STOP WORRYING START LIVING

why so serious? the famous phrase from the JOKER movie gives people an inclination to think about things in a different light. however instead of being more positive in their outlook people generally prefer to be sadist and enjoy being in gloomy state of sadness. i often see many of my friends posting sad posts and pictures on their social networking walls. please have a look on the kind of pics i often see all around:

 

 some interesting status messages :

• i think being alive z nt much of use ...isnt it..??????????????

• you said you couldn't stand to see my heartbroken.........So when you broke it,Did you close Your eyes
• ab toh bas life kat rahi h colg mein...
• life is unfair, get used to it
• love only hurts
• winner and looser both stand alone ,whats d difference
• things are meant to be used and people are meant to be loved bfut the irony is that people are being used and things are being loved.
• life is tough

there are numerous such examples which keep popping up every now and then out of frustration by people.
perhaps by posting such sadist things they want to convey the loneliness or other unhappy feelings in their lives. they think that people by reading such comments will show sympathy for them and share their sorrows. people nowadays want to be surrounded by negativity and if at all there is some positiveness ,they are just not ready to accept it. For them earth is a hellish place where everybody is supposedly their enemy and mean no good for them.
i wonder why people have to behave in this way when there is so much beauty in the world. its very easy to notice even a slight negative element and exaggerate it . people find it hard to acknowledge even the greater joys in their lives and take them for granted with no special significance. i would suggest everyone to watch "An AMERICAN BEAUTY" and perhaps then people will realise how beautiful our lives are. its just a matter of changing our outlook. The conventional way of looking only at the half empty portion of glass perfectly shows our current attitude towards life.
spreading negativity can only result in more sadness. just try noticing the little happy elements in your lives and you will find that you are the happiest person on earth. why worry about the future or lament the past when you have an exciting present to live your life.
Now again have a look on the above pics and then look down to see for yourself how delighted our mind becomes when we see something joyful.

JPC: an albatross round the CONGRESS's neck

"face JPC or quit",BJP tells PM Manmohan Singh
BJP has been persuading Congress to go for Joint Parliamentary committee (JPC) probe into the alleged 2G spectrum scan. the parliament has been in deadlock since many days due to BJP's refusal to attend the paliament until Congress caters to their demand.
Congress has been in a denial state as they believe that JPC is not of much use as it has not brought out any useful results in past too.
the ruling and the opposition parties have brought the functioning of the biggest democracy to halt. i think both parties are to be blamed for showing disregard to country's political system.
BJP has been adhered to JPC probe and boycotted every parliament sitting due to non-acceptance of their demand. The so called BHARTIYA JANTA PARTY has no respect for bhartiya janta nor do they care about the smooth functioning of parliament. BJP has unnecessarily opted to boycott whereas they could have peacefully tried to persuade their demand alongside going through the important hearings in parliament which are more important. Only BLP knows what hidden treaure lies for them in JPC probe. Aam janta can only lament on their stupidity which has halted the growth of our democracy.
CONGRESS too has not shown a mature attitude. when they know that BJP wont ditch their decision of JPC, they should allow JPC probe so that parliament can again start functioning. This immature attitude of Congress has brought great shame on their part as people are now even doubting the honest appeal of our Prime minister Manmohan Singh which is bound to happen as people now think that there might be something which Congress doesnt want to come out thorough JPC probe.
If Congress really has nothing to hide than why it doesnt allow this probe??
Both CONGRESS and BJP have degraded themselves to lowly levels by playing cheap politics.
"For too long people of India have taken PM on his value and given him lot of consideration for his honesty and integrity. What have people got in return from PM: 2G scam, Commonwealth scam, a corrupt CVC, Adarsh scam, untamed loose talking of Digvijay, and so on - all under his nose and supervision. How can an honest man of integrity have a so many blemishes? People are feeling betrayed by this honest man.",a quote from toi's website.

Doubts are now being raised over the authenticity of our democratic structure and many people now want a change in the system. Well i believe its not the system but the parties which need to change their mindsets and start respecting the democratic functioning.

HOME SWEET HOME

I am back home (the best place on earth for me) after going through a hectic semester in my college. i shall better not talk about my academics here which are in a state of total mess since i joined the college. After struggling to escape E grade in almost every course now i am back home where there is only joy and no tensions whatsoever regarding studies. i wonder why some of my friends hesitate to go to their homes . perhaps they might have some personal problems or they feel bored being at home. For me home is a place where my mind is totally relaxed and my creative minds starts thinking about new perspectives. I enjoy being with my family members. i can go on and on praising my home life. College life is undoubtedly awesome but then sometimes i just want to relax without worrying about tomorrow and nothing gives me more pleasure at that moment when i am at home safe and secure in the abode of my parents.

3 Month In-Service Training

November 26th, 2009

In my last post I focused on the best part of my trip back to Paso de Oro...the family.

In this post I would like to share a little bit about what In-Service training (IST) was like as part of my continuing effort to give you a glimpse of what development work in general and Peace Corps development work in particular is all about.

IST, this time called “Reconnect” since it was the first formal occasion in which my training group got together, was a 3-day event held in Guarambaré. Remember this place?



It started around 8:00 AM on Tuesday, November 24th and ended around 12:00 PM on Thursday, November 26th.

Before we arrived we responded to a questionnaire about what we would like to learn about in the following sessions:

• Language
• Country Director Brief
• Lunch with Programming and Training Officer
• Programming Session with Associate Peace Corps Director
• Medical
• Round Robin of other topics/sectors

LANGUAGE

During the course of the 3 days, we spent most of the time in breakout style language classes. We were grouped according to what we wanted to study (Spanish or Guaraní) and what level or common themes within each. I picked up and honed a few things but overall think language is not the best use of time for an IST mainly since it is such a short period of time, which implicates that the incremental gains in language at this point pale in comparison to the potential for large incremental gains in our technical area. Personally, I would have liked to see a lot more effort and time put into sector specific technical training especially now that we are coming in with a pretty good perspective on our sites and counterparts. If leveraged correctly, this newly gained in depth perspective could be used to give us some great technical training and guidance/advice, but that’s just one opinion among many.

COUNTRY DIRECTOR BRIEF

Country Director Donald Clark provided a brief in which he covered many topics. He started out by describing the Country Director conference in LA he went to in which he was able to see the new Peace Corps Director and hob-nob with other Country Directors from around the world. He then talked about some important changes to Peace Corps Paraguay Pre-Service Training (basically, Peace Corps Paraguay has not renewed its contract with CHP in the outsourcing of our training).

CHP Paraguay was the latest and last victim among a long, historical spree of severed ties between the training supplier and Peace Corps. They used to conduct training for many of the Peace Corps posts and systematically lost every single contract through the years. There is an important lesson to be gleaned from this experience. I’m not sure about the other Peace Corps posts that dropped CHP, but at least in Paraguay, the executive staff was satisfied with their work. It was a policy change and corresponding order, which came down from headquarters in Washington that delivered the final blow to CHP. Companies or organizations contracting with the government better make sure to diversify their offering and customer pool in order to hedge against risks associated with fickle government policy, which could end the company with a change of a just one law or even interpretation of a law. That goes for the private sector as well. A company should never rely to heavily on one customer or supplier because of the leverage afforded to the other organization in negotiations as well as the huge implications for survival prospects implied in a decision to end the relationship.

Our Country Director also talked about some ongoing IT issues concerning Internet at the office, and information/collaboration/knowledge sharing platform improvements, which are desperately needed. He also addressed volunteer behavior as a result of some recent incidents, which include broken glass in the pool of one of our preferred hotels and streaking naked in public during a Volunteer get-together. He discussed the importance of Peace Corps partnering with other government and non-government organizations engaged in similar work. Finally, he talked about the need of Peace Corps to create more unified, branded programs, leadership camps as an example, at the national level.

LUNCH WITH PROGRAMMING AND TRAINING OFFICER

Most of the Volunteers, myself included, went out for lunch so we missed the Lunch session with the PTO. I came in on the tail end of it and it seemed like a pity party in which Volunteers described difficult situations and frustrations experienced in site.

PROGRAMMING SESSION WITH ASSOCIATE PEACE CORPS DIRECTOR

The APCD session went really well. I had asked for examples of what other Volunteers in our sector were doing. Betsy, our sector’s Volunteer Coordinator, prepared a great one pager describing the main activities of many of the Volunteers in our sister G. I had also asked for an exhaustive listing of the most common organizations (Government, NGO, Nonprofits) with which to work as a RED Volunteer including brief explanations of each and contact info. Betsy delivered big time on that one as well.

Two former Volunteers from our sector also offered a session in which they broke their service down into 4-month segments revealing the nature of the two-year service and the activities they did within their communities.



I had also asked to get more information about how to most effectively implement the entrepreneurship course (class size, frequency, appropriate ages, how to market it, certificates?, ideal duration of class, ideas for practical application of what’s taught in the class, etc...). In order to address that, they brought in Eric, a Volunteer from our Sister G, who is teaching the course. He showed us an example of a class and then gave tips concerning most of the above.



MEDICAL

The medical session was basically structured as a free-flowing question and answer session, which was followed by distribution of much needed sun block and OFF. We discussed how to keep cool in the summer heat, which foods are and are not ok to eat if left unrefrigerated, and a handful of other topics. Medical Mary gave us a sheet with a few good recipes and common standard to metric conversions for cooking.

ROUND ROBIN

In the Round Robin style sessions current Volunteers offered us the following:

• AIDS charla
• Working with Youth Charla
• Gender and Development Charla
• Trash Management Charla
• Basic Computer Skills Training Charla

I chose to attend the first three charlas.

Aids Charla

In the AIDS charla, Lauren (the special third year extension AIDS volunteer in Asunción) quickly delivered the standard AIDS charla using a nicely designed flip chart so that we could see how it goes and how to deliver it in the event that we decided to conduct the presentation in our sites. I found it well designed, really entertaining, interactive, and informative. As an example, Lauren asked us what were some common reasons for not using a condom, one of which was reduced pleasure/sensitivity. She responded to that by asking for a volunteer participant (which of course was me) to come up for a demonstration. She told me to close my eyes and hold up the index and middle fingers from my right hand. She then proceeded to place a condom over those two fingers. She instructed me to guess what action she was doing to my fingers as she performed them. I correctly observed all of her actions, which included stroking with her fingers, blowing, and licking. She told me to open my eyes and then gave some statistic to the rest of the group and I, which states that the genital area has (huge number) more nerves than your fingers, so if I felt and discerned all the differences with my fingers, imagine the heightened sensitivity with the other area indicating lack of sensitivity is no excuse for not using a condom especially when weighed against the risks of contractions of STDs and unwanted pregnancy.

Working with Youth Charla

An Urban Youth Volunteer gave us examples of ways to work with youth, provided knowledge of some existing pre-prepared projects/activities, gave some helpful tips to keep in mind while working with youth, and then broke down her activities in site.

Some of the helpful tips:

• Don’t drink or smoke with your youth, despite if they’re of legal age
• Mix it up by changing the meeting place, buying food, playing games, etc...
• Keep it short and simple at first.
• Be patient, be more of a peer than a know it all Volunteer
• Make sure the youth know what they’ve accomplished, even if it’s small
• Listen to their ideas and do what they want at first...build the rapport, give them what they want, and then start pushing your agenda later
• Set regular meeting days and times, and don’t change them

She broke down her activities in site which include:

• Teaching basic computer skills
• Offering sessions on self esteem, decision making, communication, etc...as part of the community project class at a local high school
• Assisting a local youth group in doing whatever they want to do such as fundraising for a soccer tournament, making a garden, and writing up a request for funding for trash cans.
• Exercise Group- Offers a 45 minute exercise classes three times a week, and facilitated a weight loss contest in the school.

Gender and Development Charla

To be honest, I don’t really remember much from this charla. The first part took the form of an open-ended group conversation, which was followed up with Q & A. Rosana, the go to Volunteer on GAD issues, asked what gender roles and differences in gender relations we noticed in our communities. We went around sharing our observations and experiences. The typical things came out like how men and women separate into two different groups at gatherings, the chauvinist comments guys make, the dichotomy of traditional roles in the house and work, etc...

She also told us about the GAD committee, it’s annual camp, and I think she mentioned a few ways to conduct GAD related work in our communities and how to handle some touchy topics.

So there you have it...a Peace Corps Paraguay RED sector 3 month In Service Training. I enjoyed catching up with some of my fellow Volunteers and especially enjoyed hearing about their sites and activities in site.