Manila, this is goodbye

With hardly a week to go before Christmas and a bit more before we usher in another year, I couldn’t help but reflect on the previous months and take stock of personal milestones. It seems 2015 will be hard to top because it’s the year I finally gave myself the Christmas present I’ve been dreaming about since I was 18: a life in Europe — and a mostly wonderful one at that.

As a first-year university student, I harbored a wish to paint and live as an artist in Prague as I had read in Wallpaper that it was then a city on the rise in terms of both tourism and cultural cachet. Then, when it became apparent that that plan needed considerable rethinking, I focused my energy on London, a place I’d visited quite often in my early to mid-20s. With the sensory delights the British capital has to offer to wide-eyed youth, I fell madly in love with it, from rides on Bus 11 — which barrels down the King’s Road and passes by the entrance to Downing Street — to visits to the now-gentrified boroughs of the East End. But now, squarely in my 30s, I find myself in Helsinki, a European metropolis that is not quite Prague and definitely not London.

For most of my friends and some members of my family, my decision to pack my bags and buy a one-way ticket to this part of the world appeared sudden. In some ways it was. In late July, I received a job offer to work as a copywriter at Finland’s leading communications agency. Throughout August, I was interviewed via Skype and asked to complete some writing tests. By the end of September, I was sent a copy of the contract. After attending to other matters — moving out of my apartment, getting my teeth fixed, exercising as much as possible — I landed in Finland, slept, then went to work the next day.

Under Wraps

I kept a lot of people in the dark mainly because I didn’t want to have to deal with their disappointment if I didn’t get the job I, most likely, would’ve talked nonstop to them about. I didn’t want to jinx it so I played my cards close to the chest. It eventually became clear to them, however, through my Facebook and Instagram posts, that this wasn’t going to be a holiday.

While I’ve only been away for a month, I noticed that I’ve grown by leaps and bounds. This isn’t my first time to live overseas, but it’s my first time to move away as a young professional who earns a more than decent wage. When I face certain challenges — whether it’s furnishing an empty flat or finding the time to do laundry — I’ve had to remind myself that, perhaps, it isn’t this decision to uproot myself that is stressful. It’s the stress of being stressed that I find draining. (Besides, I’d rather plug away in a place such as Helsinki, where things actually work the way they should, than in Manila, where hardly anything ever functions.)  

I suppose this particular holiday season will be extra special: I’ve left the old me behind to make way for the person I’ve always wanted to become. I may be a bit too old for a Christmas list, but luckily, someone somewhere has been listening to my unsubtle mutterings about building a life in Europe. My journey has been extraordinarily smooth and undeniably fun so far, so cheers to that. Happy Christmas!

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Editor's note: Don't fret, Gino will continue writing his column from Helsinki.