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...]

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...]

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...]

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...]

It’s been a tough couple of months for Feyma.  Part of the “tough” part was because of me, I admit. But, now, things will start improving for her. You see, I am talking about our pending move to another house here in Davao.  As I started telling you about 3 to 4 months ago, when I began telling you that we had decided that we would be moving to a new location in Davao. A number of factors contributed to the decision, but the biggest part of the decision was because we have some downright crazy lunatics for neighbors.  They have caused a lot of trouble for us over the past 9 or 10 months.  We never experienced a problem … [Read more...]

A funny thing happened as I sat in my office in Davao City, Philippines a few years back.  It is something I think about from time to time, but I don’t believe I have ever written about it before. I was reminded of this incident the other day after I wrote an article about outsourcing in the Philippines. There were a lot of comments about call centers, phone calls received during the night and such. My friend, Macky, left a comment that kind of rang true to me: However, Service/tech calls aside, I have a problem with the random phone solicitation. It bugs me when a telemarketer calls me. I am on the NO CALL LIST and yet a few get … [Read more...]