I’m Victor, a Filipino diplomat and lawyer currently serving at the Philippine Embassy in Beijing on my first foreign posting. I started this blog more than twenty-five years ago (now nearing twenty-six), and it has somehow followed me through different chapters of my life: as a high school student, a university activist, a young lawyer, a backpacker, a graduate student in France, and now as a diplomat in China. Social media in the late 2000s sort of disrupted this project when it became more convenient to just publish a tweet or an Instagram/Facebook post. However, every once in a while, I still make an effort to document my life through words and photos in this public personal space, away from the distractions and pressures of social networks.
Before law and diplomacy, I thought my calling was to tell stories with a camera, or perhaps to be in front of one. I studied Film and Audio-Visual Communication at the University of the Philippines Diliman, graduating cum laude, and spent much of my university years immersed in student councils, organizations, and many extracurricular activities. I eventually went on to study law at the University of Santo Tomas, where, despite my attempt to keep a lower profile, I somehow still found myself elected into student unions, drawn to campus initiatives, and pursuits that went well beyond the boundaries of my own studies.
Looking back, my campus years probably revealed something about me early on: no matter how much I try to retreat into my own pursuits and happiness, I often find myself pulled toward responsibilities larger than myself. Perhaps some forms of happiness are found not in living solely for oneself, but in being part of something greater. But I am getting ahead of the story.
After law school, I spent several years moving through different corners of the legal profession. I was an associate in a Manila law firm, a management assistant at the government’s communications office, investigator at the corporate and securities regulator. For a while during law school I was a legislative officer in the House of Representatives for a youth party-list.
By the time I decided to pursue graduate studies in France, I was already carrying a certain level of exhaustion. In some ways, leaving for France was an attempt to, again, step away and see whether a more anonymous life elsewhere might suit me better. Paris became a second home for more than two years, where I pursued two Master of Laws degrees at Université Paris 2 – Panthéon-Assas: in European Union Law and in International Arbitration & Dispute Settlement, both finished with high honors (mention bien). Those years were among my happiest.
Restlessness and traveling have also always been part of me. I’ve crossed northern India by bus and train, wandered through Sri Lanka, backpacked across much of Southeast Asia, and explored France and its neighbors. I still dream of continental journeys through South America and Africa, perhaps not on a motorcycle like Che Guevara but with a camera, a laptop, and ears to hear and understand stories. For now, China is my horizon, a country my work as a diplomat has brought me to, and one that I have the privilege (and responsibility) of exploring and getting to know within and beyond the confines of official engagements.
Photography and shooting videos grounds me. It feels like curating stories in still frames and in social media reels. Scenes from places I see, sounds I hear and people I meet that when taken together show something about a place and a moment in time. I’m drawn to documenting the rhythm of life in streets, faces, gatherings, and even the in-betweens where nothing seems to happen. Over time, these all become a kind of visual diary, complementing the words I write and reminding me that stories are everywhere. Someday, I dream of weaving words, images, and film into longer narratives about people and places, perhaps even a book or a documentary that captures the world and its people, nations and their histories, and the possibilities of their futures.
Until then, diplomacy has become another way of seeing the world with purpose, connecting with others and representing something larger than myself. It is perhaps simply the latest chapter in a seemingly recurring pattern of my life, a persistent inclination to step away in search of a less hectic existence, met time and again by an invisible hand that seems determined to draw me towards a purpose I am somehow meant to fulfill in this life.
Personality tests call me an INFJ, the “Advocate.” Friends and colleagues describe me as idealistic and creative, reserved yet expressive, soft-spoken yet opinionated, sensitive to others, and sometimes guilty of trying too hard to make the world better. They may be right.
I speak Tagalog, English, and French in that order of fluency, and I’m learning Mandarin during my posting in China. I’m also an open-water scuba diver, and once upon a time, I played the violin.
I’m still the same person who started this blog more than two decades ago, trying to make sense of the world through service, through travel, through words, and through images. And perhaps one day, when the time is right, I’ll gather those fragments into something larger, perhaps a book, a film, or simply a record of how the world looked and felt in the moments I was fortunate enough to witness.
Last updated: 27 May 2026
