After a Long Hiatus

I know that it has been quite a long time since I last posted something on this website. My apologies to my very modest number of followers (hehe), who personally sent me private messages asking whether this site is still active. I have been quite busy lately having started different ventures here and there — the most recent being that I am now also work as a lecturer on a part time basis at the University of Makati.

Yes, I am back in the academe again and it has been great! I currently teach philosophy subjects such as Ethics and Logic. It dawned on me that I have a bachelor’s and a master’s in philosophy and yet I am not making use of them in my career. From a financial standpoint, they are not making me money. On the other hand, from a personal standpoint, my level of understanding in philosophy had been stagnant for a very long time(more than half a decade), rendering the said degrees to become merely as paper decorations that not even hanging them on the wall would be considered worth it. So last November 2020, I started sending applications, was invited for a panel interview and teaching demonstration in December, got hired in January, and started teaching in February. Now that I teach public university students, my morale has been boosted knowing the fact that in my simple way, I am able to reach out to society through my students and, in effect, have a sense of public service.

Although there are challenges brought about by adding another active stream of income, I am able to manage. One of which is the fact that I have to adapt to the new normal way of teaching considering that the whole world is impacted by this Covid-19 pandemic. We were encouraged to lessen our synchronous classes (real time online classes) in favor of making pre-recorded video lectures that our students could access at their own pace and time. This difficulty is understandable since most of my students are government scholars and (thanks to the the unreliable internet connection in the Philippines) could not afford more expensive internet plans; hence, they attend online classes without turning on their cameras since they are only using a limited amount of data. This poses a challenge to me because it is quite hard talking and not connecting to an audience at the same time. I very much prefer to give a lecture to a physical audience, but these are troubled times and one has to adapt.

Moreover, preparing pre-recorded video lectures consumes a lot of time. It used to be that teacher and professors study and prepare for the lessons in class. Now, apart from constantly updating myself for the subjects that I teach, I have to add more items to my preparation checklist: study the topic, read a book, make an outline summary, create a powerpoint slide, create a video and edit it, upload the video online for my students to see. This requires a lot of work considering that I have a full time job.

However, thanks to technology, I am able to handle it. I know for a fact that this is not a permanent difficulty and it is only burdensome on the first year of teaching since it would be the first time for me to make the materials in class. It should be easier in the succeeding years (should I decide to continue) since I would just have to update my previous materials. So, kapit lang (Hang in there.) as we say in Filipino.

My return to the academe is actually one of the reasons why I decided to work on my website again. One of my projects is to share some of the lessons I give to my students in this website. I plan to add a philosophy section where my site visitors will also be able to see them if they are interested to know more about philosophy. The lessons will be delivered in Taglish (Tagalog and English) though. hehe. So this is an additional feature to look forward to very soon.

Aside from my academic venture, I also worked hard to find a tenant for my two real estate properties. I hired a 3rd party broker to see if they could find one for me. However, after a year of waiting, they were not able to find one for me. Thus, I decided to work on it myself. In building wealth, we cannot rely on others. There will be times when we will have to take matters in our own hands. Now, I am happily making rental income from my two properties. I will write about it in a separate blog article. They may not be enough to substitute what I make from my corporate job, but they establish the foundations of building my own empire.

I still continue to work as a bilingual specialist. The money is good and it pays the bills. At this point, it would be crazy to give it all up, at least not during these times of pandemic. Our company is generous and quick enough to respond to the needs of the times. When the Covid-19 virus first hit the Philippines in March 2020, we were one of the first companies that started to implement the work-from-home (WFH) setup. I continue to enjoy the benefits of working from home and that is the reason why I was able to recover, contemplate on my next steps, and start different ventures.

So far those have been the updates I am sharing for now. I will definitely work on this website more often starting today. There are quite a number of contents I am going to upload. I will definitely share them.

Again, to all those who expected to see more contents, my apologies. I am back!