A newly-landed immigrant’s reflection: Monthsary
I’ll be collecting my Permanent Residency card later today. If not for my friend who visited me here yesterday at my place, I wouldn’t be prompted to phone the person whose address I nominated for the card delivery. Didn’t really expect it to arrive so soon, and it has somehow fast-tracked everything that I wish to do while I’m here in Vancouver.
I’m also celebrating my month-sary today. Just can’t imagine how I tried to make sense of what was happening within me and around me. Nothing special about how I managed living for a month. In fact, it’s really pathetic how I would stay in my room and only come out when it’s time for me to cook, eat, wash dishes, and laundry. I have the Internet, my Roger’s connection (Globe Int’l Roaming service partner), my Fido ($10 prepaid unlimited phone calls between 6:30pm and 8 a.m.) to connect with the outside world though, and I must say it isn’t enough.
Today is celebration of a month of broken routine. Friday spells easy back in Manila. Weekends too. Now, I can only wonder why Friday lost it’s appeal to me.
My coming here to Vancouver has displaced me in some way, and to a certain extent has impacted on how I live my life at the moment. It’s this process of accepting new lifestyle is one thing that I have to yet to come into terms with.
No, there’s no culture shock for me. It is mind conditioning that I did during my first few months living alone in Manila, so shall be my strategy here. In Manila, there were moments when I was overcome by deep loneliness and sometimes gripped by despair. Candid realisations stream in my mind, unchallenged by reasoning—foreshadowing what is yet to come. I dissuaded these sad feelings and confronted it as a feeling that I could possibly encounter once severed from my family in the Philippines. From there, I decided how to deal with it and somehow learned the ropes of immediate processing my emotions and thoughts. You see–it’s a form of self-preservation that vested me with self-confidence and self-respect. In my daily brush with reality, I keep my feet planted on what I think is best for me, despite the odds.
Having a PR card would mean a lot to me. It will buy me mobility, opportunity, freedom, potentiality. I need to head off now, see you in a bit.
