My new shelf

This morning, it finally dawned on me that I've been here in the Philippines for about 8 months now, and it looks like I'll be hanging out here for more than a year. Why is this news? Because since 2012, I haven't lived in any one place for more than a year. In the last 5 years I've lived in 5 different countries, living out of two luggages. And mind you, I still haven't completely unpacked one of those luggages...well, not until today. I've had this little pouch with mini souvenirs/ decorations that I've been bringing around with me for a couple of years now, always wondering when will be "the" time to take them out and display - because I think to myself "what's the point, I'm just going to have to take them down and pack them away soon". 

I finally decided today is the day I stop worrying about the non-permanence of my residence and start making my current space feel a little less temporary. Even if that meant drilling holes on my wall!

I bought this three-layer wall shelf from Ace Hardware. 

I initially wanted a corner shelf, but they were out of stock. 

Building the Team

I just realized that this has been sitting in my draft for over a month!
This was supposed to be posted back on April 22nd (date of the team building). So here goes

*imagine it's April 23rd*

***

I spent this whole week in the city of Solano in Nueva Vizcaya, visiting our Water Treatment Plant to learn about the operational and the business side of bulk water supply. At the end of the week, I joined the S.Water team's summer company outing - or shall I say, team building activity. Before this, I had an idea of what a team building activity was, even though I had never experienced one before. My last jobs in Nigeria and India had no such thing. In fact, I thought team building was just a Filipino thing because people here are very close to each other (even at work) and their favorite word is "bonding".

At first I wasn't really a fan of the idea - I mean when you come from environments where work is strictly professional and everyone functions independently, then you wouldn't fancy this either. But in the end, I really enjoyed it! The facilitator, Mrs. Kris from Ad Maioram was really, really good! She had power point presentations with related activities. I basically felt like I was in a seminar/ in school... her program was really well-organized.

The team building activity was mainly for the S.Water people - even though I was on one of the teams, I was pretty much there to help our Human Resource assistant and the facilitator and also take photographs. The venue was Villa Diana in Cordon (just an hour's drive from Solano). We had the resort exclusively to ourselves - and when I say resort I mean a huge compound with fields and trees and activity/conference halls, a swimming pool and the rooms. 

30+ of us were divided into four groups and had to give our groups a name related to water sports. So there was Soul Surfers (orange), Mighty Magat Rowers (yellow), Water Ski Riders (green) and Divers (red). It was really interesting to see how each team came up with their own way of wearing the bandanas! The orange girls' head band was really pretty, the yellow team looked like a boy's scout team and my red team's...well, sort of reminded me of the Amish people ..