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!

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Showing posts with label Living in The Phiilippines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Living in The Phiilippines. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Department of Tourism Winter Escapade brings in more tourists

By Helen Flores (The Philippine Star) | 

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Tourism officials and participants in the Winter Escapade 5 from Canada and the US pose in front of Jose Rizal’s monument.
MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Tourism (DOT)’s annual Winter Escapade – one of the agency’s most successful promotional programs in collaboration with the Department of Foreign Affairs – has again brought hundreds of tourists, mostly balikbayans from the US and Canada, to the country this week.
Philippine Ambassador to Canada Petronila Garcia said this year a total of 250 tourists, including Canadians, have joined the 10-day tour with stops in the cities of Bacolod and Davao.
Now on its fifth year, Winter Escapade has brought in over a thousand tourists, resulting in increased tourism revenues and investments, Garcia said.
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DOT data show that the average expenditure of the Canadian tourists during their 10-day stay in the Philippines is Canadian $4,000 to $5,000 or a total of Canadian $1.046 million (P42.8 million).
“In terms of presenting a good image of the country, this (Winter Escapade) is very important,” Garcia told The STAR during the welcome lunch for participants held at the Ayuntamiento de Manila in Intramuros on Saturday.
“Sometimes we get bad reputation,” she said, referring to travel advisories issued by some countries against the Philippines due to peace and order.
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“If it’s a group (tour) organized by us, people are not afraid and word of mouth spreads that the Philippines is a good place to go,” she said.
Garcia noted that the person who brought Canada’s Tim Hortons in the Philippines was a participant of the Winter Escapade last year.
The envoy said aside from “good value,” Winter Escapade brings tourists to different places every year.
Garcia said more Filipino-Canadians would like to join the annual tour to escape the cold February winter of Canada but they have to limit the number of participants due to lack of hotel rooms in some areas in the country.
Carmen Barcena, head of the Ceremonial and Protocol Services at the Federal Government of Canada, is joining the tour with her 16-year-old son, Napoleon.
“I think it’s an interesting way to be introduced to the diversity of the Philippines, the culture, the people, the food… This way you’ll have full access to places you never knew existed,” she said.
Napoleon said he intends to post all his pictures on Instagram and Facebook so his friends and classmates in Canada would be enticed to visit the Philippines.
Forty-year-old Jeremie dela Paz, who was born and raised in Montreal, said the Winter Escapade is a good opportunity to allow foreigners “to enjoy the opulence of the country.”
“Often people are focused on the poverty of the Philippines. But the Philippines is multifaceted. We’re not just a poor country. We have a lot to offer, we have a lot of ingenuity here, we have a lot of beauty, world-class amenities and activities,” he said.
Dela Paz said aside from his family, he also brought his Canadian partner, who is from Quebec, to personally experience the rich Filipino culture.
“Even if we’re not born in the Philippines, no matter what we do we’re always Filipino,” he said.

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Europe and Donald Trump

Europe and Donald Trump

IN MY OPINION
It seems that  Donald Trump’s foreign policy for European politicians is just “a scary mess”. This speech, meant to assuage America’s allies worried about a possible Trump presidency, backfired badly. It left European observers stunned, nauseous and alarmed.
In an apparent effort to tone down his inflammatory rhetoric and appear presidential, Donald Trump refrained from repeating the controversial proposal that had originally catapulted him in the media spotlight and made him a darling of right-wing zealots in the US and abroad. His promise to build a wall along the border with Mexico did not feature at all in what was billed as the Republican front-runner’s major foreign policy address. In fact, Trump did not even mention Mexico or Mexican immigrants, which he had insulted incessantly during his presidential campaign once in his 3,496-word speech.
Instead Donald Trump, reading from a teleprompter – presumably intended to prevent him from veering off-script on a topic he has shown to have little knowledge about – tried to lay out a coherent foreign policy. It did not work!
Donald Trump did speak in full sentences, did not insult anyone and did not brag about his personal success and wealth. But that alone does not make a coherent foreign policy platform.
That is because the content of his speech did little to assuage worries about a Trump presidency. Essentially, his foreign policy speech was a repetition of his populist mantra “Make America great again/America First” coupled with a laundry list of contradictions and vague promises like these: Trump told Washington’s partners that “America is going to be a reliable friend and ally again” only to threaten to leave them high and dry should they not cough up more money for their own security in NATO and generally follow America’s lead.
Trump wants to reconfigure NATO and force allies to pay more. Trump repeated his statement that he would get rid of the “Islamic State” terror group very quickly, preferably with the help of Middle Eastern countries, but again failed to give any specifics. Trump threatened again to launch trade wars to create new or renegotiate existing trade agreements that are favorable to the United States, again without offering any details how and why US’ trading partners might be willing to agree to such deals.
European observers (and count me in as German national!) were shocked by what they heard from Trump on foreign policy. “I came away, I must confess, with a vague sense of nausea,” said Federiga Bindi, who holds the Jean Monnet Chair in European Political Integration at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. “Trump is the ultimate populist, he managed to mix elements of America-ueber-alles, ultra-pacifism, acerbated militarism and gawkiness.”
“I am European, and I heard the American version of Le Pen, Orban and other European populists who want to make us believe that working together through pooling sovereignty is the source of all evil,” said Josef Janning, head of the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“As a student of US diplomatic history, it is profoundly troubling and disturbing to hear someone who is very likely to become the Republican party’s flag bearer in the elections refer often and forcefully to America First, which by all accounts represents one of the darkest moments in American populism as it applies to international affairs,” said Vincent Michelot, a political science professor at Sciences Po University in Lyon.
Trouble for Europe? A big Yes! If Trump’s speech was envisaged as an effort to rebuild bridges with the Republican Party’s foreign policy establishment which had blasted the candidate in an open letter last month, that also did not work, said Matthew Kroenig, a national security scholar at Georgetown University and a foreign policy advisor for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.”If this was meant to be a serious foreign policy speech, it did not deliver,” said Kroenig. “If anything, this speech should make us more, not less, concerned about what a President Trump’s foreign policy would look like.”
For Europe specifically, noted Janning, the unilateralism and America first rhetoric espoused by Trump could mean “a lot of trouble for Europe as it may prompt US interventions in the Islamic world which will fail or have serious after effects.” Janning’s French colleague Michelot was “alarmed and disheartened” by what he heard from the Republican front-runner. But for Michelot at least, Trump’s remarks served an – unintended – positive purpose:
“The speech also represents a confirmation that barring some catastrophic event in the summer or early fall, the next president of the United States will be a woman.”
Asia and Donald Trump? Another story – or the same?
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Email: doringklaus@gmail.com or visit www.germanexpatinthephilippines.blogspot.com or follow me in Facebook or Twitter.

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Henry Sy Still Philippines' Richest

 (The Philippine Star) 

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Mall and real estate magnate Henry Sy Sr., with a net worth of $12.9 billion, ranked 71st on the list while another taipan, 88-year-old John Gokongwei, was second richest in the Philippines, ranking 270th with a net worth of $5 billion. Philstar.com/File
MANILA, Philippines – Mall and real estate magnate Henry Sy Sr. is still the country’s richest man, leading 11 other Filipinos who made it to Forbes magazine’s 2016 annual billionaires list.
The list covered 1,810 billionaires around the world, down from a record 1,826 the previous year.
The 91-year-old Sy, with a net worth of $12.9 billion, ranked 71st on the list while another taipan, 88-year-old John Gokongwei, was second richest in the Philippines, ranking 270th with a net worth of $5 billion.
Airline and tobacco magnate Lucio Tan, 81, has a net worth of $4 billion. He came in third among the 11 Filipino billionaires and No. 380 on the annual Forbes list.
George Ty, 83, ranked 4th among Filipino billionaires and 421st on the list.
Three Filipinos, meanwhile, were tied at 569th place: 94-year-old construction mogul David Consunji, 63-year-old mall and property magnate Andrew Tan and 63-year-old fast food giant Jollibee Foods Corp. founder Tony Tan Caktiong, all with a net worth of $3 billion.
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Other Filipinos on the list are ports tycoon Enrique Razon Jr., 55, with a net worth of $2.4 billion and 722nd on the global list; retailer Lucio Co, 61, with a net worth of $1. 6 billion; and Robert Coyiuto Jr., 63, with a net worth of $1.6 billion. Co and Coyiuto share the 1,121st slot.
Mass housing tycoon and former senator Manuel Villar, 66, landed in the 1,367th spot, with a net worth of $1.3 billion.
The Filipino billionaires have a combined fortune of $42.75 billion or P2,021.65 trillion.
Worldwide, Microsoft-founder Bill Gates has remained the world’s richest person on Forbes 30th annual ranking of the world’s billionaires.
His net worth of $75 billion was lower than the $79.2 billion in 2015. He has consistently topped the list for 17 of the last 22 years.
Zara global fashion brand owner Amancio Ortega, meanwhile, emerged as the second richest person on the planet, moving up two notches as his net worth increased $2.5 billion for a total of $67 billion.