What can one do in a span of four years? To be honest, it felt like forever. I put up this blog, self-funded it and yes it did not get enough public interest. I admit that. It is not the most popular thing even for Ilonggos.

Wow, such a negative intro, right? For the fourth year anniversary of this blog, I will be writing from the heart and literally just my thoughts. So please bear with the organization and structure. This is not a research paper!

As I take on the challenge of writing this, I will outline the topics I want to cover. First, what my motivations were when I started this. Second, what lessons I learned from the development of this blog. Third, where we are heading. The last one, I have been contemplating a lot. I have been in quite a journey for the past year. It is different from all of the years I lived.

Newsflash!

Before that, here’s some quick news about myself at this point. Send applauses, love, and support! I can’t succeed by doing things or navigating the journey alone. Please be with me. Here you go:

I’ve been appointed into the Youth Leadership Board of the Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety. It is basically a group of young people from all over the world. They plan and implement impactful things on road safety at the grassroots level.

I am a government person. I committed myself to be part of this organization. I believe I can leverage my position to allow youth perspectives to come into the public sector’s agenda and priorities.

Road safety after all is something we haven’t really addressed for almost two decades now. Little has been done and road crash has been consistent being the top cause of death of young people. I’ll be holding this position for two years.

The next one is that I also have the honor to be one of the esteemed Global Youth Mobility Ambassadors. This is for the upcoming 3rd World Youth Assembly for Road Safety.

Being an ambassador, I am tasked to help the mobilization of young people into the assembly. I must make sure their demands for road safety are heard by decision-makers.

This will take place in the 4th Global Ministerial Conference for Road Safety in Marrakech, Morocco this February 2025. I am grateful to the International Road Federation for nominating me in this pursuit.

Crossing my academic pursuit close to my advocacies, I will also be loaded with speaking engagements. I will be presenting papers in two events. The Australasian Road Safety Conference 2024 will be held this end of September in Hobart, Tasmania (Australia). The IRF World Congress 2024 will be held in mid-October in Istanbul, Turkiye.

For the latter event, I will also wear my cap. I will serve as the Global Youth Mobility Ambassador in the IRF Young Professionals Summit. I will discuss local action projects. These projects are done by the hardworking and passionate members of the Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety. I will also talk about the level of engagement or exchange that young leaders will be doing in the assembly.

The birth of Ilonggo Engineer

The monicker, Ilonggo Engineer, got quite attached to me back in 2019. I made the headlines. I was someone presenting research in the 26th World Road Congress in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

To this day, I can’t believe it even happened. It was a bold move and I practically self-funded myself there. I thought this will boost my confidence. It would also build a network for me to go out of my comfort zone.

So that’s how the name came about. I thought I needed a platform for immortalizing my thoughts. These thoughts are on pressing issues that most people ignore. Issues like road safety, social equity, and technology literacy.

People are literally getting left out. And I can only do so much to help all of them. So that’s why I try to write as many things. Honestly, I’m not even sure if I’m saying the right things. But, I also stand by the fact that a single math problem can have multiple solutions. So I kept going.

I became a casual columnist for The Daily Guardian, a local newspaper in the Philippines. The newspaper has made waves nationally. It provides some of the most unbiassed dissemination of information.

I am based in Australia for now. This has hindered me from getting context on the things going on in Iloilo. I know I will have a lot more articles to contribute in this local newspaper. This will happen when I come back home in December. With my transport education, I aim to be more critical in providing opinion on the community’s transportation challenges. I also strive to be balanced in addressing infrastructure challenges.

Should I end this blog?

Last year, I began to feel tempted of ending this because social media has become so toxic. It looks like everybody has been just busy with life and take on social media as an escape from reality. I was reconsidering to just let go of things and let it die. But I encountered some interesting content on YouTube. To name a few, in no particular order:

• CityBeautiful – urban design / planning
• Streetcraft – urban design / people-centered design
• HalfAsInteresting – random topics that often go unnoticed
• Wendover Productions – longer explainer videos that keeps things interesting
• JetLag: The Game – highly entertaining travel challenges
• Veritasium – science made extra interesting
• Marques Brownlee – unbiased and transparent gadget reviews
• Johnny Harris – deep dive into controversial topics

These contents/content creators have had a strong impact in my motivation to keep going in my online presence. They are earning something due to the high number of subscribers and views. I still hope to become like them without the incentives for now. I want to get my messages to more people.

This effort will make the internet more worthwhile for me. It will be better than minding the lives of celebrities and other people (at least for me). Whether money comes in or not, I will try to keep this as a worthwhile hobby. Money comes second, impact comes first.

The future looks bright, but…

I must say, I’m pretty excited about the upcoming content ideas I intend to execute. More informed and well-researched content, other forms like YouTube/TikTok videos (hopefully). I also hope to do things more regularly than randomly.

For now, I am at the literal season finale of my Master of Transport degree and my journey in Australia. I am such a main character. Well, it’s my life we’re talking about here anyway. I feel literally bombarded with the things I can’t control.

I’ve been stretched quite a lot beyond limits. Nonetheless, as many people would say, “being busy is a privilege.” Not everybody is bombarded with responsibilities. These responsibilities that eat up our time should be taken as opportunities and not burdens.

As a closing, there are things that are better kept within my control and domain. But I ask for your prayers and well wishes. Keep them coming. I know this is just a phase. I feel this way because my Australian experience is ending sooner than I thought. I know it’s ending soon (no date changes!), but time just flies so fast.

We’ll be surprised we reached yet another wonderful year of Ilonggo Engineer! Keep supporting me by taking time to read and commenting!

Cheers!