Back to the Philippines

It is recommended for anyone staying in the Philippines for longer than 1 month to have the following vaccinations least 4-6 weeks before departure :

• Yellow Fever - 10 days before travel
• Hepatitis A - 2 weeks
• Typhoid fever - 10 days
• Japanese encephalitis - 1 month
• Hepatitis B - 3 to 4 weeks
• Tuberculosis - 3 months
• Rabies - 1 month
• Diphtheria - 3 months
• Tetanus - 1 day

We also need to have caution when going to areas near water or rural areas where mosquitoes are prevalent.  The following infectious diseases are spread by mosquito bites:

Malaria - there are no vaccines yet but there are prevention drugs available.  However, the side effects of the drugs are quite significant so one must consider if the risks outweigh the side effects that one may experience when taking these drugs.    You need to take the drugs few weeks prior to the trip.

Dengue fever - caused by a virus also spread by mosquitoes.   Only prevention available is using insect repellants and using impregnated (sprayed)  mosquito nets at nighttime.

Believe it or not, I would not have thought about this if not for my inlaws and co-workers mentioning about the necessity of vaccinations for our travel to the Philippines.  As a native of this country and someone who has lived here for 24 years of my life and have not seen or knew anyone who have gotten sick from the diseases mentioned below I do not have any fears of getting sick other than getting the usual travelers diarrhea.  But then, my husband has never traveled to a tropical country and have not been exposed at all to these diseases so I guess it is worth considering these precautions.  We’ll schedule a visit to our huisarts (family doctor) one of these days.

I’ve been quiet for the past days but so many interesting things have happened.  First of all, I FOUND BUBBLES!  Just a few days ago MrC and I were web browsing together and we thought of searching in Facebook and there I found a name that sounds familiar, it was the name of her little brother.  I fondly remember this little brother of her was in kindergarten when we were high school seniors and sometimes we would go and pick him up when going home.  So, my husband dared me to send an email to him and finally we did.  After less than 48 hours I got a reply back from him and he was indeed her little brother!  He gave me her e-mail address.   I sent her a short introductory email and after a  day I got a short reply!  She is in the Philippines, married with 2 kids and a business woman!   That girl has eluded me for almost 20 years but anyways, with the way I lived my life the past few years it’s quite natural that I would lose touch with many of my friends but I think when I go back to the Philippines it would really be nice to reconnect with a lot of my old friends.

Next good news is that MrC and I are actually meeting people who might become key players in our business venture.  He is now working closely with a fellow Dutch businessman who is doing the same kind of outsourcing business in Vietnam and has a colleague that works here as well.    Their company has now provided one .Net web developer from Vietnam who will start ASAP on his current project.  They are also very willing to assist us with any information we might need to setup our venture which is actually almost the same as what they are doing.   Hopefully we could learn a lot from them!  MrC is also constantly searching for people knowledgeable in mobile development in the Symbian platform as well.   On the other hand, through this blog we were also fortunate to meet one highly talented individual who we hope to meet up with during our trip in August and see how it develop from there.

At work, it is becoming easier and easier for me to really leave without any feelings of guilt or whatsoever because I have made known to my boss and now to my colleagues what the trip in the Philippines means.  It is not 100% sure but it surely is close to that.   After our 3 week trip, and if all went well, I will resign from my job immediately.  On the meantime, the HR has sent me a message that they are going to hire a full-time employee to assist me since the one we have now is a freelancer consultant who has no plans of being a corporate slave anyways they need us to provide them with a good job description for this new colleague.  For me, I think this person is also my replacement as well so at least they won’t be in a risky situation when the freelancer’s contract ends or if I leave.

With regards to my residency status here, it is still unclear but it looks like I will end up being a tourist when my 5 year permit ends in 2 years.     I need to pass inburgering (inbuggering) before that 5 year is up otherwise they will not renew my permit.  This would mean that if I am really motivated enough to stay here I have to at least pass this state language exam and just thinking about this wants me pack my bags now and leave for the States.  Anyways, I asked MrC again, he knows this but I constantly ask him anyways, I constantly wanted confirmation that we would go the U.S. if Philippines is no longer a choice.  In a heartbeat I will apply for his visa to the US and that should only take less than 9 months if we applied from the consulate here in the Netherlands.

You know, I truly appreciate the Netherlands and what it has done for me personally and the experience of meeting wonderful and interesting people here is priceless.  However, when the inburgering and the “meedoen” pressure they put upon immigrants like me who are hardworking and contribute to Dutch society is pretty much an insult and to me I’m heartbroken from it because I’ve seen several good relationships fall apart from it and foreign partners live in depression in such a country that talks of itself as  tolerant, fair and most of all a welfare state(!).  But times are changing and so my husband and I are preparing ourselves to go if our dreams cannot be realized in such a place.

There you go! After getting approval from my employer for a 3 week holiday we finally did it! Yesterday evening we bought our roundtrip tickets to Manila.  We will be there from the last week of August to mid-September.   As mentioned earlier, this will be our investigation trip and also the first time my husband will see my homeland

We’re very excited and nervous about it.   MrC’s client is definitely going to go for it with the new big project they are starting nowadays and he is spending some time to get the know them closely and get a feel of how they work.  So it looks like everything is going as planned still.  He is also scheduled to meet with some tax consultants to know more about how to deal with the legalities.  I, on the other hand have told my employer exactly how we are seeing this trip and that I will let them know the results of our investigation when we come back.   If the plans push through we are looking into finally moving at the end of this year.

This week I have a 5 day weekend! I decided to spend 1 day of these working with my husband as part of our trial phase to see and feel how it is to spend a day working with him.

Yesterday was a holiday here and it is called Queen’s Day but he wanted to still work in his office so I tagged along with him. My agenda for the day was to go through the documents that my mom had sent to us regarding setting up a business in the Philippines.

While working on the issues I felt that I wanted to talk to him however it was bad timing as he was very busy solving a technical problem in his web application. I felt kind of bored since I am used to having a lot of colleagues around me at work to have small talk with once a while. He also appeared to be very serious and not his normal self unlike at home. He admitted it was his usual self when at work. It was a very quiet office with only him and me in there. His partner was out partying in the streets.

There were times I wanted to talk about trivial things about the office location, buying software licenses etc etc but I guess it was pointless to talk about it now since we’re not in it yet and those things are details that is easily taken cared of once we’re there.

The points of discussion I wanted to talk also was about the structure of the company and taxes. Some of the business structures we are looking into are Joint Venture, Partnership and Corporation. A corporation is considered a Filipino corporation if it has at least 60% Filipino ownership. I found out in the tax tables that corporate tax in the Philippines is normally set at 32% and the ceiling of income tax is at roughly P125,000 + 34% of the Excess over P500,000 in 1998 according to the BIR site. Definitely, the first step would be is to apply at the Board of Investments to see if we get some incentives. Then we need to apply for a license by registering at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The rest of the details such as Corporate Insurance and paperwork for financial statements are too complex to discuss now and we need a professional to help us with it. This include Disability insurance, Medical coverage for employees, Workers Compensation and things like that. Another thing to do might be to apply at PEZA (Philippine Economic Zone Authority) to see if we could get benefits from it when we try to find office space. A bookkeeper is definitely a good thing to have also.

And then suddenly at around 3pm my mobile phone rang and I knew it was from work because of the ring tone I assigned to it (The Office US). And they were fortunate that I have brought my laptop and next thing you know I was logged in via VPN to my office PC. They needed me to run a job. I forgot that all of Europe was still working and only the Netherlands was on holiday. Suddenly, a crazy feeling of panic came to me again like it did before. I wasn’t so ready to deal with work now and my husband was a bit moody. I ended up being quite emotional. I am glad that at least we ended the day having dinner at our favorite Chinese place near our apartment. Funny thing how a bowl of wonton soup would lighten someone’s mood. The sunset I saw while at the restaurant was one of the best I’ve seen in months. Not a bad ending for our Queen’s Day at work.

The following were my references:

How to Invest in the Philippines by Isla, Lipana, and Company

Outsourcing IT 2 Philippines

Team Europe Philippines

Just a quick update: The countdown to August 2008 will still be the same although now August will be the trial scouting trip instead of the actual moving trip. Since we are still waiting for confirmation on new projects that we will be working with MrC’s client by end of this month we could not schedule the trip May or June but most probably it will be August where we will do the scouting trip.

Also, I have sent an email to my family members asking for business advice and referrals. We definitely need to consult a tax professional and someone to help us with our paperwork. My mom can probably help us with the paperwork most likely but with regards to tax matters we need extra help.

As of now, we dream of actually living in Baguio City. I have been researching a bit on this area and we plan to spend more time there on our visit. But of course, we need to know if we can find skilled IT people to work with us and willing to live there too and if housing is not an issue. Right now also, I am sure I will apply for retention of my citizenship as soon as we come back from our first trip and if the first trip was successful. Then we would plan a move by end of this year.