TODAY MARKS HIS NINTH YEAR in Australia. It was 8:45 AM, 16th of January
2007 when a China Airlines’ plane carrying him and the other passengers from Manila
and Taipei touched down at Brisbane Airport. He was very excited, to be honest, to experience another country (it’s his first
time overseas) but at the same time equally anxious about his future as a
piggery farm worker in next four years.
Others might have thought that he gave up his job for
the sake of the dazzling silver Down Under… Little did they know that leaving
something he was so passionate about was never easy, and that he decided to do it
to gather some more mosses to cover him in pursuing his dream of becoming a globally-competent pig vet. He was looking forward
to that entire four years of pig-production experience under temperate condition—hoping that it would be an additional feather in his cap.
His first day at work, the first week, first month and
first year in that job were never easy.
His brawn was not enough, and fighting against the emotional torture of
performing all the menial tasks in the piggery farm was seriously harder than he thought it would be. But he believed he was once an achiever—and this thought had aided him to keep going; he didn’t want
to just simply quit and consider himself a loser Down Under.
A performance appraisal stating that his knowledge of the job was unsatisfactory had upset him! So out of self-respect, he bravely decided to leave
the piggery, and was so blessed to get a job offer to work in a poultry
farm in South Australia.
Despite the scorching hot and dry summers, his days in
the poultry farm were relatively manageable compared to his previous job. He had to stand up against the dusty and itchy
environment, had to work at midnight—even during wintertime, though… But he had
gradually learned to focus on the brighter side of things. He kept on traveling interstate to explore the
country and he had started to discover more about Australia and its people out of these short trips. The original plan of going back to
Philippines upon the expiry of his working visa had changed to targeting to get
the residency so he could eventually settle in this country.
He missed his family and friends ‘back home’ (and he was aware that they terribly missed him, too) but there were times when the sacrifices of living-apart-together
could undeniably fill-up the pecuniary necessities they had in this life. Regular visits at an average of every couple
of years were, of course, not enough to compensate the memories they could’ve
made together but he (and he believed, they) had eventually accepted the fact
that his fate must be shining on this distant shores, and as what the song goes,
‘they have no right to make him stay…’ He started meeting people, and had made lasting friendship with the real
people he met along the way.
BEING a human, he desired to continuously grow
personally and professionally. He envied his friends who showed happiness and satisfaction out of their
employment and he hated himself for being too ambitious! To have been given the opportunity to run the
poultry farm operation had, somehow, made him feel vindicated from that
distressing work-performance assessment he received from his previous job but he knew
that he could do something more than just looking after a million of growing birds to feed Australia
and the world.
The Australian residency he'd been aiming for was granted and after a
year of shedding more drops of sweat, tears and blood, he eventually became
eligible to take the Australian citizenship oath—which he humbly did with
sincerity. Days had become brighter
since then, dirt roads turned into concrete road surfaces that obviously paved his way into who he is and what he possesses right now.
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