My Move to the Philippines

As you can see from this and the other pictures in the album our house construction in the Philippines is in the latter stages. It’s a good thing because in our phone conversation with family it was raining so hard in Laguna that we could hear it through the headphones. I’ve posted one of the pics from the album at the beginning of this post and the rest can be found in our Moving to Philippines photo album. Click on the link to see them.

In other news, I have been contacted from a tourism student at a University in Manila to be interviewed for her thesis entitled “The Philippines as a retirement destination for foreign tourists” If our schedules match up I may accept her offer and get together with her and her group for a sit down. I’ll post more on this later.

Well thats all I have right other than to say I’m counting the days until my return back to the Philippines. As soon as the college football season is over I will be on my way. See you all soon!

This August 23rd was a little eventful for Filipinos and the Philippines in general. One of the events was on the good side and ended less than good and the second event was bad all the way around.

The first event I’m referring to was the Miss Universe pageant where Venus Raj, the Miss Philippines, had a misstep in answering the question at the end. IMHO she could have answered much better, but I still think she wouldn’t have beat out the winner, Miss Mexico, anyway and probably would have made first runner up. The good part of the night was that Miss Philippines reached the final five runner ups and that the Filipinos in attendance were definitely the loudest cheering section which shows how Filipinos will rally behind each other and show their pride.

Also on August 23rd there was a tragic event where hostages were taken and a few were either killed or injured. This event may have hurt the tourist industry slightly but you can only look at London and New York to see how they have recovered after even larger terrorist events happened in their cities. Look, it could happen anywhere, and it does quite often. If people are afraid to visit places and see the world because of  isolated incidents such as this they will be living in a bubble and will never experience what this world has to offer. As for me it doesn’t change a thing about how safe I feel in moving to the Philippines.

If you are in the United States it is a holiday that nobody enjoys. This is the day that your income taxes have to be in the mail. If you run into a friend who states that today is just like any other day, they are probably someone who is getting a refund. But if you are a business owner who will be paying taxes this is a day when your bank account shrinks a little. President Obama has even promised today that he is striving to make April 15th a day that U.S. citizens will not dread every year. Be aware that the post office will be open late for all of the procrastinators.

To go with tax day people around the United States are holding tax day tea parties to protest the out of control spending that our government is doing. For the most part it is members of all political parties getting together for the protests and I’m proud to say it is the first time in a long time that we have seen any Bi-Partisan action in the U.S.

I’ve been watching the news about the hijacking of ships like the Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates and heard that many of the crew memebers of these ships are Filipino. I’ve also read that of the hostages the pirates have right now, at least 100 are Filipino. I know of people in my family and my friends in the Philippines who are seaman on ships like this. These men have left home for months at a time to make a better life for their families and then they are confronted with thieves and thugs who threaten their lives. If any of you have family members or friends that are on these ships pray for their safety and well being.

As I shared with you I will be adding a bigger kitchen on my house in Binan, Laguna soon. I hope to be able to travel there and keep an eye on the biggest part of the work. We already have a kitchen in the house minus kitchen cabinets and appliances so I guess it’s not really a kitchen yet. We have extra room on our lot around the carport. The kitchen will extend into the back portion of the carport and will feature a terrace on top for us to have parties and if we can find a decent outdoor gas grill we will do the outdoor barbecues.

I was reading an article that R.T. Cunningham put on his site Untwisted Vortex entitled My Custom Kitchen-Cabinet, Cupboards, Counters, and Electricity. This article written a few months ago when he was building his own kitchen has helped me make some decisions about my own.

In his article he talks about having a modern kitchen or as best he can in the Philippines. He and his wife looked at many kitchen designs  and made some decisions that my wife and I faced also. As far as the cabinets he decided to go with custom built solid wood cabinets and cupboards. The point was brought up about the corrosion of metal in the Philippines and I don’t think metal even came into our thoughts. As far the counter tops we will be going with tiled countertops vs granite due to the cost.

As far as appliances we are shooting for going with as much 220 volt appliances as we can such as microwave, refrigerator, and stove. We did send 4 balikbayan boxes full of brand new things such as rice cooker, can openers, and other small elctrical appliances but we will be using regulators for them. Since there is a wall built where we are adding on we have the pleasure of cutting a new door in the wall upstairs for entrance to the terrace and one downstairs for entrance into the kitchen. I’ll leave that one to the engineers and builders to figure out.

We had an architect come out and give us an estimate and of course this would have been with the full blown best quality everything including granite counters and ceramic tiles. His estimate was PHP500,000 but of course will not be paying that much (pray pray). This has already been quite an experience for me but I just keep thinking about how many people never get to do something like this and it seems to make it all worthwhile especially when it is done.

At this first day of the year I would like to wish all of my friends on here a Happy New Year. Whether you are living in the States or abroad this is a wonderful time to spend with friends. Even if it is just in a chat room or by blog comments we need to connect with friends.

My goal with this website in the coming year is to provide more posts concerning the subject of moving to the Philippines. Sometimes I have the tendency to get off the subject and talk about some of my favorite things about the Philippines but this is because I want someone else who is thinking about moving there to have an idea of what a foreigner will experience. On my other site Retire in the Philippines Now  I will be moving towards ways of making money and being able to enjoy life while living in the Philippines. Before this year it has been mostly a travel site but enough of an introduction, I will be getting into the nitty gritty of the subject.

To close this post I would like to say I will be remembering you all in my prayers everyday and hope that you will do the same. Now let’s watch some football and enjoy the New Year.