Moving to the Philippines – Won The Internship

I won the internship with Chris Ducker.

Everything has changed so quickly over the past few weeks since I spoke on the phone with Chris Ducker. He told me I had won. I’m beginning the adrenaline filled preparation for departure.

• Selling my stuff,
• Researching a new land,
• Prepare myself for the tasks to come

Selling My Stuff

To be honest I don’t have too much. For the most part I haven’t added to my material world since I arrived. As a rule, I’m planning on packing very light for the move to Cebu City.

I’m most concerned that I set Veronica up so that it is easy for her to turn the key off on the New Zealand life and jump on a plane.

Researching a New Land

Researching the Philippines has been astonishing. Here is a bullet point of things that I’ve learned over the past month, and never had heard of before:

• The Philippines was a Spanish colony for nearly 300 years
• The Filipinos were on the cusp of freedom, they had beaten the Spanish back from the whole country except the walls of Manila
• Then the Spanish seceded the Philippines to the USA
• The USA and the Philippines began a terrible war involving scorched earth campaigns, concentration camps and untold misery.
• The USA lost about 4,000 troops the filipinos lost thousands and even more civilians.

On a happier note; I also learned that the Philippines has:

• A polo club (I’ve always wanted to play polo)
• FANTASTIC Diving
• Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Eskrimador Lessons (I plan to train in martial arts while I’m there)
• A growing economy
• A lovely change in cost of living

Tasks to Come

I’ve got to improve upon my video editing skills. So I started making some videos over the past month. First off, I had to film something. Luckily, I’ve been working on The Rock up in the Bay of Islands. I had some awesome material to film. So I put effort into making better iMovie videos:

Mix up some Sublime, house boating, diving, kayaking, fishing and beautiful sunsets with iMovie and you can’t go wrong.

But my interest was sparked with this. I wanted to take it further. When I get to Cebu I want to start adding value to whatever Chris is looking to build. The next step was the professional program called Adobe Premiere.

Again I needed something to film. Luckily, my good roommates invited me to go with them to Snowplanet up on the North Shore (Auckland). We took some dodgy videos of our less than expertise snowboarding skills. To be honest, I thought the project would be a failure as I replayed the dark ugly raw footage of our trip. I knew Premiere was a professional grade program and I started editing with merely the hope that I could create something worth watching.

I learned that Premiere is like the Photoshop of digital movie editing. Despite the fact that the footage was almost entirely too dark, I was able to bring the images out with effects and building the contrast. I wouldn’t have been able to do this with the simpler, more user friendly programs.

With a contrast adjustment and  some fiddling with lights I was able to piece this together.

Mix together some snow time shenanigans, The Strokes and some sweet new toys. Can’t go too wrong can you?

Most of all, I’m really happy with the learning curve. Premier is a killer program and I have confidence that I can make some high quality videos in the future.

Photos From the Past Few Weeks

Veronica and I have

Finally

I’m getting ready to go to the Philippines. Veronica and I will be spending a few months apart while I find solid ground and a healthy lifestyle in that strange country. I’m enjoying the anticipation for departure. Soon enough, I’ll be saying hello in Tagalog.

-Ian