TALK OF MINDANAO: April 2009

Newsletter from “The Friends of Mindanao”

In this F.O.M. News

May we wish everyone a memorable Easter? What ever you are doing over the Easter Week, we sincerely desire that you have a pleasant time with your loved ones.

In case you did not know the banks will be closed on Thursday April 9th. It will pay to get to the bank early in the week, as Wednesday is chaotic in the banks with so many people doing their transactions.

> Meeting on April 15th

> The Great Debate

> Conveners Required

> Appreciation

> Farewell

Connecting like minded people in Mindanao

The Friends of Mindanao

Next Meeting

Our next meeting is on April 15th. Please write this date in your diary. We have a speaker planned for your enjoyment

The Great Debate

The concept of the Great Debate is to have some fun and rhetoric over a humorous subject. John G is the convener. I am sure John will have a fine topic

There are three members on each Team. We need a chairman, a time keeper, along with an adjudicator. So we need 9 people to volunteer. The leader gets 5 minutes to lay his teams position. The following two speakers get 4 minutes each. Summing up by each Team leader is 3 minutes.

Please put your name forward so that we can have a nice debate. If the concept works well it is envisaged that in the future this could be come and annual event were the FOM is challenged by a local group.

Conveners Required

We have a few projects that we are looking for conveners to organize. The group would greatly appreciate you nominating yourself. We are trying to get variation in the groups activities. To do this we need people to support the programs and contribute. With out your involvement, then we won’t achieve the objectives.

We are looking for conveners for
* Guess who’s coming to dinner
* Progressive dinner
* The Pudding club
* Christmas charity activity
* Organizing the regular raffle

Please advise Ian what project you wish to involve yourself in.

Appreciation

Thanks to Curtis C for being our speaker last meeting. Big thanks to Reg who was the chairman at the April 1st meeting. We appreciate your support for the group.

Farewell

Dennis M has headed back to Australia for a period. We wish Dennis and Lucy fun times exploring parts of Australia. Paul F is in New Zealand. Chris K remains in South Africa.

Dengue Fever

The death toll from dengue fever in the Philippines has reached 724 since the start of the year, the Department of Health said Thursday.

The deaths, recorded from January 1 to October 30, were up nearly 50 per cent from 485 fatalities in the same period last year.

The health department also recorded a total of 119,789 cases of dengue infections, an increase of more than 140 per cent from 49,319 a year ago.

Dr Lyndon Leesuy, manager of the department's National Dengue Control Program, urged local officials to step up efforts to inform residents in their communities about how to avoid getting dengue.

'We cannot go to your houses to eliminate the breeding sites of mosquitoes or to cover your water containers where mosquitoes can breed,' he said. 'We need the support of those in communities.'

Dengue is an infectious tropical fever causing acute pain in the joints. Symptoms include loss of appetite, general weakness, nausea and vomiting.

Mindanao Island

Mindanao is the second largest and easternmost island in the Philippines. It is also the name of one of the three island groups in the country, which consists of the island of Mindanao and smaller surrounding islands. The other two are Luzon and the Visayas. The island of Mindanao is called The Land of Promise. Mindanao is the only area of the Philippines with a significant Muslim presence. A guerrilla war is ongoing on the islands. In addition the crime rate on the island is the highest in the country overall. Mindanao is named after the Maguindanaons who constituted the largest Sultanate historically, and evidence from maps made during the 17th and 18th centuries suggests that the name was used to refer to the island by natives at the time. Evidence of human occupation dates back tens of thousands of years. In prehistoric times the Negrito people arrived. Sometime around 1500 BC Austronesian peoples spread throughout the Philippines and far beyond. Islam first spread to the region..

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13 A Visa

Your first year of 13a visa is probationary. You can apply to have your probationary condition removed after you have successfully completed your first year of stay in the Philippines and still together with your spouse. Once the probationary condition has been removed, you become a permanent resident of the Philippines. A divorce or annulment after the probationary condition has been removed does not relieve you of your permanent resident status. If you never applied to have your probationary condition removed and got a divorced, then your 13a visa is invalidated or will naturally expire in one year of obtaining your 13a visa. This is similar to what they have in the U.S.A. when one sponsors his/her spouse, the green card is probationary for 2 years, and the green card holder will have to apply to have the probationary condition removed after two years.

TALK OF MINDANAO

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APRIL 15TH

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