Family news

Chano and Joy went to Manila for a delivery and to try to get a large check from a company who bought a large number of Christmas packaged brown rice gifts, and hasn't paid yet.

 Such things are one reason the Philippines has trouble attracting new businesses...along with all the red tape and lack of infrastructure...

I shouldn't complain too much: two guys cleaned out our open air ditches that serve as sewers yesterday, and the garbage is being collected. That is an improvement, since in the past the garbage was dumped across the street in the vacant lot and we had to gather our garbage in a trailer so we could dump it in the city dump a couple miles north of town.;