Cagayan de Oro

This past week was full of activities that I cannot blog about it in just a couple of entries--many insights will be reserved for another time. I will let it marinate first in my memory bank and let the learnings take in its flavor before anything else.

The major activity of last week was the Cagayan de Oro 1st PLMMA convention on data management. It was really great to see the Phil. LMMA network evolve into this group of people who has nurtured the friendships from accross the nation and then bringing in new friends from communities. I was inspired by the work they are doing on the ground. The sharings about learning to monitor their marine resources.

I feel for Daday and Jessica sharing that they had a very diffucult time learning to snorkel just to gather data. Another is Jun who shared about his first time to talk to a national audience and to international friends from Fiji --Tawake and Ron.

Solidarity night was karaoke night. For the past years that there were sing-along and Karaoke this one night was a class of its own. Its was a major rock and roll night with everyone from the group singing. It was like Pinoy Dream Academy performance night. Even the most quiet of the bunch from the far flung islands of Hinatuan were belting songs that could kick the behind of anyone from the tv shows going on. Ron said "I've never seen any group have so much fun with karaoke". There was no dead air--Nada. They were dancing and digital cameras were a dime a dozen clicking away. I heard Kagawad Ronel said "Ay wag nyo po ipadala yaan sa amin kami'y iginagalang sa amin". You can imagine that how this folks partied hard that night.

The next morning, we all went back with a smile and while doing our data management and analysis, remembering that we really had a great time the night before inspired us to go on with our more serious work. A clear example of work hard, party hard people.

It was always a core value of the network to have fun. Rakenrol!