Bookworm

You know how there's this idiom "Bookworm", i.e., a person who reads a lot? So, here at the resort we have a table with books for guests to read. It is mainly made up of books that guests have left here at the resort. Since I wanted to have a place to put up the new computer for guest use, I decided to clean up that table and use half of it for the computer. So I went through the books to see which ones could be thrown away (half of them were written before I was born, I think) and was thrilled to see that worms were actually eating some of the books. So, are these now called "bookworm" as well? Probably not... Anyway, so we threw the books and also the table away (the table got attacked as well), because I wasn't sure if these are modern bookworms that are also into IT these days.

Tonight I am spending most of my time teaching the staff how to use a computer. For some of them it is literally the first time using a keyboard. Fun stuff! :)

Underwater Vision

Nothing too exciting today... I went out to one of the potential sites for the no take zone with the dive operator lady. She was offering me to snorkel. After I was snorkeling for teh first time in my life in El-Nido recently and was pretty excited about it, I would have liked to. But, stupid me, I brought about 45kg of luggage with me from Germany (no joke) but failed to include enough contact lenses. I thought like, eh, ten should be enough... anyway, that whole snorkeling thing doesn't work with glasses, so I spent an hour on a rocking boat waiting for them to come back. Yeehaa! But it was good to see the site and get a feeling for how large we would have to set the no-take zone. Also saw that there was a resort on an island nearby, so maybe the resort owner could become a partner in supervising the enforcement of the whole thing.

Ok, electricity is gonna shut down soon. So I better stop. Just one more thing: Currently watching a movie called "Vicky Christina Barcelona". It's the third-or-so woody allen movie that I really like. I like the narrator it has, simply telling the story and then the actors "only" have the job of bringing the story to life.

Smokin'!!

There was no internet yesterday (Saturday)... so this is yesterday's post..

Played ping-pong today with one of the tourists today and won! After the guy told me that I could "win back my honor" after having "lost my pants" when I played against another tourist earlier. I let that guy win, seriously. Didn't know he would walk around and tell the every tourist in town. Not that that is much of an effort: I think right now there are about 6 guests in town. Low season. And everybody knows everybody. Quite particular. :)

I went and talk to the lady who is operating a dive center in town. I wanted to find out what sites would be good to set up a "No take marine zone" (a zone in which no fishing is allowed, so that the corals and other marine life can regenerate). She told me a couple of spots where there are still some corals and some marine life left, hence would be worth protecting. In case you're interested: http://ambio.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=res-loc&uri=urn%3Aap%3Apdf%3Adoi%3A10.1579%2F05-A-054R1.1
Anyway, her husband had a stroke recently. So now he is feeling a bit better and came out and sat with us while we talked. He was bones and skin only, really. His thighs were about has thick as my wrists, maybe not even that. So he sat with us, and his sick, weak body got to smoke one cigarette after another. It was disturbing to watch...

Effects of "greed and corruption"

Hm, so more than half of my volunteering experience is over, and since the first day I kept wondering whether I should write a blog about it. So, along the lines of better late than never, let me try to write a few a lines a day. If I'd try to summarize everything that happened so far, I think I'd never get started, so let me just jump right into daily business instead. I hope whoever reads this enjoys doing so! :)

Yesterday I had to sit down again and talk to the hotel staff (7 in total) about the ongoing changes, i.e., the new management company taking over. Which I am representing these days. I realized how bad I am at addressing a group of people about their immediate future. If I were in their shoes, I'd be somewhere between falling asleep and wondering what in the world that guy is trying to tell me... given that I might have to address people I am responsible for again in the future, I somehow have to get better at this. Less blabla, more things that actually matter to my audience, I guess. Anyway, so I told them I'd like to invite them to go out for lunch (it's low season, almost no guests, so we can leave the hotel with one person only for an hour, I figured). Today we want to the restaurant next door. They chose from their menu in the morning. They could have just chosen from our menu, because all the restaurants in this town seem to have the same menu of about 120 items such as chicken schnitzel, fish curry, spaghetti carbonara, and the like. Anyway, lunch went ok, the whole language issue didn't help though. So it was quiet at times. Sigh. I don't see myself speaking Tagaluk anytime soon. Apart from the fact that they don't speak english as well as i hoped, I'm really blessed with the staff here. They have no reason to make life easy for me here, but they really try hard.

We're trying to get a frenchman living on one of the neighbouring islands on board to help us with the redesign of the hotel. He currently fights his own fight against the tourism development, has the local government and corporations try to evict him from the island to build large scale hotels. There are a million reasons why that is not a good idea (like some species only exists there) and a handful of laws that actually prohibit any development there. But still the process moves along happily. In an email today he described the philippines as "a country where greed and corruption are not part of the system, but are the system." Somehow that seems to fit some of the stuff I am observing.

Environmental issues are pressing. I saw a recent coffee table book describing Palawan. It mentioned "vast areas of virgin forest" on the island. As far as I understand, all the forests here are about as virgin as a rape victim. Thanks, loggers. (Btw: The owner of the logging company is the same who wants to develop tourism now on the island of the frenchman above). But I guess coffee table books are not to bother with something as disturbing as reality.

Another area where the depletion is big is the underwater life. Dynamite fishing in the last decade, now cyanide fishing. I would like to work with the local community and tourism businesses to set up a "no-take marine reserve", i.e., a zone where any form of fishing is not allowed and, better yet, access is controlled. This would reserve some space for corals and marine life to exist, which would benefit tourism and the fishermen alike (so called spill over effects). I'll try to talk to a dive operator (the last one in town, all the others are gone because the diving sites have been destroyed) tomorrow. She has tried this effort before, but hopefully with another hotel saying that we need a no-take zone, plus educational efforts in the community, we might be successful in a year or so.

On a similar note: As i gradutated recently, I still remember the grad speech, given by the ceo of Heineken (yes, that beer company). The speech was ok, but also not great, I have to say. I don't really remember much apart from "reach out to your network". If you wanna be entertained by a really good one, I liked this here: http://www.up.edu/commencement/default.aspx?cid=9456

Phew, this has gotten rather lengthy and a bit gloomy.. really, I'm enjoying my job here, it's just that some of the stuff I get to learn is a bit painful in the end. It is great to see how little things are improving here. We have a compost system started. No trash is burned. No TV running in the public area. Guest information folder in every room. IT system for staff and guest use installed. This kind of "actually doing things" that you don't see in a consultanting role... So, enough for today!