No room for concrete in this column

This photo shows the top of a 15cm column trying to accommodate eight 16mm rebar from the roof beams and four 12mm rebar from the column. There is practically no room for concrete.  I ended up welding this tangle of rebar in the hope of gaining some strength from the rebar even if the concrete was minimal.  The post should have been sized by the engineers to be large enough to properly accommodate the rebar.  I told the engineer I wanted to demolish this column.  The engineer talked me out of it, however it should have been demolished and replaced with a larger column.

Demolishing just completed work

The engineers left out a support column needed to support a beam which they also left out.  One of the workers looked at the plans and saw the problem early on.  The engineers left out support for one end of a main roof truss.  We could not build in that defect, so we had to demolish a just constructed wall and wall footer (shown above) to allow us to pour a footer for the added column.  The concrete in the demolished footer was satisfyingly strong and resistant to demolition.

A column error corrected.

Workers laid block right up to rebar cage for columns, leaving inadequate room for the concrete portion of the column.  The block (which was filled with concrete) had to be cut back throughout the structure — a big waste of time.

Splicing error in roof beam rebar

This shows a rebar cage for the roof beam.  The splicing was done incorrectly.  No splicing plan was included with our drawings so the workers followed their own ideas which proved to be wrong.  See http://goiloilo.com/our-philippine-house-project-rebar-splicing/ for all the gory details.  This particular rebar cage was redone three times before it was done correctly.  I don’t blame the workers.  In our opinion, a splicing plan should have been provided by the engineers.

This column was demolished and replaced.   The concrete was too stony and dry because I went too far in insisting that  not too much water be added to the concrete.  As I learned, concrete can be a little wetter in hot conditions.

The effects of over vibration at the bottom of a column pour.

This defect was caused by my crew over-using the concrete vibrator.  The water and concrete slurry ran out of the bottom of the form, leaving behind the aggregate.  The crew tried to hide this from me by covering it with mortar.  I raked it out immediately.

Eight of the window openings were made 10cm too small and had to be chiseled so the windows would fit.

The welders were working at making the windows at the same time the window openings were being made.  Not great communication or oversight — including my own!

A friends of ours in Iloilo had their casement windows made by:

Denis Jaleco, denisjaleco@gmail.com, 0929-772-8699

Here’s a photo of the Jaleco casement windows in our friend’s bedroom.  These large windows give a light, airy feeling to this fairly small room.

Bedroom window 2m high and 2.5m wide (on a 3m ceiling and 3.5m wall). Also note sliding screens. These windows were custom fabricated.

The Jalecos (Denis is an architect and his father makes the windows) gave us a quote for all of our windows (12 in all) of about P90,000 installed but not glazed.  We thought this was a very fair price but since we already had a welding shop set up, our welders said they knew how to make windows, and they were running short of welding projects, we decided to try to make our own windows.

In the U.S. we’re used to windows being pre-made with fancy insulated glass, plastic cladding, smooth opening and locking hardware and big prices.  In the Philippines it’s quite common to weld up windows at the job site, especially for less expensive homes.  Here’s a steel casement window in a big house in one of Iloilo’s swanky subdivisions. You can see the security grilles behind the glass panes.  Our windows will be just about the same, with three pairs of sash per window, each having three panes of glass.  Our windows are bigger so the glass panes will be quite large — about 50cm high and 35cm wide.

Our welders beginning the fabrication of casement windows

Because steel window-making is common in the Philippines, the larger construction supply outlets stock the necessary materials; Z-bar, T-bar, I-bar, hinges and latches.  The problem is that such windows usually go into cheaper houses, so the materials are aimed toward affordability rather than quality.  This is so often the case in the Philippines.  The z-bar is the main problem.  Standard z-bar is very flimsy.  It was hard to find better z-bar.  We found somewhat better z-bar at Far Eastern Hardware on Quezon Street.  The cheap z-bar is P189, the better is P520.  We bought the better stuff, but it’s easy to see why the cheap stuff is the best seller.

"Premium" 7/8" z-bar from Far Eastern.

The z-bar constitutes the main item in window construction.  It is used to make the exterior of each sash.

This is the quite heavy I-bar stock.  It is used as part of the frame, separating the sashes.

T-bar

This is the the T-bar which separates the panes in each sash.

Another key part of the window is the security bars.  Practically all windows in the Philippines are protected with security grilles. With casement windows, the bars forming the grilles are welded to the interior of the steel window frame.  They are spaced to create a grid which the smallest child cannot climb through. You can see the grilles in the photos above.   This is because children are sometime used as part of a break-in.  If the children can squeeze through, they can then make their way to an entrance door and unlock it to allow the rest of the team to get in.

The windows themselves are welded to reinforcement bars embedded in the concrete walls.  The windows are then mortared into the wall openings making a very secure window.

Handles and security bars

We were able to find good quality window handles at Far Eastern Hardware in Iloilo City.  They have at least three grades of handles for those making their own casement windows.  These are the deluxe models at P45.  This photo also shows the 13mm security bars.

The first window being installed 3-12-10

and adjusted....

and welded to the rebar in the wall.

This makes for a fairly secure window.

The building looks a little more finished with windows installed.

COMMENT:  The materials available for window making, especially the z-bar — even if you buy the premium material, is still not that sturdy.  Perhaps heavier material is available in Manila, but another possibility is welding up your own z-bar and t-bar from flat bar.  This is going to involve more labor, but the reality is that labor is inexpensive in the Philippines.  Welding your own stock (say 3mm flat bar) means you can make really sturdy windows, something not really possible using the stock that was available in Iloilo City.  Our windows are fine, but if I had it to do over again, I would weld our own stock.

Another great thing about making your own windows is the complete flexibility to choose whatever thickness, color, energy efficiency of glazing (glass) you want to use.

More to come…..glazing, glazing compound, installation

Ours is a one-story house, so a single standard six meter long rebar (about 20 feet) can extend from the footer (1.2 M deep) to the topmost roof beam without splicing.  That’s a good thing.  Our columns used 12mm diameter rebar. All columns and beams also include rings of reinforcing steel called “stirrups”.  The stirrups are held in position using “tie wire”.  Together the rebar and stirrups make up the rebar cage which will go into a plywood form, the form will be filled with wet concrete to make a column or beam.

Column footer. The vertical rebar at bent at the bottom and secured to the footer rebar. When the footer concrete is poured the base of the column is well secured 1.2M (about 4 feet) underground.

The beams are a different matter.  Since the room beam length for our house is 13.5M and 15M,  the 6M beam rebar must be spliced.  How and where is splicing is done affects the strength of the beams and of the house.  Disappointingly, our engineers did not provide a rebar splicing plan with the plan package.  They should have.  Our good, experienced workers could neatly make the rebar splices but really had no idea of how much overlap there should be at the splices or where the splices should be.  Splicing was done incorrectly and had to be redone, in one case three times.  This wasted time and money and caused considerable frustration.

Since our workers had worked on dozens of houses this leaves one wondering about the errors embedded in them.  On commercial buildings there will likely be a supervising engineer, but on residences — who knows?  In the case of our house, if Bob had not been there, the critical roof beams would have been already poured and the mistakes, hidden.

Splicing error in roof beam rebar

The above photo shows the completed rebar cage for our east roof beam.  The rebar is 16mm diameter.  At the top and bottom are two rebars spliced together at the center of the beam.  This is wrong in two ways.  The top splice is OK as it is over the center of the span.  The bottom splice is wrong because it should be over a column.  Both splices have far too little overlap at 30 or 40cm.  The minimum is 64cm for 16mm diameter rebar.

Although this splicing was done by a excellent, experienced worker he was just guessing about how to assemble the rebar because the engineers had given no instruction in the plans.  Their lame excuse is that the workers should have known how to do the splicing. Further, the engineers could have, should have suggested using longer rebar (9M) which would need less splicing.

Here are the engineering rules-of-thumb we garnered regarding splicing:

• Splice beam top bars at locations between support columns.
• Splice bottom beam bars at or near support columns.
• The splice overlap should be a minimum of 40X the diameter of the rebar.  So, for 16mm rebar the splice should be a minimum of 64CM, for 12mm rebar, 48cm.

So, the above splicing violates every one of these rules.  The splice overlap was 30CM, less than one-half of what it should have been.  All bars were spliced in one location.  This rebar cage had to be taken down and completely redone.  Without supervision this beam would have been poured and the mistakes hidden forever, or until the first earthquake.

Why were our experienced workers ignorant of these rules?  The answer is a little scary!

Here’s a pretty good article on rebar, and rebar cage fabrications: http://www.wikihow.com/Tie-Rebar

Rebar cage at intersection of roof beams and column. Little room for concrete.

While our attention to  these construction details may seem over-obsessive (they certainly do seem so to our construction crew!), the Haiti disaster and now the Chile earthquakes show that proper engineering and construction can make the difference between life and death or at least between being able to live in your home after an earthquake as opposed to being homeless and starting all over again.

Here’s what the house looks like after thirty days of work:

After thirty work days...

Septic tank excavation

One of our workers has been assigned the job of digging the pit in which the septic tank will be built.  The three chamber septic tank will measure 3.1 meters (10 feet)  by 1.9 meters (6 feet)  and will be 2.1 meters deep (almost 7 feet). The tank will have a concrete slab on the bottom, filled, steel reinforced hollow block walls and a concrete  top with clean-out ports.

During typhoons, the considerable water from the roof downspouts, will be collected in a series of concrete catch basins and directed outside the lot.

The soil, as is true with most rice fields (that’s why they retain water as “rice paddies”) is extremely heavy clay.  The water table really varies with the season from being more or less at the surface of the land during the wet season to about fifteen feet down during the dry season.  If one had to do a percolation test to check the absorptive capacity of this clay  – well there must be none during the wet season.  During the dry season the clay becomes cracked and very absorptive.

There are complications with wastewater disposal in our “neighborhood”.  Being flat, mostly undeveloped farmland there is no municipal or subdivision drainage system into which to discharge.  As is typical, only “black water” (toilet waste) will go into the septic system.  Rain water from the roof gutters, and water from washing, sinks and showers will not be treated but will just be discharged as is.  As our neighborhood develops, probably a drainage system or ditch will be installed to carry wastewater to the nearest stream bed.  Many local families live along the streams and have their dug wells in or near the streams. Outside of treatment in a septic tank, there is virtually no sewerage treatment in the Philippines.  Boracay is one exception we know of.

When you buy property in a formal subdivision, you’re supposed to have access to a formal drainage system provided by the developer, an advantage.  The waste will just be eventually discharged into a ditch, stream, river or the ocean, but at least it will be carried away from your lot.  I have not heard of on-site leaching systems as are typical in the U.S.

Reinforcing bar framework for septic tank

In the Philippines, septic tanks are built on-site, not delivered by a truck.

Setting the rebar cage into the septic tank excavation

Concrete floor of tank and beginning of walls and partitions

Lots of smiles, even in a septic tank!

Septic tank just about done and ready for 4" reinforced concrete top. 3-3-10

Septic tank lid ready to be poured.

More details to follow.

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Splicing error in roof beam rebar

Our Philippine house building project: concrete roof beams.  This photo shows the 16mm rebar framework for the concrete roof beam which is supported by the columns and in turn will carry the considerable weight of the roof structure. For that see http://goiloilo.com/our-house-project-welding/.

A visit by our engineer confirmed a problem with the arrangement of the rebar in the beam.  Rebar comes in six meter lengths.  As shown in the photo, the workers spiced all the rebar in the center of the span.  The engineer directed that splices be staggered with no splices at mid-span in the bottom rebar and no splices at the support columns in the top of the beam. Everything you see above will have to be taken down and redone.  Our plans lacked a rebar splicing plan.  This has caused endless required corrections and wasted time and money. Our foreman and workers just don’t know the engineering principles. We’ve asked the engineer to prepare a splicing plan so that the workers (and owners) will be sure that things are done properly.  We suggest that you insist that your architect or engineer include a splicing plan.

Here’s a few rebar splicing guidelines we learned.  They are only rules of thumb.

• The splices for reinforcing bars in the top of the beam should be between columns.
• The splices for reinforcing bars in the bottom of the beam should be approximately over the support columns.
• The reinforcing bar splice overlap should be 40X the diameter of the rebar.  For example the splice on a 12mm rebar should be a minimum of 48cm.  For a 16mm bar, the splice should be at least 64cm.  Longer splices are better.

This photo (above) shows 16mm rebar spliced with a 40cm splice. The minimum overlap should be 64cm. This rebar cage had to be disassembled and redone.

Lintel Beam 2-19-10

The forms shown above are for the lintel beam.  This beam is at the top of the window and door openings to carry the load above those openings.  In the case of our house, the lintel beam will go around the entire perimeter of the house.  Above it will be two more courses of block and on top of that will be the main roof beam.

Rebar cage at intersection of roof beams and column.

It’s hard too see exactly where there is room for concrete in this dense tangle of rebar.  We’ll have to use small aggregate (the rule of thumb is that aggregate should be one-fifth the size of the smallest rebar opening) and gently vibrate the concrete.

A forest of bamboo scaffolding

Bamboo scaffolding in Kowloon, Hong Kong, 2005

The roof beam is complete

The crew worked feverishly to finish pouring the roof beam.  This is the last structural concrete work.  It will take two weeks for the beam to cure, then the steel roof trusses can go on.

More to come…..

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Our welders are paid P280 per day. Our equipment will be paid for in savings on the trusses. We are also considering constructing our own steel casement windows, steel door jambs, water tank tower, car port and lots of miscellaneous projects.  Welders and welding equipment are essential for just about any Philippine construction project.

Making roof rafters (trusses) in our new on-site welding shop

There will be five pairs of the roof truss (rafter) shown above.  Each half is 8.5 meters long, has a 2.5 meter rise and spans 6.5 meters. The total span is 13.15 meters.  The crew wanted to make each piece over-long, lift them up onto the roof structure and then cut them to fit the angle at the roof beam and at the cornice end.  This cutting and fitting of these heavy rafters high overhead did not make sense to me.  Coming from the U.S. and being a little familiar with pre-cutting wood rafters, it seemed to me that we had the necessary information to pre-cut these trusses on the ground. We did a layout on the ground to be sure our calculations were correct, welded up a rafter to use as a template and are making five identical pairs.  The crew will be watching to see if the Amerikano’s theory is correct!

More to come…

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A forest of bamboo scaffolding 3-10-2010

An index to posts about our Philippine house building project. A few of the links are not yet “live” but will become so as the project progresses.

Shopping for steel.  It does seem very difficult to save money on basic materials such as cement and steel.  While there are hundreds of construction supply firms, post-negotiation prices vary only by a few pesos.  There are some pitfalls.  Our specifications called for our roof trusses to be made of 2″ X 2″ X 1/4″ angle bar. Give this spec to construction material sellers and you’ll be excited by the price variations, hoping for a bargain.  Look deeper and you’ll see that there is no 1/4″ thick angle bar available.  After looking at angle bar from various sellers, I decided to buy a vernier caliper so that I could measure the thickness of various items.  It turns out that the prices varied because their response for a price on 2×2x1/4 included material not even remotely meeting the specification; 4mm, 5mm, 5.5mm and 6mm angle bar.  One-fourth inch equals 6.35mm.   The caliper is also useful for detecting undersized rebar.  Not surprisingly, it turns out that, once again, price differences are minor once you’ve finally managed compare products with similar specs.

There’s another complication.  It turns out that steel is sold by kilograms per meter.  This may be a fair way to price steel products but a difficult translation when your engineering specs call for 2″x2″x1/4″!

Welding. The angle iron in this load will be used to make roof trusses.  They will be constructed on-site by our crew, two of whom are experienced welders.  Setting up our own welding shop makes economic sense.  The 300 amp welder and AEG cut-off saw cost about P25,000 or about $500.  Our welders are paid P280 per day.  Our equipment will be paid for in savings on the trusses. We are also considering constructing our own steel casement windows.

My ambition to have top quality concrete quality concrete in our house project has sometimes led to frustration.  My crew are hard workers, but accustomed to their ways of concrete work.  The local gravel contains so much sand that the mix probably ends up being 1-3-2 (one cement, three sand and two gravel).   The workers like this sandy gravel because it’s easy to work with, flows easily into forms.  I pushed to use the washed 3/4′ gravel as the only aggregate, but I learned that the 3/4″ gravel in fact has larger stone which can lodge in the rebar cages.  Our most recent solution is to screen the supposed 3/4″ gravel with  a 1″ screen.  About half of the material passes through the screen.  The smaller material should work better in the columns and beams.

Trying to keep workers from adding too much water to concrete is a legendary Philippine construction problem.  They like to make soupy concrete because it flows easily and does not set-up quickly, it remains “workable”  for a much longer time than proper concrete.  It flows easily into forms.  Once the soupy concrete sets, it looks fine but really is weakened.  When I mange to get proper concrete made, the crew is horrified at at how quickly it sets.  It disrupts the way they are used to working.  I had read that some on-site supervising engineers have been so frustrated with this problem that they just disappeared from the project site.  I now understand their problem. Another problem is keeping workers from “tempering” (adding water and remixing) the already mixed concrete or mortar.  This is a definite NO on our project.  My insisting that concrete be mixed my way is resented by some crew members who have been working with concrete all their working lives.

The above photo is from the end of week three.  About $12,500 has been spent, but a good part of this is in materials stored on site but not yet used, including cement, block, and the load of steel shown above.

With some help from El Nino we have had perfect construction weather.  We have not had any rain since October.  This has been terrible for farmers but good for us. One continuing worry about the dry weather is that our well will run dry.  We use so much water for making concrete, cleaning tools and equipment, watering plants, and for our crew’s personal needs — washing, laundry and so forth.  So far the well has held up.  We had it redug deeper last year.  See http://goiloilo.com/digging-water-well-tigbauan-philippines/ From this point it should be about a month until we have our walls up and roof on.  After that, rain is not such a problem.

Walls, Feb. 13, 2010 (24 work days)

Wetting hollow block

Once you receive delivery of your hollow block, you must constantly keep them wet.  If they dry out they lose strength and eventually crumble back into the sand they were made from. 2-16-10. Day 26 of project.

Lintel Beam 2-19-10

Overview 2-19-10

Excellent new construction on plaza in Lucban, Quezon Province, Philippines

When we added some elements we wanted like a second floor verandah, this is what we got:

Perspective Drawing for our Tigbauan House

But we reluctantly abandoned these plans for a rather basic one story design similar to to a plan we had seen at SOS Children’s Village in Zarraga, Iloilo:

Cottage - SOS Children's Village, Iloilo

Here’s what we have ended up with:

A perspective drawing of the house we'll build

Here are some of the reasons  for our change of of heart as we gave them to a goiloilo.com reader:

Thanks for you appreciative comments about the house design. We had been working on it for three years, ever since we saw a similar design in historic Lucban, Quezon but we have to break the news that at the last minute we have abandoned this design and have decided to build a one-story house. I suppose our decision is really a triumph of practicality over aesthetics.

We had lots of good reasons for wanting a two story house. We wanted a perch where we could have an unimpeded view of the mountains and surrounding rice fields. We wanted to reach up to the cool night time breezes. We wanted to have a second floor refuge from any flooding, especially after experiencing Typhoon Frank in Iloilo City. I wanted an upstairs refuge from the family hubbub downstairs. An upstairs bedroom seemed more secure from robbers. Those were the advantages we saw, on top of the instinctive aesthetic appeal of the two story house. Psychologically, it was perching above rather than crouching below. My mother-in-law says there are two types of homes and home owners, “perchers” and “nesters”.

The building of our bahay kubo helped change our mind. As is traditional, the floor of the bahay kubo is about one meter above grade. This makes a standing adult above the level of the top of our eight foot fence. We are surrounded by land which either has already been subdivided or in in the process of subdivision. The pace of development in the Philippines is such that land around us will be developed, sooner or later. Our lot is only twenty-three meters wide. Our second floor would give us a ring side seat to whatever was going on a few feet away, karaoke, TV, crowing roosters and all the other aspects of exuberant Filipino life. If we built a single story house, our eight foot high concrete wall will provide a considerable buffer from whatever noisy chaos eventually surrounds us. I’m a little embarrassed to show how shallow or thinking was, but there you have it!

There are other advantages to the single story design. This is earthquake country. Panay had an 8.5 earthquake in 1948 which destroyed many buildings. Proper engineering for a two story concrete house (most are NOT properly engineered) calls for lots of very expensive 25mm rebar and steel decking to support the second story floor. A one story house is simpler, more or less like our fence with a roof. Our property is unusually exposed to typhoons. We are one kilometer from the sea on a flat, exposed, treeless plain. That gives us good breezes when it’s hot, but the typhoons will really blast us.

We came to realize that our experience with flooding in Iloilo City was not very relevant to our Tigbauan property which is about
fifty feet above sea level and did not flood during Frank. Certainly the two story house would survive, but maybe we’d be a bit more comfortable hunkered down in a one story house.

More importantly, we are enjoying having Carol’s niece in Tigbauan, sending her to school here and generally trying to give her a better future. Carol’s sister has also been staying with us. The only story house is less elegant, but gives us another bedroom for another niece or two. Eliminating the stairway and second floor complexity allows us to have a four bedroom house for less money than the three bedroom two story house.  In the end practicality ruled.  We knew the room sizes we needed and basically our home is a box containing these rooms.

We did have a few other design preferences.  We don’t use much air conditioning so we want our house to be comfortable without it. We wanted big windows to let in lots of light and breeze and also to reduce the thermal mass of the cement and block.  Our ceilings will be three meters (almost 10′) high and will have ceiling fans.  We have unusually big windows (2.4M wide and 1.6M high) and hence bedrooms may be hot during the day, but should cool off quickly in the late afternoon.  Three of our four bedrooms have cross ventilation, that is they are corner rooms with windows in two directions.  We wanted a big roof overhang to provide as much shade as possible.  Our overhang is 1.5 meters.  Our porch face north and so will be in the shade most of the day.  The location of our lot in open farm country means it’s very breezy, sometime excessively so during the dry NE monsoon.  We have already planted shade trees to the south of the house – Mango and Acacia.  We will put split air conditioning in two bedrooms.  Sometimes aircon is nice when you’re taking an afternoon nap on hot day.  We are pretty acclimatized to the heat but an air conditioned bedroom is an essential courtesy to for visiting friends and family.

Back to the one story design.  It also can’t be overlooked that the old foreigner who will occupy the house will turn 66 this year and intends to spend the remainer of his years in the house we build.  While one hopes to stay healthy and die peacefully in one’s sleep at a ripe old age, the reality is often grimmer.  The climb to our second floor bedroom might become impossible.  I recommend The Denial of Aging by Dr.Muriel Gillick.  It’s subtitled “Perpetual Youth, Eternal Life and Other Dangerous Fantasies”.  This book gives a good dose of reality about aging, but does it in a way which leads to clear thinking rather than depression.  By the way, my father died more or less instantly at 80 of a heart attack on a Florida golf course surrounded by his golfing buddies — so there are happy endings.

We looked at mixers at several locations.  The best we saw was at “New OK Marketing” on Ledesma Street in Iloilo City.  New OK impresses as one of those frantically busy businesses which move a large volume of product out of a small storefront. They seem to know their product, have a good stock of spare parts and can service what they sell.  So far, we are impressed with “New OK”.  They sell and repair all sorts of gas and diesel equipment including generators, brush cutters, chain saws, agricultural and construction equipment.

We also bought a more exotic bit of equipment, a gas powered internal concrete vibrator. One of the challenges of building with reinforced concrete columns, is getting the concrete to flow around all the rebar in the relatively small column forms and thoroughly fill all the voids without making the concrete so soupy that it is weak.

We decided to buy a Chinese-made gas powered internal concrete vibrator to ensure the quality of the columns.  This consists of a Robin 5 HP gas engine with a coupling for a six meter long flexible shaft.  At the end of the shaft is the vibrator mechanism. It bears a frightening resemblance to the equipment used in a colonoscopy! The vibrator is inserted into the wet concrete filled column to ensure that the concrete fills every void.

After considerable use of the vibrator, our conclusion is that it’s more suitable to commercial situations with trained operators and bigger pours.  Some of our workers over vibrated concrete in columns.  The result was that a slurry of water and cement ran out of the form leaving voids in the bottom of columns.  For us the vibrator probably did more harm than good.  See the photo below as an example:

The price of the mixer was P48,000 with a 6.5 HP Briggs and Stratton engine.  A Robin or Honda engine would have added P7,000.  Once proud Briggs and Stratton is now the economy option. We had a choice of a light duty mixer with a Robin or Honda engine or a heavy duty mixer with a Briggs and Stratton engine.   The heavy duty mixer looked 100% better than the cheaper model so we opted for it.  The price of the vibrator was P17,000.   As it turns out, both the mixer and the vibrator required repair.  The Robin engine had a defective ignition and had to be returned for repair.  Both times a problem getting repairs would have been caused vexing delays in the project, but were delighted to report that New OK has really stood behind the equipment they sold us.  The Robin engine on the concrete vibrator was fixed while we waited under warranty, at no charge.  We ran the cement mixer for one day and our foreman sensed that all was not well.  He removed the mixer bucket and found that  the main bearing roller bearing was frozen.  He hopped on a jeepney to Iloilo City and later the same day a technician from New OK appeared at our job site in a New OK truck with all the tools and replacement parts needed to replace the faulty roller bearing — and the new bearing was a USA-made Timken.  The entire repair was done so promptly and at no charge, so we happily recommend New OK if you need power equipment including generators, brush cutters, pumps, compressors, welders and similar equipment.  New OK, 29 Ledesma Street, Iloilo City.  033-337-1023, 335-0509, 337-6931.

Concrete vibrator in action

The business end of the concrete vibrator

Based on the first two weeks on the project, we can’t imagine not having the mixer.  It makes better concrete much, much faster.  We are less convinced about necessity of the vibrator.

Rebar cutter in action

This is a reinforcing bar “rebar” cutter.  Cutting and forming rebar is a big part of building in the Philippines.  On our fence project all rebar was cut with hacksaws.  For the house we invested in this rebar cutter.  It speeds up the work at little incremental cost.  I can’t say the number of “Lenox” hacksaw blades we bought on the fence project but it was dozens.  This cutter cost P4,300 and will be sold at the end of the project.  We bought our at Far Eastern hardware in Iloilo City.  Far Eastern is nirvana for the builder with every type of tool you can imagine on display.

A ponke in action

Building our house in the Philippines.  Ensuring concrete quality.  This photos shows the workers adding material to the cement mixer using a “ponke”.  The ponke is a wooden box with handles.  The inside dimensions of the ponke are 40cm x 40cm x 40cm.  The ponke is sized to hold one sack of cement.  I asked that the ponkes be built and used as a means of controlling the concrete mixture. After research,  we decided on a mixture of one part cement, two parts sand and three parts gravel – a 1-2-3 mix. The use of the ponkes makes it easy to get the mixture right.  Ponkes are rarely used in the Philippines now, but formerly were the norm .  Now materials are more commonly measured using empty cement sacks refilled with sand or gravel.  I wanted the ponkes and my ever patient crew accommodated another whim of the kano.

Our quest for construction quality led us to buy a cement mixer, an internal concrete vibrator and to used washed screened gravel for the columns and beams rather than ordinary unscreened gravel.  We paid P700 per cubic meter for the screened gravel versus P420 for regular gravel.  More on the mixer and vibrator at http://goiloilo.com/building-our-house-getting-started/

One of the crucial advantages of being you own contractor is that YOU have some control the quality and quantity of concrete and reinforcing bar.  If you don’t think this is important, study the photos of the Haiti earthquake.  While there was widespread destruction, many building survived with little or no damage.

Our 1-2-3 mix is almost considered to be an extravagance.  The house you buy already built probably won’t have such strong concrete.  1-3-5 is in common use.  I have seen deliveries of substandard reinforcing bar.  A poorly built house may be built with a “class B” or “class C” concrete mix and not enough rebar.  You’ll never know what’s in your house unless you build it yourself.  It might never matter, but here’s a photo of the church in nearby Oton, Iloilo which was destroyed in the 1948 Panay Island earthquake.

Magnificent Oton Church, destroyed by 1948 earthquake. About 8KM from our building site.

The plan of our house was designed by a structural engineer.  We’re trying to be quite strict in following the plans.  We see quite a bit of good engineering in the plans as we build.  Lots of reinforcing steel is used in critical areas, but much less in columns not carrying much load.  Sometimes good Filipino builders use traditional rules of thumb not based on engineering basics.  This can mean too much steel in places which really don’t need it and not enough in places that do.

At least in the provinces, the ambition to have quality concrete for your project can lead to frustration.  My crew are hard workers, but accustomed to their ways of concrete construction.  The local gravel contains so much sand that the mix probably ends up being 1-3-2 (one cement, three sand and two gravel).   The workers like this sandy gravel because it’s easy to work with, flows easily into forms.  Using 3/4′ gravel makes stronger concrete, but my workers hate it.  Even more importantly, trying to keep Philippine workers from adding too much water to concrete is a legendary problem.  They like to make soupy concrete because it flows easily and does not set-up quickly, it remains “workable”  for a much longer time than proper concrete.  I had read that some on-site supervising engineers have been so frustrated with this problem that they just disappeared from the project site.  I now understand their problem.  I have pushed so hard that it has caused real friction with my crew.   In my mind I know that when the forms are removed the columns and beams look great, impressively solid, the strength of good concrete may have been seriously compromised by my workers ingrained habits.

On a less technical note, I have to observe that this quest for perfection in construction is an obsession shared by many old foreigners building in the Philippines.  There is something a bit irrational about it. They spend too much money on the dream home of their autumn years — their last big enterprise.  Often they don’t end up living in the house for very long.  You’ll see lots of them for sale on the Internet.

Some build and find they don’t like living in the Philippines.  Most foreigners are retired and old.  Many become ill and return to their home countries. The houses they are building really don’t belong to them, as foreigners can’t own property in the Philippines.  The foreigner is dependent on the goodwill of the wife and her family.  This does not always work out.  The foreigner wants a building which will last for generations but it’s likely his residence will not be for long.

The Haiti earthquake comes as we have just finalized plans for our new house in Tigbauan, Iloilo in the Philippines.  Looking at the photos from Haiti, one sees construction that has much in common with that in the Philippines — reinforced concrete beams and columns with a soft block infill.  I have been concerned about some building practices I see in the Philippines; cement blocks that are mostly sand — so soft they can be crushed in ones hand, unwashed sand and gravel from rivers, soupy concrete with far too much water mixed by hand and used for support columns, concrete which starts to set but is revived with even more water so it “won’t go to waste”.   Comments I read about problems in Haiti seem so similar:

“There are also significant problems with the quality of building materials used, says Peter Haas, head of the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, a US-based non-profit group that has been working in Haiti since 2006.

“People are skimping on cement to try to cut costs, putting a lot of water in, building too thin, and you end up with a structure that’s innately weaker,” said Mr Haas, who was on his way to Haiti to help assess the safety of damaged buildings.

“Concrete blocks are being made in people’s backyards and dried out in the sun,” he said.”

Roger Bilham writing in Nature says, “In my visit to the region in the weeks after the earthquake, the reason for the disaster was clear in the mangled ruins — the buildings had been doomed during their construction. Every possible mistake was evident: brittle steel, coarse non-angular aggregate, weak cement mixed with dirty or salty sand, and the widespread termination of steel reinforcement rods at the joints between columns and floors of buildings where earthquake stresses are highest.”

One writer called these buildings, “rubble in waiting”.

In my own experience with building in the Philippines, non-angular dirty aggregate and dirty sand dredged from rivers is in very common use in Iloilo.

Also this from the Los Angeles Times:

Tectonics And Poor Construction Conspired To Create Devastation In Haiti – Latimes.Com

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-me-quake-science14-2010jan14,0,1587916.story

The catastrophic quake that struck Haiti on Tuesday involved a collision of lethal circumstances: a massive, shallow eruption below a densely populated city with few, if any, building codes.

The magnitude 7.0 quake occurred near the boundary between two major tectonic plates, the Caribbean and North American plates.

Most of the movement along these plates is what is known as left-lateral strike-slip motion, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, with the Caribbean plate moving eastward in relation to the North America plate.

Kate Hutton, a seismologist at Caltech, said the quake was similar to those seen along the San Andreas fault: It was shallow, a fact that enhances the intensity and makes it more localized to the region right along the fault.

“We are not surprised by any of it,” Hutton said.

The Haiti quake had many similarities to the 1989 Loma Prieta quake in Northern California. That quake, said Tom Heaton, director of Caltech’s Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory, “caused a lot of damage, but it wasn’t a disaster like this in terms of the number of people injured and killed.”

For engineers and others well versed in the strict guidelines that California, Japan and other quake-prone zones mandate, the devastation seen in Haiti — and other developing countries that have been hit by similarly sized temblors — is horrifying but understandable. They blame the high numbers of earthquake fatalities in developing countries on poor building construction and rapid urban growth.

Before about 1950, a given-sized earthquake would do about the same amount of damage in the developed and underdeveloped world, said Ross Stein, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif. Now the loss of life is typically 10 times higher in developing countries and the damage can be as much as 100 times higher, he said.

When a magnitude 7.9 earthquake rocked China’s Sichuan province in 2008, schools, hospitals and other public buildings collapsed, contributing to the huge toll — about 87,000 dead and missing. Shoddy school construction was blamed for the deaths of about 5,000 children.

The Chinese government was criticized for failing to impose strict building regulations, which it pledged to remedy.

Farzad Naeim, president of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, said that the quake in Haiti demonstrates “the same bad history, the nightmare, being repeated over and over again.”

Naeim said that older construction in the region was built at a time when “people didn’t know better.” And new construction, he said, has not kept pace with advances in earthquake engineering, including reinforcements that are standard for new construction in California.

Turkey had a “very advanced code” in 1999 when a magnitude 7.4 earthquake killed at least 17,000 people, said Stein, who has worked extensively in the country. But the government left it to contractors to do their own inspections, he said.

In a city like Istanbul, “you are not really going to get anywhere by making rules,” he said. “Many, many people are just pouring into the area without anything, and they knock down some trees and put a tent up. And the next year it’s a shack. And the next year it’s kind of a building. And the next year they start adding a floor as their family grows or other relatives come into the area.

“So here I am worrying about construction standards, but in reality so many of the buildings are built without any ownership, without any architect or engineer or anything,” Stein said.

“What you have to do is train people to build stronger buildings with the means at their disposal.”

Brian Tucker heads a Palo Alto-based group, GeoHazards International, that works with communities in developing countries to do just that. But he said that people “tend to treat earthquake disasters as God-given and controlled by God,” especially in countries with many other pressing problems.

“I try to respectfully tell people that the earthquake disaster is in our hands,” he said. “It’s not like a comet coming from out of space that you have no way of anticipating.”

Stein, of the USGS, said that part of the problem is that scientists have spent much of their time trying to understand the earthquake risks in California, Japan and other well-off parts of the world with high seismic hazards, while ignoring poorer and more densely populated parts of the world.

That’s why the United Nations Development Program and other international agencies have been helping vulnerable countries — including Jordan, Bhutan, China, Fiji, India and Iran — to improve planning for earthquakes. The U.N. advises governments to upgrade schools, hospitals and other public buildings to better withstand earthquakes; to impose stricter building codes; and to develop evacuation, rescue and contingency plans.

Jordan Ryan, director of the UNDP crisis bureau, said his agency estimates that 60 million people have been affected by quakes in the last 10 years.

Ryan said there had been progress in getting the issue onto the agenda of some governments. “It’s a very difficult argument to make,” he said.

“It’s like the old insurance argument: ‘Who cares about prevention? We don’t have enough money. We’re a poor country.’ ”

More reading:

Flawed Building Likely a Big Element – New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/world/americas/14construction.html?scp=4&sq=construction&st=cse

Haiti’s Buildings Weren’t Fit To Withstand Quakes NPR

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122547242

This is the design we’ve settled on.  More detail on how we chose this design at http://goiloilo.com/our-house-project-design-devolution/

A perspective drawing of the house we'll build

Beginning the layout

The first glitch occurred when the foreman doing the layout assumed that the front of the house faced the road to the south. The house actually faces north toward the mountains. As a result, much of the layout was reversed and had to be redone. Fortunately, no concrete had been poured and the corners were correct.

Rebar cutter in action

Our first load of rebar was delivered — 450 six meter long pieces.  All of these need to be cut and formed.  We bought a rebar cutter to speed the process, being shown here snipping 16mm rebar.  On our wall construction project we cut all the rebar with hacksaws. The rebar cutter really speeds the work.

This photo shows foreman Tatoy performing part of the big job of fabricating rebar cages.  This one is for a house corner column.  It six meters long.  The long vertical bars are 12mm and the stirrups are 10mm.  The rebar seems to have been made at Qian’an Jiujiang Wire Rod Co., Ltd. in China.  They claim to make 16 millions tons of steel products per year.  We paid (Jan 2010) P288 for 16mm rebar, P163 for 12mm and P113 for 10mm.  We are paying P209 for a bag of cement, P300 per cubic meter of sand and P420 for stone.  Sorted, washed 3/4″ stone is much more, P700 per cubic meter.

Excavating for column footers 1.2M deep

Column footer

This is a good overview shot showing how most construction is done in the Philippines.  This shows a column footer excavation which is 1.2 meters (about 4′) below natural grade.  The footer is one meter square.  A 8X8 mesh of 16mm rebar is at the bottom.  The column rebar core rises almost six meters (about 20′) above the bottom of the footer.  This rebar core will be encased in a plywood form into which concrete will be poured and then vibrated in an effort to ensure that there are no voids.   Easier said than done!   This is what greeted us when we removed the form from our first column.

The complicated rebar framework devised by our engineer is much more demanding than the usual square column with a vertical rebar in each corner.  Getting the wet concrete to flow through the multiple rebars is a challenge, especially when trying to avoid over wet concrete.  It’s a perpetual struggle to keep the workers from making the concrete too wet.   Another factor,  we were using 3/4″ gravel rather than the sandier gravel which is typical here.  The gravel “hung” in the rebar framework leaving big voids.  We demolished this column.  You can be sure that this kind of a problem wold be quickly hidden away if you are not on-site supervising.

Editorial comment. If we had it to do over again,  we’d use plain square columns rather than the complex design devised by our engineers. While there may be advantages to the design our engineers provided, the practical problems of building them correctly in the provincial Philippines are several.  Our good, experienced workers had no experience with such columns, or generally such complex rebar configurations.  The aggregate generally available in our rural area contains larger stone which tend to hang up in the small openings.  We had the advantage of a good crew who wanted to good work. a concrete vibrator and screened gravel.  Still we had continuing problems and wasted lots of time trying make good columns using the design we were supplied with. In a situation where supervision was lax the situation would be worse.  Trying to fill the complex framework, the workers would use soupy concrete.  Any voids and defects would be plastered over.  The real world end result could easily be a significantly weaker column than employing the usual simple  square column with four vertical rebar.

Practice makes perfect - an almost perfect corner column.

The rebar at the top of the columns will be tied into the reinforced concrete beams which top the walls of the house.  These elements make a strong, well-anchored frame which is filled in with weak hollow cement blocks which are also filled with rebar and concrete and then parged with a thick coat of stucco-like concrete.  Metal roof trusses are also anchored into the concrete room beams.  The trusses will support long span steel roofing.  We decided to use 6″ hollow block for the exterior walls and four inch block for the interior partitions.  We are purchasing our block from Damasco in Pavia, Iloilo.  We used Damasco block for our perimeter wall.  In our view Damasco is the gold standard for block in Iloilo.  One does pay a premium. Local four inch hollow block costs P9, delivered.  Damasco 6″ block costs P13 delivered, 4″ Damasco block costs P12.   Using better block is a minor extravagance as the cost of block is a surprisingly small part of total construction cost.  More on hollow block shopping at http://goiloilo.com/our-house-project-cement-blocks/

At the end of our first week of construction the first concrete is poured

2″ X 2″ lumber is a staple of construction in the Philippines, used for layout as seen above and with 1/2″ marine plywood for building forms.  Typically the 2X2 is “coco” lumber – lumber from the coconut tree.  My foreman insisted that we buy mahogany instead, saying the coco is dangerously weak.  I reluctantly agreed – coco is P55 for a 2×2x8′, mahogany is about P75 and we needed a few hundred pieces.  Now I’m a convert.  The mahogany is stronger and more durable.  Coco lumber in forms under under pressure from wet concrete does give way more easily.  I do feel guilt.  Much of the mahogany is beautiful furniture grade material.

A ponke in action

This photos shows the workers adding material to the mixer using a “ponke”.  The ponke is a wooden box with handles.  The inside dimensions of the ponke are 40cm x 40cm x 40cm.  The ponke is sized to hold one sack of concrete.  I asked that the ponkes be built and used as a means of controlling the concrete mixture.  We decided on a mixture of one part cement, two parts sand and three parts gravel – a 1-2-3 mix. The use of the ponkes makes it easy to get the mixture right.  Ponkes are rarely used in the Philippines now, but used to be common.  Now materials are more commonly measured using empty cement sacks refilled with sand or gravel.  I wanted the ponkes and my ever patient crew accommodated another whim of the kano.  (Anyone with information on the correct spelling and etymology of “ponke” please leave a comment.   It sounds like it may have a Chinese origin.  This makes special sense as Chinese workers were prominent in the Philippine construction trades.)

One of the crucial advantages of being you own contrator is that YOU control the quality and quantity of concrete and reinforcing bar.  If you don’t think this is important, study the photos of the Haiti earthquake.  While there was widespread destruction, many building survived with little or no damage.

Our 1-2-3 mix is almost considered to be an extravagance.  The house you buy already built probably won’t have such strong concrete.  1-3-5 is in common use.  I have seen deliveries of substandard reinforcing bar.  A poorly built house may be built with a “class B” or “class C” concrete mix and not enough rebar.  You’ll never know what’s in your house unless you build it yourself.  It might never matter, but here’s a photo of the church in nearby Oton, Iloilo which was destroyed in the January 28, 1948 Panay Island earthquake.  You can still see damage from this earthquake at the Alimodian church, only a few KM from our Tigbauan site. Also see http://earthquake.phivolcs.dost.gov.ph/update_SOEPD/Earthquake/1990PanayEQ/index-panay.html regarding the 1990 7.1 Panay earthquake which collapsed buildings in Culasi and elsewhere.

The plan of our house was designed by a structural engineer.  We’re trying to be quite strict in following the plans.  We see quite a bit of good engineering in the plans as we build.  Lots of reinforcing steel is used in critical areas, but much less in columns not carrying much load.  Sometimes Filipino builders use traditional rules of thumb not based on engineering basics.  This can mean too much steel in places which really don’t need it and not enough in others.

Magnificent Oton Church, destroyed by January 28, 1948 earthquake. This is about 6KM from our house site.

Concrete vibrator in action

Look closely and you’ll see the worker using a length of rebar as a probe.  They’ve learned that large pieces of gravel can become lodged in the rebar preventing the flow of concrete down the column.  The internal concrete vibrator (more info at http://goiloilo.com/our-house-project-equipment-shopping/) makes the concrete flow better but can’t be depended on to dislodge stuck gravel.

Our latest response was to screen our gravel exclude larger stone that could hang up in the columns or beams.  We built a simple screen for our gravel using hardware cloth with a 1″ x 1″ mesh.  About one-half of our supposed 3/4″ gravel makes it through this mesh. We will use the smaller material for critical uses such as columns and beams, the larger stone is used in footers and fill for the hollow block.

Our conclusion is that the concrete vibrator caused more problems than it solved.  Most this is because most of our workers had never used a vibrator before and over used it.  In the case of columns, over vibration caused a slurry of water and cement to drain out of the bottoms and sides of the forms.  Left behind were the aggregate but not enough cement to hold it together.  This is shown in the photos below.  Probably with trained workers and larger projects, concrete vibration results in higher quality concrete but for us that was not the case.

The effects of over vibration at the bottom of a column pour.

A column error corrected.

Here’s another worker error caught by our engineer.  Generally the column rebar goes up first, then footers for the hollow block walls.  Then the walls go up around the column rebar. The pouring of the column is the last step.

Here the workers put the hollow block almost against the rebar cage for the column, leaving no room for the concrete forming the column.  This would have resulted in a much weaker column because the block has little strength.  The solution was quite time consuming, chipping or cuting back the block to give one inch of clearance between the hollow block and the column rebar.  With hollow block filled with concrete, this took quite a bit of time.  My foremen, who have built many houses, allowed this to happen, suggesting that it was their usual practice.

Next chapter: Our Philippine House Project – Walls http://goiloilo.com/our-house-project-week-three/

The immediate neighboorhood

National Highway to the right

To the beach.....

Beach front

• FRONT THE NATIONAL ROAD TO THE EAST
• NEXT TO RAPSAG BEACH RESORT TO THE SOUTH
• NEXT TO CUYO EAST PASS (OCEAN) TO THE WEST
• NEXT TO CABANGTUHAN RIVER TO THE NORTH
  
• CLEAN O.C.T. TITLE, NO LIEN OR ENCUMBRANCE
  
• GREAT SITE, EXCELLENT TRAFFIC VISIBILITY
  
• CLEAN CLEAR COOL SEAWATER OFFSHORE
• GREAT FISHING AREA, TUNA AND ETC.
• 4 KM DISTANCE FROM TOWN PROPER OF TOBIAS FORNIER (DAO)
• 23 KM DISTANCE FROM TOWN PROPER OF SAN JOSE
  
• ELECTRIC TO PROPERTY

We are asking 1,495,000 Peso and are flexible to the terms and price and are also willing to Subdivide a portion. We prefer to deal with “Direct Buyers”, however, we are willing to pay 3% commission to buyer agent.

Galphimia Vine (Tristellateia australasiae)

We could not resist starting to plant trees and shrubs on our lot even though a final site plan has not been done or even the final amount of filling determined.  This is because we pass through Villa, Iloilo every time we travel from Iloilo City to Tigbauan and Villa is the garden of Iloilo.  Villa is blessed with superb soil.  This has resulted in  thriving, pervasive plant, shrub and tree growing vendors practically everywhere in Villa.  How can one drive past all these beautiful flowering plants and not want to take some home?  We could not.  Here’s a tally of what we’ve planted so far.

Manila (Christmas) palms

Royal palms

Bougainvillea (lots!)

Batuan http://www.marketmanila.com/archives/fresh-batuan

Allmanda aka Golden Trumpet, Yellow Bells

Indian Mango (from a pit left by workers)

Carabao Mango

Flame Tree (Delonix regia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Poinciana Ours is tiny.  We are sad to note that most of the beautiful flame trees which graced General Luna Street in Iloilo City have been cut down to make way for a “flyover”.

Malunggay (Moringa oleifera) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malunggay

Pomelo (similar to grapefruit)

Calamansi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calamansi

Gardenia

Coconut, Dwarf

Tomato, Roma (seems to be doing well)

Tamarind, Chinese http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/engl/Tama_ind.html

Banana, Lacatan. Many think this variety is the world’s best banana.  The common banana avialble in the U.S. is the Cavendish, a large and comparatively tasteless variety.  See http://www.marketmanila.com/archives/lacatan-latundan-senorita-bananas

Talisay (Umbrella Tree)  This came as a “weed” in another plant we were given.  We planted it and it’s growing like crazy! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminalia_catappa

Camote (for greens)

Avocado

Galphimia Vine (Tristellateia australasiae)

Madagascar Periwinkle (Vinca rosea)

Madagascar Periwinkle

Keffir Lime http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaffir_lime and http://www.thaitable.com/Thai/Ingredients/kaffir_lime_leaves.htm

Lemon Grass

Kang Kong – grows everywhere!

If you reside outside of the U.S., probably not, but your “tax home” must be in a foreign country and you must be outside the U.S. for a minimum of 330 days per year.

Here’s what the Senate bill says:

SEC. 1501. REQUIREMENT TO MAINTAIN MINIMUM ESSENTIAL COVERAGE.

(4) INDIVIDUALS RESIDING OUTSIDE UNITED STATES OR RESIDENTS OF TERRITORIES- Any applicable individual shall be treated as having minimum essential coverage for any month–
(A) if such month occurs during any period described in subparagraph (A) or (B) of section 911(d)(1) which is applicable to the individual, or
(B) if such individual is a bona fide resident of any possession of the United States (as determined under section 937(a)) for such month.

and here is the referenced section of the U.S. Code:

U.S. Code, TITLE 26, Subtitle A, CHAPTER 1, Subchapter N, PART III, Subpart B
§ 911. Citizens or residents of the United States living abroad

(d) Definitions and special rules
For purposes of this section—
(1) Qualified individual
The term “qualified individual” means an individual whose tax home is in a foreign country and who is—
(A) a citizen of the United States and establishes to the satisfaction of the Secretary that he has been a bona fide resident of a foreign country or countries for an uninterrupted period which includes an entire taxable year, or
(B) a citizen or resident of the United States and who, during any period of 12 consecutive months, is present in a foreign country or countries during at least 330 full days in such period.

Here’s a link to an IRS publication which discusses foreign tax homes. http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/article/0,,id=96950,00.html

If Medicare or Tricare for Life, these meet the requirement to have medical insurance.

Chinese Cemetery in Molo Iloilo City. Molo is reported to be the "Parian" of Iloilo -- the Chinese district.

Under Spanish rule travel and residency of Chinese were tightly restricted until late in the 19th century.  Most “Chinese” residents of Iloilo were Chinese men who married local women and became mestizos.   Especially in Iloilo, the Chinoy  mestizos converted to Catholicism, prospered, were considered loyal Spanish subjects and were freed from restrictions involved with being Chinese.  Manila, Cebu and Iloilo had the most significant concentrations of Chinese in the Philippines in the 19th century, hence a Chinese cemetery.

An interesting compilation of overseas Chinese cemeteries can be found at http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/special-collections/papers/ch_cem.htm

The list shows a surprising number of Chinese cemeteries in Mindanao.  This is probably because under Spanish rule the Chinese were subject to heavy taxation and periodic expulsions and massacres. Since Mindanao and Sulu were really never fully under Spanish control, many Chinese fled there.

We were quoted a price of P250 per cubic meter.  We happended to know that another major buyer of this same material paid P160 per square meter so we offered P170 for 150 cubic meters.  Our offer was accepted.

The truck drivers and helpers ham it up for the camera. Bahay kubo in background.

Four or five trucks delivered the fifteen ten cubic meter loads in one day.  The truck were constantly getting stuck in the clayey soil of the lot.  The workers were pretty good natured about that even though digging the big trucks out was a lot of work.

Perspective Drawing for our Tigbauan House

All about choosing an architect and builder for your Philippine house — our experiences and recommendations.

We spoke with many architects about our Tigbauan, Iloilo house project.  It seems to be the norm for the architect to either have his own construction crew or to have favored construction outfits they work with.  Most Philippine architects will just do the plans for you if you insist, but since most of the profit is in the construction, they are more eager to be involved in both design and construction.  Here are some of the options for the foreigner wishing to build his Philippine dream home.

1. Pay for design services and hire your own crew to do the construction work.   This approach has several advantages if you have the time, skills and confidence to use this approach.  You cut out the substantial profits which would go to the architect/general contractor.  You buy your own materials.  You get the quality you want and avoid the cut the architect/contractor would have almost certainly arranged for himself.  As construction progresses, you are free to make changes without dealing with a contractor trying to get extra pay for change orders.  You are paying your crew by the day so you are in control of any modifications or  added expense. Pay the architect to make site visits on an as-needed basis, at times when there are problems you don’t feel competent to assess or resolve. Since the architect has no business relationship with the construction crew, the architect can be on you side, looking out for your interests.

The key person in this approach is the construction foreman.  An honest and competent foreman is essential.

This is the approach we are taking  with our house building project. We have hired an engineer to develop the plans and obtain the needed permits.  There are seven sheets of plans but no specification manual.  The total cost of plans and permits is projected to be P30,000.

Update: We’d like to reiterate the necessity of having a knowledgeable foreman. The plans were provided by our engineer were lacking in detail.  The engineers assume that many of the construction standards and details will be worked out by the construction crew.  This is a possibly dangerous delusion.  For example there was no rebar splicing plan.  Incorrect splicing makes a weaker building.  There were few dimensions much less plans for the welded steel roof structure.  Our crew, good workers, who had built dozens of houses, did not know the most basic engineering rules so they guessed and did their best. Bob was on-site and caught the problems but much time and money wasted.  Had Bob not been on-site, the crew would have built the house, but with many defects which would have been invisible under plaster and paint.  One good effect; Bob and the crew are getting an modest engineering education.

We are paying our engineer to make regular site visits.  For us this is essential.  We pay her P1,000 per visit.

Despite these problems, we feel that the best bet for a quality house at a reasonable price is finding a good foreman, hiring your own crew, buying your own materials, employing an engineer for on-site visits — that is if you are willing and able to be on-site to oversee the work.

2. Hire an architect to do the design work and put the project out for bid. Shop your project to several contractors.  As in the U.S. this approach invites contrators to low ball their bid and then to cut every corner and seek additional pay for the smallest change or ambiguity in the plans and specifications.   There is little possibility that this approach will work unless the plans and specifications are very detailed. Establish strict mile posts and a corresponding payment schedule.  Be very careful about requests for a large “mobilization” initial payment.  Do not let payments to your contractor get ahead of work actually completed.  This will be a constant struggle.

3. Hire an architect to design and build your house. This is not the least expensive option, but may be the best for property owners unwilling, unable or unavailable to hire a crew of workers and supervise the house construction project.  Here, everything depends on the integrity and competence of the architect-builder.  You must do a comprehensive background check.  Find out what he’s built and not just from him. Look at the houses he’s built.  Talk to owners.  Usually they’ll be glad to show off their houses, or share complaints.  We used this option to hire a talented and personable young Iloilo architect to design and build our perimeter fence.  I did everything wrong.  I only looked at one of his projects.  He drew up the contract and I did not review it critically enough.  I advanced too much mobilization money.  The money must have been spent for other purposes because work slowed to a crawl.  I had to take over the project.  It went well after that, but we lost a lot of money which we were never able to recover. You can read all about it in a separate account here.

With the usual trepidation,  can suggest an Iloilo design-build outfit. Joemarie Yao is a talented designer and an experienced builder.  We’ve seen a number of his buildings and spoken to satisfied clients. As with many sucessful architects, he’s a bright, articulate and charming salesman for his firm.  Once your contract has been signed, your project will probably be turned over to his staff.  The only complaint that we’ve heard is that things do not progress quickly enough for some clients.  If we were going to hire a design-build firm, it would be that of Joemarie Yao, mostly because we appreciate his design talent which tends toward simplicity rather than ostentation.  We have no business association of any kind with him.

4. Buying a lot and house package in a subdivision. Many buy their homes as a lot-house-financing package from a subdivision developer.  There are many such heavily promoted subdivisions in Iloilo City, some run by large Philippines development companies.  They buy large tracts of land cheaply, make improvements (especially lavish gate houses), and make money multiple ways;  selling the lots, building the houses and interest from installment payments.  You’ll be shown a prettily furnished model home.  The base price can seem reasonable, but often not much is included — maybe not even kitchen counters.  By the time you add in all that’s needed to make a livable home you may find that you’re paying a high per square meter price for a house of mediocre quality.  I have heard so many complaints about the quality of such houses and the unwillingness of developers to correct after sale problems.

Buying a house and lot package is an easy option, but we believe it is better to buy a lot and build your own house on it.  Most of the high-end subdivsions only sell lots and leave it to the purchasers to build their own houses. The house lot packages are mostly sold in the lower and mid-range subdivisions.

We build a “bahay kubo” bamboo guest house.  We’re planning on building our conventional concrete house in early 2010.  The plans are just about complete.  More on that later. We decided we’d build one of the pretty native houses, a “bahay kubo”  as a first step.  We selected the above photo of a Panay Island home  to guide the local workers as to what we wanted.  The photo is from the wonderful book “Folk Architecture”, published by GCF Books, Quezon City, 1989.  This book not only has hundred of photos of bahay kubos and other vernacular Philippine architecture but also measured drawings of many of them.

Our rationale for building this now is that we can use the building as “barracks” for our workers from Iloilo City while they work on our house.  It’s likely that we’ll use the same Iloilo City foreman and key crew members as built our fence.  We’d like to give them a little better accommodations than they had for the fence project.  They will stay on-site from Monday to Saturday pay day.  Saturday evening they take a jeepney into Iloilo City to see their family and give their pay — or most of it — to their family. So they spend five nights per week at the site.

Once the house project is complete, the bahay kubo will be used as a very atmospheric guest house.

The bahay kubo is 23′ x 12′ including the porch.  We decided to build using four concrete corner posts or columns which will extend all the way to the top plate.  The columns contain four 10mm rebars which extend above the top of the columns and which will be bent over the top plates to secure the roof strucure from being blown away.  The columns will be one part of the structure the termites can’t eat!  The rest of the building will be built entirely from bamboo and coco (coconut) lumber.  The roof will be of nipa — the thatched leaf of the nipa palm.

Construction began on Tuesday, November 3, 2009 with a crew of four on site.  Here’s a few photos:

The standard Filipino column footer and four 10mm rebar column reinforcement.

This photo shows the location on the lot and the surroundings.

The columns going up.  They will be hidden in bamboo cladding.

Day 9 of project, total expense so far $510

Excess rebar coming out of column tops is bent over top plate to try to stop the roof from blowing off in a typhoon. This is standard practice.

The roof will be thatch from the Nipa palm. We paid P360 per 100 panels of thatch.

Nipa thatch being laid. It is tied on to the roof structure with thin nylon rope. We are laying the nipa with a 3" exposure.

The split bamboo floor being laid over the coco lumber joists.

Our bahay kubo will be sheathed in tad tad.  Tad tad (which means chop-chop in Tagalog and Ilonggo) is bamboo which is unrolled into a flat panel using a bolo to make many cuts in the bamboo until it lies flat.

Marlo is using his bolo to split open bamboo to form a flat panel

The finished tad tad panel ready to be installed as wall sheathing

Tad tad is supported by a bamboo framework

Mortises are chisled into the bamboo studs

Wall framing. The short studs are for window openings.

More progress

Making Shutters

Installing shutters

Porch added, also bamboo shutters

Inside the bahay kubo. We project the final cost to be about $1,500 USD.

Sunset light on bahay kubo.  Note  ”security” light on right.  As is traditional, the globe is the bottom of a plastic bottle, in this case a water bottle.  Vinegar bottles are also popular.  Inside is a 26W compact fluorescent bulb.  These lights, as well as lights and outlets inside the bahay kubo, were installed over the weekend by a neighbor who does electrical work.  Next steps will be adding a porch railing and bamboo strips to hold down the nipa roof.

It’s been hot and dry lately but the bahay kubo stays cool.  The windows set high on the walls and the wide roof overhang keep the sun out of the house during the day, even though there is no trees or shade.  The very open breezy site also helps.

The completed bahay kubo. Thirty five days labor and $1,500.00

Interior with Christmas decorations

Happy homeowner!

Our Tigbauan land is surrounded on all sides by what seems to be flat rice fields, sort of a tropical Kansas.  Fortunately, we have a nice vista of the mountains of Iloilo and Antique Province.  One feature of Google Earth is that it shows the elevation of any location that your mouse cursor  hovers over.  Flooding is a real problem for Iloilo property owners. So, if you locate the property you are considering, you can “cruise” your neighborhood to see if the property you are considering is in a low spot relative to surrounding properties and relative to rivers, fishponds and other water bodies which could present a flood hazard.  I’m not sure how accurate the Google Earth elevations are, but they are well worth adding as one more way to investigate property you are consider buying.

So, how did our Tigbauan property fare? It turns out that our property is the lowest spot in our general neighborhood at 38′ or 39′ above sea level.  Much of the surrounding terrain is 40′ to 42′ above sea level.  Since we are far from any water bodies, we don’t feel we face any real problems but this information will lead us to put a bit more fill on our lot to be sure that it does not continue to the neighborhood’s low spot. So, Google Earth has already helped us with our real estate project!

Look closely and you can see the arc of the net

The net closes, hopefully with a haul of fish.  Note the wooden harnesses used to give the net handlers leverage to haul in the net.  This is hard work!

The final catch resulting from much hard work by many hands and investment in fishing gear. This small catch of mostly tiny fish must be divided among several families.

Locally grown organic rice is available in Tigbauan.  Stop by the Sol y Mar Resort to purchase. We paid P40 per kilo.  Our standard rice has been the excellent Dinorado which we have been buying in 10 kilo bags at Robinson’s Supermarket in Iloilo City but we like the fresh taste of the Zayco Natural Farm rice.

Gay and Straight Bar on J.M. Basa Street, Iloilo City

Related link: http://scrimgeour.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/who-killed-epi-ramos/

However, Medicare offers the “Medicare Advantage Program” as an alternative to traditional Medicare.  The Advantage programs provide medical services through private insurance companies, usually HMOs.  These plans receive payments from the Federal government to provide Medicare services to Advantage program enrollees.

The Medicare Advantage providers are allowed to provide services beyond those allowed under traditional Medicare.  For example, most Advantage programs offer dental and vision services.  It appears that the Advantage programs are also free (to an unknown extent) to provide services overseas.  Here’s what the Medicare brochure says: “If you have a Medicare Advantage Plan (like an HMO or PPO) or anotherMedicare health plan, your plan may offer additional coverage for health care services you get outside the U.S. Check with your plan before traveling to seewhat’s covered.”  See http://www.medicare.gov/Publications/Pubs/pdf/11037.pdf

At least one Medicare Advantage program, the Care1st HMO in Southern California is said to be linking up with an physician’s group (IPA), United Physicians International to provide Medicare Advantage services to provide Medicare services in the Philippines through their clinic at The Medical City in Manila.  The Medical City is a well respected hospital, however I don’t have detailed information on the relationship between TMC and UPI.  See the Medical City website.

One thing to keep in mind — with traditional Medicare you are free to seek medical services from just about any hospital or physician in the United States, including relatively nearby Hawaii.  If you enroll in a Medicare Advantage program, you are generally required to use providers which are part of the Advantage Plan network you have joined.  At some point you may need or desire to return to the U.S. for treatment.  You will restricted to hospitals and physicians in your HMO network.  So basically you get coverage in the Philippines at The Medical City in exchange for giving up nationwide traditional Medicare coverage in the U.S.

Another possible complication with the UPI/Care1st program is that you must reside in Southern California to enroll in Care1st.  There may be other Medicare Advantage Programs offering similar services.  The economic rationale seems compelling.  The HMO receives Medicare funding but pays for medical services at drastically lower Philippine rates.

Despite  teething problems, these new programs have the potential to be a tremendous benefit to expat retirees.

You can see a copy of the UPI brochure here.

We have a Filipina acquaintance from Tigbauan who is a nurse in Los Angeles.  She is an agent for the UPI Program.  You may contact her for additional information.

If any reader knows of similar programs, please let us know.

1. On your Mac, download the utility “Address Book to CSV Exporter 1.3a” here:  http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/internet_utilities/addressbooktocsvexporter.html
2. Run this simple program.  It will create a .csv file containing your Apple address book contacts.
3. On your Mac, open Google Mail.  If you don’t have a Google account (and you should have one), you can open one just for this task and then discontinue it when done.
4. On the left of the Google Mail window, you’ll see “Contacts’.  Click this.
5. On the upper right you’ll see an “Import” button.  Click it.
6. An “import” page will open up. At this point you’ll have to decide if you want to send ALL your contacts to Windows Contacts or just the ones from your Mac Address Book.  I wanted to import all my contacts so I chose not to create a new group but rather to add the stuff from Address Book to my existing Google contacts.
7. Staying on the same page, click the “Choose File” function and navigate to the .csv file you created in Step 2.
8. Google will import the contacts into your Google contacts.
9. Once that is done go back to the Google contacts import/export page and click on export.
10. Choose “Outlook CSV format (for importing into Outlook or another application)” as your export option.
11. This will create a contacts.csv file, ready to be imported into your Windows PC
12. You can move this to your PC on a Windows formatted USB thumb drive or email it to yourself.
13. Open the Windows Contacts program.  On the top ribbon is an “Import” command.  Open this.
14. Choose “CSV”
15. Navigate to the Google created .csv file on your thumb drive and begin the import to Windows Contacts.

This worked flawlessly for me.  I hope this helps you.  Comments or corrections welcome.

Why would I want to move from years as a Mac user to a PC?  http://goiloilo.com/buying-a-laptop-computer-philippines/

St. Therese-MTC College, Tigbauan, Iloilo. This seaside campus is a short walk from our apartment in Tigbauan.  It offers mainly maritime courses and degrees.

St. Therese-MTC College, Tigbauan - courses and contact information

The Montessori School is located in the quiet, green church yard

The church yard where the Tigbauan Montessori School is located

Memorial to Cory Aquino

Tigbauan Church from Plaza

Tigbauan Church – San Juan Sahagun Parish: history architecture and photos. An ecomienda given to Esteban Rodriguez de Figueroa, Tigbauan became a visita of Oton on 3 March 1575. Although it had become an independent parish in 1578, no permanent priest was assigned to Tigbauan until 1580, when Fr. Luis de Montoya was assigned as prior. Originally under the advocacy of Our Lady of Grace it was later renamed Juan de Sahagun, after an Augustinian saint. In 1593, the parish was handed over to the secular clergy because the friar, Fr. Garcia de Quiroga, was appointed secretary of the province and had to leave the Visayas. The seculars held the parish until 1617 when they were assigned to Antique (Hamtic) in exchange for Tigbauan. Fr. Fernando Camporredondo may have built the Tigbauan church described in a report of 1848 as made of yellow limestone and which survived the earthquake of 13 July 1787 despite its considerable height. Fr. Fernando Martin is credited with building the present church, though Augustinian historian Pedro Galende, opines that he may have reconstructed a previous church, since the description of his work corresponds to the one previously mentioned. Only the church façcade, bell tower and a few pillars of the convento remain. The same earthquake that brought Oton to the ground damaged the interior in 1948, apparently. The interior is greatly renovated and has been decorated with mosaics in 1994.

Stone carving, Tigbauan Church

Heritage Features: The facade design is simple: a rectangle surmounted by a triangular pediment, the whole hemmed by thick pillars on either side. To the façcade’s right is the three-story bell tower composed of cubes decreasing in size and capped by a pyramidal roof. A lintel and post doorway and an arched window mark the first story while the second story has no apertures. The third story had arched windows. What gives the whole façade distinction is the low relief decorating the central portal. Here a retablo-like design fills the central section. Pilasters, similar to the Mexican estipite flank the entrance, between are low relieves of flowers and cords, all finding focus in the cherub head that decorates the capstone of the entrance. Running horizontally from pilaster to pilaster is a floral frieze at whose center is the seal of the Augustinian order. This band marks the division between the first and second stories. Above is a niche flanked by pilasters embellished with flowers and volutes. The church patron San Juan is depicted. Above the niche is a low relief of the Santo Niño inside a niche. The triangular pediment of the whole structure carries a low relief of flowers arranged inside a rectangular plaque.

The Panublion project was funded by the Spanish government through the Ateneo de Manila University and overseen by R. Javellana. Please visit the Panublion web site at:,

http://www.ateneo.edu/offices/mirlab/panublion/preface.html

Lots more about the Spanish architectural heritage of Tigbauan at:

http://goiloilo.com/spanish-heritage-tigbauan-iloilo/

Sunday Services at Tigbauan Church

Tigbauan Church Entrance - Doorway

“Plateresque” Tigbauan Church Entrance

Many of the architectural descriptions of the Tigbauan church describe it as “Churrigueresque”. This exotic appellation sends just about everyone to their reference books to figure out what it means.

Churrigueresque refers to the florid, over-decorated style practiced by a family of sculptors and architects in 18th century Spain, the Churrigureas. The style had some currency in Spain and Spanish America. One architectural dictionary describes Churrigueresque as a lavish piling up of surface ornamentation, especially stone carvings. In Mexico, the Churrigueresque ended up incorporating indigenous themes.

The Tigbauan church does have some intricate and quite beautiful stone carving on its principal façcade, facing the plaza. Were the friars enthusiasts of the Churrigueresque style, possibly having glimpsed it in Spain or Mexico? There is another possibility. There is considerable evidence in the literature that the skilled building trades in the Visayas were dominated by Chinese craftsmen — they were almost certainly men at the time. Chinese architecture during the Ming and Qing dynasties exhibit fabulous stone carving, not dissimilar from that seen on the Tigbauan church façcade.

Since it’s likely that the work was done by Chinese stone masons and stone carvers, was it the friars who wanted add something stylish to their new church working in tandem with Chinese workers who may have been trained in Qing stonework which produced what we see today.

Are the themes and details of the Tigbauan stone carving more Churrigueresque or more Qing? A detailed study of the Tigbauan carvings, examples of Churrigueresque carving from Spain and Mexico with Qing themes might provide clues. The likely conclusion is that the Tigbauan stone carving is another fabulous multicultural amalgam of influences and skills which also produced the stone carving in Miagao and San Joaquin.

Pierced Heart, an Augustinian icon, Tigbauan Church

The pierced heart imagery is central to the Augustinian order and marks the Tigbauan church as likely built or rebuilt by the order. The significance of the pierced heart is derived from a statements Augustine makes in the Confessions such as: Book IX 3 “With the arrows of your charity you had pierced our hearts, and we bore your words within us like a sword penetrating us to the core”.Suddenly, Augustine’s anguish left him and he now found direction in humility, as though an arrow from God had transfixed his heart. “You have pierced our hearts with the arrow of your love, and our minds were pierced with the arrows of your words.” Conf 9,2. Indeed his heart seemed to burst into flame with love for God. “Your gift sets us afire and we are borne upward; we catch this flame and up we go. In our hearts we climb those upward paths, singing the songs of ascent. By your fire, your beneficent fire, we are inflamed.” Conf 13,9.

Tigbauan Church yard – a pretty and quiet place

Historical plaque placed by National Historical Institute

Chapel in Tigbauan Church courtyard. This small chapel in the churchyard has a feel of antiquity but according to a plaque it was constructed in 1997 and recently renovated.

Tigbauan Church Interior

Fires, earthquakes and WW II have taken a toll on the churches of Iloilo, including this one. Beyond the principal facade, not much appears to remain of the old Tigbauan church. Most of the church is concrete and the roof trusses are of steel. Still, the historical essence of the churches have been preserved; much original fabric remains, they stand in their historic locations along with the accompanying plazas, cemeteries, convents, parish halls and other historic elements of the Spanish town plans. The parishes and municipalities of Iloilo deserve great credit for their respect for the historical character of their communities.

Tigbauan Church Mosaic

While the historic interior of the church does not survive, the church interior is still of considerable interest. The walls are covered with religious themes executed in mosaic fragments, very beautifully done. According to a plaque the work was done under the direction of Rev. Fr. Eleuterio Rojo Carton and dedicated February 3, 1997.

Tigbauan church bell

Bell tower restoration campaign

Plaque at Knight's of Columbus, Tigbauan

Ossuary behind Tigbauan Church

The Montessori School is located in the quiet, green church yard

Memorial thank you to Cory Aquino - outside of Montessori school

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October 3, 2009. This is the NOAA satellite image of Typhoon Pepeng (Parma) as I type in Tigbauan, Iloilo,waiting to see how Parma will affect us.  For now the skies are dark and threatening, the wind rising and it’s raining. We live on the seashore in Tigbauan, behind a seawall, but perhaps only two meters above sea level. We were hardly affected by typhoon Ondoy-Ketsana  which devastated Manila.  Ketsana was a big storm here, but only an inconvenience, long blackout etc. The beach was littered with trees, stumps, all sorts of debris washed down from Panay’s deforested mountains and I’m sure thousands of tons of soil, making the sea dirty.  After seeing what Parma did to Manila, we have packed important documents and emergency gear and are ready to load them and ourselves into our van at the first sign of water rising around our building.  Then we’ll head for higher ground.

UPDATE Oct 3, 2009, 4:45 PM.  Some light showers earlier, but now the sun is out!

UPDATE Oct 4, 2009 8:00AM.  A little rain last night but this morning is calm and mostly sunny so we (and thankfully Manila) have escaped major problems from Pepeng/Parma.

I feel so badly for the people of Manila, especially the poor who are forced into living in the lowest, most dangerous places.  It’s trite and politically incorrect to say this, but I’m also repeatedly amazed that, despite the horrible circumstances and prospects, Filipinos are such decent people, always able to find something to be happy about.

Typhoon Frank Damage, Mouth of Sibalom River, Tigbauan, Iloilo, June 2008

With Ondoy, even fancier neighborhoods and middle class people were affected.  The devastated Manila suburb Marikina was really trying to upgrade itself.  It even had a system of bike lanes, unheard of in the Philippines.  It appears to be a total ruin now.

There seems to be a frightening pattern of places that had never been flooded, flooding now.  That happened when Typhoon Frank (Fengshen) hit Iloilo in 2008. We were in Iloilo City at the time. Posh subdivisions thought to be flood-proof were hit.  The rich move out and leave the place to those who can’t afford to move.  Now the same thing happened in Manila.  I’m afraid that this may be a permanent and ever-worsening affect of climate change which may make large parts of the Philippines uninhabitable.  Low-lying river front cities such as Manila and Iloilo (and many others) may be especially hard hit.  Perhaps hilly cities such as Cebu City will become even more attractive.

The majority of Chinese immigrants to the Philippines were also Fujian, many of them exiting China during the turmoil of the 1940s.

We also note that there is a Fo Guang Shan Buddhist temple in Iloilo, the Iloilo Fo Guang Yuan, affiliated with the Fo Guang Shan, an international Chinese Mahayana Buddhist monastic order based in Taiwan.

Iloilo Fo Guang Yuan

Address: 13-A Fuentes Street, Iloilo City, Philippines

Tradition: Mahayana, Humanistic Buddhism
Affiliation: Fo Guang Shan
EMail: fgy-ilo@skyinet.net
Spiritual Director: Ven. Master Hsing Yun

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Fo_Guang_Shan

and

http://www.fgs.org.tw/english/index/index.htm

If anyone can provide further information on the Iloilo temple please leave a note in the comment box below so that we can edit this article as needed.

Chinese Temple on Rizal Street, Iloilo City

Entrance - Chinese Temple in Iloilo City

Note that the entrance shows a date of 1931 – see upper left of photo. The brass plaque (below) gives a date of 1985. Did the 1985 building replace or expand on the 1931 structure. Was the 1931 temple in the same location?

Chinese Temple in Iloilo City

Chinese Temple in Iloilo City

Balcony overlooking Rizal Street in Iloilo City

Plaque - Chinese Temple in Iloilo City

Hint: Indian/Pakistani groceries and spices are available in Manila at theAssad Ali Minimart, UN Ave, near Paco Park. Phone 02-526-1349 or 02-526-5034.  In Iloilo we like the Raja Indian food store across from the Iloilo’s Sikh Temple.  See our listing for more info.

To get to Craft’s Rooftop Restaurant from the White Beach path, take the southerly-most path through d’Mall, go all the way through d’Mall until you come to the trike-filled Main Road.  Craft’s in on the forth and topmost floor of the Craft’s supermarket building which is on the left at the intersection of the  Main Road and the southerly d’Mall trail.

Bahay Tsinoy Museum, Intramuros, Manila

While China’s rising  importance is in today’s news, China has always been a giant looming over every aspect of Philippine life.  The Spanish colonized the Philippines mostly because they hoped to use it as a stepping stone to missionary work in China. The U.S. decided to keep the Philippines as a colony for much the same reason except the aim was trade rather than proselytizing. Even before the Spanish arrived in the 16th century, there were vigorous trade and other connections between China and the islands which became the Philippines.

Filipinos of Chinese ancestry have been a critically important factor in the development of the Philippines as we know it today.

The Bahay Tsinoy (bahay=house, Tsinoy or Chinoy=a Filipino of Chinese ancestry) helps the visitor trace Chinese influences on the Philippines from the earliest days to the present including displays on pre-Spanish Chinese trading, the Spanish era, the establishment of “parians” or Chinese ghettos, the Galleon trade which brought valuable goods from China to Europe through Manila, and the rise of Chinese Filipinos into the uppermost echelons of business and government.

As of Sept. 2009, the museum is open every day but Monday, from 1:00pm to 5:00pm. Admission is P100.  Phone 527-6083, 526-6798, 526-6796.

http://www.bahaytsinoy.org/

Bahay Tsinoy, Intramuros, Manila - plaque

Welcome to Alimodian, Iloilo

There is so much to like about Alimodian, a small municipality in Iloilo Province. Altough Alimodian is only about twenty-five kilometers from Iloilo City, Alimodian is really a world apart, a pretty quiet town with an alpine feel. Alimodian is surrounded by hills and a bit further by mountains. Most everything is well maintained, the streets and plaza free from litter, showing that the residents have pride in their community. Alimodian’s old stone Spanish Church and plaza are the centerpieces. A rare Spanish era stone arch bridge is fighting for survival.

On February 16, 2008 four of us set off to explore two hill towns in Iloilo Province; Alimodian and Leon. Much of the immediate area around Iloilo City is quite flat so we were anxious to get up in to the hill country. We started out from our home in Molo and drove the National Highway west to the pretty town of Oton. At Oton we turned off the National Highway onto what is locally called the Oton-Sta. Clara Road. It begins at Barangay Buray and heads north through Sta. Rita, Sta Monica, Biaga and Sta. Rita. Not long after leaving Oton the countryside becomes very “bundok”, a countryside of nipa houses and the road quite rough. Sta. Monica is a pretty little place. Not long after Biaga the terrain become hillier. Next we turned onto the road to Alimodian. That road climbs moderately to the town.

Alimodian has an alpine feel with the mountains so close at hand

Alimodian’s altitude is only about 100 meters above sea level but it has the feel of a mountain town because of the hills that rise around it, particularly to the west. The weather on the day of our trip was comparatively cool and Alimodian seemed cooler than the city.

Alimodian's pretty plaza

The perimeter of the Alimodian Plaza is planted with a cypress or cedar. Does anyone know the variety? They seem to be thriving.

We live quite close to Molo Plaza, really just about the only park land available to tens of thousands of Molo residents. It is just loved and used to death, almost always filled with schoolkids, the terrain so used it’s scruffed to raw dirt. Nothing could withstand all the use that park gets. How lucky are the people of places like Alimodian who have inherited, preserved and maintained so nicely a pretty town park at the center of the community!

Alimodian, Iloilo Plaza and Church

The Alimodian Municipal Hall sits opposite the church, across the plaza

Alimodian, Iloilo Church

Alimodian Church History

The town’s Spanish heritage has been preserved.  It has a large Plaza dominated by has an old Spanish church, the municipal hall and other public buildings.  While the massive old church was decimated, as other Panay building were by the huge earthquake of 1948 it was not torn down.  The surviving parts were saved, treasured, restored and supplemented by new construction sympathetic with the original.  The overall impression is of impassioned stewardship and pride.  Let’s hope the same spirit saves the very beautiful and historic Eloisa bridge which is imperiled by proposal to replace rather than conserve this rare survivor.

Side Entrance, Alimodian Church

Alimodian Church Interior

Alimodian Church - Interior, Retablo

Alimodian Church, Interior, Cornice and Brick Arch

Alimodian Church Interior, Cornice showing 1948 earthquake damage

Behind the Alimodian church a quiet and green courtyard

Preserved and displayed in the church courtyard are fragments from the original church.

Alimodian Church dome from courtyard

Alimodian Library - open for business!

Neat, organized and welcoming Alimodian Library

During our visit to Alimodian we were so impressed with the actual functioning of the community.  So many towns have the various equipages of municipal life (libraries, senior centers, day care centers and so forth) but which are not really operating.  In Alimodian these all seemed to be alive with activity.   Hence, Alimodian seemed to be a truly functioning small municipality, not just an Iloilo suburb which the life has gone out of.

Tesda training program - open and busy!

Looking up toward the church and plaza from the Alimodian public market

Monument in Alimodian plaza

A sign marks the way to "Agony Hill" - fourteen stations of the Cross on a hilltop reached after a stiff hike. Excellent views of the surrounding countryside.

In the same spirit which led the community to save and reconstruct the Alimodian Church, local residents are rallying to save a rare Spanish-era bridge.

Eloisa Bridge, Alimodian, Iloilo

Eloisa Bridge, Alimodian, Iloilo Historic landmark

Eloisa Bridge, Alimodian, Iloilo

Some Alimodian Iloilo residents are working to save this remarkable old stone bridge as an important part of the town’s and Philippine heritage.  When one visits the municipality, one can’t help but be impressed with all the good work done by the Alimodian Heritage Conservation Society.

Underneath the modern highway lurks a rare Spanish stone bridge

Finding the Eloisa Bridge.  The main highway to Alimodian from the south crosses a small stream on a temporary “Bailey bridge”, more or less immediately before you reach the municipal building and the plaza.  The Eloisa bridge is under the steel bridge.  You have to make your way down quite steep river banks to actually get a look at the old bridge.  Be careful!

Phaidon Beach Resort, Pandan Antique

We spent the night at the Phaidon Beach Resort.  To get there, turn off the main highway and go about seven kilometers in the direction of Libertad.  The road is rough, but scenic.  We stayed in the cheapest available accommodation at Phaidon, one of the air-con cottages shown above.  The cottage cost P2,400 including a basic breakfast.  The resort was very beautiful.  The design, landscaping and maintenance of Phaidon was top-notch, exquisite really, but some minor quibbles;  the cottage itself was pretty, but the the bedding was very skimpy.  The dim lighting made reading difficult.  This is a common problem in Philippine hotels.  Maybe they think all guests are honeymooners!  In the future we’re going to bring our own reading light when we travel with our own vehicle.

I have one more complaint or perhaps it’s a suggestion.  It’s an issue which we have seen at other resorts with air conditioned cottages.  The windows in the cottages are sealed, so when they are vacant they get no fresh air and the rooms end up being damp and musty.  There are no screens so you can’t turn off the air-con and open the windows, so you are forced into turning on the air con even if you’d prefer to open the windows and enjoy the sea breezes, saving the resort owner money and being a bit more “green”.

We were delighted with our dinner at Phaidon.  Some resorts gouge captive guests on meal prices, but our dinner at Phaidon was excellent and reasonably priced.  Carol had beef kaldereta (a Philippine beef stew or ragout) and Bob a German-style meatloaf.

In the morning we had breakfast at Phaidon, also excellent.  After checking out we resumed our journey. We returned to the main highway at Pandan and headed toward Caticlan.

Phaidon may arrange outings to various destinations such as Igpasungaw Falls and the Bugang River, snorkeling at Mararison Island and perhaps other destinations.

Lunar New Year Celebration, China Bank Mabini Branch, Iloilo City. At smaller branches, they'll try to make you feel part of the family.

All that expats need to know about banking in the Philippines: credit cards, debit cards, checking accounts, Social Security and pension direct deposit, wire transfers, Internet banking.

Our first advice to foreigners living in the Philippines is to keep the bulk of your financial assets in your home country.  Here are a few reasons.  If you have substantial assets it’s best to keep that fact strictly to yourself.  That’s difficult to do if you keep your funds in a Philippine bank.  Bank employees gossip, especially if you live in a place with fewer foreigners. You’ll receive bank statements through the insecure Philippine Postal Service.  There have been instances where bank insiders have sent text messages to compatriots outside when a foreigner withdrew a substantial sum.  Shortly thereafter, the foreigner was robbed at gunpoint. Our bank tells us that rich Chinoys (Filipinos of Chinese heritage) do not allow their name or address to be printed on their personal bank checks. They don’t want anyone to know anything about their financial affairs.

Whatever your financial circumstances are, it’s best to promote the impression that you are retired on a modest pension which will end when you do.  Depending on your relationship with your girlfriend or wife and her family, such a impression is very worth giving.  It may be an ego boost to appear affluent in a poor place like the Philippines, especially if for the first time in your life you are relatively wealthy.  This will only expose you to the interest of cash-starved locals and foreigners and 101 schemes to get at your money, in some cases dead or alive.

Deposit insurance in Philippine banks is limited to P500,000 pesos or about $10,000 and there are limitations on the insurance coverage.  Many foreigners, including our friends, have lost money in too-good-to-be-true accounts in Philippine rural banks.  Most are still awaiting reimbursement from the PDIC.

You can arrive at your rural bank and find it shuttered....

with a notice from the PDIC that your bank is closed.

Despite the recent travails of American and European banks, it’s unlikely that an individual depositor will lose money and if there is a problem there are effective consumer protection laws and regulators to appeal to.  Further, Internet banking facilities are better and more secure.  If you lose money from your U.S. bank account through online fraud such as key loggers, trojans etc., your bank has to make you whole.

If you are a American Social Security pensioner, you can have your monthly pension check direct-deposited to a Philippine bank (more on that here) or to your U.S. bank.  If deposited to a Philippine bank, U.S. public pensions must be to an account in your name only — not a joint account with your wife.  If you are incapacitated it may be hard for your wife to access the funds.

–Philippine banks charge a monthly fee to receive each pension check of between $2.50 and $7.50, depending on the bank

–The government will not pay certain benefits to a foreign bank — for example the recent $250 economic stimulus checks that went to all Social Security recipients, except those with foreign addresses.

–In theory, funds in joint accounts in the Philippines are frozen when a spouse dies — until probate taxes are settled.  Every time you make a withdrawal you must certify that your spouse is still living subject to perjury penalties.  While this rule is often ignored, it still presents additional complications for the grieving spouse.  If the family funds are in a joint account at an American bank, your spouse will have access to the funds via ATM or check writing without such complications.

We’re not sure what estate taxes are like in the Philippines, but we’re guessing that for those that pay them they are higher than what you’d pay in America.  For example, in the Philippines we pay a 20% “withholding tax” on any interest income.  This is automatically deducted from your account when interest is paid.  There is no refund.  We fear Philippine estate taxes may be similar. Because of our very modest income and a progressive U.S. tax system, we essentially pay no tax on interest earned in the U.S.

However, we do very strongly suggest that you do have bank accounts in the Philippines to use for routine banking and living necessities and to provide readily available emergency funds.  We feel it’s unwise to be completely dependent on ATM machines or other electronic transfers from overseas accounts for all your money needs in the Philippines.   It’s essential that you have uninterruptible access to funds while living in the Philippines.  In the past, breaks in undersea fiber optic cables have severely disrupted Internet service in the Philippines.  Bigger, possibly total outages or other geopolitical or natural disasters (in an area subject to typhoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, disease outbreaks) could cut you off from access to your overseas funds.  That would be just the wrong time to be without funds — funds for evacuation, medical care or ordinary living expenses.  The supply line is so fragile in the Philippines.  When typhoon Frank hit Iloilo City, the grocery store shelves were stripped bare in hours.  You must have funds available to take care of yourself and your family.

Further, medical care in the in the Philippines is strictly on a cash basis.  Some city hospitals will take credit cards, but most do not.  In case of the kinds of disruptions mentioned above, the credit card processing system might be down.  Just as in the U.S., your first stop will be the hospital billing office to pay for services before they are delivered. More payments will be mandatory if treatment is to be continued.  You’ll have to pay for drugs before they are administered.  Foreigners have been allowed to die for lack of a relatively minor amount of funds to pay for treatment.  While not exactly on point, see this story http://balatucan.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/sad-tragic-story-of-thomas-hunt/ to get a sense of what life in the Philippines is like without money for medical care.

We feel it’s ideal to have $10,000 in a Philippine bank as an emergency reserve and buffer.  Once you establish a relationship with a Philippine bank manager they will be anxious to assist you if you need access to your funds. You’ll likely have his or her home cellphone number.

So, now that we’ve recommended that you keep your funds and receive your pension deposits in your home country bank, how do you get access to the funds you need to live in the Philippines?  There are a variety of approaches.

International bank to bank wires.  This is a fast but expensive option, about $25 to $35 for each wire.  Be sure to wire from your U.S. dollar account to your U.S. dollar account in the Philippines.  If you allow the remitting bank to do the currency conversion to Philippine pesos, the process becomes even more expensive.  Wires can be good for major purchases such as autos or real estate.  There’s going to be security questions and procedures imposed by your home bank when you seek to have a large sum of money wired to the Philippines.  It’s best that you determine the wire transfer requirements from your bank while you’re still in your home country.  Citibank (U.S.) allows entirely online wire transfer requests.  For your first wire transfer, you’ll be asked to call the bank to confirm your identity but after that the wires can be done very easily online for $25 to any Philippine bank or $18.50 if to a Citibank branch in the Philippines.

ATM cards.  Some get the money they need by using ATM or debit cards from their home country bank.  This is fine for short stays, but increasingly U.S. banks are raising their fees.  It used to be that you could find banks that had no ATM fees and minimal foreign transaction fees.  That was true of Netbank before it went out of business.  It was true of Citibank if you used a Citi ATM machine in the Philippines.  Those days are mostly over. Fees have gone up and this can be an expensive way to get your money.  If you have a Philippine ATM machine dispensing only P5,000 or even P10,000 at a time and are charged a $ 3 to $5 fee for each withdrawal.  Further, if you are entirely dependent on this method, you are subject to some of the uncertainties mentioned above in terms of Internet problems and calamities.  Another tip: insist that your home country bank give you an ATM card, not a debit card.  What’s the difference?  The ATM card can only be used at an ATM machine.  The debit card with the Visa or Mastercard logo can be used to make purchases at stores with or without a PIN number.  A lost or stolen debit card can result in drained accounts even though the malefactor does not have the PIN number.  An ATM-only card is generally useless without a PIN number.

Pension direct deposit to Philippine banks. Retired Americans with government pensions can have their pension checks directly deposited to several Philippine banks.  This can be a good option for U.S. government pensioners.  For a full discussion including a list of participating banks see http://goiloilo.com/social-security-direct-deposit-in-the-philippines/

Our recommendation. We do what lots of expats do.  We write an ordinary check from our U.S. checking account every month and deposit it to our joint U.S. dollar  account at our local Philippine bank.  The check is generally in the same amount which Social Security has direct deposited into my U.S. bank, although it can be more if we expect will have more expenses in the upcoming month. It can  take a month to clear, but there are NO fees of any kind from either the U.S. or Philippine bank.  (Before selecting a Philippine bank, be sure they don’t charge for foreign bank deposits.  Some do, some don’t.)  If you are able to establish a cash buffer as we have recommended, there really is no waiting to get money.  Just get into a regular rhythm of monthly deposits and you’ll always have the money you need.

We know that some live from month to month, but living in the Philippines without any cash buffer is just not prudent. If there is some major disruption (earthquakes, tsunamis, broken cables, worldwide flu pandemic etc.) you have to have money here or you are in deep trouble.  Stay in the U.S. work and save a little longer and come with at least $10,000 to get set up and allow for an emergency reserve.

Should you bank with an American or European bank in the Philippines? When we first moved to the Philippines, we felt that it would be best to do so.  So, we opened accounts at Citibank Savings in Iloilo — which has since closed.  There are really only two choices, Citibank and HSBC, both global banking goliaths.  HSBC has 10,000 offices in 85 countries. Citi operates in 140 countries with approximately 16,000 offices. Citi is the major foreign bank in the Philippines and HSBC a close second. No other American bank does retail business in the Philippines.  These banks only have offices in a few of the biggest Philippine cities.

Citi and HSBC have excellent cash machines.  Citi’s machines will dispense both pesos and dollars.  We used to get almost all our funds from Citi’s cash machine in Iloilo.  That’s because Citi did not charge any ATM or foreign transaction fees so we could use our Citi U.S. ATM card and withdraw just about everything we needed, up to our $2,500 daily limit per account.  Then in 2008 Citi imposed a 2% foreign currency fee for ATM withdrawals.  We have never used our Citi ATM card since.  We noticed that routine banking charges were high at Citi in the Philippines.  We also found that the advantages or interconnections leveraged by banking with in both Citi in the U.S. and in the Philippines were just about nil.  Although both parts of the same global banks, there were no useful interconnections. When we had to wire money from the Philippines to the U.S., we were charged $135.  It costs $18.50 to wire from Citi U.S. to Citi Philippines but $135.00 to do the opposite!  That’s when we decided to shop for another bank.

China Bank Mabini Branch staff usher in the Lunar New Year. Ever see such a thing in Peoria?

We went about it fairly systematically. We got rate and service fee cards or checked the web sites of the various banks in Iloilo.  We ended up feeling China Bank offered us the best deal — the lowest fees and best interest.  They were quite accommodating when we visited the branch.  We are quite satisfied with China Bank, which is by the way a Philippine Bank.  But really, the location and responsiveness of the banking staff are key.  Choose a bank which is close to you, has a big parking lot and which treats you well.  The mid-tier banks do seem to have lower fees than PNB and other big Philippine banks.  Be cautious about “rural banks”.  They seem to fail with regularity.  We don’t believe the Philippine Central Bank (BSP) will allow one of the commercial banks to fail and in fact they seem to have survived the current financial crisis quite intact.

Choosing a U.S. bank.  In general we have found Citibank U.S.’s Internet banking to be excellent.  Their competence at international banking is tops.  We once used a small local bank to wire a big (for me) sum overseas and they made a mistake and the money was lost for weeks.  That’s when We changed to Citibank.  Banking with Citibank can also be inexpensive if you don’t use their ATM/debit cards.  If you direct deposit your pension check there are no checking fees.  We pay nothing for our Citibank banking because we just use it to receive funds in the U.S. which we access via writing checks to our Philippine bank and for online bill pay services for purchases and expenses we have in the U.S.

The U.S. bank (also in the U.K.) that seems the most friendly to expats is Capital One.  We’ve had Capital One credit cards for years.  It’s one of a handful of banks which do not charge foreign transaction fees.  We use our Capital One Visa card for lots of routine purchases in the Philippines, including groceries.  Why?  The exchange rate is as good or better than we can get from a money changer.  The other reason is that it’s good to keep a card in play through fairly constant use.  If you never use you card and then need it for a medical emergency in the Philippines, you may find problems with getting approval.  The card is also good for purchases and bill paying in the U.S.  For some U.S. purchases a U.S. credit card is required.  For example if you want to buy Kindle content (see this article) you have to have a U.S. credit card. Capital One cards also have various award programs.  We just got $70 bank on my Capital One rewards card.  Of course, as with any credit card, you have to pay every month on time or you’ll get hit with horrible fees.  Capital One has started charging an annual fee of $20.  We hate paying such fees, but for this card it’s worth it.

Capital One also offers checking and savings accounts which do not charge an ATM or foreign transaction fees.  This is a link to an excellent compilation (Wiki) of the fees that various US banks charge for using their credit, debit and ATM cards overseas: Click here.

A few other tips:

• Be sure to do you research on banks and open accounts while still in your home country.  Due to security, terrorism and money laundering concerns it can be quite difficult to open an account in the U.S. from the Philippines.

• When making a major purchase, don’t carry big amounts of money on your person.  As noted earlier, bank employees have notified compatriots outside when a big withdrawal has left with a customer resulting in robbery and injury.  It only costs about P30 to purchase a “manager’s check” at your bank.  Or, if it’s a real estate transaction, have it close at your bank.

• Don’t assume that safe deposit boxes are safe.

• Don’t use public computers (Internet cafes, hotels) to access your bank accounts.

Further reading. If you’d like get all the inside scoop on the Philippine banking industry, I highly recommend Paul Hutchcroft’s “Booty Capitalism”, published by the Ateneo de Manila Press.   You can buy it from Amazon using this link.  If you do so you’ll help support goIloilo.com!
Buy this book from Amazon

I bought my copy at the excellent Pilipinas Heritage Library Bookstore at Ayala Triangle Park in Makati.  Last time I was there this book was not in stock.

Allied Banking Corporation – $3.00
Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) – $3.00
Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) – $5.00
Land Bank of the Philippines – $5.00
Maybank – $3.00
Philippine Veterans Bank (PVB) – $3.00
China Bank – $3.00
RCBC – $3.00 to $5.00
Banco de Oro – Unknown
Bank of Commerce (BOC) – $5.00 to $7.00
Manila Bank – $1.00
Security Bank – $5.00
United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB) – $4.00 to $6.00
Metrobank – $3.00
Philippine National Bank – $7.00

The banks with variable fees charge more for larger direct deposits.

If you’d like to sign up for direct deposit in the Philippines go to the bank you have chosen and ask for the direct deposit enrollment form.  They will help you fill it out and the bank will submit the form to Social Security representatives in Manila. U.S. Veteran’s benefits may also be direct deposited.

The account into which the funds are paid must be an individual account.  A Social Security concern is that benefits may continue to be paid and spent long after the pensioner has expired.  A large Social Security operation is lodged at the U.S. Embassy in Manila.  A main responsibility is ensuring that Social Security recipients are still alive.  This often includes annual letters to which you must respond or your benefits will be suspended.

More information is available at the U.S. Embassy website: http://manila.usembassy.gov/wwwh3032.html

Disadvantages of direct deposit to Philippine banks:

• The account may not be joint with your wife.  This could present problems in accessing pension funds if you are incapacitated.
• You will receive periodic letters from Social Security to confirm that you have not deceased.  If these are not received or answered your benefits may be suspended.
• Fee as shown above.  There are no fees for direct deposit to U.S. banks.  If you receive Social Security and VA benefits, you’ll pay two fees.

“I had a credit card sent to me through the mail that I never received. Plus I had some other mail come up missing. The people that got my credit card were able to activate the card, convince my credit union to transfer funds from my account to the credit card and were able to charge over 50K (thats dollars and not php). There was another expat at work that had the same thing happen to him. I have my mail sent to the house and he has his sent to work.

The people had the physical card. There is no doubt in my mind that it was done prior to the card ever arriving at my house. In other words it was not my maid. She is not smart enough. Another thing they did was to have the bank change all my contact information. Their contact with my bank was all done by phone.

they also really knew what they were doing as they moved fast and purchased large items at high end stores. They also bought well over a million php worth of Rustons (ed an upscale Philippine retail chain) gift certificates.

The NBI (Philippine National Bureau of Investigation) would not even really investigate it. Of course Rustons also refused to cancel the gift certificates and even told me that they would honor them.

I would never send anything of importance through the mail. maybe some are lucky but I was not.

The funny thing is that I could never explain effectively how it happened. None could understand that a credit card would ever be sent through the regular mail. The police and anyone else kept telling me that someone had to sign for it.”

The fans we bought http://3-d.com.ph/product/CHV-18 have given us good service.  They have run for almost continuously for three years.   They are sturdy with almost all metal construction.  Our main complaint is that the chrome plating is thin and the steel grills are now quite rusty.  Still, overall we can recommend this product and 3D post sale service.

Filipino physicians are themselves suspicious of generic drugs in the Philippines. A survey of physicians showed that 70% are opposed to the 1988 generic drugs act.  Why?  A majority of these physicians believe that the Philippine Bureau of Food and Drugs is not capable of ensuring the quality of the generic drugs.  Filipinos also tend to buy brand name drugs.  It’s hard to know if these suspicions are justified.  Pharmaceutical sales reps overrun the offices of Philippine doctors, just as they do in the U.S.  Most of them are articulate, well groomed and attractive.  It would be surprising if they did not encourage physicians to be suspicious of the generics which are a threat to their employers and their own jobs.  This is a replay of what happened in the U.S. in the early days of generics.

So, if they can afford it, expats can stick with overpriced brand name drugs at very high prices or buy generics of uncertain origin. I tend to shop at Mercury Drug in the hope that they might exercise some judgment over the generics they sell.  I read on Mercury rep suggest that their generics are suitable for the middle classes — that is those who can’t afford brand name drugs but who don’t feel comfortable with ordinary generics.  That is smart marketing!

Here’s an article giving some insight into the Philippine generic drugs market as well as that for some SE Asia neighbors.

More reading:
http://www.tsinoy.com/article_item.php?articleid=714

http://firequinito.com/archives/7-PBL-Preview-Jappy-Pascual-and-the-Pharex-Generix.html

My wife’s sister returned from work in Kuwait with a scary looking growth in one of her eyes.  We were very afraid it was a tumor.  We took her to one Iloilo ophthalmologist who recommended a biopsy which could be done at a lab in the same building. We wanted a second opinion so we took her to ophthalmologist, Dr. Karen Francia who had been highly recommended to us by other Iloilo expats. It was a good recommendation. Dr. Francia felt that the problem was a prolapse of the orbital fat in her eye. Between the eye socket and the eye itself is a layer of cushioning fat. Eye injuries can cause this fat to bulge out of the socket and into the area of the eyelid. This is not a common condition and Dr. Francia wanted a second opinion from a Manila ophthalmologist, Dr. Mae Singson. Dr. Francia arranged for Dr. Singson to come to Iloilo to consult on several of her complex cases. Dr. Singson confirmed the diagnosis of a fat prolapse. She said she could remove it surgically. The total cost for doctor and hospital for the surgery would be P15,000, a little over $300. If the surgery was done in Manila the cost would be P25,000. Dr. Singson made it clear that the condition was mainly cosmetic and did not encourage surgery. Through my Internet research I had already learned that this was likely to be the case. The fee for Dr. Singson’s consultation was P400 or about $8.50.

This was reassuring in that a fairly obscure condition was properly diagnosed and that proper treatment options were presented without trying to pressure us into further treatment. This is especially so after my experience with a Cebu City ophthalmologist who put pressure on me to have cataract surgery. I waited until I got home to New York and consulted with my ophthalmologist there who said I definitely did not need the surgery. So there’s another anecdote about Philippine medical care.

I feel there is good care available from some excellent doctors. There are also poorly trained doctors. One conclusion is that there is much more variability in quality of care than you’ll probably find in your home country. This means you’ll have to be careful in screening your medical care providers. That’s not necessarily so easy for the foreigner living here. This is just a small contribution based on our experiences. Also see http://goiloilo.com/recommended-iloilo-philippines-doctors-and-dentists/

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USS Panay underway off Woosung, China on August 30, 1928

The United States Navy named several war ships after Philippine islands.  These included The USS Pampanga, USS Luzon, USS Mindanao, USS Calamianes and the USS Panay.  Some of these were Spanish patrol boats captured in the Philippines.  Others, including the USS Panay (PR-5)  were built in China for river patrol duty.

• The first Panay was originally a Spanish gunboat in the Philippines, purchased in 1899 after the American occupation, and in various service until 1914, and sold in 1920. Among those who served upon her were future WWII admirals Chester Nimitz and John S. McCain, grandfather of the 2008 US presidential candidate, John McCain.
• The second Panay (PR-5) was a river gunboat launched in 1927, and serving on the Yangtze in China until being sunk by the Japanese in the 1937 Panay incident.  See http://www.hmsfalcon.com/Panay/Panay.htm for photos and videos of this engagement, the first in which American servicemen were killed by the Japanese military.
• The third Panay was the general auxiliary Midway (AG-41), renamed in 1943 to make the name Midway available for an aircraft carrier.

This is from the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.  The tone and perspective are dated and objectionable but still paints a wonderfully colorful account of patrol duty on the Yangtze in the years before WWII.

“(PR–5: dp. 474; 1. 191′; b. 29′; dr. 5′3″; s. 15 k.; cpl. 59; a. 2 3″, 8 .30 cal. mg.)

The second Panay (PR–5) was built by Kiangoan Dockyard and Engineering Works, Shanghai, China; launched 10 November 1927; sponsored by Mrs. Ellis S. Stone; and commissioned 10 September 1928, Lt. Comdr. James Mackey Lewis in command.

Built for duty in the Asiatic Fleet on the Yangtze Patrol, Panay had as her primary mission the protection of American lives and property frequently threatened in the disturbances the 1920s and 30s brought to China struggling to modernize, to create a strong central government, and, later, to meet Japanese aggression. Throughout Panay’s service, navigation on the Yangtze was constantly menaced by bandits and soldier outlaws of various stripes, and Panay and her sisters provided the protection necessary for American shipping and nationals, as other foreign forces did for their citizens. Often parties from Panay served as armed guards on American steamers plying the river. In 1931 her commanding officer, Lt. Comdr. R. A. Dyer, reported: “Firing on gunboats and merchant ships have (sic.) become so routine that any vessel traversing the Yangtze River, sails with the expectation of being fired upon.” and “Fortunately, the Chinese appear to be rather poor marksmen and the ship has, so far, not sustained any casualties in these engagements.”

As the Japanese moved through South China, American gunboats evacuated most of the Embassy staff from Nanking during November 1937. Panay was assigned as station ship to guard the remaining Americans and take them off at the last possible moment. They came on board 11 December and Panay moved upriver to avoid becoming involved in the fighting around the doomed capital. Three American merchant tankers sailed with her. The Japanese senior naval commander in Shanghai was informed both before and after the fact of this movement.

Manila newspaper account of the sinking of the USS Panay

On 12 December, Japanese naval aircraft were ordered by their Army to attack “any and all ships” in the Yangtze above Nanking. Knowing of the presence of Panay and the merchantmen, the Navy requested verification of the order, which was received before the attack began about 1327 that day and continued until Panay sank at 1554. Three men were killed, 43 sailors and 5 civilian passengers wounded.

A formal protest was immediately lodged by the American ambassador. The Japanese government accepted responsibility, but claimed the attack unintentional. A large indemnity was paid 22 April 1938 and the incident officially settled. However, further deterioration of relations between Japan and the United States continued, as did provocations, many of them stemming from the Japanese Army whose extremists wished war with the United States.

A good account of the Panay sinking http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17110447

WW II Panay Landing Memorial, Parara, Tigbauan, Iloilo

The Panay Landing Memorial marks spot where American troops landed on March 18, 1945 on the beaches of Parara, Tigbauan to begin the liberation of Panay Island. The Japanese garrison on Panay was only 2000 to 2350 soldiers. American soldiers came ashore to be greeted by Philippine guerrillas “stiff in starched khaki and resplendent in ornaments.” By the time American troops landed, the well-organized resistance fighters were in control of most of the island.

The American 40th Division expanded the beachhead rapidly and ran into no serious resistance until it approached the outskirts of Iloilo City. On March 20th the troops entered Iloilo City and not one Japanese was found.

Source: History of United States Naval Operations in World War II Vol. XII.

The monument is just off the National Highway in Parara, west of Tigbauan proper.

Update as of August 2009.  The memorial is no longer.  Hopefully the elements have been removed for refurbishment.

Site of former Parara war memorial - September 2009

Historic Spanish Stone Bridge, Miagao, Iloilo

Midway between Guimbal, Iloilo and Miagao, Iloilo, pause at the old Spanish stone bridge just off the National Highway, on the south (ocean) side of the road.  Thanks to those who have preserved and maintained this oasis.  It’s a good place to get our of the car and stretch your legs, perhaps even to picnic.  On the Miagao municipal website the bridge is referred to as “Tatay Boni”.

Historic Spanish Stone Bridge, Miagao, Iloilo

Historic Spanish Stone Bridge, Miagao, Iloilo

The path of the old road can be easily seen.

Historic Spanish Stone Bridge, Miagao, Iloilo

Looking west, toward Miagao.

Namocan, Tigbauan War Memorial

This well-kept memorial is located on the north side of the National Highway before Tigbauan property.  It celebrates a raid by Filipino guerrilla against a Japanese truck convoy.

Namocan, Tigbauan War Memorial

Namocan, Tigbauan War Memorial

End of the road from Guimbal, Iloilo to Tubungan, Iloilo

Residents were using a jury-rigged footbridge they had built to cross the river. According to press reports, 2,000 residents and 600 high school students use this bridge each day. Note that a light has been installed on the bridge. This is the typical rural Philippine outdoor light, a plastic bottle (bleach, vinegar etc.) with the bottom cut out and a compact fluorescent bulb inside – exactly what we have as a “security” light at our property in Tigbauan.

Rickety footbridge to Tubungan, Iloilo

There are other routes to Tubungan and we’ll explore them in future trips.

Anini-y Cemetery on the outskirts of the village center

Note:  Just beyond the cemetery is a dirt road.  Take that road to catch a boat to Nogas Island.  See http://goiloilo.com/nogas-island/

This is the essay on Anini-y from the Ateneo de Manila’s indispensable “Panublion” website: http://www.ateneo.edu/offices/mirlab/panublion/r6_antique.html#aniniy
“Reputedly established by fisher folk, ca. 1600-30, Anini-y was inhabited by fishermen who came from Asluman (Asloman), a barrio of Hamtic. Hamtic, the oldest settlement of Antique was under Augustinian administration from the year 1851, when Fr. Miguel de Siguenza was appointed minister. Anini-y was a visita of Hamtic and priests from the mother parish would visit the settlement on their mission tours that brought them as far as Cagayancillo, islands in the Sulu Sea. Fr. Hipólito Casimiro and Fray Felíx Roja y Zuñiga were two priests credited with organizing and evangelizing Anini-y in the 18^th century. Anini-y became an independent parish on 22 March 1862, in accordance with a decree of 20 December 1861.

Due to lack of personnel, several Filipino seculars under the diocese of Cebu were assigned to Anini-y, however, Antique governor Don Joaquin Varón (1849-53) ordered the Augustinians to take over administration “so that better buildings would rise in Antique’s skylines.” The Augustinian chapter of 1875 accepted the order. The first Augustinian parish priest was Fray Romualdo Crespo who was appointed that same year. The third and last Augustinian parish priest was Fray Jerónimo Varquerín, who served Anini-y and Cagayancillo for 17 years (1878-95). He continued serving Anini-y, three more years after that. The parish complex was vacant during the Philippine Revolution until the Aglipayans took possession of it in 1902. A Catholic missionary congregation, the Mill Hill Fathers, took charge of Antique in 1906, and when Anini-y reverted to the Catholic Church the fathers took charge of the parish in 1908.

Heritage site: Anini-y has the only preserved colonial church in Antique. This gem of a church is the third built in the town. The first was probably built by Fray Hipólito Casiano, between 1630 and 38. The church whose foundations still exist measured 33 x 13 meters. A second church of much greater length but narrower at 48 x 12.5 meters was constructed close to the earlier church. Work began around 1845. Fray Vaquerín was responsible for completing the present complex, the convento in 1879 and the church, except for the arco toral, was almost completed when the Augustinian left. Vaquerín’s church measured 65 x 16 meters, and had a height of 10 meters.The convento was almost totally demolished during the world war, but the Mill Hill priest Fr. William Erickweld preserved the ruins while building a modern convento beside it. In 1973, the church roof and back wall were damaged by a typhoon, but Fr. Erickweld took pains to restore the church. The church belongs to 19^th century revivalist styles, incorporating traditional elements from the Baroque like the triangular pediment, supported by a single story, divided into there sections by engaged pilaster. Between the central pilasters is the arched entrance to this single-naved church, pleasingly decorated by rosettes. Flanking the entrance are expanses of wall decorated by niches above, which are rose windows. The pediment is likewise ornamented with a niche and flanking blind occuli. The facade comes to an end in stout pilasters ornamented above with finials. The three-story bell tower is attached to the church; its lowest floor is quadrilateral while the upper floors are hexagonal. Arched windows pierce the tower and a domical roof crowns the whole structure.”

Anini-y Church

Historic Plaque on Anini-y Church

Main doorway, Anini-y Church, Antique Province

Anini-y Church

Beautiful classical capital - Anini-y Church

The church is adjoins an extensive plaza

View into lot through gates.

Property Taxes — a welcome contrast.  When we lived on a farm in Upstate New York, our local real estate taxes were about $4,000 per year.  The annual property taxes of our Tigbauan, Iloilo property are P129.04, however since we paid them early we received a discount.  We paid P98.24 for 2009.  This is for a 1,500 square meter lot.  Of course this will go up when we build a house but still low property taxes are a big benefit to life in the Philippines.

Chinese settlement in the Philippines almost always followed Spanish settlements. In the vicinity of their settlements, the Spanish provided the Chinese with commercial opportunities and some level of security of person and property. The Chinese were generally not interested in agriculture and that was the predominant enterprise of the provinces, except near the Spanish settlements. Accordingly, the vast majority of Chinese settled in Manila. Until 1850 the Spanish restricted Chinese enterprises in the provinces.

The Church generally opposed Chinese immigration to the provinces because the friars feared the Chinese would interfere with their mission to the “indios” or take advantage of their charges. However these restrictions did not apply to Catholic mestizos. In the early years, almost all Chinese immigrants to the Philippines were men. Typically they married local “indio” women and became Catholics. Even is the husband did not become a Catholic, his children under the supervision of the Catholic indio wife certainly would. There were strong commercial incentives to convert. Chinese Catholic mestizos were free to travel and live where they pleased. In some communities they prospered. In the Visayas, Cebu and Molo, Iloilo developed a highly successful mestizo elite. Generally the mestizos were loyal Catholics and supporters of Spanish rule. They were also major contributors to the Church.

Iloilo began its period of real prosperity when in 1855-60 the Spanish allowed foreign ships to call at ports other than Manila. Formerly, foreign ships were limited to Manila. As residency and trade restrictions on the Chinese were relaxed, Chinese immigrants began to compete with and displace the mestizo elite of Molo who previously controlled imports and exports from Panay Island. Many of the mestizo elite of Iloilo refocused their energies toward the establishment of sugar plantations on Negros and became fabulously wealthy in doing so.

Opium Den

One curious indicator of Chinese presence in Iloilo is that in 1890s Iloilo had 100 government authorized opium dens. Forty-four of the dens were public. The remaining 66 dens were the private dens of well-to-do Chinese who did not wish to visit public dens. Only the Chinese were allowed to use opium. Opium growing and use was authorized by the Spanish authorities and administered as a revenue-raising government monopoly, much as the British did in China. Opium use was barred when the United States occupied the Philippines.

Below are a few snapshots of Chinese cuture in present day Iloilo. They remind us of the role the Chinese played and continue to play in the life of the city.

Iloilo's Chinese Cemetery in Molo, said to be the old "Parian" or Chinese district. Remember, Arevalo, Jaro and Molo existed before Iloilo City proper.

What a customer! Lunar New Year, Iloilo City, Philippines 2008

Chinese New Year 2009 at the Atrium

Philippine Kang Ha Uy Family Association, Panay Chapter, Iloilo City

Cantonese Club, DeLeon Street, Iloilo City

Iloilo Central Commercial High School "Hua Shiong" or "Washiong"

Sun Yat Sen School, Iloilo City

Lunar New Year Celebration, ChinaBank Mabini Branch, Iloilo City

China Bank Mabini Branch usher in the new year. Ever see such a thing in Peoria?

Lunar New Year, Iloilo City, Philippines 2008

Lunar New Year, Iloilo City, Philippines 2008

Lunar New Year, Iloilo City, Philippines 2008

Lunar New Year, Iloilo City, Philippines 2008

Lots of fireworks! Lunar New Year, Iloilo City, Philippines 2008

Chinese Temple in Iloilo City

For more on the Iloilo Chinese Temple see http://goiloilo.com/chinese-taoist-temple-iloilo-city/

Tax ID number

The hiccup was getting the tax ID number.  After finding out that it was required, I headed straight to the Bureau of Internal Revenue.  A mistake.  I should have asked at LTO.  I needed a letter from the LTO before getting a tax ID number from the BIR.  Why?  I can only speculate, and since you can do the same, I won’t bother here.

The foreign license official

The next step is that I went back to the LTO with the ID number.  I was first sent upstairs to see a very nice man who is in charge of foreign driver’s license conversions.  He looked at my documents and told me what I needed exactly (copies of various documents and passport pages, med exam, and drug test).  I went across the street, xeroxed, peed, and was asked questions by a doctor.  An hour later I was back upstairs with all my documents in order.  Everything was inspected, signed, and given back to me to take downstairs. Downstairs I went and was told that there was no time left in the day (I had gotten to the LTO at 2p) and I should come back the next day.

Written but no driving test

The next day, I returned, just after 1:00p.  I filed the paperwork, had my photograph taken, twice, and paid a 167.63p fee.  I then waited for the written exam.  When called, I entered the exam room. They asked me if I wanted to review and I said yes because I didn’t know what special rules there might be for the Philippines (i.e. 80 KPH speed limit outside the cities). They gave me a 7 page list of questions and their correct answers.  After reading it through, I returned the booklet and picked up the 40 question, multiple choice, optical scan test, specially printed for me with my name on it.  I answered it, left the room and after waiting yet again, I was asked to pay about 517.63p and was handed my non-professional driver’s license.

I passed the exam, obviously, but I don’t know how many questions I got wrong. Drat.  The questions were pretty straight forward. I didn’t need the review and some questions were missing on the review.   Some of the English was confusing for this American English speaker and at least two questions I took an informed guess one (i.e. a red flag is needed when the load sticks out how far from the back?).

From the website I thought I would have to take a practical test since my Massachusetts license had expired.  That is not the case, as the foreign license official told me, since I have a conversion.

Various websites talk about the LTO having cars to use for the practical exam.  If that’s the case, it’s not true in Iloilo, at least according to a sign on the wall which says that you need to bring your own car for the practical exam.  This of course implies that in the past they had their own vehicle.  The sign was also in the far corner and I would not have seen it if it wasn’t for the waiting I did.

This second day took me about two hours.

I did not go with anyone — no Filipino or anyone else.  I am not sure whether that helps. I always think that it does because then they are limited in what they can ask me.  They cannot ask me subtly for a bribe.

I have heard horror stories about LTO offices, including about the Iloilo office, which is located in Jaro, but my experience is of a efficient, professional and well-run office, though still a government bureaucracy and so maybe I am judging on a curve.

Bruce in Iloilo

In order to make concrete, the basic building material of the Philippines, water is a necessity.  That’s why a well is the first order of business when building a house.  Most of these wells are what we’d call dug wells but Filipinos usually call deep wells.  Drilled wells are rare here but the Iloilo Municipal Water District does have some drilled wells in Oton.  American colonial authorities and geologists gave up on wells to supply water to Iloilo City and instead built the reservoir on the Tigum River.  It’s still in use today.

We had bought a lot in Tigbauan, Iloilo in the Philippines.  Our plan is to eventually build a house there.  The first step was to build a perimeter wall around the lot.  This is usual in the Philippines and most developing countries.  We hired an Iloilo architect to design and build the wall because we had never managed such a project in the Philippines on our own.  We were a bit intimidated at the thought of hiring and supervising a crew, buying materials and so forth.

Making culvert/well tiles at Damasco, Pavia Iloilo

Philippine wells almost always use precast concrete well tiles.  Since we wanted our well to be good and to have a big capacity we specified that big tiles be used.  We shopped around and found good well tiles at Damasco in Pavia, Iloilo.  More about that at http://goiloilo.com/our-house-project-cement-blocks/

We ended up using tiles that were 36″ in diameter on the inside at 18″ high.  These tiles are very heavy, perhaps 500 pounds each. They are much larger than the tiles most property owners use.  Our theory was that the large tiles would give us a bigger reserve for peak water usage such as garden watering. Our architect-contractor brought in some workers to dig the well.  Locals had told us that wells should be 25 feet deep to ensure a reliable supply of water.

Hauling up dirt from the bottom of the well where another worker is digging.

The actual digging of the well was less drama that I had imagined.  Basically, the first tile is set in place and then workers dig under the bottom tile causing it to settle into the well hole.  When the tile has sunk to ground level another tile is rolled into place on lifted on top and the digging continues.  Since we had a big crew in site for the building of the wall, there was plenty of manpower available to wrestle with the tiles.

Carol and I left for a few days and when we came back we were dismayed to find that the well had been dug so that ten tiles were in place below the surface with two tiles above ground.  This meant that we had a fifteen foot deep well, not the twenty-five foot depth we had been told was necessary.  The well-digging crew had disappeared.  The well tile joints had been sealed with concrete mortar and the exterior of the well back filled.  I was not happy but the architect assured me that the well would be made deeper “later”.  This turned out to be wrong.  The sealing of the joints, and especially the backfilling meant that the tiles were fixed in place and digging under the bottom tile to deepen the well would not work.  Since this was in January, before the hot, dry weather set in, we had plenty of water for the time being — about six feet of water in the fifteen foot well.  The question was would we have enough water for our wall building project as the water level dropped during the hot and dry months of February through May.

Fast forward through almost three months of hot, dry weather to April.  The architect and his crew have been given walking papers and a new crew is on site and making good progress on the wall.  There is only two or three feet of water in the well and we decide we have to take action.  The father of one of our crew members, Juanito Trogani, is purportedly the ace well digger in the Tigbauan, Iloilo area.  This proved to be true.  Trogani came to the site to evaluate the well.  He said all the tiles have to be removed and the well redug.  He agreed to do the work for P800 pesos per tile.  We had more tiles delivered and Trogani appeared with his crew and a few simple tools carried in rice sacks.   We document the work below.

All the tools (rope, a couple of lengths of pipe) arrived in rice sacks over the digger's shoulders. We supplied the bamboo for the tripod.

Bear in mind how much more difficult a job rebuilding the well was than was digging it in the first place.  All of the 500 pound concrete tiles had to be hoisted out of the well using almost medieval technology.  I was really appalled at the risks being taken.  Young men were lowered into the well to tie a rope around the wet, slippery tiles which were then slowly hauled out of the well, mostly by brute force.  I shuddered to think what would happen if a tile came loose while one of the men was in the well.

Hauling the 500# tiles out of the well

This was the brake which regulated tension on the line

The tiles are out and waiting to go back in once the digging is done.

All the old tiles had been wrestled out of the well by the second day and the process of digging the well deeper started.  The well was dug to about 16.5 or 17 feet deep and then two tiles were lowered in.  Digging under the tiles continued.  The crew had to constantly bail water out of the well.  As work progressed the young diggers had to dive to the bottom of the well to continue the digging.

Diggers in the bottom of the well using the tool shown below.

This is the tool used to dig in the confined space at the bottom of the well

So far the digging had been through a very dense clay (probably a vertisol) but at 19 feet we came to a layer of pure gray sand.  It appeared to be almost identical to the volcanic material deposited across Washington State when Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980.  We lived in Washington at the time and remember the snow plow trucks plowing this material off the highways.  Certainly this layer must have been deposited from an ancient volcanic eruption.  It was subsequently overlaid with twenty feet of clay, probably deposited when the area was a seabed.  The sand layer was considered to be very auspicious and digging was ended and sealing of the joints and backfilling undertaken.

Good news - layer of volcanic sand at 20'

The tiles go back in

Total cost was P13,600 or about $285.  Of course this did not include the well tiles which were P870 ($19) each nor does it account for the fact that I had previously paid for the original well digging.  Still the redigging was a success.  We ended up with almost nine feet of water in the well instead of two or three feet.  We went on to add a concrete platform and Dragon hand pump.

Now, after several months the water is still slightly milky.  This is pretty much unavoidable in a well dug in clay, which is the finest of soils.  The particles are so small that they remain suspended in the water rather than settling out.  The heat, the slightly stagnant and swampy nature of the surrounding rice fields promotes algae growth.  Our solution is to treat the well with chlorine powder — or one can just use liquid laundry bleach.  This is a standard well treatment practically everywhere.  Chlorine powder in small packets is sold in grocery stores and given away by government to help residents keep their wells safe.  When we lived on our New York farm our fabulous water came from a mountainside spring.  Our Iloilo water is nothing like that. Filipinos struggle to find and afford safe drinking water and the situation is only likely to get worse as forests disappear and population and pollution grow.  We are fortunate to have a good supply of water from our well but we’ll likely keep buying bottled water for drinking and cooking.

Asus F50SV

Why I’m buying an Asus laptop computer for use in the Philippines.  I’ve been a Macintosh user ever since I gave up in frustration trying to install a device on Windows 3.1.  I dumped the PCs and bought Macs for my business and for my own use.  With regret, I’ve now ordered a Windows laptop for use in the Philippines.  Here are some of the factors:

• Mac software is more or less unavailable in Iloilo.  PC software is available.
• Service on Mac hardware is a trial in the Philippines and especially in the provinces — whether in warranty or out. There are lots of technicians willing to help with PC hardware or software problems in every Philippine city.
• I’d like Pinay family members to be computer literate.  In the Philippines that pretty much means a PC running Windows.

I feel that the Mac OS is superior to Vista. Mac hardware is excellent, especially the new Macbook Pro laptops.  All things considered, they are now nearly price competitive with PC laptops.  Macs often outperform PCs even running Windows via the “Bootcamp” utility.  Despite this, if I bought a new Mac in the U.S., it seemed uncertain to me that I’d be entitled to repairs in the Philippines under the Apple U.S.A. warranty.  This same problem seemed to apply to most of the PC brands I researched.  Let’s face it — computer prices in the U.S.A. are lower than in the Philippines.  PC manufacturers seem to protect their worldwide markets from price competition from U.S. products by limiting the applicability of U.S.A. warranties outside of the U.S.A.  Laptops are subject to very expensive repairs — bad displays, bad system boards for example.  Therefore warranty coverage is an essential factor in buying a laptop.

Based on my research (which I don’t pretend is comprehensive) only one manufacturer offered a warranty valid in the Philippines for a laptop purchased in the U.S.A. and that was Asus.  They offer what on paper is the best warranty in the business; two years parts and labor, one year against spills, theft, drops, fire and surges and 30 days on bad pixels.  Here’s the Asus blurb:

Asus 360 USA Warranty

Most elements of this warranty will not be useful in the Philippines but the 2 year warranty should be.

Some manufacturers offer international warranty service to business travelers but they explicitly reserve the right to refuse service except to bona-fide travelers.  They also reserve the right to request proof of your travel status. Acer is an an example of this.  Further many manufacturers (such as Dell) don’t list any service centers in the Philippines.  The web is full of horror stories of customers trying to get service overseas.

Asus was a top scorer in the 2009 PCMagazine consumer survey with high satisfaction and low repair rate, almost as good as Apple. See http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2352798,00.asp

So for us, Asus seems the best bet.  Time will tell!  Here’s the contact information for Asus repairs in the Philippines:

Philippines  ASUS Technology Philippines Inc. +632-7380398; +632-7385300; +632-6317510 (09:00-21:00 Mon.~Fri.)  #14 United St, Brgy, Kapitolyo Pasig City, 1600.

Newly planted Malunggay tree

Planting Malunggay is accomplished by hacking off a branch of sprout of an existing Malunggay tree and sticking it in the ground.  I came back to look the next day and here’s what I found:

Malunggay sprouts leaves in one day!

It looks like we may be harvesting Malunggay leaves in a few weeks or months.  Malunggay is thought to be very nutritious and it’s cultivation and consumption in promoted by the Philippine government.  It seems to have been a native of India.  Lots more information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malunggay

Also note the kangkong (water spinach) spreading on the ground below the Malunggay.  This edible plant is also widely eaten in the Philippines and has virtually taken over our lot without any effort on our part.  I especially like it in the sour soup sinigang.  For more information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipomoea_aquatica

Espanola Fabrics, Iloilo City

I had a hard time finding a good quality tarp to cover the leaking nipa roof of my construction office.  I finally found just what I was looking for at Espanola Upholstery on Iznart Street in Iloilo City.  The address and phone number can be seen in the image above.  But, shop around.  After we bought our tarp at Espanola we found what looked like the same item at a nearby store.  As always, we love to shop in Iloilo’s old Calle Real neighborhood.

Tradewinds Books, Silahis Center, 744 Gen. Luna, Intramuros, 63-2-527-2113 and 63-2-527-2112.  This beautiful restored or reconstructed building also houses an art gallery and wonderful antique and gift shop.  One could easily spend half a day here.

Filipinas Heritage Library, Makati Avenue, Ayala Triangle, Makati. Good selection of books on Philippine history and culture. Phone: 63-2-892-1801 www.filipinaslibrary.org.ph email: fhl_inquiry@filipinaslibrary.org.ph

Filipinas Heritage Library, Makati, a green oasis in the city.

Ayala Museum Bookstore

Powerbooks, Greenbelt Mall.  The closest thing to Barnes and Noble or Borders. http://www.powerbooks.com.ph/index.asp

Iloilo Airport

For those that have asked about a flying club in the Iloilo area… I visited Visayas Aerospace college and technology at the Iloilo airport and spoke with their president, Orson Bahinting. They do rent planes and provide the necessary instruction for those wanting to get their Private rating. They currently have a Cessna 150, two 172s and a Barron 55E (twin). His number is 033-333-0330 for those wishing to get more information. (Thanks to Patrick for supplying this info! Fellow Iloilo flight enthusiasts can reach Patrick at ldo96 at cox.net)

Queen of Heaven Mission School, Tigbauan, Iloilo, Philippines

Queen of Heaven Mission School, Allera St., 5021 Tigbauan, Iloilo, Philippines.  Phone 63-33-511-7692

This year (2009) we’re sending our niece to Queen of Heaven Mission School, a private school in Tigbauan, Iloilo.  She’s in the first year of high school.  We’ll post some photos and feedback as the year progresses.  Tuition is P1,100 per month.  We were charged a total of P9,195 on enrollment.  This included the first month tuition, PTA fee, P3,000 Miscellaneous fees (no idea what that is), P3,745 for books and P1,200 for uniforms and ID.  Expect further assessments with various justifications.

June 8, 2009 – first day of classes.  I walked our student to school today, about a ten minute stroll from our apartment.   Our niece’s first year class is only fifteen students, eleven young women and four young men.  This is potentially an advantage over the public high school where class sizes can be much larger.  The ocean-view classroom was clean, there were desks for each student.  Queen of Heaven seems to be where some of Tigbauan’s more affluent families send their kids, although some transport their kids to Iloilo City’s bigger private schools.

The dominating presence of the 18th century Miagao Church, a designated UNESCO world heritage site, in the center of the town is a pleasant change from the jumble of dirty post-war concrete structures which constitute the heart many Philippine small towns.

Miagao is slightly reminiscent of Dumaguete, another, much larger Philippine college town.  Miagao has a bit of the college town gentility of Dumaguete, but does not have  the more extensive shopping, medical care, dining and accommodation amenities which Dumaguete offers.  You’ll have to travel 40KM to Iloilo City for most services.  Nor does it have the hundreds of foreigners, beggars, bars and bar girls and crime, which for us have somewhat dimmed Dumaguete’s luster.

Miagao is a bit refined but still is a small Philippine place.  Please see our short essay of life in the provinces.

The extraordinary “tropical baroque”  Miag-ao Church (1787-1797) dominates the town center.

We find the Ateneo de Manila’s Panublion heritage site to be a real treasure.  Explore it yourself at: http://www.ateneo.edu/offices/mirlab/panublion/r6_miagao.html

Here’s what it says about the Miagao Church: “Santo Tomás de Villanueva Parish In 1993, Miagao church was included in UNESCO’s World Heritage List under the title “Baroque churches of the Philippines.” The town was a visita of Oton until 1580, then annexed to Tigbauan until 1592, to San Joaquin until 1703, Guimbal until 1731 when it was raised to an independent parish. However, it was only 1734 that Miagao had a resident priest, Fr. Fernando Camporredondo. The original town site was by the sea in a place called Ubos (Hiligaynon for lower place). A church and other structures were built around 1734 but in 1741 the church was burnt during a slave raid. Fr. Camporredendo who ministered in Miagao from 1734-37, 44-50 built a second church during his second term. This lasted a handful of years because in 1754, the town was looted and burnt during another raid. Because of its vulnerability to raids, the Augustinians transferred the town up a hill called Tacas. There Fr. Francisco Mayo began building the present church in the year 1786. The structure was completed in 1797. Stones were quarried from San Joaquin and Igbaras. Fr. Francisco Perez added a story to the left tower in 1839. In 1864, Fr. Agustín Escudero restored the church. In 1880 Fr. José Sacristán decorated the interior. Early in the 20th century, the church was burnt during the Philippine American war and used as headquarters and barracks during World War II. The interior of the church was greatly damaged. In 1948, 1959, and in the 1970 the church was restored. Restoration is an ongoing concern as the soft yellow sandstone used in the church erodes easily.”

Miag-ago Church - detail

Exuberant a word that captures the spirit of the stone carving on the pediment of the Miagao Church.  If anyone has any questions about what “tropical Baroque” means, a visit to this church should be an education. St. Christopher is shown carrying the diminutive baby Jesus though a grove of palms, papaya and other stylized tropical vegetation.  The carving, probably done by Chinese craftsmen, is bold, imaginative and delightful.  What was the intention of the artists?  Alicia M.L. Coseteng speculates that “the intention…was to show that the same Christopher who ferried the Child Jesus across the biblical river to safety could well have crossed the seas to implant a rich and abundant faith in these islands…”  (Coseteng, Spanish Churches of the Philippines, 1972).

Miag-ao Church Interior (sorry for poor quality of photo)

The restored convent behind the Miag-ao Church

Well-maintained old house in Miag-ao

Spotless Miagao Public Market

Our apartment is in this duplex building. Photo is taken from the beach

We rented in Molo, Iloilo City for two and a half years.  Our new apartment is steps from the beach in Tigbauan, Iloilo, about 22 km from Iloilo City.

Our Tigbauan Apartment

In our apartment, Filipinas master the Internet. Left to right: Lika, Carol and Allen

We have a carport and a car wash team!

Beachfront Promenade

My beachfront parapet/reading nook at sunrise

The seawall from below

During storms,waves will break over this seawall, sending coconuts and gravel over the wall. The pounding of the waves on this seawall is easily heard from our apartment. The salty spray covers everything.

Sunset at our apartment

The two km. stroll to our Tigbauan property is through pleasant agricultural landscapes is a real treat and a pleasant change from the streets of Iloilo City.

Capiz Shell Windows, Lucban, Quezon Province, Philippines

Capiz or Lampirong (alternative spelling: Lamperong) Windows. One of the most distinct and beautiful architectural details of old Philippine buildings are the windows made with shell rather than glass.  We’re not sure if this is because glass was not made in the Philippines or it was just too expensive, but whatever the reason, it has has given us a treasure in these beautiful windows.  We had imagined that Capiz was something of the distant past until the stands selling “Lampirong” oysters (Placuna placenta) sprang up along the National Highway between Oton and Tigbauan, Iloilo on Panay Island in May.  The vendor told us that these Lampirong were harvested right in the immediate area, not trucked in from Capiz Province.

One of dozens of roadside stands selling Lamperong near Oton

The photo above shows Carol buying Lampirong oysters.  At first glance the Lampirong seem so thin that there could not be much meat.  This proved not to be the case.  The Lampirong were meatier than other local oysters and, according to my Filipino family, exceptionally fresh, sweet and delicious.  The cost was P35 per kilo.

Bucket of Lamperong oysters, Oton Iloilo

Getting back to historic Capiz windows, you can see why the windows are so beautiful.  They filter in a quiet light through the luminicent, mother-of-pearl shell.  The fact is that one the Lampirongs are eaten, the shells are discarded.  One firm is marketing newly-made Capiz products, including windows: http://www.lamperong.com/

Since we’re designing our new home, it’s a real temptation to incorporate these beautiful Capiz shells somehow, somewhere.

Grand Opening of RS2 Offices, Tigbauan, Iloilo, May, 2009

RS2 Software last week inaugurated its new premises in the Philippines, during a reception attended by various key officials. The new premises, situated in the municipality of Tigbauan, Iloilo, will serve as the company’s base in Asia. RS2 is currently carrying out various marketing initiatives in the region. RS2 Software CEO Mr Mario Schembri said: “RS2 has been seeking opportunities to set up an office in Asia. As a global company, Asia is a key region for our business which offers numerous business opportunities. Furthermore, from here, we will be providing software development and support services to our clients worldwide. The company plans a recruitment drive. It is envisioned that initially around 25 persons or more will be employed. We augur that this venture will serve to create new employment opportunities in the Philippines within the field of IT.”

During the reception, guests were addressed by RS2 Software Chairman Mr Reinhold Schäffter and RS2 Software CEO Mr Mario Schembri. Guests at the event included the Comissioner of Cyber Services Monchito Ibrahim, Iloilo Provincial Governor Niel Tupas Sr, Congresswoman Janet Garin of the First District of Iloilo, Tigbauan Vice Mayor Roel Jarena, Regional Director of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Dominic Abad , DTI Provincial Chair Engr. Wilhelm Malones, Overseas Workers Welfare Administration Regional Director James Mendiola, Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office Regional Director Jeanette Oberio and Department of Labor and Employment Head Filomeno Sonz

Above is a RS2 Press Release.

RS2 will initially hire 25 IT graduates who will work in the Tigbauan office as their training ground. After the training, the staff will travel to various RS2 branches around the world.

RS2 Software Group offers electronic card payment and Internet software solutions to banking and financial companies, service providers, and retailers. The company’s products include BankWORKS, which is a client server based card payment solutions. RS2 Software also provides Internet and mobile banking services software. The company was founded in 1989 and is based in Neu-Isenburg, Germany with additional offices in Gzira, Malta; Budapest, Hungary; Hong Kong; and Cairo, Egypt. (http://www.linkedin.com/companies/rs2-software-group)

Website: http://www.rs2group.com/

Abaca being loaded at the port of Iloilo City

Abaca or Manila Hemp fiber being loaded onto trucks at the port of Iloilo City. Philippines, 2009.  Abaca, the fiber of a type of banana,  was one the most important Philippine export.  It was used in the production of cordage.  Today, abaca is used in making premium papers including paper for printing currency.  In Iloilo, abaca was also used in the production of a fine fabric called sinamay.

See more information at http://www.abacaphilippines.com/abaca.php

Abaca being loaded at the port of Iloilo City

Abaca being loaded at the port of Iloilo City

Abaca being loaded at the port of Iloilo City

One thing we have noticed is that there really is not such a big price gap between nicer rooms in modest hotels (for example Fersal Inns or El Cielito, Makati) and entry-level rooms in somewhat more upscale mid-range hotels such as Best Western Astor or Crown Regency.  Generally we try to find relatively inexpensive rooms in mid-range hotels.  Often you get better rooms and furnishings and other hotel amenities such as free breakfasts, fitness centers, wi-fi and common areas, by trying to get a bargain room at a more upscale hotel.

We almost always search, compare prices, look for bargains and make our reservations on-line.  We have had the best luck with www.asiatravel.com. If you are a Filipino — or are married to one — look for their “balikbayan” (returning Filipino) rates.  We have also used www.asiarooms.com.   AsiaRooms has a better website than AsiaTravel.  I check both, but I have better luck finding good deals at www.asiatravel.com.  So far, I have also had good luck with their reservation execution. They take U.S. credit cards and do not charge a surcharge.

Manila or Makati.  There’s lots to see in the Ermita-Malate area and many hotels, but we prefer to stay in Makati. The Ayala-developed area of Makati is a little island of relative gentility in the madness of Manila.  In Makati, there are avenues, trees, parks, wide sidewalks, shopping centers and restaurants.  It’s actually fairly pleasant to be a pedestrian there, especially on weekends. Don’t let us discourage you from visiting the Ermita-Malate area.  Some of our favorite places (Fort Santiago), bookshops (Tradewinds Books) and restaurants are there.

Tropicana Hotel, Manila

Speaking of the Malate area, we stayed two weeks at the Tropicana Apartment Hotel.  It’s very conveniently located, just steps away from Robinson’s mall.  It’s easy walking distance to the U.S. Embassy, Intramuros, Fort Santiago, Roxas Boulevard and the restaurants and entertainment opportunities of Remedios Circle and the rest of the Manila “tourist belt”.  We had a roomy one-bedroom unit with a kitchen and a porch with a beautiful view over greenery to the skyscrapers of Manila.  Rooms are variable so take the time to look at what they have available.  We had room #702.  It was high up and facing a quiet area so traffic noise was minimal.  The Tropicana is on relatively quiet Luis M. Guerrero Street. The Tropicana also offers weekly and monthly rates.  A good percentage of the rooms are rented on a monthly basis. Address is 1630 Luis Ma. Guerrero Street, Malate, Manila Philippines 1004.

Website: http://tropicana-apt-hotel.com/ Phone: +63-2-525-5555

Friends also recommend the Executive Plaza and Cherry Blossoms Hotel as good moderately-priced options in the same area.

MAKATI AREA

We are more familiar with Makati hotels so can offer a few more suggestions.

Best Western Astor.  http://www.bestwesternastor.com/

The Best Western Astor can be a solid budget pick if you can get a good rate.  During our first stay there we got a good deal through asiatravel.com, about $50 per night.  When we checked in we were given an upgrade to a large, quite nice room with a king size bed.  The included breakfast buffet was pretty good.  This hotel is on Makati Ave., not far from the P. Burgos “adult entertainment district” but not really in the heart of the district and is a relatively short and safe walk to the more refined parts of Makati.  There’s lots of budget dining nearby, including North Park Noodles and all the fast food chains.  More recently, rates have risen beyond our frugal budget to about $85.

Fersal Makati http://www.fersalinn.com.ph/makati/

The Fersal Inn is quite near the Best Western Astor, on a quiet side street.  This is a good budget place, but you can often stay at a more upscale place for not much more money.  107 Neptune St., Bel-Air Village, Makati. 897-9123

El Cielito http://www.elcielito-makati.com/

El Cielito Inn, Makati

The El Cielto Inn has a good location on Pasay Road.  It’s an economy hotel with upscale aspirations.  A nice room there can cost as much as a room in a more upscale place.  A good place to stay.  A good location. 804 Arnaiz (Pasay) Ave., Makati City. 02-815-8951 to 54

St. Illian’s http://www.saintilliansinn.com/

St. Illian’s definitely has the feel of a budget place.  It’s acceptable, but you may be able to go more upscale for not too much money.  It’s on Santillian St. and is a bit hard to find. 893-0754

Crown Regency http://www.crownregencyhotels.com/makati.php

We splurged on the Crown Regency for several days in January of 2009. We were very disappointed.  We paid $64 for our room through www.asiatravel.com.  We are budget travelers.  For us, $64 per night is a splurge.  Our first room, #103, faced Arnaiz (Pasay) Road but we were not too much bothered by traffic noise.  On our second night we transferred to very quiet room at the back which faced a concrete wall.  We ended up preferring the room on the road because there was more light and we could feel a part of the activity of the city.  The hotel has a fairly convenient location on Arnaiz (Pasay Road), across from Park Square One and not far from the uncertain pleasures of Glorietta and SM City malls.  It’s a longer hike to the more refined Greenbelt area.

Crown Regency Hotel, Makati

The Crown Regency  is a small hotel, apparently aspiring to botique-hotel status.  There’s lots of granite and marble and genuinely good design touches.  This flash is undermined by very cramped standard rooms and the most disappointing breakfast buffet we’ve ever encountered.

This is were the Crown Regency breakfasts are served.

Pensionne Virginia - a budget hotel

The basic Pensionne Virgina has a convenient location on 816 Arnaiz (Pasay) Road. When we stopped by in Jan. of 2009 they offered a large, aircon room for P1105.  The room seemed spacious compared to Crown Regency room which cost four times as much.  This is an economy hotel in a good location. Phone: 63-2-844-5228 and 63-2-844-4626.

email pensionne_virginia@yahoo.com

http://www.geocities.com/pensionne_virginia/

There are a couple of other mid-range hotels located in the Pasay Road near Greenbelt.  The Tower Inn http://www.towerinnmakati.com/ and

One Roman Suites, 914 Arnaiz St. Phone: 63-2-752-9113.  2009 rates: suite P3200, deluxe P2888, standard P2288.

Friends recommend the Citadel Inn Makati http://www.citadel-inn-makati.com/ a big newish hotel which offers good rooms at good prices.  You just have to be aware that it is at the epicenter of the P. Burgos Street adult entertainment district, one of the main bar girl neighborhoods in Manila.  We tend to go to bed early and get up early.  If you do the same you may not be especially aware that the streets are full of hookers and fake-Viagra sellers.

One Roman Suites, Pasay Road, Makati

Our emergency lighting!

Emergency lighting. A couple a months ago we moved from Iloilo City to Tigbauan, Iloilo.  That gave us a new electric power supplier.  In Iloilo City we had “PECO” – Panay Electric.  In Tigbauan we have “ILECO”.  ILECO has proved to be far less reliable and that’s not to say that PECO was so great.  Some of the outages have been long — many hours.  We bought a kerosene pressure lamp (similar to a Coleman lamp in the U.S.) for another purpose but it’s proved to be so useful during the night time power outages in our Tigbauan apartment.  We bought ours at Senor Hardware on Iznart Street in Iloilo City for about P1200. Senor is right next to a fisherman’s supply store.  Senor has a complete line of parts, mantles and globes for the lamps.  These Chinese-made “Anchor” lamps are very popular with fishermen in the Philippines for night fishing.  Senor has two models.  Ours was the onshore model.  For P2400 you can get the marine model which is made entirely of non-corrosive materials. We’re sure these lamps must be available throughout the Philippines.

These kerosene pressure lamps are a bit trickier to light than the gasoline-fueled Coleman lamps I’d used in the U.S.  You have to prime the kerosene lamps using alcohol which is placed in a receptacle adjacent to the generator.  The alcohol burns, raising the temperature in the generator, eventually allowing the kerosene to vaporize and the lamp to light.  This can involve impressive flare-ups so I’d advise lighting the lamp outside of the house. Once lit, the lamp runs for many hours without further attention.

Santa Barbara, Iloilo Golf Course

Santa Barbara, Iloilo Golf Club and Course. On Easter, 2009 we had to take our son to the Iloilo airport to begin his journey back to the U.S. after his almost two month stay with us.  The golf course is not far from the new Iloilo airport so we decided to take this opportunity to take a look at the club.  Our timing proved to be serendipitous.  The course was closed for the Easter holiday but the gate was wide open, so we wandered in strolled around and took a few photos.  The course and the surroundings are just beautiful — big old trees, pretty paths to stroll.  Despite my father’s best efforts, I’m not a golfer so I can’t evaluate the course from a golfer’s perspective but it seems an idyllic place to stroll, club in hand.

Santa Barbara, Iloilo Golf Course: club house

Santa Barbara, Iloilo Golf Course - Club House

Santa Barbara, Iloilo Golf Course - fairway

Santa Barbara, Iloilo Golf Course

For more information on this historic golf course, see the official site: http://www.iloilogolfclub.com/

Santa Barbara Heights subdivision

Adjoining the Santa Barbara Golf Course is a very attractive subdivision under development.  It’s one of the nicest subdivisions we’ve seen and should be high on the list for golfers (or anyone else) looking for property in the Iloilo area.

Santa Barbara Heights subdivision

Santa Barbara Heights subdivision

Santa Barbara Heights subdivision

Real Estate for sale in Tigbauan, Iloilo, Philippines

Land for sale in Tigbauan, Iloilo

Land for sale in Tigbauan, Iloilo

5.28 hectares of exceptionally beautiful rural land in Barangay Namocan, Tigbauan, Iloilo at P1,000 per square meter.  Beautiful mountain views.  Internet access via SmartBro. Walking distance to plaza, market, high school. Convenient to Iloilo City shopping (SM City, Robinson’s), dining, medical care via National highway. For further information contact Mr. Hector Zayco, +63-33-511-8288, Mobile: 0919-891-4555. Email: hrzayco@yahoo.com

Cathay Pacific Airways Iloilo City phone: 033-335-1838

Cathay Pacific maintains its Manila ticketing office at:
22nd Floor LKG Tower, 6801 Ayala Avenue, Makati City 1226
(632) 757-0888

Keystone Lamp and Shade, Pasay Road, Makati

The location is more or less across Pasay Road from Park Square One.  Keystone will custom make any type of lampshade but they are not cheap.  Our simple shade cost P2500.  You can also find basic lamp shades for sale at SM Makati, not far from Keystone, at a much lower price.

Another flyover to be built in Iloilo City

The flyover, which is proposed to be constructed at the junction of General Luna-Jalandoni streets, will be implemented under the President’s Bridge Program of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

Emil K. Sadain, executive director of the President’s Bridge Program in a letter to Mayor Jerry P. Treñas has requested the assistance of latter’s office for the conduct of soil/geotechnical investigation as part of the design of the substructure.

The Woodfields Consultants Inc has been tapped as project consultant of the project.

Meanwhile, Treñas, in consultation with Sangguniang Panlungsod’s chairman on traffic committee councilor Erwin Plagata, disclosed that they will also look into other areas where traffic congestion is experienced and compared them with the proposed location.

One area is the junction of the national road in Taft North and Diversion Road in Mandurriao.

“This will be the second flyover for Iloilo City,” he said.

Treñas said there was no mention as to the budget allotted for the project.

The first flyover was constructed at the junction of General Luna and Infante streets, which is worth about P400 million. (PNA)
FFC/PGL/vlo

From:  Philippines News Agency

http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=0&nid=2&rid=182012

UPDATE: March 16, 2009.  Brace yourself for the Jalandoni flyover, a major new aesthetic affront to the beauty of Iloilo City and to the pretty San Agustin campus.  The “looking into other locations” seems to have come to nothing. Today we saw that the highway engineers were doing soil boring at the Jalandoni flyover site, an almost sure sign that the project will be built.

Building a hollow block perimeter wall around our Philippine lot.

Katherine Boo, writing in the February 23, 2009 edition of the New Yorker magazine makes what I feel are over-politicized theories on fences in the developing world.  Basically she says that electrified fences, walls jagged with broken glass and security gates have gone up as inequality grows, “that however the rich wished to consider the details of the poor, the poor might fully consider the details of the rich.”  The idea is that the rich build walls to protect themselves from a growing revolutionary consciousness on the part of the poor.   In the Philippine context, everyone wants a fence, not to protect themselves from a revolutionary mob, but rather to protect themselves from pervasive ordinary crime.  The poor have as good a fence as they can afford and always a dog to raise the alarm.  If a relative goes overseas and sends money back, a hollow block house and glass-topped concrete wall, may well result.  Read an abstract of Boo’s article (you have to be a New Yorker subscriber to get the entire article) at:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/02/23/090223fa_fact_boo

Now that we’ve defended ourselves and the fence project from political incorrectness, here’s a continuation of our posts on our house building project in Tigbauan, Iloilo in the Philippines.  In this segment we describe building a hollow (concrete) block perimeter wall and digging a well on our lot in Tigbauan.

We described shopping for hollow blocks and well tiles in an earlier post.  View it at http://goiloilo.com/our-house-project-cement-blocks/

Earlier we described buying our property, why a wall is needed:

http://goiloilo.com/our-tigbauan-home/

This narrative will continue until we’ve moved in to our new house.   This post is about building the hollow block perimeter wall itself.  We’ve reconsidered our ideas regarding the kind of fence we want.  In urban areas of the Philippines, high solid block fences topped with broken glass or barbed wire are the norm, but in rural places such as this, we just don’t feel that such a fence is appropriate.  When we traveled through Antique Province we saw that most non-bamboo fences were built with concrete posts about three meters apart, with perhaps one meter of concrete block above grade and the rest of the fence being cyclone wire.  This keeps animals in (or out), allows breezes, does not make you feel as through you are in a penitentiary and, in our case preserves views of the surrounding rice fields and mountains.  However, we’ve recently learned that the land around our lot will be subdivided for residential development we’re going to compromise.  Our wall will be seven feet high.  The first three feet will be hollow block topped with four feet of cyclone fencing.

Job site office and lounge

A first step was building this bamboo “office” for my visits to the job site.

Digging the well

In the U.S. wells are almost always drilled.  Dug wells are a remnant from an earlier era, considered prone to contamination by surface water.  Public health officials generally will not approve their use.  That said we had dug wells at our farm in Essex, New York.  There was a well which must have been dug around 1810.  Then I put in a new dug well using concrete well tiles very similar to those shown above.  In Iloilo dug wells, sometimes referred to as “deep wells” are standard.  Many of them are contaminated and are only used by the affluent for laundry and washing.  Of course the poor have to drink well water.

Down in the well

I was not exactly sure how a 25′ well could be dug by hand, but it’s really not that complicated, at least until water is struck. A shallow hole is dug and the first tile placed in the hole.  The digging team consists of the digger in the bottom of the well, and his helper who manages a pail on the end of a rope.  The digger digs around the bottom of the bottom well tile, putting the dirt in the pail.  Gradually the tile is undermined and the well tiles settle downward.  As the top of the tile approaches ground level, members the other members of the construction crew pitch in to put a new tile at the top and then the digging continues.

We used reinforced concrete well tiles (which are actually culvert tiles) 36″ in diameter and 18″ high.  These are larger tiles than are usually used in the Philippines. The tiles cost P885 each, delivered. We bought ours from the same supplier as our hollow block, Damasco Marketing in Pavia, Iloilo (phone 329-6461). We have been very pleased with Damasco.  So far we have received 4,200 6″ block.  The count of blocks delivered has been accurate and very, very few defective blocks.

As of Jan. 30, 2009 twelve tiles were in place, ten below grade and two above.  There was six feet of water in the well.  The well diggers seemed inclined to stop digging, but January is just the start of the dry hot months.  The water table can be expected to fall further.  The original plan, based on local recommendations, was to have a 25′ deep well, with another 5′ above grade but the well diggers stopped digging, cemented the joints, and back filled around the tiles and left.  By April we only had three feet of water and the level was still falling.  We had to bring in a new crew to completely redig the including removing all the tiles which had already been placed.  I’ve made a separate photo essay on the amazing and terrifying work of the new crew.  See http://goiloilo.com/digging-water-well-tigbauan-philippines/

Digging the trench for the hollow block perimeter wall

At the same time as the well is being dug, the foundation trenches for the hollow block perimeter wall are being dug.  As you may be able to see from this photo, our rice land soil is unbelievably heavy clay.   The mountains in the distance are in Iloilo Province, in the Bucari area.  We decided to back fill the trenches with gravel fill so that we could save the soil from the trenches for use a lot fill.  The gravel fill is better for the fence and the clay soil is better for our future gardens and landscaping.  Later we found out that the heavy clay soil cracks so badly during the long dry season that the crack can cause structural damage to fence and house foundation walls.  The photo below was taken in March of 2010.  There had been no rain since late October of 2009.  Backfilling with gravel can create a barrier or buffer keeping the cracking clay from damaging foundations.  This is a growing problem in the U.S. also as reported in a New York Times article:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/garden/04foundation.html

Cracking earth near hollow block wall. 3-9-10

Four foot deep fence foundation trench

It’s been a surprise to me that such extensive foundation work is needed for a simple hollow block wall.  The trenches are four feet deep.  One reason may be that the wall will be retaining up to one meter of fill, so it has to have considerable strength to resist the outward pressure of the fill.  Many poorly built walls tip.  They are everywhere.  When we were in Cebu City we saw a huge section (100 feet?) of concrete boundary wall collapse into a stream during a rain storm.

Pancit Break at the job site

On my way to the job site I stopped at Bong’s Eatery in Oton and bought saipao (steamed pork buns) for the worker’s merienda (afternoon snack).  I was completely upstaged by a this neighborhood woman and her son who arrived with an afternoon meal for the workers.  For ten pesos (about twenty cents) the workers get a plate of pancit (noodles with meat and vegetables) along with two or three small pan de sal (wheat rolls).  She and her family live nearby, “over behind the coconut trees”.  She keeps an account book on collects for the meals on each Friday payday.  Eventually I stopped bringing snacks for the workers as I did not want to compete with Mercy.

Rebar columns for fence

This worker is fabricating steel reinforcing for the concrete fence columns.  The columns are 30cm x 30 cm.  Each contains four 12mm rebar vertically, wrapped with 9mm or 10mm stirrups.  Although the fence will end up being seven feet above the final grade, each column is four meters (12 feet) high –  (a four foot foundation, two feet of fill and seven feet fence height = 12 feet).    The columns are spaced three meters apart.

Rebar column and column footer. The heavy concrete column footer is 80cm (32") square. It is further reinforced when the wall footer is poured across the column footer.

Vertical rebar is 12mm.  Also shows column footer.

It looks a little like a state prison construction site!

February 22, 2009 Update.  A litany of disasters.  The workers had done a great job digging the trenches.  Then a typhoon arrived two weeks ago with very heavy rain.  The walls of the trenches collapsed back into the trenches, almost filling them with mud and clay. They have to be re-dug.  The muddy soil is not a promising base for the footers.

Collapsed trench

Lesson: it was unwise to dig all the trenches in advance.  One side of the fence should have been dug, the footers poured, the block laid and the trench back filled.  That would have limited the trench collapse problem.  Why was it done this way?  I suspect (see below) that digging trenches is cheap because it requires only labor — not expensive rebar and cement.

We made other mistakes.  We advanced too much money to the architect-contractor at the beginning of the contract for “mobilization”.  Although we had advanced nearly 50% of the project funds by the fifth week, work was not commensurate and then almost stopped when there were no materials being delivered by the architect-contractor.  The workers had no materials to work with. We suspended payments to the contractor and had to pay the workers ourselves.  We should have known better than to let payments outstrip actual work completed.  This is unwise anywhere.  Mindful that the rainy season is not far off, we have had to start paying workers and buying material.

Because we had to pay workers directly, we became privy to what wages were being paid.  Wages ranged from P170 per day for laborers to P280 per day for the most experienced worker.  Payroll for the week was P9,320.00 for eight construction workers and one supervisor.

Feb. 23, 2009 a basic materials list for our fence project.  This is for a fence of about 180 lineal meters.  The wall height is about 10 feet, four feet below grade and six above.

• 6″ hollow block – 8,475 pcs – paying 13 pesos delivered.
• Cement – 1,299 bags – Apo brand, paying P209 delivered
• 10mm rebar, 6m length – 1,446 pcs – paying P111 delivered
• 12 mm, 6m length rebar 252 pcs – paying P161 delivered
• Sand 90 cm – paying P290 per cubic meter
• Gravel 111 cm – paying P340 per cubic meter
• Ordinary fill material for back filling the trenches was P170 per cubic meter, delivered in six cubic meter loads.. This is a stony, sandy gravel.  We’ll also use the material for the driveway and underneath the carport and house.

Some of these prices are a bit high for the Iloilo City area but the job site is about 30km outside of the city so transport adds to the cost. The sand and gravel costs seem high.  Soil fill is about P225 per cubic meter.

We have a watchman sleeping on the site along with his family.  Yesterday we had a big delivery of hollow block.  Our watchman, who works as one of our laborers during the day, could not work today because he was kept up at night by people trying the steal block and escape with them across the fields on foot.  They must have cursed us for the heavy six inch block!  No block was lost.  He requested a big flashlight.  I happened to have a five battery-D-cell Mag-Light that I bought twenty years ago, so I gave it to him to use.  This type of theft is routine in the Philippines.  Any more questions why a wall is necessary?

March 2, 2009.  We take our son to Boracay, leaving behind instructions that no concrete be poured until we get back.  We want to inspect the placement of the gravel, the rebar and so forth.  We return the following day to find that about sixty meters of footer have been poured.  Explanation of site supervisor, “I forgot what you said”.

The block sits on a rough pile of concrete. Somewhere underneath is the footer.

March 4, 2009.  I return to the site to see that block is being laid atop that new footer, but the block is not on the footer itself but on a hump of stony mortar several inches high.

Detail of how a badly out of level footer is "corrected". The footer is about 6" below the block.

I’m furious. A fence which will be nine feet high is teetering on a hump of mortar!  The explanation — the grade of the newly poured footer was not right and the “hump” is to correct the level.  Finally it becomes clear that this crew lacks proper supervision.  Perhaps this is the way of ordinary Filipino building, that all of these problems will be adjusted away, hidden away and that the completed fence will look fine.  The “hump” will be buried with the footer back fill.   If I had not been on site every day, the trench would have been back filled and I’d have never known about this bit of creative construction, unless the fence failed.  When you buy a already built house, or if you are not present during construction of your house, you have no idea how many sins are hidden beneath the finishing.  This could have just as easily been the foundation of a house as a fence.At least we’re learning these lessons on our wall and not our house!

We decided that we had to terminate our contract with the architect-contractor.  Although we had paid advances of almost P350,000, the project was being stalled for lack of material and inadequate attention and supervision by the architect.

We hired a new crew who began work on March 13.  So far we’re very pleased with the work.  Bob and Carol are responsible for buying and arranging for delivery of all materials.  Given the rate at which this big, hard-working crew consumes cement, rebar, sand and gravel, keeping them supplied is a real job.

This shows the column and the .8m x .8m column footer ready to be poured

Concrete being mixed. The amount consumed is prodigious!

This shows the wall footer being poured over the already poured column footer.

Pouring the footer, and unending line of buckets of concrete fill the trench.

The new supervisor and crew have made a dramatic improvement in the pace and quality of the work.

Steel and concrete stream into the project site

I am starting to feel guilty about the environmental impact of the wall project.  The amount of concrete and steel being used to fence a small lot seems really excessive.  Perhaps this concrete overkill is to compensate for local construction methods. Materials and mixing are not always up to proper standards.  Sand and gravel can be dirty, mixtures impromptu, and mixing done with a shovel. Filipino concrete construction often seems overbuilt in this way, as though the buildings are designed to last forever.  In reality, the buildings are transitory and are often knocked down in a few years.  The New York Times has an excellent article on concrete at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/science/earth/31conc.html?_r=1&hpw

The new crew built a "bodega" to store materials, especially sacks of cement.

The bodega is sheathed in "hamakan", thin strips of bamboo woven into panels. In Tagalog areas it's called sawali. This is taken from the inside of the bodega.

Tall post to receive electric power built into corner of fence

Detail showing electric cable attachment at corner post.

At long last, real progress on the fence project!

The east wall (above) will be eight feet above the preexisting grade.  If we add two feet of fill, the wall height will end up at six feet.  Th east wall is the only wall which will be solid block.  The others will be two or three feet of block topped with four feet of diamond-mesh (”Cyclone”) fencing suspended from a 1.5″ schedule 40 pipe embedded in the top of the columns.  This will allow air circulation and views of the surrounding rice fields and mountains in the distance.

The east wall will be all block because we adjoin an undeveloped subdivision on the east.  There are five five 300 square meter lots along our 65 meter long east boundary so we eventually have neighbors, very possibly owning roosters and karaoke machines.  Unfortunately we’ll lose some of the cool breezes during the northeast monsoon — the Amihan.

The construction of the wall consists of panels of hollow blocks between 30×20 cm concrete columns.  The columns rest on 80cm x 80 cm reinforced concrete footings.  The blocks rest on a slightly shallower reinforced concrete footing.  The columns are spaced about three meters apart.

Above the footing there are nine rows of filled, reinforced hollow blocks topped by a horizontal reinforced concrete tie or banding beam running the length of the wall.  The rebar for the banding beam can be seen in the photo. Then will come six more courses of block topped by a final tie beam.

Perspective problem

The above photo should show an engineering problem with the fence.  The lot slopes up about two feet during the 65 meters from the road to the rear of the property.  The footers must be level so the footer trenches so they get progressively deeper as the grade rises.  This means the fence will be lower in the rear than in the front.  Is this a problem?

Heavy traffic on the road into our lot. Barangay Namocan is dairy cow country.

Our electric utility is ILECO, the Iloilo Electric Cooperative.  Ileco’s power lines run right by our property.  We wanted to get temporary power installed.  Our crew was mostly from Iloilo City and stayed overnight at the project site.  Lighting would make their evenings more civilized — they could see the food they were eating. Power will be essential for welding.

As a temporary measure we bought a kerosene-powered pressure lamp — similar to the Coleman lamps in the U.S. and widely used in the Philippines for night fishing. Lamps and parts available from Senor Hardware, Iznart Street, Iloilo City.

A neighbor suggested we hook up to his power connection and that we could pay him for the power we use.  We preferred to have our own temporary connection so we asked our architect to apply for a temporary electrical permit to the Tigbauan Municipal Engineer’s office.  Although the Engineer’s office had a form for a temporary permit, actually getting the permit approved devolved into an endless, frustrating bouncing back and forth between the ILECO office and that of the municipal engineer’s office.  Of necessity, we capitulated and accepted our neighbor’s offer.  We had power the next day.  It seems that you get your electrical hookup when your building is complete and that ad hoc hookups are normal for construction projects.

Relaxing with some of the construction crew - Barangay Namocan, Tigbauan Fiesta April 18, 2009

We make access road repairs

Like dumb novices, we did not pay too much attention to the quality of the road leading into our bit of paradise, other than ensuring that we had the legal right to use it. We saw the property during the dry season.  The road was rough but very passable.  Of course, that all changed when the rains came.  Access to our property was just about impossible.  Fortunately, it’s only about 500 meters to a fairly solid barangay (municipal) road.  As is typical, our road served dozens of families traveling mostly by foot, motor bike or tricycle.  The road also served a dormant subdivision just beyond our property.

The seemingly inexorable pace of development in the area helped save us from our road problems.  Owners of lots in the subdivision just beyond us complained that they could not access their lots and road improvements resulted.  The improvements consisted of truck hauling in loads of rough sandy-gravel fill and dumping it on the muddy road.  The trucks appeared and then disappeared, the job only partly done.  Still we were grateful and learned how easy it was to improve the road.  We decided to continue the work in a small way.  We filled bad spots with a total of about 25 cubic meters of sandy gravel, using our worker to spread the fill.  This cost us about P6,000 and made our access (and that of our neighbors) better.

We bought this “Dragon” brand pump at Senor hardware on Iznart Street in Iloilo city for P2,500.  For many Filipino households, this would serve as the all-purpose wash area; for taking a bath (while dressed for modesty’s sake), doing laundry and dishes.  Even some rich households make their help use hand pumps to save money on electricity and to avoid using “NAWASA” — municipal water which costs money.  Most Filipinos must use ground water, whatever its quality.  They have no other option.

The water level -- a key tool

The water level is nothing more than a length of plastic pipe filled with water.  It allows builders