Respect Begets Respect

Saturday… first day of the week in Saudi Arabia.

I had to get up early to be at the office ahead of time. Usually, Saturday is a dead day for me after an exhausted weekend.

Nakakatamad pumasok.

Before, I used to spend my weekend with my group in community service. We organized a group involved in developing talents in singing, modeling, and theater arts in Saudi Arabia. Although bawal ang mga ganitong activities, we survived almost three years in giving good quality shows sa Embassy. We hold our practices in Philippine schools here in Riyadh since most of our talents are students. Siyempre nandoon yong makita mo ang mga may potentials maging sikat. Aside from their looks and upbringing, mayroon silang mga natatagong talents. Yon nga lang, walang chance to develop them, kaya dito naming naisip na mag-organize ng isang organization. Actually, biglaan lang naman yon, we just group ourselves one day at nabuo yong grupo namin dahil may gustong patunayan yong grupo. May existing organization kasi with the same genre na gustong tapatan ng iba naming friends. Gustong patunayan na mas magaling kami sa kanila. Honestly, to me, it was such a nasty move. In the first place, I hate limelight at ayaw ko ng competition, but because they are my friends, I go with the flow.

Our shows were appreciated by many because of our collective ideas and sharing. Kahit may mga disagreements, still we managed to work as a team. Pero dahil nga sa minsan nagkakasakitan ng ego, lumalabas ang samaan ng loob. Of course, if it reached the maximum tolerance ika nga, something worse might happened. And this lead to the first break-up of the group. Consequently, nadagdagan ang magkatunggali sa pagalingan…. However, personal ferocity against each other aroused by being antagonistic of the break-away group to us. Emails flooded reaching even the embassy authorities accusing us of harassing/exploiting our talents, branded us like “manggagamit”, “balahura”, “baboy sa sex” and other demeaning accusations affecting our self-esteem. We never thought of fighting back, we let others defend us. God is great at all times… We get sympathies from many. After the heavy down pouring of accusations to us, one day we have just noticed that these accusations bounced back to them. Their president flew to Iraq and left a huge unpaid balance to some of their members. In short, “na-raket sila!”. Till then, nawalang parang bula ang mga bumatikos sa amin… At last, we were vindicated!

We have dominated the prestige and fame of being the best cultural organization in Saudi Arabia for the past 3 years. However, as time passed by, we have also diversities among ourselves, which prompted me to resign. Indifferences that are meant to be the cause of fall-downs and parting ways.

Now, I concentrate on my job and spend weekdays with someone special or sometimes with my blogs.

My day in the office is always an stereo-typical one. Fortunately, my boss is so kind that I am not warned if he sees me spending more time browsing the net…. Perhaps, he knows that my low salary, compared to others, is compensated by my addiction to the net.. with the assurance that no porno sites to browse..Mahirap din kasi at naka server kami……