Work in the city, live in the province

One positive result of the COVID-19 pandemic is that it has opened our eyes to the viability of working from home. It has even shown us that it’s possible to live remotely in the province while working virtually in the city. I’ve heard of professionals who have relocated their families to residences in Batangas, Cavite, Laguna, Rizal, Bataan, and Zambales, while continuing to run their offices or maintaining their employment in Metro Manila. They have either entered into long-term lease or purchased farm or coastal homes.

I myself have been residing 600 kilometers from Metro Manila in Cagayan province since the pandemic began, but still continuing to work for our law office in Makati City. I’ve attended court hearings as far away as Cebu, via video conferencing. A brilliant artist I engaged to design our provincial home, Antonio Leaño, supervised the construction from his house in Antipolo City, and he completed the project even without having set foot on the construction site. My wife has been taking music lessons from a talented theater singer, Sean Nolasco, who’s based in Iloilo City.

Offices and businesses have adopted systems to accommodate work-from-home arrangements. Hopefully, this arrangement will not be temporary and made co-terminus with the pandemic, but will instead become a permanent work system. There are benefits for everyone: for employees, reduced transportation expenses and more freed-up time for family and hobbies; for business owners, reduced need for work space, and less expenses for electricity and other costs of physically hosting employees, and; for the national economy, more job opportunities, and less road traffic.

People who have always lived in the cities may entertain doubts that relocating to the province will deprive them of the conveniences and luxuries they’ve been used to and which they think are only available in urban centers. Their misgivings are unfounded. Almost all towns now have access to nearby regional cities which have malls and stores where one can buy the kind of clothes, food, and other items that used to be available only in big cities like Metro Manila. The proliferation of online stores, the availability of online shopping from regular stores, and fast delivery by package transport companies, have made everything sold in the cities now accessible in the provinces.

The only remaining advantage of the big cities now is their wide selection of restaurants that offer specialty cuisines. One misses, for instance, restaurants that serve Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Persian, Spanish, and Italian gastronomies, as well as those that serve the classic fares of local regions like Bicol and Iloilo. But there are now dining places in the provinces that offer an increasing number of these cuisines.

The provinces have their own food advantages as well. I have never experienced in the city the fresh and sweet taste of newly-picked vegetables sold in our town market. I can request for sugar-free peanut butter from the women’s cooperative. I can order cake with lessened sugar from a neighborhood pastry maker. I can ask for more garlic and less fat from the lola who makes delicious longganisa. Lunch or dinner fare that my family orders on special occasions have the ingredients and quality of home-cooked meals. All these food choices are expensively marketed as artisanal fare in the cities, but they are food selections readily and reasonably available in the provinces.

The best feature of provincial living that city slickers would surely envy is the very low cost of food. Visiting city residents are shocked at the amount of food they can buy with little money. One can have a huge serving of batil patung (local noodles with lots of minced carabao meat, egg, and vegetables) for less than P60 in our province. The same is true for food specialties in other provinces.

Even with all the havoc that the pandemic has brought into our lives, it has nonetheless shown us beneficially that it’s possible to enjoy the blessings of both worlds — working in the city while enjoying life in the province.

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