We’re all aware of the heroic task of our frontliners who are brave enough to risk their lives. As one of the companies fortunate enough to still continue operations during this time of uncertainty, Infobuilder salutes each and every one of them. With that said, we would not have maintained the quality of our work for the past months without our very own frontliners inside of the company. One of which is Jay Edson Lopez, our 29 years old System Administrator.

When Manila was about to be placed in lockdown last March, Edson’s original plan was to briefly come to our office at Ortigas and come back to Los Baños that same day. He had the vital task of setting up our VPN to enable remote access to our servers. His plan was easy but by the time he had finally accomplished the valiant job of allowing everyone else to be able to work from home, he was unable to go back home. As hard as he tried, there wasn’t any kind of public transportation available. Edson was stuck in Manila.

For the next few months, he had 2 of the most important tasks resting on his shoulders. First, he had to maintain the backup disks of our servers where we test our products, deploy our system, etc. Someone had to physically turn on our servers because we have to back up every weekend. Second, he had to facilitate our VPN. During this time, only five users are allowed to use it simultaneously. In case there were some complications, someone needed to physically be in our office to check on the systems. Edson was that person.

We asked him how did he handle such important duties while protecting himself from the virus and maintaining his personal relationships. It turns out that Edson might just be the perfect man for the arduous task. As one of our most skilled System Administrators, the tasks at hand was no stranger to him. The challenge was walking from Mandaluyong to Ortigas with only 3 disposable masks for months and months during a pandemic. Edson is one of the most resourceful and creative people we know. And he proved it with his “techniques”. According to him, he managed to survive in Manila by wearing his disposable mask only when absolutely necessary. At that time, the metro practically looked like a ghost town, even EDSA which had been notorious from the number of people coming in and out of it every single day was silenced for once. Edson used this to his advantage, wearing the disposable mask only when greeting the guard at the office’s building and when going to the grocery store.

As for his personal relationships, he admitted that he was used to the popular term “LDR” or long-distance relationship. His long term girlfriend is in Los Baños while his family is in Iligan City, Lanao del Norte. Edson said that they had fewer interactions but from time to time, they would call each other. Even so, being by himself in Manila could be a little dragging so during his free time, he went back to reading more books and playing video games.

Currently, Edson is finally back in Los Baños after so many months. When asked what he’s hoping to happen moving forward, he said that he wishes for a vaccine so everything can go back to normal. He can jog in the morning before going to the office and play basketball with our officemates after working hours. He hopes to come back to Iligan City as well to see his parents. Both of which are high risk so they can’t leave their home. He hopes that they can enjoy their retirement which they can’t do at that moment because their house had limited space. Lastly, he hopes that LGUs will improve how they handle the pandemic, the curve will flatten, and for his plans to come into fruition.