My Story
How I landed to be an OFW?
I never planned to be an OFW at all, I was only interested in roaming and exploring different places in this globe. It all started with the occurrence of the famous tragedy in the world, September 11 attack in 2001. That time I was on holiday in Berlin when the news broke up, I never expected that the event would change my whole plan of further travel to the US from Germany. When my Schengen Visa is consumed, I was compelled to get the flight back home to Manila.
The tragedy affected the entire tourism industry in the whole world and being a freelance tour guide those days, I got very few job assignments from the contracting tour operator in Manila. My income was very less, not even enough to support myself. I browsed the classified ads of a leading newspaper and found an advertisement for a job in Qatar and Bahrain, I clipped the ads and the next day I went straight to the recruitment agency as a walk-in applicant.
The recruitment agency for Qatar is more accessible hence I went there first, with the plan of going to the next one after I completed the preliminaries from the first agency. However, I was right away shortlisted and was asked to come back in 3 days time for the employer’s interview, so I went home and did not bother to go to the second agency anymore.
To make the story short, I was selected by the employer’s representative for the position of Sales Secretary in Ramada Hotel Doha (today it is now Ramada Plaza Doha), a 4 star international brand hotel in Doha, Qatar. This marked the beginning of my life as an OFW.