VeryWellAged: Blog

I put the new short story outside Jake's Universe because the story line is totally independent of Jake's life. But there are many people downloading it who have not read my other work and they do not seem to understand the basis for some of the material. The story would not have worked as a longer form piece. Still if I had put it into the orbit of thread #2 I think two things wold have happened. (1) fewer people would have downloaded it and (2) of those fewer a larger percentage would have liked it if only because they would have the reference material understood. As Joy from #2 would have said: bahala na. (I did my best, the rest is up to God.)

The Food Court is a very short piece. It has nothing to do with Jake and really does not belong in that Universe. I am not sure, but I will probably clump it and others like in a collected random stories group.

With any luck I'll submit it tomorrow.

Other than the next and last Jake Thread, still in process, this may be the last good guy piece. I feel like it is time to try my chops on a bad guy... at least one and see how that goes.

Trifecta is part of the Jake Thread #2 world but is sort of a stand alone. We are of two minds here because much background from Jake T2 is not recapitulated in Trifecta. Still it may be possible to read it without Jake T2 under your belt... It would be a very different story for the reader in that case. I'm not ready to recommend that.

Thanks again to Grisbuff for the masterful edit.

I hope you enjoy it.

With many thanks to my editor Grisbuff for the invaluable corrections, any remaining errors, oddities and style issues are mine and mine alone. An editor can only do so much. In the end all final decisions are mime as is the responsibility for such.

As soon as it can get through the queue, Thread #2 will be available for reading.

In the mean time I have kicked out a far shorter piece called Trifecta which I have sent off to Grisbuff for his skillful review. Trifecta is part of Thread #2's Jake and though it can be read on its own is probably best if read after Thread #2 has been taken in.

There is one more main thread of Jake to go but I am not sure when I will finish it. That Jake story is still in process and I don't know yet how it will turn out.

In the Philippines, all education starting at Kinder #1 (there is a Kinder #2) through High School requires tuition. (US grade 10.)

Many poor families in the provinces cannot afford to educate their kids.

The public schools have the lowest tuition and the poorest quality in teaching and over crowding.

Private religious schools are in general the most expensive (can be ten times as expensive) and the best in quality.

College education is cheap compared with the US. There is tuition by quarter and fees to take exams throughout the year. Still compared to a US college education it is pennies to the dollar.

The exchange rate between Philippine Pesos and the US Dollar has fluctuated in the last four years from 49:1, to 42:1.

The is no equal employment protection in the Philippines. You can advertise for an attractive, single female, 21 to 25 years of age. And you can fire her without cause later to avoid ever having to pay unemployment insurance. You can simply refuse to hire woman over 30 years of age and many do just that. Woman are the most vulnerable in the society.

There is no divorce in the Philippines unless you are Muslim. Annulments are costly and very hard to get. Even after a judge rules in your favor, it may take a bribe of many tens of thousands of pesos via a subordinate for the judge to hand over the signed order.

Then it may take the sheriff a year to serve papers on the husband unless there is a bribe... etc ad nauseam.

Many woman marry and then the man leaves for another woman. She is probably unable to get an annulment and therefore unable to marry, including a foreigner. She is essentially screwed.

There is a huge difference between the mores and practices of the affluent in the big cities, who have maid and servants and are very conservative in all things, and the entrepreneurial, what ever it takes attitude of many in the provinces where not only do they not have the maids, they don't have money to put their kids through 6th grade. (Think of the South before the civil war and the difference between landed gentry and the dirty poor. That exists today in the Philippines.)

The time zone for all the Philippines is +8 and there is no Daylight Savings Time. In NY during DST, the difference is exactly 12 hours.