Pakistani & Filipino Workers

Delayed post, November 14, 2015 Vienna

I was still in my hotel room at around noon when the housekeeping knocked on my door. So as not to inconvenience her by asking her to clean my room later in the day, I let her clean my room even If I was around. She quietly changed the bedding, refilled the toiletries. No vacuum cleaning to my big relief.

She and her husband are originally from Pakistan, the equivalent of what we call OFW.

There are approximately fifty thousand Filipinos currently living in Austria. The first migration was mostly nurses working in hospitals mostly in Vienna. The number gradually increased as they were joined by their families, relatives, friends.

The guy working on graveyard shift at the front desk is a Filipino. His parents are also working in Vienna sending money to their poor relatives in the Philippines.

Majority of the McDonald’s crew near our hotel are Filipinos. In fact the three ladies at the counter were puro Pilipino. I am sure their parents chose to live and work in Vienna to give them a better life.

There’s a Filipina sales lady and a half-Filipino sales guy at the LV store in Vienna.

There are a few hundred Cebuanos working in Iceland.

With the number of Filipinos working at the Hamad International Airport, one would not feel foreign. If it’s more fun in the Philippines it’s “Feel at Home in Qatar” with the 300,000 Pinoys in this oil-rich country.

Roughly, the number of Filipinos residing / working abroad is around 15 million with the biggest chunk in the United States. This does not include the undocumented workers.

The world has become one big city. People of every nationality move to foreign land for different reasons. For education, for work, for love. We go where we could find peace, happiness and opportunities.