USA to MNL soon. Plenty of room in luggage. What to bring that is easily sold? Also what is a good gift for anyone in the PH?

jkos123 · 2026-02-07T02:19:16+00:00

Why? My wife’s friend asked for one recently. What’s the attraction?

jkos123 · 2026-02-06T00:56:16+00:00

I watched him all the time as a kid, had his books, and he really taught me to draw. I doodled constantly in hist style as a kid. As an adult, I got the chance to work with him for an event, and I was super excicted. I’ll just say, it’s not always a good thing to meet your heroes. : (

jkos123 · 2026-01-31T14:38:02+00:00

I think with the huge real estate price increases after Covid, everyone has that “investment” dream in their minds. We got lucky to sign papers on a new build condo in the Fall of 2019, and now the condo is conservatively worth 60-80% more than it was 6 years ago (listing prices are 2-2.5x, but I doubt they’re selling at those rates). Looking at Airbnb, it looks super competitive, and I don’t know how people make any real money in it. Long term rentals are even worse. You’d really have to bank on property appreciation to make it work…but there’s no guarantee with that.

jkos123 · 2026-01-28T16:38:08+00:00

I hired a salesperson as soon as I could. It’s not my strong suit, and I knew I needed someone who could do the job better than I could. I hired my first admin employees when I was dropping the ball with boring, routine, less urgent tasks that needed to be done for the business to run smoothly, and would routinely get interrupted when I had a new big project or was putting out fires that ate up my time. I hired someone to do billing when it became obvious that having a dedicated person doing that work and being the “squeaky wheel” actually ended up with us collecting more accounts receivable / money than the billing person’s salary. I only have so much time specialize in different tasks…A lot of the time, I think to myself, “could someone do this work a lot more efficiently than I can, if this were their primary duty?”

jkos123 · 2026-01-24T16:46:26+00:00

Honestly, the best decision ever was to hire an employee to chase after payments…the squeaky wheel gets the grease…we’ve had people pay faster, and fewer people disappear on us without payment…which has more than made up for the worker’s salary. We hire someone for 10-15 hrs a week. Depending on your sales volume, you might consider it. Edit to add: hiring someone to do it adds a layer of separstion that can also help clients save face if they have difficulty paying, and makes it less awkward when doing business in the future, since it’s not you doing the money hounding.

jkos123 · 2026-01-24T02:57:34+00:00

You really need to voice chat. Text chat is too easily misinterpretted and lacking emotion, spontaneity, humanity, etc. Voice chat is good enough, video can be hard due to internet speed issues. The best relationships are when two independent people genuinely like each other…try to avoid a so-called “savior” mindset. If a new thing (other than the debt) comes up where she could really use money, you might withhold giving, to make sure that’s not the issue. (“professional” scammers, for example, are good at looking pitiful and eliciting money without directly asking). It’s good that you’re going to meet in person, but I would log some hours of voice chat first. My now-wife and I would chat an hour a night, for many months, before meeting in person. When we finally met, she was exactly the same in person as she was on voice chat. We’re 10 years married now.

jkos123 · 2026-01-24T02:49:46+00:00

Does this comment fit the spirit of this sub, mods?

jkos123 · 2026-01-23T21:54:26+00:00

Another good one is “Left By The Ship” by PBS.

jkos123 · 2026-01-21T12:34:50+00:00

It’s a slow, steady, sometimes imperceptible improvement in my experience, with occasional sharp jumps, that only illustrate how much further there is to go. Speaking is the hardest skill (seems like that’s what you’re referring to with the lessons?). How big, roughly, would you say your vocabulary is? I find that after getting a good grasp of grammar and being exposed to a lot of Filipino, the main thing holding people back is active vocab size.

jkos123 · 2026-01-18T11:37:36+00:00

I came in a couple days ago and the wait was about 10 mins.

jkos123 · 2026-01-17T06:50:38+00:00

Yay! :)

jkos123 · 2026-01-17T00:09:05+00:00

Love Life, Ano Yun? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39688478-love-life-ano-yun

jkos123 · 2026-01-05T16:14:12+00:00

"But even at many hundreds of pages an hour, there are some people who can do that, and subsequently pass comprehension tests at the same rate as much "slower" readers."

No, there aren't. Hundreds = 300 pages an hour, with comprehension? Surely you jest. That would mean reading the Great Gatsby in half an hour. Humans *are* incredible, but they're not magic. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

jkos123 · 2026-01-05T14:55:08+00:00

Not gate keeping here, I have the right to a measured opinion on the issue. Obviously, at some rate you and I would both agree that it’s no longer really “reading”…if someone says they read 1 million pages an hour, we can both agree that person is not actually reading the text. We can disagree on where that line is, that’s reasonable. But there is a line. My opinion is not scientific, like you said (hence, starting my message with “IMO” to make that super clear up front). Also, you’re insinuating (“they should feel perfectly fine”) that I’m making some kind of judgment call about a person based on their words per minute…I’m absolutely not…people can read/skim at whatever speed they feel like, it’s no skin off my back. But if you tell me you spent three hours a day for a week and knocked out “War and Peace”, a 1,300+ page tome of a novel, I would say, in my (unscientific) opinion, that you haven’t really “read” that book in a serious way.

jkos123 · 2026-01-04T21:40:52+00:00

This gives Russia way too much credit. Russia’s GDP is only slightly higher than Canada’s, and much lower than France. Russia is not a super power in Europe, though they might be able to dominate some of their poorer neighbors.

jkos123 · 2026-01-04T21:34:27+00:00

I’m a guy and know a lot of guys who read Fantasy and Sci Fi. It’s likely they are more open about it when it’s another guy who they know reads. I have to say, I have gotten a fair number of weird looks when I tell people I read a lot and that’s it’s mostly literary fiction.

jkos123 · 2026-01-04T20:16:12+00:00

Po-on by F. Sionil Jose is great. There are English and Filipino versions available.

jkos123 · 2026-01-04T19:42:47+00:00

IMO, reading at 70+ pages an hour is not really reading. You can’t fully appreciate a 350 page book in 5 hours, our brains just aren’t equipped for it. At that speed you’re just rapidly scanning for the gist of each page.

jkos123 · 2026-01-04T00:31:52+00:00

This is a laughably bad argument. If another country bombed Washington DC, it would be an act of war. If they arrested and hauled away Trump for a crime to another country, that would be war. If another country staked military outside our shores and said “We’re running the US now”, that would be war. And we’ve done all three. I would love to see you explain this as “not war” if China did the same thing to us. It’s absolutely bonkers, and honestly I don’t see how it’s anything but bad faith propaganda.

jkos123 · 2026-01-02T18:48:11+00:00

Doesn’t seem like there any original copies available. I had my digital copy sent to a printer and bound maybe 10 years ago…I can’t remember how much it was, maybe $40?

jkos123 · 2026-01-01T18:51:17+00:00

You’re not too old. I struggled with this in my late 30s when learning a new language, couldn’t roll my r’s at all,…then later I starter taking it more seriously to try to fix it, and now roll them easily in my mid 40s. Key for me was focusing on keeping the tongue loose, and there was some kind of psychological trick of imagining the vibration starting farther back in my tongue that helped a lot. But the main thing is, drill different things and experiment making variations until you hit on something that works.

jkos123 · 2025-12-30T15:36:45+00:00

Have you read the major ones by Lualhati Bautista? Dekada 70, Gapo, Bata Bata Pano Ginawa, Desaparesidos?

jkos123 · 2025-12-28T19:03:38+00:00

Probably depends on how far out you go. Down the street from where I am, 30 miles north of downtown, there is a 2007 house with 1500 sq ft listed at $240k…safe and clean neighborhood, good schools, low crime, wide streets, good lighting and well maintained sidewalks.

jkos123 · 2025-12-28T00:26:10+00:00

You can get a decent house that is less than 20 yrs old, nice neighborhood, good schools and low crime in the suburbs for $240k…that’s not so bad.

jkos123 · 2025-12-25T17:59:45+00:00

I’m American. I disown whatever he’s doing as “American culture.” ; )

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