About Philippine Pearl

My name is Colin Smith, I was born in England, spent 30 years in Perth, Western Australia and now live in the Philippines. 50 plus years of my life in a single sentence!

I have a new life in a new environment. I started again if you like. I have always liked change and new places and I know to make such a change would not suit many people. But even if you have no desire to “Start Again”, in fact I hope you are happy and contented in your current life, maybe you might be interested in my story of a new beginning.

This is a subject, judging from comments from friends and acquaintances, that interests many people

I didn’t have a terrible life in Perth and I am not running away from anything, but life sort of took me this way. I am surprised it did at times. Have you noticed there are pivotal moments in your life when one small decision leads you in a completely different and sometimes surprising direction to the one you expected? It certainly happened to me and I am thankful that it did. I guess parts of my story will emerge in my posts and if you are interested you can always ask direct questions.

With “Philippine Pearl” I want to make comment on my new World as I find it, day by day. I am trying not to judge or criticise when I find an aspect of local life different to the “Western Way”, just observe and report on it. If you move to a new country then you must respectfully accept that is the way things are done whether it is good or bad from your perspective. To do otherwise will certainly result in your constant frustration and rob you of the very happiness you came to enjoy! That can be a difficult lesson to learn.

On a micro level you can and often should change some things within your own family and local environment to everyone’s benefit. This of course must be done with great sensitivity and an automatic self check of whether it is an important matter that should be changed if possible or a detail that is best left alone.

In these posts I want to explore such things and invite comment on them. Hopefully stereotypes and undiluted Western attitudes can be avoided by all who participate. We should all be aware that our opinions and attitudes are forged by the conditions around us, past and present. Valid values held in one set of circumstances are not necessarily valid in another situation. They may require a change to cope with the current situation.

There are other Forums available which dissect Philippine life and give answers to many of the “How”, “Where” and “How Much” sort of questions people have. I have read and contributed to such forums in the past and have found out much valuable information. After a while though I found them to be repetitive with a tendency to be dominated by self opinionated contributors. This is probably inevitable given their format. I wish to explore and observe things about living in the Philippines as they seem to me. Everyone’s story is unique and I totally accept other people have their own which may be completely different to mine

As with all such enterprises I can’t deny self gratification to be the base motivation for this Blog but if I can convey anything of what it is really like to live here and possibly give some pleasure to readers, then it will be very gratifying…

Thank you for reading this far and hope you will take the time to comment or just say Hello.

Sincerely,

Colin Smith 

Email  magicmagicol@gmail.com