like there's no tomorrow

8 undersecretaries
7 assistant secretaries
+ more to come daw
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foreign travels galore

meanwhile, the department is finalizing the rationalization plan that threatens to axe the humble casual employees by september this year. top that.

hindi ako maasim!

DISCLAIMER: sa mga kaopisina at kaibigan kong nakakakilala sa mga karakter na inookray ko dito, mangyaring manahimik na lamang at nang hindi na ako lalung mapasama. salamat.

the inter-color volleyball tournament in our office is finally over. after two round robins, one crossover and one final match, we placed third out of four teams. it's not so bad, really. i'm very proud of my how my team came through, considering the other teams' skill advantage over ours. we always play a good game, and we always play fair.

my beef with this tournament, however, is the way it was organized. i've participated in quite a few nasty debates with the organizers regarding some decisions that did not seem fair. i'd rather not be sour about it but this is my blog and i can't help it. so let me give you a list.

• meetings were not organized. it was unclear who should be there and what the agenda were. nobody took note of agreements. for instance, we decided to separate the better players (these are players who represented the office in more competitive matches outside the office) to ensure fairness and to add an element of fun to the competition. however, when the line-up of players were finalized, it turned out that one team had un unfair share of the better players, leaving one team looking like they didn't know what they're getting into. apparently, the organizer approved the line-up despite the previous agreement. i did feel a sense of betrayal, but it was just a game and i had faith in my team. so dedma na lang.

• i was asked to prepare ground rules (tournament formula) and a tentative schedule for the volleyball competition, a copy of which shall be provided (daw) to team captains prior to the start of the games. i made one based on the formula of some fivb tournaments. unfortunately, my team had to be on our toes and play it by ear because no sight of the so-called approved ground rules appeared.

• game schedules kept changing for reasons that could be argued as unnecessary or invalid. we worried that certain team/s were being given undue advantage but we had no proof so we kept mum about it. we played by their "rules", why not play by their "schedule"?

• the main organizer of the volleyball tournament was coaching a team at the same time. this is actually no biggie. we understand that not a lot of people would take this responsibility so we didn't mind.

• the last straw -- we were on the final stretch of the second round of games when i was informed that the first round has been deemed "no bearing" or "not counted." my blood pressure suddenly rose from hell... where's the logic in that?! why would you make us play one round of games and then suddenly tell us that these games had no bearing?! that's like telling me that my team (not to mention our fans and supporters!) wasted a great deal of time and effort.

never mind the first four in the list. i wouldn't have brought them up if not for the "no bearing" issue. i tried to get answers from the two organizers and what did i get? two incompetent women who kept referring me back at each other because they couldn't give me a good enough answer. i got so sick of it that i told them (through a common friend) that they better clean up their act or else. apparently, they didn't realize that i had it in me to be so feisty (perks of staying at HRDS for too long)! hah!

they ended up making some dumb excuse for the "mistake." i had to play dumb too, so that i won't look like i'm making a mountain out of it. but i swore to myself that if i could ever have anything to do with it, these two will no longer organize a volleyball tournament without someone with good sense guiding their decisions.



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and i thought it was over. we finally got our trophy and nothing could make us any more proud . . .



ganda ng trophy namin anoh?! (pardon my tendency to interchange wits and sarcasm.) and to put an icing on it, individual awards were creatively awarded. why creative, you ask? i'm not going to mock the others' awards but me getting a "best spiker" award?! yeah, i was successful in delivering a few killer spikes but the key word there is few! i was mostly tasked with setter/stopper duties, nakakapalo lang pag saktong nasa dos. i found out later that laila also got the same medal and i was almost put to shame. di hamak namang lamang ang killer spikes ni laila saken! i'm sure her award somewhat diminished in value considering that i got the same award.

i didn't bother asking the organizers who else got a "best spiker" award or why they would give out two (or more) "best spiker" awards. god forbid! i didn't even bother asking what other awards they gave or what their criteria were or who decided which players deserved these awards!

on a lighter note, let me tell you that i would not be humble about it had i gotten a "best blocker" award despite only three successful blocks and despite the fact that nobody else tried. ;)

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this post, although written ages ago, was posted only in july 4 due to my inability to upload photos (either something's wrong with me or something's wrong with blogger's photo uploading). i decided to use webshots to host the pics, and hopefully, they look just as nice as blogger itself would've showed them

crossed signals

"wake up and smell the smoke!"

"protect our roads! stop opression!"

is it just me or are these messages totally bewildering? the first one, i sorta get. but the second, hard as i try, i just couldn'tfigure out.

perhaps i should explain...

these messages are printed in big bold black letters in white tarpaulin. they're posted along the streets of the Loyola Grand Villas, the streets which are part of the short-cut from marikina to quezon city (usually referred simply as the tumana shortcut).

i did see one other tarpaulin but i can't remember the words (the message was too long) but i captured a sense of LGV residents fighting against the use of their streets as detour/shortcut/ alternative to motorists travelling from marikina to UP/balara/katipunan.

the first message must mean that residents should be more active in fighting against the public use of their streets due to the pollution from numerous vehicles of non-residents. i would guess that this same message is posted in other parts of LGV.

but who's the advocate? the homeowners' association? then why not make it clear who the message is for and who the message is from? why would they post it in streets where non-residents can read it? is there some sort of a trick here that i don't get?

the second message got me really confused. what would road protection have to do with oppression? do the residents of this posh subdivision feel that the public use of their streets result to their oppression? the logic escapes me, i'm afraid.

i have nothing against exclusive subdivisions who restrict non-residents from entering their streets for security reasons. for over 7 years i lived in a subdivision that allowed non-residents to use their streets as shortcut for a minimal fee -- a win-win situation, if you ask me (although collecting fees is a great temptation to the corrupt and thats another issue altogether).

i just couldn't understand the point of these messages. would someone please enlighten me?