PhilFAQS

How Low Can You Go With Philippine Flights?

I may not win a lot of friends with this post … because I perceive an awful lot of fellow Americans who get so angry at the thought of government regulation that they quite literally “throw out the baby with the bathwater”, but here’s a post from my blogging friend Don Brown that I recommend.
Do [...]

There’s Meat In Those Noodles

Regular readers might get the idea that I am pro-Chinese and anti-American when I point out things like the tremendous economic advantage we, the US, have given China by becoming their financial serfs for the next hundred years or so.
I am not pro-Chinese, but I feel I am reading the writing on the wall better [...]

Stranger In A Strange Land

A few days ago a reader used this expression to describe how he thought he was going to feel when he came to the Philippines to live.
Probably an apt choice of words, but as some of you know, I am currently back in the USA and believe me, the expression sure explains how I feel, [...]

Can You Define That Expat Feeling?

One of the things that is always difficult for me is to come up with an answer to the question, ‘but why would you choose to live in the Philippines’.  This is especially hard for me when Filipino friends and family ask this, because it feels kind of snippy to answer them back with something [...]

About Time I Got Back To Work

You will adjust, or you will go home …. or maybe both.  Recently my friend Bob wrote a good article about the adjustments you will have to make if you choose to join those of us who choose to live here in the Philippines.  It’s well worth reading.  In particular I got a chuckle out [...]

Leaving the Philippines Again

About a year ago, I first published a post entitled Why I Left the Philippines.  It has had a lot of “reads” over the past year, and I updated and republished it a few months back.  A lot of people didn’t really read it, though, because I got calls and queries even from some relatives [...]

Philippine Living Most Popular 2009

This may not look like all that much, but considering that a year or so ago, this blog was lucky to have 3 or for visits a day, I am a pretty happy camper. None of this happened without you, the reader, many coming back through thick and thin …. and I thank you [...]

Some Thoughts About Helping The Helpless

Panhandlers. Beggars. People who spend their days asking the age-old question “Brother, can you spare a dime.” Every big (and some small) city has them and their approach is always the same… “Excuse the interruption. I lost my job, have no place to live, have no food, have 8 kids and need any money you [...]

It Isn’t Paradise — Trust Me On That

I’ve been reading about, researching, traveling to, touring around and living in the Philippines for nearly 10 years now.  Actually, I had a business relationship with the Philippines for many years before that as well, because I spent a total of 38 years with the USAF and the Philippines was very important to us during [...]

It’s All a Big Nothing

Or so once said Olivia Soprano, played by the extremely talented and deeply missed Nancy Marchand.
As I write this, most of you in the USA are in various degrees of preparation for the “big ball drop” on Times Square in a couple hours.  Here in the Philippines, it’s just past 9 am on New Year’s [...]

Things I Learned So Far This Christmas — Part 2

Yesterday, give or take a few hours, I promised you some thoughts on the questions:

Do you want to retire in the Philippines?
Do you want to move to the Philippines and earn a living here?
Are you undecided about either of those first two questions?
Are you searching for a job in the Philippines?
What is the single, most [...]

Things I Learned So Far This Christmas

I looked this quote up a few minutes ago.  It was posted back in March 2009, and got virtually no notice.  So one of those “sides of the brain” of mine (I don’t know the right from the left, or so I have been told) says to me, “why write about this again, Dave, they [...]

Blessed Are the Meek — Or Are They?

First of all, let me throw in a little disclaimer here.  This post isn’t really all that much about religion, but I do throw in some Bible teaching and no matter what your personal feelings about religion, you can’t learn much about the Philippines without recognizing the fact that it is one of the most [...]

“And there I was …”

For those of you with a military background, or even just in my age group, you likely have heard a story (or three) that started off like this … often what came next was something like “flat on my back at 30,000 feet, diving out of the sun to take on the whole Japanese Imperial [...]