Philippines Expats returning to home country what changed?

[Nickleback99]

41 minutes ago, bigpearl said:

Same same but different.

Cheers, Steve.

Good to see you on here Steve!  you nailed it on your longer reply above about we aren't gonna change a thing and change is inevitable.  Look forward to a beer with you in our both soon to be future "home" country.  R/James

[SNAFU]

2 hours ago, jpbago said:

Is this USA or Philippines that you are referring to? Same-same.

USA, JP, specifically the D/FW metro area, our last area of career/residence in the States. If asawa and I had plans or even expectations to duplicate/replicate our lifestyle in the States when we moved here, then yes, I might not have said "simpler life" but, we didn't.

[bigpearl]

38 minutes ago, jpbago said:

After years of reading about the problems that expats here are having with LTO, immigration, buying a car, house construction, neighbours, relatives, dogs, roosters, airports, hospitals, ATMs, traffic, crime, breathing bad air, buying a restaurant, finding a school, finding good food, buying quality goods, opening a bank account, TV, internet, etc, I do not see life here as simpler.

Reading about? You are a Canadian living in the Philippines, or so your bio states, you never encountered these problems personally? Nothing different to Canada? I see all of these issues in Australia,,,,,,,tut tut, if in the city we don't hear roosters, my bad. Rhetorical? Somewhat. Regardless we are comparing cheese and chalk. 

Back on topic, I noticed cigarettes prices have gone up yet again in Australia. fuel prices are the same and they dropped the speed limit from 100 down to 90 clicks on my road, happier to fight the tricycles and Jeepnies doing 40.

Cheers, Steve.

 

 

 

 

 

[bigpearl]

1 hour ago, Nickleback99 said:

Good to see you on here Steve!  you nailed it on your longer reply above about we aren't gonna change a thing and change is inevitable.  Look forward to a beer with you in our both soon to be future "home" country.  R/James

Off topic but yes looking fwd to that beer, then we can really bit@h about our home countries and rejoice in the new found land.

Cheers, Steve.

[Jake]

5 hours ago, Nickleback99 said:

Yep, something along those lines...did near 5 yrs in USMC back in 80's, joys of Beirut and that mess, and realized it's a lot more fun and freedom doing something similar on the Fed side working for one of the alphabet soup agencies.  

We look forward to meeting you when we move down in the Fall! From a former Marine to the Master Chief, Semper Fi !

 

Hey James,

Roger that Marine!  You are a living breathing USMC motto of adapt, improvise and overcome!  We have another member, Jon1 who travels back and forth to the "desert".  He also did a few tours down in Injun country of southern Mindanao.  Good thing you survived and did not come home in a body bag:

 KBR?  

Well done Marine!  How come you guys have all the fun?

Respectfully Jake, master bater

Edited April 15, 2017 by Jake

[Jollygoodfellow]

15 hours ago, Nickleback99 said:

it's now just like Manila and over grown without supporting infrastructure.

This is probably true but here in Cebu I notice that for an example on Mactan there has been rolling power outages while they install new sub stations/ transformers to address future issues of power usage or so I read.

It's about money, where does it come from to build a first world city and if it was one I could image the gripe here about the cost of living. 

[Jollygoodfellow]

1 hour ago, bigpearl said:

Back on topic, I noticed cigarettes prices have gone up yet again in Australia.

From memory that was the plan to rid smoking, bit like the sin tax of the Philippines 

[jpbago]

8 hours ago, bigpearl said:

Nothing different to Canada?

I don't have any of those problems in Canada.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-best-countries-in-the-world-according-to-us-news-and-world-report-2017-3?op=0#/#2-canada-canada-boasted-the-highest-quality-of-life-of-any-of-the-countries-meaning-its-economically-and-politically-stable-family-friendly-and-has-well-developed-public-health-and-education-systems-23

[Dr. Shiva]

22 hours ago, jpbago said:

I don't have any of those problems in Canada.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-best-countries-in-the-world-according-to-us-news-and-world-report-2017-3?op=0#/#2-canada-canada-boasted-the-highest-quality-of-life-of-any-of-the-countries-meaning-its-economically-and-politically-stable-family-friendly-and-has-well-developed-public-health-and-education-systems-23

According to the link above UK are third and Switzerland is first place. But both countries requires to have a lot of money for a decent living there. If you are a poor guy or family in Switzerland then you will have a really tough living. Especially if you are required to get social welfare or social aid because you have no or a far too low income.

[not so old china hand]

Am heading down  to Hong Kong in a couple of weeks and then to the UK for a month or so at the end of May so interesting to see if I notice any major changes in the two years since I was last there.

One change I noticed last time was bus fares from Heathrow to London were lower (Boris J capped them at £2 for any journey in London). However one needs to pay with a stored value Oyster card cash is no longer accepted. One thing that had not changed bus drivers were still helpful. Having told me cash was not option and realising I would miss the bus if I went to buy a card the driver wrote out an excess fare voucher for the exact amount and told me I could pay the fare online when I reached my destination (which I did) it's  nice to be trusted.