Farewell Letter of Ambassador Antonio V. Rodriguez
AMBASSADOR
OF THE REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES
IN BANGKOK
FAREWELL LETTER OF
HIS EXCELLENCY AMBASSADOR ANTONIO V. RODRIGUEZ
TO THE FILIPINO COMMUNITY IN THAILAND
I would like to take this one last opportunity to thank all of you for the friendship that we have so fondly shared and for the support and cooperation that you have extended to me and the Embassy.
It really saddens me to finally leave Thailand after almost seven years. But what depresses me most is the thought of leaving behind friends with whom my family and I have spent wonderful moments in both official and non-official events, within and outside the Filipino community in Thailand.
The Filipino cclmmunity in Thailand is one of the most vibrant, dynamic and close-knit Filipino community in all the foreign diplomatic postings I have been to. I attribute this to your unparalleled dedication and fierce loyalty to the dreams and aspirations of our community, and also to your professionalism and world-class talent that have made you and our community in general the envy of other expatriate groups in Thailand.
My family and I, as well as the entire embassy staff, will always fondly remember our many c:ommunity undertakings, how we transformed the embassy grounds into a full-blown Filipino fiesta every Independence Day, and how we ensured both a lively and solemn celebration of our traditional simbang gabi and noche buena every December from 2003 to 2009.
But of the many wonderful memories I share with you, what I will treasure most is how you helped us transform the Embassy from a cold, stone and wooden structure into a warm and welcoming house where everybody felt at home. We flung open the Embassy’s doors for you because we felt that you deserved it more than anyone else. In recognition of your tireless, if not heroic, efforts to help yourselves, your families backs home, and our motherland, we made sure that the Embassy was always ready to service your consular needs, to offer legal advice whenever you needed one, to provide shelter to our kababayans with no place to go, and to help repatriate our brothers and sisters who needed to go home.
I look forward to going back to the Philippines after an absence of almost seven long years. But 1 leave with a heavy heart knowing that I am also about to leave behind friends who have, in so many ways, enriched my life.
ANTONIO V. RODRIGUEZ
Ambassador
