Working Abroad with Multi-Cultural Colleagues...

It's always been a dream of most if not all Filipinos to travel anywhere around the world, be it for vacation, immigrant or be an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW).

There comes a time in all our lives where we needed changes or our financial status and for a lot of people, that change is moving to another country to work and counted as one of the many Filipinos whom our countrymen called "Modern Day Heroes".
Working abroad isn't that easy specially for the first-timer like me where adjustments be part of your struggle in first few weeks. I've learned to be firm so as to fight homesickness for all my love ones left behind in our country, not to mention the close ties I had with my family while am still there in our homeland, Philippines.

One major adjustment that one needed also to consider in working abroad is the flexibility of one's personality specially in dealing with your colleagues. Taking my case, am currently working in an Accounting & Finance Dept. of one of the Group of Companies here in Riyadh, KSA and in our department alone, we are compose of different nationalities (Bangladeshi, Indian, Jordanian, Egyptian, Syrian, Palestinian, Pakistani, Sudanese & Saudi Nationals) and working with all those races entails self-confidence and competence so as to proved to them that Filipinos indeed are "world-class professionals". From them, we are bound to encounter interesting characters and lifestyles.

Whether we set off to work abroad with the help of mediation organization or well-established recruitment agencies or with the intention of living by our wits, still gradually we will learn the essence of knowing and considering the multi-cultural differences of different people and inevitably realized that there will be some surprises along the way. Masalama! (Arabic term for good bye).