A German Expat in The Philippines - Ein deutscher Auswanderer auf den Philippinen
This might not be the typical expat blog, written by a German expat, living in the Philippines since 1999. It's different. In English and in German. Check it out! Enjoy reading!
Dies mag' nun wirklich nicht der typische Auswandererblog eines Deutschen auf den Philippinen sein. Er soll etwas anders sein. In Englisch und in Deutsch! Viel Spass beim Lesen!
You plan to move to the Philippines? Wollen Sie auf den Philippinen leben?
There are REALLY TONS of websites telling us how, why, maybe why not and when you'll be able to move to the Philippines. I only love to tell and explain some things "between the lines". Enjoy reading, be informed, have fun and be entertained too!
Ja, es gibt tonnenweise Webseiten, die Ihnen sagen wie, warum, vielleicht warum nicht und wann Sie am besten auf die Philippinen auswandern könnten. Ich möchte Ihnen in Zukunft "zwischen den Zeilen" einige zusätzlichen Dinge berichten und erzählen. Viel Spass beim Lesen und Gute Unterhaltung!
Visitors of germanexpatinthephilippines/Besucher dieser Webseite.Ich liebe meine Flaggensammlung!
Regine Velasquez opens up about the changes in her voice and the challenges of staging major concerts as she prepares for "FINALE," her final major solo concert series.
For Regine Velasquez-Alcasid, “FINALE” does not mean she is saying goodbye to music.
It does, however, mark the end of an era.
After four decades in the OPM industry, Asia’s Songbird is ready to scale back on the kind of massive concert productions that have long been part of her career.
But is it really a finale for her?
“Yes and no. For major concerts yes, but I'm not going to stop performing altogether. I will still perform siguro sa mga smaller, intimate venues,” she said.
The decision comes as Velasquez acknowledges that staging huge concerts has become more demanding, especially with the preparation and physical pressure that come with each production.
“More than anything, I can't handle na talaga yung pressure na mag-stage ng huge concerts because of everything that comes with it, you know, what it entails. Mahaba ang preparation kasi kailangan bongga diba, it will eat up too much of my time, my schedule, and it's hard because I'm also a mom and wife.”
Age has also changed the way she approaches performing.
“I am not the same singer that I used to be like 10, 20 years ago. Kasi may mga pagbabago as you age talaga. But don't get me wrong. I could still sing. It's just that, it's not like before anymore.”
Her decision comes after years of demanding performances, including periods when health problems forced her to slow down.
In 2012, she lost her voice during her “Silver” 25th anniversary concert at the Mall of Asia Arena after coming down with a viral infection, forcing her to cut the show short.
The following year, she took a one-month break from television and live performances to address acid reflux, which she believed had also contributed to the problems with her voice. Doctors advised vocal rest and discussed treatment options with her.
She has continued performing through the years, but the demands of mounting major concerts have changed.
Still, the decision to stage one more major concert proved that the audience remains eager to see her on a big stage.
“Yeah, I was mildly surprised kasi ang bilis, I mean, alam ko naman bebenta pero hindi ganoon kabilis na in a matter of minutes, sold out na.”
The sold-out shows will also give Velasquez a chance to thank the audience that has followed her career.
“This concert is not a farewell, it's a thank you concert. It's for all those that supported and loved me through the years, I just want to show my appreciation by giving them a huge concert.”
Fans can also expect plenty of singing, but not necessarily the elaborate stunts she used to do.
“Naku, hindi ko na kaya,” she said laughing. “I've done that already and you know, I can't do na mga buwis-buhay na pasabog. But expect a whole lot of singing talaga.”
“Iba-iba ang setlist ko gabi-gabi,” she added.
Velasquez will stage “FINALE,” her final major solo concert series, on Oct. 17, 18, and 19, 2026, at 8 p.m. at the SM Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay City.
Viele Menschen möchten glauben, dass dieser Weg ausschließlich von Wonne, Freude und Glück geprägt ist und dass andere Wege, die Herausforderungen, Zweifel und Demut mit sich bringen, automatisch falsch sind.
Diese Illusion ist sehr heimtückisch, da unser Ego sich darin am wohlsten fühlt. Schlussendlich werden wir auf diesen „Friede-Freude-Eierkuchen-Wegen“ nicht unser ersehntes Glück und den universellen Frieden finden.
Doch trotzdem gehören auch diese „Umwege“ zu dem Pfad der Rückkehr. Erst wenn wir bereit sind, den wahren Weg zum ewigen Frieden zu gehen und nicht mehr durch unser Ego getäuscht werden können, werden wir uns von dem schwermütigen Bild des Leides lösen können und ewigen Frieden erleben.
***
Many people want to believe that this path is characterized solely by bliss, joy, and happiness, and that other paths—which entail challenges, doubt, and humility—are automatically wrong.
This illusion is highly insidious, as it is where our ego feels most at ease. Ultimately, however, we will not find the happiness we long for or universal peace on these paths of "peace, joy, and sunshine."
Yet even these "detours" are part of the path of return. Only when we are ready to walk the true path to eternal peace—and can no longer be deceived by our ego—will we be able to break free from the somber image of suffering and experience eternal peace.
Philippine stocks bounced back on Friday as bargain hunters returned after five straight sessions of losses, while strong foreign buying provided additional support.
The benchmark Philippine Stock Exchange Index (PSEi) climbed 1.67 percent, or 95.95 points, to close at 5,825.97.
Luis Limlingan, head of sales at Regina Capital Development Corp., said market sentiment improved following expectations that local gas prices could decline next week, easing some cost pressures.
“Sentiment was further supported by reports that US and Iranian negotiators are exploring a phased deal that could see Tehran reopen the Strait of Hormuz and Washington lift its blockade of Iranian ports,” Limlingan said.
Foreign investors were net buyers, posting net inflows of P2.85 billion.
This helped lift the market despite lingering concerns over the country’s macroeconomic environment.
Trading activity, however, remained tepid. Net value turnover stood at P5.21 billion as many investors stayed on the sidelines due to persistent downside risks, according to Philstocks Financial Inc.
All sectoral indices finished in positive territory. Services led the advance after rising 3.22 percent.
International Container Terminal Services Inc. was the strongest performer among PSEi members. Shares of the port operator climbed 3.95 percent to P920 each.
Semirara Mining and Power Corp., meanwhile, was the main index laggard. Its shares fell 4.5 percent to P15.28.
Alex Eala | Photo by Matthew Stock-man/Getty Images via AFP
In 2026, we’re reaching a point where Pinoy Pride no longer feels forced onto anyone with a drop of Filipino blood. Alex Eala’s been making tennis history, Olivia Rodrigo’s cemented her pop princess status, while Sophia Laforteza of Katseye and the members of Bini have been soaring to new career heights after their Coachella sets—and yes, ube’s the new matcha.
For a nation whose global news headlines usually revolve around natural disasters and political corruption, these wins are quite the comforting distraction. They also beg the question: Is the Philippines finally developing its own soft power?
Sophia Laforteza | Photo from sophia_laforteza/InstagramBini at Coachella | Photo from @bini_ph/Instagram
Soft power equals cool
Soft power is a term that refers to a country’s ability to influence and persuade people without the use of military or other coercive means. For countries like ours that don’t necessarily have or need strong militant forces, we can consider soft power as a culture of coolness.
Soft power brings in new tourists, TikTok vlogs that romanticize what you may consider mundane about your country, and the priceless recognition of your nation and culture as something “cool.”
All thanks to soft power, Japan exceptionally rebuilt its image after World War II, and South Korea became a global force to be reckoned with through the Hallyu wave after experiencing financial crises. Everyone being in a “very Chinese time of their lives” is another form of soft power—albeit a bit more unserious.
Soft power is more than capable of becoming a launchpad for countries that would otherwise be overlooked or overshadowed. For a country as multicultural as the Philippines, the development of tangible soft power could spell wonders for our already exceptional creative industries—as well as a solidified identity that no longer gets conflated with Latin American or Pacific Islander cultures.
Olivia Rodrigo (AP Photo_Chris Pizzello)
Everybody gets more Filipino now
There’s an apartment in Monaco that’s probably blasting Rodrigo’s newest album as we speak. That flat is probably owned by Anya Granados, the only Filipina journalist who’s accredited to cover Formula 1, Formula 2, and Formula E.
Like the newly crowned pop princess, Granados is also a mixed Filipina working to put the Philippines on the map in industries that have traditionally leaned Western. From mainstream pop music to motorsport, it’s initially been rare to see Asian voices at the forefront, but recent years are turning the tide there.
“Olivia has reached a point where her Filipino identity doesn’t have to be introduced to a Western audience as a novelty or an educational footnote,” Granados shares. “It simply exists within the global cultural picture she occupies. She is Filipina American, but she is also one of the biggest young artists in the world.”
“When she brings Filipino elements into that world, millions of people encounter them without being told, ‘here is a Filipino person you should know.’ They are simply encountering her,” she adds.
The world has been consuming Filipino culture for years
This distinction is of particular importance: for Granados, the world has been consuming Filipino culture for years. It just wasn’t paying attention to what was Filipino. In the early 2000s, we already had stars like Enrique Iglesias, Shay Mitchell, Nicole Scherzinger, and Vanessa Hudgens who had Filipino heritage, one way or another.
“There was a real pressure to assimilate, sometimes even to distance yourself from being Filipino,” as per Granados.
That pressure is a natural side effect of centuries’ worth of colonial mentality, despite an overwhelming Filipino presence scattered across the globe through our diaspora, and the “unusual amount of raw material” we have in music, fashion, beauty, food, film, literature, design, and sport. Raw materials like capiz shells and ylang-ylang, for example, are often associated with luxury and opulence first (see Ibiza-style dresses and Chanel No. 5), and their Filipino-ness second.
Anchored in their Filipina identity
What makes Rodrigo and Eala’s ascents to superstardom extra admirable is the visceral shift from that urge to distance oneself. Rodrigo and Eala are consistently anchoring their Filipina identity when they’re making their press rounds.
(Unless one lives under a rock, they’re bound to know about the aforementioned stars’ Filipino roots because they make where they hail from crystal clear.)
By doing so, they and their successes become instrumental in developing a more positive and nuanced view of Filipino people, which is important when the Western world still tends to associate Filipinos with the stereotypical roles of caregivers, nurses, and service workers.
Crab islands
What do Liza Soberano and Eala have in common, aside from being Filipinas making waves across the globe? They both prove how the Philippines is a country that loves to celebrate winners but cannot get itself to celebrate the process that makes them winners.
“Once there is a medal, a championship, a ranking, a record, suddenly everyone wants to claim them. But the years of development that came before the victory: the money, coaching, travel, sacrifices, and uncertainty, are much less glamorous and therefore much harder to get people excited about,” shares Granados.
Sports like tennis, gymnastics, and weightlifting only started to become palatable to a Filipino audience when Eala, Carlos Yulo, and Hidilyn Diaz started winning internationally. Prior to that (and honestly, even after that), we as a society only cared about basketball.
Similarly, before “Forgotten Island” became the highest-rated DreamWorks film at debut, people were too busy calling Liza Soberano an ungrateful woman for burning bridges in the Philippines.
These are just a few examples of the crab mentality that pervades the Filipino people. Generations raised on “hiya” and “utang na loob” make up a volatile Molotov cocktail that teaches us to look down on people trying to make a better life for themselves.
That’s why it’s easy to call people social climbers, ingrates, and other insulting terms: Filipino crab mentality tells us that if we can’t have something, other people can’t and shouldn’t either.
Filipinos will only continue to make waves across different industries globally from here on out. For Granados, she fears that as we develop stronger cultural exports, the culture takes off before the people do.
“Something so specifically Filipino has traveled far enough to become commercially desirable in a place where Filipinos themselves are barely present,” she says as she recounts that irony.
While a development of soft power is mostly ideal and desirable, we have to exercise caution because we might end up exporting our problems alongside our culture.
A timeless example of this would be the distinctly Filipino value of resilience. Yes, there’s something beautiful about it, but there’s also something disconcerting about the concept of celebrating an ability to survive unsurvivable conditions.
Celebrating global success versus seeking validation from the West
Granados also thinks that we ought to strike a balance between celebrating global Filipino success and treating Western recognition as a final stamp of legitimacy on our culture.
“I hope we learn to support every kind of Filipino—not just the well-spoken, half-white person who wins a beauty pageant crown, the middle- and upper-class athlete who makes it into an elite sporting system, or the actor whose Filipino heritage we discover only after they’ve become famous abroad,” she says.
“Because if we only support something once it is aspirational, we never give ordinary people the opportunity to become extraordinary,” she adds.
That said, the true power lies in learning how to celebrate and build bridges for the wins of our people while simultaneously unlearning the urge to tear people down for exercising some form of upward mobility.
“I’d rather the Filipino value we export be: your success doesn’t diminish mine, and my success doesn’t have to come at your expense,” she ends.
Sharing valuable information and public service from the No. 1 regional newspaper in Western Visayas. https://lnk.bio/panaynews
By Klaus Döring
Our globe and its population bear innumerable strange facts. Following many people's opinion, this world shows mostly worried characteristics and symptoms nowadays. No wonder. Just try to consume and digest today's headlines and news from all around the globe.
To "make a difference" means to have a significant or important effect on a person, a situation, or the world, usually by improving it or causing a positive change.
It is a world with quickly bridged distances - our Mother earth is becoming smaller and smaller. Any tourist, even with little time and with only a small budget, can travel to other faraway cultures. But joining them as well as different races and religious communities requires first of all, great care, tact, instinctive feelings, empathy, and logical ideas.
The stranger whom we meet for the first time during a business meeting, for example, maybe an uncommon, odd and extraordinary guy. He may be someone from a foreign country, who speaks another language and whose skin is of another color. He may be a migrant, a restless hiker or the expatriate in our neighbourhood.
The foreigner beside you and me can become a provocation or a challenge. Strangeness can become exoticism. Maybe that's why my family and I decided to move to the Philippines. On the other hand - going abroad can open other and even better horizons. We must not feel as "a stranger in paradise". By the way, I never did since I have been touring around the globe many times.
However, a migrant bears a juxtaposition of optimism (even calculated optimism!), confused feelings, nostalgia, and homesickness. Yes guys, during the first two years of my expat's life in the Philippines, the round trip ticket was always in my mind, because no one among us can escape his native roots.
But, I am really a lucky guy. I experienced an amazing tolerance in the Philippines. A real practicing tolerance. Already, during my first business meetings, I met supportive, forbearing and broad minded people. A wonderful mix of different cultures without giving up their own identity... .
Every new challenge in a strange country means a change. Changes in life are necessary and important. Let's alter or make a difference; let's put one thing for another; let's shift; let's quit one state for another; let's take fresh clothing. Let's burn the "lock fat" away. And remember: nothing comes from anything.
The Daily Guardian is a renascent Iloilo-based publishing firm and media outfit with bureaus across Western Visayas and beyond. Led by Iloilo's most respected journalists, we pledge to tell the Ilonggo story as seen through the various lenses of society so that every side may be told.
A better calling in your life starts by shifting your focus from finding a specific job title to living out a purpose rooted in everyday obedience, love, and alignment with God.
What is a calling? Your life’s calling is what makes you feel that life is meaningful. It helps you live a purposeful life. Callings look different for everybody. Some people, for example, want to help others as part of their calling.
Have you ever felt a sense of purpose or direction in your life that you couldn’t quite explain? Some people refer to this feeling as a “calling.” It’s a sense that there is something you were meant to do or become, a mission or a destiny that is unique to you.
A career is a rapid motion. A course of action. Sure! Professional conduct in life. Even progress through life. Here we are! That means a careerist is one who rushes wildly and makes his (or her) own personal advancement his (or her) aim in life!
What can we do if “career doubts” won’t go away? First, allow me to quote my Bible, especially Jude (Watch out! Sounding an alarm!), who writes in the style of a teacher who is watching a freight train bear down on his student driver. Yes, bells ring out: “Be merciful to those who doubt” (Jude 1:22).
What does my calling in life mean? Your calling can be thought of as the urge to share your gifts with the world. When you express your gifts for the sake of others, you often experience the joy of being fully alive.
A true calling is a career or walk of life that a person feels compelled or meant to pursue. Finding meaning in life is something people often spend a lot of time contemplating. Or some individuals may feel the passion so strongly that they know quickly in their hearts what they were born to do.
“The way that people pick up careers is incredibly primitive,” said Nicholas Lore, founder of the Rockport Institute, a career coaching firm, and author of “The Pathfinder.” Strong tobacco, indeed. That’s why so many people are indeed dissatisfied with their jobs.
Believe me, I always thought about a true calling for myself. Sure, people whose careers aren’t the right fit often feel like impostors, as Professor Robert I. Sutton, an organizational psychologist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, said. Very, very well said, Sir.
Notice dreams and signs. Prioritize creative expression. Think about what you used to love. Notice what feels good. Turn down the distractions. Pay attention to what keeps coming back. Try new things regularly.
How about you, my dear reader of this column? Are you also placing too high a value on the external rewards of a job, like money, prestige and power? Of course, for many of us (most?), these things are indeed important. Hold on, please! The work you do, the skills your opportunity requires and the value of your work are really more vital to fulfillment. Paperwork or not… You think you’ve found a better career fit? Go ahead — but don’t expect that this is your life’s career!
I waited for my “better calling” (what a terrible term!), experiencing many even better and wonderful moments in life. I also experienced that several professional things I did in the past were not very compatible with me. But I stored many valuable experiences.
Today, I am what I am. And I am proud of it. Almost 73. A retiree with so many opportunities still in the Philippines.
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