Having nothing else to do, I blog

I'm essentially doing nothing, I texted my hunny. He must be in his usual busy self in the office right now, he might not even have a wee bit of time to text me back. It's okay, I also do that to him sometimes.

This is a rare occurence for me, blogging in the middle of the day. Having nothing else to do, I might as well let my fingers do some keyboard talking. Ordinarily my workload is such that I only get to blog very late at night/very early in the morning of the next day. Today is not that day, but an idle body I may be right now, the mind still rages on with the twisting and turning of many unanswered questions... imagine a Rubik's cube as an unanswered question, then multiply them with any two-digit numeral. Haaay! Questions, questions, its desired answers would have made me more productive today. My semi-employed existence continues, and November came in with a vengeance for the many things that were left unresolved the month before.

While the Global Fund seemed to be running more smoothly now in our Southern Tagalog site, the Albay project is still in limbo. Our people are still waiting how the project will be getting started. Yesterday, the staff sent us budget requests for some activities; I don't even have their final workplans and budgets yet. I'm not one to be too restrictive on staff in doing their, er, stuff, but somehow for this case, I have to decide not to release funds without knowing for sure what will be coming in. Boring chore, someone's got to do it, and by the end of this week, I will become the "bad guy" in all of this. I can feel it coming.

The next round of Global Fund remains an unfulfilled promise (for those in the know, that would be Round 5). Its roll-out is such an abstract idea that a Kandinsky would have been more coherent, a Malevich more explicit. A few weeks ago I got a tip that the fund management group for this round will be publishing an ad calling for proposals on major newspapers supposedly first week of November. I've been buying newspapers for days now and nothing. I really don't appreciate seeing a growing stack of old newspapers at home. Aside from the stack being a muted mocking thing, painfully feeding into my growing desperation, I also get to reflect on all the wasted money it represented.

I don't have much use for newspapers, actually; my current events needs I mostly get from the Internet. When I do get to read newspapers, I get the news of the day bundled with unwanted icky printing ink, dizzying flip-and-search of continuations of stories, and frustrating realization of the increasing incidence of bad editing and wrong grammar of some journalists. With the Internet, it's a bit easier: my mouse doesn't smudge ink, reading is essentially scroll and click, and when bad writing/editing is emerging, the window can be easily closed, better writing of similar stories always a promise, always a Google away.

Things are not going so well in the PNAC either. I was supposed to have a very critical meeting yesterday for a major activity in December. The meeting was cancelled and I was not even informed. Later last night, a colleague called me up regarding our intended advocacy in line with the ASEAN Summit. Certain allegations floated around, most surprisingly, that PNAC no longer plans to go through with the advocacy. I wasn't informed of that either. Most irritably, people from whom we needed answers are not around. I was supposed to attend an emergency meeting about this ASEAN thingie today; had to be moved as other people already have their appointments set. So how about tomorrow then? People haven't yet replied. It all feels so disabling.