Hello? Anyone out there?
I suppose after 3 months without a post it’s unlikely that anyone is
still interested, so I’m mainly just writing this one for myself. I got so caught up in finishing up my work in
the Philippines, job hunting, and preparing to move back to Seattle that I just
didn’t find much time to write. But lest
I have another blog end mysteriously (My china blog went silent abruptly after
all of google blogspot was blocked by the powers that be), I wanted to at least
give closure to this one with a final post.
My last few months were great. Nothing that I felt was sufficiently epic to
write a blog post about, but definitely some good times. I spent a weekend back in Puerto Galera with
a few friends, the scene of the Malasimbo music festival. I took advantage of the fantastic diving the
island has to offer, which, if you recall, I wasn’t able to get out of bed for
the weekend of the music festival. We
also had a great Sunday morning watching game 7 of the Heat-Celtics semi final
at a beachside bar.
I ran a 10k in a fundraising event, the Run for Light, put
on by the foundation that organized the Hike for Light series. This was the longest organized run I’ve ever
participated in, and I felt my time was respectable, but I did manage to lose
to a guy running barefoot, and two guys strapped together, one of which was
blind (in my defense, they were training for a marathon). My last weekend I did another organized run,
a 5k called Outbreak Manila. This is just
like a normal 5k except it’s an obstacle course with zombies chasing you. You start with 3 health flags, and in order
to win you have to not only finish first, but have at least 1 health flag
remaining. The entire event was very
well done - elaborate costumes and facepaint, athletic zombies with handfuls of
red flags, and little girls sitting in the middle of the road watching runners
go by. They also had a “Thriller”
zombie, ambulances coming through intermittently, and a character you can
rescue to get an additional health flag.
My Princeton in Asia fellowship in the Philippines ended on
August 2nd, 2012, almost exactly one year after my arrival. As my departure approached, I was offered a
research position in the Philippines with a US based NGO, but decided to turn
it down. I gave it some serious thought,
but ultimately decided I wasn’t prepared to make the 2-year commitment to live
in Manila that was required for the project. I returned to Seattle with very few promising
employment leads, and found myself having flashbacks of my long, bleak, job-hunting
session of 2009.
However, I somehow managed to land on my feet this
time. After 5 interviews (2 in Spanish),
a strong recommendation from the CEO of Hybrid Social Solutions, and a fair
amount of Linkedin snooping and informational phone calls, I accepted a job
offer from an organization called Global Partnerships. Global Partnerships is
a nonprofit social investor based in Seattle, and Managua, Nicaragua, whose
mission is to expand opportunity for people living in poverty. They invest in
microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Latin America that provide a holistic
package of services for clients beyond microcredit. My boss and I are creating a
new investment portfolio that supports green technology lending programs for
solar-powered lights, improved cookstoves, etc.
I recently spent 3 weeks in Nicaragua investigating potential partners
and visiting solar home installations of local MFI clients. This job feels like a great fit so far, and I am
thrilled to have the opportunity.
So what are my final thoughts on the Philippines? How was my experience? Overall, very positive. It was an interesting year to say the least,
full of ups and downs and many lessons learned.
I made what I hope to be a number of lasting friendships, learned a lot
about what I’m looking for in life, and definitely found some adventure. And in the end, the work experience and
connections I gained doing Princeton in Asia opened doors for me. A lot of what took place this year I never
could have anticipated. It was uncomfortable
and awesome, difficult and hilarious. I don’t
know why this popped into my head today, but I all of a sudden remembered one
evening standing on the street corner in Manila when an ambulance drove by, lights
flashing, blaring “I shot the sheriff” by Bob Marley. I never got a picture of this, but I
occasionally witnessed traffic stopped for a man tossing coconuts out of a tree
in the middle of downtown Makati to two associates waiting underneath with a
t-shirt to catch them. And in perhaps the
least predictable turn of events, my buddy Kenny, the I-banking Princeton Grad
who used to speak so often about “crushing it” in the Philippines, found God in
Manila and completely changed his life, proving once again that you never can
tell what’s going to happen next in the Philippines.
