01361: A Sietch Without Prince

Well, Prince has successfully made it to Boracay. It took a lot longer since we opted to test out 2GO Travel's Batangas-Caticlan ferry but it's nice to know that things turned out okay. He mentioned the trip was pretty peaceful and he didn't even feel the motion of the boat at times.

Now he's busy going from resort to resort at Boracay as he secures more details and builds relationships for A.S.A. Travel and Tours, our little family-run travel agency. I really see big things for this business, but of course it's going to take a LOT of work. But this is also Prince's dream and so he's really pouring himself into it. Tobie and I can only do our best to support him as best we can, although the travel industry is really his forte and not ours.

But it's all rather exciting indeed, since it's becoming quite the interesting challenge for my marketing skills, which I'd like to think are decent but still a tad too focused on the BPO / ITO industry. So I'm still learning a thing or two about the local market in that regard, plus the need to figure out how to branch out operations to address those outside of Metro Manila or those who do not use the internet a lot.

But in the meantime the Sietch is rather quiet. Tobie and I are still going about our business of course but with our differing work schedules, it means that there are stretches of time when we're apart. And while we do our best to stay in touch over SMS or chat, those times apart also coincide with our respective sleeping periods, so the need to rest becomes inevitable.

Even the animals seem a tad bit somber given Prince is away. Yoshi still pesters Tobie for attention, but otherwise he tends to just laze around a lot. Ar-Yannah is quite the funny little fighting fish given he seems to enjoy lying down on the bed of colored glass beads and plastic crystals that decorate the aquarium. I made sure to clean the aquarium yesterday and I've been handling feeding as well.

But seriously, that fish doesn't even get excited when I drop the food pellets in. At least Yoshi gets a little excitable when I bring out the can of dog food.

Prince will be home by tomorrow night, although he'll be going to a meeting right after his trip, complete with all his travel gear. I wish he didn't have to work so hard and push himself to his limits almost every day, but he's a man of many passions and many dreams and he's really doing his best to achieve them all.

And Tobie is in a similar boat given how he's juggling two full-time jobs. One's the family business, which never really ends as anyone else in a family business would know. The other is his amazing job as a game designer where he gets to exercise his creativity to the fullest day after day. And that's an amazing thing indeed for someone as creative as Tobie is. And I'm proud of what he's doing as well.

That leaves me running marketing campaigns for A.S.A. Travel and Tours and of course coping with my "day job" of completing proposals and building even more marketing collateral at the BPO company where I work. Certainly makes for a busy life indeed. And outside of blogging, my photography and caring for our pets and the Sietch in general, I still need find time to write.

We named our home Sietch Creare to stress that is a place of safety to express ourselves freely. I really need to focus my efforts to where they need to be - and it needs to be sooner rather than later.