OPINION

OUR LESSON FOR TODAY
By Joel N. Sayson
March 8-14, 2009 issue

Love Your Work

Recently we were shaken by news on Global Financial Crisis in which even some local companies have already declared bankruptcy. We can also observe the recessions from other countries and even the big countries are not exempted from it.
If you have your job as of the moment, well, congrats! But do you care about your job? If not you might be the next one to lose your it. More often, we are told by our friends that work is a curse and labor is misfortune instead of telling you that it is a blessing from God.
Let us have a glimpse of the past when were just fresh graduates of a bachelor’s degree. During the first few days after our graduation we are very excited to have our job and our own life. We do not care about the salary that our employers might offered us? The only thing which concerns us is that we do not want to be branded as a "professional tambay".
Little by little after you were employed you are already thinking about the security of tenure, the high compensation, incentives etc. well, perhaps, that is good, but sometimes we feel tired and jaded of working specially when we cannot get the things that we expect from our companies.
Let me share you some of the passages from the literary masterpiece of Kahlil Gibran entitled About Work. May these passages make us realize that we should love our work amidst the hardships that we encounter in our work place everyday.
"When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music." Gibran tells us that if we learn to love our job we will find every single minute in our office enjoyable.
"If you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distills a poison in the wine." This passage tells us if we are working with hatred we are not the only ones who might suffer the bad effects of our inferior outputs, our company or worst, our family might also be badly affected. In order to avoid the ‘spilling of the poison’ Gibran also mentioned in his essay "if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, its better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy."
If you are already bored or tired of dealing with your officemates just look around and find new things in your office that will make your day exciting and enjoyable.
"When you work with love, you bind yourself to yourself and to one another and to God" -Kahlil Gibran.

OUR LESSON FOR TODAY
By Joel N. Sayson

‘Siranikos’

MOST of the youth nowadays and even the young at hearts owned "Teki" devices such as cellular phones, mp4 or iPODs, digital cameras, and the likes (as observed in the campus). All of us have one common thing to fear and that is to find out that these gadgets are not functioning as expected. Unfortunately, I was one of the troubled "tekis", my mp4 was about to say goodbye. Out of the blue an idea came out from my mind to bring my beloved mp4 to a repair shop located in one of the well known mall here in our locality. I was very happy then to hear that the technician can still extend the life of my mp4. Due to my excitement I paid the initial deposit which was asked by the technician and upon getting the initial payment I was told by the "teki" doctor to come back the next day. The following day I got my mp4 and he assured that it will function good as new, and then I already paid the full amount of service fee which was already half the price of the gadget.
When I got home I started to enjoy again my mp4 which was given to me as a graduation gift by my cousin. After several hours it started again to turn on and off and I started to feel very disappointed to the technician whom he called himself "professional". The next day I went back to the shop then surprisingly after I told them about the problem and they started to blame me that I did not tell them the cause of the malfunction during the first time that I brought to them my mp4. Isn't it very unprofessional for them to ask their customer about the cause of the malfunction? I started to argue with the technician that if I know the cause of the malfunction and if I have an idea to fix it then I would not bring it to their shop. Besides he was the one who should first know it because he is the expert as their store logo says. He insisted again to get my mp4 but I already refused to give it because it was very obvious that he does not have an idea or enough knowledge about gadget repairs or perhaps he was just taking chances on our gadgets.
This article was written to warn the youngsters to be fully careful when choosing the repair shops where they will entrust their precious gadgets or much more important that when buying gadgets choose the high quality devices that can last for a long time rather than buying the fake ones. Due to the financial crisis we are tempted to buy the affordable devices, in that case when your gadget malfunctions do not try to bring it to the morticians, I mean the fake technicians.
Before having a repair, try to compute the cost of the service (that was obviously not guaranteed) then canvas for a brand new gadget and I am sure that it is more affordable and ideal to buy a new one or you can try to buy branded products which for sure has a service center.