Have a Blast

                            (Sydney photo booth)

Eventology was first heard when people started to consider event organizing as business. Basically it is a statistical jargon which is all about random and vague events. Yet, with the influx of entertainment and leisure as potent avenues for business, people gravitate to such areas to socialize and do the much-needed R&R. This could also be linked to the stressful and busy schedules of the working force they find a need to unwind.

Managing and staging events are skills to be mastered to make the desired outcomes be realized. And since these include people as clients or participants, the persons to man the events must also be knowledgeable in dealing with others. In short, they must be socially-intelligent to be able to come across. It is not enough to have the desire to serve or the need to be recognized for the eventologists to become successful ones. There is a need for them to be trained, educated and have a strong conceptual background of how to manage events to make things happen.

As I observed some of the events being attended lately, I realized that there is a necessity for people to learn how to stage and manage events. You see, selfish intentions and motives won’t make the events happen. Instead, it would become a waste of time and resources that add up to a certain craving to have more events which will also become hollow. A vicious cycle of creating gigs that could be considered as exercises in futility will happen.

Management and leadership must be employed in doing similar things. Policies and the much sought-after monitoring and evaluation should take place.

Here’s a series of thoughts:

Who will be attending the party? What are their motivations and how could we meet their expectations? Eventually, how could we gain something out from it?

The genius of John C. Maxwell will then surface. According to him, everyone wants something. Even the person who appears not to be motivated has desires. You need to find out what people want. Sometimes, they will tell you. Other times you need to use your discernment. Whenever people want something but see no way to get it, they will not be motivated. One of the jobs of the leader is to determine how the people can achieve what they desire.

Building teams will then follow. After the planning phase and identifying the needs of the people who will attend the gigs, the leader then build a strong team to manage the different teams. These teams must act independently and the managers will then become functional. Micromanagement must be avoided so to make things happen.

In the end, it is always a headache to attend a disorganized activity. It could be avoided once the eventologists will come out of their boxes and create meaningful events that would satisfy the multiple desires of the people they are having. You see, most of them even spend resources to attend such gigs yet they end up dissatisfied.

But then again, no matter how boring or exciting the parties could be, what matters most is the friendship and relationships that thrive.

We are All

                              (photo: inquirer.net)

“You spent everything?” the wife asked the partner as they embarked the public utility van. “You seem to be like that one-day millionaire!” she hissed as the van started to depart from the gate of a department store.The husband was quiet. He was probably savoring the time when he was in control with the amount he received from being a construction worker. Whatever happens he was the king during that time. He could play the scenes on his head: the time when he bought that shirt and he was not afraid that he could not pay the exact amount… He could reminisce the exhilaration of that moment when he could feel the money in his pocket and that he could buy anything he wanted.

According to the latest SWS survey, 47% of the 10.9 million families tagged themselves as poor. These are the members of our society where they have hand-to-mouth existence and they work daily to earn a living. These families have students sent to public schools and are being exposed to the difficulties of life. There are those who will survive the difficulties but there are lots who will surrender to their fate.

There are times when we will receive messages from our phones and through the internet from young people who ask for gifts. We tell them that gifts are not supposed to be asked. But these young ones see this time of the year as opportunities for them to have something they wish they have. They oftentimes make is as a joke yet there are those who are lucky enough to get what they want.

These are also opportunities for the predators to thrive on the preys.

With the onslaught of typhoon Vinta, there are people who are displaced from their homes. Most of them are informal settlers who live on the riverbanks or near the sea. Imagine the time when they tried to save their meager belongings to be brought to the evacuation center. Picture the elderly who could not walk without assistance and the small babies crying and wondering what on earth is happening?

These are scenarios that we could not deny. We suffer with them even if we are being protected with the sturdy houses and iron roofing we own. We feel their discomfort as they lie on the cold floor with nothing but those cheap blankets we grimace at inside stores in the bargain boxes. We are also hungry as the stomach of the children crave for solid food and not the half-cooked sardines they received as relief goods.

There are those of us who worry about their relationships. We sometimes fail to go out of the emotional cages that we built forgetting that there are people who need us. Yes, our emotions are important but they are being gifted to us by God not just for ourselves but to be extended to others. We are responsible for our own happiness and we are also born to be generous making such happiness pervasive.

There are those of us who worry about what clothes to wear. But among us, there are those who do not even have clothes. We often worry about what food to prepare on the eve of the 24^th, yet there are people who do not have anything to eat this moment. Our Christmas embellishments are sometimes more expensive that the food some of the children are eating…

There will be storms to face. We could be brave and strong if we face them together.

Sink or Swim

                                    (pinterest)

There were complaints on how the ship seemed to be at a snail’s pace and the like. The person in charge of the bedding in the tourist section tried to give an indifferent ear to the complainants. High time that another shipping company to stop this monopoly! Shouted someone who said he had a wedding to catch up. It was almost ten in the morning and the canteen served only instant coffee at twenty pesos per cup and stale biscuits. Indeed, patience could be tested at such times.

You drowned these words inside the world Pat Barker created via “Double Vision” but your stomach failed you to be with the protagonist who tried to have redemption after covering the different wars his country has waged. You sensed the urgency to go home as well after seeing hundreds of passengers trying to go home or proceed to a destination. You wonder why people complain about poverty on this country while malls and airports so with ships are always full of them.

To have some fresh air as the ship maneuvered to be docked, you went out and followed an aisle on the ship’s side. There you saw them.

Clad in filthy undergarments, some kids of the Badjao tribe begged for some passengers to throw coins to them. This is not something new for constant travelers but the sight of toddlers diving for one-peso coins could be disturbing. How could these young ones survive at such environment? But then, the more chilling scene is the sight of those adults throwing coins to them and seemingly enjoying the feat.

Of course others would frown on your words if you prevent them from their twisted sense of “helping others”. Who are you to judge them, anyway? Their intentions might be different from what you thought. They might have justifications that would pale in comparison to what you were thinking.

You then remembered the times when those self-righteous persons commented on your plight to air out ideas and generate stands on social issues on women and children. Your thesis focused on the viability of anti-violence against women and children law and you were scandalized to find out that even government offices are seldom practicing measures to stop violence against women and children. You fought hard to raise hell on persons with biases on the issue. And often, you are the minority and sometimes considered as hilarious.

But you still believe that ignorance could be battled. Stupidity thrives but with the influx of new technologies, there is still hope that these issues would be taken with seriousness being followed by action.

There are children among us who are like those swimming ones. They tried to live a life so different from the ideal one. There are those who are addicted to computer games because they’d like to have a sense of power which is triggered by their basic need to be secure. There are some who are into prostitution to be in step with what is happening around them.

And there are the most of US who oftentimes frown, be indifferent and even be the predators of their weaknesses.

Revolution

                                                 (pinterest)

Every time there is a party being held in the public area for free, young people flock and try to blend in the crowd. The need to belong is present in the way they move and the way they talk to their friends. Here, we could also see how the well-off ones flock like entitled beings on the area. They seem to underscore their presence with signature clothes and the way they talk. Some would even feign eloquence even if their lines are the nightmares of their English teachers.

There was a time when the noisy and “common people” were being glanced sharply by the “educated” ones. But on a macro perspective, they are the products of the society where we all belong. What has become of this generation when the adults point their fingers to the young when in fact they are the products of our own actions? Of course, the young must also be responsible of their actions but what if their movements and lifestyles are being copied from their own parents? 

According to www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, Parents who form warm relationships with their children and have minimal conflict with them, provide adequate monitoring and supervision, and do not provide models of drug use can protect youth from developing substance use disorders. Lack of strong positive relationships with parents increases involvement with deviant peers, which increases adolescents’ risk for a variety of problems, including precocious transitions, such as early pregnancy, premature independence from parents, and school dropout.

But then, we could not blame the parents who work with hand-to-mouth incomes. They need to concentrate on making a living than deal with the complex way of parenting. This could be thought properly by legislators, health workers and educators to come up with policies that could improve the status on this area of governance where the young people’s lives are at stake.  

Still, this multifaceted act could be done by the person who is in control with his inner self. But then again, it takes capacity-building, or a springboard followed by a shift of philosophy and evaluated actions. These could only be gained through education.That could take an unending discourse to the point that the evolution of education must also be in step with its ecology. 

With this, we could be left with the only thing that we can do. Make our own actions as contributors to the change that we want to happen in the society. Nothing will come out if we complain a lot and do less. In our own micro-world, we could create simple changes that will radiate to others.

By simply affirming and humanizing the young, they will appreciate their own contributions and could probably start a revolution in the heart which will become valid actions to make the world a better place.

Breaking down walls and by not labeling people based on their status, looks, skin color, religious preferences and sexual orientations, these could be the springboard of having "that" envisioned society. Smile. This could make others feel they are important like you.