My Itinerary: A Prologue to My Solitary Travel

My first travel away from home was going to Cebu when I was six years old, about to enter Grade 1. My older cousin, who was then a military sergeant, was really fond of me (perhaps i was too smarty and cute when i was little :-)) and asked my parents if he could tag me along for a summer vacation. I can remember a little - playing with some kids amidst the differences in our dialects, going to the market, and taking the long bus trip. It was too late for my parents to realize why they allowed it to happen. I was just a kid and only in pre-school. But I cannot remember getting homesick. What I can remember was being afraid of the dark, as kids normally do, so I'd play with my watch in darkness until I fall into sleep. I think it was the first time that travel bug bit me, very deep that it stung into my blood and kept on running through my veins. The poison has never been cleared, until now!

Since then, my summer and school vacations were spent either in my grandparents' house for months or in a relative that were far from home - where I traveled by land, by the sea, and by air.

Source: www.mychildmagazine.com

Travel, then, was all about F.U.N! It was when I played with new kids and met new friends (where I compelled them to write in my SlumBook). It was where from the eyes of a grade schooler, I learned the different facets of life. When I started to have crushes and had a my childish version of a "long distance relationship".

Summer vacations meant travel to me.

Fast forward.

A year after I passed the CPA Board exam, I applied for working visa to Canada. But as a newly grad, with less than a year of experience, I did not meet the required number of points. Years passed, as I hopped from one job to another, I never stop trying. I applied for Singapore, Canada, US, New Zealand and Australia. But either fate or any other forces of nature was defying the chance. I've never been successful.

When I was on the verge of completely giving up after I landed with my current job where complete compensation package is already at par with Singapore's experience level, I got a call from Apple Singapore offering a job very much similar to mine. I did consider. I may get the same bucks with I was getting with the local one for a managerial post and with Singapore's as an analyst, its the experience that matters - to work abroad and learn how to survive away from the perks of comfort life (in all aspects) in my country, to live and work with other nationalities, to adapt to their cultures, to be just independent.

But that opportunity also went away. So I retreat. It's not my destiny. It's not my fate.

Eventually, I understand why. There's always a reason for everything!

I can have the best of both worlds. I still have the comforts of my home but I have the time, the opportunity, my created chances, and most of all, the resources to explore the world on my own - out of pleasure and not for the sake of living.