On productivity

When I returned from the HIV/AIDS training at 2:00 in the afternoon, I was greeted by Pong who immediately told me that Khun Sippon (the director) wanted to speak with me. Having wanted to talk with him as well about my ongoing projects, but having been unable to because our schedules conflict (I leave in the afternoon; he arrives in the afternoon), I was glad to be able to get a chance to do so. Just then, he walked out of the kitchen and said hello, asking me if I'd gotten the note from Pong. I told him that I hadn't and he proceed to explain that he had had Pong type up the expanded concept paper that I had written and that he wanted me to write up a cover letter to UNICEF and to include a copy of the brochure (which I was in the process of working on) and that we were sending everything out tomorrow. As an aside, he said, "we do things like this last minute all the time."

Happy to have a mission, I went up stairs and set about on my cover letter and to finish the brochure. I had already designed the brochure and was simply waiting on Moo to show me where they kept pictures on the computer for me to upload and for Khun Sippon to have the website re-established so I could cut and paste some information from there as well (something I'd be asking about since my first week on the job).

Once I asked Moo about the pictures and she showed me where they where, I went to Khun Sippon about the web site, because I wanted to put a Mission Statement on the brochure and knew there had to be one on there (having not found one on any other English materials). When he told me that the site was still down, I asked him if HAT had a mission statement written somewhere that I could use for the brochure. He replied that there was, on the website. I smiled and he shrugged, so I asked him if he could just make one up on the spot. He looked at me thoughtfully and said he would come up with something. A few minutes later, he came in to the office with a piece of paper and handed it to me. Looking at it, I saw that it was a printout of the website with a mission statement, funding sources and descriptions of HAT's projects. I thanked him graciously, not evening considering mentioning how much use this little piece of paper would have been to me eight weeks ago!

I finished cover letter and printed it out for his review, while I continued to work on the brochure. At about 4:30, walked back into the office and said that it was great and was I leaving now? I said that I wasn't leaving until I had finished everything I had to do, feeling quite the dedicated employee. He thanked me and left me to my work.

Finally at five-thirty (we are only supposed to work until 2:00, for those of you thinking "5:30? Poor thing! I work until 7:00 every night!), having finalized the cover-letter, re-proofed the concept paper and had my four separate sheets of brochure saved to four separate floppy disks (all of which was an ordeal I didn't even get into here), I headed home to work on the final version of the brochure.

At 10:30 p.m. that night, knowing I had to get up for work at 5:00 a.m. the next morning (for an all day 'study tour' with the consumer protection volunteers), I called it a day.