The Idea

“An idea is like a virus. Highly contagious. And even the smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define you, or to destroy you.” – Dom Cobb

I am a strong believer that context is everything. Context gives story meaning and a perspective to better understand what the author is trying to say. Without context, the message or the meaning can be easily lost. And it will be the same here; we start with context. So here goes. 

To start this story right, I need to go back some years. Not to any day or situation in particular, but just to describe my relationship to the Philippines back then. Let’s say we are in 2017 (that was the year when the UK triggered Article 50 and officially started their Brexit path, Trump was inaugurated as the president of the USA, or when Mosul in Iraq was captured by ISIS). At that time, literally everything I had known about the Philippines was that it’s an archipelago in Southeast Asia with the same name as I have (for which I didn’t know the reason), one or two of my friends were there for vacation and loved it, and I read one article in a Czech magazine about the president’s bloody drug war. And that’s it. The country was just too distant, alien, and as back then I did not have any means (read: money) to go to Asia anyway, I didn’t much care about it. You might probably be asking how the hell I got there with that kind of attitude not too much later. To be honest, from time to time I ask myself the same question.

The very idea about living in the Philippines was born probably sometimes in late 2017 or early 2018. I can’t remember the exact time, but I do recall the situation. It was one of my job crises when I did not feel that I was progressing or moving forward in the direction I’d like to, so I was exploring potential opportunities in other countries around the world within the company I was working for. I came across a position that looked interesting and suitable for me, but there was a catch: the position was based in Manila. I think that was one of the first times that I had heard about Manila, and I had to do some Googling to find out what’s that and where it is. It was also the first time it made me wonder whether I’d actually go down that road — whether I’d ever be able and willing to move somewhere as far from home as the Philippines. I did not follow through with the role back at the time, or to be accurate, I reached out to the hiring manager, but there was no follow-up, and I gradually abandoned my aspiration for that role. But the idea was already there, planted to grow for the right moment.