Sweet simple things...

The day before I left my home country for Malaysia, Krista and I went to out to go to church and meet my high school friends. It was the last leg of meetups and despididas I've been having for the past two weeks. I fetched here from her house to say goodbye to her family also and to take some pictures we've had for the past weeks.

So she transferred some files to my USB. the folder's name was "vanilla twilight." Thinking it contained the pictures I asked her, I opened the folder and saw the pictures of friends' greetings and well wishes for my going to Malaysia. All the while I thought there was only one file there that I should read when I am already in Malaysia.

The supposed-to-be-surprise was at once revealed. So all the while, whenever she meets up with our friends, she would take time taking videos of them saying well wishes to me. Some friends whom she was not able to meet just sent their picture messages. all these files were contained in the folder she saved in my USB. She was supposed to make an AVP out of it but because of busy-ness, she was not able to.

As I was watching the videos and reading the messages, I really felt loved and special. It was the perfect confidence-booster a person leaving home for a while could ever have. So I'm really thankful to Krista for such a wonderful idea. It's a very simple yet touching act she made.

In Service

Finally. I'm already at my host country Malaysia. A little bit later than most of my batch mates because of visa processing but I have no complains whatsoever. It was i think God's perfect timing. No doubt about it. Maybe I've been a little too excited to really focus on preparing for the post so He gave me a little more time to reflect the gravity of the endeavor I am to embark.
And so the timing was as precise as the universe intended it to. And I'm here, sitting at my desk typing a blog entry about the things that happened and will be happening and the emotions that come along with them.

Social Engineers

It's a term "coined" by one of my batchmates in the 19th FK Prepcourse in Bangkok. He was actually an engineer by profession and he used the term social to indentify himself as a "real" engineer and to differentiate his tasks from the rest of us NGO workers. 

Let me clarify. He did not say it to demean us NGO workers. I actually thought he wanted to create a metaphor out of the term engineer for all the different tasks we're going to do in 10 months. Engineering is the field that deals with the scientific application of knowledge in order to build and design structures and processes to improve people's lives. If we put the social component in the scientific concept, the meaning would not change dramatically, the meaning will only be enriched. It would expand in ways that the metaphor captures development work as an attempt towards building and improving people's lives. 

It's a great realization for me. The concept if used in political science would actually mean manipulation of people to change their attitude or perspective towards policies or systems that a political entity wants to pursue for their political gain. But putting it in the light of development work, social engineering can mean the other way around. It can mean changing or inlfuencing people's attitudes towards development. It can mean taking away the culture of mendicancy among the poor people; it can mean changing people's attitude towards government systems and the culture of corruption; and it can also mean changing people's attitude towards gender relations and power. 

It's a concept that can define the work that we do. I'm proud to be a social engineer. Scoail