USA to Philippines

It’s been over 4 months since I posted on this blog! Thanks to my loyal readers for their undying patience. Life has been very full.

Initially what led me to stop posting was a rather negative experience of culture shock last Fall. I was driving from Tagaytay City to Manila. In the city of Bacoor I stopped at an intersection, and a traffic enforcer walked up from behind my car and knocked on my window. He said he was giving me a ticket, but could not explain clearly what I had done wrong. It turned out that he wrote on the ticket that I had disobeyed a traffic officer, something I had not done. I spent 2 days contesting this lie, to no avail. In the hearing he told many more lies, fabricating a story in which he had stopped my car, a story that never happened. The hearing officers believed him and I was required to pay 1500 pesos to get back my driver’s license, which he had confiscated.

This incident left me feeling very sad and disappointed, and seriously questioning the wisdom of my move to the Philippines. There are aspects of life here that are very depressing. And while it is possible over time to create positive changes in society here, there are things you just have to live with. I’ve been stopped by traffic enforcers about 5 times in 15 months, and usually they are attempting to engage in deception or corruption. The corruption is part of the design of the system. If you refuse to participate you sentence yourself to significant inconveniences.

However, there are also many positive aspects to life here in the Philippines.  In January we moved to a new house in Tagaytay, with a view of Taal Lake and Taal Volcano, and a separate billiards room that we’ve adapted to become the office of my new company, Saiff Solutions. We launched the company after New Year’s. In early February I was in the hospital for 2 days with a severe infection. I had a very high fever (103F) for several days, and a splitting headache. The diagnosis was upper respiratory tract infection, bacterial. It took me all of February and the better part of March to recover. I still have an occasional cough and congestion, but it isn’t slowing me down much now.

Right, I was going to talk about the POSITIVE parts of living here.

Those of you who’ve read some earlier posts know that I was writing a book about moving to the Philippines. This transformed about 9 months ago into writing a chapter for a larger book on Moving to SE Asia that a group of writers is publishing. Well, after about 8 months of off and on writing, I’ve finally submitted a complete draft of that chapter, about 90 pages. This frees me up to do all the other writing I now need to do for the business.

I’ve been planning this business for about three years. We launched it  in early January. At that point our site was up (http://www.saiffsolutions.com), and our Facebook and Linkedin pages, and our new Twitter account . We had completed our registration with the national government as a Filipino corporation back in November. Now we’ve completed our local registration. I knew the business was a viable idea and that it could work. The one thing I was a bit uncertain about was, would we get any customers? Well, as of the last 2 weeks we now have 4 customers who have verbally agreed to do business with Saiff Solutions. I am about to hire 2 people, and probably 2 more as soon as I identify them.

The business model for Saiff Solutions is based on doing business with companies overseas – companies in the USA, Europe, and other wealthy countries who need technical documentation or related consulting, in English. Most Filipino companies would not make good customers for us, because they’d be unwilling to pay the rates we charge. Our rates are approximately 1/3 of what companies pay technical writers in the USA, and competitive with what companies in the USA or Europe pay for writers in India. However, our rates are several times greater than the rates that Filipino companies pay local writers in the Philippines.

So, I’ve been surprised to learn that one of the most useful ways to spend my time is networking with people in Manila. Many local companies are involved with foreign companies. And despite the general truth of my thinking on Filipino companies, there are exceptions. In fact there seem to be enough exceptions, that is Filipino companies who for various reasons are willing to pay our rates, to keep us quite busy.

So, I am thrilled that this new company, which I’ve had such high hopes for but also great uncertainty about, is already becoming a success. There are many, many issues to address to make our success possible, and at times it seems overwhelming, but this is exactly the challenge that I wanted, and I am up for it.

Also, we have a new member of our family, and a new wing of the company. Most of you have seen pictures of our shi-tzu, Yeesta. Yeesta is now a 2.5 year-old male. We have wanted to get a companion for him, and Dindin has been researching the idea of becoming a dog breeder for some time. On Sunday we met Sydney, a 6 month-old beautiful female shi-tzu. Her personality seems to be the exact opposite of Yeesta. She is a bit shy and reserved, but she does wag her tail often. Our new house provides a perfect environment for breeding dogs. We don’t let them into the main house, but there are both indoor and outdoor areas for them to play and sleep, and a storage room out back where we plan to keep the puppies when they arrive.

Yes, I will post pictures soon. Sydney is a tri-color shi-tzu with a beautiful coat of soft, silky hair. In the last few days our office has been transformed. Most of the floor space is taken up by a full-size billiards table, which the landlord has required us to retain in the room. We had a carpenter build work surfaces on top of the pool table, with insulation underneath to protect it. He also made another workspace on the side. I selected some beautiful woods, and he did a great job.

Much of the success of Saiff Solutions so far I owe to our newest board member, my friend Leon. Leon has extensive experience in the call center business, and as a salesman. With his help we are creating a sales capacity and developing a pipeline that should keep us busy and growing with new customers every month. In so many ways, this business is being built upon friendship and family. I am grateful to all of our business associates, our whole team, all of whom I count as friends or family.

I will share with you the three elements of the Saiff Solutions corporate vision:

US$1 billion in annual revenue by 2025

To move the annual global budget of The Hunger Project (http://www.thp.org) from $12 million to $200 million, by 2020

To transform the culture of work in the Philippines.

Please like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SaiffSolutions

Follow us on Twitter: SaiffSolutions

Now that I’ve been living here almost 1 year, another level of culture shock has set in. For 50 years I learned how to live, how to enjoy life, how to succeed in life, in the environment of the USA. This is a very different environment. It may not seem so different at first, due to the prevalence of English and the Filipino love affair with many aspects of US culture (songs, movies, malls, some major brands). But it is a whole different world, and navigating it requires different approaches.

Given this, experiences of home become crucial to my well-being. I think I’ve always had a strong sense of home, in large part because the house my parents bought in New Jersey when I was 6 months old they did not sell until 40 years later. Unlike many of my fellow citizens who moved frequently as children, I never moved as a child (well, OK once as an infant). I made up for that by moving about once a year in my twenties and most of my thirties, joining the 20% of the US population that moves about once a year. Since then I’ve been more settled. But now I am far from my home country, and I may only be able to return there once a year. How do I find or create home where I am?

The answer for me is community. But not just any community. A community where it feels like family. I participate in many communities. Last week was like old home week, as I got to be in two communities that feel like family to me.

On Thursday night, I attended the first session of the Landmark Forum in Action seminar series, offered in Manila by Landmark Education (http://www.landmarkeducation.com/). Landmark is a global educational company that offers state-of-the-art courses in human growth and development. I’ve been participating in this work since 1981. I’ve done many of their advanced courses, and for a period I led their introductory meetings in the San Francisco Bay Area. While the main purpose of Landmark Education is to empower their customers to live their lives powerfully and to lives they want, an important side effect is the community of Landmark graduates. These are people from all walks of life, adults of all ages, who share what I would call a very special form of humility. Landmark graduates, no matter how accomplished or talented, believe that they can learn more about themselves and the world, and are committed to their own personal growth and development. They are actually interested in finding out what their “blind spots” are, what are the ways in which they have been missing what’s important in life? To me, these are very important qualities. We humans are all arrogant in our own ways, and our arrogance often causes problems for us and those around us. Being willing to see your own shortcomings in a new light, no to knock yourself down but out of a commitment to improve yourself, this to me is the true measure of a human being.

So it was like being at home, to be able to participate with a group of Landmark graduates in Manila in a Landmark course. The seminar meets weekly for 10 weeks. This is one of the major reasons why I bought a condo in Manila (I’ll share about that and post pictures soon in another post), so that after these seminar sessions, which end at 10:45 pm, I don’t need to either get a hotel room or drive 90 minutes home to Tagaytay at night on roads that are not well lit.

If you’ve never heard of Landmark, or if you’ve heard of it but thought it was something different, I encourage you to check it out. And if you used to participate in Landmark but have not in years, I encourage you to check it out again. Landmark has changed dramatically in the last 30 years (before 1991 it was known as est). What I observed as arrogance and obsessiveness in the 1980s is gone now, replaced by a deep respect for people. And love, not romantic love but a natural, healthy acceptance and love for everyone, has returned, not as a focus but as a context of the education. I owe a great deal of my success in life to Landmark Education. Without it, in numerous situations I would have damaged myself and others due to my own arrogance and denial. Time after time, it has opened my eyes in ways that saved my soul.

On Friday night I had another experience of home. I finally went to the Jewish Synagogue in Manila (http://www.jewishphilippines.net/). I attended the Friday night Shabbat service and the dinner afterwards. I was raised in a Reform Jewish congregation in Edison, New Jersey, led by Rabbi Alfred Landsberg. Rabbi Landsberg is one of the people who made me who I am. To him, the most important aspects of Judaism are ethics, love, humility, and family. Long after I moved away I read about Rabbi Landsberg’s leadership in officiating same sex union ceremonies.

I remember the Rabbi drawing a circle on the chalkboard, a pie, and then making slices in the pie for the different aspects of Judaism – heritage, food, traditions, belief in God. He told us that we could choose which slices to participate in. Including belief in God. You didn’t have to believe in God to be Jewish.

Now, to many Jews that will occur as heresy. But that is my background, and I firmly believe that a person’s actions and how they live their lives are more important than what they believe. I am not exactly an atheist, but I do not believe in God as he is depicted in the old testament. So, in some ways, I felt out of place at the synagogue in Manila. This is an orthodox Sephardic synagogue, very different from the Reform synagogue I grew up in.

The sanctuary is beautiful. However, the main part of the sanctuary is reserved for men. Women must use the two sections higher up on either side, behind a large marble wall. Only two or maybe three times in my life have I experienced this separation of the sexes in Jewish prayer. It does not sit well with me. While many Jews will claim that there is no sexism involved, that women’s participation is valued, just in different ways, I don’t buy that. If women are not truly equal, meaning that they are free to participate in every aspect of life exactly as men, then life becomes based on a denial of the true nature of human beings. Women are just as capable, and their contributions in every aspect of life, including all levels of leadership, are just as important as the contributions of men. Traditions can be helpful, or they can be hurtful. At this point this tradition has outlived its usefulness, and it is holding back the Jewish people.

The service was completely in Hebrew, again not what I am used to. Despite the lack of spoken English, and my inability to follow most of the Hebrew in the prayer book, I loved hearing the singing of the prayers. Although our services were part English and part Hebrew, as a child I loved hearing and singing in Hebrew, and I realized how much I miss that. Every year my family would attend a Passover seder at my orthodox cousins’ house, and we would sing many Hebrew songs together over dinner.

The congregants and the Rabbi were all very welcoming, and I met some wonderful people. While their practices are in some ways foreign to me, they are Jews, and we share a heritage of thousands of years. Despite all our differences, it felt like family, like home, and I look forward to returning there. I am very grateful for what the Rabbi and the congregation are doing, creating a home for Jews in the Philippines, a country where the total number of Jews is probably only in the hundreds.

The Philippines is in the tropics, so things grow quickly here. There are all kinds of plants and animals all around. Having lived most of my life in cities in the US, I was used to the assumption that there are spaces reserved for humans, where other animals only rarely tread. Here it’s a bit more mixed up between the species.

Insects

The cockroaches here are not merely humongous, they also fly. I realized that while they are bigger than the cockroaches I’m used to from the US, I did see some this size in Florida once. In Florida they call them palmetto bugs. But according to wikipedia, palmetto bugs have short wings that are useless for flying. These cockroaches here really do fly. Not that often, but when you least expect it they may fly right past your face. We’ve found the best solution for them is spray – get the can that says Cockroach Killer on the label. It works pretty fast. Whereas if you step on them or flush them down the toilet you may not actually kill them.

I’ve seen bees here the size of lemons. OK, that includes their wings, but even the body part is maybe 4 times the size of the bees I’m used to in the US. I’ve seen one moth that was the size of a large grapefruit, again including the wings. Lots of smaller moths that have little clear wings. They are attracted to light, easy to kill, but very annoying.

Mosquitoes here can carry not only malaria but dengue fever. Dengue can be fatal to children, less so to adults, but it can make you very sick for weeks, as it did to a friend of mine here. Lots of smaller insects like ants of all sizes, termites, and things I don’t have a name for.

We also have lizards, which eat the insects. Most Filipinos live in harmony with the lizards, as we do here. I once saw a lizard actually eating a moth here, so I know they’re on my side. But one day there was a horrible smell in the bedroom, it turned out there was a dead lizard there. There are spiders too, of all sizes, and I suppose they also eat insects. Their webs are sometimes annoying. Walk in a place where we haven’t been recently and you’ll get web all over you (and it’s not the world-wide kind).

Sometimes you can’t even see the insects until they are on you, or you find yourself scratching later. At least twice I’ve been sitting here at my desk and something dropped into my hair.

Rodents

Then there are the mice. Little tiny ones that can hide in the walls. We managed to catch a few with the little glue trays. Of course then you have to pick up the tray with the still moving little body on it and dispose of it. A few weeks ago Dindin went to visit his family for a few days. I called him one night because I saw something, larger than a mouse. First I had heard it, rustling the plastic garbage bags in the hall where we keep the garbage. Yes, we had a rat, actually it turned out we had rats. Seemed like he might be too big for the glue tray, so the sales person at the hardware store recommended the fly paper. Well he just balled that up and ignored it. The glue tray held no interest for him. We tried a mousetrap, he got the cheese out without springing the little trap. I bought a cage trap, but when I got it home I realized it would not kill him, and then I’d have this large, living animal to contend with. So we got some poison. We had been concerned about poison because then we could have a dead rat smelling up the place and not be able to find it. But they sell poison that works slowly and slowly causes blindness, so the rats seek the light.

Well after a few days, we found 2 small dead rats outside on the lawn. So it apparently worked. They were larger than the tiny mice, but not as large as I had feared. About half the size of a small banana. Disposal was fairly easy. Now, I know some of my friends will object to the cruelty, and perhaps I should have used the cage and taken the animal elsewhere, but wouldn’t that be likely to just cause problems for some other people? This country is full of people – almost 100 million of them. I think we did a public service by killing those rats and mice. At least we did a personal service for our household.

Snakes

I haven’t actually seen any snakes, but they are here. It’s a consideration in landscaping. You don’t want areas of thick growth where the snakes can hide. You want to be able to see the dirt. I actually like snakes, but I don’t want to be surprised by any.

Ever since I got back from the USA on July 20, it has rained. Every day, or almost every day. Yes, it is the rainy season, which in the parts of the Philippines I frequent runs roughly from June to October. There was a typhoon this week, but it traversed across our island, Luzon, on a fairly straight east-west course 6-8 hours north of us here in Tagaytay. But I think that typhoon is long gone, and we still get rain every day. Sometimes the rain is light. Sometimes it is very heavy. Sometimes it rains all day or all night or both. More often it rains during some parts of the day and night.

There are many areas in the Philippines where flooding occurs quite often. Tagaytay is not one of them, as we are perched on a mountaintop 600 meters above sea level. But to me, it seems amazing nevertheless that our house doesn’t float away. Especially since, from the outside the back of the house does look a little bit like a ship.

How can the ground absorb so much water, repeatedly? Apparently it’s not a problem here. Everything gets greener and more lush, which is nice. This week we asked the man who usually works at the house next door to come and clean our pool and trim the yard on Tuesday. Tuesday it was raining very hard all day. And Wednesday. And Thursday. On Friday he must have had some kind of premonition, as he and his wife both showed up early and worked all day, until about 4 pm, when it started raining very hard. How did he know the rain would come late on Friday? I have no clue.

I’ve done some feeble research online into the levels of precipitation here. As usual, weather data on Tagaytay is readily available but mostly worthless. As I’ve noted before, almost every site that shows weather data for Tagaytay notes in the fine print that the data was collected at Manila airport, where the weather is about as close to Tagaytay as Southern California weather is to San Francisco. However, I found this page, which has 3 nice graphs summarizing historical weather patterns in Tagaytay:

http://www.weather-and-climate.info/average-monthly-Rainfall-Temperature-Sunshine-fahrenheit,tagaytay,Philippines

And this page, which predicts it will keep raining every day for the next two weeks (no, I’m not surprised):

http://www.accuweather.com/en-us/ph/cavite/tagaytay-city/forecast2.aspx

This page has a nice brief summary of weather patterns in the Philippines and when it’s good to visit, with nice pictures:

http://www.worldtravelguide.net/philippines/weather

However, if you haven’t been to the Philippines yet, I’d suggest you ignore what it says on that page about places other than Manila. Most of the places they mention are not likely places you’d visit on your first trip here, unless you have family or friends in those areas.

I’m still frankly very happy with the weather here in Tagaytay. At least it’s not unbearably hot that often. I can take some rain. What I don’t want is extremes – way too hot, way too cold, winds or rain of hurricane force all the time, lots of snow, etc. Tagaytay offers none of those so far, but then again August is historically the month with the most rain, so we’ll see how that goes.

On Sunday Dindin and I drove to San Pascual, Batangas, where his family lives. It’s about a 90 minute drive from Tagaytay, but can be longer depending on traffic. We were delayed by three different funerals. Outside of Manila, funerals and parades seem to be the main impediments to the smooth flow of traffic (but tough competitors are poor road conditions, vehicles in poor condition, and a near total lack of traffic law enforcement). Some of the hearses here are quite beautiful, basically similar to hearses I’ve seen in the US but more creatively designed.

The worst of the three funerals (in terms of its traffic impact) must have had at least 100 vehicles (although who knows, some of them may have just been tagging along to avoid the gridlock). This one did not seem to have a hearse at all, although there was a van from a funeral home and a large flatbed truck. Perhaps they had several corpses on that truck, which would explain the unusual size of the caravan. Overall I think it took us about two hours to get there.

Sunday was Duane’s second birthday (Duane is the third child of Dindin’s sister, Loids). So we stopped to get some chocolate fudge cake. We also had plans to take the car to the Toyota dealer in Batangas on Monday. Of course, we knew it would be hot. The summer here is supposed to be from March to May. But it doesn’t follow the calendar as reliably as I’m used to in the US, and there seems to be a lot of disagreement about when it begins and ends. Summer started late this year, in late March. But it ended on time, according to the newspapers. Except the weather didn’t seem to cooperate with the news reports. Here it is June 7 and it was a hot day today, even in Tagaytay.

Anyway, Sunday in Batangas was very hot. Duane seemed to enjoy his birthday. He looked quite different than I recalled, because his head was shaved, or almost. He reminded me of the boy in the movie The Last Emperor. Luckily my rib has healed enough so that I can hold him now, because he kept asking me to pick him up. But this time he didn’t cry when I left. He has learned “bye-bye” now.

On Monday Dindin and I woke up at 5:30 am. I wanted to go to Toyota early, so I didn’t go back to sleep. It turns out that Monday, June 6, was the first day of school for 28 million Filipino youth, including Dindin’s nieces Aprhille (13 years old) and KC (8) and his nephew Damiel (7). The school is quite close to their house. I walked with the kids and the adults to the school yard. On about 5 hours sleep, I was amazed at the level of activity at 6 am. The whole town seemed mobilized to get all the kids safely to school.

It was quite a large campus, with several buildings. Aphrille had already left to go to the high school part when we left. The two younger children are both in the same third grade classroom. All the students were dressed alike, more or less. The boys had white tshirts that have the school name on the front and the boy’s first name on the back. The boys all had black pants, either long or short. The girls had matching skirts and white blouses, with plaid ties (ascots?) hanging from their necks. The list outside the classroom for third grade part A had 23 boys and 22 girls on it. 45 students and one teacher, but it could grow higher if other kids showed up.

This is the tragedy of education in the Philippines. The public schools are underfunded. Most students attend for only 10 years. High school begins at age 13, and kids graduate high school at 16 or 17. There is a plan in place to extend schooling by three years, by adding kindergarten and two later years, for a total of 13 years. While this would bring the country closer to international norms, the way this plan is being implemented suggests it may do more harm than good. They have begun rolling out the first phase, kindergarten, but have not provided any more teachers. They expect the overloaded first grade teachers to also teach the kindergartners. Of course, my information here is limited to reading a few articles in the newspapers and talking to a few people.  So my details may be way off.

What I observed Monday morning, aside from the high student-to-teacher ratio, was quite wonderful. Children are very important in this society. While the funds from the government may fall short, the enthusiasm and dedication of the whole community was evident.

While I took the car to Toyota, Dindin took Yeesta, our shi-tzu, to the vet to have his hair cut. The difference in his look is dramatic. He is usually a ball of fur. Now he is a seemingly hairless, naked little dog, except for his very furry ears and tail.

As planned, Dindin’s mother, Luzviminda, came back with us to Tagaytay. Our plan had been to drive to Manila on Tuesday, as I had some business to attend to there. Monday night Dindin reminded me that we cannot drive to Manila on Tuesday. Not on any Tuesday. Because of the number coding.

Number coding? Yes. It’s a system they have here to try to reduce the number of cars on the road. There is one day each week, determined by the last digit of your license plate, when you cannot drive your car in Manila. Of course, I bought my car on December 30, 2010, and I had to wait until mid-May to get my license plates, so I wasn’t yet used to this. Before I got the plates I could drive any day of the week, wherever I pleased. Now that the plates are on the car, ending in the digit 2, I cannot drive in Manila on a Tuesday.

So today we stayed home. We could have driven the car, as in all the other areas we tend to drive (basically in the provinces of Cavite and Batangas) there is no number coding. But we were all tired and decided to take it easy. Besides, it’s cooler in Tagaytay than anywhere else we would go.

The main cultural difference between the Philippines and the USA is that the highest value here in the Philippines is family. (The highest value in the USA is definitely not family. Personal achievement perhaps.) While I have always been very happy with my family of origin and didn’t think I was looking for another family, I am grateful for the truly wonderful family that I have here.

I promised in a previous post that I would explain why I went to the Hall of Justice, and then discovered behind it the Mahagony Market, where I later broke my rib. I went there again today. My rib, by the way, is healing nicely, very little pain now.

This all began when we moved to our rental house in Tagaytay on January 16, 2011. It’s a 4 bedroom house with a large outdoor pool. I had never had a private pool before, although my parents had. I knew there were important pool maintenance tasks that if neglected could impair the health of people using the pool. There was a caretaker at the house, who had been working there for several months, a man called Junie (his real name is Dionisio T. Bragil, which becomes important later). Junie (his nickname) had worked for the owner for several years, on construction projects, and the owner was good friends with Junie’s brother, Jerry. Based on the owner’s recommendation, and on talking to Junie, who has limited English, we agreed to hire Junie to take care of the pool, the extensive grounds, and clean the house. Initially we were not comfortable with having a live-in caretaker, so we were planning to have Junie come 4 days a week and live elsewhere. Attached to the house there is a hallway which includes a very small bedroom and bathroom, where Junie had been living. (To his credit, Dindin was at first very uncomfortable with Junie, but got used to him as he got to know him.)

Somewhere along the way it changed to Junie living in that bedroom, with his 3-year old daughter, and working for us 5-6 days a week. Overall he did very good work. He was good with the pool and the grounds, spending most of his time outside. He was very helpful in fixing things in the house and hanging pictures as we got settled. He was reluctant to enter the house to clean, as he didn’t want to disturb our privacy. Eventually we told him to clean the house twice a week.

The caretaker’s quarters has 2 separate entrances, at the front and back of the house. There is a door from that hallway that leads to the kitchen. Junie told us that he does not have any keys to the house. We would lock the doors at night, or when we went away, so that Junie only had access to the hallway and his quarters.

Both Dindin and I seemed to keep misplacing things. Dindin lost his new wallet, with his ID cards in it. We thought he might have left it at the mall, and inquired there. I lost one cell phone, then another. We had bought 2 small locks when we moved in, then could not find them, even with Dindin’s whole family searching the house. Some food also went missing. I was particularly upset about losing my Blackberry phone, as it had all my personal data in it. Of course I asked Junie if he had seen it, he said no, he hadn’t seen it, he doesn’t know anything about it.

It wasn’t until the middle of March that we started to suspect that perhaps Junie had something to do with these disappearing items.
Finally, on March 23 we invited Junie up to clean the upstairs, where our bedroom is. Before Junie came upstairs Dindin placed a small Nokia cell phone in a drawer in the bedroom, and closed the drawer. After Junie was done cleaning, the cell phone was no longer in the drawer.
We went down stairs and confronted Junie. He continued to claim he knew nothing about the missing items. I was not yet ready to fire him. I felt I either needed more certainty that he was truly at fault, or at least to sleep on it. We had been very helpful to Junie and it seemed like we had a good relationship. It was difficult to accept the betrayal, I guess.

The next morning, Junie talked to us, he was crying, he said he’s leaving. He asked us if we wanted to take his 3-year old daughter! Of course, while I was and still am concerned about the child, I want no connection to him.

After Junie left, our neighbor told us that Junie had tried to sell a cell phone to the neighbor on the other side, Darwin. I talked to Darwin, and asked him what kind of cell phone it was. Darwin said, Verizon. Verizon is a US company that does not operate in the Philippines. Darwin also said that he looked at the cell phone and saw that the contacts were all in English, not Tagalog. He told Junie that this cell phone must have come from a foreigner. He did not buy the cell phone.

Well, at this point we now had evidence that Junie had stolen from us. Over the next 2 weeks, the owner, who also felt betrayed by Junie, worked with Junie to try to recover some of the stolen items. Junie told us where to find Dindin’s wallet. He recovered the wallet and the ID cards, which saved him a great deal of hassle. The money of course (about $75 worth of Philippine pesos) was gone.

In all Junie stole 4 cell phones, one gold ring, seven silver rings, and a great deal of other items. After he left we found books, magazines, and other things of ours in his quarters. We also found a set of keys. We didn’t know what these keys were for, and thought they might be to another house where Junie had worked. We discovered today that one of the keys on that key ring unlocks the door that leads from the caretaker’s quarters to the kitchen.

Junie had already sold the cell phones, and we were not able to recover any of them. Three of those cell phones had extensive personal data that is worthless to anyone else but very important to me, and is now lost. Hundreds of addresses, phone numbers, emails, birthdays. Records of all my personal appointments for the last 6-10 years. Memos, passwords, etc.

I was able to talk to a woman at a local pawn shop who bought the gold ring and 4 silver rings from Junie. She returned to me one silver ring, and 1500 pesos (about $35), which was her profit on the other rings. They were already melted. The gold ring was my class ring. It was a special design that I chose when I graduated Princeton in 1983. I contacted the company, which still exists, but that design does not. No one currently at the company recalls it, and they have no pictures of it.

We decided to file a case against Junie. I went to the police station around the corner. After discussion with them, we followed them to the main Tagaytay police station, behind city hall. I typed up a statement there, including a list of the stolen items and their value. The items we knew about at that point added up to 76,400 pesos ($1,777). We were told to bring our witness, Darwin, to the police station so that he could make a statement.

Overall, despite the repeated warnings (and bona fide reports in the news) of corruption, incompetence, and outright criminal behavior by police in this country, my dealings with the police here have been very good. They’ve been very professional, very concerned with getting the facts straight. The one aspect that is very different from my US-based expectations had to do with the witness. In the US, the police would have gone to Darwin’s home and talked to him. That was not going to happen here. I was responsible for bringing Darwin in to make a statement, which took about 2 weeks because Darwin has a job and is a busy man. But it turned out fine. I was told to expect a subpoena from the prosecutor, but they could not tell me how long that would take.

On Friday, April 29, Dindin and I left the house at 3 pm to do some shopping. Jerry, who works most days for Darwin, was working in our yard, cleaning the pool and the yard. We returned at 4:20 pm and saw mail on the front door, which Jerry said had arrived at about 4 pm. I opened the mail to find my subpoena, which of course I was very excited to receive. However, the subpoena said that I was required to appear at 3:30 pm on Friday April 29! In other words, about an hour ago.

The subpoena said I had to appear at the Hall of Justice. No one seemed to know, but I assumed this was in the very large City Hall building. I got in my car and drove right over there. The guard at City Hall however, explained that the Hall of Justice is a separate building, in a part of Tagaytay I had not yet been, about 1-2 km from City Hall. I followed his directions and found the building. It is a 3-story white building that says Hall of Justice at the top. The front was obscured by 3 stories of scaffolding. The front door had a chain around it and a padlock. There is a traffic police building next door, where they explained that the Hall of Justice is closed already. It probably closes at 4 or 4:30. They told me to come back Monday.

So, for two days I was a fugitive from justice! (cue music from Mission Impossible) I had not appeared at the required time. It was nevertheless an uneventful weekend.

Monday morning I went to the Hall of Justice again. As it turns out, the locked front door was irrelevant, although the building had been closed. I had to use the side entrance, and walk up the stairs to the third floor, where I met the prosecutor. He explained that the preliminary hearing had already been rescheduled for May 27 (today) at 11 am. He told me to bring Darwin to the hearing on the 27th. He explained that the reason it was scheduled so far out is that Junie is in another province, Pangasinan, which is very far. We had given the address of Junie’s family there.

Today Darwin and I left at about 10:30 am to go to the hearing. Junie had been texting Dindin occasionally over the last month, which bothered Dindin, who did not respond. He had also been texting Darwin. so we knew before we left the house that Junie was already in Tagaytay. We arrived on the third floor at 10:50 am. The small office was crowded with people, but no sign of Junie. We were told to wait, as the prosecutor dealt with other people. A very well dressed older Filipino man, we think he is a judge, talked to me while we waited. He wanted to know where I lived, and did I have a Filipina wife. No I have a Filipino boyfriend. Oh, you have a girlfriend! No, a boyfriend. Oh, that’s good. There’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with having a boyfriend, he announced to the whole office. He seemed sincere, just unprepared for the reality I confronted him with. It’s a common kind of reaction here.

Around 11:05 the prosecutor called my name. There is no wall or divider between the waiting area and the prosecutor’s desk, where Darwin, Junie, and I all sat down. The prosecutor asked if Junie could make amends to me. I said I don’t think he has any money. The prosecutor said to Junie, Mr. Saiff here is a reasonable man, perhaps you can work for him to pay the debt off? I said, no, he cannot come to my house, that is not safe. He lied to me too many times, I do not trust him.

The prosecutor set the next hearing for June 10 at 11 am. He explained that Junie is entitled to a public defender at no cost, who will help him prepare an affidavit. We all left the building. Junie, who had brought his daughter with him, had been talking to Darwin. Darwin suggested that we all go to his house to talk. I said, I don’t know what there is to talk about. Junie has lied to me so many times, why should I believe whatever he says?

We ended up talking briefly outside the building, as it began to rain. Junie showed us the slip of paper listing the requirements he must fulfill to be able to get a lawyer. He needs certification from his Barangay (like a village) in Pangasinan that he is indigent, and also from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) there. He said he doesn’t have the money to go back there. I said that’s not my problem. The conversation dragged on for a few minutes, then I said to Darwin, I think you and I should leave, which we did. Meanwhile Dindin was making lunch for the 3 of us. Dindin made bulalo for the first time, which was very good. Darwin came over for a very nice lunch after we returned.

I’ve heard differing opinions of how long Junie is likely to be in jail – from 2 years to 8. I’m willing to leave that up to the court. I think it’s important that he have a record so that future employers can be forewarned, and I’d also like to see him serve time in jail. We don’t yet know what will happen to his daughter, who of course is not to blame for his crimes, but unfortunately she may be made to suffer for them. If no family member will take her the DSWD will likely place her in some kind of facility. That part is very troubling, but it’s not something I can change.

I haven’t gone through this kind of process in the US, so it’s difficult to compare. It seems that the system here places a great deal of power and decision-making authority into my hands, as the “complainant.” If I did not file a case, nothing would happen to Junie. If I agreed to work something out with him, he could stay out of jail. It’s an unfamiliar and somewhat uncomfortable place to find myself in. But I feel quite certain that Junie going to jail is what needs to happen, and that I should not stand in the way of that.

We did of course learn things from this experience. After Junie left we decided we would not get another live-in caretaker. We (mainly Dindin) have been cleaning the house ourselves. We can hire people by the day to take care of the pool and the grounds. Before we settled on Jerry (not Junie’s brother, but another Jerry who works next door for Darwin), we interviewed another man. He had been recommended by his brother-in-law, who is a local friend who also works occasionally for the owner. Nevertheless, we took all the precautions with this new man. We requested and received from him a police clearance, a barangay clearance, and a resume with a list of references. Two of the references were from a local rural bank, where he had worked for 8 years. I talked to those two people, who had a glowing report about him. They described him as very trustworthy and industrious.

The first time he was scheduled to come to our house without his brother-in-law, he was 90 minutes late. The next time, which was a Friday, he never showed. He didn’t respond to text messages for 2 hours. Finally I texted the brother-in-law, who said he was with him. Then the man himself texted, apologizing and promising to come Saturday or Sunday. On Monday, after hearing nothing from him, we hired Jerry. A few days later the man texted again, offering to come the next day. I told him no thanks, we found someone else.

I actually ended up doing business with that bank, and when they asked me about him, I told them what happened. I said, You told me he was trustworthy and industrious, but you didn’t say he was reliable! Although he caused us a minor amount of trouble, had I not met him I would not have found out about the bank, which has some very good programs. So I have not named him here.

Of course, the story of Junie is not over. Stay tuned for further developments!

On Monday I went shopping at the Mahagony Market here in Tagaytay. After living here for almost 5 months, I discovered this market only because I had to go to the Hall of Justice, which is located in front of it. (In a future post I’ll explain why I went there.) The Mahagony Market is a public market. Public markets are the poorer, less sophisticated version of the mall for Filipinos. You can often get better goods, or better prices, at a public market. And at a very large public market such as Mahagony Market, you can also get a very broad selection of goods.

The front part of the market has stalls selling everything from packets of tomato paste to newspapers, as well as services. Car insurance and legal services predominate, but haircuts are available, all sorts of dry goods, hardware and household items, etc. At the back of this section are some restaurants, with parking behind them. The back part of the market consists of two large concrete-floored structures with booths inside them. The one on the left is the “wet market” where all sorts of meats are sold. The one on the right sells fruits and vegetables.

The produce available at this market is fantastic, in most cases much better than, and less expensive than, the large supermarkets in the shopping malls. This is the only place I’ve found really good tomatoes. The tomatoes elsewhere tend to be small and not that sweet. Here they have beautiful red ripe sweet tomatoes in all sizes, including very large. I also found eggplants that come closer to those I bought in the US than ever before. Most eggplants here are the long thin Chinese variety. Lately I’ve found small round dull green eggplants in the supermarkets. At this market on Monday I finally found large round shiny purple eggplants. The one item I still cannot find anywhere except the large supermarkets is berries, and the only kind of berries available even there are strawberries.

Anyway, I had managed to get everything on my list at the market on Monday, including specific fruits, vegetables, plants, a whole chicken, hot dogs, tomato paste, and take-out bulalo from one of the restaurants. Bulalo is my favorite Filipino dish, one of the few that I can usually eat without modification as it fits in my very strict diet. Bulalo is a beef soup, made from the knee joints of the cow, including the bone, the marrow, very tender meat, a few vegetables, and a beefy broth.
Well, I was walking back to my car, which I parked behind the wet market. I had made several trips to the car already to place bags of groceries in it. At this point I was carrying 2 newspapers and a bag with my bucket of bulalo and 5 small packets of tomato paste. In the middle of the wet market is a small concrete ramp, about 4 feet long.

As I walked down the ramp, my feet slid out from under me and I fell back at an angle, on my left arm and left side. I fell pretty hard. I was in pain, and made some noise. A man who worked in the market was next to me, standing there as I got up, asking if I was alright. I asked for a chair, and he pointed to the other side of the wet market. I gathered my things and walked there. By the time I got there about 10 men had gathered, trying to be helpful. They suggested I go to the toilet to clean up, as I had dirt all over me. I sat down in the chair. The man who had sold me the chicken and hot dogs earlier brought me a cup of hot water, which I drank. The toilet did not look appealing. I took my shirt off and used it to clean my arm and my side. The men put my bags together, rebagged the bulalo, which had lost all its liquid but was otherwise intact.

I called Dindin, got in the car, shirtless, and drove home. We unpacked the car, and I ate the bulalo meat and vegetables.
Then Dindin drove me to the hospital, about 2 km away.

It turns out I broke a rib.

Tagaytay Hospital has been deemed a Center of Excellence, the highest rating for a hospital of its type. We went to the emergency room there. The whole experience that first day took about an hour. They took 4 x-rays, a doctor did a physcal exam, and explained things to me. I was not surprised to hear that there is not much to do for a broken rib, it heals on its own in 6-8 weeks. I was told to make an appointment with one of the hospital’s orthopedic surgeons the next day.
That first day at the hospital cost 1266 pesos, about $30, plus about $9 for 8 pain pills.

The next day I saw the orthopedic surgeon. That visit cost about $11, plus $17 for 7 pills of a different variety, they help with pain and also with inflammation.

I do have pain whenever I take a deep breath, cough, laugh, or move. Movement while lying down, or lying down or getting up from lying down, entails the worst pain. Despite that I slept a good 9 hours the first night, and have been able to sleep since. The pain is slowly reducing.

Of course, Dindin has been wonderful at taking care of me.

People sometimes want to know, What can I do to help you?
It is often difficult to do much from far away. But there is something you can do.

You can join me on my journey. I have embarked on a journey to write, publish, market, and sell my own books.
The first book is entitled, “Moving to the Philippines: The Complete Guide.”
This is a somewhat risky venture, as I am now living on my savings, and my plan is to make a living as an author and publisher. The next 4 books I am planning are:

Poems to End Hunger (book of poetry, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to The Hunger Project)
How I Beat Diabetes (nutrition/exercise/health)
A Stand For the Earth (expansion of a poem I wrote, The Earthist Creed, into a program of thought/action)
The Last Body (sci-fi/fantasy novel with time travel and genetic engineering themes)

I’m very excited about Moving to the Philippines, as I think there is a large market for this book, and I hope to enlist a variety of government agencies, organizations, and companies whose interests are aligned with the success of the book to help market it. But ultimately it will be up to me to promote, market, and sell the book. I’m working with some very experienced partners in the publishing industry to make this venture a success. So what can you do?

Right now, you can participate in this blog. Read the blog. Post a comment. Share it with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, email, etc. The wider the readership I can generate for this blog, the larger the platform I will have to market the book.

Later, there will be other exciting adventures in this journey. For example, you’ll have the opportunity to pre-order copies of the book, to purchase the book after publication, to read the book, to make suggestions for the book of for future editions, to review the book on Amazon.com or other sites you use, to give away your copy to someone else who will review it, etc. If you do read the book and find it worthwhile, perhaps you’ll have some ideas of your own about groups that might be interested in this book and how to approach them.

I realize that not everyone wants to move to the Philippines. But this is the first part of the journey, to make this first book a success, and after that, the sky’s the limit.

Thanks for reading.

I’ve been saying for a long time that the cost of living in the Philippines is about 1/10 of San Francisco. This is my personal estimate, based on my 9 trips here over the last 4 years, and on living here the last 3.5 months. In total I’ve spent about 7 months here over 4 years.

Of course, this is an average. Not everything costs 1/10 of what it costs in San Francisco. Some things cost 1/20, some things cost more. But this average is based just on my impressions, and is therefore biased and based on small sample sizes.

In this post I will attempt to give a wide range of examples.

Because exchange rates vary, I will give both dollars and Philippine pesos for each amount, using the recent rate of 43.5 pesos to the dollar.

Of course, cost is not the only relevant issue. There are also issues of availability, convenience, and quality. For some things, equivalent quality here is very hard to find and more expensive when you do find it, but adequate alternatives are much cheaper.

Haircuts and highlights

For example, let’s look at men’s haircuts. For my first 8 trips here, I thought they cost about 50-100% of the cost in San Francisco. This was because I only had my hair cut at David’s Salon, a chain of salons here that you can find in most malls and cities. For example, at David’s Salon in Tagaytay a haircut and highlights cost me $37 (1600).

But last Fall, my boyfriend Dindin suggested I have my hair cut by his hairdresser, in his town of San Pascual, Batangas, as it would be much cheaper, and I always like Dindin’s haircuts.

When I was done, I asked Dindin what it cost, he said 50 ($1.15). I was in shock. I didn’t believe him at first. The haircut was every bit as good as the one I got at David’s. A month ago I had my haircut at a salon here in Tagaytay. It looked a bit more sophisticated than the place in San Pascual, and Tagaytay is a mountain resort where lots of expats live, comparable in costs to Manila. I got a haircut and highlights for $6.44 (280). Had I gotten the haircut only it would have cost me only $0.87 (38).

So, instead of haircuts being 1/2 to the same cost as San Francisco, I would now say they are about 1/20 the cost.

Rent

Let’s take a look at another essential of life, housing. Rents vary widely, as does the availability of places to rent that are comparable to what you may be used to in the USA. For example, in San Pascual I rented a two-bedroom apartment for about a year. Rent was $103 (4500) per month. However, the apartment had no air conditioning, no hot water, no tub, and no shower. There was a bathroom with a modern flush toilet, and a faucet and drain in a washing area. The “kitchen” consisted of a sink, some counters, and some cabinets under the counters and sink. We bought a small refrigerator and a portable 2-burner electric stove for the kitchen, and used a fan. The apartment was fairly large. It was on the second floor of a small building that had a vehicle repair shop on the first floor, set back only a few feet from the National Road, a  major 2-lane road that serves as both a highway and a local road. The road noise and road dirt were both extreme. The road dirt made it impossible to get the place clean. Although I learned to sleep there, it was kind of like sleeping directly underneath a freeway. It felt like I was only 1 foot underneath in fact. Still, in San Francisco you can get a storage cube that is about 4 feet by 5 feet for $103 a month.

In January, 2011, Dindin and I moved to a 4-bedroom house with a large outdoor pool in Tagaytay. (See my last post for a detailed description of the house.)

When we moved to the house in Tagaytay, we vacated the apartment in San Pascual and took a different apartment, on Dindin’s family’s land. This is much smaller than the old apartment, but below the level of the road, so it is cooler, quieter, and gets very little road dirt. For that we pay Dindin’s mother $69 (3000) per month.

The house is located in a mountain resort/tourist area, similar to Lake Tahoe. Rent is $805 (35,000) per month. For the first two months we had no hot water and very poor water pressure, however these problems have been fixed, we can now take hot showers and hot baths. There is still no hot water on the first floor, including the kitchen. I’ve learned that you don’t really need hot water to wash dishes. The washing machine is probably beyond repair, and the jets on the whirlpool tub will likely never work, but the 3-burner stove and the microwave work. And, miraculously, one item I thought would never work now works fine – the oven. We roasted a 2.8k (6 lb) chicken the other night, it was delicious. The house sits on a 600 square meter lot, on a quiet, lushly wooded street only 5-10 minutes by car (30 minutes walking) from the center of town.

A similar house in Lake Tahoe I’m guessing would cost several thousand dollars per month at least to rent year-round, which put rents here at about 1/5. In other areas outside of Manila, such as San Pascual, it is probably closer to 1/10. Manila is probably closer to 1/5 than 1/10. So I would say, in general, rents are about 1/6 of San Francisco.

Property

What about purchasing property? According to the constitution of the Philippines, foreigners cannot own land, however you can own a condo. I’ve been looking at condos in Manila for several years now. The cost ranges from $46,000 (about 2 million) for a very well-constructed small studio apartment in a good area of Manila to $180,000 (about 7.8 million) for a very large 3- bedroom apartment. Both are in the newest modern hi-rises, built to withstand a 7.0 magnitude earthquake, with significant building amenities (gym, pools, gardens, etc.), but not parking, included.

In San Francisco, a small studio in a good neighborhood will cost you $375,000 or more, and a large 3-bedroom condo will cost you around $1.5 million.

Massage

Two days ago I had a pain in my shoulder blade, I wanted a Thai massage. The Thai massage place nearby didn’t open until noon, so I went to another spa. A full body massage cost $10.35(450). It was a good massage but I still had about the same pain, so I went for a Thai massage that afternoon. The Thai massage cost $5.75(250), and it reduced my pain by about 90%. I went back for another Thai massage the next day.

Groceries

A trip to the supermarket to buy a week’s worth of groceries for 2 people costs me about $110 (4785) here, versus about $150 for one person in San Francisco. However, that may not be a very useful comparison, as I’m not buying the same things (mostly because they are not as readily available here). (And yes, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I spent that much on groceries in San Francisco. I have a very restricted diet and try to eat very healthy. But I digress.)

In working on the examples below, I realized there is a very simple way to do these conversions.

If something costs 100 pesos per kilo, at a conversion rate of 43.5, that means the price per pound is about $1.04.
((100/43.5)/2.2)

Some specific examples:

- Chicken legs, raw, cost about $3.22 (140) per kilogram. A kilo is 2.2 pounds, so that’s about $1.46 per pound, about half the cost in San Francisco.

- Salmon, the most expensive fish here, when you can find it, costs about $13 (588) per kilo, or $5.90 per pound. That’s between 1/5 and 1/2 the cost in San Francisco.

- Cabbage costs 55 pesos per kilo, about 57 cents per pound.

- Cantaloupe costs 50 pesos per kilo, about 52 cents per pound.

Vehicles and Transportation

I did a lot of research before buying a car here. In general, it seems that most new cars cost about 150% of the cost in the USA. I think the main reason for this is the import tax. Also, buying a new car here is a bit different. This is one area where the haggling over price takes place in the USA, but not in the Philippines. The price is the price. They have different incentives each month or season, which are available to everyone. You can’t negotiate the price. My theory about this is that the car dealerships, like most companies here, seem obsessed with youth in their hiring. There are no laws against age discrimination in employment. I went to 5 dealerships and found only 2 salespeople I would describe as competent. Companies want to hire young, good-looking people, especially for jobs involving contact with the public. While age and experience are valued on a personal level much more so than in the US, in the work world they are often not valued at all. It’s interesting that in the spheres of family and intimacy Filipinos are less youth-obsessed or ageist than people in the USA, but in the sphere of work they are much more ageist.

I found a way around this problem. I ended up purchasing a Toyota Innova, an “Asian Utility Vehicle” (minivan) that is made in the Philippines. I suspect that is why you get more value for your money with the Innova, the lack of import tax. In any case, 3 months later I am still thrilled with my purchase. I paid about $25,000, which I think would be a good deal in the USA as well.

In Manila, a taxi cab across the city will cost you about $3.00-$6.90 (130-300), depending on whether the cabbie uses the meter or demands a flat rate. A jeepney ride in a province (small bus with no air-conditioning, often very crowded – everyone sits but maybe not comfortably, travels distinct routes but stops at any point for passengers to board or leave) costs between 16 and 23 cents (7 to 10 pesos).

Computers and electronics

This is an area where I would say costs range from 75% to 110% of San Francisco. I recently bought a new laptop here, a Samsung, it uses an Intel Core i5 processor, has 4 GB RAM, DVD R/W, webcam, etc. I paid about $1,011 (44,000). Again, I think the reason is the import taxes on electronics. I also bought a new cell phone recently. I got a MyPhone, which is made by a Filipino company. I paid $87.36 (3800). A comparable Nokia phone would have cost me 2-3 times as much here.

This page puts the cost of living in the Philippines at between 1/5 and 1/4 of the USA. That might not be at all inconsistent with saying the cost of living in the Philippines is 1/10 of San Francisco, as San Francisco is one of the costliest cities in the USA.

http://www.worldsalaries.org/cost-of-living.shtml

Another way to express the cost difference is to compare my total budget for living expenses in San Francisco vs. in Tagaytay. I am spending much more than 1/10 of what I spent in San Francisco, for two reasons: 1) I am supporting two people instead of one, and 2) I have significantly increased my standard of living.
I estimate that I’m spending about 1/3 of what I spent in San Francisco, however, I’ve increased my standard of living in a couple significant ways:

- Instead of living in a 2 bedroom/2 bath condo in downtown San Francisco, I’m living in a 4 bedroom house with a pool in the mountain resort of Tagaytay. I’m renting out the San Francisco condo for about $3000 a month, about 3.75 times the rent I pay for this house.

- Instead of driving a 16-year old BMW 325i convertible, I’m driving a brand-new Toyota Innova (minivan).

So I think I will stick by my estimate of 1/10, but with an important caveat for anyone considering a move: You will likely take advantage of the cost differential to increase your standard of living. So, even if you move from a high cost area such as San Francisco, your costs here will be higher than 1/10.