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I passed the test! With new Podcast!

August 27, 2010 By MindanaoBob
test

Today, I’ll be sharing a new podcast with you, but that will have to wait until the end of the story. It’s been a while since I did a podcast, so it feels good to put one up again. Over the past 3 weeks, I have been having examinations as part of my Bisaya Class.  For new readers who don’t know, Bisaya (or Cebuano) is the main language used in the Central and Southern parts of the Philippines. As the name implies, Cebuano originated in Cebu, but much of the Visayas and Mindanao speak this language, or a variation of it.  For the past 3 years I have been taking Cebuano classes and learning to speak the language. The textbook … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Bob, Bob Martin, Daily Life, Expats, Language, Live in the Philippines, Living in The Philippines Tagged With: Philippines

My new PC!

March 2, 2010 By MindanaoBob 14 Comments
My new USFF PC, sitting on my desk next to my cellular phone

In the past week or so, I purchased a new PC!  It is kind of a departure for me, because this computer is much different than any other computer that I have bought in my lifetime.  And, believe me, in my lifetime I have bought a lot of PCs too!  What is so different about this PC?  Well, a lot of things, and I'll be telling you about that later in the article. It all started out with my old laptop, a Compaq laptop that was only about 18 months old, or so.  I started having problems with it.  The monitor was starting to give out on it.  If I touched the monitor, the screen would go white.  Because I make my living on the Internet, I … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business, Entrepreneurism, Featured, Language, Making Money, My Thoughts Tagged With: Technology

Chatting in Bisaya

May 31, 2009 By MindanaoBob 4 Comments
Bob & his Bisaya friends

One of the things that I find has been fun and helpful to me in terms of learning language is chatting, and interacting in other ways over the Internet in Bisaya.  In recent weeks, I have been using Facebook to do this.  If I update my status and write it in Bisaya, it always draws a lot of comments!  When there are comments, I always interact with them too, usually exclusively in Bisaya. I find that this is just another way to add more use of Bisaya into my daily life.  It also helps me by making me interact with a number of other people.  I mean, if you always only interact with the same people, I believe that the Bisaya you speak becomes … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Featured, Language Tagged With: Cebu, Friendster

Improve your life: learn the langauge!

February 14, 2009 By MindanaoBob 6 Comments
Me and My language teacher, Bebe

When I first moved to the Philippines, I thought to myself - "why should I learn the local language, everybody can speak English, after all!"  Well, it is true that most people here can speak English, but it is a different English than what an American speaks, and we do not always communicate clearly with each other. Something happened that caused me to re-evaluate my thinking when it came to language.  A number of years ago we had a visitor from the States who came to see us here in the Philippines.  He and I got talking about various topics as we sat out on the patio sipping mango shakes.  He told me that the US had changed a lot since … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Language