Saying Goodbyes

In every three years or so, the managers being in this company will either grow or shrink in numbers. While it has not evolved into a consistent trend yet, I believe that this phenomenal marvel will stay as an observable matter for a few years to come.

To offer a simple explanation as to why such a thing happens uncontrollably, I have devised a list from my lightly expressed yet debatable opinions under the guise of deliberately euphemised statements on a descending scale as follows:

3. The employee is not happy.

An employee may lose all the motivation to work in the absence of happiness. The effect is usually easily reversed by any attempt of an employer to find the source of sorrow and by doing something about it.

2. The employer is not happy.

When an employer becomes unhappy with an employee, it’s quite difficult to win the faith back.

Very little option can be done to reverse the effect and this usually ends with the cessation of contract. But there is still hope.

1. Both the employer and the employee are not happy.

Paper contracts are ripped apart and digital copies are purged. There is no point of finding a fix to mend the broken pieces.

But not all of which actions have ended into separating ways are from the list above. There are other obvious reasons that may spark an interest to switch jobs. Say for example, my friend Malou has decided to move to another company. While it is true that her decision was partly due to her continual pursuit of a greener pasture, quite a few mitigating factors also involved having a fresh start to everything.

Here are my fellow managers preparing foods for Malou’s celebration. We Filipinos have traditions that are jovial and yet quite confusing at times. We prepare foods and invite everyone when an occasion is worth celebrating, say a birthday celebration for an instance. But when someone that has become an acquaintance for quite a time is departing for good, we find such thing worthy of celebration too.  

I guess the fun fact there is that Filipinos welcome any excuse for a celebration even when it's ambiguous to everyone around.

The menu for that night included homemade siomai and some stew. In the Philippines, the elders of long ago have coined a term “Bayanihan” to name an instance when everyone is in voluntary mode while helping each other at times like this. Even in a far away place like Papua New Guinea, bayanihan can be observed among Filipino communities.

My voluntary contribution for that night is to assume quality control by tasting and sampling the cooked meals.

While there was no cooked food to sample yet, I must also assume the role of the photographer which was quite an easy job for the night.

My favorite food to sample is from a fellow manager’s specialty, the cassava cake. She has chosen not to be named but I can say that her cassava cake is unique as the toppings that she uses are from her own recipes.

And here are all the managers joining the celebration that night. The rests are seated on the side not captured by my camera.

This celebration is for Malou and Hernan’s last day on the company premises. Unfortunately, Hernan wasn’t able to join us that night because his plane was set to leave a couple of hours earlier. 

While I’m in no position to know what the future holds for these two perky colleagues, I believe that it is going to be brighter.  I wish you two good luck in your new endeavors. 

Interesting Places around Port Moresby

Whenever I’m driving, my focus is only about three things: the road, the car that I’m driving and the people who may try a sprint across the road.  The places I pass by have less of my attention. Both eloquent and meaningless conversation carried out by passengers in the car are deliberately ignored, regardless. A passenger told me once that with my traits, I can be a locomotive driver. Seems to me like I have reached a milestone with my career in driving until a close friend of mine had said, “Hey, a train driver is usually alone in a driver’s compartment.”

Hi! My name is Glen Villar.

And this is Rodney. He has been under my supervision since the beginning of my employment in the company that I work with.  He has, at first, started as an encoder for our purchases and has since progressed into performing more challenging duties.

While having preceded this post with this photo may appear irrelevant with regards to the title of this post, the idea behind is to show that even a narrow passageway that is  crammed with a delegate of oversized airconditioners has become a place of interest for both Rodney and I.

I’m thinking that the reason for such is somehow connected to my theory upon which I believe that if someone has been on the same place for a long period of time, his brain may start freeing memories inhabited by his experiences of having been in another places. When he is moved to somewhere else, during which a new scenery is introduced, despite having been there before, his brain will attempt to bring back the freed memories.

But since the brain is known to have a great devotion to its host and its protection, it then decides to stop wasting time trying to bring back what is supposed to be a purged memory to begin with.  Because for the brain, there are other more important things at hand like maintaining a DEFCON 2 alertness for any danger. Such a phenomenon lets you experience any common place as new and interesting.

The guy in the left is Noel and on the right is Rodney. I have both trained these two guys in different areas, with Noel concentrating on dealing with Quotation and Invoices and Rodney in both encoding and hardware troubleshooting.  Some people may not enjoy what these two are doing, but for Rodney, deciphering the mysteries of colour coded wires while seated on a monoblock is as interesting as to what Noel, who is on a cozy office chair, was doing on a computer.

I have taught Rodney about the different configurations of UTP cable.  Like anyone else unfamiliar with networking, he has found it confusing at first. Now Rodney knows how to crimp for a 10-baseT and 100-baseT connection and cross-cable connection with ease.

In search for a greener pasture, Noel has already resigned from this company.

Patience and perseverance is the key to finding the problem in something faulty. Most of the time, a computer may emit beeping sounds in response to its self-integrity checking mechanism triggered off by errors.  But in the absence of these little  telltale  noises, a technician’s job becomes relatively challenging. We can think of the whole picture as a jigzaw puzzle with dozens of tessellating pieces.

Each piece of puzzle is like an individual troubleshooting experience from which the technician draws its solution and deal with the problem at hand in a trial and error fashion. Rodney is now good at this. Nearly as good as me.

Ha!

This is our little make-shift half-court basketball setup in our front yard. The guy on the left wearing a red short is responsible for coming up with this ingenuity. The hoop is made up of an old and rusty steering wheel which is then mounted on some kind of fixture where a pulley is purposely installed.

Playing basketball is fun for the first 100 times, but thereafter its amusement factor declines if you keep on playing with familiar faces every now and then.

This is me on an early Sunday morning at Pacific Adventist University (PAU). Settled behind me are the numerous stall owners selling different kinds of vegetables and foods with beverages. Being one of the few in our company who were allowed to drive the company’s car, I’m getting all sort of requests from fellow managers to bring them to places where I would not normally have a reason to go.

But going to PAU on a Sunday morning is more productive than sleeping it off in my bed. You can spend 1 Kina for each pile of vegetable which I find relatively affordable. And because the vegetables in the picture are hard to come by, I did not think twice about buying them. A few years ago, I learned how to cook Ginisang Munggo by reading about it at Panlasang Pinoy blog and the bitter gourd leaves in my hand is a crucial recipe.

While varying proportions of the PNU campus are divided to school buildings, housing and an open air market, the larger partition of its land is converted to plantation. The picture above shows a vast area where the corn crops and papaya are planted. 

This place is the PNG Gardener. Once in a while, I come here for a visit. There is always something in an aquarium shop that makes me visit it. Although it’s not clear yet, I guess it has something to do with being an aquarium enthusiast myself.

Here’s a shop assistant attempting to scoop out a pair of rainbow fish. Rainbow fish is an ornamental fish naturally found in the habitats of Papua New Guinea. I’ve read somewhere before that it’s quite hard to keep. Luckily though, the pair that I bought are still in good shape after introducing them to a community of Sogeri Kois and swordtails.

This area is near the Centrepoint which is next to our place of work.  Noel and I were aiming to snap a photo of an Australian-duo who were performing before the crowd. They are quite visible if you try and zoom in.

This is what the old Rita Flynn Netball Complex looks like before its renovation. Nowadays, the complex is far better. The players wearing the lighter shade of blue are employees from the company that I’m working with. I know the players by their individual names but as a group, we refer to them simply as The Netball Girls. 

Netball has a striking resemblance to basketball. Like the latter, the mechanics of the game mandate that players from opposing team must try and and outscore each other by bringing the ball into the hoop. A few noticeable differences between the two games are:

• The ball itself. It seems like they’re using a ball the size of a soccer or volleyball instead of the official basketball.
• Dribbling.  There is not much dribbling involved throughout the entire game. However, good movement of the ball through passing among team mates is the key to much of the winning.
• The hoop doesn’t have a backboard like a basketball court does.
• It seems that netball is more commonly played by girls.

Here’s ate Des and a couple of our co-managers exhibiting some form of moral support by being present in the game and shouting cheers amidst the other cheering crowd. 

That's it for this week. Until next time!

Foods to Eat at POM

What can be a more rhythmic question than asking what is there to eat? It’s possible that while there may be a lot of people like me who don’t bother much about coming up with this question in mind, our kind has only a miniscule part of the entirety to which all human beings are represented.

A little vague, isn’t it? Generally, my thoughts can become aimless and without sense when I’m hungry. As such, I notice that my grammar becomes a bit weird and my statements hold a tendency to digress from my main point.

But going back to my topic, if you have somehow, wondered about the foods we eat here in Port Moresby, here is a photo-list that I prepared for everyone.  I did my best and tried to remember each occurrence in its chronological order as possible. 

In Brumby’s, which is a bakery and a cafeteria at once, one has a freedom to experiment on “pairing up” upon which a brewed coffee of your preference is combined with the bread of your choice. The pair above is a tandem of croissants and a cup of cappuccino which I ordered.

You can find Brumby’s inside the Vision City.

If your taste is accustomed to oriental foods and at some point in your life, it got slightly changed by the introduction of western delicacies, you might want to go and try the restaurant at the Edgewood Hotel.  My friends and I have been here in quite a number of occasions. Our modus operandi for this recurring indulgence is to split the bill among ourselves in varying proportions. 

There is no better place for a bunch of hungry managers to eat and talk freely about the intricacies of politics in the workplace than a geographically well placed hotel-resto.

The Ela Beach Hotel along the Ela Beach is a classy restaurant which is frequented by both expats and locals. Here’s Malou, I and kuya Levi. I’ve only been here for like, twice or so. I like it for the big hamburgers and pizza on its menu.

If you’re in for customized bread, try the Love Bytes Bakery. They can accept custom-made bread to any form and size that fits any occasion. The bread in the photo above is just one fine example.  Its faecal resemblance is done with a sense of purpose and has nothing to do with how it smell.

Mmmmm. Yummy!

Shakers is another bakeshop and cafeteria located at the second floor in Vision City. Although I cannot exactly remember when, we have once dined in here. We just ordered coffee and a few slices of cakes.  

If there is something noteworthy of being mentioned, it is the Claypot in Plaza Inn restaurant which is by far, the greatest-ever kind of claypot that I have ever tasted in my life. Here’s a photo of which the variety of ingredients speak for themselves.  My friends and I have been trying to imitate this recipe but our failures prove that it’s not quite an easy task. Perhaps there is a secret recipe to it.

I wonder what it can be?

Another place where we can buy and eat a really nice cake is in Boroko Foodworld near Gordons. The cake above was what I ordered before. Like everyone else, I seem to have developed a habit of taking a photo of something I’m about to eat… or have partially eaten in this case.

Here’s me in my uniform and this shelf is in RH Hypermart at Vision City.

I love chocolates as much as pregnant women love unripe mangoes. But then not all pregnant women love an unripe mango so I guess the more appropriate analogy would be, “I love chocolates as much as some pregnant mango-loving-women love unripe mangoes.”

Next post, I'll try and write something about a couple of interesting place that I've been in POM. Enjoy your weekend everyone!

Late Night Post In Port Moresby

This is the fish of my dreams.

                           -  Dan Dodds

Among the primary things of which everyone’s enthusiasm becomes apparently stimulated whenever a momentary congregation of semi-tired managers squeezed in together for a 15-minute ride home are the profound interest to know what sort of fish, in its size and form, is available at Malaoro Market at the time being.

Malaoro Market is a prominent open-air market and an alternative place for shoppers whose premeditated itinerary is to buy freshly caught fish and for those who are budget-wise alike.  Fish are displayed on temporary stalls in quite a number upon which prices of unquestionable modesty is coupled. 

Here is Ben and the “buro” which he has recently made. While most people are drawn to this market for low prices, a number of people like me are quite in for finding a fish alive, which is what a fish must be, in order to make a really nice and authentic buro according to Ben who is a co-manager and a seasoned buro maker. I’ve been meaning to try and learn his art of buro-making but I haven’t got around to that yet.

But then again, I’m also in for low prices. 

This is ate Des. If there is one reason for her to be happy about after returning from Malaoro Market, it will be a fleeting moment like this while she’s holding a yellow fin tuna of incalculable disproportion to her hand which dwarfs what anyone else has bought in comparison.

Wait a minute; I think we might have a new stalwart contender. Here’s nanay Ada, holding the same variety of tuna. Judging from how she holds it for this photoshoot, it must be a couple of times heavier than what ate Des has.

Nanay Ada has once been featured by this young blogger sometime around November, 2014 and has since then become a regular persona of interest in the pages of this blog. You can read it here if you have a bit of precious time to spare.

 Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

- Henry David Thoreau

While it appears to be a fallacy of hasty generalization, the quote with its varying degrees of meaning has somewhat found itself useful for this particular scene.  I owe the reason for owning an aquarium partly due to the fish’s inexorable cuteness when swimming underwater and largely due to the associated psychological factors that we can benefit from looking at it or by going through the chores of maintaining one.

But then again, it’s just one of my feeble attempts to explain the reason behind getting some things that I want, like this small aquarium in particular.

Years ago, I had an incredible urge to learn the art of bread making. My point of study in particular was solely about making pandesal. I did make some to varying degrees of success but more often than not,  the quality of the bread I made were in nowhere near  within a marketable value.

Sometimes my pandesal were as hard as rock and sometimes they just don’t taste like one at all. The picture above was the last ones that I made and I have since then stopped baking. 

One significant effect of having an aquarium nearby is an apparent reduction to the levels of anxiety and stress on those who are contemplating on the fish dwelling inside. The effect of which can increase tenfold if an exercise involving a moderate physical workout such as riding a stationary bike is added on a daily routine. During the first few months since I bought the bike, I adhered to my biking schedule religiously like how Lance Armstrong stuck to his biking regimen.

Nowadays, the things that ride my bike involve a number of used shirts and an ample amount of dust.

Back in my younger days, I used to play Starcraft a lot. This personal desktop computer in my room bears a copy of this game and I still play it whenever I am in the mood for crushing a colony of alien being. Of the particular antagonists in the game, I disliked Zerg the most, and this is followed by the advance and more technologically capable Protoss.

I am huge fan of the Terran colony despite its unjust inadequacies in the game.

Here’s me in my bedroom while programming our company’s Lucky Chance software right after a good Starcraft game. While playing a computer game seems counter-productive to many, this is not always true for everyone. According to several studies that have regarded the effect of games to the gamers’ brain, a positive outcome of playing a strategy or real-time games includes a notable increase of activities in areas of the brain that involves spatial ability and critical thinking.

I’m not sure what that means, but if it means being able to come up quickly with a good alibi during a thorough questioning by an angry girlfriend, then there's more reason for you to play.

Hypothetical conversation.

Girl: Who’s Jenny and why is she in your FB friends?

Boy: Oh her. Uhm. Yeah.

Girl: Who?

Boy: (stammering) Uhm. She’s my boss and…

        … she’s specifically asked us all to…

        … to, add her up on facebook so she could see who was spending time on fb during working hours.

Girl: Oh. Okay.

Again, here’s me on my back. If, by any chance, you are wondering what this young blogger is actually doing when he is not blogging, I do all sort of things that can assist the company that I work with on their inventory and IT matters. The endeavor involves a number of things like planning for stocktake and making sure that they are done on time while keeping the results up to their highest accuracy as possible.

Here’s Moses, while testing his fingerprint on the biometric machine connected to a computer. The software running on this PC is what I programmed within the confinements of my bedroom.

 Luckily, this young blogger has developed a keen interest on software programming during his younger age. In general, if humans spend a lot of time doing the same thing with a high degree of interest again and again for what may seem like an eternity,  one can become so accustomed to the deed. The associated result is what humans have simply referred to as “skill.”

Here’s one of the software that I created for the company that I am working with. This module is particularly designed to deal with product searches and organizing them. 

This young blogger has a profound interest on other things as well that may or may not have something to do with a computer. He likes networking computers and troubleshooting problems related to such. The picture above is an example. Our server's previously setup state and after I did some rearrangements.

 And when everything of what this young blogger does becomes mundane, he just simply retreats to his art corner to which he spends a quality time to unwind. Having a conglomeration of varying art supplies on a narrow drawing table with a good source of light may bring forth the inner child within us, said I.

I specifically like to visualize someone how they would look like if they were an anime or a manga character. 

I have quite drawn a number of sketches that depict people in that way like this sketch above.

It’s almost midnight around here and somehow, my eyelids are getting heavier. 

Shop Hopping at Port Moresby

Port Moresy and Papua New Guinea in general is a home to numerous shopping store and supermarket.  Back in my country, I remember Cabanatuan, where I spent most of my school days, as a home to numerous schools and universities.  Walking around a few blocks in that place will almost always bring you to a different school. On busy weekdays, students can make up most of the public on every crowded street.

Port Moresby, having dwelt by diverse cultures comprised of the locals and expats from different countries, is adapted to meet what the multicultural community needs.  Thanks to the local farmers and poultry growers, we are enjoying a steady supply of fresh meat and vegetables.

This shelf is in Waterfront Shop. While the prices may be outdated, tiger prawns are sold at K87.75 per kilo and baby squids are sold at a much lower price for K24.95 a kilo. Squids are generally associated to foods that are of rubbery substance and are hard to chew, so I am guessing that the word “baby” in this price tag is a fun way to disassociate these little creatures from the same conviction.

Kind of suggesting these are the “softer” kind of squid. 

I’m not sure if it’s a good idea not to mask off the prices but it seemed that the majority of my readers are people interested at knowing things about PNG.  A few months after I started this blog, I’ve been occasionally receiving emails from various people asking mostly about the cost of living in Papua New Guinea. 

Apparently, shop owners here are quite knowledgeable in local cuisine.  Here on display is mixed veggies intentionally packed together for a certain recipe. There are various days in our kitchen when I pretend like a good chef and just cook whichever is the simplest from a recipe book. Perhaps, I’ll be trying these on one of those days. 

In Port Moresby, local farmers continue to bring in their contributions to the ever luscious display of fresh vegetables on store shelves.  I sometimes wonder how the locals can still manage to grow crops despite the scarcity of rain being received by this place all year round. 

Proficient farmers, I must say.

Some stores are considerate enough to bring in goods from the Philippines.  When I was younger, although I still am, but by some metaphorical interpretation, I can feast on a whole jar of peanut butter just by progressively scooping it out with a single finger.

Nowadays, when I try and reproduce that behavior, such a childlike action can sometimes elicits gleeful reactions from my good-humored housemates.  

This shelf is dominated by heaps of Choco Mallows and Flat Tops. I specifically took notice because these two were my favorite treats.  If you haven’t come across eating Choco Mallows before, its taste is akin to that of a regular marshmallow dipped in a bowl of chocolate-flavored pancake syrup.

Although I work in a shop of similar ventures, I also become a customer to other store every now and then. Being a customer, I always enjoy the pleasure of taking all the time to inspect an item before I buy it.  But I have come to learn that shopping while dressed in my company uniform does attract a steady influx of inquisitive customers lost in the labyrinth of shelves and gondolas.

Hypothetical conversation

Customer: “Could you help me locate where the Anchor milk is?”

Me: “Uh wait, I think it’s on that side. But I’m really sorry, I don’t work here.”

Customer: “Oh, sorry.”

Me: “It’s okay. No worries. Have a good day.”

Papua New Guinea’s undeniable growth is apparent on its every day scenery. For example, an increasing number of vehicles on the road and the partial colonization of hills that have once stood uninhabited can be considered a sign of progress.

We left the Waterfront Shop and visited Waigani Central. Unfortunately, this store has caught in minor fire a few months ago. I believe that this remains close to the public at the time of this writing.  Luckily though, it still has its old building nearby where they are doing business as usual at the moment.

We usually go here for bananas and carrots. The shop hopping has largely been due to the differences in the way each stores add a markup on their produce.  We have learned that paying a visit here on weekends can be productive on our part.

Plus you’ll get to see a mosaic face of vegetable origin on the banner.

It wasn’t long before our hungry stomachs took our concentration away from the vegetable stalls.  We went inside the shop and looked around for something to munch on our way home.  A co-manager ended up choosing this sushi.

I did not feel like eating at that time so I walked about a few paces from there and found myself staring at this remarkable machine that produces superb-tasting coffees in an instant. I always wanted one of these for myself but the price of owning one is just simply impractical.

In the end, I decided to order a cup of cappuccino that fits perfectly in the cup holder inside our car. We went home feeling jovial that we spent our weekends in a fruitful way.