Cebu City is no longer a good place to live.

Cebu City is no longer a good place to live. There are too many people. Congestion of both roads and the internet are getting worse. I don’t think those would be improved in a decade.

I’ve been to the mountain region to the north of Cebu City by motorcycle in May. I found that there are so many people living there. I suppose their population is increasing and they will come down to the city area of Cebu City. They use cellphones, motorcycles, cars and landlines. It surges through both roads and the internet. The consequence of population growth always exceeds improvement of the infrastructure in Cebu City.

I think the time will come to move to Davao sooner or later.
The Advantages to live in Davao is as follows.
(1) There're fewer vehicles on broader roads.
(2) Both LTE and landline internet connection are fast.
(3) Water from a tap is drinkable.
(4) Jeepneys don't smell so bad because of the emission tests of exhaust gas.
(5) Davao is safer than Cebu City.

Sexism in Japan June 24 2015

This blog post is a revision of “Sexism in Japan 23 Sep 2014”. I wrote the previous version as a material for an ESL lesson. However, I was not able to use it. ESL tutors I met liked Japan and Japanese. I hesitated to show them the negative side of Japan.

But one day, a Filipina friend mentioned that she read my blog. So I became eager to complete it.

I am a Japanese. I had ESL lessons from Filipina tutors in Cebu City. I talked about sexism in Japan in a lesson with a tutor. There was a discussion question “Are women and men are equal in Japan?” I answered “They are equal in Japan.” The answer came from my experience.

I myself have never seen sexism in Japan, but it is a reality that stiff sexism exists in my country. I realized it from a research by Akira Kawaguchi and Chizuko Ueno.

The research revealed that some (most?) Japanese companies benefit from sexism. The employment system discriminating against women allows the companies to employ women temporarily on low wages, even if the women have excellent skills. The discrimination against women is a rational attitude for companies which pursue profit.

However, this unfair employment system prevents the companies from employing productive women, because excellent women can leave a sexist workplace for a better one. And it makes the companies' productivity lower in the long term. That sort of unfair company will be defeated and will withdraw from the market, especially the global competitive market.

Some people claim that there is no sexism in Japan. I suppose they have never seen it.

I write about my experience relating to sexism here.

My mother died when I was 4 years old. I had been raised by my father. I have never seen sexism at home.

I had worked as an engineer for several companies. I saw a skilled female engineer was promoted, but I have never seen something that looks like the “Glass Ceiling”. 

The “Glass Ceiling” is a political term. It means an unfair system or set of attitudes that prevents some people (such as women or people of a certain race) from getting the most powerful jobs. 

For an engineer, skill is more important than gender. And I was so impatient that I quited my jobs too quickly to observe the “Glass Ceiling”. Of course, female and male engineers got the same wages for the same jobs in my observation.

I suppose that some people claiming that there is no sexism in Japan have experiences similar to mine.

Sexism has various aspects. The research sheds light on one of them. We Japanese need to overcome this issue.

参考文献

上野千鶴子 ネオリベと女性差別が少子化を生み出した 文藝春秋オピニオン 2013年の論点100

上野千鶴子 比較ジェンダー・レジーム論の構想 ジェンダー社会科学の可能性 第1巻

私は川口章さんの「ジェンダー経済格差」を読んでません。上野さんが言及してるのを読んだだけです。

Margin FX trading overview

Margin FX trading overview

FX is the abbreviation for Foreign currency Exchange. FX trading is similar to exchanging currency at money changers. However, an exchange fee from an FX company is so cheap that we can earn money through it.

Suppose the exchange rate is 45 pesos to the dollar and I deposit 5 million pesos in my account (Actually, I deposited Yen because I’m a Japanese), I can buy 100,000 dollars for 4,500,000 pesos. I can ignore the exchange fee because it is very small. If I sell 100,000 dollars when the exchange rate moves up to 46 pesos to the dollar, I can get 4,600,000 pesos. This means that I will earn 100,000 pesos.

Margin FX trading allows us to buy a greater amount of currency than what we have deposited.  If the FX company offers me a maximum leverage rate of 20 :1 and I deposit 5 million pesos when the exchange rate is 45 pesos to the dollar, I can buy 2,000,000 dollars. If I sell 2,000,000 dollars when the exchange rate moves up to 46 pesos to the dollar, I can earn 2,000,000 pesos, which is 20 times as much as leverage rate of 1:1.

If the currency rate moves to the opposite way of my forecast, I lose money.

The advantage of margin trading is that I can earn greater returns on my trades. However, I may incur greater losses as well.

self-introduction May 14 2015

I’m Koichi Ishida, but you can call me Tony. Tony is my English name.

My hobbies are watching movies and riding a motorcycle. To watch blu-ray 3D movies, I brought a Playstation 3 from Japan. And I bought a motorcycle in Talamban.

I have lived in Talamban, Cebu since April.

I’m an individual investor. I mainly invest my money in margin FX trading. FX trading is similar to exchanging currency at money changers, but an exchange fee at an FX company is so cheap that we can earn money from it.

Earning money from FX trading is quite difficult. Most FX traders are losing their money but, I’m making profit.

My strategy is that I don’t look at charts of currency rates so much. Instead, I read a lot of business news, grasp global economic trends and choose currencies to buy or sell. 

Reading news takes so much time that I can do nothing else. So I said to myself, “What if I hire a Filipino assistant? He will read the news and write reports about economic trends. I can save time.”

Then, I looked for someone who has economic knowledge. But I realized it’s so difficult to find such a person. My plan hit a wall.