OnMyWay

I just saw this. To be completed in 2020, the new main BI office will be in Pasay. http://immigration.gov.ph/images/News/2018_Sep/2018Sep05_Press.pdf Groundbreaking Ceremony Held for New Immigration Building A groundbreaking ceremony was held Wednesday morning to celebrate the construction of the new Bureau of Immigration (BI) Main Office and Annex Building. BI Commissioner Jaime H. Morente announced the construction of the new building at the 6,030 sqm lot of the Bureau of Immigration located at Central Business Park 1 along Diosdado Macapagal Boulevard in Pasay City. “The groundbreaking of our new main office and annex building is in time with the BI’s 78th anniversary, which was held last September 3,” said Morente. “We are very much excited as this development marks a new chapter for the Bureau,” he added. The new building boasts a 7-storey main office building with a modern design, and a 5-storey annex building with atrium. The construction of the building was awarded to R.U. Aquino Construction and Development Corporation by the Department of Public Works and Highways. “This new building is long overdue as our current head office was constructed in 1968,” said Morente. “This milestone is set to improve the quality of service that the BI delivers, because the bigger and better office will allow us to cater to the everincreasing number of people transacting with the Bureau,” he added. Construction is set to commence immediately and the building is expected to be completed by 2020.

Yes, fire escape is a concern. Our house is strange. It has bars on all the windows, except.... The front door has decorative beveled glass in the top part, and on both sides of the door are panels, about 1 X 7 feet, of the same heavy beveled glass. Then there is another window near the door of the beveled glass, and then in the back of the house we have a wall of the beveled glass that includes two sliding doors. A thief could punch out one pane of beveled glass and get into the house. When and if we remodel, I'm thinking about removing the bars and adding other modern security. Most of the newly remodeled houses in our area do not have bars.

In Subic Bay Freeport, we have Fibr via Subictel, a subsidiary of PLDT. We don't get the same rates, packages and specials that are on the PLDT website. Check there for rates that would apply to you. I'm paying a total of about p3700 a month for 50 mbps service + Cignal HD that has a lot of channels and around 15 HD channels. I have had it two years now and last time I was at their office I tried to ask what the current rates are, and all they could say was "you want to upgrade?". No, I would like to pay less if the current rates were less than mine. All of a sudden their English skills got worse, so I left. I'll try harder next time and bring one of my little charmers with me.

Yes, I think you and some others said they were very happy with Express VPN, right? I might have to look up how much I paid for Pure VPN and consider switching. I don't use it a lot so would not make sense for me to pay much more money for faster VPN right now.

PLDT upgraded our Fibr modem last week to a great big white one with 4 antennas. It has two wireless connections: 2.4 ghz and one I think they call 5G. I can't tell much difference between the two. I still use our internet over powerline adapter in our bedroom. The new modem does have a lot more available ports on the back which was a limitation of the old one. It seems that they are letting my speed go a bit above the 50 mbps I am paying for, or perhaps the improvement is just from the modem. Here are some tests I just did. The last test is Los Angeles with my Pure VPN on. Makati PLDT Cebu City, SMART Buffalo, NY Dallas, TX Los Angeles, CA Los Angeles, CA with Pure VPN

Yesterday there may have been some kind of internet problem. My speed on speedtest.net was 50 mbps + but speedtest would take a long time to load and others like yahoo mail, FB, etc. were all super slow. This was about 3-6 pm and then after that, back to normal. I tried to call PLDT but their lines were tied up, indicating a widespread problem.

Any updates Jessdaddy? My shipment now says received at LBC Manila warehouse today.

This is almost 10 years old: http://www.financemanila.advfn.com/2009/08/how-much-do-philippine-government-officials-make-in-salary/

Wish I could say that. The 2 letters to my kids from U.S. SS were stamped arrived in Subic Bay Freeport on August 14th and delivered by the inept post guy on September 13th. Maybe I need to go down to the actual office and do what you did. I wonder if that can be verified? 200 a day does not sound right.

A quick look here: https://airport-departures-arrivals.com/philippines-airport/francisco-bangoy-international-airport-live-arrivals/ Seems to indicate Kuala Lumpur is the only direct flight back and forth. The SIN flights are only direct outbound, e.g., SIN-CEB-DVO-SIN. Unless they have some directs on other days.

Subic International airport will be reopening fairly soon for some commercial flights. A lot of money has been approved and work is underway. My wife said she read that Philippine Airlines, Malaysian Airlines and another will be the first commercial flights to operate. https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/1764512

That is a bit harsh. I have found them to be professional so far. Good website, good handling of packages in their warehouse, no billing issues. The SEA logistics and tracking, I believe, are done primarily by their sub-contractor, who I think is LBC and a leader in the Philippines shipping business. I'm not that concerned on the transit time because I had low expectations. I suspected that their SEA shipments were travelling via Balikbayan box mode and I think we now now that is LBC. I think they are handing over to LBC in SF Bay area. Despite the Shipping Cart estimated delivery date that was quite promising, I'm happy with the 1-2 month service that BB boxes usually get from the U.S. west coast. LBC does not have good tracking of BB boxes. I remember that their website was quite useless for tracking but there was usually a lot more info on Aftership.com. I'm not sure if that works for the Shipping Cart shipments. However, the tracking doesn't seem bad to me. This is what they show for my outstanding shipment: I also just found in my spam folder an e-mail update from the 17th: Please be advised that we received confirmation from our partner carrier that your ShippingCart shipment with tracking number 1572-5511-VLMC experienced a delay in the berthing of the vessel in Manila due to port congestion. We received update today that the vessel has arrived and berthed today, September 17, 2018 in Manila. Rest assured, we're doing everything we can to expedite the processing of your items so delivery will be within the earliest possible time. You may monitor further the movement of your shipment through your ShippingCart account. Considering there was a super typhoon impacting shipping, that delay is acceptable to me. I'm not unhappy with the service at this time. Having worked in the shipping business for many years, I do probably have a bit more tolerance for delays than some might. You also need to remember, this is a very low cost method to ship.

I'm always suspicious of the Windows updates. It seems that my non-Microsoft software (Open Office, Chrome) start having issues after the updates. I updated Open Office and it is still crashing sometimes. It never used to crash.

Yes, correct. SSDI family max is different than regular ss and I don't know benefits are used the same way to find out if the family max is reached. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/COLA/dibfamilymax.html

My second sea shipment was delayed a week in Taiwan and arrived Manila on the 17th.