As she is with God now her pain has ended. Let us be thankful for the years you all had with her and her memory live on.

God Bless and let the healing begin.

Mike & Rochelle K.

I am a bit slow in starting the process for a visa. My wife, kids and I all live in the Philippines and plan to continue doing so. I do plan to start my wife’s visa soon. What visa would you recommend for a Filipina that is only visiting the US for 30 days or so maybe once a year but probably something closer to once every 2-4 years.

So I would submit that is real-world ForEx involvement on a daily basis.

But do I trade as a business venture/source of income? No.

I do see a lot of very low cost services though, some of which even give you free ‘learner’ accounts, so a guy/gal could get their feet wet and test thier skills on a very low risk basis. As with all financial ideas, YMMV.

The bandwidth requirements for slow-scan video that I am envisioning is nothing like watching videos on YouTube. Bandwidth sufficient _is_ available to many of us here in the Philippines. I’ve been involved in provisioning, fixing and modernizing slow scan video circuits around the world for years, some in locations much more challenging than the Philippines so I know this can be done.

Again, thanks for your thoughts but these are issues to work, not show stoppers.

I was once an avid ForEx trader. But, I have been away from it a while. Anyway, I have been considering getting back into it. The Auto Pilot may just be my key. Have you tried it for yourself?

Indeed that is the point of why I highlighted this review. Both Filipino and foreigners sit here in the Philippines thinking there is no way to earn a living in the Philippines, while Chinese who do not think of themselves as ’second class’ are using the Internet for what it is useful for … making money long-distance.

For those clinging to the “Internet cafe” dream or wanting work as a second-class foreigner in a third-world job, read that review with a critical eye and think about how much better you can do it … from the Philippines. The obstacles are all in your mind.

It’s better work than cleaning toilets for some rich Saudi, that’s for sure.

Liability. First, form a corproation (likely an S corp is better thna an LLC, manystates don’t give much corporate protection for an LLC. Do this with an attonery’s advice of course and use a well-written release form that the cleint has to sgn and fax to you (there are feree fax to email services so you don’t even have to buy a fax machine. I was also going to add but trimmed out of the article itself, you should run the Net nanny type software on the machine you use for monitoring the children as well a son the machine being monitord … that gives proof you or your nanny helper were watching client’s kids and not goofing off in case of negligence accusations. provides safety against accusations of viewing porn or talking dirty or doing anything else bad that perhaps a vindictive child could accuse you of, in anger.

Another automatic feature of Yahoo Messenger is that you can set it to make a written record of all conversations, files sent, etc., so you can automatically account for what you did or didn’t do. It even ahs a built in whiteboard for teaching the alphabet or drawing diagrams t help with homework … all in one free package.

ACtually, from a liability standpoint, my own thought is you would be a lot less at risk than if you sent a teenage daughter out to babysit and she was accused of doing something wrong … and people routinely send their children to babysit as a normal part of growing up.

For some people liability is much more a concern than for others … not all opportunities are right for everyone.

Bandwidth: If you use a decent service like Yahoo Messneger you’ll find bandwidth of little concern … you aren’t watching hi def streaming video and without special software you are only lookng at one cam at a time. When my wife and I were living in the US and she used to video chat with one of her nieces here in the Philippines who was still on dial-up at the time, the picture quality was certainly usable. Wireless DSL as I have, and you do too I think is available over a large part of the Philippines … but, like everything else,YMMV.

As a side note, one of the things the nanny could pass the time with the client children with that keeps them interested and under supervision is online games …Othello, Checkers, Chess and half a dozen other games are readily available on Yahoo Games and all work fine on dialup. I wonder if they have Scrabble too … or would playing scrabble come under the heading of tutoring?
Thanks for commenting and bring up those thoughts, Bob … always good to have a sanity check on some of my schemes

1. Liability. If a kid is injured in some way, you could be found liable or negligent.
2. Adequate bandwidth in the Philippines to monitor multiple webcams.

It certainly is an interesting concept, though!

But, it is easy to pay 100 here and 100 there. Before you know it, money is gone. I too regretably was told by my doctor I have to start this maintenance pills. Even with Pfizer discount of 30%, it is still expensive - around US$30 per month. On numerous times, I’ve checked my purse, and wondered where all the money have gone.

i suspect I am going to have to start sticking to a budget, sigh, and I have no one to blame but myself. Looking at the past 12 months of our current account here it is clear that we have spent more per month than ~pHp26T … which would be about $600 USD … but certainly less than $1,000 USD (~ PhP 45T or 46T) per month on average.

Part of the difference is drugs. I’ve been blessed by near zero medial bills htis year but I do take two regular ‘maintenance’ drugs per day and this comes up to $40 or $50 USD each month.

I’m guessing we spend more at the supermarket or with the ‘gulay girls’ I mentioned earlier than my first estimate. Still cheap living though.

Declaring “world income” is just that - ALL income irregardless of where you are, unless otherwise stated or specifically exempted in a TREATY agreement between the 2 countries.

If you are a small business, just keep-it-simple-stupid (KISS principle) and declare all your income and pay the taxes due, unless you have lots to spare to hire a good CPA and TAX attorney for advice. You can sleep better this way.

BTW, how are things going in the book department?