Humabdos returns to PL!!!

[Humabdos]

Well I'll start by a big apology to Jeff S. and anyone else I insulted in the past. Hope all can be forgotten and we can start with a clean slate.

Sallie and I have just returned from a wonderful three week trip to the Philippines. Most of our time was spent in Davao although we did spend three nights in Manila to visit  some of Sallie's relatives.
I'll work up a detailed trip report as soon as I recover from a bad case of jet lag . Hope some of the old time PL members will drop in and say Hi.
If anyone wants to contact us our E mail is: Humabdos@aol.com

Regards, Hum & Sallie

[Ray]

     

Welcome back stranger! Can't wait for that trip report with all the pictures of topless native girls...

[flipflop]

[Ray]

     

[Jeff S]

Glad to see you back Hum. No apology needed. Just curious. How much does a rural beach house go for these days in the PI? Not talking a nipa hut - a framed or block, livable place.

- Jeff

[Humabdos]

Hi Jeff

Glad there are no hard feelings!
I try not to think much about politics any more it just makes me mad

I think you could find good rural beach land for about $50,000 Depending on the location of course. A nice house will cost around $60,000 to build.
Something similar in your area would cost at least 3 to 5 million dollars.

 Sallie and I have our eye on a house and lot in Ladislawa subdivion in Davao average price in this up scale neighborhood is around P7.5 million to P10,000,000 the peso to dollar rate in PI is now P47.5 to a us dollar.

personally I can't wait to get the hell out of USA and get to Davao, Philippines where I can feel safe to walk around at night without my Glock .45ACP G21 and 2 extra clips
Hum & Sallie

[Humabdos]

Now that's funny!!! 

[Humabdos]

     

Welcome back stranger! Can't wait for that trip report with all the pictures of topless native girls...

Thanks for the welcome Ray it's good to be back to PL however... I wish where back in D Philippines the land that I love! I'm already home sick! Pictures of topless native girls? Sorry all I have is video!
hum & Sallie
Hum & Sallie

[Jeff S]

Yeah, I could cash out here, build a fabulous place there and probably never run outta money. Hows the fishing in Davao? Here's one of my boat plans customers with his family in the PI:



- Jeff

[Humabdos]

So why don't you? Certainly you don't like your job that much do you? The fishing in Davao in excellent and even better south 100mi in Gen San.
Hum

[Ray]

Hey Jeff,

A rural beach house in the islands will probably run somewhere at $150K and up in a decent area. Here’s one I was looking at a while back. It’s a nice little house on Camiguin Island, which is nice and peaceful, little traffic, friendly people, not too far from a major city (Cagayan De Oro). There are active volcanoes though.

http://www.islandsproperties.com/properties/beachfronts/cam-mam-bf-44/index.htm

This place is listed for a little under $200K, but it’s been advertised for quite a while now, so probably overpriced. It does come fully furnished and even includes a mini-van and lawn mower. The owner also has a nice little 24-foot boat for sale, which would be nice for fishing.

The big problem is that foreigners are not allowed to own property in the Philippines, with the exception of some condos. However, you can lease land for 25 years, extendable for another 25 years. There are some special allowances for foreigners who have a big chunk of money ($1,000,000+?) to invest, who can purchase land to develop a commercial resort or something similar.

Hum, did you make it to Camiguin this trip?

Ray

[Jeff S]

I'm more daydreaming than anything else. I'd never get my wife to move out in the country. She's a city girl all the way. Hmmmmm how's Dumaguete City? http://www.islandsproperties.com/properties/beachfronts/negor-dum-bf-54/index.htm

Anybody know a good carpenter who can build me a nice place here?

- Jeff

[Bear]

Hey feller!  Good to see another of the "wild hogs" back.  Blow up any bikers clubs lately(read Fil-Am sites)?   I don't post much just too many things happening lately and really a lot of the weirdos on sites like Mag-anak make me sick.  Rather than get into discussions they want to call names.

Honey and I were gonna make the trip back to Davao this month too but she went wacko on me and we didn't make it .  She decided that she didn't want family and friends to say our children looked like her so she'd go back alone?  I decided that no way I'd get the little monsters for 3 weeks by myself (not at this age anyway) so I said either take both or stay home.  I had intended to follow behind her a week or so and meet her in Cebu or other place where we could have a nice relaxing vacation.  Of course I was finding that I'd have to pay to take half her family with us but heck! Why not? I could afford it there.  Ended up we decided to do some more house improvements here instead ?  We just remodeled or kitchen - looks real nice, very modern.

I'm a bigwig in the office now.  Promoted to senior engineer after just under 3 years but hey I got 21 years field experience so why not?  Hard to believe 5 years ago I was driving a truck around servicing peoples automation systems in the field for what seemed like payday-to-payday minimum wage.  Love it now (except the occasional instense stress)  Recently finished a NASA job for Boeing which had me doing doubles for about 3 weeks, my 8 hours during the day and then 8-12 hours trouble-shooting at the site at night (including weekends).  Just seems there aren't many willing, knowledgeable younger guys out there to learn the field stuff.  Of course I think they don't pay them well enough either.

The company was bought out by a Division of Carrier/UTC because of some of our innovations with that companies product.  They were surprised we could do things with it they never thought about.  We developed what we call a "comfort index" and read utilities and equipment usage, add in the people data and started finding how to save and invest so that the customers dollar went to the right spots.  Its quite awesome - you just login to the site and click on a link and its shows you a color index of the problem areas/floor and where costs are excessive to the comfort level.  Like watching a movie.  Carrier trademarked our product the next week!  Then they bought 7 of our sister independents around the nation to help market it.  Tirane near sh@t-a-brick from what I heard and lost $4M in sales locally the 1st month after Carrier bought us!  Our first customer paid us a measly $31K and saved $132K in 5 months.  Needless to say we now have a very long waiting list and I work a lot of hours of but the bonus checks are great!  Last week I trained 8 visiting offices and 15 of their customers with no end in sight.

The boys are awesome! Both have unique characters that I just have to smile at.  The oldest, A.J. is 4 this week and talks like a college student?  Where did he get that grammer?  The youngest if 14 months and the doc says if he continues at this rate of growth he'll be 6'3" to 6'5".  I'm only 5'9" and Honey is 4'11" so how this happened is very curious!!!   We love to watch this one animated roller-coaster-ride and "The Polar Express".  They'll climb up in my lap and drink hot chocolate and eat popcorn just having a blast.  Of course Mom runs around taking pictures of it like she's a Filipina or something!

Do you have children now?

The Bear Family

[Humabdos]

Hi Bear


Glad to hear your still alive and well. Wow two kids now!
Lets see now.... when you are 70 you will have two teenagers? 

It was great to get back to the PI. I really like Davao City Sallie and I hope to retire there someday. We have kept in contact with RGG and family from Davao. We met him through P.L. over 5 years ago.
We all drove together to Camiguin Island from Davao thru bukidnon spent a few days on Camiguin then went over to Duka Bay near surigao. Very nice! I'll have a full trip report soon.

Sounds like your doing a lot of ladder climbing. Just remember a few things:

Health isn't wealth .
Honesty is still the best policy.
Money can't buy happiness.
The higher the climb the farther the fall.

Hum & Sallie

[Bear]

Two!  We're talking about the 3rd one now.  Honey really wants a girl, took it pretty hard at first when our son Aiden was born, but she has finally come to terms with it.  Think now she'll even be okay if the third is a boy.  She has had lots of her friends tell her that girls are more of a problem to raise and of course I told her we'd send our boys back to the R.P. to get a wife.  She laughed but I think she'd actually like that . 
She believes in this Chinese calender thing which says with her cycle and their "scientific study" puts her most likely to have a girl from May through July, soooo....  This will be the last!  I'm just too old to be a fair participating parent to have any more afterwards.  Aiden (the second) will be 18 when I'm 70.  Hard to go on scouting trips and mountain climbing at that age.
Today was A.J's BD.  He was 4.  Got his first two wheeler bicycle - of course mom bought all kids of pads and helmets!?
Work just got harder.  The kid who was my boss got pneumonia.  I was the recipient of 3 of his projects and had to work on two others today.  He'd already maxed out the hours on one and totally goofed a control sequence by putting a global broadcasting piece of information in a non-broadcasting module - no one could figure out why nothing would work. Loved their faces when I pointed that out???  The rest of his projects of which he is behind as much as 2 months with the hours maxed out got divided with the other engineers.  Everyone hates him and now...
I'm not one of those big heads, I just like the fact that I'm finally getting some respect for what I can do, but I noticed my "easy going" "do-it" attitude has been allowing people to take advantage of me - at least until I was promoted under my current PM - he really protects me because he worries what he'd do if I left.  There's another guy at work that would engineer rings around me but he just can handle the stress.  About a year ago he took a demotion because he just couldn't tell employees to do their job.  But gosh he knows this equipment.  Even the newer stuff he just snaps and it becomes clear.  He was just honored by NASA for single-handedly keeping the Mission Control Center at the Lunar Module Facility running during a crisis situation and what he was doing wasn't even his job.  Awesome dude really.
Me, I just get a kick out of watching it work or seeing the numerous school boards members faces when we show them millions in savings while improving the learning environment of the classrooms.  We're killing the competition.  We do ten times more work than the next 5 "big guys" put together and we are expanding fast!
Hows the construction business?

The Bear Family

[Humabdos]

WoW! 3 kids now? 

"Bear" foot and pregnant?  I guess that's one way to keep her busy!

With all that ladder climbing hope you can spend some time with them 3 cubs. Sounds like a lot of stress to me . Getting respect is nice especially when it's from your kid's and wife.

My business is doing great. My only problem is finding good help. We had 80+ MPH wind here in December which damaged at least 25% of every roof in town. 80% of my work even before this storm is roofing so I'm booked months in advance. Today it's snowing here with a 30MPH wind maybe I can get to this huge pile of paper work on my desk....
Hum