Press button to speak
July 24, 2010
I just had a read through some of my old blog entries and the Red Cross memory packet was unearthed in my mind . It all seems so long ago, and far removed from the new role I’ve had since February 1.
On February 1 I joined the Philippine Disaster Recovery Foundation, (check out www.pdrf.org and here is our facebook, and twitter for more frequent updates and news) – which was set up to aid the public sector in recovery and reconstruction efforts since Ondoy. The idea was that private sector funds (foundations, CSR budgets, even individuals and small organisations e.g. home owners associations, schools,) should be channeled to an orchestrated recovery effort with planned projects. It was a great idea actually, and coming from Red Cross the need for coordinated recovery work and long term development plans had been made very clear.
So I swapped our beloved 60 year old Red Cross Rizal Chapter office for a cubicle in the PLDT Ramon Cojuangco Building, right in the heart of the Makati CBD (and too close to Red Mango for comfort… a frozen yogurt habit is EXPENSIVE). As you may have seen from the PDRF website, the foundation has a lot of programs and I was excited to get cracking.
The first 2 weeks were a barrage of high level meetings with the PDRF board, the Asian Development Bank, the Worldbank, and the Special National Reconstruction Commission – our public sector counterpart chaired by Secretary of the Department of Finance. We were scheduled to meet weekly at the Development Bank of the Philippine’s executive board room, and though it was to be my first meeting my boss asked me to give a short update. No huge task, except you had to speak into a microphone – one of those with the red lights around that you see on the news at the senate or UN or something like that… and that was enough to intimidate me. My engagements with microphones usually involved a song list and decent amount of booze – not an audience of cabinet secretaries and a mic with a red light around it. Kulang lang yung Absolute bottle on the table in front of me.
The room itself was a conference hall with oil paintings hanging on the dark wood paneled walls. I had stood up to use the bathroom and was directed through a secret door, flush with the wall panels, that led to a private ante room and adjoining bathroom. The hand drier looked like it was out of the Jetsons – ‘space age’ as perceived in the 1950s or 60s – the manufacturing date on it preceded my birth date by about 25 years and the thing probably had more horsepower than a Vios.
Anyway back in the conference hall I was sitting clearing my throat as our segment drew closer. My boss was to go through our presentation and I was only to give a short quip about one of our programs – housing. And so his segue went:
“something about a flood warning system, and about the newest member of the team MIA, WHO WILL GIVE A SHORT SUMMARY ON OUR HOUSING ACTIVITIES”
I leaned in to speak and caught sight of the sign in front of me “Press button to speak”. For some reason I understood this as “Keep button pressed to speak” rather than the intended “Press button once to speak (and then press it again to turn off)”… clearly not my fault. But anyway, no use now. What happened was that I kept my finger on the button as I spoke, which had the microphone turning on and off continuously, and it sounded something like this:
THANK YOU garbled speech WEEK WE WERE more garble garble ESTABLISHED A TASK garble garble MULTI SECTOR garble VULNERABLE mumble RIVER mumble RECOMMENDATIONS garble THANK YOU.
The commission looked back at me with blank expressions very similar to those seen on TV and so I took that as a good sign. It was only later when my boss spoke again that I noticed he didn’t keep his finger on the button. You live, you learn.
I looked forward to more valuable insights my work at the PDRF would unearth.
