Living in the philippines

Living in the Philippines

Slow Internet connections where I live are making running an online business very difficult in Sindangan and the situation is only getting worse. Smart the ISP recognises there is a problem, which degrades the service and they cannot maintain the bandwidth. A friend of ours runs an Internet Cafe and of course is as lo effected badly.

Yesterday we travelled to Dipolog to check on progress of our new house and it seems it will be completed next month so we took the opportunity to search for appliances and furnishing as there are a number of special; offers been run by stores.

We had been recommended to go to one store Better Living, as the local Branch in Sindangan said they had a larger stock, however it turned out they would only give 5% discount for cash. I found this amazing as we were prepared to spend about half a million peso, but they would not shift. So we left and went to another store our friend recommended Emcor. Here the they could not be more obliging, and they did have in stock a Front Loading washing Machine which is very difficult to find in the southern Philippines. we in fact spent the whole afternoon with one member of their sales staff travelling around their various outlets picking the items we needed at 10% discount. We in fact made some very good saving compared to our budget which was based on manufactures recommended retail prices an in addition received a number of free gifts.

So when we have to purchase more items for our home in the Philippines guess where we are going to shop

Recently the local ATM have been offline for hours at a time die to a combination of brownouts, power cuts ISP failures or lack of money. On two occasions this has caught us out, once when getting our puppy Fred vaccinated by the visiting Vet, so we them a few days later with no problem. But it was a different story when wanting a bottle of Sprite from the local store, the owner wondering why a White person did not have money. It comes as a surprise to many Filipinoes to discover that white people are little different to them and can run short of cash. we are not banks after all.

Until the next Time

Regards

David