Bob Martin

It’s Monday morning here in the Philippines.  In another 36 hours or so, will I still be living in the Philippines?

Well, I’m not planning to move, but there is a legitimate question as to whether or not I’ll still be in a part of the Philippines.  How can that be?  Well, the Government of the Philippines has been in negotiations for years with the MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front), and tomorrow a partial Peace Agreement will be signed between the two parties.  This is not the full deal, but a step down the road to peace.  The agreement that is scheduled for signing is the Ancestral Domain issue that is the most contentious of all issues being negotiated.

But, how does this tie in with not being in the Philippines any longer?  Well, according to rumors (the agreement is not being made public), a number of areas of Mindanao will be given Autonomy and will be governed by the MILF under this agreement.  The good news on that (for me) is that according to rumors about the agreement, Davao is not included in the MILF Automomous Area that has been negotiated.

Over the past weeks, Vice Governor (former Governor) of North Cotabato, Manny Piñol has been quite vocal on this issue, because it is rumored that parts of his Province are to be included in the MILF area.  He wants to ensure that the people of the Province have the opportunity determine their own destiny.  Do they want to be part of the new region, under MILF control, or do they wish to remain as part of the Province of North Cotabato, Philippines?  Well, it would seem that the vast majority of peopel there wish to remain part of the current Province.

In addition to the outcries from North Cotabato, demonstrations are slated to take place later today in Iligan City, Lanao del Norte, and also in Zamboanga City.  Government officials in each of these Cities fear that they will also be included in the Ancestral Domain to be given to the MILF.

What would change once this agreement takes effect?  Well, the area would be governed by the MILF.  It would operate under Shariah Law with it’s own Police Force.  It seems like the area would come as close as it possibly could to being a totally different country, without actually being so.  According to reports, the entity could send it’s own representatives to the United Nations - now that, to me, is already a new country!

All reports so far are that the new area would comprise only a portion of Mindanao, maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the island.  Could Mindanao survive being split like that?  Or will it only lead to additional fighting to put the whole island under one type of control or the other?  For me, I would prefer to see Mindanao remain whole, and remain under 100% Philippine control.

One good thing about all of this - it is my understanding that the way the agreement is worded, it will require a Constitutional Amendment of the Philippine Constitution.  With that, it would make me less concerned, because usually changing the Constitution, in any country, involves a lot of reflection, and serious thinking.

Of course, as a lover of Mindanao, and a resident of Mindanao, I hope that long term Peace can come to the Island.  I just am not sure that this is the right path leading to a lasting Peace.

photo credit: Keith Bacongco

UPDATE:  As of Monday afternoon, August 4, 2008, the Supreme Court of the Philippines has issued a Temporary Restraining Order stopping the signing of the agreement in Malaysia tomorrow.  There will be a hearing on August 15 for the court to consider arguments from North Cotabato Province and Zamboanga City against the agreement.  So, for now, there will be no signing until at least after August 15.

Do you know what a DVD9 is?  Have you ever seen a DVD before that was labelled “DVD9″?

If you’ve seen that before, it’s a pirated DVD!  DVD9 is a “brand” made in Malaysia.  The name came from the fact that a dual layer DVD can hold approximately 9 Gigabytes of data.

DVD9 is available all over Southest Asia, including the Philippines.  Although some DVD9 movies come in through Manila, most of them come into the country through the famed “back door” route: from Malaysia, they make the short hop to Tawi Tawi, up the Sulu Peninsula to Zamboanga City, and are then distributed to the rest of the Philippines.

If you know where to shop for pirated movies (DVD9 and some others), you will find almost an unlimited selection of movies, TV shows and other entertainment available for your choosing.  You can easily find everything from classic movies from the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, up to current TV series that aired even this year!  Even current movies that are still in the theaters are available on DVD!

It is not hard to find where to buy these items, I know two different shopping centers in Davao who are selling a full selection of DVD9 releases.  I used to be a big consumer of DVD9 pirated DVD’s, but for about a year now I have not purchased one.  I just kind of got tired of them, and also decided not to purchase pirated products anymore.  Personally, I have no problem with people who do so, I just decided that it was not for me.

How much is the price, you ask?  For a current run movie (a Hollywood movie that’s still playing in theaters) you can get it on DVD for P40 to P60 or so.  If you buy several, you should be able to bargain the price to the lower end of that scale.

The quality?  If you get a DVD9, the quality is generally excellent.  If you buy another “brand” of pirated DVD, the quality is usually not as good as it is on the DVD9’s.

OK, in yesterday’s column, I discussed the worst things that I had experienced while living in the Philippines.  I like today’s topic more, though - the best things I have experienced here.  I would say that the good outweighs the bad by an immense amount, it’s not even a close contest.  If that wasn’t the case, I probably wouldn’t be living here anymore!

For yesterday’s column, I felt that I had to struggle to find bad things to write about.  Today, I’m having to struggle too, though - this time keeping the list of good things to a minimum!  There are so many good aspects in my mind about living here.  Let’s have a look:

1. I came very close to running out of money. What?  That was the number one bad thing yestereday, how can it be the number 1 good thing too?  Well, I did give you a teaser the other day and said to have a look at the number 1 bad thing and the number 1 good thing, because they are related.  You see, while running low on money was certainly a bad experience, it is something that forced me to learn how to money here.  Honestly, the number one complaint that I hear from other expats here is that they don’t have enough money.  Things are more expensive than they expected.  A lot of expats end up going home, because they can’t afford living here.  They need to go home and get a job.  Well, when I was staring at that same situation a number of years ago, I decided that I did not want to go back home, and I would do anything I could to make money here.  It took some hard work, time and commitment on my part, but I succeeded in that goal, and I’m glad that I did.  So, basically, through my hard work I was able to turn the worst experience I ever had here into the best.  I am very thankful for that too.
2. Learning to speak Bisaya. No, I am not fluent in Bisaya yet, but I am well down the road.  Last week, I got into a conversation with an old man in town.  He is from Leyte originally, but has lived in the Davao area for decades now.  He could not speak English much, so we talked in Bisaya.  Our conversation went on for an hour or so, I guess.  We talked about our respective lives, our families, kids, etc.  It was reallly enjoyable.  If I did not know how to speak Bisaya, I would have never been able to do talk with this man.  I have had other similar conversations with people over the past year.  I find that learning to speak the local language has been very rewarding to me.  It helps bring me closer to the local culture, opens up my understanding of the people and the place, and overall, it improves my life.  It improves my life a lot too.  Remember yesterday, I talked about feeling “superior” and how that was a negative thing about living here?  Well, I find that the ability to speak the local language gives you a lot of opportunities to be treated as “just a regular guy.”  And, I like that.  My only regret about learning Bisaya is that I should have done it earlier.  But, I can’t change that, all I can do is keep plugging away and improving my Bisaya skills.  I really offer a deep sense of gratitude to my teacher, Bebe Metillo for this too.  What she has done for me has improved my life immenseley.
3. Gaining better health. In yesterday’s list of the worst things that I had experienced here, I mentioned that I had a stroke in 2001.  That has not been a secret, I have eluded to it a number of times on this site over the years.  But, that stroke pushed me toward improving my health.  Living in the Philippines contributed toward improving my health because of a number of reasons.  I have the time to get some exercise, be it walking, swimming or some other activity.  I don’t have to always be in a rush to get to work or whatever, and can take the time to improve myself.  Aslo, since living in the Philippines I have lost nearly 150 pounds, and that is certainly better for me.  I am not thin now, by any means, I am still very big, but having shed the pounds that I have has been good for me.  All I can do is to continue working on losing more weight in the future.
4. Travel and learning about other cultures. If you have been reading any of my sites for any appreciable time, you will know that I have done a lot of travel around Mindanao.   This ability to travel the region has really opened my eyes to cultures other than my own, and that is something that I have found valuable in my personal life.  If I didn’t live here, I doubt that I could have had such an opportunity.
5. Becoming more thankful for the things that I have. It would not be easy to live here without developing a deep appreciation of the things that you have in life.  Seeing the poverty that exists in the Philippines can have a deep impact on you, if you allow it to do so.  One thing that has come to my mind is that some people who may be very poor in terms of finances are still rich in terms of other things in their lives - family and such.  Most westerns don’t appreciate these things as much as they should, in my opinion.
6. Making good friends. Yes, I had good friends back in the States too, but living here has given me the chance to make friends from many different cultures.  I have friends from dozens of countries - other expats who live here - as well as Filipinos and other Americans.  If I lived in the States, I don’t think that I would have had the opportunity to have such a diverse group of friends.

Well, there are so many good things that I have experienced here, it’s hard to list them all.  In fact, listing them all would be impossible.  I have, however, listed those things that I find very important in my personal life.  I hope that you all get the opportunity to experience things like this by moving to the Philippines yourself.

I love living in the Philippines.  At this point in my life, I can’t even imagine ever leaving.  However, no matter how much you love a place, you have to remember, no place on the Earth is perfect.  During the entire time that I’ve lived here, my life has never been perfect, far from it!  I guess if life was perfect, it would probably turn out to be boring.  We all need challenges to keep us moving forward.

As I mentioned in my column yesterday, last week I was having lunch with John Grant.  John asked me the question: “since you’ve been living in the Philippines what were the worst and best things that happened to you?“  Well, today I’m going to talk about the worst things that I’ve experienced since living in the Philippines.  Frankly, there are not that many, but in order to improve our lives, we always have to examine the good and the bad, and decide how we can use those to improve.

So, let’s have a look at the worst things that I’ve experienced since living in the Philippines:

1. I came very close to running out of money. When I moved here, I came with quite a nice stash of money.  Not enough to retire, but enough to make a nice start.  I’ll be honest, I came here with around $100,000 in cash.  I thought that would last me a long time, but I was not right.  Frankly, after about two years, I was in serious trouble.  It came to the point where I was not sure how is going to pay my bills the next month.  I had to make some money, and I had to do it fast.  We were at the point that Feyma even offered to go abroad and work, sending money back to help pay the bills here, supporting me and the kids.  I explained to her that that just was not going to happen.  If anybody was to go work, it would be me, but my preference was to keep the family together.  Feyma started encouraging me to try some methods of making money online, and I agreed.  Luckily through this effort, I was able to recover, and learn how to make a good living here.  How did I get into this position to begin with? Well, frankly, it was not hard.  Firstly, we invested in several businesses when  we came here.  Some of them did okay, others didn’t.  One thing I really learned is this, if you’re moving to a new country, take some time to learn how things work there before you start investing into things you don’t know much about, because, things don’t work the same way as they did back home.  You’re likely to invest way too much money into things that you don’t need, and not enough in the things that you do need to get your business off the ground.  Another thing that can make you run through your money is that most foreigners come here, thinking everything is cheap, and they just throw too much money at stuff.  When everything is cheap, they feel that they can spend recklessly, and it won’t affect their pocketbook much.  Well, believe me, when you spend money it depletes your savings, no matter how cheap the individual item is.
2. Temptation. This is a delicate topic, but one that must be discussed.  For men, there is a lot of temptation here.  I’m talking about other women who throw themselves at you and such.  Coming from a country where you may not be considered desirable, and rarely have even thought of other women being interested in you, and showing up in a new country where you’re like a rockstar is not easy.  There is constant temptation.  Such temptation, even if you do not act on it, is not good for a marriage.  If you do act on the temptation, that’s even worse for your marriage.  All of this is particularly tough in the first couple of years that you live here, because it’s new for you, and something like this is hard to say no to.  After a couple of years, you will get used to the feeling, and learn how to deal with it (or some may decide that this is the life they want, and continue full speed ahead).  But, it’s not an easy transition.  I am lucky that Feyma was patient and understanding with me.  I have had times when I had Feyma with me, and women would come up to me and make offers to me.  Many wives would not put up with that, even though it was not really the husbands fault that this happened.  This, in my opinion is one of the hardest things about living here, and it took me time to learn how to avoid such situations.  Honestly, I thank Feyma for her patience in this regard.  I love Feyma very much, and I could not ask for a better wife.  I hope she knows that, and I think she does. One important thing to keep in mind for you in this regard is that most women doing this are really only out for one thing - money.  By “catching” you, they can get money, and that is the prime reason why they are interested in you (sorry to burst your bubble!).
3. I had a stroke in November 2001. Having a stroke is certainly bad, but was it because I lived in the Philippines?  Probably not totally, but I think that living here contributed to it.  Why?  Because living here was stressful until I adjusted more.  There was a lot of pressure.  Financial pressure, as I outlined in #1 above, the kind of pressures in #2, and other pressures.  These pressures created stress, and stress leads to strokes.  I was not in good health, and there is a history of stroke in my family, so I probably would have had a stroke at a later time anyway, but living here probably speeded it up a bit.  Thankfully, I was able to make a full recovery, and I have improved my health a lot since then too.  I think that living in the Philippines had a lot to do with these positive things too!
4. Feeling superior. After moving here, I went through a stage where I felt superior.  I felt like I was the hottest thing going.  Why?  Well, I can think of a few reasons why I developed this attitude.  Firstly, as a foreigner, people here treat you in a way that makes you feel superior.  It’s always “Sir” this and “Sir” that.  You are treated in a way that you are better, more special, etc.  When you are constantly treated this way, it tends to go to your head, or at least it did for me.  It’s really a bad attitude, and one to avoid if you can.  Also, take into account #2 above, you have all these women chasing after you - of course it makes you feel high and mighty.  If you get an attitude like that - try to kick it as soon as you can.  I feel that I have, for the most part, gotten past that, and I don’t feel that way anymore, and I’m glad that I don’t.  It’s a lot more fun and enjoyable to live as a “regular guy” than the opposite!

So, these are the things that I have been able to come up with as the “worst things that have happened to me in the Philippines.”  Certainly, there are other bad things that I have experienced here, but in the end they add up to very little.  Overall, I would call life here super.  As I have said many times on this site, I don’t really have any thoughts about leaving here, so that would tend to show that I like living here!

A few weeks ago, I was out walking.  When I’m walking, I tend to do a lot of thinking, and come up with some of my best ideas at that time.  On this particular day, I was thinking about a request from a reader.  Remember couple weeks ago I wrote an article about Penny, a white female who is thinking of possibly living in the Philippines, but was concerned about safety?  This particular day, while I was walking, that’s the subject I was thinking about, and planning to write the article.  However, my thoughts strayed on that day.  The subject that kept coming back to my mind was, why do I live here?

If you think about that, it’s not really an easy question to answer.  Even though I knew that I enjoyed living here, if I wanted to give specific reasons why I like it here, that was something I had to think about.  I mean, there are a number of reasons why a lot of people would not like it, and there were reasons that I did not like.  However, even though there were things I did not like, overall, I love living here.  Why?

Well, one of the things that I thought of that I didn’t like was that I’m different.  I’m always different.  No matter where you go, you are often the only foreigner there.  The only time that this is really not true, is when you go in a group with other foreigners.  And, I don’t just mean the you look different, you’re just different in almost every way.  As a foreigner, you will find the you think differently than the local people, do things differently, react to situations differently, you are just different.  Like I said, at first I was thinking this was something I didn’t like about living here.  However, as I thought about it more, I realized that I’ve always been different, no matter where I lived.  I never totally fit in any place that I went, because I was different!  There’s nothing wrong with that either, and as I thought this over, I decided that this was actually something that was okay about living here.  I accept being different, and have no real problems with it.  A friend and I once talked about this, and we came to the conclusion that if we weren’t different, we probably wouldn’t live here.  The normal person back in the states doesn’t move to the Philippines, it takes somebody who’s a little bit different to do that.

So, while this subject was already on my mind, last week I was having lunch with John Grant.  He has lived here for a couple of years now, and I have lived here for 8 years.  He asked me a question which I found intriguing.  He asked, “in the time you’ve lived here, what is the worst thing that ever happened to you, and what is the best?”  Wow, now that was something to think about.  It was not something that I could immediately answer, rather something that required some deep thought.  After a while, I gave him a few answers, off the top of my head.  However, now, I have given it more thought, and I want to answer it here in my column.

So, I’m going to write two more columns about this.  Tomorrow, I’m going to talk about the worst things that have happened to me since living in the Philippines.  These worst things are things that I do not believe would’ve happened to me if I did not live here.  The following day, I will write a column about the best things that happened to me since living here.  So, if you’re thinking of moving here, these two columns are some things you might want to consider for yourself.

Let me give you a little clue.  Tomorrow, take a look at the number one worst thing that has happened to me since living here.  The next day, take a look at the number one best thing that has happened to me since living here.  You may find that there’s an interesting connection.

See you tomorrow?