That was a good read Fred :-) Evidently, like me, there are foreigners here who do their best to fix problems rather than just complain about them. That guy obviously had a great (and positive) affect upon that employee who will obviously behave differently, raise his own family differently and have a different work ethic to that which he would have done had he not met his employer. That has the prospect of proliferating through that mans family into the future. It is not going to change a nation, but if more people did this, it would eventually. The is proven by the obvious impact that the American presence here over the decades has had on the people of the Philippines. Obviously, as a Brit, I am not so happy that they brought American English here as my own beautiful language and accent is difficult for most to understand! I am not pointing the finger at any live Americans here but your forefathers did a lot of dumb things that served only to destroy standardization rather than promote it. When "our" forefathers savagely, brutally and greedily stole America (I am one of the Brits who deeply regrets the many actions that produced the British Empire) from the American Indians, they took with them the language, Imperial scales of weights and measures, proven construction methods and skills and much more. In just 200 years the American pointless stupidity has resulted the introduction of its own weights and measures, a severely limited vocabulary of misspelled words that are then mispronounced (my name is PeTer...not PeDer thank you!) and a plethora of homes constructed by people who clearly have never heard of the storey about the Three Little Pigs! My goodness, they even removed a zero from a billion!! Exactly how DUMB is THAT! Maybe that was done so billionaires can have boasting rights sooner than the British :-) Then, once they have done allllllllllll that damage, they then bring it here to the Philippines and teach it to people here. The icing on the cake that aggitates a true Brit is that they taught the language as "English!" Whaaaaat! A school girl in Iligan politely asked me "Sir! Where are you from?" I asked her "What language am I speaking?" to which she said in an obvious tone "English!". I said that was correct and then asked "So where do I come from?" To which she replied equally as obviously "America!". Arghhhhh!

Having said all the that, the good thing about the Americans arriving here before the British is that if it had been the other way around, all the men would have been killed, all the women raped then killed and all the land stolen and claimed as part of the British Empire! So it was definitely a better thing for the Filipinos!

I have been to a few of the States in America and I had a great time with great people. But as a nation that has actors in government and even had one as its President, even that great nation still needs to make smarter decisions. Get rid of your silly small gallon, your silly smaller AWG, stick another zero on your billion and hey! here;s a good plan...GO METRIC! It is a really new and modern system that bases weights and measures on a natural basis. Developed nations have kilograms (water based) and metres (light based) (and yes it IS spelled that way!).

Not only do the Filipinos use the insane American weights and measures but as they have no National Standards, when ever you ask for a specific size of something they ask "Actual or undersize" This would be hysterically funny if it was not for the inconvenience it causes when every two items you buy never fit together! And time......I defy anyone to find two clocks here that say the same time! They deliberately put clocks in "advance". some 5 mins, 10 mins, 15, 30 and hour.........when you make an appointment here for 2pm you must immediately ask "What time do you have now?"!!!! Then you have to adjust YOUR time for the other persons WRONG time as they would NEVER be able to understand how to arrive at your, CORRECT time! Bwahahahahaha!

Ever had a phone call from a Filipino? It goes like this....your phone rings so I answer "Hello, Peter Parker" and they say "Hello". Then silence. They NEVER say why they called! They wait for you to say "Hello?" AGAIN! To which they simply say "Hello" AGAIN back to you! Then they ask who I am after telling them at the start! I have learned to only say hello once and suffer the loooooong silence before their second hello. I then say "You called me ok. What do you want?" And THEN they tell me. It does not matter if its the bank, the supermarket, a worker, a friend....all the same. Nobody has taught anyone here anything, not even basic telephone skills so nobody knows the procedure. But this is only one element of the very poor communication skills here so it is going to take a long time to improve - but it surely will :-)

But here's the twist. The Filipino is typically a happy go lucky, quick to smile and quick to share individual who seems to have a smile in a heartbeat no matter what difficult circumstances surround them. They do not care about the time or no warranty on products they buy and nothing seems to be a problem to fix or overcome. The foreigner, on the other hand, is often frustrated, sometimes angry, displeased with the level of service or information and smiles far less. He is impatient and less understanding and generally a lot unhappier. The Foreigner complains back home and complains here in the Philippines yet the Filipino hardly ever complains..... So who has got it right? No matter what we foreigners say, it seems to be our wonderful Filipino hosts who have life worked out better than we do!