5 Things You Learn As An Overseas Filipino Worker
It’s been more than two years since I shipped my ass to the bottom of the world. And, man, what a clusterfuck it has been. Some good. Some bad. But all in all, I’ll probably give it a 7 out 10.
That’s not because I’m being a prick about it. If you asked me back in 2015 how I would evaluate these past few years, I’ll probably give you a resounding 21.5/10. But now that the magic is gone and my routine has settled down a bit, I’ve realised a few things that I want to share with you:
1. Working Abroad Ain’t Pretty
We’ve all seen pictures of our friends on Facebook having a blast at some random part of Europe. You know the drill: “candidly” smiling at something off the frame, with their Ray-Bans, preppy clothes, and some picturesque landscape behind them.
This is fake fucking news on a whole other level. This is not what working abroad is all about. Rather, it’s more like:
1. Waking up early to get to the bus on time
2. Placing your ass on an office chair for eight hours
3. Riding the bus back home
4. Taking a few hours off to get your shit together
5. Slapping on two slices of frozen chicken schnitzels on a frying pan for lunch tomorrow
6. Trying your hardest to sleep before 11 PM
Sounds familiar? That’s because you’re already doing the same grind back home. I probably get to skip some of the shit that you have to go through (mainly Manila traffic and Philippine government BS). But you get to skip some of the shit I have to deal with, too:
1. Cooking every single fucking meal you want to eat
2. Visa constraints
3. Cultural barriers
4. Being a one-man army when it comes to EVERYTHING
5. Expensive EVERYTHING
If you think working abroad will mean more pretty pictures to post on Facebook, let me tell you that it’s totally not. Working abroad is an excruciating process of getting your ass kicked over and over again until your bum turns blue.
But, it’s an ass-kicking unlike any other you’ve experienced before. It teaches you shit that you would never learn by staying at home. And that’s one of the few reasons why I’m still here.
2. You Learn to Give Less Fucks
I’ve been unfollowing my friends on Facebook one by one for several months now. And, I’ve a reached a point where my News Feed now resembles a barren and dry wasteland. Sometimes a tumbleweed of worthy memes comes rolling along to keep things a tad bit interesting. But, for the most part, it seems like my feed is desperately trying to keep things together by fetching the most random and uninteresting bits of news it has left. Prime contenders are the usual “This random friend liked this random page” or “This random friend commented on this insanely long thread” notifications. And, when I do decide to have a look, it’s just a friend tagging another friend on another “Tag this friend if he’s ‘this’ type of dick or ‘this’ type of dick” shitpost.
But, if there’s one type of post that I do decide to keep on my news feed, it’s the toxic shit that the Philippines keeps pumping out on a regular basis. Before, I used to actually give a fuck about how things were going. I occasionally complained about the shitty Manila traffic on Facebook (it was an easy way to get at least 7–10 likes from the perpetually dissatisfied public). I even tried to do a bit of research and complain about politics.
But then, when I moved here, I realised that all of that shit is just noise. The Philippines will always be my home, but giving any more fucks with that type of shit yields zero productivity.
Before you stab me with your pitchfork and torch me alive, I know that my case is entirely different from yours. Being physically away from that shit helps a lot with the detachment process. But this desire to just flush out all the brain-dead and toxic “peenoise” culture already began when I was still there. In fact, it was the impetus that drove me to YOLO my way down here. It’s such a negative space to be involved in that there’s no point wasting my time caring about that shit anymore.
Now, I just look at Philippine news as a way to get a few grim laughs. I’d rather focus on more important stuff like cooking my next batch of chicken schnitzel and queuing up my next Tinder date.
3. Treat Women Like People, Not Like Women
If my life was chopped up into classes, I’m not ashamed to admit that I probably skipped the ones about women entirely. I was stuck in an all-dude school environment until I was 18, so I wasn’t exactly properly groomed to woo the ladies. Then, when university came about, the initial encounters I had with women went as smoothly as a drunk man on stilts walking on ice.
As a response to the stellar history I had with the ladies, I made up for lost time these past several months (mostly through OkCupid and Tinder). And, thankfully, my thick head managed to learn a few things.
The beauty of dating is the fact that you can risk putting yourself out there without risking the years of friendship that you otherwise would have to put on the line if you were dating a friend. Each new date is a clean slate and an opportunity to start over.
Dating also made me realise that there are plenty of great people out there. And, if you ask the right questions and play your cards right, you get to spend several hours with this person reading the cliff notes of what makes them tick all for the price of a hot chocolate.
I’ve talked to a woman that flew all the way to Mexico to teach English right after graduating high school. Another woman decided to walk her own path and travel the world instead of spending her youth working for a corporation. I’ve also met women who, just like me, flew all the way down here by themselves without knowing if things would work out or not.
The more dates I went to, the sillier the idea of “The One” became. Rather, the real problem is figuring out which among the potential “Ones” you’d have to end up choosing. To be completely honest, I’m pretty sure I’d end up meeting women that are as equally or even more impressive as the ones that I’ve met here if I decided to move elsewhere.
There’s no shortage of decent people in the world. You just need to give them a fair shot at showing who they truly are.
Before, I used to chase women as soon as they ticked all of my “Is She Cute?” boxes. But, meeting all of these women made me realise how shit that criteria was. Any woman with a quarter of a brain can load up YouTube, search for a random make-up tutorial, and paint her face within a few hours.
It’s only when I’ve started dating that I’ve met women who genuinely made me feel insecure and impressed simply by what they were able to accomplish. I started judging the women in my life based on what they were able to do rather than how big their tits were or how pretty their face was. Only then did I realise that a lot of the women that I chased or thought about chasing didn’t have anything of real value to give.
We give men shit all the time for being uninspired, lazy bums. But, to be perfectly honest and fair, a lot of women out there are uninspired, lazy bums as well. So, if I could give a piece of advice to the men out there looking for love, let me say this: the moment you start judging women based on the standards we use to judge other men is the moment you’ll realise that only a few deserve your heart.
4. Friendship is Sacred
Male-female relationships in the Philippine context have a certain sense of ambiguity. And, it’s all because of a complicated combination of our conservative culture, our general belief in “The One”, and our tendency to box ourselves in within our groups.
Naturally, this leads us to develop feelings with people within our inner circle. And given that most of us aren’t exactly seasoned veterans when it comes to the dating process, no proper buffer is given to clarify this intention to become intimate. So, instead of getting a few laps around the dating circuit to warm ourselves up, we jump headfirst towards the Relationship Olympics while placing genuine friendships on the line.
I understand that setting a romantic relationship on top of a foundation built on solid friendship makes for a pretty solid infrastructure for romance to blossom. However, it pays to know the basics when it comes to being a decent partner beforehand. You don’t see pilots flipping through the Airbus A380 manual, scrambling around the controls as they fly from San Francisco to London. They sat their ass in flight school before taking the job because they knew lives were on the line.
You have to make sure that you are prepared for the risks when it comes to transforming a friendship into an intimate relationship. You can’t go back to being “just friends” again when shit hits the fan. Feelings get hurt, friendships get ruined, and groups get chopped in half.
The people that make up your inner circle are the ones that you keep for life. I think everyone in your group would prefer if you didn’t shit where you eat.
5. You’re Not Important
Moving here felt like being dropped into the middle of the Amazon rainforest. And, unlike Bear Grylls, I didn’t have the willpower to drink my piss to survive. But, I knew I had to develop a taste for it eventually if I wanted to make it out here alive.
My first weeks down here felt like a great cleansing. The whole-day flight was the pilgrimage, and the student visa was the great equaliser. Down here, nobody gave a shit about which school I graduated from or who my parents were. All they cared about is whether I acted like a dick or not and if I could get the job done.
This isolation gave me the opportunity to step out of myself and see which direction my life was going. I had no destination in mind because I didn’t know where I was supposed to go.
What I do know is the fact that I’ve spent 23 years in the Philippines going where everyone else went. I was itching for a change. It didn’t have to be the right direction. All that mattered was it was a different one.
This new direction pushed me into situations that made me feel like a cornered animal. It flushed out the noise in my head and gave room for my instincts to call the shots.
People didn’t think that I was important. So it was up to me to prove to them that I was.
