Christmas in Tubday 2018

decisions decisions

I woke up today at 4:30am thinking I needed to finish a questionnaire that needed to be pretested this week. In my mind I need to email it to my staff today before I leave because we were scheduled to leave at 6am  for Pangasinan for some planning session. So I did, the alarm clock rang I woke up and started working. I managed to read the Bible - today the account of a David and Jonathan and the boy and the arrow. I failed to pray though as my mind was on finishing that instrument. Anyway, I was well buried into it when I suddenly saw the time was 5:57!! Our bus was at 6:00am. I still had to pack my bag, do my kiss and biiiig hugs and apologies to the three small kids and say my excuses and prayer requests to my kindest husband. Weng, our efficient kapamilya has started prodding the two boys. Fast forward. I arrived 6:18am and had to say "patawad" instead of "good morning" to all the probably already angry ma'ams and sirs on the bus.

Now I am sitting on this bus repentant that I was late but at the same time angry at myself for my wrong decisions. Why was I late? Because I was working. Why was I working? Because I was late on my project targets. Well see I also worked half day yesterday for another project with deadline. 

It would have felt much better if I was late because I had to breastfeed my baby, feed my kids, pray with my hubby. Good reasons with shall we say eternal significance.

Now I think something is really wrong and has to change. I feel guilty that I was not able to feed Kharece before I left. I feel guilty that we didn't have breakfast together with my other kids. That I didn't have a respectable time of prayer....

So what can be done?  What should be changed? 
What can I give up? 
1. DA-BAR project - no
2. CHED project - no
3. IPP - no
4. NIA - no it is SSIS related, it is service
5. GIZ - pursued the proposal, pangatawanan na! 
5. ISRD directorship - meetings, planning, mgt. - yes! 

After all, am I not just a lowly Senior SRS step 1 who has no career path at BSU. (oops-sama ng loob ba yan? pero desisyon mo lumipat sa BSU.) 

(Count your blessings. 
(Akala ko reformed ang theology mo. God is sovereign. God is gracious. Wala sa performance. Only by grace.) 

Oo nga.
Thank you hubby for showing me the way of grace. For always reminding me of God's sovereignty and that He is in control. I will try and make better decisions from now. I will keep trying anyway. 
For now, I will go through the motions, contribute what I can. I have two weeks to decide. 

of word logos and slogans

i like word logos. but now where should i put bsu and the institute of social research and development in this layout? maybe it's best this way. i have this research project where if i go for data gathering, the mere mention that i am from bsu, people will start to flinch. so i say i am from the institute of social research and development or isrd and hope hard they won't ask what or where is that. of course in many of my field works, it feels nice to be treated so well just because we said we are from bsu. and of course, other occasions, i'd proudly use the BSU t-shirts (i didn't get a loyalty award back in 1993 for nothing).

(digress)
we were requesting for some data from a government unit and we were told that per an executive order, we need to buy per page. fine with us because as i always say information is never free. problem is we are talking about around 100 pages data. so we requested for soft copy with a note that we were willing to pay. they responded that the executive order says payment per page. so in short, they cannot give us a soft copy. in my mind, then we would have to encode the 100 pages worth of data, when we could have easily paid more and got the encoded one similar to how PSA does it. anyway we purchased the data alright. only to find out that they sold soft copy of the data to another national government agency. apparent conclusion of the matter: they did not sell us the soft copy of the data because we were from bsu?

(digress)
we have this jacket at R&E and the only "tatak" was "R&E". BSU logo was not included. i don't know why they opted not to include the bsu logo. probably so that even if the JOs or COS staff will leave bsu, they can still use. and it was on voluntary basis paid by the staff themselves. but really, times like the above account, a jacket with just "R&E" helps.

back to my obsession for a word logo for isrd, i would like the "i" to be some variant of "bulul" or maybe the shade of some part of the acronym made of ethnic design, but not too much. something like when you see it, you see a human being or a person... for the "social" and some kind of simple graph for "data" that reflects "evidence-based policy etc.." anyway, i give up and admit that word logos are not my craft. for now, i will be content with the above tries for a corporate gift i would like to share.

(sigh) times like this, i sure miss kuya lito bibal (+) of philrice and the legendary dr. abastilla of BSU.

blessed Christmas from isrd!//