This is my first post on this Reflections community here on Hive and I want to share something that I thought would never exist, the term loving kindness which I experience with myself after meeting my online friends since the year 2016.
Loving-kindness is hard to find right now, there are many definitions of the term loving-kindness, according to Cambridge Dictionary it is the quality of feeling love and being kind towards yourself and other people.
The definition fits well with my life experience of meeting these guys online for the past few years. I met Chris Rice, the Founder of D.Buzz during the year 2016 through Facebook Messenger and since then we've been in contact but in the year 2019, I was so busy with my day job that I forgot to message him.
Fast forward to the year 2023, I tried to contact Chris Rice through messenger and I was lucky enough that he responded to my messages and since then our connections got even stronger.
Reasons Why I Contacted Chris Rice:
During my busy days, I was given the opportunity to finally use one of the Computers (PC) to get some things done online and while surfing the net I tried to check some updates from my friends and tried to review all my accounts particularly my accounts about cryptos.
This time I remembered that I was onboarded by Chris Rice on Steem during the year 2018 and luckily I was able to retrieve my keys on Hive. I started looking for a place to share my daily activities online.
I was also desperate to earn some extra income because my personal news website was not profitable anymore due to the huge backlash from Facebook, most of my traffic came from Facebook so when my articles were no longer shown on my Facebook Pages, my website views dropped significantly.
After discovering more about the Hive community I happened to see a post from the DBuzz community on Hive and I was intrigued because I remembered Chris Rice told me about a certain project before, so I contacted him and he immediately responded. I also posted some short-form content on DBuzz and was so satisfied with the engagement of the community.
To cut a long story short, I decided to venture once again into writing and blogging through DBuzz and Hive and even left my job as a community organizer in the Local Government to work for DBuzz and to share my expertise in Search Engine Optimization.
Why Loving Kindness:
When I decided to resign from my previous jobs, I was unsure with my decision whether I could make money or I could fail once again, but what I experienced is loving kindness at its best.
My intention is to only get away from the stressful jobs that I felt I was not given an opportunity to use my full potential as a former social media manager and search engine optimizer in a company that I once previously co-founded.
My condition for joining the DBuzz Team in Davao City is just for me to secure my site by transferring it to a self-hosted one from the Google-hosted website. Chris Rice was able to fulfill that promise to me, and in just one month of stay in Davao City, I felt like I belonged to a family and my decision to venture once again to blogging is not in vain.
Arriving in Davao City from Bantayan Island:
I shared the story of my travels from Bantayan Island to Davao City in a blog post earlier on Hive, but one of the most significant parts of my life was the assurance that I have a place to stay in Davao City, and equipment to use for online activities and food to eat and I will find ways to make money online with the guidance of Chris Rice and our new circle of friends in Davao City.
How I Experience Loving Kindness:
Within a week of stay in Davao City, I experienced loving kindness with my own sight when we happened to visit a McDonald's Store in Matina, Davao City, when Chris Rice invited a beggar to eat with us inside the McDo restaurant, although it was the first time that we met that beggar.
The beggar was so happy when Chris invited her to eat with us and even offered a Christian song for us after eating and the best experience of that meeting was when the beggar decided to eat only half of her food because she wanted her son way back home to join her meals.
In one instance when we were driving around Davao City and happened to pass by a Jollibee drive-through, a beggar came to us and asked for money, instead of giving money to the beggar, Chris Rice decided to add some orders and gave it to the beggar who joyfully accepted the offer and eat her meals in the road.
These were some of the experiences that I could remember since I joined Chris Rice here in Davao City.
Right now we are in Metro Manila attending some Web3 events and once again I experienced a loving kindness gesture from one of Chris Rice's long-time friends PJ Entrepreneur who did not hesitate to host us in one of his condo units in Ortigas City.
PJ Entrepreneur, a businessman and owner of Targetron.com offered his space for us to stay here in Manila and the place in Ortigas is indeed accessible to all parts of the Metro and served as our staging place for various meetings and meetups here in Metro Manila.
I would like to give thanks to these American citizens who are now calling the Philippines their home for the loving kindness gestures shown to us, ordinary Filipinos whom they met online.
Thank you so much for this kind of people and I am looking forward to learning more from them as the days go by definitely will do everything as long as we can afford to give back the kindness they showed towards us.
Hive Family From Davao City, Philippines (Image: Source)
Photos are mine taken through Chris Rice's iPhone unless otherwise stated.
Hi, everyone! My name is Ed Umbao, also known as 
I have been blogging since 2010 when I was working as an OFW in Saudi Arabia. I became a member of Hive in 2019 and posted only two articles before returning to short-form blogging through D.Buzz in February 2023