May has flown so fast like it was shorter than the its own three-lettered name. Not quite the end of the month, but days before, I was almost ready to call it quits. My TTD's (things to do) was being stuffed like a thanksgiving turkey (or for more local color like rellenong bangus) as days wore on. May was, and is, a blur, and I actually turned 33 last week. I made a simple reminder alert on my cellphone just in case I'd forget. Fortunately, some people did also remember to greet, foremost my hunny, mom, sis and dad (in this order too). And to the rest of the peeps who remembered to greet, a million thanks!
I was also almost flying ceaselessly in places, work related for most of the time, of course. Labor Day weekend was a short but fulfilling on-impulse respite for eon and I in Baguio. As always, even before I've had the words in my head to blog about it, eon has his already uploaded. First week of May brought me, and all the Global Fund staff in San Pablo for the training of trainers. Then off to Legazpi for the project management team's evaluation of our work in the region. There was a short trip to Donsol that came with this. As it was short, I essentially just slept in, the nearest I got to see the butanding (whale shark) was a poster on the check in counter where we stayed. In between, there were the "showbiz" appearances for the AIDS Candlelight Memorial ceremonies, first in Gumaca, then in San Pablo. I'm attending one for Pasay City later today. Then on Friday, there's one more for Metro Manila in Marikina Riverbanks. Last week, I attended a workshop at Fontana in Clarkfield, Pampanga organized by Tropical Disease Foundation for the fifth round Global Fund AIDS project. I celebrated my birthday with a plenary presentation in the workshop.
With so much work to be done, my mind is running on auto-cruise. I work on impulses. I had to trust myself for doing the right things without so much preponderance going into my actions. I also had to be most prayerfully trusting of my peers, as many other smaller but equally important details had to be decided and acted on their end. And speaking of prayers, I have seemed to develop short, silent, personal packets of time, breathing wishes of things to eventually come out right.
There are the bigger issues of course, of which at this point can be considered I'm in denial. Global Fund round 3's phase one coming to an end, our performance was considerably good (and maybe better than some others) but "they" want us out. Ouch! Global Fund round 5's around the corner, and "they" are already typecasting our role even before things have officially begun. Double ouch! Then, LEAD for Health just got pre-terminated, all SIO's (like us) have only until June 15th to accomplish, and until two days ago, they even hadn't transmitted a replenishment of funds. Triple ouch! Such madness! I remember last year, which now seemed to be ages ago, that some people told me USAID projects are a nightmare. I told them I'd wanted to find that out myself. Truly, now I can say, I found out.
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