Political Humor Break

With the entry of Sarah Palin into the political ring, she has become the subject of many newspaper reports both for and against her. She has also become the subject of late night comedy shows.

The following is a video clip of a comedy sketch from Saturday Night Live that was shown last night (September 13). The sketch features Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton in what is supposed to be a joint appearance to impart a non-partisan message. Enjoy. :-)

Castaway in Burbank

Thanks to a hectic work schedule this past week, I was not able to take presentable pictures of the mountains and hills around Sylmar, California. The end of each workday saw me exhausted and drained of energy that I was not able to drive around the area to do some "tourist" stuff. :-)

Our red eye flight was scheduled for 9 p.m. Thursday night but we didn't get to leave the office until close to 6 in the evening of that day. Since we had to be at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank at least an hour and a half before departure time, we were all in a rush for we still had to stop somewhere for dinner.

Thus, we decided to eat at a place a few miles from the airport. The restaurant we picked was called The Castaway and is located right in the city of Burbank. The restaurant is nestled in the Burbank Hills and Harvard Road, the road Castaway is on, winds up the hills past some nice homes and a golf course.

The following view of the Burbank Hills greeted us as we pulled into the restaurant's parking lot.


One can enjoy some spectacular views of the Los Angeles city skyline from this restaurant's windows and patio. While waiting for our food to arrive, a colleague and I decided to step outside to enjoy the views and take a few pictures.

The photo below shows the restaurant's patio.


From this patio, one can enjoy the breeze and views of both the skyline and the surrounding hills. However, this area is reserved only for customers who are out to enjoy a few drinks. Here's another shot of the patio this time taken facing the west. The sun was setting at this point.


I took the following picture from one end of the patio. It shows more of the surrounding hills and in the foreground, it provides one with a view of part of the neighboring De Bell Golf Course.


Another shot of the golf course but this time, with part of the Los Angeles skyline in the background. It was quite a hazy day and as a result of that, I was not able to take a much clearer picture of the skyline.


Here's one more shot of the golf course and the skyline taken from a different spot on the restaurant's patio.


And of course, no photo of the Los Angeles area would be complete without a shot of these palm trees on the patio.


I had to get back in for my dinner moments after the above shot was taken. There was a cool and pleasant breeze coming in from the west and a few people had started hanging around the patio.

I have an aunt who lives near Burbank and from the airport, I called her to say goodbye and also to let her know where I had stopped for dinner. She said Castaway is quite popular in the area. It is a popular place for wedding receptions, baptismal parties, and Mother's Day lunches. In fact, one of her husband's nieces had her wedding reception there. There was indeed a decent size crowd while we were there and we even saw a group of people who were engaged in discussions with the restaurant's manager regarding plans and arrangements for a coming wedding reception.

I also enjoyed my dinner which was shrimp scampi served on a bed of steamed rice and steamed vegetables. I like this place and will definitely come back to it the next time I find myself in the area.

Thoughts On A Job

My work week ends a day early today. After a closing meeting with the division's management, we will be rushing back to Bob Hope Airport later this evening for our flight back East.

It was a busy week at work. Meetings, interviews, and hours spent observing the division's operations made it quite a hectic one. But all throughout, our contacts managed to remain very friendly and cooperative in spite of weaknesses and areas for improvement we found and identified with their processes.

A lot of times, one has to destroy in order to build. My job facilitates the process of destroying procedural and operational weaknesses in order to help our divisions run better.

In some ways, I'm glad that I do what I do where I'm at. This country has a strong culture of professionalism at work. People remain very civil and professional even when they disagree with another individual's opinion. In my situation, they understand that I'm simply doing my job when I inform them of areas they need to improve on, things that I know they sometimes don't like to hear. People take a lot of pride in their work and it could be quite a delicate matter when I'm dealing with someone who was the brains behind a particular process or procedure. It is critical for me to manage to retain their support and cooperation because I will certainly need such when I ask them to implement my recommendations.

I make sure to give the people credit where credit is due. I give people credit for what they've accomplished before discussing the areas for improvement. In a lot of situations, people work with whatever resources are available to them. They certainly deserve credit for making the best out of difficult situations. One aspect of my job that I really like is that my findings help shed light on areas that need improvement. And once that light shines on a problem, it often forces a division's management to pour the resources needed to fix it.

On the human side of things, I appreciate the fact that in this country, people can disagree with each other without becoming disagreeable. In the years that I've done this job over here, I haven't come across someone who has taken my findings as a personal attack. They all know and understand that we all have a job to do and that we all aim for what's good for the company and for everyone.

Thinking about the whole thing reminds me of some sad experiences I had when I was still back in the Philippines. For doing the exact same job I'm doing now, I received a death threat from a client whose selfish interests drove his opposition to my recommendations; I had seen our team's findings and recommendations distorted by another client's management to pursue an agenda against their laborers; and I had also witnessed how one client's management twisted and bent our recommendations to continue their corrupt practices. Although I had also seen several instances where our recommendations were implemented to the letter, it is sad to note that such instances did not make up the majority of what I saw. Is it any wonder then that our country is in the state that it is in?

At the end of the day, I am the type of person who just wants to do his job in the way it was meant to be done. The professional idealism I had from my youth has managed to remain with me in a lot of ways. Sometimes office politics do come into play but such things are unavoidable in human organizations. However, as long as the areas that need improvement are addressed to everyone's satisfaction, that's all I care about.

Busy Week Ahead

It's southern California for me this week and I'm spending it in the working-class Los Angeles suburb of Sylmar. We flew into Bob Hope Airport (formerly Burbank Airport) yesterday (Sunday) afternoon on board a JetBlue plane. The following is a picture of the plane I was on after we had landed at Bob Hope Airport.


It was a five and a half-hour flight from New York. No meals were served on this flight as has become quite standard fare for US domestic flights. However, what one got in exchange were free drinks (except for beer and liquor), sufficient legroom and satellite TV entertainment courtesy of DirecTV. On-board satellite tv is all fine and dandy but I still want my food. I'm the type who gets into a foul mood if I get hungry. Thus, to prevent starvation, I packed a "few" egg sandwiches to consume on the flight.

Three people are accompanying me on this trip. I anticipate our team's work schedule to be quite hectic for we don't have the benefit of a full five-day work week. We will only be here for four days. We are scheduled to take a "red eye" flight back to the East Coast on Thursday night that will get us home very early Friday morning. In exchange for such an arrangement, we get to take the entire Friday off.

I'll be reporting for work in a couple of hours but at this point, my mind's already looking forward to Friday. Can't wait to get an extra day of rest.

A Little Housekeeping

I did a little housekeeping on my blog today. It was getting too cluttered for my taste and for its own good that I decided to trash some of the widgets that I had installed previously.

The casualties from this round of blog cleanup are the following:

1. Google's Adsense - It didn't really make much sense to keep it since the revenues from it are a joke. A beggar would probably make more money in a bad day than a blogger would make from Adsense in a year. Thus it's gone.

2. Technorati - I didn't find much meaning with the statistic or number this tag provided. I link to other bloggers' sites because I like what they write and not for the purpose of displaying a higher Technorati number. Thus, I showed this one the door.

3. Recent Comments - This particular software was so unreliable. It sometimes displayed the readers' comments and sometimes it didn't. I hate inconsistency and thus, this widget is history.

4. Million Blog List - I'm already on their list as #968 and so there's no further need to display it on my blog. There's not much significance to the number #968 anyway since my blog is not the one millionth on the list. :D

There. That's it for now. Less clutter to see and deal with on a daily basis.