Vince, a programmer, describes a family trip to Manjuyod with his OFW cousin Ken on vacation. The episode argues that online work lets Filipino families stay together instead of enduring the long separations that overseas workers face, benefiting both workers and the employers who hire them.
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Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with OFS online Filipino specialists. This is episode 342 Blessed to be Working From Home. A couple episodes ago I talked about how we have been trying to tell more stories at onlinejobs ph and I told you the story of Karen, who is one of Julia's friends. Well, one of my programmers, Vince and his wife Jen, who also works for onlinejobs ph, recently had a relative come home from Hong Kong. They work in Hong Kong just like Karen worked in Cebu. This person works in Hong Kong and they came home for a vacation. Now they're not coming home permanently, they're coming home. I don't know, maybe it's been years that they've been gone and now they're coming home for the first time and they're going to go spend two weeks at home. Something like that maybe. Well, Vince was kind enough to write about the vacation they took to celebrate him coming home. So here is a story from from one of my programmers, Vince in the Philippines last weekend we went out of town for dolphin watching. Jen's brother in law Ken, an OFW working in Hong Kong, is home for his occasional vacation. He invited us for an outing in a town called Manjuyod, around five hours away from our place. Just so you know, OFW is like an official Philippines term for overseas Filipino worker. Okay. Continuing Friday night, we prepared for an early 2am drive for the scheduled dolphin watching set at 7am Jen, who finished her shift Friday midnight, took a full two hours of sleep, which if I would have known that I would have told her to stop working earlier so she could sleep better. But people are dedicated. They want to do their work. With our three sleepy kids and two nephews, Jen drove while I navigated in the first car while Ken, his wife Tin, Jen's sister and the parents in law in the other Manjuyod, which I have no idea how to actually say that, I'm just reading it with a funny accent, is such a beautiful coastal town with clear waters, sandbars and dolphins in its natural habitat. We went there some years ago. Jen and I quite enjoyed the dolphins. The locals would typically offer you their boat service to take you to shore where the dolphins frolic. You normally have to chase them along with the other tourist boats. The chase is also quite exciting as the dolphins likely take it as play. This time though, the dolphins weren't as playful nor as plentiful as I expected. We only saw a few and they were not as big as I remembered. Some of the dolphins didn't bother to surface at all and for those that did, they were quite far off. The kids still enjoyed it though, and so did Ken and Tin since it was their first time. Now, hopefully you're getting some pictures in this because Vince sent us a bunch of pictures of their trip. He continues. After some time chasing dolphins, we went to the sandbars. The tide was still high though, and so there were no visible sandbars yet. The kids started swimming in the lowering waters on the sandbar. Uncle Ken treated his nephews and niece to some water rides. It was already 10am and I remembered I hadn't had coffee yet. I needed coffee in the morning or it will be afternoon of headaches. Luckily, here's me having my coffee fix aboard what the locals call their floating 7 11. I hope you can see this picture if you're watching this on YouTube. The $0.50 coffee isn't Starbucks, but the ambiance can't be beat and I'll just describe this to you if you're just listening to the podcast. He is sitting on a I don't know how to describe this boat. It's a canoe. It's an outrigger. It's a canoe with two tube poles strapped across it that are attached to two sideways poles to add stability. It has a cover over the top and just stuff hanging everywhere. Products that you can buy. It's their floating 711 and he's sitting on the bow of this boat with his feet in the water, just hanging out in the ocean. He continues. Filipinos will simply provide anything whenever, wherever. The sandbar did not actually dry up while we were there, which was another disappointment. So we just left for lunch. I guess it was an okay day. I hope Ken wasn't too disappointed not seeing the sandbar chasing more dolphins. I realized the trip wasn't really about the dolphins at Sandbar, but about time spent with family. Ken will be going back to Hong Kong soon and who knows how long till the next vacation. And it made me think the usual sad airport scene of OFWs returning abroad. Ken and Tin don't have kids yet, but I really can't imagine kids crying at the airport when an OFW father needs to go. Jen and I are simply blessed having work without leaving home and family without the usual drama of departures and no hassle commuting. Blessed with work where we can go to sleep seconds after clocking out because the bed is just in the next room and we've been working in our pajamas. Anyway, so blessed. So I'm so thankful for Vince being willing to share this. And it's again, I told you that Karen's story was typical, and it really is. You go to work overseas because there isn't work locally, and you have to support your family. You send money home. And so often people do have kids. Fortunately, Ken doesn't have kids yet. He's not missing his kids growing up. But so often they do have kids, and they're leaving their kids for years at a time and their wife for years at a time and come home. And man, it is just so hard and so blessed. When you have work online and you can stay at home. When you hire an ofs, you bless their lives. When you hire an ofs, you bless your life. You grow your business, Go hire an OFS.
