VeryWellAged: Blog

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.

I have finished my internal edits after the third draft for the second thread. It has gone for outside review. It will probably be posted before the new year.

I find Jake an interesting character. In the first thread Jake was living in a world with clearly defined boundaries. In the second thread Jake is in a world where boundaries are less clear and rules less impermeable. In both Jake must balance appetite with... is it sanity?

In both Jake gets to define love and commitment in a way that makes so much sense to his psyche that he finds it almost humorous that others just can't see it.

Within the walls of Jake's reality he is trying to do good as he sees it. He just will see it very differently that the average person... or is it that he will admit to what others will not? Jake doesn't bother to ask the question. He assumes there are plenty of guys like him. For him it's not a matter of speculation, it is just not possible that he is wrong.

Jake doesn't live very far outside our world as we know it. In fact he could be here...

VeryWellAged
December 23, 2010

Now the painful second draft re-edit. I have no idea how long this will take, but I hope to have it completed and posted before the new year.

To my everlasting embarrassment Grisbuff found so many errors in my original work, it took four days to correct that blasted thing.

Every author should have such a close, careful and knowledgeable reader for an editor.

With some, after the fact, but outstanding editing assistance over 100 errors were squashed as I submitted rework of all 11 chapters tonight. When it posts, it should, I hope be displayed as version 1.1.

I am now half way through the first draft of the second thread and hope to complete it in a week or two.

For those, who enjoyed the first thread and sent me email, thank you. It was appreciated. Best wished to all for the holidays. Right now Jake is having the time of his life in Mindanao, not far from General Santos City. He has stocked up on fireworks for the celebrations to come.