The question that I can’t really answer

Davao City - My Home

Because I have become fairly well known through my various websites, I am asked a lot of questions.  People e-mail me with questions about living in the Philippines.  People send me questions through Facebook.  When people visit the Philippines, and have coffee with me, they always have questions for me.  It's a never ending thing. There is one question, though, which is probably the most frequently asked.  Surprisingly, that is also the question that I really cannot answer. Bob, where are you from in the States? Well, that's tough for me to answer. For most people, they remember back to their childhood.  The place where they … [Read more...]

I’m growing older… not up.

Margaritaville

Those words in the title come from a song of my favorite singer, Jimmy Buffet.  I find it true, though, for me. Tomorrow is my 51st Birthday.  Last year was the big bash for #50, this year is a more reserved laid back occasion.  That's what I want.  I rarely ever have birthday parties, last year was an exception, because 50 is a milestone of sorts.  This year, things are back to normal.  No party, nothing like that.  A sort of tradition for Feyma and I is that if it one of our birthdays, we go out to lunch together, then in the evening we spend it with family. Where will we go to lunch this year?  I am still trying to … [Read more...]

Exploring the neighborhood

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One of the things I enjoy about moving into a new part of town is that it gives the opportunity to do a bit of exploring, and finding new things about the City where I live. I have been starting to do some walking around the neighborhood, and I’m liking what I see as I walk.  I had an interesting day last week when I needed to get a haircut.  We are located roughly halfway between two major malls, and each is within walking distance.  When I get my hair cut, though, while there are barber shops in the malls, I tend to prefer to go to a smaller “outside the mall” barber shop.  I find that those places are more genuine … [Read more...]

Continuing my jeepney adventures

New Friends

As I mentioned the other day, I've been riding jeepneys lately.  I consider it a further part of my acculturation to the Philippines.  I've already lived here a long time, more than a decade, but I can still learn more about the culture here and make efforts to better fit in culturally.  So, that is what I am doing. As far as I can recall, I don't think I've missed a single day of riding the jeepney somewhere since I started last week.  I've had mostly good adventures on the jeep, but the one bad one that I wrote about a couple days ago.  Today, I need to go to Union Bank for some business that I need to take care of there... so I'll … [Read more...]

Market Visits with Friends

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Over the past few months, I have had the pleasure of getting together with two friends from the States.  Both of these friends are likely to be known by long time LiP Readers.  First, back in June through August or so, Kevin Smith visited the Philippines with his wife and children.  Kevin was one of the early writers here on LiP after I opened up the site to multiple writers (originally, I was the only writer on this site).  Kevin lives in Pennsylvania, but he really wants to move to the Philippines as soon as possible.  Kevin is a school teacher, and teaches Math and Science. Next, my friend, Randy Countryman visited the Philippines in … [Read more...]

A real bad feeling

Old man in the Philippines

Today, something happened that made me feel really bad.  The truth is, I don't understand what happened, or why it happened, and that is part of the reason why I feel bad. Over the weekend, I got a notice from the Post Office (it's called "PhilPost" here in the Philippines) that I had a package waiting for me, and I needed to claim it at the main Post Office in Davao.  The PhilPost Office is closed on Saturdays, so, since it's Monday morning, I decided to go down and pick up my package first thing this morning.  I had recently ordered something on eBay, and was looking forward to receiving my purchase, which I was sure was the package … [Read more...]

Observations while sitting on the porch

speedtest

On Saturday afternoon, I was out sitting on the porch with Feyma.  There was activity all around us, but we were just relaxing. Our maids were sweeping up leaves under the trees in the front yard.  There were sure a lot of dead leaves sitting on the ground, since this house had not been occupied for some time, and thus simple maintenance like cleaning up fallen leaves had not been done for quite a while.  I sat there for 15 or 20 minutes just watching as the two maids were sweeping up dead leaves.  The area where they were sweeping is in a raised flower bed that had several big trees and leafy plants.  The rest of the flower bed is … [Read more...]

Moving notes – Updated

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Well, as most readers are well aware, Feyma and I are in the middle of moving right now.  Because there is a lot of work to do, I will keep this article a bit short, but I think I have a few interesting tidbits of information to share.  I want to tell you a bit about what it is like to move in the Philippines.  I am not talking about moving to the Philippines, I am talking about moving from one place in the Philippines to another place in the Philippines.  Believe it or not, it’s probably a little different in some respects to what you might be expecting. Feyma and I signed the lease, put down our deposit and such on Friday, October … [Read more...]

Why choose to rent in the Philippines

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On Monday, I published an article about how Feyma had finally found a suitable house for use to rent here in Davao.  Of course, we’ve been living in Davao for years, so this was not our first rental house in the City, just the latest. Almost immediately after the article was published, a number of people questioned why I would rent instead of buying a property.  Jim Cunningham put it in a non-confrontational way, simply wondering why I would choose to rent.  Thomad Gil called me stupid for renting.  Hmm… it’s the first time in years that I have been accused of being stupid, but if that is what Thomad thinks, well, so be … [Read more...]

The move is on!

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As I told you in my Monday article this week, Feyma and I found a new house to move to here in Davao.  As I also stated in a previous article about personal security, with this new house, I will not be too specific about where I will be living.  I had also said that I would not post any pictures of our new house, due to security concerns.  However, as this house cannot really be seen from the street, we decided to go ahead and show pictures of it after all.  We do not believe that showing the picture will have any negative repercussions on security, so we decided to show it. Our New House Our new home is in an area of Davao that we have … [Read more...]