At Long Last A Birthday At Home

For the past few years, I have been celebrating my birthday outside of the Philippines. This year has not been any different. Only this year, I am celebrating it at home.

Yup, New Zealand is my home now. It is where my heart is. It is where my journey brought me after 36 years of wandering.

It took all these years to arrive, and yet I have this feeling that this is just the end of a new beginning. Another journey awaits me here and I am itching to take it head on.

But before I rattle on, let me tell you what my birthday was here a couple of days ago. I woke up beside the woman I love. I worked from home, relaxed and stress free. A little past five in the afternoon, Onie and I headed to a fancy restaurant to dine with Christine and Bea. I ordered a sumptuous steak dish that was perfectly cooked and melted in the mouth. We drove home in just under 10 minutes and still had plenty of time left to unwind for the evening.

That, in a nutshell, is what home is for me now. What a lifestyle, eh?

Oops, I got to go. Time now for a nice jog through the forest. Oh, and did I mention to you that it is only 4:00pm?

25,000 Feet Above the Long White Clouds and Saw Nothing

Sometime in late 2007, my wife Onie and I tried and applied for a permanent visa to New Zealand. A little over a year later, we found ourselves on a plane headed to Christchurch, and what is to be the most daunting journey of our lives.

This blog chronicles my adventure on this land of the long white cloud.

The flight into New Zealand took us to Brisbane in Australia, then to Sydney, before the plane headed to Christchurch. As the captain was announcing our descent to the premiere city of the Canterbury plains, Onie and I were craning our necks to get a glimpse of the land we will be calling home. Disappointingly, all we saw were a multitude of blondes staring out of the windows since we were situated in middle aisle. Now I would not have minded this in other instances, but this time around, the blondes were unlike the ones that Poms and I used to ogle on in Laguna Beach. As a matter of fact, they were old people. Blonde, maybe, but no thank you.

So, this may be the reason why New Zealand approved our immigration papers. They must have figured their country needed more young dark haired people. I don't know about the other criteria though because I slipped in quite easily.

And so it started...