Think Out Loud: July 2010

mind reading

1:00 AM

i was badgering my friend yesterday because we're getting suspicious of the way he's acting. he's doing things he doesn't normally do.

then finally, he said it. he's starting to like someone and he's praying about it.

discernment worked again!

of course, he didn't reveal any details. and i didn't press on the matter, either. i just badgered him for a short while just for the sake of pestering him. but at this point, i just want to keep on guessing. it's a good mind exercise and it makes a good pass time when you have nothing better to do. after all, analyzing and studying people's behaviors has become one of my favorite hobbies. interesting, don't you think? and i also find it amusing. sometimes, i even try guessing what the people sitting across me are thinking. i do this small monologues in my mind and i imagine that they say the most ridiculous things. (and when they see me chuckle or smirk, they think i'm crazy. how ironic.) but i don't do mind reading with all the woo-hoo stuff. that is just plain creepy.

maybe i should work for the FBI? like the people in Criminal Minds? i'll get inside the head of criminals and try to figure out what their twisted minds are concocting.

then i'll work in the crime lab and do those techie-chemistry-physics-math things they do. that would be one cool job only if:

1. i don't hate math and anything related to it (which includes science); and

2. people don't die, people's lives are not put in jeopardy, future and families do not hung

in the balance, and people don't get arrested because of the bad stuff they did.

but the opposite of that is practically the whole point of police work. gah. what am i thinking? of course, that is why there is such a job that would keep the bad guys away on the streets. and that job is called police work (FBI) and crime lab specialists (CSI).

speaking of CSI, it's CSI Trilogy tomorrow night at AXN!

unfortunately, i can't watch it because i'm on duty again tomorrow for the telethon. but i hope there will be a replay on Sunday.

ah! can't wait!

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inspiration hunting

12:21 AM

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[Telethon] Nothing is impossible... Believe

11:13 PM

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the hills are alive with the sound of.... Benguet Mission Part 1

Baguio City 6:42 PM

now i don't want to be all emotional writing about this, or overeacting. but Benguet Mission is a life-changing experience for me.

Benguet is a province in the Philippines located at the Mountain Province. It sits above and below mountain ranges and is very famous among miners and gold diggers for its gold and other expensive minerals. Through the years, people exploited the land through hard core mining and logging and you can tell that the mountains could only take just about enough.

View of the once glorious mountain ranges during our drive back home.

Today, Benguet is gripped with tragedies of landslides and mudslides. People here and there die. The latest tragedy was when Typhoon Pepeng (international name: Parma) ravaged the Philippines last October. It left hundreds of people dead and thousands homeless. During that time, when Operation Blessing sent a medical team to a landslide-hit area, people were like walking zombies. They didn't know what it was exactly that hit them. It was like the angel of death did a passover in Benguet and killed those who didn't have the blood on their door posts (just like during Moses' time when all the first born died. In this case, every member of the family died).

Five months later, this March, we went back and visited the tent city in La Trinidad.

(Top) The tents where the displaced families are now living. Tents were given by the United Nations.

(Below) The strawberry farm field where some the of the people living in the tent cities temporarily work,

just until they could get back up on their feet again.

That is where the victims lived after their houses got buried in the landslides. Along with more than 20 families, the people share bathrooms and sinks. Some worked in the nearby strawberry farmfield since their source of livelihood got buried as well.

During the ocular, we met up with Ruthanna Uy. She is the program coordinator of the Women of Hope, the radio program where the 5 minute segment we're producing is a part of.

me (center) with Ruthanna and Paji. We're looking at the once town of Little Tibungan which was wiped away by the landslide.

She served as our tour guide and she led us around Baguio and La Trinidad where the victims lived. In almost every part of the city that has a patch of scraped mud, it happened to be places where the mudslides passed through.

Here and there, she pointed to me the places where the landslides happened and where the recovered dead bodies were placed during the rescue operations. The woman heading the National Disaster Coordinating Council in Benguet told us that the typhoon hit Benguet twice. What was surprising was that the death toll on the second hit was way higher than the first, to think that the people should have been more cautious. They hypothesized that too much rainfall caused the soil to erode, which led to the monstrous landslides.

Ruthanna told me all these depressing stories:

during the rescue operations, majority of the people who died were rescuers. they were washed away by the strong currents. it didn't help that the soil was soft.
a father brought his family out of the house because pf the landslide. they could hear the sound of the coming landslide and they rushed to a waiting shed to temporarily take shelter. unfortunately, the mud came sliding down the main road, burying them. they were recovered huddled to one another. only the baby was recovered down the hill, probably because the father accidentally dropped him. when friends and family members went to see the state of the house, it was not at all affected by the landslide and is still standing until this day.
experts found food on the mouth of many of the bodies recovered. they estimated that the landslide occurred during dinner time.
one landslide wiped away a whole town, leaving 70 families dead - others unrecovered.

It was only a one day ocular. But I left feeling heavy hearted and the giddy idea of seeing Baguio again after how many years quickly evaporated. The stench of death was still in the air. In spite of the 5 months that have already gone by, within those months, zombies suddenly turned into mourners as the gravity of the tragedy started to dawn on them.

It's on times like this that the song "The hills are alive....." will sound with mourning.

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"Gekster!"

5:41 PM

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overworked? better than jobless

4:58 PM

whew! finally. this will be my first entry on my new blog and funny because i don't know what to write about. i've been very busy lately that's it's even a blessing that i could still find time to blog or even think of setting up one.

until now i'm still piled with staggering amounts of scripts. for the past couple of weeks, i hardly edited. i just can't help changing the whole content of the scripts the OJT did. to be honest, i'm a little peeved about it but there's really nothing i could do. and it's not helping that other workloads are piling on my desk while the scripts just keep coming and coming. i guess i should be thankful that it's only a five minute segment and not a full blown 30-minute radio program. if that's the case, i'd probably have my position changed from executive assistant to radio segment producer, LOL, and have my desk moved to Baguio City where it's being produced.

anyway, probably i'll give a little background on myself and what i do. i'm 21 years old working for a non government organization here in the Philippines. It's called CBN Asia but I work for its humanitarian arm - Operation Blessing. technically, i'm an executive assistant, but usually, i do writing jobs - writing feature stories, handling the facebook and twitter account, laying out manuals, on-field photographer (but very rarely), and designing/editing things on photoshop.

however, during the first quarter of this year, i was given a new task which is to write and produce a 5-minute radio segment for a radio program. my executive, you see, is a medical doctor and she was asked to host a five minute segment that would educate listeners living in far-flung areas of the country on health. since i did a bit of radio scriptwriting and producing back in college, i got the job.

i enjoyed it, and i still do. but having to produce 4 segments in a month is becoming too taxing for me. because besides this radio job, i also have other responsibilities at work that i could not ignore. after all, i AM an executive assistant and i have tons of administrative work to do, besides the communications work that is also demanding my time. i guess i have to start mastering the art of balance before i tip over and fall. now the question is how to do that, with me juggling work and personal life (if i still do have one, LOL).

probably you could say i am overworked. but better to be overworked at this stage in life than jobless.

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Think Out Loud

mind reading

inspiration hunting

[Telethon] Nothing is impossible... Believe

the hills are alive with the sound of.... Benguet Mission Part 1

"Gekster!"

overworked? better than jobless

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