Kharece turns 1, Lola turns 77!

 Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Praise Him all creatures here below.

Praise Him above the heavenly hosts.

Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Amen.

Mama turned 77. Si Chairo o gusto magblow din hehe.

Dearest Kharece

Dearest Kharece,

In a few days, you will be turning one year old. We thank God for a year He has given you and you to us. It’s true what other parents of Down syndrome children blog about. We wish we had known from the start that it is not so bad after all.

Kharece, we would like to thank you for a lot of things (we hope you will grow to be able to read what we write here anyway):

Thank you baby for bringing joy to our family. It sounds like a cliché as every child brings joy to a family. But the joy you bring is a little different, more intense, more impacting. Your contagious smile (even if we are still awaiting your first tooth) always reminds us of rejoicing with what is at the moment, with what we are and what we have, and to be cool even when everything seems to be so stressing.

Thank you baby for not being so fussy. We leave you to play at your walker or your crib while we cook or wash clothes and you seldom mind. You only shout and let us know when you think we should have been done. Even how you let us know make us giggle with joy.

Thank you Kharece for the lovely stare that melts, and that thing you do with your face when you are about to cry. It causes us to try and bully you more, but again even such moments are joyous for our family.

Thank you Kharece for daily reminding us of God’s sovereignty. You are our greatest shock in life. Yet you are our greatest reminder of His sovereign will, of the reality of His presence, and of the truth of God’s peace. How can we not serve Him more?

Thank you for trying your best. We think you are trying your best. While your milestone schedules differ from your "kuyas", your small accomplishments are worth looking forward to. If we can only take away that extra chromosome from your cells, we would. Not so that you will achieve the milestones the way other children would, but to shield you from future questions from a society that has a different normal. Our prayer is that we will be able to teach you the proper behavior or reaction when the inevitable time comes when you will be compared to the “normal”. The PWD world will make it sound better, that you are not “abnormal”, but you are “special”. I say, you are not a normal child indeed, but that doesn’t make you less special.

Kharece, our journey will be long but one year into it and we are confident that we have Help. Our first year was not bad. The worst so far was that time you were so hurt nine times when you were being admitted to the hospital for Pneumonia and they were trying to insert an IV through your chubby hands. Your Dad couldn’t stand your cries and had to distance himself.  We resolved that time that we will try our best to prevent you from being hospitalized again.

As we celebrate your birthday, our hearts are full with thanksgiving to our God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank Him for many things concerning you:

We thank God for giving you a healthy heart, a healthy thyroid, good swallowing and eating ability, and hopefully sustained good ears and eyes;

We thank God for sustaining your physical strength so far. At one year, you cannot pull yourself to sit nor stand by yourself yet. Hypotonia (low muscle tone) and ligamentous laxity (looseness of the ligaments that causes increased flexibility in the joints) are how the medical world call those characteristics and they are associated with your extra chromosome. Nevertheless, you can sit by yourself for a longer time now, and can push and scoot yourself backwards and that is enough to thank God for.  We thank God also for teaching us the virtue of patience.

We thank God for your mental development. We do not know how much you understand or what stock of knowledge you have as of now but we are glad you know your blood family somehow. You love your "kuyas" and they adore you. We thank God for the small things you can do like clap your hands when we ask you to, or respond with some syllables when we converse with you.

We thank God for Hope Presbyterian Church family and the universal church family He brought us into. For all our shortcomings and the weaknesses of the church, the brethren have been very very supportive of you, us, since you were born. Thank God for our, your near and far spiritual family.

We thank God of course for dear blood family and friends who from the start showered you, and continue to give you, us, love and prayers. But as your Uncle Winslow would tell us "mamingsan ti salamat". Kharece, God willing, may you reach to a point in your mental capacity, when you will be able to appreciate and thank God for His grace and blessing of good family and friends. Mama and Daddy have not perfect but great parents, a good bunch of siblings, and real friends who will let you in when you knock on their doors. 

Finally, how we so thank God for what He is accomplishing in us your parents because of or through you. Our earnest and continual prayer is that by His grace, you will grow to give only glory to our Maker and accomplish your purpose, just as we try to continue to find and accomplish His purpose in us by giving you to us.

Happy birthday our dearest Kharichay, Khayen, Kharece Ayen. We love you so much.

In Christ,
Mama and Daddy

11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare[a] and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:11-13 ESV)

Kharece at 10 mos (photo by Tita Betty Listino)

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!//

Kharece pictorial at 7 months

  

Thanks to Dream Foundation (located at Lion's club) for the nice pictorial even though Kharece was clearly not in a celebrity mode or mood that day. It still amazes me how an extra chromosome can make them all look very similar indeed. Even so, the Sovereign One distinctly gave her to us and was the one who formed her inward parts; and knitted her together in my womb (Ps. 139:13). Thank you Kharichay for continually bringing us the gift of pure joy.

On the value of planning

I've been meaning to blog about planning but never got the time for it.

Anyway, I have been at BSU for four years now and I probably attended more than 10 planning meetings in that span of time. Just to list the major ones:

1. Strategic planning for BSU R&E - La Union (facilitated by an international speaker)
2. Strategic planning for BAPTC - Manila (facilitated by DAP)
3. Operational planning for BAPTC - Baguio city (facilitated by DAP)
4. Strategic planning of HAARRDEC/CorCAARRD - Pangasinan (facilitated by an international speaker)
5. Strategic planning (Roadmap) for IRO - BSU (facilitated by IRO Director)
6. Strategic planning of BSU - NPRCRTC (facilitated by a retired NEDA personnel yata yun)
7. Operational planning for selected R&E centers - Pooten resort, Asin (facilitated by Planning Director)
8. Strategic pre-planning for BSU Internationalization - ATI BSU Compound (facilitated by IRO Director)

I know that strategic planning comes before operational planning and it is more long-term and includes visioning and "strategizing". I also know that planning is one of the major functions of management. With the above experiences, however, and watching how things are unfolding, increasingly I'm beginning to have second thoughts about the value of strategic planning.

Well, I like the idea of dreams, VMGOs and scenarios, but I'm beginning to believe that more often than not, the how part seems to be just really an exercise, at least considering the nature of government policies, turnover of leaders and system of budget allocations and disbursements.

I like better annual operational planning, and since my last PhilRice semesters, I actually love the idea of the semestral DPCRs for centers, divisions or units, and IPCRs for individual employees. For all its weaknesses, it is this level of planning and targeting (not to mention monitoring and evaluation) that I take very seriously.  I do like planning and setting my targets in the next 6 months.

Of course I still do not like the BSU system of the DPCR being the IPCR of directors and other leaders. My position is leaders ought to have their own IPCRs. After all, the DPCRs are office or department targets, and the director is NOT the department. Even directors have their own individual commitments, even while it is their command responsibility to make sure the DPCR targets are met. Management and supervision of the unit where he or she is designated should be just a part of his or her IPCR. Employees are either faculty members or non-teaching personnel and thus ought to have their own individual targets. I am not a faculty member and do not know how the PES works but it seems it ought to be part of a faculty's IPCR.

In addition, I wish there is a provision for intervening activities and percent offsetting in the current IPCR system of BSU.

I also like the idea of logical frameworks for development and research projects which is essentially a planning and monitoring and evaluation framework. It is not easy to craft though and the theory of change is really often difficult to show.

I also like the concept of final IOB which becomes the bible of disbursement for the agency for that year and supports the operational plans. It should be set considering the operational plans and deemed fixed when released. The final IOB or budget allocations should be available at most by end of January or early February of each year. And the administration, budget or accounting office should NOT be allowed to juggle funds. Not even sector heads. At least not without the knowledge or permission of the units. With a final budget allotment for each sector or unit or program or project, planning becomes more relevant and achievable. Middle managers will have difficulty operating with a noncertain or "moro-moro" budget allocation.

I hope that with ISO certification there will be a protocol before any item in the IOB for that year can be adjusted or before another sector or even another unit can use your fund allotment. Say, every quarter updates of fund utilization by units can become the basis for "borrowing" reallocation after the semester or half year. Of course the monitoring of budget balances and disbursements should be properly done almost real time. As of now, it doesn't seem to be working that way. Issues of overspending and underspending still exist even with external projects.

I think government agencies have a lot to learn from the planning and production management tools in private business management or business administration particularly of manufacturing and service companies. Concepts such as quality control, JIT, Six Sigma, Kaizen, etc are very useful.

Thank you anyway for the opportunity to be a part of the planning processes in the past. I learned a lot and see the value of scenario building and midterm to short-term planning. But really, ironic it maybe considering that my field of specialization is even into intergenerational planning, I have yet to appreciate the value of strategic planning. At least maybe when I see a strategic plan where at least 50% of the strategies are actually operationalized or implemented and not the opposite.