The One with the Political Angst

I never thought I'd be one to post anything political but what the heck, some of my readers asked for it, so let's give it a go...

At the start of this year, we were shocked and horrified with the civil protests in Egypt. The people took to the streets, as then Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was being accused of severe corruption. The Egyptian government's financial oversight body stated that the Mubarak, including his wife Suzanne, and his sons, Alaa and Gamal, have amassed billions of dollars' worth of properties, including luxury apartments and condominiums, palaces and even valuable farm land. This doesn't merely stretch along the Alexandria and Cairo, but traverses time zones - from the Red Sea luxury resort condos, to Beverly Hills Mansions, to properties in Paris, France. Apart from the extreme properties, the Mubarak family has acquired, over the years, companies which are worth millions of dollars. 

The Mubarak Family: (L-R) Alaa, Suzanne, Hosni and Gamal.
Picture Credit: Huffington Post 

To find out more about Hosni and the family, let's take a look at their history. Hosni took over the Egyptian government in 1981 when his predecessor, Anwar Sadat, was assassinated, following peace talks with Israel. Since the monarchy was overthrown, presidency was the next best thing and Hosni, in his first political address to his public in Cairo, promised "not to commit myself to what I can not implement, hide the truth from people, or be lenient with corruption and disorder...". 

(Far right) Hosni Mubarak in 1981. 

After assuming the post in 1981,supposedly, Hosni has rigged every election and has done everything in his power to push for elections every 6 years, but crushing political opponents and dissidents prior to the elections. 

Democratic rigging as demonstrated by Hosni in one of the allegedly rigged elections. 

During the 2005 Egyptian Presidential elections, no international observers were allowed in the Egyptian polls. 

Dr. Ayman Nour, a political opponent that tried to shed light on the widespread rigging of elections, was imprisoned  for forgery and was sentenced to 5 years of hard labor. 

January 25th, that fateful day, when people in Egypt bundled together to show their disgust and uprising against the corrupt and cheating Mubarak, was the day the world was introduced to a Muslim country fighting for its own rights. The massive outpouring of Egyptians in the streets of Cairo incited the world to take notice and for the world to become a spectator in a country desperate yet dedicated to reclaim its reputation and dignity as a nation. Following the uprising in Tunisia (which is a completely different story), Egypt's white and blue collar employees, students and random ordinary citizens pooled into the biggest uprising the Muslim country has ever seen. January 27th was the day that Egypt shut down the Internet - forcing people like Alyouka, the first Egyptian Twitter user to use the hash tag #Jan25 to alert others to protest. 

Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook were repeatedly blocked in Egypt for some time, ensuring that no other countries will be aware of what is going on in the country.

Protesters in the streets, carrying flags, drums, anything to show their revolt. 

What does this tell us? It tells us that in extreme oppression, people revolt. When things become too unpalatable and undesirable, it becomes the tipping point. In extreme cases, people don't only revolt, they fight and civil unrest ensues. A government will face its downfall when people find their means and they will, because they won't stop until they overthrow someone whom they know is not going to be good or right for them. 

This happens rarely in everyday life. People in the Philippines are way too weak to even question corruption. We tend to shrug and say, '...meh, karma will get them'. In the face of billion-peso scams, worthless pork barrel implementations and dare I say, smear campaigns. We're very good communicators - we form opinions and share them in taxi cabs, usual inuman sa kanto sessions and friendly dinners. We even, in our families, talk about politics. 

Surely, I'm not the only one that thinks that LPG-ran vehicles isn't bad for the public's health. It's been chronicled that LPG emits hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide and the poor cab drivers that drive those heinous converted vehicles are not benefiting from paying less for gas if they're going to pay for lung surgery medications after! Thanks to the former first gentleman Mike Arroyo for that! For more, I'm not the lone proponent of the thought that politicians should worry more about the health and safety of children in the Philippines rather than get caught up in a sex video scandal featuring a well-known erstwhile plastic surgeon come singer/actor and an up and coming starlet (And yes, Senator Bong, the word is perversion - not pervertedness or something to that effect, and sir, not pointing fingers, but you dare say, in front of congress, that Hayden Kho doesn't have morality and doesn't respect other women? You, sir, have a wife and Lord knows, 11 kids?! And you have allegedly slept with all your female co-stars. Am I on glue here?!). Then there's the RH Bill - don't even get me started on that one. In a church, near my office, there's a tarp saying "Stop the RH Bill, It's not God's will". I don't think God's will is to have 100,000 bastards at the end of each month because people had to avoid contraception. Further to that, let's face it, people are having sex! They are! In fact, my bet is someone half my age is doing it right now, with some dude she met at a bar, or a drinking session or whatnot.This young lady, with a condom or the pills, will avoid conception by almost 96% (I'm a pharmacist, BTW, so these stats make sense to me...) which means she may not conceive at all! The probability of her being preggers by the end of the bump-n-grind session is almost 96% as well. Given the right ovulation period, hormonal triggers,etc - I'm not gonna bore you with that - the point is, this girl would have to stop a year of her education to give birth, then expecting her to do the right thing, we expect her to land a job, a good career so she can provide for the resulting child. How can she do that if she's not equipped to face that responsibility? I'm freakin' 30, I can't imagine having a child yet! So what more if I was 15 and I got preggers? I'm with the whole movement that children are our future and perhaps the Catholic church has a right to impose upon its people the avoidance of contraception, but even the government is weighing in on it. You can be Pro-Life or Pro-Choice, either way, it's not your life that's at stake, it's that child's. And about children - if DSWD's programs were half as good, we won't be seeing rugby-sniffers around the metro, we won't see children prostituting themselves to foreign and local customers and yes, fathers won't be abusing their daughters or their sons, for that matter. If the government was ran as successfully as it can be, how come we're poor as a nation? Why are we illiterate as a nation? Why are out people generally thought of as domestic helpers in other countries? We clean for a living and we can't even clean our own society. 

The separation of the church and state rarely happens in the Philippines because politicians are worried about the amount of support they'll get from church leaders, or lack thereof, should they oppose.

Sometimes, I envy Egypt, because they took their flag and ran with it. They were unapologetic and they understood that they can reclaim their nation - they can reclaim the morality and the dignity that is the seat of civilization. With us, ask anyone in the street about the most moving news story they heard the past few days and that would probably be a showbiz news! It sucks that we've bred a society that fosters lack of awareness, but what stings more is that we ourselves breathe the society that fosters apathy. Bet a peso that this person you ask in the streets won't even know much of the history of the Philippines, how ancestors fought for our freedom and how we should be thankful for it. How long does the culture of apathy run and will this generation's legacy be that? You and I will have to decide. 

All Egypt and Mubarak pictures were taken from the Huffington Post. 

No photographers were harmed during the making of this post. All other pictures were taken from Stock Xchng. 

The One with God and the Multi-level Manager

A couple of years back. I was a Training and Development Coordinator before, in Merlin. I used to handle several sites - Hungary, UK and the Philippines. Think that it's a Training and Development Manager post, except that the company calls it something else for purposes of taxation, semantics (cos they're Brit) and the whole thought of we're not a call centre hence we're not gonna call everyone a manager mindset. (Thanks to James for clearing that up!)

Apparently, I should have had a PDA. They just gave me a laptop and I had to lug it around for hours to get to the office! Hahaha! 

In Hungary, where there is an entire floor in a building dedicated to the company, there are so much more employees. Handling training for soft skills, communications and other specifics was simply harder to accomplish remotely and at the same time, it was just hard to follow-up.

In the UK, because it's corporate, it's easier. The personnel are great to get along with and they often just need some systems training, where one SME (subject matter expert) is already in the site and it's mere coordination that needs to be set in motion.

In the Philippines, it was a whole lot easier. Everyone can see you, everyone "respects" you to a certain extent and it's easier to reach out. People are commonly more agreeable cos they know you're working hard on something and your intention is to get everyone trained on a specific topic, even if it means taking an hour-long call from the NASA affiliate of the account you're handling (which means extending your shift until 5 in the morning even though it's agreed that you only work until 2AM).

Getting people to follow your training requires some weird talent - it involves food, some warm coffee and a lot of stand-up acts that you should have mastered by the time you're almost 30! 

Earlier today, I had dinner with a trusted friend. He sat down with me and told me how he abhors (notice how I skipped the use of the word hate cos it just doesn't give me the same intensity as "abhor") it when some "evangelists" tell you you're wrong and condemns you to turn you to their religion. He spoke of a time when he felt like he was being crucified for doing something wrong, as a former classmate of ours would come to his house and would try to get him to attend a church he belonged to. They stopped talking after my friend said "I'm not saying no to God, I'm saying no to you...". I guess the extremist church dude took the Bible verse "...do not yoke with unbelievers" seriously. 

Who could say no to that face? Maybe evangelists should utilize cherub-like  images before they "preach". They'd get better responses. 

I came to think about my own experiences in religion. I have had friends who would gently prod, others would guilt you into going to their churches, others would surprise you (as in you feel trapped, you're in someone's "party", and in the middle of the hip LL Cool J song, they whip out their Bibles and the pool is already prepped for your "baptism") and others would simply back-off when you say you're busy. Those whom I'm still friends with are those who showed genuine concern. Those who may have failed but still show their care, would pray for me, would accompany me on a bad day or simply go shopping and not quite talk about their faith. I've been approached by all types of religions - Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Christianity. All types of faiths, leading me to believe sometimes that I can just wait until some cult comes up to me and say "The Sunshine State of Mind is the way to go..." and I'd just finally give up and say "Sure, why not?!". I figured there are really those that force and condemn and criticize, without taking someone's side on anything. They judge and cast stones. If you've ever been approached by people who tell you that your faith is wrong, you're wrong or the way you live your life is wrong, then you know what I mean. They congregate as a group and collectively point their fingers at you, choosing to say "You're wrong", instead of "This is what's right in my eyes, or in God's eyes...". 

Judge me. I'm a sinner. 

In most cases, eager and overzealous evangelists become the judge,jury and executioner. I'm familiar with the drill. Corner someone and say he or she is wrong. He/she is a sinner. He/she is a bad person. Guess what, everyone is a sinner. Supposedly, according to the Bible, "everyone has sinned and fallen short of God's glory". There's no need to condemn anyone because "the wages of sin is death" and I will skip stating which part of the Bible it is. The main idea is God has always tried to reach out, to coordinate, to hold out His hands and try to get people to see His point of view. Preachers tend to point their fingers at you and say "You're the worst person on earth"... They follow up their church and what their doctrines are and it scares the heck out of you because you're not a judgmental person and you simply hope not to be judged by anyone. 

I read it once. Not enough to quote it like a lawyer but hey, enough to know God loves me. 

They always say that God is a jealous, spiteful, avenging God. He is a God that punishes and whatever bad thing that happens to you is your punishment. Flu? You didn't read the Bible yesterday! Leprosy? That's cos you cheated off your 2nd-grade classmate back then. AIDS? Homosexual abomination! You deserve that! Famine and strife? Your country is heathen and hedonistic and you've displeased God! I sincerely don't doubt that there are people out there who tend to cast stones because of self-righteousness. Guess what, it makes sense to me. Scare someone sh*tless and you tend to make them want to seek out the one thing that would hold them together. But isn't this a cult tactic? Isn't this what the Manson Family (Charles, not Marilyn) did? Isn't this what the late great cultist Jim Jones did in Jonestown, Guyana? Fear - fear of failing, fear of humiliation, fear of rejection - aren't those their tools? These men - great minds, amazing followship (and I don't call it fellowship because it might offend some people) was because they were bullies. They coerce people to follow, coerce people to belong and thus, people tend to. They make a stand, and they force people into accepting their words as gospel truth because they have a congregation that says "amen" to what they say, because they have a group that can "excommunicate" you when you choose not to follow and they have the machinery of God's word - thousands of Bible verses to prove to you, to the congregation and the rest of the world that YOU ARE WRONG! 

Still a cute girl. Seriously,preachers, get a little girl to do this... 

Guess what, no one wants to hear they're wrong. 

I was asked by my trusted friend what I think God is like. He laughed when I said "God is like a really good omnipresent and omniscient multi-level manager in a corporation" (Sounds like something I'd say, right? Blasphemous and challenging.). He is an excellent manager of people and a manager of systems. When God needs something communicated, He tends to look into a person's psyche first. Figures out what works best then goes with it and runs with it. Different strokes for different folks. I think God figured out a long time ago that bullying doesn't work (Those Inquisitions never did Christianity any good, did it?) and tolerance, instead of condemnation, is key. God doesn't sit down and tell other people in the department to give sanctions to people for mere omissions or commissions (Christian term which means omitted acts - like reading the Bible, praying, paying your tithes, etc and committed acts - lying, cheating, coveting someone's wife, etc), rather He weighs his options. He has a Performance Appraisal for everyone and knows what each one did to merit an Exceeds Expectations rating, or Fully Successful or even Needs Improvement. He listens in on calls, knows your metrics, bases your performance on that rather than something subjective like how well you participate in meetings or how friendly you were to the staff. God works in mysterious ways too, He doesn't need a major breakthrough so He'd give you a kudos, He knows what you did and He will pat your back when you deserve it. God also sits you down and tells you you've been late for a couple of times, and what the hell is wrong with you or tells you your metrics have dipped, and works with you on how you can make it easier to target those metrics. God isn't a micro-manager. He tells you what He wants done and sets your expectations clearly and tries to get out of your way so you can work your mojo. Ultimately, God knows how to communicate to you. There's no need for flaming swords or the vision of Eden or tears of blood and gold to show you how much He cares. At the end of the day, God is an excellent multi-level manager. 

God has a freakishly large calendar to pencil in talking to his people!

Managing sites, getting people's buy in, finding common things to talk about, not bullying anyone... If I was as good as God (please don't consider this blasphemy, you can dream right?), I would have done that. I would have lessened the administrative tasks and I would have given my all to talk to people and make them want the training, make them want to learn, push them to make the best decisions of their careers and not coerce them into making decisions based on fear or bullying tactics.If you're going to minister to me, trust me. I'm going to need you to talk to me the way most managers do, with patience, tolerance and finally, with understanding. There's no need for an Inquisition when you're not ready for a war. 

No photographers were harmed intellectually during the making of this post. All pictures were taken from Stock Xchng.