i just finished the paper i am supposed to submit on monday. I knew i'd finish it this week but told my supervisor i will forward it on monday instead (miss lebron: for his perusal, hahaha!). i wanted to have fresh eyes come monday, so i can edit before submitting.
it will be my 7th month here in sg, this coming april 23, and i remain grateful for keeping a job despite the difficult times. i do not love my job. well at least not the kind of love that you feel excited going to work each day. at least i do not (yet) hate it. essentially, the "work" i do is one of the things i love, writing. but the one person i work with dude, man! (randy jackson tone hehehe), can sometimes drain the last drop of positive energy i try to keep.
after you read this, you will appreciate the job that you have and the people you work with more. and you will love your boss even better.
i am under one supervisor, we shall name Apu. and for this particular project, i work alone. by alone, i mean there are no other research assistants (RAs) working with me. Apu has several other projects with different RAs one of whom is my friend. but i digress. working alone on a project can be good and bad. the good side, i get to set my deadlines and in fairness to Apu, he agrees with the deadlines i set. (at the back of my head, he should, kasi i do most of the work really, even when he's the principal investigator [ PI- not the bad PI ok? :-p ], for the 7 months i've been in the project, he never came up with something you'd expect from a supervisor, not even a proposal for his own project, when i am only hired as a research assistant, not a PI)
i tell my friend our boss is Val, si Val na walang malay. being under a supervisor like him does not help me try to find direction in the things i do. he keeps asking for review papers because we (his RAs) think, he's eyeing a promotion (he recently got demoted) and he can only secure one if he keeps his "paper mill" running. wala siyang malay sa mga projects nya to put it bluntly. he always tells me, there is not enough funds (kasi we have not yet come to make a proposal just yet, which i understand). and evey time he calls for a mtg, it;s the same thing he says. the same empty promises of putting me (us his RAs) up for a scholarship.
what i would like is a supervisor who knows what he wants to accomplish. not someone who leaves his crew to do all the thinking. it makes me wonder, what put him in his place to begin with. they say, it was because he knew politics. he knew the ropes of being with the right people at the right time if you get the drift. i just feel sorry because i know that i am someone who seeks motivation from the people i work with, and i am left with Apu. good luck naman :-)
my friend's predicament is something worse, because she's working with a partner (under Apu too) who steals her ideas and refuses to cooperate. her partner, we shall call Wanda, is the typical colleague whom you might call a suck **s. yun bang ma-bibo. she always took credit for things she didn't do. and Apu is unaware, because he is Val.
I know that I may sound like a ranting brat. there will be those who'd say i'm lucky to have a job. while i do not discount the fact that i am indeed fortunate to have work that pays good (although my friend and I both know we deserve better pay, kasi expereinced na kami ng pumunta rito, lalo na siya they take advantage of the fact that we are foreigners) Our blood boils every time Apu tells us that we only have a general degree (vocational sa atin) and not an honor's degree, when i completed a full degree, and my friend even has her Master's! whatthegrrrr!
i told you that after you read this, you will learn to appreciate your work and your boss even more. i'd say it's really different working with kababayans. kahit papaano, i felt the genuine malasakit of my supervisors in the many jobs i had in the Philippines. some people can think so highly of themselves (Apu does it well) that they end up in a totally different plane.
i am hanging in here. i am asking for more patience because i told myself i wouldn't want to keep changing jobs just because i know there is a lot in store outside this university. i wanted to keep my self still. but then i hear steve jobs' subdued speech echoing over and over, he said: keep looking. don't settle.
for now, i'd say i am settling for a little more time, and keep looking again when the perfect time comes. so help me God. huwaaaaah!
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!!!!!
But hold on—even the Filipinos? Manila has just claimed sovereignty over the scattered rocks in the South China Sea called the Spratly Islands, complete with a blatant threat from its congress to send gunboats to the South China Sea to defend the islands from China if necessary. This is beyond reproach. The reason: there are more than 130,000 Filipina maids working as $3,580-a-month cheap labor in Hong Kong. As a nation of servants, you don’t flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter. 
