by a stiff fine……

Interestingly, the dislike of queueing has been somewhat institutionalised, with an express lane being provided at many government agencies for those of us in a hurry, of course there is a charge for use of this lane, which at the Bureau of Immigration is P500 and it is even listed on the receipt, however despite many visits and being charged this fee each time, I have yet to locate this mythical lane that speeds my progress.

Taxes: nobody likes paying tax, especially when the money the government takes from the hard working public is wasted or stolen (see corruption). The BIR mentioned above in the receipts paragraph, is actively trying to get people and companies to pay the correct amount by naming and shaming those that have a discrepancy between earnings and tax payments publicly in newspapers.
The BIR is also enforcing the rules very strictly an example of this is that for a doctor to provide a free consult or treatment to a patient, they need to get a notarised (see above) affidavit to confirm the fact that the treatment was given ‘pro bono’; the flaw in this is that a normal consult would be charged at ₷400 any treatment obviously significantly more, somebody then has to pay the lawyer ₷300 for the notarised statement of free treatment, it won’t be the patient (who has no money and hence the free consult etc.), but the doctor, who then looses their professional fee and is saddled with a bill at the lawyer’s office. Who wins from this, apart from the BIR (and even that is debatable) you guessed it, the lawyers!!

Driving: Now, in common with many men, I consider myself to be a fairly good driver with not just a car licence, but also a truck licence for many years (36 to be exact), and I have banged on about this on previous occasions, however I have now concluded that the problem is that I am working to a different set of rules developed from all those years of experience and the other guys haven’t even seen the rule book!

Bureaucracy: loved by all governments, the Filipino one above all, on a later blog I shall relate the fun and games we have had at the Bureau of Immigration, but since my application is pending, I am not prepared to go on record just yet. Needless to say, between the notaries, lawyers, receipts and overall suspicion of everyone even a seemingly simple task can take a long time. Kat’s professional medical licence, in common with all doctors requires periodic renewal, making sure that all professional requirements have been complied with, however it baffles me how it can take 3 months just to change her name after we got married. Likewise renewing her accreditation with a medical insurance provider is likely to take 2 months or more, and there are lots of forms to complete too.

Photocopies: as a part of the bureaucracy etc. all applications require supporting documentation, this takes the form of copies of licences, passports, receipts and at least 2 copies of the application form, it doesn’t matter what the size of the original is even a small slip of paper, it is copied onto an A4 or legal size sheet then stapled together (see, I told you staple are a booming industry) and in some cases each copy needs notarising rather than taking a copy of a notarised document just to make life more difficult. What all this means is that there are a load of trees being chopped down to feed the every hungry bureaucracy machine, I wish something could be done about this.

Food and eating: perhaps surprisingly for a south east Asian country with long association with China amongst other nations nearby, the Philippines does not have a cultural bias towards the chopstick. Also it would seem that despite being colonised by first the Spanish and then the Americans (the Brits had a go back in 1762 but only managed to occupy Manila and Cavite before being unceremoniously thrown out by the Filipino natives and the Spanish in 1764 but not before making a mess of Intramuros) the knife and fork are not the normal utensils used by Filipinos. In fact although forks are used, in place of the knife a spoon is used. I find this hard to work with as a cutting tool would be much more useful in many dishes, although the spoon is useful for those with a predominant sauce base or those with finely cut components such as Bulalo, Sisig, Bicol Express and the like.

Rice is a staple of the diet of many in South East Asia and as such a lot of time and effort has gone into developing the many varieties of rice that are found here. I arrived thinking there were only the 4 main types, long or short grain, Basmati and risotto, how wrong I was. It would seem that rice has a similar status to the humble potato back home, many varieties with many characteristics and tastes. Sadly for me, the potato is merely a source of starch here, and is not treated with the reverence it deserves, often left out in the open air, exposed to light and going green. No distinction is made of the soft and floury varieties or those better for making chips (French fries) or roasties!!

Noodles are also very much in favour here, but I was surprised to learn that a Filipino version of "Pot Noodle" was quite so popular, makes me feel like a student again!

Bicycles: It has been said that bicycles originated in the Philippines, I am not in a position to agree or disagree with this, but the common or garden bicycle has been put to very good use in this country with for some people having this as their only mode of transport. Bikes take many forms and modifications are widespread, this can be  something as simple as the use of a small block of wood on the crossbar to make a seat for a passenger or the replacement of the handlebar with a steering wheel to the more extreme changes to the geometry of the headstock to fit a very extended set of front forks making a “chopper” or the welding on of a sidecar to make a pedicab or small cargo carrying vehicle. Oh and by the way, many of these modified bikes have no proper brakes!

What I have also noticed is the extremes in size of some bikes, I have seen adults (mostly male) riding something I would consider more appropriate for a small child, however it has been either specifically built or modified to take the larger size person with extended seat tube and wider handlebars. At the other extreme, mountain bikes are very popular and you often see people riding these around in all the gear, including baggy shorts and logo covered shirts; some of the bikes have unfeasibly large frames and wheels with no possibility of the rider being able to get either foot on the ground whilst stationary without dismounting. Of course, these bikes come with hydraulic disc brakes, just to look macho!!

Politics: this is a minefield for the unwary. Many politicians here are part of a dynasty with the whole family involved, seemingly passing the position down through generations or from one sibling to the next in those positions where a person may only serve a limited number of terms. For an outsider it is quite funny to see the father pass the mayorship to the son for a couple of terms whilst he is elected to congress then to take it back when the son becomes a congressman in his place. This can lead to some inter family tension as opposing factions line up for the next set of elections. Sometime the politicians are also movie, TV or musical stars, some of these have managed to combine this with being part of a dynasty, begging the question of “why vote for x?” to be answered with “he / she is my favourite movie star” party politics and policies don’t get much of a look in sometimes.

It would be unfair of me to suggest that Filipino politics is corrupt, but I think it is fair to say that there is corruption in Filipino politics. At the moment there is a lot of interest in what is known as ‘pork barrel politics’ where politicians are given large sums of money each year to allocate to various pet projects on the basis that they know what is needed in their constituencies. In the current case being played out, it is alleged that some senior politicians have been involved in diverting funds to interested parties and or bogus NGOs with the politicians receiving significant kickbacks of up to 50% of the total. Due to the Filipino love of bureaucracy there are receipts and money orders providing a lovely audit trail, but the implicated parties are claiming that their signatures were forged or had delegated authority to subordinates, who must have been acting outside the bounds of the politicians wishes, we shall have to wait and see whether any concrete evidence turns up.

The current president, President Aquino, has banned the use of what is called “Wang Wang” or the use of police out riders and sirens for politicians to get about in their normal daily business and, to be, fair has taken the time himself to apply for the renewal of his own driving and firearms licences in person, however this edict is not well liked and it is not uncommon to be blasted by the horn or siren of a police motor bike to make way for a large black SUV to come by, often Chevrolet Suburban or Toyota Landcruiser and always with dark tinted windows!

In conclusion, the Philippines is, as mentioned earlier, a weird and wonderful place, I am learning to modify my behaviours and expectations to take into account the differences between where I am now and where I have come from, I am not sure whether I shall ever fully fit in, but I am going to give it a damn good go and will certainly enjoy myself trying, with the help of my asawa and our family and friends.