Hello

A couple of my own from about the house here:

is this you Alan @Alan Salter

Top one looks like an Atlas Moth, if you make a mercury Vapour trap you will see swarms of moths and nocturnal insects

Trekking with a garmin?

That is me, where and when was that I wonder? Brecon canal I think probably 7 years ago

great write uo on the Steatoda Bipunctata!2014

False Widow, I have met a few of those in the Philippines

I'm impressed, a mercury vapour trap eh... perhaps that's one for the bottom of the garden nearer the neighbours house... few more for you here:



Sorry about the last one - that's what you get when you search do a Google Search on your Photos

Middle one is a hawk moth, next time you see a decent insect like a mantid put your hand beside it for scale

That's incredibly unusual for the Philippines, especially for a poor family, which country was she adopted from Alan?

Thanks for posting those, John.
There is a Photo website (free to register) that has all sorts of subjects.
Lots about Macro too, and of course, Insects are prominent:
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=38

It taks a lang spin tae sup wi a Fifer, weel thits whoar am frae, whit aboot yersel whoar dae ye bide? (keep to the code) wi dinnae waunt ony oh them English white settlers tae ken whoar we are, they would miybe come tae oor local and try an mooch a drink frae us?

For around 2oyr of my 36yr marriage in UK I did the cooking for a family of 4 and also the shopping, only one of our two supermarkets at that time supplied vehicle fuel, this is Asda and where I would go, prior to this time my wife did this, she would come back from a shop with a till receipt as long as your, arm and be spending over £100, she never did care about the price of anything and always picks from the middle shelves, when I took charge of this I reduced our food bill by around 33% and I managed to keep in that range for the next 20yrs as during this time Aldi and Lidl had come to the town, the Aldi store was only 200mtrs from our house, my main shop was still in Asda but I used this new Aldi for fruit and veg, milk, sugar, eggs where the quality is much the same no matter the brand label, today I shop exclusively in Aldi, the quality in these stores has much improved over the years and equal to the big boys now. I firmly believe I could still feed a family of 4 on £100 for the week and that includes all household and personal cleaning materials, as an example when it comes to the washing of clothes I would hazard a guess that I can do this for 80% less than your average household and perhaps have less problems with the machine and not because it is getting used less, I've had the same machine for 15yrs with never a problem, in a three person household.

My Family in PH lives in the house I built in Valencia, Negros Occidental, of all the places I have lived and the many places I have visited which includes Las Pinas, for me this is the best of all and the only downside being it only has a domestic Airport, it is a 15mins drive from our wee toon to the city of Dumaguete and 21mins to the airport, I guess you could say it is a quiet sleepy town, it is 200mtrs above sea level and never floods, it has clean mountain air, the reason I moved there in the first place for the benefit of our new born child, added to that it has a good public park a great meeting place for the locals and Foreigners alike, every Sunday it is a beehive of activity when the farmers market comes to Town. The crime rate there is very low, no need for Bars on Windows and Doors, the locals treat us Foreigners very well, I must admit the place has more than its fair share of Dumb US guys, there is a host of Foreigners that have settled there having lived in other places as I have done and most would tell the same story as myself.

Having lived in a few Sub-Divisions this is something I would strongly advise against, I have lived 3 of them, wild horses could not drag me back into one.

What are the issues with the sub divisions that would not want to live there ?

You've not seen or heard my neighbors, karaoke singing right now, bloody awful. Going to be a long night.

Can say that about most houses in towns and pretty much issue unless living in upmarket area or in middle of nowhere. Would seriously like to know the issues as wife is desparate to have house in philippines and need to know the potential problems.

We rented a place in a sub division for about three years and felt it was ok but also felt over the period was slowly going downhill.

I'm of opinion that money put in will end up being lost money as not convinced easy to sell or extract the cash out of country and really want to understand the additional ongoing costs such as taxes. As we were renting only had the standard utilities and rent as outgoings.

Useful to know the additional upfront costs in addition to purchase price as well and any issues to minimise risks.

I'm more attracted to the rent to buy schemes as minimises upfront costs and risk although know end up paying more than cash buy.

Also useful to understand how long the buying process takes.

In the three Sub divisions I have lived in these all had one thing in common, (these were all in Lapu Lapu City where land is at a premium) all of the houses were placed Cheek by Jowl, in the first two these were small houses at the cheap end of the market none had any garden area so all the land was composed of 100% concrete cover added to that you had the perimeter walls and the walls of the house so perhaps as much as 200% of the land area was just a large concrete heat sink added to that it was devoid of any cooling winds, in the first of the three we had a small furnished studio with no place to sit outside but it was too hot anyway, however we were happy there until we got our new neighbour with the Dog, this was tied up all day with the sun on its back for half the day so it whimpered continuously often it had no water in its plastic dish. this had the obligatory mostly sleeping Security Guards at the gate house, they never did stop anyone or even ask questions when entering the gate, but there was fees imposed on us for this service.

So we moved to SD No2 into a 2Bed terraced house again there was no garden area with the exception of odd ones at the end of the row, there they all had a place to park a Car and seating area all done in concrete, only good to sit there when the sun was down and still Cheek by Jowl to the neighbours, plenty of dogs there also, security gates and Guards that applied the same rules as No 1 SD after some time in this house I had to stand on a chair to change a Lightbulb, from that position I could see over the perimeter walls and on the other side was a sea of green of an unusual shade and I had no idea what the cultivated plants were, later I was to find out this place was flooded and the water was thick with algae, another Foreigner told me there was a high incidence of Dengue in the area, then come the big flood, our house was 1mtr above road level and the water rose to 1.5mtr in less than 2hrs, so we broke our contract and got out of there, actually the landlord was OK about it.

Then we got lucky or so I thought at the time? I found a small 2 bed Bungalow fully detached in a very high end SD, this place was huge with around 500 houses and most were fully detached many of them had room for a garden but so many were paved all over, for the most part they were all owner occupied with respectable Professional Filipino's, this was where I found out that Pinoys with a bit of coin in their pockets are just arrogant rude Feckers with a total disdain for Foreigners who may have more money that them? they also treated their own people like ****, we had an older woman to cut our grass for us she only had hand shears, we would give her P200 for around 4hrs work and a meal at the end of her shift, she later went on to tell us, these rich Pinoys gave her around half that or less for the same hours, we must have been the furthest lot from the main gate around 7/800mtrs and after a hard day watching the Lady cutting the grass, I would go the Bar just outside the SD gate now this road was very wide around 8mtrs, you could actually see the heat haze off this road and feel it in your feet and this would be at 5pm, from around 4 to 7pm the traffic was hectic outside this gate all travelling nose to tail slower than walking pace, you could see and smell the traffic fumes, later on in the evening when it was dark you could see all the smog around the street lights.

I will say the security was well run there, for any strangers to enter a phone call had to be made to any house that may be visited, but we had hefty SD fees to pay for this and everyone was subject to the rules and extra charges that may be applied for whatever whimsical reason? while I was there they laid new speed bumps to replace the old broken ones, this time they made them wider and higher than before, many of the small cars had to take them at an angle or they would bottom out, to pay for this they imposed and entrance fee for all taxis, p50 entry and again on exit, but an increased fee of P150 for anything with twin wheels like a delivery vehicle, after a a couple of weeks they withdrew this and everything was back to normal again.

For any respectable Filipino there is two must haves, the first being a large 4WD car and the second a large Pedigree Dog, there was no Askals on this high end SD, there Great Danes, Dobermans and a host of other large breeds, these Dogs were a big problem for me, they were never out of their very small yard, most of them going a little stir crazy all it would take was for someone to walk past their gate and off they would go and just like a row of dominoes from one house to the next and so on till all were at it just about every house had a Dog.