21-May-2011, 1616
It’s Saturday! It is a bit warm and humid today, probably mid-70’s to early 80’s right now. I am thinking if I would have been in US right now, I probably will most likely be working at the CRU until late this afternoon, go home and take a nap, and plan something nice and be out for the evening. Alas, I am in East Boroko, Port Moresby, PNG, and guess what? I am at home! It was nice to just wake up in the weekend morning and not rush to do errands. But then again, there weren’t many errands to do today anyway. Listing some of the activities to eat up the hours of today helped—breakfast, shower, read, lunch, laundry, ironing, blog, dinner, blog, and more reading. Tomorrow is still up for grabs.
Everyday at work, the hours pass by rather quickly and before I know it, it’s time to go back home again. Thankfully, work colleagues are there to interact with since boredom and isolation are always creeping up on me like a parasite. Desperately in need of company and mental stimulation, I am bordering on selfishly needing my co-workers to challenge, talk, ask, make me think, or just say jokes, laugh, and have fun. I don’t have this at home being isolated and alone. When Thomas (my housemate) does his errands on the weekend, I am left at home with absolutely no one. My living situation in New Haven is physically the same, and yet different! In New Haven, I am at least mobile, able to drive, and go around! My family in Groton is 45 minutes away. There is internet, TV, radio, movies, restaurants, bars, and gym (not that I go often, he he he!). The mere absence of these things, often taken for granted, humanizes me, making me long for and wait until the day comes to go back home! Please understand that I am by no means whining or complaining, rather, just exposing the pragmatic feeling of being lonely and homesick. So, pardon’e moi, sil vous plait, eh? Hopefully, the burden of work during the next five months will temporarily make me forget about home. Just thinking that it will be five more months from now literally excites me—one down, five more to go!!!
Reading novels is slowly becoming an enjoyable past-time and hobby. I already finished two murder, suspense/thriller, CSI-esque type of novel from Michael Connely (Chasing the Dime) and Stephen King (Cell). Both were not bad! As a matter of fact, I am looking forward to reading another novel, my third one that is, from Andrew Klavan, not only because I have something now to consume my time, but also because the novel’s prologue alone describes a very sexy, daring, and thrilling hide-and-seek kind of action. Thankfully, there are books on the bookcase shelf at the house that the guests are welcome to read. I probably will start Uncanny tonight since the laundry and ironing were done this afternoon while watching and getting amused with watching The Hangover, which was on HBO. Doing the laundry and ironing reminded me of my Mom and how I could never ever match up on her abilities in ironing my own clothes. The movie reminded me of my younger brothers, brother-in-law, sister, and sisters-in-law because we watched this movie together one weekend.
In the interim, writing a blog this afternoon, so as to update all on my recent underpinnings at work, provided a cerebral way of releasing inner thoughts all the while listening to the lighter mood and tunes of neo-classically trained Josh Groban’s vibrato and falsetto. The USAID and CDC group left PNG yesterday after the morning debriefing meeting. Even though I met the Asia Regional Monitoring and Evaluation Group for only a very short time (2 weeks), all of us bonded and became acquaintances rather quickly. Since yours truly will be the only one going to be left behind while the others travel back to Washington, DC, Manila, and Bangkok, they wished me well and asked for me to go forth and continue the legacy of their work, make positive and sustainable changes despite being the smallest donor, and reinforce previous and most recent implementation items. Business cards, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses were exchanged, promises of keeping in touch were made, especially if anyone is around town, so as to meet and catch up again. Hopefully, I will be able to keep in touch and connect with USAID in Manila Philippines next year when I go back home. We’ll see…
OK, so work stuff. Believe it or not, I will be here for almost three weeks now, and I am still somewhat unclear as to what exactly my role is going to be. I know that somehow, technical advisement and expert consultancy will be my areas, to help out in building and strengthening capacity in the health clinics that FHI oversees. I spent two days last week at one of them—Lawes Road Clinic—and had a good concept of how the clinic operates. However, clinic staff thinks that I, an expatriate hailing from US, am there to actually see patients, do physical exams, and prescribe treatments and recommendations using and following American guidelines. I made sure to be perfectly transparent and clear with all of them that I will be observing, keeping notes, and recommending practice enhancements, but NOT to actually and physically see patients. I mean, I would love to really, but the NGO at least made it clear, that I will not be providing hands-on-care, at least not yet. I might get the chance to do it in Id Inad clinic in Madang, but that is not going to take place at least until September. I still have to sit down with the technical advisors like me next week, and discuss in great detail what my Scope of Work is going to be. I already had a draft, but I saw numerous changes and amendments to it, leading me to believe that what I had in mind as far as what I will be doing is not necessarily accurate and correct. During the two days that I went to the clinic, my plans of attack were to get to know the key personnel and their scopes of responsibilities and practice, become familiar with the patient flow, identify areas of strength and weakness, and qualitatively inquire about the accomplishments and perceived deficiencies of the clinic. I got an earful from the Clinical Project Manager, nurses, physician, lab staff, reception/registry, counselors, and administrative staff, working on these items. I responsibly jotted and wrote down all of the comments, questions, suggestions, and answers that everyone told me, from much needed equipments and clinic materials, to suggestions on how to better service the patient population that come. During the observation and tour, I also listed numerous items and practices that needed urgent focus and action. I suppose I will be using these pieces of information when the technical advisors and I sit down and talk about my Scope of Work next week. The issue is, almost all of the items I wrote down demand urgent attention, and picking out which ones are the top priority will be somehow hard to decide.
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