First of all, thank you for dropping by and please don't go away yet. Let me at least introduce myself. My name is Delfino, but since we are now virtual friends I'll let you call me Pino just like what my friends like to call me. I am quite a shy person so please take it easy on me especially when it comes to language that I didn't grow on. It's kind of hard for me to get those bits of words in my head as if being in a hot seat right now. But I will make this simple and just be who I am.
I am born on an island where the Pacific ocean can be seen and surrounded by abundant seawater, my beloved home town called Guiuan Eastern Samar, Philippines. If you remember the typhoon Haiyan, that the place where the first landing of the storm where it destroyed not only our home but devastated my whole family. I tell you up to this day my heart feels like sinking whenever I remember that night when the typhoon happened. I thought that I am still lucky to be alive and my family and I would never forget that terrifying experience.
I should tell you more about the story because the media even barely covered our hometown situation even though we were the first town that was hit by the storm. Almost every home was washed out, and would not have access to food if I didn't step up and looted some canned foods at one of the small stores that were already destroyed by the typhoon. At that time I didn't feel guilty it was a matter of life and death, we were literary for food. I cried inside after what I saw the next morning of the typhoon, anger was that all I felt, why would mother nature do such a thing like this? We didn't have much, and I have siblings to take care of, I didn't have savings, we were only living day by day because that time I was still in college but I was already doing different kinds of part-time job just to help out my family and then the typhoon destroyed our home! My siblings were even more devastated than I was, I saw the look on their faces, the saddest faces I've ever seen on them. I wanted to just take all the pain and sadness that they felt that day. It was really heartbreaking!
But life moved on even after what happened and we started building a tiny home that I and my siblings with our very hard-working mom can be at least be comfortable to sleep in at night, but the worries every time a new typhoon arrives we can ignore.
I moved to Manila with my girlfriend hoping to make a living and be able to help my family. I have been working over 12 hours a day, waking up three hours before going to work because of the crazy traffic in Manila. Been in between jobs because some employers just decide that they don't need their employees anymore even though we were working like crazy and paid very little. But I didn't mind because I wanted the experience and I took every opportunity that I was comfortable with.
When the pandemic happens my life almost felt like it sank just like after the typhoon Haiyan. There were months were we not working because the business was temporarily closed because of covid. We didn't get paid of course and that was the worse part so I decided to use my small savings to buy a pedal bike and do food panda delivery. But a lot of my customers didn't trust me because I didn't have the panda storage bag and some of them canceled the order so I didn't make any money but rather even cost some money coz I had to pay a penalty for not delivering the order and the complaint of the customer. Since I didn't have enough money left to purchase one, I decided to build my own using styrofoam and I designed it like the food panda logo. And hey I need your empathy here because I am proud of my DIY Food Panda Bag! =)
After making my DIY food panda bag, my customers started to trust me and get their orders, see? There are always good things for us, we just need to keep pushing forward.
Now that I am here on this platform, my hope is that I can share my creativity and anything that I can bring to this community.
I hope you will follow me here and my stories. That's it for now, see you in my next post. Salamat!
