Picking up where I left off…
I came back from Boracay a tad browner and somehow sadder than before I left. I got a glimpse of how the other half lived. I met people untethered by corporate jobs and familial responsibilities who spent their days bumming around the island and traveling elsewhere whenever they felt like it. Of course, these people probably had trust funds and stipends from God-knows-where that made such a life possible for them.
That did not stop me from coveting that kind of lifestyle, however. I started considering my options. I had this crazy idea of giving up my day job, moving to Boracay, and living off the P8,000-a-month I was earning from writing. Pretty farfetched, I know. After all, who lives on P8,000 a month in a very expensive island like Boracay? Still, I hoped and dreamed and hoped some more.
Then things started happening all at once. First, Chin got wind of the depressing rate I was getting. It was she who told me I was being taken advantage of. I was meant to get paid at least 3 times that rate for the same amount of work for starters, even more as I gained the experience. She then introduced me to the lovely woman she was writing for and who was more than willing to pay me the going rate.
While this new deal was definitely a huge help, it still didn’t address my feeling of restlessness. Once again, Chin came to the rescue. She knew a lovely Filipino couple, Paul and Rose, who worked as teachers in Bangkok, and they just happened to be looking for someone who can work as an office assistant. The pay was 15,000 baht (about $400). It wasn’t a lot but with my new writing rate, I figured I would have enough to live on comfortably, albeit simply.
For someone who had never left home before (except for those brief summer vacations to visit my dad in Manila), it was a huge and scary decision, but I took it anyway. My family and friends had misgivings, but they still supported my decision, and between all of us, we managed to scrape up enough money to get me to Bangkok and tide me over until I got my first paycheck. Barely a week after I started talking to Paul and Rose, I landed in Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport in the wee hours of the morning with a suitcase full of clothes, Fita biscuits, Milo, cup noodles, and a flashlight and a Neo laptop that I got on loan (payable within 6 months) from a friend.
My first few hours in my new city was extremely harrowing. I couldn’t find Paul (who was supposed to pick me up) anywhere. I didn’t have his number (stupid, I know), and I was scared shitless. He did eventually find me, thank heavens, and I stayed in his and Rose’s place for a couple of days until I moved into a one-bedroom apartment a bit closer to the office. For 1,800 baht a month, I got a tiny bathroom, a double bed with a rock-hard mattress, and a small wardrobe. But it was clean and decent, and I fell in love with it at first sight.
The office I worked at was beside the railroad tracks across the old Don Muang International Airport, about half an hour by bus from where I lived in Pathumthani. It was a placement agency for English teachers, and my job involved developing their lesson plans and playing liaison. I met the man I married on my very first day, though we didn’t start dating until a month or so later. I guess you could say I was off to a good start.
Naturally, the office had Internet connection, so I downloaded my assignments and found research material while I worked during the day and wrote at night. By then, I was earning a cool $150 every couple of weeks from writing alone, and I enjoyed it immensely. The writing kept me busy enough to fight whatever loneliness might be lurking around the corners of my tiny apartment.
Bangkok is ripe with Filipino English teachers, and I met many of them while I worked for the agency. Now, I’ve been speaking English almost from the moment I learned how to talk, and having spent my entire career life up to this point working in call centers, I took pride in my language skills. I found the English proficiency of these Filipino teachers dismal to the point of non-existence – a very disconcerting fact, considering that they were meant to be teaching the language. They also got paid more than I did (upwards of 20,000 baht), so the hoity-toity part of myself felt mildly insulted.
My Thai boss, bitch as she was, refused to give me a teaching job, so I started looking elsewhere. It didn’t take long before I landed one, and oh, what a disaster that was! I was fired within a week (click the link for the full story), and because I resigned from the office job to take on the teaching job, I was left unemployed and just a tad broke in a strange, new city that I still regularly get lost in even after a month of living in it.
I was at a crossroads. I had two choices: I could go home, lick my wounds, and go back to my old job (my supervisor said I could), or I could stay in Bangkok and try again. At this point, however, I’ve gone right off teaching. For me, it was as pleasant as the prospect of colon cleansing. I had absolutely no talent for it and no patience for rowdy Thai students, and the thought of classrooms just made me ill. By this time, however, I’ve already started dating The Husband and it was starting to look serious, so I knew I had to find a way to stay.
And I did. I e-mailed the woman I was writing for and asked her if she had a full-time job available, and she made me team manager! I was put in charge of all the campaigns she got going on top of the writing I was doing for her. Fortune was definitely smiling on me. I started earning at least $600 a month (often a lot more), which, in turn, allowed me to live more comfortably, travel more, and move to a bigger and better apartment in The Husband’s building.
By the end of 2007, life couldn’t have been better. I was in a wonderful relationship, I had a job I thoroughly enjoyed, I traveled a lot, and I was earning more money than ever. On top of all that, I was learning so many things from my job that would prove to be completely invaluable later.
To be continued…
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