Tuesday, June 30, 2009

General Trias, Cavite

The last day of June today. Yesterday, Aida and I went to General Trias to do some paperwork on registering a house. We did not realize that we did not have this and soon we'll be selling this house, so all papers must be in order to transfer the title over to the new owners.

Two surveyors came along with us to the house, about 10 minutes away from their office in Trece Martires at the Assessor's Office. While we were waiting, we went out of the office, we noticed that there was also a Courthouse on the same floor. There happen to be just on that day several court appearances for inmates. Young men with yellow shirts and written at their back: " Inmate # and city jail of Cavite somewhere". They seem a clean bunch of skinny guys sitting on the floor, surrounded with guards and policemen with cell phone in their hand. There were even some vendors who were selling some sweet bananas to the guards, when I saw one of these guards sharing his treat to one of the inmates.

All in all, after about a four hour process (well there was an hour lunch in between), the surveyors were able to give us the registration of our house.


Monday, June 29, 2009

Introduction

Hello. My name is Raf (Ralph in English) . My wife Aida, and I, moved to the Philippines in 2006 from Canada. I was actually born in Belgium, although my wife is from the Philippines. Due to my poor health at that moment, I could not see myself going back to work. Even though, there was short-term disability insurance for me, the stress that caused these insurances took more toll on my sickness. So, we decided to take a chance moving where my wife is from. We live in Metro Manila and must say, we've been through a lot of culture shocks.

It's only after 2.5 years of being here now, my good health came back, and actually my wife's health got also better since she quit her job as a nurse's aide in a nursing home where she complained lots of times of shoulder and knee pain due to constant lifting of the residents. The pain went away by itself since we came here.

We are both middle aged and are now early retired here, as life is also overall cheaper where we are now than in Canada, so it's manageable.

Anyways, it's a short introduction and see you around!