Life in the Philippines pt 2 | Homes, Family & Work

hello world this is my third video about the Philippines so if you've missed those two I've put the links to them in the description for this video how about we ease into things by checking out some homes first off let's talk with Jordan who lives with his sister her husband and his nephew who just so you know aren't the other people you see in the house footage how come you don't have lets on right now oh it's daytime yeah at the save energy oh okay see if money yeah yeah here in Philippines yeah while my camera doesn't show it it's indeed dark in the house and Jordan is right energy is expensive in the Philippines especially in Manila so there's a hole in the ceiling because he's trying to fix a water leak and this is simply me confirming that those are new shoes on the bed which they were this room is Messier because they have a kid here they have a kid in here yeah and then can you see that oh wait your your rooms there's no wall yeah just for not ventilation this is where that's your toilet ball yeah so you just squat over top of it so do you use that to clean your bump yeah or you use your hand to wash let's pause my shaky camera for a second so I'm told that a typical middle-class house will use the bucket and tabal to wash themselves there's no showerhead and that you most likely won't have hot water everything gets wet so you'd wear slippers so this is just drying right yeah so it's not like a dishwasher what they told me is that dishwashers in the Philippines are not a popular thing if you're not wealthy you can't afford one if you are wealthy you'd have a maid do them and this is me enjoying some Filipino hospitality Thanks the mango Jordan next we visit Jessica and her family who live in a gated community unfortunately for all the health stores I did a terrible job of talking and filming at the same time so I'll be summarizing conversations a lot like this one this is her father's room and she said her mom stay at her sister's house which shares the same backyard as this house I went on to ask about the CR the comfort room has it's called in the Philippines and why not use a curtain separate the toilet and shower they don't want to have Curtis but I want to have curtains it cuts the bathroom oh yes they do it prioritize the bathroom as long as there is a shower and there's a toilet bowl that's the bathroom already so this is my cousin's haha room he's staying with us like since he was a little boys and without holding primaries happy like Father's author we have my cousin here this is supposed to be my mom's room having some bias or places where you can hang out I'm dyin we call it from Ryan like some nice and body okay so there so here we have a balcony then overlooking everything um my dad's garden with this footage I did an even worse job than the house tour and didn't even record sound however I was impressed with the variety of fruits so I wanted to show you here are of course bananas and this is actually a banana heart or banana blossom and this is soursop here's uh papaya tree and this is passionfruit and doggie over here is rambutan this one is named jackfruit now we're looking at a gourd I believe this is a water apple but I'm not 100% sure lastly this is a pineapple plant I never knew they looked like this now back to the house tour I love I love hanging here initially your house is just until this wall and then we had an extension and then another extension so Filipinos like to have extensions next if we extend the house as long as their lease yes peace there as Jessica was showing me around her real estate mother joined us her and her team actually sold many of the houses in this gated community agent my three kids finished colleges through my commission oh and this is our third house third huh yes we have been lately and we have in San Pedro Norma and the Dino houses have their all third yes sir so we have those angels and the holy of the Trinity and the Holy Family any nerve you have to a dining areas no house for the visitors and then the sealy yeah now I'm skipping ahead a bit but here's the fourth house I visited you see the formal dining room and then the two living rooms on the left and the right those weren't used during my visit instead it was this tiny little kitchen counter table that we gathered around I thought it was pretty funny because it's exactly what happens at my dad's place back in Canada anyways he shows I've never seen them like this before yes here it's coming to have a drawers like this because of termites and if you're into like your you want to move from one place to another yes easier like I'll say in Japan this is very important to us they're ice cooler typical you know calendar is just this one and then this is where you just slice this is where we cook our food but but we only cook simple food here yeah so if you want to cook like for example vanilla like the one that we add the beef we cook it here so we use firewood oh there so this is where my mom cooks bliss if you cook the rice using firewood it's a different taste in the province we also have this one it is very essential yeah as was the norm I was treated to some delicious food so fresh fruits from her dad's garden and home cooking from her mother's kitchen I even got a takeout container to go thank you now we're going to visit another gated community the last one was in the provinces with houses and now we're in Metro Manila and this one is full of apartments and has a resort like feel to it so like what kind of people live here so you'd think of think middle-class to upper-middle class because if you look at the rent so it's like usually the ranges eighteen to twenty-five thousand for rent and if you were someone that works in the in the office if you were maybe in that office for like five years or so your salary would be around the thirty thousand range so only when you're a manager of a department you look at the fifty thousand pesos salary so as usually the people that are making at least 50 50 to 70 can afford a place like this so let's take a little tour of the facilities available there's a few pools this one's for laps behind it is a covered basketball court and in another building we find the indoor gym there were signs for noise and littering and indeed the place was quieter and cleaner than other places I visited they have a little convenience store and importantly a place to fill up with clean water there's even a water reservoir on top just in case it's also right on the river with some green space to walk your dogs [Music] buddy hey so do you go swim in there hell no so is that unit with the plastic over top is that just for shade that's the one in the back is banana [Music] when I asked to film inside this is the response I got but they did let me film a bit of their workspace which they use for their online jobs and in the background you can see the small kitchen that they have will return for some home cooking and job talk later however let's now check out Eileen's parents home the biggest of them all yeah it's this one with a massive square footage I actually didn't film much since I know it's not close to an average Filipino house but this is the guest room that I had all to myself I even had my very own ensuite Comfort room on top of that Thailand's mom left out all these goodies for me which I had no opportunity to eat since she also made these scrumptious ribs now houses that I didn't film inside of at all our informal settlements are ISS people would build their houses to it to a point where it's already cement it's not like wooden houses anymore and then so somebody's like oh let's develop this land now and they have to move okay our house is already made of stone it's already cemented well then we could pack up and go our livelihoods are here so and then they would like well wherever we're gonna go you have to give us housing that's been an issue past three years and then they send them to the provinces where there's like actual houses and then they go back saying oh we couldn't find any livelihood there it's estimated that 1.3 million people are 11% of Metro Manila's population live in informal settlements I'll quote the World Bank Group report within migration of those aspiring for better lives from rural areas to urban centers came surges in demand for jobs housing infrastructure and basic services in major cities yet the government has been unable to address the increased demand given the accelerated pace the result has been proliferation of informal settlers in urban areas without adequate access to decent living conditions if you look at the wires most is FS have access to electricity although it's expensive in fact the fifth most expensive in the world as such many resort to shared connection are jumping an illegal connection to neighbors our public electricity only 46 percent of the homes have a proper connection in my previous video I already talked about how a waste collection was an issue what I didn't mention was that besides polluting the water ways when trash is dumped in there and polluting the air when burned solid waste leeches into and contaminates the soil causing health issues and in my first video about the Philippines I covered what the commute is like transportation is a huge expense for residents in informal settlements currently comprising 15% of household expenditure and is only set to go higher as congestion in Metro Manila worsens there are a variety of transportation methods that a Filipino student can take for example there's the school service van you'll also see students being picked up in trikes that are likely picking them up according to a pre booked schedule in the case of the family I stayed with they had a band that came right to their gates for the pickup it's this extra transportation cost as well as uniforms textbooks school supplies and lunches that make the free kindergarten to grade 12 public education system not truly free as a result of those living in informal settlements 22.4% had up to elementary school education or lower and 30.6% were high school dropouts so basically half the residents don't graduate from high school and the main reason seems to be financial both because of the cost of education as well as the opportunity cost of not having young family members contribute at an early age on the opposite end of the spectrum we entered yet another gated community to see how the super wealthy lived in Metro Manila they have security guards that actually do proper security checks so we needed an inside connection to get in once inside the cityscape totally transformed this could pass for a street in Canada or the United States if you just took a quick glance the streets weren't busy it wasn't noisy there were plenty of trees there are joggers and dog walkers and even houses with front yards however there were some giveaways that this wasn't a typical if not wealthier Canadian neighborhood first of all there were the gates restricting access to the area then there was the shiny fire truck out on the street lastly there were the hired cleaners ensuring the roads were tidy and I specifically said Canadian neighborhood because while there are plenty of gated communities in the United States they are few and far between in Canada to live here in this exclusive Makati neighborhood you need to be a millionaire this is truly where the elites live especially seeing as the mean household income in the Philippines is around five thousand US dollars [Music] since we're talking about money let me tell you about these guys that fish for a living we caught them organizing their hooks under a busy bridge so the audio was unusable at some points so they told us they'd go out on the water every day from 7 p.m. to 4 a.m. fishing using a flashlight they sell the fish at a local market and then have to reset the 4000 fish hooks that they cast back over at Jordans place we learn about his current employment status I am not employed right now okay but I'm working on it in Japan or Canada when you're unemployed the government gives you money no no nobody would work ok so then like how do you survive here in the Philippines if we don't have a job we still look for some some racket some side jobs survive yeah party organizer yeah like that okay we do some free birthday shoots birthday presentations like that but we're in family we help each other to survive yeah so he lives with his sister brother-in-law and nephew and it's my brother he's the one who only got a job here over at Nikola Norman's we learn about online work so I actually started in corporate and then I kind of just got tired of corporate so I decided to look for more freelance work because I had enough experience in my resume to say I can do certain things it's a lot of project management so a lot of e-commerce website creation Amazon stores so whatever you can do on the Internet basically I just figured out how to do and I offer it as a service I actually just have one main client now so enough to get you by because when you just compare the cost of living to how much you can earn a dollar like it's very competitive it's even much better than I used to make appropriate well I make anywhere between 700 to $1,000 per month like just depending on if I can get more projects in right now I'm a web developer for a Canadian company yes with our qualifications and our educated background you think that we'd be doing more with our potential a good example of this is Nicola Norman who both went to the third-ranked University in the Philippines De La Salle nicole has a bachelor's degree in creative writing while norman has a computer science degree major in software development if you're say from the US or from Canada they have certain expectations from like someone who was educated in a third world country right so it's not the in other words they just don't trust us with something bigger like yeah it's just it's too much of a risk I mean you've never met the person they're thousands of miles away they're educated in a third world country you don't know them that well beyond online work from home are for a BPO a business process outsourcing company there are many Filipinos working overseas they are called OFWs are overseas filipino workers and as of 2018 there were 2.3 million of them one example of a former OFW was our truck driver he worked abroad in Saudi Arabia as a driver for about three years using that money he was able to get a house however he didn't own his own truck so he went abroad again this time to Dubai for a year and a half and bar is owned by a foreign leader said no motor start Wow some people I talked to had ambitions of becoming a citizen of a foreign country many others did something similar to our truck driver who used it as a way to get a step-up in life interestingly while he owns his own trike he says he doesn't make more than others in his association but because he's an owner he doesn't need to work in the evenings like the other guys thank you so much so Filipinos from at least from what I read and from observation is there willing to bear that that the whole you're going out of the country for several years you're not going to see your family just to you know just to give them a better life because you're earning more than you ever could here because how much does a nurse make here fifteen thousand pesos that's the these numbers are from an online job site for Filipino workers so I can't vouch for its accuracy but having talked to several different locals they don't appear far off the column in the left is what Filipinos can make working locally while the column on the right is what they could make working online my next interviewee has also been working online but is now in the process of moving to Japan to become an OFW during the factory work so yeah so I'm cycling and I'm from Baguio City ok so I work for a call center for like almost Oh two years and that is for inbound account they were in we accept calls so we take orders and set them for pickup and delivery okay so if this for Sioux Shelly Oh Swiss Chalet not only a Canadian restaurant it was no lie my favorite restaurant when I was young I asked her what kind of money she made I started for 12 Towson for my first year in comparison the NCR the National Capital Region has the highest minimum wage in the Philippines at five hundred and thirty seven pesos are about $10 u.s. a day however where she lives in Baguio minimum wage was more like 300 pesos a day so by taking calls for swiss chalet she was able to make nearly double what she could have with local jobs free now I am working as a home based on lengthy trip her online work which is teaching English to Chinese students has the potential to make nearly double what her starting wage was taking calls for Swiss Chalet so it's easy to understand why she upgraded to a job that she can do from home and on an hourly basis however recently she's been training to work in Japan for me I will be working as a weaving operator and the company I think that most of the filthiness would take this opportunity to like to work overseas because of the salary of course and for the experience to go out of the country and of course to support their family financially supporting the family was a reoccurring theme in all conversations I had with Filipinos I'm being for my brothers tuition fee because my parents can't pay for it so a lot of people be in that same situation they have siblings they have parents who need their financial support that's a very classic story yes if anything that's an expectation for siblings right with Cyprien it was her family who helped pay for her 2-year information technology course and it's also her family especially her older sisters who are helping to pay for her training to go to Japan father is an OFW so that's why he was the one who financially supported us he's been in Canada for like six to seven years and before he was able to like work in other countries as well so we grew up like not being with him for like a very long time recently her father got permanent residency in Canada and while her mother and youngest brother who is 15 were able to join him Cyprien and her three other siblings were too old to be sponsored while I previously said that there were currently 2.3 million Filipinos working overseas an even more surprising statistic is that an estimated ten point two million Filipinos have looked or worked abroad given that the country has a population of around 100 million that's a good 10 percent who are or have been overseas [Music] you know somebody abroad my sons two sons know they are working in ship one of the reason why they are working abroad is they'd like to see other places free of course the side that is great pool when you work abroad like the most minimum like in a cruise ship or I worked the smallest wage that you could receive is like $500 a month and that you don't pay for rang you don't pay for food yes that's 500 take home Jessica's mother has two sisters working overseas one in Japan in a tofu Factory and one in Canada in a seniors home please indulge me for a second as a flash back to an earlier scene so this is my cousin's her room he's staying with us since he was a little boy so he's staying here right now [Music] [Laughter] you always prairie is your family before the rose before yourself so that's why again I find myself about 25 minutes into this edit and I still have so much footage I promised to talk about food and travel in the previous video so how about this let's do a quick montage of a select portion of the food I had for example Nicole specifically shot boar and cooked meat dishes like it's called target area because it looks like a cream so it's a Filipino tank on curry [Music] she also made it's called Bicol Express because it comes from because [Music] I also went to a night market where what do you know there was music [Music] I'm doing the takoyaki first okay [Music] and in Tagaytay i'm hope i'm pronouncing that right i also went to a essentially most things we tried to order we're not available but we made the best of it out in Bulacan we ordered so many dishes at this pick and Grill place just look at this montage and even though this is technically not Filipino food please soup dumplings whose name I won't even try to pronounce we're probably the tastiest dumplings I've ever eaten and I mentioned these homemade ribs right I think they were the best ones to ever touch my lips despite speeding through all the food let me just slow down a brief moment so we can find out about a popular Filipino export bananas I actually went to a few plantations in Davao so Davao in Mindanao is the banana capital of the Philippines basically it's where we grow all the Cavendish for Doyle don't want it so she's talking about Cavendish bananas like this which account for nearly half of global banana production the thing about regulation there it's very strict like to be expert quality you have to fulfill certain standards so if the banana if the bunch of bananas don't fulfil that then they usually get rejected so they're all put into this pile either for a disposal or it's just gonna become animal feed because Philippines don't eat it Cavendish instead they prefer something like the LA to none which I'm told are long and sweet and make great milkshakes are the lock upon which is smaller paler starchier and more filling now for that travel footage while in the Philippines I traveled a fair bit often stuck in places a bit noisier than I liked one of my solutions for enjoying that time was to listen to an audible audio book with my noise-canceling headphones one of the books I'm listening to right now is 21 lessons for the 21st century I find it very fitting as I research about the Philippines as the book is about modern-day concerns such as work International Cooperation trusting data sources and immigration with so much to worry about what do you do I think this audio book helps give you perspective on big topics like those encouraging you to be more thoughtful and less reactionary thanks to audible for sponsoring this video I've personally been a member since 2011 if you're not already a member get your first audio book for free plus to audible originals when you try audible for 30 days visit audible.com slash life where I'm from our text life form from 2 500 500 in case you're wondering audible originals are exclusive audio titles created by celebrated storytellers from worlds as diverse as theatre journalism literature and more one last thing it's pretty risk-free to subscribe to audible you can counsel or pause your membership at any time plus you can actually swap out an audiobook if you start listening to it and it's just not your thing it's helped give me the guts to choose titles I normally wouldn't since I knew I could always exchange them if I didn't enjoy them which I have done on a few occasions again go to audible.com slash life where I'm from our text life where I'm from - 500 500 get started okay so I actually have way more footage than that but I wrote so much about my travels that instead of only giving you a one minute drone montage I'm going to make one more video talking about that fantastic scenery I just showed you so please be patient with me while I make it once again thanks to all those that led me into their homes and shared their stories with me I learned so much and was moved many times thanks to my patreon and IndieGoGo supporters for helping to finance this series of videos and lastly thanks for watching see you next time bye if you've worked abroad what was your experience like [Music] free gravy refill a McDonald's nice

Channel: Life Where I'm From

Views: 403,086

Rating: 4.8937387 out of 5

Keywords: Philippines, family, OFW, work, homes, life in the philippines, living in the philippines, life in manila, philippine society, philippines documentary

Id: b98dy-nFs5k

Length: 31min 14sec (1874 seconds)

Published: Fri May 31 2019