Best Year Since 2019 — But the Daily Struggles Are Real

It is now Friday.

Despite daily promises since last week, the electrician still hasn’t shown up for the new shop wiring. The setup at the meter is atrocious — the whole thing needs a proper junction box, and the wiring to and from the meter is badly undersized.

Sexytary has a cold and refuses to go back to the bank to wait in line and withdraw money for the cargo container. As a result, we still can’t move materials and equipment.

At least the landlord has had his people cut the grass. Unfortunately, the new shop is still full of wood and construction scraps from the previous tenant. On the bright side, they haven’t started charging rent yet.

We did get the driveway gravelled on Wednesday. It only took 4 cubic meters, so I’ll need a couple more loads for landscaping and to gravel the building interior. The existing concrete pad is slapdash and only covers about 25% of the floor. I’ll probably pour another couple of inches on top — I’m thinking of adding 1-inch square wire mesh and a couple kilos of chopped strand fiberglass in the top coat, then sealing it with waterglass. Maybe throw in 10 bucks worth of cement pigment for fun.

FaceBorg banned me for an hour this morning, which really pissed me off. I mostly just use Messenger and try to avoid the doom-scrolling, but the propaganda they push is awful.

The rainy season has technically started, but it’s been strangely dry compared to normal — almost like the 2020 lockdown period with almost no rain.

Father’s Day is this weekend. I feel kinda used. I’ve been told I need to pay for and cook a big spread — roast beef, homemade pita bread, the works. Meanwhile, the stepchildren will arrive late because they and their mother plan to spend the day gallivanting around Makati.

Last Mother’s Day, her kids treated her to a lavish meal at a fancy restaurant in Makati. I wasn’t invited. I only found out through her public Facebook posts (we aren’t friends on FB). I only saw it last week because I barely use the platform.

On a more positive note, I’m working on bringing a family member from the US over to join the business. He’s been struggling to find work there. As soon as employers see he’s a white boy and not an illegal, the job offers evaporate. I can’t promise him a big salary, but he’ll have a roof, food, a car, and pocket money without daily living expenses. Fingers crossed.

All week I’ve been advertising for a business/office manager. Responses were slow until I paid for an ad — then I got around a hundred applicants. The problem? Only two followed the instructions. One never responded after I invited them for an interview. Most just messaged “How much Salary?” without discussing qualifications. It was pretty offensive. Only one actually looked at my business page.

I’m desperate for someone to handle the office side — HR, QuickBooks, job tickets, and all the growing paperwork. As the crew expands, these tasks are piling up, and I have zero desire to deal with them. Thankfully, the rest of the crew is mostly in hand. No gamblers, drinkers, smokers, or chronic absentees. Work gets done. Sales are extraordinarily strong, and it’s shaping up to be my best year since 2019, pre-COVID lockdowns.

With a lot of hard lessons learned along the way, I now find myself doing what others call “screwing off.” The difference is that my version of screwing off often leads to big money coming in. So I’ve learned to sit patiently, let the crew do their jobs, and stay out of their way.

They lie to us constantly.

They lie to us and tell us it is a conspiracy theory.  But why then multiple countries proposiing and enacting the exact same laws simultaniously??  Alex Jones is right.  Again...

and this one... hahaha

 

Nose Ring Law

Nose ring is a law at this point. As much as the sun rises in the East, or Newtons laws.

  I am so sick of this hippie era beatnick commie nonsense.  Theories formulated under the influence of hard drugs and mental illness by wackjobs on draft deferrments in the universities.   They get older, get into power and corruptd this generation.  

The problem with Filipina women

Why So Many American Guys Get Absolutely Hosed in the Philippines

I see American guys come here and get hosed. Like really hosed. My daily BS is nothing compared to some of the nightmare stories I’ve heard from other expats.

After being here a long time, it comes down to one main problem:

You lose your normal filtering ability.

In America, the average guy has working cultural radar. He can usually tell within a short time whether a woman comes from a low-education, opportunistic, work-averse, or high-drama background. He might still make mistakes, but he has the signals and pattern recognition to screen her out early.

That radar breaks down in the Philippines.

When you’re new here (“fresh fish”), you can’t read the local cues. You don’t catch the subtle differences in communication style, family dynamics, work ethic, or long-term orientation. Filipinos are famously indirect — they often hide everything behind a smile. That smile can mean genuine warmth or it can be masking serious problems. Without time and local context, you won’t know which until it’s already expensive and painful.

White guys show up thinking, “We have so much in common, I got this.”

Wrong.

The apps and bars make it worse. You can’t effectively screen online or in those environments as a newcomer. A woman from the same socioeconomic and character profile you would quickly filter out back home can present as sweet, feminine, and “traditional” here long enough to pull you in. They’re often young and attractive too — which blinds guys who are already disoriented.

Regional and cultural differences exist and matter (sometimes even town to town), especially around work ethic, honesty, and family expectations. But as a new arrival, you’re not equipped to evaluate any of that yet.

That’s why you have to get on the ground and build a real network. Spend serious time here. Make local friends. Learn to read what people aren’t saying directly. Only then do you start regaining some of your filtering ability.

You can’t phone this in from Tinder or FilipinoCupid.

Shop project

Spent this Sunday shopping for cargo containers. I managed to find two for a $325 savings compared to the previous offers. So I guess that was a profitable use of time.

I’ve never bought a cargo container before. I guess I just never really thought I could afford one. I mean, I could have bought one back in the day, but it never happened. Another milestone, like getting the forklift.

Sexytary and the two welders are working on the plastic sheet press outside. The press has been jamming when moving up and down. I replaced some bushings and greased the rod, but it was still binding. I ordered proper linear guides, and they surprisingly arrived this morning, so those will go on. The wiring is nearly done too.

The sheet press customer has really turned into an asshole. I quoted about six weeks, and they’ve been bitching and moaning about the delivery schedule since the first week, constantly asking for progress pics. Last week they had some lawyer call up and threaten to make problems. Very unprofessional. She hung up before I could ask for her bank account details so I could send the down payment back and cancel the order. I have plenty of other buyers and can sell this to someone who will actually appreciate the hard work — without the threats.

We’re at 45 days today, and it’s a long holiday weekend, so we’re pretty close to the estimated delivery schedule. They called on day 41 making threats. It’s humid as hell and gloomy. We have tarps strung up in case of rain. I am so ready to move and not deal with this shit anymore. Moving stuff in and outdoors constantly in between rain showers and not having a flat cement pad is getting old.

My good welding machine died Thursday. It’s been shipped to the dealer for repair. I bought a cheap inverter welder to go with the other one so the guys have something to use in the meantime. I also sent off the plasma torch — that thing has barely worked since new because the electrodes keep welding themselves into the handle.