About the author

Mark inside the Balloon Tunnel

Considers himself as a sporadic travel blogger & landscape photographer, business owner Mark Anthony Maranga used to work as a freelance SEO Specialist, Ethical Hacker and Website Developer. He’s made more than a hundred websites already. He is now focused on his own online businesses and no longer accepts web projects.

Before he got into Website Development and SEO, he started working as a part-time crew member of KFC while he was on his 3rd year in college but had to leave the food chain because of school projects. In his last year of taking BS Technical Education major in Industrial Electronics in Don Bosco Technology Center, he had his first “school-OJT” in the College of Technological Sciences-Cebu, teaching electronics theory and laboratory subjects to Electronics and Communications Engineering students.

On his “industry-OJT”, he went to Celestica Philippines without knowing what type of job he’ll be doing. Lucky enough to be acquired by the Hardware Design Engineering Group and tasked to do component-library and PWB (Printed Wiring Board) designs using a Japanese-developed software, Mark got a full-time job in the same company as a Design Engineering Support, after five months. He was working mostly on electronics component-specifications documents. After 2 years, his manager promoted him. He was already planning to resign but he decided to stay because of his promotion as Procurement Engineer. He was transferred to the Supply-Chain Management Group. The skills, knowledge and attitude he acquired from his previous group remained in him and he doubled his efforts to learn the things he needed to learn and easily got the trust from his new boss. Notably, he was the only non-engineering graduate from his new group.

As a Procurement Engineer, Mark got many chances to talk with people from the different provinces in the Philippines as well as people from all over the world to discuss and negotiate their products and components for Celestica to use in manufacturing their own products. To build rapport, he always do small-talks with them by asking them some information about their place. From there, his urge to travel and discover new places was triggered. Sadly, he doesn’t have enough “travel funds” yet.

He resigned from the job and finally decided to look for greener pastures, Mark applied for jobs which were far from his line of interests. He was lucky enough to get the several job offers such as a CAD Ship Designer, Production Engineer, Product Manager, etc. The salaries offered were fairly high but not high enough to allow him to do what he really wants to do in life – Travel, Photograph, Write.

He decided to self-study IT as his then girlfriend, now his wife, Lisa Rae graduated from IT in the prestigious MSU-IIT school in Iligan City. Mark was lucky enough to get a free training from TESDA (Technical Education and Skills Development Authority) for Computer Troubleshooting and Networking Class. While having the training, he applied as a Management Trainee in Informatics Computer School. Without minding, he luckily got the job, which he thought would give him a very less chance of getting hired. As a Management Trainee, he was trained to do administrative work and given the chance to teach Business Subjects at the same time. He also helped in marketing and selling the school to graduating high-school students by means of career talks.

In the following school year, he was asked if he could teach HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language) and never hesitated even though he has limited knowledge about it. He’s literally 1-page ahead of his students but it did not stop him from giving them the lessons they needed to learn. He was given an excellent grade by his students during the teacher evaluation, which is a confirmation that he was able to deliver the subject matter very well.

Because of the trust of the school’s Academic Head, he got to teach other IT subjects including MS Access, PC Troubleshooting and Networking, System’s Analysis and Design and Web Programming to part-time and full-time students. He also taught Flash Animation, Photoshop and Web Design to JITS (Junior Information Technology Society) members.

Then there was a job opening for an IT teacher in UP (University of the Philippines), a prestigious school in the Philippines, famous for their oblation run. Mark knew the pay would not make a big impact but a lot more opportunities will open for him because of the influence of the school. As part of the hiring process, he was tasked to demonstrate in-front of the school heads and selected students – and they say it was brilliant. The several rounds of interviews by the principal, school administrators, head teachers were seamless and his medical exam was fine. He was advised to resign from his present job to start processing his requirements so he can start teaching as soon as possible. He was very responsive until the school dean looked at his college records and discovered he had failure grades. They told him they were no longer hiring him. Mark was dismayed because he already spent a lot of time, money and used a lot of vacation leaves just to get the job. Sad to know that someone who has not met Mark or interviewed him believes that his failing grades 5 years ago is a manifestation of the present him.

After that day, Mark thought that God may have something better for him.

He decided to withdraw his resignation in Informatics and decided to stay. After a couple of months, he was pirated by a French-owned Company as a Project Manager after discovering his management skills.  He was assigned to oversee several web developers as well as develop E-commerce Websites. This helped him enhanced his skills in PHP, Paypal, Website security and other E-commerce related skills.

In about four months he was pirated by an American-owned Company as a Manager, who also works as an SEO Specialist and Web Developer. He got to call and teach Americans how to manage their own websites.

Six months later he decided to work home-based.

In his 3 years working in Web Development, Ethical Hacking and SEO, he has worked with many foreign customers mostly from the US, Canada, UK, France, Ireland and Vietnam. At the same time, he makes his own blog sites specific to boxing and MMA (mixed martial arts) events and added some advertisements on his websites to earn some revenue.

Now blessed with a decent income from his current online job & small-time party shop, Mark continues to work in the Philippines. He’s open to working and possibly migrating abroad if there’s a good opportunity in a well-known and stable company.

Through blogging, Mark is enjoying the “fruits of his labor”. He gets to do the things he loves and earn at the same time. It’s not much but enough to shoulder the basic needs of his family and travel occasionally. Together with his wife Lisa Rae and their sons Sam & Jim, they will be showing you the different tourist attractions of the Philippines.

Come, travel and explore the amazing 7017 Islands. Tara na, Biyahe tayo!