The Philippines Experiment, Track One

If you know who I am or have been reading this blog, you are probably aware that I spent two and half years of my life living in the Philippines. Now I'm back, and I'm going to attempt to chronicle the entire experience as best as my vague recollection allows.

The New Pornographers - Adventures In Solitude

It’s been more than two and a half years ago that I left Edmonton, but it seems just like yesterday.


Even after two and a half years, people still can’t comprehend why I left. I was asked so many times “why are you leaving?” that I actually concocted reasons just to amuse myself, ranging from “I’m going to run for congress, so that I can improve my home country” to “I stabbed someone, so I’m going to chill there until everything blows over”. My motivation for leaving evolved so many times that I don’t even remember what I decided what the official one is. From what I recollect, I switched back and forth with these rationales when I was asked the question “why the hell are you moving to the Philippines when everyone in the country is trying to get out?”:

i. I wanted to challenge myself so that the tribulation I’m inevitably going to experience will make me tougher. You know how kids today never develop any competitive fire because they’re undeservedly given a trophy or a ribbon for “participation”? I don’t want that to happen to me here in Edmonton. If I look back at my achievements, I want to say that I did the work.

ii. It’s not uncommon for people in my age group to move to places like Vancouver, Toronto, San Francisco, Australia, or somewhere in Europe. I’m assuming people leave because of the same reasons that I did: they want to have some sort of independence, and they want to capture some sense of adventure. An escapade to the Philippines made sense to me because I have family and friends there, I had a place to stay, I know the language, I know the area, and because of my dual citizenship, I can stay there without obtaining a resident or work visa.

iii. Thanks to my parents, I had no problem keeping in touch with my Filipinism even while I was in Canada. But I did miss out on the best days of a Filipino’s life: high school and college. It’s a particular time in their existence when pursuit of pleasure is the only concern. I’ve often fantasized about reliving that part of my life with my present-day mind. Since I saved up a bit of money coming in and because the Philippines is a hedonistic country (even if its citizens love to pretend that everyone is conservative), I can just wild out without a care like I’m in my more youthful days. In a way, this trip to the Philippines is my Delorean (or my Hot Tub Time Machine, if that reference is a bit too dated for you) to a time devoid of commitments. And let’s face it, I look young for my age, so I didn’t have to worry about, what Chris Rock described as, being the old guy in the club.

In hindsight, I think the real reason was that I just wanted an upper hand. I know it sounds ridiculous, which is probably why I was a little embarrassed to reveal it back then. A reasonable person can insist that any achievement I can accomplish in the Philippines, I can also do so in Canada. And he’d be right. But I'll counter nonetheless. In Canada, I was a normal guy living a normal life and I went to a normal school and received a normal degree. In the Philippines, I was the guy who grew up in Canada with a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from a prestigious Canadian university. Suddenly, there’s intrigue. Suddenly, I stand out (*). Finish lines may be similar, but in the Philippines, the race hasn’t even begun and I already have a head start. I admit that the attitude is a little defeatist; at the time, however, it made sense to me. So I tried to take advantage of it. It seems crazy, but this is how things evolve. Progressive ideas are introduced by weirdos and mocked by the world, and then everybody else adopts and refines those ideas ten years later. That was me being ambitious, anyway.

(*) I know it seems like I’m saying that education in the Philippines is not on a level with the education in Canada, but trust me, that’s not the case at all. The country has a number of scholarly and diligent people in every field of work. But if you’re from North America, you do stand out, even if I can’t properly give a specific reason why. Maybe it’s because they see moving from a first to a third world country is like a professional basketball player moving from the NBA to the Euro Leagues, or maybe it’s because the country’s idea of modernization is to replicate the Western world, or maybe it’s because what I was doing was so rare that the people’s curiosity were sparked. Whatever the reason is, when people in the Philippines find out that you’re from North America, they are instantly interested in you.

I don’t know if my hesitancy was discernible to my closest people because I tried my best to conceal it. Even as I was packing my suitcase, doubt clouded my mind. I was terrified. It’s not that I didn’t have confidence in my abilities, it’s that the horror stories that people tell about how the jobs are scarce, the salaries are insufficient, and the working environment is distressing…well…they’re pretty unnerving. Plus, there were the severe living conditions and the fact that you shouldn’t trust everybody (**), and I was pretty much scared shitless.

(**) On the night before I left, my dad and I had a highly sincere father-son talk. He said that he trusts my decision-making, but I would inevitably get myself into a situation that I would not be able to get out of. When that happens, I should contact his old buddies from his freemasonry and they’ll know what to do, and he did it with the same conviction as Marsellus Wallace when he was referring The Wolf to Jules and Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction. I’m grateful for the advice, father, but couldn’t you have done it without the spook?

Of course, there were the things that I’m undoubtedly going to miss (***). You have to understand that even though I was coveting independence, I wasn’t one of these teenagers who wanted to get away from tyrannical parents once they turned 18. I have a wonderful relationship with my parents (and my sister) so I wasn’t unhappy to be living under their roof. Also, I have developed a tight bond with my small group of friends (some of them I’ve known for ten years!). Even though some have left the city to pursue their own personal adventures, not seeing them for a while made it hard to leave. The only sure thing I knew at the time was that the experiment was going to be tons of fun.

(***) The (t5!) Top five things I missed while out of Canada: (5) faster internet, (4) fresh 2% milk, (3) Hi-Def TV, (tie-2) Edmonton Oilers & NFL Sundays, (1) hot showers. Fast food is a whole other category: (5) Quiznos, (4) Chinese fast food from WEM food court, (3) New York Fries poutine, (2) Edo Japan, (1) Funky Pickle Pizza.

I think I came in on a Wednesday at 10 in the morning so everyone I knew was either at work or at school. Therefore, I was left entirely alone in a humid two-story house with no TV, no fridge, and no Internet. A wave of staggering homesickness swept through me; I held back tears because that’s almost admitting that I made the wrong decision going there. As I unpack my suitcase in an empty house, I distinctly remembered thinking “what now?”