In Praise of the Filipino Worker

Labor Day has been bleak this year. With re-hashed ‘benefits’, what’s the average Filipino worker going to look forward to? 

I thought I’d give all those who are working hard and live from paycheck to paycheck a little boost by saying how proud I am of Filipinos when it comes to their profession. Filipinos have passion. They have what it takes to get the job done – sometimes at the cost of great personal sacrifice. Our OFWs are a testament to this. And this is what I attest to ever since I started working.

I’ve been working for the past 7 years of my life. Starting out at a semi-conductor plant in Carmona, I was exposed to the dedication of everybody in order for the company to reach its goals. It was a downturn for the industry back in 2000-2001, where there was a glut in supply of chips in the market due to the less-than-spectacular Millenium jitters. So everyone in production was hardpressed to minimize wastage and improve quality. being a cadet engineer, I regularly worked with the operators of the machines and the maintenance technicians. These people were fathers, mothers, husbands, wives. Yet when the need arises, there was little hesitation to go the extra mile – overtimes or just to stay behind a while longer to finish checking a batch.

When the industry was at its low point, I decided to move on and landed at an insurance company. Being a management trainee at a relatively medium-sized firm, I got to know the ins and outs of the insurance business. Here, dedication and care for customers was what I learned and what I observed to be a trait we Filipinos are good at. naturally malambing, although at times mambobola, we see to it that service is given to those who need it – from quotations to sample forms to the policies themselves, people would go out of their way to really finish a job.

Fast forward to today. I’m in the airline industry and have been exposed to the different cultures of Europeans and Americans. I have nothing against working with American firms – particularly because they have lots of Filipinos working for them too. Hmm, maybe that’s the reason why they’re succeeding…

But for Europeans, that’s another matter. I just can’t believe their arrogance and utter lack of concern.

Here’s the scenario: A European company is now late with their deliverables with our project, thus jeopardizing its on-time completion and ultimately cost our company millions of dollars. The only reason is that the Euro company can’t quite get the hang of the American company’s data transfer scheme. What do they tell us?

“I’m doing all I can in the 8 hours of work…”

“May is a vacation month here and it may be hard to get things done…”

BS. I can’t believe that some companies are still arrogant enough in a global environment.

You won’t expect to hear that from us Filipinos. Our passion to get things done will be our key to success.

Leave the old bone to the old dogs, I say.

Taas noo, Filipino!

Back from Nowhere, Happy Thoughts, and more on ‘Gizmo’

Back from Nowhere

Whew! made it back in time for a Special Occasion…

My company sent me to attend a meeting somwhere-out-there. It’s jsut a 2-day meeting but since I’m on an interline ticket, I’m the last priority on every airline I have a ticket on. So, I had to leave way early just to be sure I’m at the site during the days I need to be there. So I left Sunday on a Dutch airline, connecting via Amsterdam to Frankfurt.

In Frankfurt, I learned that my pick-up was not there and so I had to spend a night at a hotel there where I wasn’t booked. The travel to Nowhere began the day after. And from then on, I can’t wait to be home. It’s hard on Nina everytime I leave since she takes care of young Matt all by herself…

Happy Thoughts

I should’ve posted this earlier, but hecic preparations for my trip didn’t give me much time to blog.

CONGRATULATIONS, HON! My wife’s scrapbook layout got entered into a US gallery Basic Grey. Basic Grey is a line of papers and other scrapbooking stuff that my wife loves to use and is in line with her style – a combination of bold, intricate patterns and subdued color tones that bring emphsis to the picture and theme of the layout.

Here it is:

Here’s the link to her page on the Basic Grey gallery. You’ll love the journaling as well.

‘Gizmo’

Here’s a PR for ‘Gizmo’ at hardwarezone.com.ph. You’ll also find a link to this article at BLUE’s website. I have people having interest on the BLUE Radon W310 based on my blog entry and my post at TipidPC.com. I don’t know if that’s a good thing. I know of at least 2 people who have bought the same machine – an officemate and a brother from TtipidPC.com. Hope they don’t kill me if this machine has other problems I haven’t yet discovered…

It’s 4 months of worry-free ‘Gizmo’ usage and counting.

Yes, i know, the review… (I’ve run the 3dMark05 on it though… AND have the results already…)

And the Story Continues…

This week has been as cumbersome to bear as the week that was. It wasn’t from any external pressures. It’s from within:

• A long meeting with intra-company departments concerning the definition of criteria to pick seats and the entertainment system that will go with our new ‘equipment’. What was to be a one- to two- hour meeting stretched on to become a F-O-U-R hour meeting. What did we accomplish? More questions that were there to begin with… and yet some saw it as a ‘productive’ meeting… geeez…
• An incident (yes, involving one of our equipment – a rather highly publicized event last Thursday) forced my manager to hurriedly fly off to Tacloban (you’ve guessed it by now, i hope) and be the on-site technical representative. Even if the ‘equipment’ was from the ‘other’ group. I’m left with no manager to sign-off the technical documents and a colleague who’s leaving for Malaysia to oversee the maintenance of our somewhat old ‘equipment’ that needs returning.
• And yes, my colleague had to leave for Malaysia… with rush engineering orders from an incidental/accidental damage to one of our ’equipment’ that has left a strange-looking dent. It still baffles me as to what caused it. But the OEM has deemed it worthy to, er, be operated again and is within established safety margins.

Oh, and yes, the rush review of tasks and taskcards still continue, with work piling up on the later part of the week and into the weekend.

Just when things seem to be getting worse by the day… a temporary respite… got to go to the UP fair last Friday, my manager’s on the way home and there has been no recall this Saturday, leaving me with much needed time with Nina and Matt.

A Looooong Week That Was + Another New Toy

The Loooooong Week… 

The past week was exhausting. It was inevitable, since we are now in the midst of having our maintenance program approved by a foreign Aviation Authority (read: the US). Hectic preparations were made weeks ago, but as of yesterday, it seemed like it was for nothing. There were still tons of work to do.

It’s bad enough that we have half-day Saturday work, but to be recalled to the office after your mindset is intent of having to enjoy the precious afternoon with your family edges me to the brink. But, what can I do? If I don’t report for work, I know there will be unwritten consequences. Yes, and couple that with the fact that I’m just a couple of minutes away from the office won’t help any excuse I can conjur. Besides, my manager was in a far worse condition. He was the one who called me up and asked me to report back. Everybody was being recalled, he said. Just after our AVP has met with the Denizens of the High and Mighty Authorities. I had to comply. Worse still was my colleague who was asked to go to work, when he was on vacation leave! Geeezzz…. I thought he’d be spared.

Oh, and did I tell you that I had to wait until around 9pm Friday night just because our Maintenance Provider couldn’t give us the dfocuments we needed earlier? Ho-hum.

There I was, explaining the situation to my wife, who knows I can do nothing… and then Matt comes up to me to hug my thighs and declare “Dada!”. We had to break the sad news to matt gently. When Nina told him I had to go to work, the kid cried. It tore my heart. It’s a good thing that Matt’s at an age where we could talk to him. So we told him that I’ll be back soon. He agreed, but still whimpering and sobbing.

I packed my laptop, just in case it would be more effidcient to have two displays in front of me, and hurriedly put on my clothes. When I got to the office, a briefing was taking place on what exactly were we to do. Everybody knew that we had to move this thing forward, or all our heads will be on the chopping board. In the end, I never got to use MyToy. It just sat in my bag the whole 5 hours I spent, looking at the hard copy of a task card and the monitor for checking what the hell is wrong with it.

We had a small feast of barbecue for dinner, but there was still uncertainty as to what will happen even after I left.

And the story will continue this week…

A New Toy

Although I refuse any Zoids model to be called a ‘toy’, I had to concede to the label. We got a very very late lunch at Robinson’s Place Malate today. Our main objective: to find a pillow replacement for Matt. We bought him a flat hotdog pillow at the same store. It was originally for Nina when she was pregnant with Matt. But when matt was a baby, he claimed it for his own.

The pillows were near the toys at the department store and Matt saw the Thomas trains, different sizes, on a rack. Nina and I knows that the kid has been obsessed with Thomas ever since my mom (who’s in ‘the land down under’) sent him a Thomas train set. I also wanted to make up for the lost time last week, so when we saw the small Thomas look-a-like train for an affordable price, we had to buy it for him. But I planned on using my card to pay for it (since it’s near sweldo, the previous sweldo has dwindled to a point where I have to ensure there is sufficient cash to run the house for a few more days). But I feared that they would require a bigger amount for me to use my card.

And thus we got…..

Buster Eagle! (I know it’s a weird name, but that’s what this Zoids is called)

And now, it’s the new banner for this blog!

I’ve set my sights on this zoids whe I first saw it around 4 years ago on the Japanese website of the Zoids toy line. And, I got it with around a 40% discount!

It’s a good ‘power up’ to keep me going for another hectic week.