And that's not it, there's more! Just today, I received feedback from Melody of HerWord.com that my contributed article has been published on their site! I'm so overwhelmed because it's my first! And I'm going to make it a START -- my goal is to write one article per week and farm them out to broadsheets, magazines, or online venues.
Now 'nuf said about it, enjoy my article. You may opt to read it on HerWord through this link. Or you may read it below.On being who we are meant to be
Published on http://www.HerWord.com (owned and operated by the BusinessWorld Corporation)
December 15, 2008
As I write this, I am in Cebu on a business trip for three days. My job entails me to travel to key cities in the Philippines like Cebu, Iloilo, Bacolod, Davao, Baguio, Pampanga, etcetera. But that’s not what my write-up is all about.
Let me start by introducing myself, I am Miami Alciso-Cabansay, a cool Mom, a ravishing wife, a small business entrepreneur, and a project manager by profession. I am a proud Baguio girl – born, raised, and schooled there.
My first real job (I worked as a crew with a famous fastfood restaurant) was with a telco company then I was given an opportunity to work for a competitor in Manila. And this started my so-called Manila life.
I always take pride in sharing my story about how I got myself living independently and achieving remarkable milestones in life. I reminisced all these again today and I got inspired to write about it when I received the email invite from Herword.
Shiela, a former colleague and a friend of mine picked me up at the Cebu airport and we had lunch together after.
She’s such a darling she does this all the time, in spite her very busy schedule. On our way to a restaurant, we started talking about a lot of things and we discovered that we had so much in common. After her stint at our office, she decided she wanted to have another career. She came to a realization that she had a lot of goals she’d like to achieve and she had to do something about it.
The last time our other friends heard about her after she left is she got employed with a pharmaceutical company. We all were flabbergasted about it as it was very unlikely of her, much more that she was going to be assigned in Cebu after her gruesome training. We were kidding that she may end up coming back after just a few months or weeks even. She was not the type who would be left alone and do things all by herself. She was pampered by her family, she had everything laid out before her.
She carried on with the challenges of her job as a medical representative, learned the dialect, established very good professional relationships with doctors, adjusted to a different culture and a different set of colleagues. In many instances, she proved to every one and most especially to herself that she is capable of doing more, doing great, and doing it all by herself.
I shared with her that I could relate to what she has gone and is going through now. I was also in such and many other situations when I first set foot in Manila. For someone who was all set and comfortably living in Baguio City, Manila was a totally new world for me. I got to learn a lot of things on my own – from commuting to different and many places, working with different types of people, learning the who’s who in the political and social arena (which I previously only got to learn about through the media), and a whole lot more. There were so many times when I thought I wanted to go back home but my innate fighting spirit which I most likely got from being partly an Igorota held me back as if saying “Hey woman, you gotta keep it together, you’ve still got a long way to go!” And so I did.
Three companies and 13 years later, I’m married to a very supportive and not to mention a hunk-of-a-guy husband and best friend; We have a very smart and very pretty daughter; I am an executive in a stable and booming industry; I have a small business; and I’m about to finish graduate school next year!
Suffice to say that I have “arrived”. My experiences in life range from missing work opportunities, getting fired, dealing with ultra-difficult people, knowing one’s real friends in unexpected situations, adjusting to married life, and making life decisions for another human being (my daughter).
One may say, but that’s what life is all about! Oh yeah, most definitely, but nowadays, when the world we live in is doubly fast-paced, everything is turning digital, there are Starbucks everywhere – recognizing and acknowledging life milestones which I call “lifestones” are not common anymore. People get frustrated easily, they lose the meaning of being who one is meant to be by going through the many facets of life.
I am saddened that very few people celebrate small personal achievements anymore. We sometimes tend to forget that after all, we’re human beings and we are here in this world to make the most out of our borrowed lives, to make ourselves better persons and that we need to continue to grow but then we also need to enjoy life and look at small things as part of the big picture. Without them, life is not exciting!
Being who we are meant to be is a process. Most of the time life throws us bits and pieces of what-have-yous but we just need to embrace all of it and take it in stride. Just like my fave movie character, Forrest Gump says “Life is like a box of chocolates, you’ll never know what you’ll get!”
Published on http://www.HerWord.com (owned and operated by the BusinessWorld Corporation)
December 15, 2008
As I write this, I am in Cebu on a business trip for three days. My job entails me to travel to key cities in the Philippines like Cebu, Iloilo, Bacolod, Davao, Baguio, Pampanga, etcetera. But that’s not what my write-up is all about.
Let me start by introducing myself, I am Miami Alciso-Cabansay, a cool Mom, a ravishing wife, a small business entrepreneur, and a project manager by profession. I am a proud Baguio girl – born, raised, and schooled there.
My first real job (I worked as a crew with a famous fastfood restaurant) was with a telco company then I was given an opportunity to work for a competitor in Manila. And this started my so-called Manila life.
I always take pride in sharing my story about how I got myself living independently and achieving remarkable milestones in life. I reminisced all these again today and I got inspired to write about it when I received the email invite from Herword.
Shiela, a former colleague and a friend of mine picked me up at the Cebu airport and we had lunch together after.
She’s such a darling she does this all the time, in spite her very busy schedule. On our way to a restaurant, we started talking about a lot of things and we discovered that we had so much in common. After her stint at our office, she decided she wanted to have another career. She came to a realization that she had a lot of goals she’d like to achieve and she had to do something about it.
The last time our other friends heard about her after she left is she got employed with a pharmaceutical company. We all were flabbergasted about it as it was very unlikely of her, much more that she was going to be assigned in Cebu after her gruesome training. We were kidding that she may end up coming back after just a few months or weeks even. She was not the type who would be left alone and do things all by herself. She was pampered by her family, she had everything laid out before her.
She carried on with the challenges of her job as a medical representative, learned the dialect, established very good professional relationships with doctors, adjusted to a different culture and a different set of colleagues. In many instances, she proved to every one and most especially to herself that she is capable of doing more, doing great, and doing it all by herself.
I shared with her that I could relate to what she has gone and is going through now. I was also in such and many other situations when I first set foot in Manila. For someone who was all set and comfortably living in Baguio City, Manila was a totally new world for me. I got to learn a lot of things on my own – from commuting to different and many places, working with different types of people, learning the who’s who in the political and social arena (which I previously only got to learn about through the media), and a whole lot more. There were so many times when I thought I wanted to go back home but my innate fighting spirit which I most likely got from being partly an Igorota held me back as if saying “Hey woman, you gotta keep it together, you’ve still got a long way to go!” And so I did.
Three companies and 13 years later, I’m married to a very supportive and not to mention a hunk-of-a-guy husband and best friend; We have a very smart and very pretty daughter; I am an executive in a stable and booming industry; I have a small business; and I’m about to finish graduate school next year!
Suffice to say that I have “arrived”. My experiences in life range from missing work opportunities, getting fired, dealing with ultra-difficult people, knowing one’s real friends in unexpected situations, adjusting to married life, and making life decisions for another human being (my daughter).
One may say, but that’s what life is all about! Oh yeah, most definitely, but nowadays, when the world we live in is doubly fast-paced, everything is turning digital, there are Starbucks everywhere – recognizing and acknowledging life milestones which I call “lifestones” are not common anymore. People get frustrated easily, they lose the meaning of being who one is meant to be by going through the many facets of life.
I am saddened that very few people celebrate small personal achievements anymore. We sometimes tend to forget that after all, we’re human beings and we are here in this world to make the most out of our borrowed lives, to make ourselves better persons and that we need to continue to grow but then we also need to enjoy life and look at small things as part of the big picture. Without them, life is not exciting!
Being who we are meant to be is a process. Most of the time life throws us bits and pieces of what-have-yous but we just need to embrace all of it and take it in stride. Just like my fave movie character, Forrest Gump says “Life is like a box of chocolates, you’ll never know what you’ll get!”
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