At this point the reader might ask why were Lydia and I going against the tide? So many Filipinos have left their homeland, seeking greener pastures, especially in the U.S. And thousands, maybe millions more dream of leaving. I guess the answer is that it’s all in the perspective. Those who want to leave the Philippines are mainly younger people and family breadwinners who think that they have a better shot and a future making dollars abroad and remitting pesos back to the Philippines. The result is that the Philippines chief export is OFW’s—overseas Filipino workers.

But many former Philippine citizens, like my wife who have already lived abroad for many years and who have a pension, and /or social security realize that their money and retirement years are better spent in the land of their birth.

In Lydia’s case, she wanted to give back something to the Filipino people as well, and as will be seen later in this narrative, that’s exactly what she did.

Before we knew it, the next phase in our timeline was upon us. This was going to be the most difficult part of all: Lydia would go to the Philippines by herself to lay the groundwork for our new life there, meaning that we would have to be separated for several months while I stayed behind and continued earning money and wrapping up our affairs in California. So in November, 2004, Lydia took that giant step.

Now that I was alone, the thought of planning and executing the final disengagement of life in the U.S. seemed daunting. But I didn’t have much time to worry about it. This was a task that had to be done, and I had to be up to the challenge of carrying it out.

A very difficult step was projecting just how much time and funds I needed to finish the job. I couldn’t let being apart from Lydia cloud my judgment. It had to be a realistic and objective timetable and budget. I finally settled on August, 2005. Once I established a date, it made the task more concrete and I was able to actually see the light at the end of the tunnel.

And speaking of job, naturally I was not about to tell my employer what I was up to. As mentioned, I needed several more months at work to generate the income required to finalize the move. Keeping my mouth shut would seem simple enough, except that I’m not very skillful in cover-ups, and I was afraid that I might accidentally say something at work that would give away what was afoot. Fortunately, I managed to keep mum after all. However, as will be seen later this confidentiality almost became unraveled from a source totally out of left field

Hiding my plans from my employer is one thing, but we were not about to leave our families in the U.S. in the dark and then spring our intentions on them at the last minute. As it turns out, they were very supportive. I don’t have many close relatives, mainly a few cousins with whom I have a strong bond, and they were happy for us. My parents have long since passed away, and my few remaining aunts and uncles are distant in more ways than one.

Lydia on the other hand has a large close-knit family with siblings, nieces, nephews, etc., residing both in the States and the Philippines. It was her family members whose tremendous contribution in time, effort, and resources made our transition so much easier. For example, when Lydia left for the Philippines several months ahead of me to look for a place to live and set things up, her sisters in Manila gladly took her in to live with them until she found a place of her own. And as previously mentioned another family member, a step-niece in Lydia’s home town, received and watched over the numerous cartons of our belongings that we had sent on ahead of our arrival.

I just can’t overemphasize how much of a difference Lydia’s relatives made in easing the transition of our lives from America to the Philippines.

Flash forward to May, 2005. With my sights set on leaving the U.S. in August, it was now time to apply for the aforementioned visa from the Philippine consulate. By the way, this form may be available on line for downloading, depending on the Consulate General office in the reader’s locale. Such was the case for the CG in Los Angeles.

But when I pulled up the form on the internet, I received a rude shock. One of the requirements for visa application approval is that the applicant must give notice to his/her employer about his/her intentions to resign. Further, the employer must confirm this notification by signing off on the form. Now what was I going to do? I needed to work three more months to have enough funds for our plans. Keep in mind that in California as in most parts of the country, an employee can be fired at any time for any almost any reason under the doctrine of “at will” employment. Many companies regard employees who intend to resign in the near future as damaged goods, and it so happens that my company had a very strict loyalty policy. So if I let the cat out of the bag so soon, I faced possible immediate termination.

Apparently, in the Philippines, such is not the case. At least on paper, employees here are protected from such arbitrary dismissal. Perhaps the Philippines Bureau of Immigration just assumes that such worker protections abide in America as well. Well, in any case I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. So I went to Philippine consulate to see if there was some way that I could skip this part of the application. It turns out there was another version of the visa form available that didn’t include this employer notification section. Needless to say I took that revision and ran.

But this would not be the last close call that I had. A major requirement for approval of a visa was a doctor-certified clean bill of health. In my case, there were some previous and current health issues which I nevertheless felt were not serious enough to put me at risk for travel and relocation. Yet my doctor didn’t see it that way and was reluctant qualify me as physically fit. If she listed my physical condition as inferior on the visa form, it could have spelled rejection of my visa application. I finally convinced her that her reservations were exaggerated and that I really was up to making the change.

A long time has passed since then, and although I have had occasional and mainly routine medical problems since my arrival, they’re nothing that local doctors haven’t been able to treat, so as it turns out my former physician in California made a good call after all in giving her medical authorization for my plans. I will discuss local medical care in greater detail in Part 2.

Finally, it was early August, 2005. I was now prepared to give 10 days’ notice to my employer. To my relief, management accepted the news very graciously. I think that’s because I stated that I was retiring rather than just resigning. I was allowed to stay on for the full 1 ½ weeks and was given a very nice sendoff.

On the day that I turned in my intent to retire I felt some trepidation about leaving my job. But I didn’t have much time to dwell on it. My focus now was on questioning whether I had allowed enough time to wrap things up from the day that I stopped working on August 14 to the planned day of departure from the U.S - August 25. I had also given notice to my landlord for occupancy termination effective that date. I had long since made airline reservations and bought my ticket. So by all accounts things were pretty much set in stone. Now the clock was really ticking, and things were going to get interesting - but in ways I hadn’t imagined. .