A former Irish policeman shares his life in the Philippines

people in Europe they don't know much about the Philippines when they think of Asia they think of Thailand they don't expect a lot of things to be so modern and advanced and convenient meet Patrick Armstrong who worked as a policeman in Northern Ireland for 14 years he then lived in Mexico Germany and Spain before moving to the Philippines 5 years ago Patrick shared what westerners completely misunderstand about the Philippines what Filipino sense of humor is like and why there are so many armed people in Manila and your new YouTube friend let's go so you lived in Dublin you lived in Mexico yeah and in in Berlin but eventually you have chosen the Philippines yeah um few big things I came here on vacation in 2017 uh I liked it and uh I wasn't able to move out straight away so it took about two years to go back to Europe two years to move out so the language is a big deal you can go into any government building all the road signs everything everything's in englishy Filipino I've ever met a good level of English to very very good level like better English than most nearly all the English people sort of level cuz I'm not able to retire just yet I still have to work as some things so yeah the the weather I love it um the language massively helps uh I I enjoy the big city life CU I I grew up in a small town and even where my mom lives in Spain is quite a small town so I'm really enjoy the the big City Life the convenience of everything the um millions of people around easy to make friends that sort of thing is there anything that westerners don't understand about the Philippines something that they they don't get about the country if if they never been here I think sometimes people have warped memories of their own country so sometimes I find westers uh even friends complain about uh something being slow or something being overly complicated and I was like you you know it's not any better in the UK it's more difficult that sort of stuff is more difficult to do in the UK or to do in Germany or Spain Spain is incredibly bureaucratic uh I I've actually found most things quite easy here with the government offices uh it's like when I go into to do anything it's been fast there's been a lot of you know if you go into a government office in the UK there's like 50 uh people waiting to um have a service done and there's two people working behind the counter in the Philippines you go in there's like a few people waiting and 10 people behind the counter so I find actually a lot of things quite not everything a lot of things quite easy to deal with quite efficient everything's in English the paperwork is in English oh all all in English yeah all in English all all all the courts um so I've had to get documents signed at courts I even one of the courts I I needed a judge to sign it was business stuff I had to get a judge to sign some documents show up this court in 20 minutes minutes later a judge has signed these documents and stamped them for a few pesos and wow okay I guess in in Europe in Europe a lot of PE uh people in Europe when they think of Asia they think of Thailand especially UK and Ireland yeah so they think of Thailand Thailand they don't know much about the Philippines so uh it's the Americans that are more familiar with the Philippines they don't expect uh everything a lot of things to be so modern uh so modern and advanced and convenient and um I think when I was doing the YouTube videos uh so I went through BGC BGC I can kind of consider like a a mini Singapore except better might disagree with me no that's like I was like impressed by place I did like for example a couple of years ago I had to my the company I worked for sent me on a business work trip to Singapore and I was like I don't want to go you know why not well it's um well for me I'd rather spend the weekend in well BGC is only 10 minutes from me I said I'd rather hang out in BGC than go to Singapore it's about a fifth of the price um it's much more compact you can walk everywhere uh and for me it's a much nicer vibe to it so yeah I I did this um video walking 18-minute video of BGC High Street and I was saying you know this is one of the most modern safest uh cities I've ever been in and um so BGC is like a bubble within Metro Manila itself and because it's Metro Manila is made up of 17 cities BGC is one of them that's maati the other one mati is also super nice yeah yeah yeah so um so as the the thumbnail on the the you on for YouTube I did uh I did Philippines third third world question mark uh so I was being ironic all right and uh so I did that and a lot of comments were people saying oh thank you for showing our our country people think it's just NEPA huts and coconut trees uh but then a lot of Filipinos didn't actually get it like how dare you say our country is third world it's developing and FL I'll have you deported and I'm like I'm being ironic and can you not see I've shown one of the most advanced modern cities in the world in the middle of Metro Manila so uh so yeah I guess one of the things they're a bit surprised at is um is how modern the city can be yesterday I walked around this triangle how you call it a Yow triangle a Yow triangle the VIP is super nice like people chilling outside someone is running someone is just doing some Jujitsu stuff and someone just chilling okay first impression it's I I wouldn't judge the country by first impression but it's kind of feel of Freedom let's say um this kind of thing yeah and different places like you go to Jakarta you have different feeling you go to Bangkok you have different feeling so here is like very nice I say yeah yeah there's generally a good vibe that that trip to Singapore I did I I went to um I went to Boat Key and Clark key but I can't remember which one it was so uh so I went down there and the first bar I saw had about uh I think they were British actually you had about 10 or 12 British guys and you know you've got that work hard play hard type in Singapore so they're in this bar and they're all singing and it's like a like a rugby team almost and very loud and I was like yeah you don't get that in BGC BGC is much more much more chilled even with my American and British friends we uh you know we sit outside have our beers coffees and it's a it's a lot quieter and more chilled and yeah you know watch people go by um what the other funny thing about BGC is in the the prams or the strollers usually when you see someone pushing a stroller there's a dog in it as well so everyone's got cool little dogs and yeah yeah how's the know Social Circle look like here like mix of foreigners Filipina or my guy friends have mostly for over the years have mostly been expats so uh well mainly Americans and British and uh a few others Dutch and different things scattered around they've all dated or married Filipinos yeah so which is super common yeah so then my girlfriends have been Filipino and often when I've dated uh someone I've usually stayed friends with them so for for quite a while all my Filipino friends have been girls whether my friends wives or girlfriends or uh girls I've met uh up until probably the last year or two uh I've well PL enough I'm drinking from it i' started I've gotten very much into going to watch standup comedy so uh so the guys there you know there's a mix of Filipino comedians so uh yeah developed more sort of like male friends uh through uh through that so uh but you very much a mix of foreign and Filipino friends yeah I had this uh advice from someone I think in Malaysia so if you come to a new country and you want to like understand it better go to the local standup club and comedy show and see what jokes are uh that people are laugh about and then you kind of understand what's the hid like uh things that going on in society yeah yeah so um when I moved here as well really wasn't a culture shock um yeah so like I I've I'm from Ireland which I'm from Ireland I've lived in Spain I've lived in Mexico even though I'm an atheist and not interested in religion um there a country like Ireland uh the foundations have been built on Catholicism so it's been a big influence on on its culture and its laws and uh very the exact same as Spain so the Philippines is the same it's very much a Catholic country so uh it it really wasn't a culture shock in any way and I found the sense General sense of humor understanding of sarcasm so so yeah I mean the the Filipinos and the Irish sarcasm is uh is very is much more similar than Irish Australian sarcasm so I find uh Australians can take things very literally and stuff um I find Irish and Filipinos are closer than culturally than Australians IR Irish for example I was just curious why why is that because like Philippines have really influenced by American like pop culture so I would expect they the sense of humor is more like the comedians from the US L like the British like salty humor in the comedy club anyway when uh when we talk when I speak to the the actual comedians the you know when they say what's your favorite comedians like oh Bill Bill bear is my favorite and they're like oh Bill bear is my favorite and okay he's American they love Ricky Jes yeah that's my favorite yeah so uh Jim jeffre is as good he's Australian I remember two um Irish comedians famous Irish comedians um Ed Ed burn and um Dar oin and they were TR they made a TV show traveling Asia and I think they're in Vietnam and la and Cambodia those that area yeah so they looked at the comedy scene and they're saying oh the comedy scene is very much in its uh infancy there it's a very different type of humor so these two uh these two professional comedians that are super famous and sellout theaters uh they they got up and tried some of their material in these comedy clubs and just bombed you know nobody was laughing whereas uh here when I I go and see the Filipino comedians uh there you know it's same observational humor they enjoy the the western style watching the western style Comedians and uh their yeah their acts are along the same lines of observational humor so uh so yeah so you yeah you get that we're all laughing at the same thing okay what what are the jokes about let's say I give you an example like I go to comedy shows in Singapore and there are a lot of like okay in Singapore I don't know if you've been there but that's the mix of like three predominant kind races like chese indiaan and Malay and like others so we are others the society is pretty harmonic in a way that people really like can live along with each other so they they're fine but if you go to the comedy show there will be lots of jokes about like racist jokes about relationship Chinese Indian like Malay like Malaysian Malay and like singaporeans that are a lot of so that's the hidden stuff that you kind of don't talk about in a when you meet people like in real life but in comedy show it's like that's the jokes yeah yeah they they yeah they they understand that as well so they kind of say look um you know these are just jokes guys you know uh we we don't want to go viral with anything we're it's it's a safe space uh one of the guys I think I'm trying to think of a couple of recent ones Filipinos kind of joke I go oh we're we're very racist here we're very racist or you know what uh what do we call Chinese people here and they went someone like don't can't remember the word what do we call Indians can't remember the word and what do we call white people sir so yeah and quite often I'm the only Foreigner white guy in the audience so they and they know me now as well so they pick on me a bit and uh and you know just it's observational humor uh one of the guys he um his girlfriend's pregnant or his wife's pregnant actually and yeah this actually is quite a cultural thing the Health Care System here it's all private it's like America you have to pay for everything the health insurance doesn't cover much okay so he's likeing he's like a natural birth is is 4,000 or $4,000 uh cesarian section is 7,000 so he's like I'm there with the the doctor or the they're explaining all the prices he says I feel like I've gone do you know when you go into a store and a very expensive store and you can't afford anything but you don't want to tell them that and they're like how much is that suit that's $7,000 nice yeah okay yeah how much is that 5,000 okay yeah so you you felt like that in the in the the doctor's surgery getting all these prices for giving birth to his child natural yeah let's go natur yeah yeah okay that's good deal good deal $7,000 so yeah it's it's it's very it's the type of humor we're all used to watching Netflix stand up I think Philippines Filipinos and Irish are very similar is it yeah oh we're very very simar both very friendly that's our thing yeah well it depends Southern Irish are quite different from northern Irish so I guess um I guess the biggest difference is Northern Ireland are probably uh as a nation probably some of the most aggressive confrontational people in the world oh and uh so you're the Philippines is the complete opposite uh probably one of one of the least confrontational nations in the world and uh more and not aggressive in general so so that was the biggest from northern irland to here that was probably the biggest difference but I'm generally a very Cal non-aggressive person anyway so it wasn't for me it was nice to leave that part of Northern Ireland I used to live in Ireland in dubling so I spent there three and a half years and Irish people like to me like my experience was that super lovely people like you you cross the boorder you come back to Ireland like you cross the board and they actually you own like employment P Visa per say and they the officer tells you welcome home it's like how sweet is that yeah this the south of Ireland has a slight different vibe to to Northern Ireland and and plus In fairness in Northern Ireland I worked in the police there so I saw the the worst side of it which a lot of people wouldn't see did did you have a lot of like crazy stories back then um H yeah it is a bit of a weird place to work for example it's like so it's a nice relief for so because we have a bad terrorist problem and they tend to Target police officers when they're off duty cuz uh you're less likely to have a gun so uh so so for 14 years I had to look on so that one of their tactics is put a bomb under your car so wow so at your time still now wow so for 14 years of every every morning or afternoon getting into my car I have to like look underneath the car uh even if I even if you drive somewhere to a park to go for a run you come back and look under so so it was nice to it took about even after I left the country it took about 2 years to shake that off to to get the muscle memory shaken off from that so uh so it's it's just a very to to work there as a police officer it's a very weird type of Life uh to live there it can be very weird as well with segregation so you have like Catholic schools Protestant schools uh you have bar uh bars uh where predominantly Catholics go or bars where predominantly Protestants go and there's still quite a lot of segregation there wow so it it like it would be weird if you're let's say Catholic and you come to the Protestant War so they'll you'll have glances uh yeah it's it's gotten a lot better over the years but in in parts it can still it can still be pretty bad well so there're just places where uh especially the smaller towns just uh bars and areas just Catholics wouldn't go bars and areas Protestants wouldn't go so uh yeah a lot of the country is still very segregated so it's 14 years right as a police officer there it's a long time can you recall any like the crazi story that you can tell um from that time I guess one of the more interesting times I worked there is we held um in my hometown where I grew up and where I worked actually there uh it hosted the G8 Summit so uh so it was the last time before Russia was removed from it actually it's now the G7 so the last G8 Summit so it was it was very interesting seeing the the planning and preparation um put in put into that having eight world leaders come there and uh then funny enough this rolls into the segregation part so Barack Obama was Presidents at the time so he and David Cameron the British prime minister uh the one visit they did away from the G8 Summit uh the hotel Zone where which had the Ring Of Steel around it was they went to The only integrated School in in the town uh so which was a Catholic Protestant polish whoever could go to it so Barack Obama I think being black he he was most interested in that so it was the only visit they did so um D David Cameron joined the the the American uh motorcade with Barack Obama because I was trained in cbrn chemical biological radioactive nuclear okay um there was such a huge setup you had Secret Service there all around the school so they even set up for um uh in case someone comes out throws a liquid at them or a white powder yeah uh they need to um they need to think about what to do so the Americans have their own team to deal with Barack so I was Bor in on the team to deal with David Cameron yeah so we had like a scientist there who had all the equipment to uh to test the powder uh we had two paramedics and we're all in uh we all looked like we were coming from Chernobyl or something we're all in proper gear so then they had two police officers so we were at the side of the fence watching Barack Obama and uh and David Cameron coming in and uh but the Americans don't trust anyone so you basically had two foreigners there well foreigners they were in Northern Ireland we were Northern IRS police so we had guns and we were going to be within a few meters of their president so then they had this Navy SEAL actually they don't trust you as well no so they had this Navy SEAL type guy standing behind us so they so we were standing there watching him so the Americans put their own guy behind us you yeah so it's just like so it's like me and the other police was like uh keep your hands away from your gun cuz just in case he so just in case we went yeah there's the president he would shoot us so even even though they they were in Northern Ireland yeah the Americans don't leave anything to chance we were watching them and they were watching us so that was so the entire G8 was an interesting experience with all the the world leaders there the planning went into it but yeah that was a weird weird moment wow so we we had a special van there if Happ we would take Cameron put him in the specialized van take to hospital him down it feels safe here especially in the central Manila feel very safe but there are so many people with guns like so many police so many like this armored crazy cars like Batman mobiles and like guards carrying guns carrying rifles is like why if you can explain the people who are not uh don't really know what's what's going on wi well the the gun LS are very relaxed here I think it's been the American influence over the last 100 years so you've a lot of gun clubs uh gun ownership is uh quite easy uh not not for a foreigner but for locals uh gun ownership is quite easy so there are a lot of guns here but gun crime is very very low these are very low yeah I would expect like like in the US if guns so accessible so like some bad guys can get access to it MH but no no it's like this the gun wild is there's lots of guns here but uh you gun you like I said gun violence is is it's pretty low for a population of over 100 million people I've had a lot of uh good experiences with the police here I mean they're generally friendly uh you know it's generally just talking to them on the street or whatever they generally nice and friendly um and I often say about police um when I joined my friends were a bit worried that I would become an and so I was like don't worry it won't become an and uh so and I don't for Northern Ireland as well I've worked with a lot of I've worked with guys that have some issues I've worked with some great people you mean in police department in the police yeah so I always say to my friends you know police are people so you get some you get some good guys you get unprofessional guys you got professionals so they're humans they're people so yeah they're not all brilliant they're not all terrible you made quite a career switch like from being a police officer to the UN Consulting right one of the big firms in in philad uh well actually it was a very sort of similar switch uh so it did in it did sort of corporate investigations and so on so uh yeah and due diligence and uh uh business advisory so uh it was a it was a big switch going from government style to to corporate world uh so there's there's a lot of uh lot of small differences but uh but it was a transferable skill set to bring over and so here you work for the this one of the big corporations yeah uh yeah I've worked for a couple of companies here multinationals so the previous one was one of the uh one of the big four if I may ask like the the level of salaries if uh if you work for multinational and the life is pretty affordable in Manila so it's probably you have a lot of money being saved here is it the case uh the salaries are tend to be lower in in the Philippines yeah the salaries are a lot lower my wages have sort of um uh especially the first company I worked for is sort of multinational and I sort of bought in as a a consultant to kind of help fix it was a smaller company but helped fix the office yeah so it was like a shorter term contract and it was like bring in for 6 months uh fix fix it so so that that was a bit better paid but uh yeah generally for corporate work here as well it's uh to go into Corporation here that the salary is a lot lower at at every level manager senior manager level country manager level all the way down and yeah even what I see the associates and Senior Associates on it's it's a pretty pretty low wage the philppine uh in the Philippines what whates are on do you have any like important principle in life something that is really that you I don't know you learn something through the years of your like professional work and your life some like one or two or like main principle that you follow I actually had this on my phone screen saver for a long time it was um uh it was a quote from John Lennon and uh I don't know how accurate the quote is because he said he was 5 years old bit Advanced for a 5-year old or he could have been 10 or something oh yeah he says I was in school the teacher gave us an assignment or asked uh you know what you want to be in life and I said happy and she goes you don't understand the assignment and he and he said you don't understand life so I had that for my screen saer for a while so uh I see in um especially in Northern Ireland people are more uh practical minded uh they don't uh put a lot of emphasis on travel or life experiences they just uh uh work as much as possible buy the buy a house uh ex renovate their house extend their house or whatever else so uh for me uh life experience is is quite important which is why I've traveled a lot lived in different countries and I guess sort of leading on to that the other um cuz I know you sort of focus on business and stuff as well I was born in 1981 so throughout my life we've had a few sort of um recessions which are becoming more and more frequent so in 2008 um we had the uh financial crash and property crash which hit me really really badly uh pretty much much wiped wiped me out with a lot of stuff uh so had that crash and then um then started to sort of build a bit uh back up with that and then all my investments uh and stuff were in British pounds and then the we had brexit and then the currency just collapsed 25% after brexit and I'm like ah and then uh so then back in corporate world every 2019 everything's going great uh it wasn't just that work a few other project everything's going great then uh lockdown happens I oh me so uh as was like this is getting more and more frequent and uh I've been busting my ass all these years trying to invest trying to do this working hard and it's just one after the other so uh since the lockdown lockdowns and another kick in the blls it's been uh I was just like right um uh for future work and Future projects and things uh and also what I'm 43 years old now they're talking about oh the next pandemic uh so all there's war um so then it's just like so now my principal is like right whatever I take on I need to enjoy so I don't want to take on another job that I hate and uh not that I hated the previous ones but they were high extremely high stress hard work long hours so uh now I it's just like right well I can I want to take a bit of time out take a breather and look at stuff I enjoy because I'm not getting any younger I wanted to be richer by this stage but like I said several recessions brexits everything has had a few noteb backs so I was like right okay I'm not going to spend the next 10 years working at something I hate so now it's just like right whatever I do I need to at least enjoy it [Music]

Channel: Max Chernov

Views: 198,942

Keywords: max chernov, the philippines, american in the philippines, foreigner in the philippines, living in the philippines, life in the philippines, cost of living in the philippines, filipina wife, manila, philippines, living abroad, moving to the philippines, native life in the philippines, life in philippines, becoming filipino, philippines vlog, moving from the us to the philippines, british in manila, british in the philippines, moving from the uk to the philippines

Id: eLUOQgR3VRE

Length: 27min 26sec (1646 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2024