Heeb

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/nation/232573/20-years-later-senators-who-rejected-us-bases-hailed-anew/story/

From Wikipedia: 1987 The People's Republic of China (PRC) conducted naval patrols in the Spratly Islands and established a permanent base.[where?] 1988 PRC warships and Vietnamese transport ships clashed at the South Johnson Reef. Over 70 Vietnamese were killed and two Vietnamese transport ships were sunk. The PRC gained control of some of the Spratly reefs. 1994 The People's Republic of China, Malaysia, and the Philippines sign the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). History as a legal basis is now not accepted. 1995 The Philippine government revealed that a PRC military structure was being built at the Mischief Reef. Philippine President Fidel Ramos ordered increased patrols of the Philippine-controlled areas; the incident lead to numerous arrests of Chinese fishermen and naval clashes with PLAN vessels. If not for the Philippine government (magnificent 12) we would still be there, I remember their demands for us staying there were preposterous, they wanted service members stationed there to pay Philippine taxes, use the Philippine mail system instead of FPO and also do away with the SOFA agreement which kept a lot of falsley accused sailors and marines out of local jails including myself.

If I remember correctly they had already started building bases in the Spratly's when I was on my last tour there, it was a topic of conversation, the oil had been discovered in the late 60s.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/does-it-snow-in-hawaii.html

It was 7 pesos when I first got to Subic, Sam Magoo was 2 pesos, jeepney ride 2 pesos, tricycle ride 4 pesos. It went up to 20 pesos while I was stationed there and I was still always broke before payday.

Here’s a question, let’s say you purchase a motorcycle in the P.I....could you take it to another country like India for a trip and bring it back and avoid hassles since it was purchased in P.I.?

I road my friends Super Tenere for half a day up in Alaska, very nice bike.

BTW what will be his major? We payed for nursing school twice, one never passed the boarding exam but married some rich Korean dude and move there so it turned out okay, one was a tourism major, that was a waste of money, the current two that just graduated and are studying for their board exams are civil engineer and maritime engineer. I'm not sure the maritime student will even find any work since it's saturated right now. There are websites that you can find that give the percentage of students at each university that pass the boarding exam listed by major. The school makes a big difference, some schools have a horrible success rate, without passing the exam it's almost a waste of time and money.

It's hard to say, it's seems like it depends on the school and the student, it would be nice if the school website would list the miscellaneous expenses. It's hard to say whether or not we were being used as a piggy bank by the students we put through or possibly the family. Ask for receipts for everything, they can take a photo of them and send via messenger or email. You may be asked to buy a laptop depending on their needs to help them study, we bought cheapo laptops at bestbuy and mailed them with balikbayan boxes, they probably didn't absolutely need them.

I'll have to go to the local dealer here and have a sit on the Kawasaki Versys 650, I used to have a Kawasaki KLR650 and the Versys has double the horse power, I see some aftermarket tall rider seats as well, it looks like a good option.

I just sold my BMW R1200GSA to a friend last week, I'm still struggling with the loss, it was the best bike I ever had, I didn't want to store it not knowing how long we will be in the Philippines even though a friend offered. I see them pop up on OLX for sale and they want almost as much or more used as I paid for mine brand new. Quite frankly I don't think I would enjoy a big bike over there, It's going to be one of the hardest things about moving to P.I, I probably don't have that many more years to ride and I still have South America on my bucket list. I was thinking if I could find a KTM 690 or Honda I might be tempted to buy one over there, most of the bikes there are to small for me, I have really long legs and they don't bend that well anymore.

My wife and I have put several of her nieces and nephews through college over the years and we always end up sending more than we anticipated, I don't know whether the expenses were real or not but there was always something. Tuition itself wasn't bad but then there were fees for trips and extra courses and exams, plus once they graduate you have classes to study for board exams, if they fail there's more classes, we are just finishing up with the last two and there will be no more as we are retiring June 30th. On the subject of remittance companies...let's see, we started with Western Union and one day they just stopped sending money for us, I called them and asked an agent what was going on and she wouldn't say, ironically I could tell I was dealing with a Filipina at a call center, she wanted a bunch of information that I wasn't willing to give, like SSN number, where I worked, bank accounts etc. Then we tried Zillo which didn't work right off the bat, same thing, I called and they wanted too much information, so we moved on to MoneyGram which worked well for several years until it didn't, apparently these remittance companies use algorithms to detect fraudulent activity and if you get pinged for it they will just drop you. We have been using Remitly for about 5 months now and it's been good so far, it's not as convenient for the money receiver because there's not as many pickup establishment as western Union and MoneyGram.

Reading this thread makes me wonder how we got things done back in the olden days. I did a fiance visa for my wife in 1989 back when there wasn't loads of information on the internet, I just walked into an Immigration office in San Diego and asked for the paperwork, the instructions were on the forms, communication was mostly through snail mail because there were hardly any phones in the Philippines at that time. I don't remember it being too difficult on my end, more so on hers. The best part of the fiance visa is you have 6 months to decide if you really want to get married, unless things have changed since then.

When someone asks for directions you point in the general area with your lips.

I have lower back pain and hip pain, when the hip pain switches from my right side to the left I need a cane to get around, fortunately that only happens a couple times a year. Turmeric with 95% curcuman seems to help.