It’s hard to believe that yesterday was our One Year anniversary here in the Philippines.  How time flies!

Here’s a month by month rundown of what happened to us.

December:  We arrived at the airport in the morning and was picked up by my Mom and uncle.  Since we had an apartment ready for us we were able to move in same day.   Later on, we got in touch again with the Dutch IT business guy we met last September.  We then met other Dutch expats on several occasions.  We spent some days also in a beach resort in La Union and attended his company’s Christmas party.  Christmas and New Year was just spent quietly at home with my Mom.

January:  Our stuff arrived and I took care of handling the government paperwork involved with tax and duty free exemption. We spent a weekend in Baguio and stayed at The Manor.

February: We started employing part time live out househelp.  Possible contract with Dutch client shows up in the horizon. We started scouting for office space and ended up renting one next to our apartment building.

March: The Manila Offshoring Office opens with 5 new people on the team!  Work commenced immediately after furniture and all pc’s arrived.  MrC’s Dad and business partner visits from the Netherlands and is there for the Office Blessing. MrC becomes a godfather (ninong) for the first time!  We also spent 4 days in Kyoto in celebration of both our birthdays this month.

April: Visited The Netherlands for 3 Weeks at the height of spring.  We stayed in a house near the Keukenhof.  It’s very beautiful out there but we realized driving back and forth to the place takes too much time! We were so happy to be back home — in the Philippines where it is warm, sunny and never boring!

May: Started looking for a .Net developer.  Interviewed several  good candidates but with no luck in hiring. Took a short but relaxing break in a resort in Subic.  After coming back from that trip, we bought a new car, (a gorgeous red SUV) after a few days and suffered from buyer’s remorse shortly after that (the remorseful feeling  lasted only a few minutes).

Life here has been quite good and we are thankful for our blessings.  We were also able to hire a driver through MrC’s Dutch local business associate.

June: I registered as a voter in Mandaluyong.  Then, we decided that it’s finally time to leave our “very convenient” but small and smoky nest near EDSA for a more spacious house a bit farther from the noise and pollution of the the CBD’s.  We started house hunting once again.  Another reason also is that the Office has had so many issues / problems that we could not anymore overlook.  We also realized that the Building Management is hard to work with.

July:  We continued looking for places but had no luck in finding one.  We kept ourselves positive in spite of the frustrations. MrC also had to go back to the Netherlands for a few weeks and I chose to stay here (bad idea for me).

August: Just as soon as we were almost giving up we found the house that we wanted finally! Also, our newly found .Net Developer started working for us. He was actually applying for Linux Admin position and we were just lucky to find out he is also a good .NET developer as well.  Indeed we are lucky! Or should we say it was all meant to be ;-)  Also, we started applying for MrC’s permanent residency.

September: We moved to our new place!  Later on, we endured days of storm and flood (Ondoy).  We are so thankful that our house was not flooded.  We were so glad we didn’t end up renting some of the houses we saw in Pasig which were all now flooded.  Our Pioneer office was damaged by this storm but this allowed us to discontinue our lease.  We then started looking for a new office (again!). Total number of people in our team is now 8 not including me and MrC.

October : Our ties at Pioneer is totally severed as I turned over the keys to our landlord and also moved all our office belongings to our new office in Ortigas.    We had another trip again out of the country but this time it was different for me.  I first went to Amsterdam and stayed for 5 days then took another flight to Newark and stayed there also for 5 days.  There I stayed at my old friends place in NJ and Pennsylvania.  I also went there primarily to keep my drivers license current.  After that I spent 7 happy days with my family in Canada.  I left Canada with tears in my eyes

November to present: I spent a few weeks away from the office also to recover from the trip and get myself back in the current time zone.  I spent the past few days being responsible for furnishing the house.  That involves a lot of painful visits to the mall, a hardship I tried to endure.  I also by the way, completed a SQLServer Analytical Services training course somewhere in Makati. In the next few days I hope to be busy with my usual IT Work again and have a more organized home before the New Year starts. Our house now has a beautiful Christmas Lantern which I bought near our place. It costs 900 pesos.

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