“Sa wakas! Heto na ang aking passport.” (“Finally, I got my passport!”)
With a sigh of relief, I blurted out that exclamation as I was given this document in September 2013, so I could go on my first out-of-the-country trip to Thailand. The application process was a journey in itself. First, I had to correct certain mistakes in my birth certificate so I could be cleared by the police. They, then, released a certificate, a minor requirement by the investigation bureau, which released an official document that verified my birth and law-abidingness. Once I got it, the bureaucracy in the consular affairs bureau meant weeks of waiting for my passport. All of these took place in a span of four months, navigating through painstaking bureaucracy and spending countless hours of traveling back and forth in four cities under the blazing Philippine sun and sporadic thunderstorms.
Fast forward to 2019, when I returned to Beijing from Strasbourg after attending the World Forum for Democracy. It’s just amazing to know how far I have gone since that first trip outside of my home country. I already have a second passport. The first one, with several visas, is now punched. Together, the stamps and visas on these documents teem with memories of my journeys in this decade, with the exception of 2010 to 2012. Those three preceding years were the formative period of my journalistic career, a figurative passport to my exciting pursuits.
In this decade-ender piece, I look back at the journeys that defined my years gone by. I retrieved some old photos and traced them to passport stamps, journal and blog entries, and mental notes, much to my delight because of the nostalgia, recollection, and melancholy all of them bring.
2010
A bright-eyed and bushy-tailed lad fresh from university, I volunteered for the national election coverage of the local radio network where I previously interned. Eventually, they hired me to work as a segment producer of an investigative public service program, which allowed me to write stories about so many disadvantaged people. I grew out of this work as I slowly transitioned to TV production work.
In April 2010, I launched my now-defunct Blogspot site as a continuation of my Multiply website. I am pleasantly surprised the Blogspot site is still online up to now!
2011
A weekend news program was looking for a background graphics operator in early 2011. Though sounding very complicated, this was a menial yet important TV production job: I had to ensure the looped graphics played on-air and rewind them during commercials. News elements such as scripts to videos to graphics were so serendipitously available and accessible that I slowly learned the language of TV news production.
2012
The world was supposed to end in 2012, but the year marked my first-ever flight when I went to the islands of Bohol and Cebu for a short holiday. This was part of my 12 for 2012 photo album campaign on Facebook, where I recorded everything (special) I did on the twelfth day of each month. From snapping a selfie with a tarsier in Bohol to meeting Maria Ressa to seeing a hot-air balloon show in Pampanga to getting dental braces to a-bookstore-and-a-Silver Linings Playbook-movie date, the twelve events (in an album of over 50 photos) were my exciting preparation to go to the ends of the earth!
2013
After my first-ever flight in 2012, I ventured further out of the Philippines to Thailand in 2013. I survived the hassles of obtaining a passport, as well as the non-stop breaking news coverage in the last half of the year when tons of events happened in the Philippines. The worst was the ravaging of Super Typhoon Haiyan in the already earthquake-stricken central Philippines in early November. I remember working almost 18 hours straight for the disaster coverage of GMA News, from a morning program down to a late-night newscast because many producers could not come to work. Never did I think I had much energy to work straight, but I loved every single moment of that coverage.
Two weeks after, I and several colleagues flew to Bangkok — a journey we thought would not happen because of the typhoon. There in Thailand, we had a temple run–a wordplay on the mobile app–where we visited almost every temple ruins in central Bangkok on foot. Mass protests against the previous Thai prime minister flared up just as I was on my way out of the capital.
2014
Many career movements happened in 2014: I executive-produced a primetime news bulletin, I embarked on my master’s degree, and I resigned from my work in the TV network and moved to a brewery company. Everything was so sudden and the choices I made during this point still reverberate up to now. In that executive producer job, I had a tough editor that taught me some of the best journalistic lessons I had in my career. In my master’s, I endeavored to major in applied media studies, which gave me deeper insights into the deterministic tendencies of media and technology. In my move to the brewery company, I learned events management and people relations even if I stayed there only for 6 months.
2015
The first test of my passport came into play in 2015, when I moved to Beijing for a news editor role at CCTV. Just two years before, I was exhilarated to get this official document so I could fly to Bangkok–and nothing more. I did not even think of moving abroad after that trip. But a lot of things changed when I accepted the work invitation to Beijing in June 2015, the time when I began my work at a public relations firm. In the midst of uncertainty and anticipation, I focused my laser-straight sight on co-managing a massive educational investment project of our biggest client. This project enabled me to stay in touch with children and teachers learning in dilapidated classrooms in the National Capital Region.
When the move finally happened, I adapted a “travel mindset.” I will go in-depth about this in a future article.
2016
In early 2016, a colleague invited me on a trip via the Trans-Siberian Railway. Bought by the idea of traveling via a train, I accepted the invitation despite not knowing what would happen next: I was entangled in a series of misfortunes resulting from the personal issues of other people. The worst was I considered them my first communities in Beijing. The train trip still happened, and never did I understand the importance of this journey until I was on the berth, meeting an old Scottish couple with whom I shared a love for history. What’s more, my trip coincided with the centennial anniversary of the Trans-Siberian Railway.
When I returned to Beijing after that marvelous trip, I moved to a new company as a deputy managing editor of an expat magazine brand.
2017
It was clear by this time that I had been bitten by the travel bug, but the fever it brought about was not just confined to the luxury of traveling. I set off on my second solo journey, but this time, in Europe, to see the places featured in an encyclopedia set that have awed me since childhood. In Spain, I endeavored to meet people who share the same surname because I have been told our clan had Spanish roots. Over in the Greek archipelago, I marveled at the sight of the Parthenon in Athens and, later on, sailed with the old Scottish couple to Corfu, on the Greek boundary with Albania. In the Italian peninsula, I hiked Mount Vesuvius and saw Pope Francis in Vatican City.
2018
A particularly rough year it was! I sunk into anxious feelings, perhaps what Beijing expats refer to as the “Beijing days.” Some friends told me they experienced similar feelings when everything gets depressive that you just want to get the hell out of Beijing. This was my case in mid-2018 when I came across people who struck my nerve and left me off track. In spite of them, I still saw a glimmer of light from unfortunate situations. For example, a botched and cursed trip led me to revisit the naivete and excitement I felt during my first-ever travel. As a result, I produced a three-part series on island-hopping in the central Philippines. Later in the year, as I began a self-induced social media exile, I produced a massive feature on the various entrepreneurs making the bustling market scene in Beijing more fun–I consider this one of my greatest achievements in my career in the expat magazine. I also met my furry companion, Fu, before the year ended.
2019
The last year of the decade (Yes, I’m Team Zero!) has been my year of self-rediscovery and bouncing back from adversity. I left my work in the magazine a couple of weeks after my grand Chinese New Year 2019 holiday. The expedition brought me back to Madrid, this time, feeling lost. Later, I traveled across Morocco, camped out on its eastern boundary with the Sahara Desert. I went back to the European mainland in Portugal where I set off on a 120-kilometer pilgrimage to the Catholic town of Fatima.
In the second half of 2019, I received good news from all around the world. I got accepted into four short development programs, but only went to three: LinkedIn Begin Your Career in June, Future Leaders Congress at the United Nations Headquarters in Bangkok in August, and the World Forum for Democracy in Strasbourg in November.
Traveling, local or abroad, definitely is a privilege. And not everyone has the means to do so, let alone so many people who cannot get a passport or be given a visa. So it’s not surprising that people who can travel make the most out of it. But I, myself, is quizzed why I view traveling differently from many other millennials.
Now, I wonder where my passports will bring me in the next decade.
I’m ready!
Cheers to a fantastic decade ahead!
Photo: Featured image by Porapak Apichodilok from Pexels; Andy Penafuerte III