Thursday 4 August, 2005 - Random Ramblings

Okay - need to do a great big shout out to Joel here in the office (although he will probably never know it!!) as he managed to fix that little box you see in the previous post where you can enter your email address and then my updates will be sent to you automatically (somebody please tell Andrew Newmarch about that feature!!!) Joel is a champion - a fairly quiet fellow who is responsible for doing the website and student database management system here, and is an absolute technical wizard. For those of you who have seen my groovy new signature on my work email (and those of you who received my initial, somewhat mis-typed email about it...*red face*) he is the chap who did that. And when the code to do this sign up thing wasn't working and I was about to pull my hair out, he got me to email it to him and soon emailed it back, and hey presto! It worked... Such a legend

This is an example of a lot of the Philippinos. While they are very friendly and welcoming, they generally appear to be quite reserved when you are getting to know them (there are obvious exceptions, as anyone at WVA who knows Ichie can attest!) But it is worth making the effort as the hidden depths are wonderful. Yesterday I was having a conversation with one of the guys here in the office about the political situation. As I was saying to Ange last night, you would probably write him off as a bit of a lightweight if you just met him, but he has amazed me a few times with some really insightful and interesting discussions about a huge range of topics. Some of the staff appear to be stuck in the 'reserved' frame of mind, and I have given up a bit - I am perfectly friendly but constantly beating your head against a brick wall only kills brain cells! But then there's the guy who wouldn't stop calling me ma'am when I arrived, and now is one of my closest friends in the office! And the IT guy, who I hardly spoke to in my first month (we started within days of each other and were just running around both trying to fit into our jobs and figure out what we were doing!) and who I now spend waaaaaaay too long chatting to - he is one of those ones that you cannot get away from, although he is usually very intersting and that is fun. He is actually so enthusiastic about relief work - he was involved in the typhoon response here last November/December and just loved it. Talking to him reminds me of the point of everything we do here and the joy that can be found in truly making a difference in people's lives.

Not sure what the point of this post is - I guess the joys to be found in the depths of the Philippino people. They have a reputation for being extremely friendly, which they are. However, I think a lot of the AYADs discover that friendliness at the office doesn't generally extend beyond that, which I think is true. They don't tend to invite any of us home, and few of my colleagues socialise outside work, which is different from Australia (possibly due to the size of Manila and the distance that some of them live from the office - the aforementioned Joel has a six hour round trip on the bus from Batangas province to the office each day!!) If you ask any of them what they did over the weekend, the typical answer is 'hung out with the family, went to the mall, went to church'. The activities are not terribly varied (I think the heat dampens many an adventurous streak) and we certainly stand out with our general weekend activities (went out to dinner a few times, went to this club and that pub, went to this sightseeing venue, did some sporting activity, listened to this band, went away etc) I sometimes find myself listing only half of the weekend activities because it sounds a little absurd in comparison.

Some time soon I might introduce you to some of the key people I work with (will bring my camera in and take photos perhaps!) but for now, am still endeavouring to make my posts shorter so will sign off

Toodlepip