@OldBastard 24 January 2022

Rebuilding Cousin's House - Part of a Continuing Series on How To Go Broke In The Philippines for Westerners. In addition to spending a lot of money fixing Lola's house, (details of that sad story here: https://noise.cash/post/1rgzq0qz ), the decision was made to build a new house for our cousin, who lives with his wife and kids right across the muddy "driveway" from Lola's house. The first pic is of his current house. I don't think it looks too bad, and is more-or-less average for the houses in our purok, but I have been assured that the roof leaks, and it has only a dirt floor, which is less than ideal. The second pic is of the outdoor CR. I HATE outdoor bathrooms, (can you imagine trudging out to that thing on a rainy night?), but once again for our purok it is more-or-less standard. There are much, much worse CRs around here. Heck, the CR outside of Lola's old house was so miserable that when visiting I would become constipated rather than force myself to use it! The third pic is of the back of the house, where the mighty Sir Anthony sits scowling at me, wondering just what the heck I am doing wandering around in his backyard! (Sir Anthony is our cousin's oldest kid.) The last two pics show the beginning of the construction of the new house. Unfortunately this new house was built right on top of their garden! They had a really, really nice garden, full of flowers and yummy stuff to eat. If it were my decision, I would have been tempted to stay in the old house and save the garden. Once this new house is complete, this will be the second house we built on land we do not own. Supposedly our cousin's papa had a similar "tenancy agreement" that our Lolo did, so we should have some protection against simply being told to vacate someday. Who knows? I hope we aren't throwing good money after bad. Speaking of throwing money away, yesterday we drove to Ozamiz to get our tourist visas extended. We have to do this because my wife never got her Philippines dual citizenship resolved, despite my insistence upon arriving here that it was her highest priority to do so. (So much for my authority within the family!) We had to pay about $820 USD to bump out our visas for another 6 months. Well, that's not quite correct. My visa and our two kids' visas were extended 6 months, but for some bizarre reason, my wife's visa could only be extended for 2 months. Maybe that will finally inspire her to stop putzing around and get her dual citizenship? Ha!