Howdy! I am an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW). I love my work. Well, whatever work I’m in, I do try to learn loving it. That is why my employers love me back. Is it not amazing? Amazing to know that the people you work for are satisfied and happy with your performance. Right attitude towards work and towards the people who provide the work: Respect, discipline, perseverance, honesty and being trustworthy. These are the traits which I tucked in always in my system. It is not easy being an OFW, but when you do have these values, then it is not hard either. I have been abroad since 1999 until todate, and in most of these years lots of things have changed and improved in many aspects of my life. But there is one thing which surely will never change: The humble person in me. 

I was a media practitioner for many years. Started as news reporter for Mindanao Daily Mirror (Davao City local daily) for quite sometime then later worked as Column-writer for The Mindanao Scanner owned by the late Noel Miranda (my father.) When journalist Noel Miranda was murdered in the year 1988, I took over the publication business. Shortly, family matters intervened in those years where I lay low from the media. In 1991 I went back to circulation and became a correspondent for Davao del Norte Bureau of Peryodiko Dabaw now Sunstar Davao. Setting a Bureau office on my own, those were the times which I considered ‘peak years’ of my life socially.

I consider myself as a really sincere, hard working person. In the middle of my media activities, I was offered part time jobs here and there, one at the Admin Department of Gold City Commercial Complex, Incorporated, another job as Technical Assistant of RB Oliva and Uy Construction Company. I had also a brief stint at Guardian Angel Shuttle Company in Manila. Different tasks I have handled, different challenges I have taken and different people I have dealt with, various experiences which I think have helped me a lot in honing my skills and talents, most of all developed the very best person that I know I can be in any field that I land into.

I got involved in different media and civic organizations. 1996 I was Vice President of Davao Province Press and Radio-TV Club (DPPRC). I was a member of Mindanao Press and Radio-Tv Association (MINPRA). I also joined the Junior Chamber International (Philippine Jaycees) where I was appointed as Regional Secretary (Region XI) Southern Mindanao in 1995. Then in 1996 I was President of Tagum ‘Green Pearl’ Jaycees. Years of social responsibility awareness had started to unfold.

Though my newspaper The Mindanao Scanner came out only once a week, I claimed to be the youngest Publisher of commercial tabloids in Davao, Philippines in way back mid-1990’s. Well, until I was offered a job abroad as Assistant English Tuition Teacher carrying a domestic helper visa in Brunei Darussalam, I packed my things up and shut down my paper. It was not easy getting diverted from a glamorous career into what everyone calls undignified, odd employment, but I have no regrets. It was another challenge, an oppportunity and an adventure to explore the life beyond the borders and meet people of multi origins…though there maybe tears, but all is worth it. Rest is history.

Digging my personality deeply, I am adventurous, strong-willed and would take risk for my family. Choosy when it comes to finding friends but stay loyal to those who are true. I also have the tendency for service. I love to help especially if I know I am pretty capable of doing so. But I hate those people who think that they can fool me, or those who understimate me, or those who take me for granted, or those who abuse my help. That just wont work on me because I always extend my hand and heart and lay kindness in good faith, but once betrayed, alas, I curse the very day when that person was born! 

This is Joy Beldua Miranda, currently an OFW, but forever, a writer. Yes. Someday I will go back home bringing all the richest that I have gathered from abroad, and while I enjoy the fruits of my own toil, right there under the banana tree in our backyard, I will continue to scribble, telling everyone that life is common sense. When you want to be better at anything, with humility embrace the truth that it is not easy, but with common sense, it is not hard either. Just love it.