The Spaces in Between...

...is where I am right now. I remember the feeling well. I went through it last year, before I left Manila for the US. I was staying in an apartment that was assigned to my friend, and I was just waiting to leave. I felt I was not welcomed. I felt like I didn't belong anymore. I was not here and yet was not there either. It was time to move on, but not just yet.

In the US it didn't take long for me to feel that I belonged. By the time it came, however, it was time to come back to Manila. The feeling returned. The spaces in between began to fill in the gaps during the last week I was in Concord. I was not there and yet was not here either. It was time to go back, but not just yet. I was nowhere.

Now here I am going through the same thing again, temporarily living in an apartment that was assigned to a friend of mine (because I've been booted out of mine). My things are everywhere, and I lost my usual bit of habits and orderliness. I used to put my glasses there, my wallet over here, my handphone on that table, and I now that I moved room couldn't seem to find them anywhere.

I have one foot in the past, and the other about to cross that fine line between then and right now. The present. But it's not there yet. Not yet. I'm just in between the lines.

However, the spaces in between are still spaces. They are still places. And rather than letting it be a gap, I'm trying to fill it in with activities. There shall be more photos. There should be more posts. There should be just a few more good-byes to places that I like most. And there should be one more song to sing.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. But there will always be the spaces in between until then.

Signing Out of Olympic

2 years, 1 month and 8 days. That’s how long it’s been since I first set foot here in the Philippines. Time flies by, and before I know it, it’s time for me to leave. I could come up with a lot of cliches here, like “it’s been quite a journey", “what an experience!", “I have learned a lot!", “it’s been nice working with a team that has such and such kind of people with such and such kind of attitude.” etc. They will all be true. Yet they will never be enough to express what I truly feel and what I have truly learned from this period in my life.

To tell the truth, at this point in my writing, the above paragraph seems to be enough. Yet, for entertainment sake (and trying to avoid getting a tell off from CS from writing such a short entry), I’ll try to elaborate further.

September 3, 2006. My flight landed in Manila at about 6 PM. It was a fine Sunday evening. Unsure where I had to go and what I had to do to get myself safely in my apartment, I called Fanny up and ask for directions. Thank God they speak English. Soon enough I got myself on an airport cab and went on my way towards Somerset Olympia. My first apartment. Ever. And the company paid for it. Even though I would find out later that there were better apartments, I was already impressed with the fact that I got my own bedroom, my own living room, my own kitchen, my own walk-in closet (I didn’t even know they call it that until Dide told me about it), my own bathroom, and I didn’t even have to share it with anyone! (a luxury that I didn’t have in my own house). In retrospect, writing this made me realize that I should count my blessings.

The first 2 people that I saw was Fanny and Angel. They were getting ready to go to Fanny’s apartment in Fraser to cook dinner (It didn’t take that long for me to realize that there were better apartments). After that I saw Serene and CS. I still remember seeing CS when he came to Jakarta one early morning and ask me whether or not I could find him a meeting room. He talked so fast I was having a hard time understanding him. The man I saw that night looked slightly different (maybe it was the hair gel), but as soon as he spoke I knew it was the same person. Hendra, Adulwit and Justinus were there as well in Fraser when we had dinner.

Monday, September 4, 2006 came by. Fon and Pao was the first people I saw in the morning (I didn’t know their names and didn’t realize that they were in the same project until I got to the office). What follows after that is a flurry of activities and introductions that went by in a blinding speed of light. New building. New office cube. New office mates (have I mentioned that thank God they speak English?). A global team to boot. And most of all, a new set of work that I didn’t know anything about. I remember Arvin having a hard time trying to explain stuff to me. Thank God he speaks English.

In the coming months I get to know more about my project mates, about the nature of my work, about what typhoon level 3 means (a lot of broken-down billboards, apparently…and a lot of broken glasses, one in Fraser in particular, and the best thing was a day off from the office), about the fact that riding on horseback going up to Taal volcano wasn’t exactly a joy-ride, about Dampa (the old one, where they made me eat crab eggs and sing after a meal) and about a lot of other stuff that If I mention all of them here CS would have thrown up his hands in the air saying “I give up dude, I should have let you write a short one instead.”

I’m one a roll here, might as well get on with it!

Early 2007 was quite a tumultuous period for me. Work started to pile up, and the arrival of a person who…wait…should I even go there? Better not. But I suspect everyone knows who/what I’m talking about here. Skip. Sorry guys, if it weren’t for the fact that this entry is going to be a public consumption I would’ve gone and elaborate just for *beep* sake. Booooooo….Aaaaaaanyways…

I was (and hopefully still) a simple boy who grew up watching Hollywood movies one too many and had a dream of going to the US. Just because it’s the US (you know, like, you know, like, it’s the US…duh). And just because of one too many Hollywood movie. I pretty much thought my life’s dream impossible to attain ever since the economic meltdown and terrorism became a new trend. US Visa was not an easy thing to secure, and saying that terrorism didn’t help matters at all is quite an understatement.

That was why I was excited and pessimistic at the same time when I heard that they’re sending me to the US. Will I even get the Visa to begin with? It took awhile indeed, but thanks to some reference letters and the help of PH’s RMS, I finally got it! I can’t believe that I’m going to the US so early in my life. I really, really never thought my life’s dream would come true so fast *reminiscing now, with glassy eyes…*.

May, 2007. US was not what I think it was at first. When I woke up on the plane when it was about to land, I thought that it was morning. The sun was still high in the sky. When I realized that it was actually 7 PM, I knew then and there that I was truly in foreign land. Perhaps it was just the city where I was placed in ("Pleasant Hill"…when some of my friends heard the name they said that it sounded like one of those small cities you see in horror movies), but I felt so lonely and out of place. That feeling was exacerbated by the fact that during that time I…nah, won’t go there. San Francisco, now that’s a totally different story. I didn’t like the city at first. However, thanks to Angel and Jingson I saw the true beauty that is SF. I unashamedly admit that I have fallen in love with that city. She has soul. After 2 weeks or a bit more, I got used to the US and thanks to some friends who took me around, I got to see the better part of it.

One and a half month I spent my life in the US. Seemed so long, yet it ended too soon. I got one of my life’s dream came true so early, and there was this feeling of “is there anything more next in line for me?” Knowing life, sure there was. There were many more.

In the first year that I spent here in this project, I was not letting myself get used to the comfort of living here in Makati. I always thought that anytime soon this whole thing will end and I will have to go back to Jakarta. It would be wise not to let myself build any emotional ties with this place and the people. Alas, the project is not to end for another year and I’m only human and soon enough the inevitable happened. I got comfortable…

…which is something that, looking back, I should have done earlier. To make up for the loss of time I started traveling around the Philippines. Batanes was a wonderful place. I was totally blown away by how beautiful it was. It also marked the first time I went down financial hell thanks to an expensive hobby that I got myself into. Pinatubo was an exciting trip as well. Bohol-Cebu was a pleasant surprise. Those were the highlights, among other equally interesting places that I visited. I learned that I have to seize the opportunity to travel and get myself acquainted with a place every chance I have and appreciate the good points of the places I visited. I saw my mom going to places that in my opinion is not worth going, but she is always happy because it’s a place that she’s never been to. She’s right. We all live only once, and that’s saying a lot.

Emotional ties be damned, the human heart is resilient. We’ll get back on our feet somehow.

What about the project? Sure enough, I have learned a lot. Once again, I could come up with a lot of corporate cliches. But I’d like to save my breath on that one. The managers could come up with better words than I could ever come up with. And I would agree to most (if not all) of them. Serene has also pretty much sum it up nicely when it comes to the general strong points of each countries’ members/community (see below entry titled “My Final Entry"). But no matter how diverse people could be, I found out that in the end they’re still people. There are some basic things that you just couldn’t change. That no matter the skin color, the language, the traditions, they’re people, they’re human and they’re basically the same. I need not elaborate further. Oh yeah, thank God that most of them speak English.

In the end, I am grateful.
Grateful of the new friends I met here.
Grateful of the old friends who still stick around even though I’m away.
Grateful of the new lessons I learned.
Grateful of the old lessons that I need to learn again.
Grateful of a lot of things that will make this list unbearable to human eyes.

Ah…there’s just so many things I could talk about here and so many more names that I should mention…but any more than this the entry will be too long and lose it’s true meaning (moreover, it might make the reader fall asleep before they even reach the last sentence). The first impression always lingers the most, and that I have taken care of. For everything else that went after, let there be gaps. Fill it in yourself with rumors, gossips, old news, new news, myths, legends, or what have you. Some things are better left unsaid. And some things are better said in a different blog entry.

Time to move along. Even though I’m going back to Jakarta, the Jakarta I knew 2 years ago was a different creature than what it is right now. It’s exciting to know that there will always be something new just around the corner. You could never know what kind of chocolate you’re getting until you open up the box. Just open up your wings and let the winds of life carry you away to unknown places. We all live only once.