Benchwork

Don Bosco Poipet's new intake of Voc-tech students comes from the grade 6 entry level (Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville have grade 9 as entry level). They are being introduced to the world of benchwork. This starts with long hours of filing. I could still remember our batch when we did the same many years ago in college. Boy! how we hated this gruelling and humbling exercise. Time dragged on as we yearned to be transferred to the less laborious yet more prestigious lathes and the shapers. Until one day, we had a field trip to Toyota Motors. There we learned that the "filers" received higher salary than the "machinists" and the best ones were even taken to Toyota Japan. That experienced changed the wold of "filing" for us.
Filing smoothens out the workpiece's rough edges. It seems a lot of benchwork still needs to be done in my spiritual life. Otherwise this piece won't fit in nicely in Your "great master plan."

A Microsoft Conference

Sometime ago there was this Microsoft conference in Boston. I'm not really a big die hard of this but since I do have my Microsoft certs, I always enjoyed updating myself in the things that they offer.
One of the conference paper and presentation was:

“Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em: Getting Good People to Stay” by Beverly Kaye and Janis L. Keeley

According to Beverly: “Every leader's contribution to their organization's mission and strategic goals is highly correlated to his or her ability to retain, engage, and develop talented, highly skilled, knowledgeable people. Today's leaders are expected to build a work environment in which their key employees thrive, constantly learn and give their discretionary effort to their organization. Talent-minded managers know that if their organization is to be productive and competitive, they must not only 'hang on" to good people, but also continually develop them in order to meet constantly changing business needs. The big question for most leaders is how to do this in a "no-time-to-do-it" environment.”

Wow, that for me is the epitome of "shepherding." Reminds me of Your management style found in John chapters 15-17. Incidentally, last week I submitted my abstract to the Royal University of Phnom Penh for the upcoming Socio-Cultural Research Conference. Let's see if it gets chosen. It's a research on: "why students nowadays don't ask relevant questions in class?" OK, I know, I ask too many questions from you... maybe I have too many doubts and too many curiousities. Hey, I'm not complaining, so far you are giving me answers in prayer.