Congratulations! I’ve decided to give you all a brief respite from the Why the Hell Would You Buy Property in the Philippines series. Part 4 will arrive soon but in the meantime August 1st was the one year anniversary of our moving to Dumaguete. So let’s look at the Good, Bad and Butt Ugly of our 1st year!

The Good: I know this sounds boring or Polyannish but most everything has been good. Most of our goals were met. We successfully moved into our temporary apartment, stocked it with crap from Robinsons, found a rental house in Valencia, stocked it with some more crap, bought a car, bought two lots (which I am sure you’re sick of hearing about), and Janet has been overseeing the building of a modest house for the family. Somewhere along the line we’ve been able to visit some places in Negros Oriental (Apo Island, Siquijor, Dolphin Watching in Bais) traveled in Cebu, managed to get to Thailand again, and returned to the US to see family and friends. Whew! I’m getting tired reading this list.

I’ve also managed to put together a rudimentary workshop in our house and when I wasn’t happily obtaining some new tools, spent as much time as I wanted restoring some of the very old tools I have. I also managed to play the guitar more than I have in years and had the foolhardy courage to record myself a bit.

Other things in the “good” category are things that didn’t happen and being slightly paranoid I am reticent to mention them, lest they immediately occur. But journalistic integrity requires me to mention them, so here goes; pray for us. Neither Janet nor I have been seriously ill; a  two day flu after we returned from Thailand is about as sick as I have been – fingers crossed. After we rented our house in Valencia we were able to obtain (and I am not making this up) excellent, fast, reliable Internet in the Philippines – ducking head in fear.

We’ve found plenty of good restaurants. In fact just discovered one last night – South Beach Grill in Dauin – so happily eating a variety of foods has been no problem.

Financially so far everything has worked well. I told myself I would budget carefully and track all expenses which I haven’t done at all. But it hasn’t mattered. We have denied ourselves nothing and yet have not gone over our budget in the year we’ve been here. Now granted our budget may be a bit higher than some expats but it’s not insanely high. And we’ve done everything we wanted including travel. Our budget allows us to do one more out of country excursion this year, so stayed tune for that!

I am happy in retirement and it’s all I hoped it would be. I have not missed work for a second. As with everyone, I wouldn’t mind finding a way to make a few more dollars or pesos – as long as I don’t have to work to do it 🙂

The Bad: Bad is a misnomer here. It would probably be more accurate to list things that haven’t yet happened; not much that’s out and out bad. As reported before here we haven’t made as many friends in Duma as I’d hoped but we’re still working on it. Truth is we’re busy, sometimes tired, and if we have spare time we spend it with each other, but we’ve got to work on this more.

Connected to the above, I had the goal to make Filipino friends and so far haven’t been successful in that realm, but then as I mentioned I haven’t been very friendly or sociable in general.

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On the negative side, I have not made a guitar yet; hell I haven’t even started making one. I’ve done lots of other minor bits of woodworking, built a workbench and set up my shop environment. But I’ve procrastinated on starting a major guitar project. Someone please offer me a boatload of money and that will get me kickstarted 🙂

Likewise Janet hasn’t done much sewing, cooking and baking – things that she loves. Nor has she figured out what kind of small business she’d like to have here. But most of this is because she’s busy as hell building the family compound.

The other thing we haven’t yet done that I said I would do, is help in some way within the community. I imagined I would do something similar to famed Dumaguete vlogger, Bud Brown, who gives away tchinelas (slipper or sandals to you) to barefoot kids here, but so far I haven’t. Truth be told I am probably not as nice a person as Bud, but still it is a goal to do something or in some way get involved.

I suppose under the Bad category you can also include the two car accidents we’ve had, one of which was documented here. Fortunately not much money was involved but it is still disconcerting.

Butt Ugly: I was warned years in advance that the worst part of moving to the Philippines could actually be other expats and this has proven to be at least somewhat true. Dumaguete is a hot bed for expats and most are good guys. I’ve already written about it before but there are a certain percentage of Rude Foreigners. They are difficult to avoid and stick out like a sore thumb.

Then there are the foreigners for whom getting drunk is apparently their sole hobby. Now I like a San Miguel myself but it’s hard to believe that in a wonderful place like this you can’t find something else to do. Janet and I can go to several fave restobars with the full knowledge that we will see the same guys drinking there no matter what day or time we arrive.

Then there is the fact that if I go someplace in public, often a foreigner will sit down next to me and either bitch to me about the Philippines or tell me his tale of woe, usually within the same sentence. Today a guy sat next to me and told me that in the past month he had broken in separate incidents each foot plus one toe. He then complained about the cost of the medical care he’d received. I was a ray of sunshine, “Yeah but at least the San Miguel’s cheap.”