7 Quick Takes Friday #66

See more 7 Quick Takes Friday contributions at Jennifer Fulwiler's Conversion Diary.

It is truly incredible how quickly time can pass nearly unnoticed. That is what has happened with the quick takes series. When I looked at my last post, it was from the end of July! Really? Two months seem like merely two weeks. Well, since those two months have seem some extensive activities, let me pick just a few to share, seven actually.

1. One of the most interesting trips I have had in this two-month period was to Nebraska where I met with our branch there. One of our specialists, whom I have sent to Afghanistan for consulting several times now, introduced me to his sister, and we all went to dinner, where the most incredible story of their escape from Afghanistan was shared. If any of you have read the Kite Runner, you would have found many details familiar because of the great similarity between the stories. It is simply unbelievable what people have had to go through in order to escape from Afghanistan over the border to Pakistan and then onward. (Those whose stories I know, of course, went onward to the USA.) Most unbelievable is that the father of my employee went back to Afghanistan when Kardezai came into power to help the new government. He holds a high post; therefore, for his safety I can give no more specific details. All I will say, then, is that there are people who have challenges in this life, and then there are people whose challenges are so extreme as to appear somehow to be beyond life.

For those with an interest in the challenges of living in Afghanistan and leaving Afghanistan, there is a great but haunting movie, called Kandahar. The movie is about a Canadian-Afghani woman who is trying to reach Kandahar to help her sister, who is severely depressed by the events taking place there. I don't want to give away the ending, so I will say no more than that it is worth watching, very information (a semi-documentary), but with a heart-rending ending.

2. In August, I tripped to Washington, DC, for two different business events. While I cannot go into details of either business event, since both events were closely associated with US government affairs, I can say that one meeting took place at the Pentagon. For some reason, the general who was leading to the meeting decided that he liked me, and after the meeting, he asked me, "Do you want to see a really cool room?" Well, who could say no to that? The room he showed me is one that appears in movies from time to time (in which the directors guess at what it might look like). The directors have portrayed it in such interesting ways that now the Pentagon has hired one of them to redesign the room in keeping with the movies! (Life is stranger than fiction sometimes.)

3. The very next week, I ran back eastward almost to the same location: Baltimore, Maryland. There we had a meeting of all our branch managers. The last time we all met (we do this twice a year) was in Hawaii. At that time, there was an earthquake in Japan that, as you probably all recall, resulted in a tsunami there and in Hawaii. If you remember the third week of August in the Washington-Baltimore area, you will probably recall that on Tuesday there was a historic earthquake that caused both damage to building and concern to individuals. (In California, earthquakes are business as usual, but not so on the East Coast.) Then, at the end of that week, Hurricane Irene arrived. We all wondered how much of this was really only coincidence -- where we all meet, the earth unsettles itself. Hm...our next meeting is to take place in Texas in the spring. Flash floods or tornado? I wonder which it will be!

4. A really unique thing happened in early September. Donnie and I took our first vacation in years and years. We decided to visit my relatives in Maine. Unfortunately, my brother, Keith, with whom we had planned to stay, was sent by his employer on business to California (not far from where we live) the very same week! We ended up staying at St. Anthony's Franciscan Monastery, a truly inspirational place, in Kennebunkport, Maine, not far from all my relatives. While there, we took the cog railway to the top of Mount Washington in NH, home to the world's worst weather (a mild day when we were there: winds at 83 mph, 28 degrees, moderate sleet, and covered in clouds -- of course, it was only the beginning of fall; there is plenty of time for the weather to grow its normal worse). On a different day, we took the sunset cruise on Lake Winnipesaukee with a friend from my high school graduating class. Of course, we also got to to visit scads of relatives, eat a wicked amount of lobster (including lobster rolls, lobster pizza), and spend hours with a "lost" GPS in the backwoods. I also enjoyed the early morning Masses each day before we set out for one or another point. Ironically, we never made it to the beach even though we were walking distance away! Go figure!

5. On the way home, we spent a day in Boston. (We flew into and out of Logan Airport there.) En route to Boston, we stopped in Boxford and had lunch with another high school chum, who had married and moved to that area. It was great fun, catching up on a couple score of missed years. Then, in Boston, we picked up our older daughter, Lizzie, in town from South Carolina for a conference and met a common friend from Colombia for dinner at the harbor. We stayed just a couple of miles away from the restaurant, but our GPS took us on a two-hour (!! no exaggeration !!) drive to get there. Fortunately, we had left significantly early, but we arrived significantly late. Our friend explained to us why a GPS works so poorly in Boston: all the underground roads really confuse it because it keeps losing the satellite signal. All is well that ends well. We got back to Lizzie's hotel and our hotel easily by turning off the GPS and using our friend's written directions.

6. I no sooner got back home than I had to take off for Madrid, Spain, where I had some business to take care of. one of my employees (a Spanish speaker, yes!) came with me, as did the director of another division. We met with counterparts in Toledo (and learned the supposed origin of the expression, holy Toledo), an immensely beautiful city that looks today much like it was portrayed by El Greco. We also met counterparts in Alcala, childhood home of Cervantes, creator of Don Quixote. And, of course, we did spend some time in Madrid, where, on a positive note, I was able to attend daily Mass and experience some of the local Spanish dialect, and where, on a negative note, my credit cards were compromised and had to be replaced. (I won't go into that story; it was rather annoying.)


7. I just got back and, surprisingly, was fortunate enough to be able to get today off from work. (I have a lot of annual leave that I have to use before the end of the year, so I am looking forward to some more leave some time this month, work permitting.) It being First Friday, I spent the day at our local St. Francis Retreat Center, where Fr. Philip did a beautiful lecture, Mass, and contemplative session and where I got to spend time with friends who regularly attend First Friday. So, while the week has been hectic, the ending was calm and peaceful. A great way to start the weekend.

I wish you a pleasant weekend, as well!

7 Quick Takes Friday #47

See more 7 Quick Takes Contributions at Jennifer Fulwiler's Conversion Diary.

It must have been a really full week, and yet it did not seem so. However, as I sit here, trying to remember what I did, I cannot remember a thing except eating turkey yesterday at Old Mission and cleaning BIG pots and pans afterward. Oh, well, I will start with that and perhaps the rest of the week will pop back into my memory. Senior moments already? Or, just an overfilled memory?? (Ooh, I hope the latter...)

1. So, okay, yesterday. Old Mission Church puts on a feast for the entire town with donated goods. It looks like we fed about 400 yesterday, which, counting kids, would be 25% of the town. It is a good place and time for everyone to get together. The mission is the center of the town's life, and Fr. E is pretty much considered the town's father. (I think he looks at it that way, too.) Doah and Noelle came; Shane and his family had their own event in a nearby town with Lemony's family. I was able to snatch a couple of pictures. On the left is Donnie, Noelle, and Doah with a family friend, Bennie, who was working the serving line. On the right is Sr. Delores, who lives at the local convent for Sisters of the Atonement (Franciscan order) along with Sr. Maria, whom I have mentioned before. Sr. Maria was not in town; she went to the central valley to be with her biological sisters. It was, however, nice to have Sr. Delores, Sr. Catherine, and Sr. Mary Catherine with us at the feast. I believe some of the friars came down from the monastery at the retreat center since they usually do, but I missed the first wave this year -- had to pick up Noelle and Doah -- and so may have missed them. Saw some folks from there at Mass earlier in the morning, though.

2. Ah, now I remember Wednesday. It was a day of rubbing elbows with all the folks who work with me, which is really great. Too often I am at meetings at headquarters or at meetings in other cities. Being in Seaside the entire day of Wednesday and in and out of my office gave a different color to the day. All morning, the junior managers presented their programs to all the senior managers and some visitors, telling us of their accomplishments during the last quarter and their concerns for the next. That was a good discussion. The day ended with an all-staff meeting to welcome new faces and say goodbye to old friends moving on to other jobs through promotion or new positions.

3. It's working! Now I remember Tuesday! Tuesday was hell day. I had no less than THREE meetings scheduled at the same time for every hour of the day. None of them were my meetings, i.e. none that I had scheduled for my staff and could therefore postpone or cancel. Some were at headquarters (a 20-minute drive) and some in my building. Some were mandatory financial and personnel meetings; others were entertaining high-level visitors. I passed to my deputy all the visitors. That took me down to two meetings simultaneously, and I found other senior managers to take over those. Whew! Talk about exhaustion! (My sister says that she really likes the idea of triple-scheduled meetings because it gets them out of the way faster!)

4. Monday was a meeting day, as well, but also one of crisis resolution. My boss was grumpy, which did not help because he was trying to solve problems in ways that I knew were not supported by regulation. So, I had to maneuver around that approach. Also, one of my best and most essential senior managers had his pay level (which is about 50% of what he could make elsewhere) attacked by the head of the personnel office who is trying to remove the retention bonus I gave him when he was offered a job elsewhere at double his currently embarrassingly low salary. It seems to be a personal vendetta, and I am still working on trying to fend that off. I was really happy when time came for our prayer group.

5. Our prayer group is as much a faith formation as a time for prayer. We include both, as well as singing. We have just finished reading and discussing Richard Rohr's Things Hidden, from the point of spiritual direction (the co-leader of the group is a trained spiritual director which is likely why we have moved in this direction). We liked doing that so much that we decided to try out another book for the next few months, Warren's The Purpose-Driven Life. Has anyone read this book? It turned out that everyone in the group had the book at home, but no one had read it yet. Good candidate for our meetings! On Monday, we had a new member show up who was really hurting because of very recent trauma in the family. We spent most of the time, then, in prayer with and for her. It was appropriate timing and probably not a coincidence.

6. Sunday -- yes, I am remembering now -- we had a meeting of the Secular Franciscan Order at the St. Francis Retreat Center nearby (well, nearby for me -- I could almost walk the distance, but most members come from much farther away). I brought some sugar-free baklava (yes, there is such a thing -- order it from shilla.com), which everyone liked, especially the thought that it was not causing bad things for diabetic systems. Sr. Delores (yes, the same person pictured with Doah above) is our relatively new spiritual advisor, and she led a beautiful prayer service at the beginning of our meeting before we got into the experience sharing, Franciscan rule discussion, and baklava eating.

7. And then there is Saturday, and I am still pulling a blank. It would have been great had I stayed home and vegged out, but that is not me. Staying home is a vacation; the only time I get to do it is when I take a stay-cation. There is no better place in the world to be than in San Ignatio Since where I really was remains a mystery, at least for now, I am giving you a couple of pictures of San Ignatio to enjoy.

Wishing you a pleasant week -- and one that you will remember!

7 Quick Takes Friday #44

See more 7 Quick Takes Contributions at Jennifer Fulwiler's Conversion Diary.

1. The week started out with a mild but continuing annoyance: every time I answered my cell phone, the call would drop and the phone would take a picture of my ear. At least, I thought it was my ear until logical Donnie told me that this is not possible because the camera faces outward. The phone was taking a picture of my hand. So, okay, I don't know my hand from my ear. That does not solve the problem, though. For now, since I don't have time to deal with that, I have solved the problem in a different way: I have stopped answering the phone. I have an adequate number of pictures of my ear (or hand), already.












2. Halloween was a fun evening. Lemony did a great job on the grandkids' costumes (Above, Nathaniel as Dr. Who is on the left and Nikolina as a little lamb on the right). Doah bought himself an Ironman suit, and I took him around to a few houses. He has not grown up in that respect. Then he came back and helped Donnie and me hand out candy (we have two accessible doors -- each on a different street), so that was very helpful. Then Donnie took him home. It is a different world for all of us now that he lives nearby -- so many more possibilities for interaction.

3. November 1 was Donnie's birthday. It was also voting day (about which I have already posted). After voting, we wanted to celebrate Donnie's birthday at a Grilling and Chilling restaurant before going to a movie. Unfortunately, everyone in town had the same idea. We would have had too long a wait, so we went where the lines were short: Jack in Box, where I ended up with some inedible tacos (no worse than my own cooking, though). There were only a handful of people at the cinema, so we had some excellent seats for Hereafter, a movie I had wanted to see but ended up not really liking. Oh, well, the important part of the day was that we got to celebrate Donnie's birthday and spend some quality time together.

4. After Donnie's birthday, however, the week turned grueling. We had two rehearsals with the big boss for a presentation that we four senior managers will be making at the Pentagon on Tuesday. A Congressional advisor, whom I have known for years, was in town and helped out our boss by listening to the first rehearsal and murder-boarding it (providing ruthless feedback). A truly debonair gentlemen from a nearly bygone generation, he is not capable of ruthlessness. I was second to present and left after that to deal with other work issues. As I departed, I held out my hand to shake goodbye with the advisor; instead, he held it and kissed it. Indeed, a nearly by-gone generation... [image from Tine Kameer gallery; click on image for link to some fine art work]

5. In spite of a crushing workload this week, I did, for the most part, leave my office door open, which is an indication to employees that my open-door policy is in effect. It seemed a big week for a little problems, and getting my regular, introversion-required work done was difficult. I did ask one employee to come to me if he would. His first-line supervisor was about to give him a letter of reprimand for refusal to do a particular task for a short period for another program manager, and I knew him to be an excellent, cooperative, and diligent employee. I asked if he would talk to me if there was some justification for his behavior that he felt he could not share with his immediate supervisors. He came, revealed having been egregiously abused through false and pernicious rumors started by the program manager for whom he would be working, and then said, "If you personally ask me to do this, I will." Wow! Of course, I would not ask for that. I talked to his first-line supervisor and got the letter of reprimand cancelled, and I will be talking to the other manager's supervisor this week. I did talk to the other manager about having to find someone else without revealing the confidential information given to me, but if he is smart, he will figure it out, and if he is not, he will be counseled by his own immediate supervisor. I very much dislike finding out that these kinds of things continue in spite of a servant leader orientation that I insist upon among managers. I have two managers out of about 40 (this one is one of the two) who just don't get it. Both those managers, who otherwise do an excellent job, received negative comments from me about these things on their annual appraisal; I am hoping that those comments will get them to listen to their boss and to me more actively.

6. Speaking of appraisals, they are one reason it has been hell week at work. I had nearly 400 to turn in, of which I was the first-line rater of only six (yes!), but second rater of a couple dozen. The remaining I just had to ensure were completed. Of course, these being all computerized, we had a number of recalcitrant computers (I negotiated with the Personnel Office to turn in some the old fashioned way: hand-signed on paper) and, by the end, we were down to one functional photocopier and that one would take only feeds one page at a time laid on the glass. Everyone should be happy this weekend: hell week is over until next year!

7. Hell week, though, did not end with the appraisals for me. We had four sets of materials to get into the office in Afghanistan where I visited last month. It was a promise, and I always meet promised deadlines. Three teams turned in their materials either early or by COB (close of business). One team told me that they would finish either next week, or if I insisted, on Saturday. "No," I told them, "neither alternative is an option. They are due COB today, and your business day will close when you hand me the materials." They worked until 9:45 p.m. Their managers stayed, and so did I. So, our COB today was very, very late, but the materials did get to Afghanistan within the promised November 5 deadline. I have a half-hour drive home, so I am now truly, truly tired. All I want at the moment is to tumble into bed. My eyes are drooping even as I write, trying to keep them propped open long enough to finish.

I hope that you have had a much easier week than I and that your weekend will be just a whole lot of fun. (Mine will continue in a similar vein: ball for work on Saturday and red-eye to Washington on Sunday -- and a journal to edit before I go. I dream of sleep, but it appears not mine to have for a while!)

7 Quick Takes Friday #43

See more 7 Quick Takes Contributions at Jennifer Fulwiler's Conversion Diary.

Since I spent most of the week sleeping -- well, at least evening and night and even an extra hour most days into the morning -- I am not certain that I have seven "events" to report, but I shall "dig" a little and see what I can come up with. Actually, I will make them short because I feel like sleeping already. It is this darn cold/flu/virus; I could sleep it off a lot more easily if I did not have to go to work every day! As for the seven takes, here goes:

1. Dinner with Shane and Lemony. This week was Lemony's birthday, so Donnie and I took her, Shane, and the grandkids to dinner at her favorite restaurant, Dona Ester's, in our little town of San Ignatio. We had quite a choice of authentic Merxican foods. If not anything else, this town is indeed authentic Mexican in many respects, not just in its food choices. Nathaniel sat beside me and chatted non-stop about bakugans, about which Grandma Beth knew very little and still knows very little (I cannot quite get my head wrapped around these newfangled toys) and battle plans, the latter of which he sketched out on a napkin for me. When it was time to leave, he mugged for my camera. Nikolina meanwhile slept and slept and slept, did not wake up at all during the entire meal (hm, seems she inherited that sleeping thing from her grandmother). Pleasant evening.

2. Tripping to San Diego. The next day Donnie and I left for San Diego. Padre Julio, a priest from Colombia, about whom I have blogged on this site earlier (see posts on Fr. Julio) had asked us to come see him in San Diego, where he had moved recently. When Padre Julio was a priest in our diocese, I had taught him English so that he could celebrate the English Masses. (I originally met him when he was celebrating our Spanish Masses, which is the Mass I usually attended on Sundays -- still do.) I was able to get free tickets to San Diego from all my frequent flying. Off we went, having obtained rather nice seats right by the door, or so I thought. It was freezing there, and so I was glad I had brought a warm hoodie sweatshirt for keeping warm! Cold aside, pleasant flight.

3. Dinner with Padre Julio. Once we reached San Diego, I called Padre Julio, who suggested that we meet at Anthony's Restaurant, a popular seafood restaurant on the harbor -- well, on land in the harbor. Thanks to the GPS we had brought with us and installed in our rental car, a Mazda that we quite enjoyed driving, we easily found Anthony's. Finding parking near Anthony's, however, was not nearly as easy a feat. It was clearly a popular restaurant. After several swings through the parking lot, we lucked out. Someone was leaving as we were approaching, and we were able to pull into the only open spot. I have no idea how Padre Julio found a space, but he did and, to our surprise, was already waiting for us inside. There were some interesting dishes on the menu but somehow we all felt like fish. So fish it was. That and some lively conversation, filling in the missing gaps in our information base since we had last seen each other. Please conversation.

4. Mass with Padre Julio. On Sunday, we put the GPS to good use again as we wended our way through San Diego to the church where Padre Julio was celebrating Mass, Cristo el Rey (Christ the King Church). We quickly realized that we were the only Anglos in the entire church -- gringoes, I suppose, would be the better term. Padre Julio was very happy to see us there and introduced me to his congregation as his teacher and us as "good gringoes" -- we were not quite sure how to take that except in the best of intentions as was meant by Padre Julio. After Mass, we parted wtih Padre Julio as he had to leave for Guadelajara and we got to spend a relaxing evening at our hotel. We had contemplated spending an evening on the town, but we know San Diego well from the days when three of our children were attending college there, so opted for a kick-back evening, instead. Pleasant rest.

5. It hit. On Monday, it -- the cold, flu, virus, whatever it is -- hit me, and it hit hard. I was wiped out before we even made it back from the airport. When I get sick, I crave sleep, something that I otherwise often get very little of. I was suddenly very tired, and it seemed like the long trip from San Francisco had never been longer. I am not sure if it seemed longer because I was not driving or would have seemed longer had I been driving; in either case, all I wanted to do was sleep. And so as soon as I reached home, I slept. All afternoon. All evening. All night. Pleasant dreams.

6. A week of work. I had grand thoughts of perhaps sleeping through the rest of the week as well, but that was not to be. Every day filled up with appointments before I left for home the previous day. No complaints will you hear from me about them for most were quite interesting appointments. Many people just wanted to talk about one thing or another. Several junior managers stopped in, wanting guidance on one or another topic or mentoring or just to talk. All the senior managers were out of town, so it seems that with the echelon of management between the junior managers and me gone, interaction between us took place on a several-times-a-day basis. (I will relate a joke about management and talking tomorrow; I am out of time for today.) Pleasant week.

7. Afghanis. The Afghanis who work in our organization, especially the Pashtuns, are delighted with the fact that I have now spent time in their country and that I have learned to speak some Pashto. They go out of their way to find opportunities to give me a chance to practice Pashto. For some reason today, I felt like an ice cream cone at lunchtime and stopped into Burger King where I had heard ice cream had just been added to the menu. The BK is across the street from my office, so it is often a gathering place at lunch for my colleagues. Sure enough, there were a few there today, too. Two of them were Pashtuns, and they immediately approached me, speaking Pashto. We ended up sharing lunch although I had not originally planned to eat lunch at all. These two are relatively new employees, so I got a chance to learn more about them. Pleasant company.

And now it is indeed night time. So, I will wish you all pleasant dreams.

7 Quick Takes Friday #40

See more 7 Quick Takes Contributions at Jennifer Fulwiler's Conversion Diary.

This is one of the strangest weeks I have spent in a while. It was a week with two Saturdays, no Korean Wednesday in Korea and no American Friday. That is what happens when you cross the International Date Line twice in one week. It has also been a high intensity week.

1. Last Friday (the Friday I spent in America), I spent most of the day at an EEO hearing for someone I helped into a leadership position three years ago (he did not know that his application had been turned down, and I had intervened) but who had not been accepted into an even higher leadership position, and he blamed me for that, so sued our organization and me for discrimination. Ironically, his "class" is overrepresented among our leaders and the "class" of the individual selected for the position is underrepresented, so he did not even have a prima faciae case. The investigator was rather put out that he had come in from out of town only to find out that the complainant had not checked the facts. Further, and this was pretty funny, I had nothing to do with the selection. I always delegate selection to the immediate supervisor, who uses a panel with external membership as well as internal to keep everything above board. In this case, I was two echelons above that supervisor. The lawyer for our organization did an excellent job in bringing all of this out. When I had to present the information that no one had wanted the complainant years ago for the low-level supervisory job he has held since then and that I had actually intervened, recommending that the immediate supervisor give him a chance, the complainant, who works at one of our remote sites and was participating in the procedure by phone, seemed overwhelmed and asked for a half-hour delay and recall so that he could compose himself and recoup from the stress he was feeling. While clearly the finding will be for our organization, I feel sorry for the complainant. It did not have to come to this if he could have put aside his ego and objectively looked at his own lack of qualifications compared to the qualifications of the person selected. The only good fallout was the opportunity of all of us -- the immediate supervisor and senior manager and I -- to forgive the complainant for all the extra work that we had to do in preparation for the investigation and negotiation. (Obviously, we did not negotiate since the case had no merit.) There could also have been ego issues, but no one in this particular chain considers himself/herself better than anyone else, so I don't think any offense was taken by anyone in that regard. I did not notice any self-defensive responses at the hearing. It is rewarding for me to see managers in my organization acting objectively and with compassion. I think everyone benefits from opportunities for forgiveness. For whatever he thinks was done unfairly to him, I hope the complainant will also ultimately feel the pleasure and release that forgiveness brings. (Note: picture drawn by Latuff, a Brazilian artist who does marvelous artwork -- take a look.)

2. On Saturday, we ran all over creation -- well, at least, the Central Coast California part of it. We picked up Doah's belonging from his old group home and visited a new possibility very near by, just minutes from us, and in the same housing development where his brother Shane lives. Before picking up the belongings, we had lunch at Dairy Belle, a quaint dinette where we could eat outside in the warm, dry California sunshine. We spent the evening at a members' night at the Monterey Bay aquarium, where they have new otter pups. (Note: If you recognize the picture, it could be because the Monterey Bay Aquarium was one of the locations of the Star Trek IV movie.)

3. On Sunday, I had a reception for visitors from my organization's oversight board, who would be spending Monday and Tuesday with us. Ironically, one of them is a former vice-president at a college in Vermont where I taught in the graduate program in the early 1990s. My old boss! It is always fun getting to see old bosses -- if one has had a good relationship. We did. Now we are a mutual admiration society -- if two can be considered a "society"! It' s interesting how relationships change as life goes on.

4. On Monday, our prayer group met at our house, as usual on the second Monday of the month for an inspirational movie. Sr. M had just heard what happened to Doah and was in tears. She is such a lovely person. The group has been praying for Doah, and things do seem to be working out for him. We watched a very short documentary because people mostly wanted to talk about the situation. Doah and Donnie did not want to be there since Doah has trouble sitting still for more than 5-10 minutes and Donnie does not like crowds, so they went out to McDonald's for a leisurely dinner where they could be alone together for Donnie's sake and Doah could run about as needed to expend his energy.

5. Tuesday was another eating day. Tough on the diet. One of our teams, including me, went out to dinner at an Afghan restaurant to do some team-building. We had had three members of the team come in from out of town -- two from Washington DC and one from North Carolina. Working together over the phone and Internet is quite different from working together in person. One person was quite new and is somewhat of a counterpart to me. I liked him immediately. It turns out he has worked with some of my former students.

6. There is not much to say about Wednesday and Thursday. I did not see much of either day. I got on the plane to Korea on Wednesday morning after forgetting my passport at home and making a mad dash back there for it and got off the plane on Thursday afternoon in Incheon, Korea, after having slept the entire flight. There I realized that having the passport in and of itself was not enough. The passport had only two pages left for stamps, including the extra pages I had sewn in when I was in Bahrain. Fortunately, Korean immigration found a page they had used earlier and put the new stamp on the old page. Otherwise, I might have had some difficulties at the US airport upon return. (Will have to get some extra pages immediately upon return since I have four more countries to visit in the next five weeks.) Then, too, I had not only forgotten my passport; I had forgotten to get money from the ATM. I arrived with $4 in my pocket. At least, there are ATMs in Korea, too, although the person meeting me, one of our senior managers, had to spot me bus fare until I could to one.

7. Friday was a tough day. (Yes, past tense here in Seoul, present tense in the USA.) I don't do jet lag, so I was wide awake and bushy-tailed, but I would rather have had the jet lag so I could have been a little out of it. I had come to conduct an evaluation of our programs. The senior manager responsible for this area told me that the local director was not doing her job, had crossed some legal and ethical lines, and that she would not listen to him. My job, while conducting the review of the work being accomplished at the site, would be to make the final judgment on whether or not she should remain and be trained or fired. I opted for the firing when we both learned more details about some of the things she was doing, including working for a competitor during work hours at our organization and throwing her work onto one of her subordinates. I gave the go-ahead to cut the cord to the senior manager and the junior manager who had come with him (and is the immediate supervisor of the local director). I was not present when they did it since that would have been micromanagement. I don't like doing these things. I prefer to reward people, not punish them, but some transgressions cannot be overlooked. Objectively, an easy call. Subjectively, a wrenching one, especially since this particular director was someone I had mentored a few years ago. (On a positive note, during my lunch hour I had a local deaf artist prepare Fr. Ed's name on a wall hanging in Korean calligraphy -- not the picture shown here, but very similar, in green on white, green being his favorite color, of course, given that he grew up in Ireland.)

And now I am off to bed to catch a flight back to the USA tomorrow afternoon. Crossing the international date line again, I will arrive tomorrow morning. For next week's 7 Quick Takes, I guess I will have to decide which of the two Saturdays I include as the real Saturday. May all my problems become as simple. May all yours be as simple.

Have a wonderful weekend.

7 Quick Takes Friday #33

Another week, another seven days of work, at least another seven learning experiences. Here are the thoughts that have accompanied this week's experiences. Thanks to Jennifer Fulwiler for hosting the 7 Quick Takes meme at Conversion Diary.

1. Last Friday, I ended up at Mass accidentally. I suppose it would have been much better had I ended up there intentionally, but rarely do I have Friday noon available. Work seems to tumble right up to departure time and then spills into the Mass time itself. Last Friday was no different, or so I thought. As I drove into my parking spot, one of my employees approached me to talk about matters in his department. Ah, I thought with resignation as I listened intently to the information he wished to share, one more week without being able to take advantage of Mass being offered at the little church down the road from my office -- or lunch! (The church near my office is a far cry in beauty, historicity, or even numbers of worshipers from the old mission here in San Ignatio and a place where I know no one, but Mass is Mass and I had attended once before when I was able to sneak away from work while no one was looking.) As we were talking, my employee looked at his watch and excused himself, saying that he had to hurry because he wanted to go to Mass. "Oh, take me with you!" I exclaimed, and off we went. The priest who celebrated Mass was an elderly gent who reminded me very much of my beloved Fr. Barry, who was transferred out of our diocese six months ago. It turned out that my employee knew most of the people who regularly attend Mass there and introduced me to them. What a blessing Friday noon turned out to be!

2. Saturday morning dawned too early. We had to be up because the first thing in the morning the carpet cleaner, Eric, who had spent the afternoon cleaning the carpet throughout the house in preparation for two upcoming parties, was coming back to redo a portion of what he already cleaned because because Donnie had brought chairs that he had set on the porch back into the house, dragging them and his dirty shoes over the newly clean carpet without realizing it was still wet. Dark black streaks glared from the white carpet. Eric came bright and early and quickly cleaned up Donnie's mess. He stayed a bit and talked and would take no money for the extra work. That is the way it is in small towns, or at least in our small town. I went out onto the porch to say goodbye to him, then walked back over the wet carpet with socks made dusty from the front porch. There were the black marks again! Well, gray marks. Thank God for Resolve! After the carpet dried, I could take care of my dirty work myself.

3. On Sunday, Donnie and I attended a funeral mass for the mother of one of my employees at St. Mary Assyrian Chaldean Catholic Church in Campbell, California. What the employee forgot to tell me was (1) the Mass would be conducted in Aramaic and (2) women need a head covering in order to take communion. I probably could have guess both these situations, but I did not think ahead and so was quite unprepared, especially for the Eucharist, which I was unable to take. (I could comment on that, but I won't.) The Mass was celebrated by Fr. Yoshia Sana, who is originally from Iraq and was posted to the Campbell church by Rome. Present-day Chaldeans and Assyrians come from the northern regions of Iraq and the eastern regions of Syria. Ethnically, they are the descendants of the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia. Culturally, they are the heirs of the Aramaic language and culture of Jesus; most of the local population in this part of California, particularly those in my employ, speak as their everyday first language modern Aramic (which differs from the language of Jesus's day in that all languages add/drop/change vocabulary and simplify grammar over time). You can read more about Assyrians and Chaldeans here (much of the information is in Arabic, but if you cannot read Arabic, keep digging, there is much information in English, as well. There were helpful missals in all the pews at the church. At first, I thought great, Arabic, but as I looked more closely and tried to read (nary a word could I understand), I realized that there were additional letters beyond those present in the Arabic alphabet. It is rare that I end up somewhere where I cannot understand at least something of what is being said in the local language, but Sunday was one of those rare occasions. We also went to the sitting (an Arabic way of paying respect to the departed that involves men together and women together -- poor Donnie had no way to communicate because none of the men, except my employee, spoke English well enough for communication; at least, I could speak Arabic with the women, but Donnie had learned little Arabic when we lived in Jordan and has forgotten most of what he did know.

4. On Monday, I had the day off! Yes! Happy Fourth a day late! We held a BBQ for my prayer group and others from Old Mission Church. We brought Doah down, and he celebrated with us. Donnie cooked. (No one would have permitted me to cook, given my reputation for burning or otherwise ruining any food I touch.) Shane, Lemony, and kids showed up. It was the first time I saw Nathaniel up close and personal with his new spiked haircut. I almost did not recognize him. "Grandma! You know who I am!" he complained. The prayer group members, who had done a lot of praying for Nikolina but had never met her, were delighted to see her. They were astonished at her progress from nearly hopeless to full of life.

5. Tuesday I attended an all-day, in-house, mini-conference for everyone within the organization. We have one a year. I am not actively involved in setting them up; there is a committee, overseen by my boss, the local head of our organization, that does that. I arrived at the plenary session promptly because a friend and colleague, someone I have worked closely with for nearly 30 years, was coming from the East Coast to be the keynote speaker. Delighted to see me, he immediately made plans for us to get together the next day to discuss some things of mutual business interest, and we did. The best part of the day, however, was an incidental discussion with one of the junior leaders of another division. She had worked for me years ago when I first worked at our organization. (I worked there from 1989-1993, then left for 13 years, returning in 2006.) She told me the history of the annual conference -- me! I was astonished. We had done such a conference on a small scale in my division years ago. A couple of years after I left, she happened to be working on a project where she was in a position to make a recommendation to an advisory committee that the whole organization pick up on this idea and conduct an annual in-house conference, and management agreed. This has now been going on almost 15 years. When she saw me, she said, "Look what your conference turned into!" I did not understand until she explained. Oh, my, it is good to feel that one has made a contribution somewhere! (I do realize, however, that it took many other people with as good or better ideas really to turn it into the major event that it is today.)

6. Wednesday I had my first Pashto lesson. One day not long ago when I was handing out cookies to employees on one of my famous MBWA (management by walking about) afternoons, one of our Afghani employees, learning that I have been involved in some Afghanistan-related projected, offered to teach me Pashto. I emailed him, thanking him for the offer and taking him up on it if he was still inclined to help me. Indeed, he was! He came to my office on Wednesday, nervous as all get-out. After all, he is one of our traveling employees so I don't know him very well, and I am his boss's boss's boss. That lengthy chain can unnerve some folks although most, given my open-door policy and occasional afternoon cookies, have become used to interacting with me. Jamal perched nervously on one of the chairs at the conference table in my office. Seeing his nervousness, I took a slightly lower chair, so that he could look down on me, not up to me. That seemed to do the trick of throwing us into the proper teacher and student roles. Pashto is the 18th language I have studied, so I do not find it difficult. Jamal expected to teach me part of the alphabet that first day and was quite surprised to learn that I already know the alphabet (except for three letters). The alphabet is the same as the Arabic alphabet, which I have known since my days of living in Jordan. He quickly taught me the three letters, the days of the week, greetings, numbers to 1000, all the pronouns in the language, present tense of some verbs, sentence structure, possessive prepositions. In one hour, we were already communicating in the language albeit in short, limited sentences, banal questions and answers. Jamal left his glasses behind; when I contacted him to return them, he said it was because he was so overwhelmed by all the work we had accomplished in such a short time that he lost his head! :) We had our second hour today (well, actually, 30 minutes is all I could squeak out, but now I can talk about things in the future and past tenses, can describe my town and state, saying such things as "San Ignatio is a beautiful, historic town located in California in the southwest part of the USA," "I will be going to Jordan on the 19th of August and returning on the 25th," "I come to work every day at 7:00 in the morning but today I came at 7:30," and "I have seven children, four boys and three girls." Jamal is so excited about having an experienced language learner that he came in from vacation today and is coming in again tomorrow to teach me. I guess he got over his nerves!! The downside? I don't do homework (no time for that), but I warned him about that in advance.

7. I finally got around to reviewing a book proposal for Cambridge University Press. They tend to ask my opinion before giving contracts for new books because the two books I have published through them have been their most successful. Unfortunately, I could not give even one thumbs up to this particular book. I always feel a tad guilty when this happens because I know how hard it is to put a book proposal together and how disappointing it is to get a negative response. On the other hand, the editors/authors should have done their homework a little better and been a little humbler in their presentation. They claimed that the whole world would be excited about their book. Well, probably not. In fact, I suspect that only libraries would buy it and then only if it were to carry the CUP label. They claimed that their work was seminal. Well, no, they even listed others who had written on the topic in their bibliography. They listed someone with a well known name in the field as writing the final chapter. Well, perhaps he would do that but they had not included an abstract, so clearly he had not cooperated with them on a deadline and, while famous (and a bit infamous), in my opinion, he does not have enough experience in the narrow field about which the book editors were collecting chapters to make reliable and valid commentary. While I always dislike giving a thumbs down on proposals, it is not fair to either authors or the press to encourage the publication of a book that is likely to be a bomb. That, I suppose, is why I have a reputation for honest and frank reviews, which I would prefer to retain.