Vietnam

Hi marlon…this is my promised blog on Vietnam…why in a month’s time I will fly towards that war-ravaged country way poorer than ours…in my previous semester, I enrolled in a class called marketing research…I wasn’t too excited about it, I just signed in for lack of anything better to take (my other option was investment management, a finance class, which was a no-no because I abhor finance)…near the end of the term, our professor told the class that acnielsen vietnam was looking for market researchers…I being the eternal optimist had an inkling that if anyone of us applied for the position, we were likely to get hired…what with our mba degree and all…so with some of my classmates I emailed and got scheduled for an informal interview with the senior managers of the company…so come January 2, I flew back to manila from leyte...i met with the managers, 2 filipinos (one was gay and the other was a thirty-something woman) at café breton at the podium…I don’t know what nailed the job…I was quite uncertain if I did well because all they did was laugh when I made some comments…the interview was so informal that’s why I was able to inject some jokes and factoids about my life every now and then…for example, one would ask “what do you do in your free time?” oh, I sing in the church choir “so you can sing…” not really, when the notes gets tough, I’d just lip-synch. You don’t need much talent in choral singing,that’s the soloist’s problem… Tas they’d laugh….isip ko nga siguro it’s true, humor is the great equalizer…people will tend to connect with you if you can make the conversation light…then after some days, some british guy (country director) called up twice…then told me they would like to have me as part of their team….

Why I’m crazy about Vietnam

I grabbed the opportunity because first, I find the job interesting plus, that would elevate me to an expat status…this would look good in my resume…second, that might be my only chance of traveling to another country for free…they’d let me stay there and be trained for two months…if I don’t like it there or if I mess up, I can go back home…free of charge with pay pa…third. I would like to get to be immersed in a different culture…fourth, I heard that Vietnam is replete with rivers and mountains…plus the managers said that the country would be a good place to “rediscover yourself.” I was thinking: whoa, I don’t come across would-be bosses saying such philosophical words…isip ko, I think I would enjoy working with such people…lastly, I think this would expedite my dreams of being an entrepreneur…with earnings in US dollars, mas kakaipon ako para sa business natin…hoping!

But sometimes when I think about going there…I do have what I call my pre-vietnam homesickness….huhuhu

Why I’m not so crazy about Vietnam

Yung una siempre…friends…it made me sad kasi I’ll miss our weekly exchange sa eastwood/ortigas/wherever…and I was doubtful whether I’d find friends as good as you guys are…chuks… it sounds trite but it’s true… chuks ulit…but I figured it has never been difficult for me to find friends…so I’m sure I’m going to meet some new friends there…

The bigger problem, one that cherryl unabashedly pointed out to me, was, gulped…what if I never got married…Yuck. I know! It sounds too 60’s-ish…but you have to understand the context of our conversation…that was the time you blogged that went something like…no matter how much we try to tell ourselves that being alone doesn’t mean being lonely…waking up with someone beside you on your bed would make life a lot more ecstatic…yeah, even if you are that far, you still have that impact on the way we think and feel…hahahaha…cherryl asserted kasi that there are so many career-driven people who are very successful yet as morose as the sound of that rusty antiquated train sa espana…pero take a look daw at our parents, even if they are not the richest people in the world, they’re happy because they have each other and they have us children…yeah, I thought it’s true, I have always believed that human beings are not meant to be alone…we are presumably destined to fall in love, have a partner and be happy…and unless we have that, we might (just might) feel a sense of kakulangan thus, we’ll continue to search for that love…maybe the reason why matronas such as madam auring pay their boyfriends P50,000 per month is that they just need somebody to wake up with in the morning… that got me depressed for a while...add to this the fact that the managers warned me not to expect to meet anyone from vietnam…lost kasi mga vietnamese guys…the business book that I was reading that time didn’t help…it stated that work shouldn’t be taken seriously as health, love and family…LOVE daw!…darn…I have good friends, health, family, but love remains oh-so-elusive!!! honestly, that forced me to have second thoughts…but I gathered, if I do stay, there is still no guarantee that I’ll meet someone…god, I’ve spent 25 years of my life in this country and I still haven’t met the one guy I can madly, passionately be in love with…well, except for one, hahaha pero he got away eh…chuks…so I decided that I will push through Vietnam…and thank god, my thinking has been altered to the better…now, there is the hope that there will be someone (sana hindi Vietnamese!)…chuks pero no chuks…I guess I don’t have a choice here…pardon the cliché, pero I just have to have faith, di ba?