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ynnipad · 6 years ago

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SA SAMAR

May 4-8, 2018 - ”Nasaan na raw po ‘yung mga paintings ni daddy?” (Where are my daddy’s paintings?)

The lack of Waray words in the sentence might’ve encouraged my grandmothers to ignore my inquiry once again. Still, I insist—I cannot let down my dad’s excitement and mine, too. It was my first time in Samar, and right after setting my foot in the tiny Tacloban airport, I knew it was going to be a special experience. It must have been different for them, though. I am just their (literally) distant granddaughter who visited the province for the first time as a representative of my dad, the young man who left his hometown in his 20s and hasn’t come back since.

Western Samar, 2018

I traveled to Samar for a 5-day vacation with my two Waray Balikbayan aunties. What they spoke of 60% of the time, I have no clue! Upon landing at Tacloban, we immediately embarked on a 5-hour drive from the airport to my grandmother’s humble home. I’m all groggy and tired, but I can’t waste those 5 hours of stories and beautiful scenery by sleeping.

My aunts hired a local driver and they exchanged short anecdotes on the life of Yolanda survivors after the great Typhoon, the freshness of seafood and vegetables in Samar, the perfect places to buy pasalubongs, etc. I struggle to keep myself in the conversation, asking them to translate in Tagalog a sentence or two.

San Juanico Bridge, 2018

The ride started from souvenir shops, gasoline stations, and small parks, to tall palm trees, an overlooking of the shore, and of course, the Samar-Leyte connection—San Juanico Bridge—and its good-looking view. Serene and beautiful. Not until we noticed the recurring view of identical half-made houses that seemed to be under construction AND abandoned. They were the pabahay (housing) for the victims of Typhoon Yolanda.

Our local driver narrated the current situation of the pabahays. It is a worry that most of the houses can comfortably accommodate only at most 3 people. But, it is even more problematic that most of them currently accommodate less than they can—none—because they are not even halfway done. See, Typhoon Yolanda happened almost 5 years ago.

On a positive note, it is a relief to know that there are housings of good quality provided mostly by the NGOs and other donors. They are medium-sized, beautifully-painted, and some are even equipped with a satellite dish. :)

SAN PEDRO

San Pedro, Quinapondan, Eastern Samar, 2018

My grandmother and Aunt Baby, the sweetest of them all, welcomed us with a big hug and a feast of seafood, vegetables, root crops, and meat. Freshness beyond words. We ate together with our hands, and called to meal whosoever happens to pass by the dining area. It was a feast! I can still remember how my hungry, jet-lagged self devoured that meal. Jollibee is no match. Sobrang sarap talaga huhu

San Pedro, Quinapondan, Eastern Samar, 2018

A mini "welcome tour" from my Aunt Baby followed afterward. Meeting my cousins that day was like meeting them for the first time. We were kids when we last spent time together. My cousins smiled shyly and said nothing as my Aunt Baby called them from their rooms. If their eldest sister--who was of my age--was there, it might have been different.

My Aunt Baby's eldest son tagged along as she led me to the shabby stairs of a bahay kubo across my grandmother's house. The bahay kubo was old and fully furnished, but spacious. It housed relatives I've never met until then: my father’s cousins, their children, and their blind mother—one of my grandmothers. All narrated childhood stories of them and my dad’s. Happy stories, until they get to the part where my daddy left.

San Pedro Church, Quinapondan, Eastern Samar, 2018

San Pedro Church, Quinapondan, Eastern Samar, 2018 | Fujicolor C200 in Canon TLb

From afar, San Pedro Church looked like a typical province church. Beautiful and small. Up close, it was of dried flowers, broken pews, shattered glass panes, and severed holy statues. I wonder how a church, that stands in the middle of a Barangay, filled with (probably) very religious people, can look so neglected. We said our prayers, and left.

CALICOAN ISLAND

Calicoan Island, Guiuan, Eastern Samar, 2018 | Fujicolor C200 in Canon TLb

Calicoan Island, Guiuan, Eastern Samar, 2018

The moment we arrived, it was low tide. Nevertheless, the Island was beautiful. For someone as easily fascinated as myself, I am in awe. (as usual) I don't have much to say about Calicoan, except that it makes me feel like leaving the City life for good.

Traveling with people who are from a different generation means I have to do my millennial shit alone. And so, that day, as my elders are chitchatting and trying to avoid the sun and the sea, I put on my bathing suit, went down the beach, set up my phone camera beneath the rocks, and took videos and photos of myself along the shore.

Sounds lonely, but it was refreshing.

The Goat House, Calicoan Island, Guiuan, Eastern Samar, 2018

A few steps away from Calicoan Resort is a surfing spot called ABCD Beach, and across that beach is a small eating place for surfers called The Goat House. I urged my Aunt to try their food, which I had high hopes for. Not as good as I hoped, but the stories we heard inside The Goat House made up for it.

The eatery was manned by 2 locals and a French traveler, the girlfriend of one of the locals. The 32-year-old French waitress served our food, along with the story of the surfing scar on her leg--upon asking. Her travel story followed right after. She was really brave.

Another foreign traveler sits by the wooden bar. The Dutch surfer/customer enthusiastically answered my Aunt's inquiry: "So how's the Philippines?" with very lovely, positive words. It’s a shame that they might’ve experienced the Philippines more than I do. Before leaving, we finished a kakanin that one of my uncles ordered from a vendor by the road. Despite the food, I have no regrets about visiting the place.

SULANGAN

St. Anthony of Padua Parish, Sulangan, Guiuan, Eastern Samar, 2018 | Fujicolor C200 in Canon TLb

This is a corner dedicated for offering prayers to St. Anthony of Padua. As expected, it was filled with Catholic tourists lighting their candles. I waited long for the area to clear up to get a shot. However, as I finally take the long-awaited shot, a man in short bobs and worn-out gloves replaced the group of praying people. He was patiently clearing out the candle drops and leftover wax before another set light new ones. I gladly included him in the frame. Only to find out weeks later that my shot was out of focus. Even so, I enjoyed the people-watching.

SAN PEDRO, AGAIN

San Pedro, Quinapondan, Eastern Samar, 2018

It was a mini recap of my dad’s childhood, before finally leaving Samar. I saw the house and the woman--his aunt--who raised my dad. They told me lots of stories, and were very warm. I love old stories by old people.

While my dad was on video call, I looked around the house for the paintings that he was bragging about ever since I landed. This has to be the highlight of my trip--nothing’s more interesting, so far, than my father’s long lost art! Finding nothing, I inquired once again:

“Nasaan na raw po ‘yung mga paintings ni daddy?”

(Where are my daddy’s paintings?)

I got my answer.

“Wala na, natangay ng Yolanda.”

(None are left, they are taken away by (Typhoon) Yolanda.)

For a while there, I was devastated. I could sense my dad was too. So, I let him talk to his old friends and family. He was laughing the whole time, despite the weak signal, pixelated faces, and slurry words.

At that moment, I decided I should go back soon. I’ll be with dad. He will be coming home, too.

--‘Till next time!

#samar #tacloban #calicoan #abcd beach #the goat house

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waynelizzie · 3 years ago

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ronaldmrashid · 8 years ago

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Why Is United States Property So Cheap Compared To The Rest Of The World?

One of the biggest conundrums today is trying to understand why the mass media and housing activists keep droning on about how expensive U.S. property prices are, when in reality, U.S. property prices are amongst the CHEAPEST in the developed world.

Anybody who has actually spent time house hunting in Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Mumbai, Paris, London, Zurich, Stockholm, Sydney etc. realize how cheap the U.S. is. Do you think I’m just going to London to eat strawberries and cream at Wimbledon? Of course not! As a personal finance blogger who writes from first-hand experience, I’m diligently pounding the pavement to research the truth to share with all of you.

If you don’t believe how cheap US property prices are, have a look at this chart by the OECD (The Organization for Economic Development And Co-operation).

The United States is at the bottom and New Zealand is at the top based on this OECD property price index. They don’t even highlight Hong Kong where the average flat price equals 19X the median income. 19X vs. 5-6X in the US. That spread is outrageous.

What makes New Zealand property 2X more expensive than United States property? The obvious answers are the country’s natural beauty, Lord Of The Rings, more fluffy sheep than fluffy people, incredible rugby, foreign buyers, a stock exchange with a total market capitalization of roughly $100 billion (1/6th the size of Apple), and the 69th largest economy in the world by GDP.

Wait a minute. Why does the 69th largest economy in the world have the most unaffordable real estate in the world? This makes no sense unless there’s a tremendous amount of policy mismanagement in the form of building restrictions, loose foreign investment regulations, and corrupt government officials who love receiving money under the table.

I’m not saying that all this shady stuff is happening in New Zealand. I’m saying that something artificial is happening to cause such a pricing disconnect. Why else is there traffic around a toll road?

When prices are out of whack, a tremendous amount of social inequality occurs. When there’s enough social inequality, a revolution isn’t far behind (see Brexit, Trump, etc).

Mass Media Manipulation

Take a look at this SF-based Wired magazine tweet. You don’t have to read the article because it is the same populist verbiage about how it’s becoming increasingly difficult for the middle class to afford homes now.

The magazine even goes so far as to write, “A family that makes $100,000 can’t afford to buy a house in most U.S. cities.”

Are you kidding me? The median home price in America is roughly $240,000. Let’s say you put down a typical 20%. Your $192,000 mortgage at 4% is $917 a month. Let’s add another $200 for property taxes and maintenance for good measure.

Is Wired saying that a household who makes $100,000 gross, or $80,000 after taxes, can’t afford $1,117 a month? $80,000 net a year equals $6,667 a month before any 401k contributions. Spending only 17% of your net income to housing is affordable. Even if this household only put down 10%, a $216,000 mortgage at 4% still only costs $1,234 a month.

Now you know why there’s such distrust in the mass media. Either the writer at Wired magazine is incompetent or the writer has an agenda or both. One of the best media strategies is to tap into populist angst to make life better for themselves. The more enraged the population, the more views the article will get.

The great irony is that those people who can afford to go into the dying journalism industry probably don’t come from poor families. If you were poor, you’d study an in-demand major like engineering or computer science so you could land a well-paying job out of college and help support your parents who sacrificed so much for you! Only the rich can afford to study a soft major and willingly enter a struggling industry. Everything is rational.

Besides having a populist agenda, Wired magazine is also DISRESPECTING all of you who don’t live in San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Miami, Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Washington D.C. That’s right. If you guys don’t live in one of the 10 most expensive cities in America, those of you who live in the other ~20,000 cities in America don’t count according to the phrase, “A family that makes $100,000 can’t afford to buy a house in most U.S. cities.” Note there are roughly 35,000 cities and towns in America, and ~4,000 cities with over 10,000 people.

What Wired and other media organizations writing about unaffordable housing are really trying to say is:

“Families making $100,000 a year have a difficult time affording a home in the top 0.01% most expensive cities in America.”

“Because I can’t afford to buy a home where I work and live, most people can’t either.”

Talk about being myopic. It’s no surprise the largest media organizations in America who like to complain on and on about high real estate prices are mostly based in New York City, Los Angeles, Boston and San Francisco. Their writing clearly ignores the 50% of you who do not live where they live.

Being biased is unavoidable. It’s why organizations are so homogenous in their demographic makeup. To consistently ignore the heartland of America is INSULTING. The brazen disregard for half of America is exactly why Hillary lost.

Why Some Americans Don’t Understand How Good They’ve Got It

1) They believe the mass media. If you live in one of the most expensive cities in America and only earn $48,000 a year as a journalist, then of course you’re going to write about how unaffordable housing is, and extrapolate your situation with your company’s platform. If you start believing everything you read in the news, then of course you’re going to take on their biases. Instead, it’s up to all of us to read with a more critical eye.

2) They haven’t traveled around the world. Once they get outside the country, they’ll realize how truly awesome America is. Everything from real estate, to cars, to gasoline, is so much cheaper here in the States. Do you really want to pay $70,000 for a Toyota Corolla in Singapore? Do you really want to pay $1,500,000 for a 500 sqft studio in Knightsbridge, London? If you don’t have money to travel to London or Singapore to see how truly outrageous prices are, just surf the web and see for yourself.

3) They’re too lazy to do any research. Even surfing the web for comparison property prices in Stockholm takes moving your fingers about 50 times. Instead, it’s much easier to just trust a headline. We expect everything to come to us in America. As a result, we fail at speaking a second language fluently while many of our friends in Europe can often speak three languages quite well. Just look at 18X major champion Roger Federer. He’s a professional tennis player, not a professional linguist, and he speaks three languages fluently (German, French, and English).

4) They want to believe what they want to believe. Have you ever believed in something so hard, only to later realize it wasn’t? Have you ever been so adamant in your belief that you disregarded reality? Like seeing the light after breaking up with your crazy girlfriend or boyfriend. What were you thinking? Obviously, you weren’t when you thought you were in love. Once we believe something to be true, it’s really hard to change our minds.

5) They’re frustrated at their own situation. Just because they can’t afford to buy a $1.1M median home in San Francisco or New York City on a $100,000 salary doesn’t mean you can’t buy an awesome middle class home for $300,000 wherever you live.

Long And Strong U.S. Property

US Dollar is at a 13-year high due to high demand for high demand for US assets.

The reason so many foreigners are rushing to buy U.S. property is not only because they realize how comparatively cheap U.S. property prices are, they also believe America offers one of the world’s best lifestyles with the most upside opportunity.

Therefore, if foreigners realize the U.S. value proposition, it’s a good idea for Americans to realize our own country’s amazing value proposition by owning a piece of America too. To do so, we need to gain some perspective and inhale some toxic air in Beijing for a month or hopelessly try to find a well-paying job in Milan. Only then will we truly appreciate our good fortune.

The reason U.S. property prices are so cheap is because we have a large land mass, a stable government, a world currency, a deep bond market, strong IP protection, incredible productivity, a strong work ethic, property rights, human rights, a desire for equality, clean air, drinkable tap water, a deep education system, and innovative technology. Not owning at least a primary residence in such a great country when foreigners are beating down our doors to buy is foolish long term. We’re going to hear the same complaints from the same people 10 years from now.

Foreigners see U.S. coastal city property like U.S. coastal city inhabitants see middle America property: great overall value. But before the tidal wave of new foreign money comes crashing down on the heartland on top of fluid coastal city money looking for new opportunities, I want as much exposure to the heartland as prudently possible. Sooner or later the money is going to start pouring in. Before it really does, I’m happy to earn a healthy yield while I wait.

Readers, why do you think American real estate is so cheap? Why do you think Americans don’t realize how good we’ve got it? With the USD appreciating to a 13-year high, isn’t it obvious there’s tremendous demand for U.S. assets? Why are we letting overseas buyers purchase our properties before we ourselves buy them?

from http://www.financialsamurai.com/why-is-united-states-property-so-cheap/

#Financial Samurai

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