Rock wrote:Perhaps. But she really wasn't trying to impress or anything like that. I'm the one who was making efforts to understand her business and she just answered me matter of factly. If I had accused her of BSing or bragging, she would have said something along the lines of, "I don't care whether or not you believe me, you're the one asking these questions and I'm just answering". It's rude enough to ask about earnings and compensation but then to say bola to her answers would take the cake. If that's the way Pinoys would respond, no wonder she's keen to date a foreigner.
Perhaps she's one of the lucky women who could start a business with a bit of capital and grew and reinvested till being financially well-off. For some strange reason, when I think of that kind of prototype of clever, entrepreneurial and proactive Filipino...I always think of a woman
Rock wrote:Wait a minute. You consider me a first world tourist/expat even though I've been living my adult life in various parts of Asia and Latin America including poor ones and localized to a degree in some of these areas. And you talk like an old hand even though, as I remember from your posts, you've always lived in W. Europe, romped around Asia for just a few weeks in total and spent maybe 2 of them in the Philippines (Davao I believe). Well Davao is a nice city and all. But it's still a relative backwater. The lion's share of money and economic opportunities are in Metro Manila and to a much lesser degree perhaps Cebu. The kinds of gals I was talking about are going to be found primarily in Metro Manila with a few here and there from Cebu and maybe places like Davao or Cagayan de Oro. I did date a couple of girls there from what seemed to be good backgrounds. One of them has an uncle who is base commander of the army base in the area. She was already working on their part time and told me he was going to get her set-up with an army career in Manila area Pampanga after she graduates. The other graduated last year and moved up to Makati to pursue a job with one of the airlines. So you see, even with girls like that who hail from Davao area, there's a fair chance you will encounter them up north around Manila.
As for restaurant outings, they are common for people who work or live around Makati, Ortigas, Fort, Mall of Asia/airport area, or even SM North/Trinoma. Venues of all levels from fast food to the high-end get packed both for lunch and dinner, weekdays and weekends. Consuming at restaurants and coffee shops is not the big deal you imagine it to be for the fast expanding educated middle classes of Metro Manila, a world apart from sleepy Davao.
I can't say much here Rock, but believe me when I say I know the Philippines much, much more than you imagine.
Anyhow, I don't think one has to spend several months in Metro Manila to notice the young men and women sitting at the American coffee shop franchises or the al fresco bars of the Greenbelt. It surely looks like a lot of people, and surely reflects the growing share of metropolitan middle/upper middle class populating those luxury condos and leafy residential areas. Metro Manila is where you would find the old money families, the up and coming political and media families, and those even more up and coming families with dads and uncles working in the US, Japan or Dubai. I am really curious to see how many of those metropolitan boys dining at Yellow Cab Pizza while surfing on their iPads are spending their own pesos, or their OFW daddy's pesos. One of the cleaning ladies I had a few years ago was charging £8 an hour and could send her two daughters to De La Salle (and the elder dropped out and got knocked up), so I can imagine what kind of lifestyle can have the sons and daughters of an oil engineer working in Saudi Arabia or a software consultant working in Singapore.
All I meant when mentioning "the point of view of a first world tourist/expat" was just that: that cushy Metro Manila lifestyle is reserved to expats and first world tourists with decent money to spend, or to the tiny minority of local, upper echelon people whose wealth comes from legacy or fat remittances. I have friends in Manila who work for investment banks, huge corporations (or the Filipino subsidiary thereof) and they tell me their 50, 60 or even 100K a month just aren't enough to buy the dream. And too much to resort to a foreign husband, perhaps
An army career or a job for Philippines Airlines or Cebu Pacific won't earn much more than the canonical 40/50K a month, and that is in Metro Manila. In Davao, the same jobs would probably command 30% less.
As for sleepy Davao, yes I have found Davao more of a backwater town compared to Manila. Yet, Davao seems to hit a very comfortable middle ground in terms of quality of life, safety, cost of living, people friendliness, existing and potential infrastructure, etc. I dined at the same franchises in Makati and Davao, and the food was discernibly tastier and fresher in Davao, especially the fish. In Manila I would have never been able to access some of the top 10% locals as I did in Davao. And even if I did, they would have never acted in such a friendly way as they did. If I was a wealthy businessman with a big network in Asia, or the scion of a notable Asian family (better if Spanish or Chinese), then Metro Manila would be an amazing playground. Being just another man exploring new business, with no family legacy to show off and no particularly bright ideas in his pocket, few in Manila would have given me their time of the day, or even night.
Rock wrote:I've met quite a few people whose families build wealth by having multiple members go overseas to various parts of the world to work - nurses, caregivers, cruise ship employees, factory workers, and even small business people. And when I travel to various parts of the world, I encounter such Filipinos including here in Taiwan. Even in Haiti, the top super market in the expat zone of Petionville had hired some Filipinas. Global demographic trends in the developed world will only increase such demand, especially if Japan continues to open up to immigration. I've also met some people who have fathers or other relatives working on ships or in the oil business, sometimes as welders or other skilled employees. Those jobs can pay over $5,000 a month.
I agree. This is why I said that it's hard to be up and coming without either old money or new money from abroad. And to access the high-paying job abroad, you can't just be a Filipino willing to work hard...unless you're a wizkid who went straight into Philippines Science (elite science prep school) and UP Diliman (public and excruciatingly hard college), you must have gone to expensive private universities, which means you had an at least middle class family background to start with (again, old money or OFW parents).
Having said that, you really are preaching to the converted about the Pinoy abroad being a prototype of smart, hard working and humble. I have never made it a secret in how much esteem I hold them.
Rock wrote:Then you've got the BPO industry which is growing well over 20% per annum in revenues. The call center industry there alone employees about half a million, larger than in India, a country 10 times it's population, or anywhere else in the world. Besides call centers, there is also legal and medical transcription work, back room operations in logistics and accounting, and even higher-end stuff such as software development, animation, and financial analysis. Whenever you get that kind of growth, there is strong upward pressure on wages. Just look at what has happened to manufacturing wages in China over last 25 years.
The BPO industry is a success story, agreed, but despite the pressure on wages, it seems hard to smash the 60/70K monthly ceiling, and certainly harder than the very tangible inflation on luxury goods, in fact any good that doesn't get produced locally or comes from China. I think the problem with BPO centers and service jobs is that, however you want to pay your staff, we're talking about skilled people with a degree, but definitely not the creme de la creme. If all those engineers, programmers, doctors and lawyers stopped going abroad and staid in the Philippines, THEY would truly be the major force behind median wage increase. Such was in the 80s where Filipino professionals were the equivalent of the Taiwanese or South Koreans now.
Rock wrote:Another thing you will notice if you visit places like Cebu, Metro Manila, or Angeles City are Koreans, boatloads of em. And they come to learn English. Guess who gets to teach them? Koreans have also been setting up communities there and pouring money into real estate, businesses, and other investments. Ditto for the Chinese, many of whom are desperate to find uses for their newly acquired capital. The Korean disporia there have created an English teaching industry which is expandable to other nationalities and applications. For example, Ava Paige does part time student work at a company teaching English to Turkish nationals online and gets paid around 10,000 Pesos a month for that. If she did it privately, the pay would be much higher.
I know, but with all due respect to Ava Paige, teaching English doesn't make much money, even privately. I met a collective of very smart guys in Davao, they set up some sort of "software guild" where they were basically all working as independent freelancers for oDesk or eLance, but recommending each other for specialised jobs and sharing their know-how in local conferences. I went to a couple of them...and they were awesome, both in spirit and substance. Most of them were making at least $2000 a month, with some of them topping the $3000 mark, which is a lot for a 30-something in a tier 2 city.
Rock wrote:I've noticed a critical difference between career women in places like Taiwan (and probably S. Korea, Japan, SP, HK, etc.) and even to an extent in China vs. Philippines. Birthrates in those countries dominated by NE Asians are among the lowest in world, well below replacement. Something like a third of women in HK aged in their 40s have never even had a child. Average age at marriage for women in Japan has reached 30. And that's if they marry at all. A large survey done last year in Japan suggested that a third of Japanese think marriage is pointless. And Japanese still very rarely have children out of wedlock.
But in Philippines, even among the middle, upper middle, or upper classes, birthrates are much higher. In my personal experiences dating on the ground in some of these areas, educated and professional type Pinays still tend to have a more traditional mindset which makes them keen to find a man. But their counterparts in NE Asian countries often seem to be ambivalent about it and might not even consider it if conditions are not perfect. A lot of people in developed NE Asia, most notably Japan, have lost hope in the future. The vibe in Makati/Ortigas/Fort is very different from that.
Agree 100%. And what's more, I think I have got the key to understand what makes Filipinos so optimistic about the future and happy under the sun despite the massive stash of problem they have to face, both at the macro and personal levels:
it's (Catholic) God and Family, the big legacy of Spaniard colonisation. Despite what Ladislav says about the Catholic veneer hiding the Hindu cultural ancestry, I believe the answer is a lot simpler when one looks at and compares to South American countries and people. I have been smashed so hard with evidence from, say, Colombia and the Philippines that I am now convinced that Filipinos are Asian-looking Latin Americans!
Rock wrote:So why might some such girls consider a foreigner? As I mentioned in my previous post, some local guys, even those in the professional classes, prefer girls a bit below them in terms of ambition, education, wealth, etc. They feel such girls are easier to control. And some of the professional Pinays I've met who lean towards dating foreigners have told me things like most of the most interesting, artistic, creative types of local guys they've met are gay and/or they prefer taller or more intellectual type guys which are more prevalent among the some classes of expats.
Exactly, you said it: some classes of expats. Those expats you are talking about are again a small minority: many of them are mixed Asian/Western, which is a very desirable trait to be accepted into an upper class Filipino family, they have lived in the Philippines for a while, they are well established socially and financially. As a "foreigner", I was thinking more of the young and pennyless (and probably decent looking) Army guy, or the happy go lucky professional on the proverbial soul-healing break, or the divorcee just out of mid-life crisis, or the well-off 60-yo guy, etc. People without such an impressive status, at least in SEA or the Philippines, and/or quite a bit of life behind them, and/or without the next big thing to build over there.
Rock wrote:In my case, I find women on average to be much more attractive in developed NE Asia than Phils. Yet, I still seem to have more opportunities cherry picking the ones I like in Phils. vs. doing more of a shotgun approach in NE Asia. And in my own way, I'm quite picky.
You may agree with me that girls in advanced economies have access to better food, better quality cosmetic products and treatments, fashion aplenty, as well as much more disposable income to spend on the above. If your average Filipinas had access to that kind of lifestyle, they would probably look much more attractive, probably 1 or 2 extra notches on the 1-10 scale.
Rock wrote:You can suspect what you want about the women I have mentioned. But we're talking about a pool of individuals, each with their own case and story. I would like to think at least they are all reasonably attractive or better. And even if not, I see plenty of upper crust dudes in the cream areas of Metro Manila with homely mates. Filipinas are often unfortunate when it comes to pure physical appearance. It's group where I would say guys tend to outclass the girls lookswise, opposite to the case in NE Asia.
Again, different strokes, but I have seen lots of very cute and/or attractive girls in Manila and Davao. And I have been very disappointed about Singapore, where I have seen a lot of ugly, short and chubby girls with, let's say, less than optimal facial skin.
The reason why the girl below
is perfect looking isn't just because she's mixed Filipino-Spanish ancestry...it's also because she's from a millionaire family (Perez de Tagle)!
Rock wrote:There are a lot of poor countries in the world. But Philippines is one which stands-out. First of all, people there seem to have a better attitude and spirit than about anywhere else. They can go all over the world and work hard with a smile on their faces and carry themselves with humility. The girls are easier to attract, date, and bond with than in other poor areas I've been exposed to. And there are real prospects for big economic improvements in the future unlike so much of the third world where nothing seems to be changing.
I love the Philippines for that good vibe. Making a Filipino feel good is so easy it makes you proud. Just show them a celeb dancing to a jolly cheesy tune, the latest cohort of graduates from the Ateneo, the CG renders of a new luxury condo to be in the Rockwell area, or Imelda Marcos' massive shoe collection, and they will have had their daily fix of optimism. It's a sign of humility when you don't boast your successes, but it's also a sign of humility when you know how to rejoice of other people's successes and can "feel them yours", in a way. Again, needless to say, I have found a very similar attitude in Medellin, Colombia.
