Manila & Me - A 26-Year Unlove Affair
My Past, Present, and and Probably My Future in Manila and The Philippines
My father’s brother was a New York City taxi driver for decades. He owned his taxi medallion (a piece of metal bolted to the car that made a yellow cab a yellow cab) in the days when one could earn a respectable living as a taxi driver - he owned a house and put his two sons through college. I always thought he was borderline gonzo - but after driving a taxi in NYC for just a year, it was easy for me to see how one might end up that way after doing it for decades.
When he retired, he passed the medallion to one of his sons. One day the son picked up someone who worked for the Philippines consulate. This person told him that if he moved to the Philippines, he could live on the beach like a king for maybe $50 a month. So he sold his medallion, gave me all his records, and moved to the Philippines.
I don’t know too much about what he did while he was there. I heard that while he had gone to Canada in the 1960s to avoid the draft, one of the ways he earned money was working as an extra in all of the Vietnam War movies being shot in the Philippines back then. The definition of irony? Yes. Was he in Apocalypse Now? I have no idea.
Then in the 1980s, when Marcos was brought down and it may not have been the best time to be an American in the Philippines (due to Reagan’s support of the dictator), he returned to the US, with a Filipina wife. The point is - I’m not the first one in my family to live in the Philippines and I’m not the first one in my family to marry a Filipina. How meaningful is that? Given that the circumstances that led me to Manila were very different from my cousin’s, who can really say?
I first came to Manila in 1997. I was working for Merrill Lynch and I’d managed all of the IT aspects of opening a new commercial branch in Taiwan - software for front and back of house, connections to the stock exchange, infrastructure, a small data center - the whole nine yards. It wasn’t an easy project at all but I kept it on track and was well rewarded for my efforts.
After the Taiwan branch opened, a similar project in Manila (being run by someone else) was going off the rails and I was asked to step in. I got things back on track and I was one of the people invited on stage at the Philippines Stock Exchange to ring the opening bell on the day that the office officially opened.
Did I have fun back in those days? Let’s put it this way - when others at Merrill would tell their wives they had a trip to the Philippines, the wife would say, “Is Spike going? If he’s going, you can’t go.” So there was that.
In the 00’s when I was working for Warner, I was supporting two offices in Manila - one for home video distribution in Ortigas and one for theatrical distribution (first in Malate, later in Ortigas). I hired local staff, managed an office move, and managed several upgrades for the home video division.
I remember one day being taken to lunch in BGC, to a Filipino restaurant that remains a favorite almost 20 years later (Abe). I recall the managing director of home video pointing out the Serendra condos to me. He said that with the economy not doing well, people were selling their condos at a loss and I could pick up a bargain. I said to him, “But why would I do that? I’m never going to live in the Philippines!” Duh. I probably could have picked up a two bedroom condo for a few million pesos - now they go for well north of 25 million. Such is life.
Fast forward to 2014. At that point I’m married to a Filipina and I was about to hit my 60th birthday. I said to my wife, “We don’t own anything anywhere. I can never afford to buy something in Hong Kong but I can afford to buy something in the Philippines. This is probably my last chance to get a mortgage. But I won’t be able to afford a mortgage in the Philippines and rent in Hong Kong. So let’s buy something and I’ll get my company to allow me to work from Manila.” (The company I was working for had an office in Ortigas and half of my team was based there.) We spent 6 months searching, I put in offers on 3 different houses, the 3rd one was accepted, and we moved to the Philippines in early 2015.
With this job I was lucky in one aspect - as half of my team was in Manila, half in Hong Kong, I mostly worked from home. I only had to commute to the office once a week and could do it at off-hours. Our house was just 10 kilometers from the office but the drive could be painful if I had to do it at the height of rush hour.
In 2017, the company I was working for was sold and one of the first things the new owners did was to shut down the Manila office. At that point I flew to the US to look for a job. I stayed in the Dallas area (I had friends there) for 6 weeks and came close to finding something a couple of times - close but no cigar. And then a company I used to work for in Hong Kong called me up, asked me if I wanted to return, but in a different position that would be based in Manila rather than Hong Kong. Since I was out of work and had no firm offers, I accepted. That seems like my life in a nutshell - I leave Manila, I fly to the US to search for a job and end up getting a job in Manila.
I worked in Bonifacio Global City (BGC) for the next two years. This time I had to commute to the office four days a week. Looking back, I don’t know how I survived that. Finally I ran straight into one of the country’s nonsense laws - mandatory retirement age of 65 that affected anyone working in a company that had more than 10 employees. Fuck. At least this time I was able to line up another job (in Hong Kong) before this one ended. The day after my 65th birthday, I flew to Hong Kong to start the new job.
How did I feel about those 4 years living and working in Manila?
Let’s start with the traffic which is the defining feature of Manila, at least as far as I’m concerned. I’m guessing that the road system here could comfortably handle vehicles for a population of a million or two. But Metro Manila’s official population is around 15 million and add in the surrounding area and you’re closer to 20 or 25 million people.
Now add in the horrendous joke that they call “public transportation” that the area has. After living in Hong Kong for 20 years, a territory with one of the best public transportation systems in the world, I looked at what one gets in the capital city of a third world country and thought to myself, “I can’t go for that, no can do.”
Very limited rail lines that break as frequently as they run. Some buses. A network of mini-vans. The famous jeepneys (wonderful to look at, but you try sitting in one crammed shoulder to shoulder with 15 other people when it’s 35 degrees and 80 percent humidity). Some ferries running along the Pasig River (once awarded the title of the world’s most polluted river). “Tricycles” around the outskirts (125 cc motorcycles with sidecars strapped to them that can hold 6 people or more that should have been outlawed by the Geneva Convention). And various ride-sharing services (Uber got out a long time ago). Is it any wonder that most people commute by private car? As a result, traffic is never-ending and soul-destroying.
Pretty much the government’s entire response to traffic has been to create a system that bans cars from metro roads one day per week - based not on your license plate number but on a separate orange “conduction sticker” that one must place in one’s windshields. The rich get around this by owning multiple cars. The idea of having some sort of congestion pricing (as Singapore has had for almost 50 years) has been ruled out - some probably think that most drivers couldn’t afford it. But a recent estimate said that this traffic costs the Philippines economy US$72 million per day. If that number is correct, that’s a loss of over US$26 billion a year, a staggering number for a country in which perhaps 25% of the population survives on maybe US$2 a day.
For me, if I wanted to attempt public transportation to travel the 12 kilometers from my home to my office, it would have been a tricycle to the front gate of my village, another tricycle to a transport hub, a mini-van to a shopping mall relatively close to my office, another mini-van from there to my office. Less than ideal, wouldn’t you say?
Some choose to deal with the traffic by getting a scooter instead of a car. These can make it through traffic more quickly for obvious reasons - they’re moving slowly between the cars that are stuck in traffic. It didn’t seem like a workable solution for me - a combination of too many factors for me to list. That meant commuting by car - and I could not afford to hire a full-time driver, which meant I had to drive myself. I lived 11 kilometers away from my first office, 12 kilometers from the second, and on average my commute took 90-120 minutes. Each way. Four days a week. Up to sixteen hours a week just sitting in a car stuck in traffic. Thirty-three days a year just sitting my car, watching my life slowly melt away. The way I see it, if it wasn’t for audio books and podcasts, I would have ended up in a Philippine prison for murder a long time ago.
Also let’s not forget that aside from bad public transportation and streets overwhelmed with cars and ignorance of something called “lanes” and traffic “enforcers” who can be bought off for US$2, many people here drive like shit. Corruption in the country means that one can buy a driver’s license. Most people in this country profess to be Roman Catholics but when they get behind the wheel of a car their religion becomes Me Me Me Fuck You.
It just kills everything for me. Just last Friday night we went to one of my long time favorite restaurants here, a hole in the wall Mexican-ish joint in the Poblacion section of Makati called El Chupacabra.
(I think they’ve been around for ten years now. When they first opened, they had a small non-air conditioned space, the cooking was done on carts outside the restaurant, and if you wanted to use a toilet you could line up at the guest house next door. On the other hand tacos were less than US$2 each, a bottle of beer was less than $2, they were open late and always packed once the word got out. Eventually they expanded to have an airconditioned space, a kitchen (more items on the menu) and even toilets. The tacos are now US$3, still a bargain.)
Anyway we went here - 4 people and we feasted for well under US$30, walked around a bit, and then, at 11 PM on a Friday night, it took us well over 90 minutes to drive the 14 kilometers back home.
It’s agonizingly painful. Most days I’d just as soon stay home as deal with the fucking traffic in this godforsaken place.
I can remember years ago, when my mother came to live with us here, we took her to our favorite restaurant in Tagaytay, Balay Dako (from the same people behind the globally famous Antonio’s). Elevated Filipino cuisine in a beautiful house overlooking Lake Taal. But after we ate, there wasn’t much of anything we could do. My mother was too old to walk around in a park or bring to an amusement park and she had no interest in getting a massage; all we could do was drive home again. “You must be crazy to drive two hours each way just for a meal,” she said. But mom, wasn’t the food great? “Wonderful!” And wasn’t the view fabulous? “Amazing! Next time you go there, I’ll stay home, you can order Pizza Hut for me.”
At this point, when people ask me if I like living in the Philippines, my answer is invariably I like it fine, as long as I don’t have to leave my house (and the internet is working, which is another story).
It’s not just the traffic. There’s lot of smaller annoyances too.
(Before I continue with my standard bitching and moaning, which you might find amusing or tiresome (or worse), I know that the problem is me. I want too much. I expect too much. I know plenty of foreigners who live here who appear to be tremendously happy here. The one thing they all appear to have in common is that none of them live in Manila! I can’t change a country of 110+ million people. I have to change myself. Which is harder to do? Sometimes I’m not so certain.)
We had no internet service in our house when we moved in. That should have been a simple enough thing, no? But there was no utility pole on our street, no place for them to put the wire to run to our house. Getting a pole erected and getting PLDT to run a line took six months - and it was only that fast because I knew someone who knew someone. Otherwise, for all I know, I could still be waiting. And actually, when the service goes down, it is almost always a month to get it restored. PLDT seems to always be replacing junction boxes or running out of spare parts. There is almost no mobile signal reception inside our house. If we want to make or receive a call, send or receive an SMS, we have to stand by a window at the front of the house or go outside. This also probably means that we couldn’t switch from fiber to 5G home service - maybe it would work with some sort of external antenna on our roof, something I might have to look into at some point. Or I suppose I could go with Starlink, but that would mean giving money to the world’s richest piece of shit, something I’d prefer not to do.
Let’s not forget - one of the Philippines’ biggest exports is people. People leave here because salaries are low, opportunities are few and far between, hiring discrimination is rampant, social mobility is rare. The Philippines economy survives to a large extent on people leaving and then sending money back to support their families.
I won’t claim that all of the “best and brightest” have left. I know from personal experience that’s not even remotely true. Having worked for five companies that have staff here, I’ve worked with hundreds of smart and capable people. Some of these people have opened up to me, have expressed their frustrations with the struggles that comprise daily life here. I have not asked so I am just guessing and my guess is that they have resigned themselves to the status quo, that this is how it is and how it is likely to stay for a very long time.
Every retail transaction in the Philippines takes place in the 1950s. I went to buy a new router for the house, in a chain computer store in a major shopping mall. The guy who showed me the box then had to tell some lady sitting in a booth what I bought. I gave her my credit card. Then I had to give her my driver’s license. Then she had to write the information by hand in a book. Then enter the SKU number of what I bought into a computer terminal. Then swipe my card and enter the amount into the swiping device. Then print out three receipts - one for me, two for the store. Then enter the approval number into the computer terminal. And then I had to wait for them to print out my receipt on a dot matrix printer.
Let’s say I go to a major supermarket, SM Supermarket at the SM Megamall. And I want to pay by credit card. They may have 20 checkout counters at the market but they don’t have 20 credit card readers - that costs money! (And SM owns one of the largest banks here as well.) The woman has to take my card, write out how much I just spent, go to another counter, swipe the card, print out the receipt, return to her counter, and then manually enter the approval number into her register.
Go to a convenience store here and you’re going to wait online for 15 minutes while the 3 people on line in front of you buy two pieces of fried chicken and a soda. They can’t have a separate person serving the food because they don’t trust that they would hand you the food and that you’d wait on another line to pay for it.
The other day we went to the branch of Paul’s (the French coffee shop chain) at MegaMall. It’s small, maybe a dozen tables around a serving counter by the mall entrance. The place was less than full. My wife and I ordered two cups of coffee and a small pastry to share. Five minutes after getting the coffee I had to return to the counter to ask what happened to the pastry. After we finished and I handed my credit card to the server, I had to wait 20 minutes to get the card back. The one cashier was busy processing all of the payments for FoodPanda orders - a manual process that appeared to require two separate terminals and a log book.
In other words, even the most basic retail transactions can be time-consuming and insanely painful here. But what’s the rush? All you’re going to do is get back in your car and get stuck in traffic again. You might as well just stand there and do nothing and enjoy the air conditioning.
I’m home in Manila for three weeks. I don’t have a car here any more and getting Grab to pick us up from our house isn’t trivial. Last week we did the “staycation” thing. I booked a place via AirBnb in Makati, in easy walking distance of tons of restaurants and shops. The one bedroom apartment (with a balcony and in a building with a pool and gym) cost about the same as if we did two Grab round trips from our house to a mall or restaurant per day - and we didn’t have to deal with 3 hours of traffic.
We really enjoyed those four days. My wife enjoyed it so much that she said something I never expected - that she would consider getting a condo in the Makati area. Which seemed great, until I checked the prices of a two-bedroom condo in vaguely desirable areas. Even at Manila prices, they are a bit out of reach.
I suppose many of you are asking, “So why the fuck do you live there? Why do you have a house there and plan to retire there?” That’s a very reasonable question. Hopefully my answer is equally reasonable.
Number one - the cost of living is very cheap here. Given that my house is fully paid off and real estate taxes are very low, I can live a very comfortable middle class existence here on my monthly Social Security checks. (I receive roughly the same monthly amount as an experienced IT engineer earns.) And being married to a Filipina, it was relatively trivial for me to get permanent resident status. (If I didn’t do that, then it would be matter of leaving the country once a year; I’d get a one-year “balikbayan” visa each re-entry as long as I’m traveling with my wife.)
And then there’s this - aside from the traffic, the crumbling infrastructure, the crime, the corruption, there’s actually a lot here that I really like. The people are mostly wonderful and while I can’t get one-day shipping from Amazon or a streaming subscription to the Criterion Channel, there’s more than enough here to keep me satisfied and occupied for the rest of my life.
(Another example - last night I was able to call up a local service and have someone come to the house and give me a 90 minute massage for less than US$20 - including tip and transportation.)
The current plan is for me to continue working in the US for as long as I can. There are many reasons for it. I’m finally in a position where I can start to build up some savings - getting converted to employee gets me into the company’s bonus plan, which could be a non-trivial amount each year. I assume that now that I’m paying into Social Security again every month, my monthly payments will go up as a result. And I really don’t know what I’d do with myself if I stopped working. I’m hoping I can keep this up for another 2 or 3 years.
By the time I do stop, whenever that is, we would sell the house in the Metro Manila area. My wife’s family (and her business) are in the town of San Pedro, roughly 35 kilometers south. And a little farther south is the city of Santa Rosa, “a first class component city” that offers more than enough food, shopping, entertainment and health care options. We don’t need as large a house as we have now (my mother passed away 7 years ago and the kid is about to graduate from university) so the money we could expect to get from selling this house should buy us something reasonable in that area.
The biggest downside is the cost of medical care. My US Medicare doesn’t cover anything here and there is nothing that even remotely approaches the British healthcare system that Hong Kong enjoys. I don’t even want to think about what local health insurance would cost for someone my age. The Philippines has some excellent hospitals and doctors but when the day comes that I get seriously ill, will I be able to afford treatment here? (A very good American friend here recently came down with something quite serious and decided to go back to the U.S. to get it treated.)
As I see it, that leaves me with just three options for the future:
1 - Sell the house, move to the San Pedro/Santa Rosa area, and hope that I don’t get some long, protracted illness - that I get a heart attack and die, get hit by a bus, or shot by a jealous husband (or my wife).
2 - Rent a government-stabilized apartment in Hong Kong (once I stop working, I would qualify for one; the wait list is a tad shorter for people my age).
3 - Sell the house in Manila - that money would allow me to buy something in some rural backwoods US area, where my social security might be enough and Medicare would cover most of my needs - but my wife seems pretty dead set against that idea as she doesn’t want to live half a world away from her family.
But shut the fuck up Spike. You own a house. You have a pension. You have a family. You’re still able to work in a challenging and high-paying job as you close in on 70. You have more than probably 75% of the people in the world. Be less of a pain in the balls. Be more grateful. But keep trying to win the lottery.
Some quotes from Bradley Cooper’s film Maestro, his biography of Leonard Bernstein, which I watched yesterday. I used to see Bernstein conduct the NY Philharmonic for many years when I was a kid. My aunt was a major donor to the NY Philharmonic and always got me tickets for tapings of Bernstein’s amazing Young Peoples Concerts, one of many things in my life for which I am eternally grateful.
Random thought - is Lenny actually the title character of the film? Or is it his wife Felicia? Carey Mulligan gets top billing in the film and I will almost certainly watch it again soon.
Felicia Montealegre: There's a saying in Chile about never standing under a bird that's full of shit. And I've just been living under that fucking bird for ao long, it's actually become comedic.
Leonard Bernstein: “Summer sang in me a little while, it sings in me no more.” Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Felicia Montealegre: If the summer doesn't sing in you, then nothing sings in you. And if nothing sings in you, then you can't make music.
Many of my favorite films of the year were historical - Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50, Maestro, maybe not so much Napoleon though I didn’t hate it ….
“Is Spike going? If he’s going, you can’t go.”
Classic.
Thank you for the details, and I can understand feeling that the people are mostly wonderful -- seems true. And good about some other factors. What you're saying aligns with the concerns of many in the US as well, to some extent -- finding affordable mortgages and health care. Good luck!