Team Building Seminar

Following the day out at Langogan, where I began to feel I was being lead a bit off track, an even less constructive day followed. In the morning I was invited to a meeting at the city office of the Palawan branch for the Department of Trade and Industry. The DTI is the federal body who is charged with bringing national initiatives involving trade, investment and business to the local provinces and regional goverments. It is they who along with local city council, have intiated the OTOP project. They help small enterprises in the areas of identifying, branding, and marketing products, and bringing together the necessary resources for communities, including training and community processing centers. They do good work. Like all similar agencies world wide however, they like to go in circles, and the more feathers in their cap the better. I had been hoping to come and find out what the OTOP project was all about, but the discussion focussed on the available sites for a particular communities processing center and that was all the time there was.

In the afternoon, I was invited to a DTI sponsored "TEAM BUILDING SEMINAR", which was exactly what you're probably picturing. A bunch of people sharing communal activities such as building a group coat of arms based on our lives, and following on screen dance steps. This sort of thing is used by many organizatons, and they are probably even practical, but I spent the whole time thinking, "I might as well be working for Wal-Mart". I was inspired by the stories of a few single working mothers (everyone has lots of kids here) and met a few interesting people. One of these people was Attorney Vic Tan, an Chinese Filipino who commented that upon visiting family in Richmond (Vancouver) he couldn't understand why there weren't any white people. He was just about to open his store Budget Home Depot (with a few borrowed names—no such thing as intellectual property here). Although Mr. Tan prefixes his name with Atty. he apparently only practised law for a few years, because as he explained, everyone knew him and wanted him to work for them as a favour.

So a few interesting people were met. I received a number of texts afterwards, asking me to come up with packaging designs. I think I inherited Attorney Tan's problem. I escaped before dinner as I had another appointment and spent the next couple of days thinking what the heck am I doing here? Such is the adjustment period of coming to a new place.