Moving Homes. Moving Offices.

by Monette Iturralde-Hamlin / September 18, 2020

Overwhelmed but determined. That’s how I feel these days as I tackle the task of moving offices. Physically, I am exhausted, clearing out old files and stuff to make way for new ones, while juggling work and home management duties. I find myself tarrying while deciding what stuff to let go and what to keep, as memories flood back with each item I look at. I remind myself to keep things simple and manageable, and yet, there’s always a tug at the heart, especially when it comes to letting go.

This COVID-19 pandemic has affected our events business dramatically. While we continue to pivot with our triad of creative, content and digital services, it just doesn’t make business sense to keep paying the steep rent of our 18/F offices at AEON Center at this time when it hasn’t been used for several months due to the lockdown, and will now be used only by a few because of physical distancing. And since we are now fully Work from Home, Bea and I agreed that we would much rather use the funds to take care of our people. We’re moving to a smaller G/F space in Polaris, a nearby PEZA building. And so, we have to pack up and say goodbye to this beautiful TeamAsia home we’ve had for four years.

Even now, as I imagine our office, I feel a twinge of pain at the thought of what I will miss. So many happy memories to leave behind, from entering the office with our big red circle logo, to the welcome message on our wall that reminds everyone to SMILE as the universal greeting; to our THINK BIG conference room where all the major meetings, brainstorming, and pitch revalidas take place; to our small meeting rooms PASSION and INSPIRE; to the brick-walled BE BRIGHT room where the young ones perch on high stools, working on pitches.

I will miss the open space office with the industrial feel where one could just holler to the person across the room for a quick meetup, where collaboration was easy because everyone was in sight, where someone would just suddenly burst into song, or rollerblade from one end to the other. I will miss the boisterous laughter of our people, and the ringing of the bell to announce big wins and happy news, or to tell everyone to stop work and have fun with our TeamAsia Pop-ups.

I will miss our LIVE Room aka pantry where we would swap stories, banter and check on each other over shared meals. Being a corner room, LIVE claimed the very best view of Laguna de Bay and the mountains yonder, the clear blue sky, the Filinvest concert grounds (free concerts!), and the Skyway exit (the best way to know if we need to leave earlier for a meeting in the business district). I dare say it was everyone’s favorite spot.

I will miss my office with its floor to window view of Filinvest, and the pretty library cum wooden cabinet against a brick wall with the movable wooden staircase to reach the books up high (Remember Belle in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast?). The writable glass walls all around the office where we would capture ideas, and where our staff’s children would draw and leave behind their loving messages when they came to visit. Our onliness statement wall where we proudly shared who we were as a company, and Mike’s birthday art wall. Our bright lime green wall announcing TODAY IS OURS, where our TeamAsia family photos would be taken. And just before the lockdown, our newly-launched Next Level Experience (NLE) wall to remind everyone of what we strive for every single day.

It is a gut-wrenching feeling to uproot yourself and move, but looking back, I’ve done this a few times, and it has always worked for the better, no matter how difficult or dismal it seemed at the time. From our ancestral compound in San Sebastian where I grew up, to our home in Better Living which we called Pequeñita, back to San Sebastian when my first marriage broke up, then to a rented apartment in Palms Village where Mike and I had TeamAsia upstairs and our home downstairs, then to building our home-office in Southbay, to moving out to Plaz@ B, Northgate Cyberzone on our 10^th year, and then to setting up at the 18/F of AEON Center. And now this. These moves have marked the times of my life, with TeamAsia and home life as wefts and warps intimately woven into the fabric of my journey.

Reflecting on the past, I’ve realized that each move has helped me grow. Leaving the comfort of the ancestral home where I grew up for Pequeñita was an exciting yet daunting time. For the first time, I was completely responsible for running a home as a young bride and then taking care of my two young daughters, Bea and Cara, while working full time at a publishing company. This took place at a time when getting a landline was nigh impossible and mobile phones were not yet a reality, so calling my mom for help or advice was out of the question. I learned to stand on my own quickly.

Moving into two rented apartments in Palms Village was my first taste of home and work together. Now happily married to Mike and with Niccolo on the way, we kept home downstairs and our fledgling TeamAsia on the second floor. This allowed us to keep close tabs on our young family, while investing a lot of hours growing the company.

Soon, we felt confident enough to build a home in Southbay, and we enthusiastically embarked on the plans for a home office. We designed the house with completely separate areas and entrances for the home and the office. The office portion was on three floors: the first floor for our staff and conference room, the second floor was Mike’s and my office, and the attic was where we had our telemarketers who supported our events business. The home part meanwhile was designed for the needs of our blended family. So, yes, decades before WFH became a buzzword, we were already working from home.

Once we crossed the doorway into the office, we were completely professional and in our work element. Even the children knew that dad and mom were at work and not to be disturbed, though baby Niccolo would sometimes escape into the office and hide under our program manager’s desk to my chagrin. This set-up, however, allowed us to have all our meals with the family, and for us to be there for any emergencies, from simple scraped knees to asthma attacks that needed quick emergency room runs. Lunches were with our TeamAsia work family, and I guess this is also why early on, we’ve always treated TeamAsians as family.

As we grew bigger and hired more staff, we decided it was time to move our offices to Plaz@ B of Northgate Cyberzone, touted then to be the next Silicon Valley. This meant we had to leave home and travel to work, even though it was just a 15-minute drive away. Good thing that the children were now all in school, and we made sure that breakfasts and dinners were together as a family. As entrepreneurs though, this meant that we would continue to work after dinner well into the night. We converted the first-floor office into an entertainment room, and kept the second floor as the extension of our office, where Mike and I continued to work at night.

When Mike died seven years ago, I felt my world end as I lost not just my husband, but my best friend and partner. I felt like giving up, but Bea would have none of that, and she came home to help me with TeamAsia after finishing her masters in the US.

Applying what she learned from her graduate studies and international exposure and injecting her youthful drive and enthusiasm, Bea assumed the role of Managing Director with much success, developing a strong team of young, passionate TeamAsians. From a Mike and Monette tandem, TeamAsia became a women-owned, women-led organization. As we offered more services, TeamAsia continued to grow, adding more units on different floors, which made coordination difficult.

Within two years, Bea felt we had outgrown Plaz@ B, and it was time to refresh the brand and get a bigger space where we could all be together. With Bea as principal architect and driver of the move, that empty dusty shell on the 18^th Floor of Aeon Center was transformed into our beautiful TeamAsia home.

Indeed, we’ve marked that AEON Office as our home, imprinting on it our very culture. The very essence of who we are. There is one wall in our TeamAsia home that tells it all, where each and every TeamAsian had left a handprint in a circle, beside the words “These hands built our home.” This is what I hold on to. What we’re leaving behind is brick and mortar, but what really makes up TeamAsia are our people. And home is where our people are. Where our family is. And so the next chapter begins.

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Moving Homes. Moving Offices.

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