Raffin

A great relief. It's now just a regular noisy old motorbike!

A guy living in the Barangay at the side of our house over the subdivision wall finally got his motorcycle fixed. He bought an old secondhand motorcycle a few months ago. From the beginning starting the machine could take him up to 10 minutes. Once he managed to start it it gave out regular, loud, firecracker-like explosions, which continued to be heard as he drove away and when he returned. He doesn't have regular work and usually goes out on his bike several times a day.At weekends he would often come home at 3am, sometimes waking us up with the noise.

I'm giving myself a pat on the back for having patience as I came very close to going out on to our balcony and starting a "discussion" with him about his very noisy bike. But I told myself he probably has no money to fix it,it's a long way to any store from his place and he seems to be in some sort of in loco parentis situation there. Our subdivision dominates his small corrugated roofed house and those of his neighbours, offering just a few temporary building and maintenance jobs in return. And I am a foreigner living in a house which he and his many drinking mates could easily target. But later on I began to wonder if he had any intention to get it fixed. Would he be adding to the real firecrackers on New Year's Eve, I thought!

So eventually exercising patience paid off, but in another situation a few months ago it didn't when I complained to the water company about an unfinished job on the waterline outside our house. In that case "naming and shaming" had to be employed to get the long delayed repair completed.

So when to have patience and when not to and get involved?

It seems to me that patience should be the usual approach for us Expats Following the locals? They seem usually not to make much fuss or show impatience, except when driving sometimes perhaps? Although the results of the recent Presidential Election may indicate they are getting less patient here!

What do you think?

Philosophical 11

Raffin,

Nice post. To live in the Philippines you need limitless patience and a huge sense of humour. However, I would be tempted to have a small "operation" on his bike such as stuffing something down its exhaust pipe so it will never start.....or even setting fire to it.

Complaining is a waste of time and energy. You would get better results talking to a brick wall. Certainly beats banging your head against it.

Its much more fun in the Philippines.... so I am constantly reminded.

Keep your hair on....

Regards

Pete

Stokkevn

I am fairly patience but it does occasionally run out. We have a local lad I know with an exceedingly noisy exhaust, by design. Eventually I got fed up with the all times of the day/night of this bumble bee in a can going past the house. So I told him that I thought he was very brave in doing what girl motor bikers in Europe do and make his motorbike exhaust noisy. Within a week he had changed the exhaust for a much quieter one.

I agree with your naming and shaming policy. Our power supply used to be as stable as a bulldog on heat. Phone calls and e-mails made no difference or even got a reply. So a quick call and e-mail to the local radio station offering free engineering and management help to the power company with their minor problem from a fat, old Brit galvanised them into action installing several transformers in the village and rerunning a power line correctly sized for the power consumption.