On Being Superwoman

What does it take to be a superwoman? First of all, be involved with the right thing at the right time. I mean, you have to be involved with something that would demand so much from you that you wouldn't have any other choice but to be superwoman.

Take building a Science Museum, for example.

I've been barely four weeks into the Science Museum project. For this, I dropped my world of beer and bacon back in Ortigas. It was a place of complacency, but I had to give it up and take a big leap.

It's only been three weeks since I got into the Science Museum project, but I probably learned and did more than I did for six months where I previously worked. I've met and interacted with probably more than a hundred different people from different fields -- arts, science, design, construction, management, and what-nots. I've monitored 120-plus email threads -- not just individual emails but email threads averaging around 5 responses for each. I'm running out of pages in my everything-im-doing-at-work notebook. Hard copy of important files are starting to pile up in my file folder. My electronic files, on the other hand, have also started to accumulate, but not before I could segregate them into 10 or more different folders.

I practically have to be on top of everything that's going on with the development and execution of the science museum. I am the project development assistant... and for this I am superwoman.

So much demand. So many different challenges to face. For one, I had to learn about the different aspects of designing a special-purpose building. It was something entirely strange to me, an industry I have never encountered before. The past four wednesdays have been a crash course for me, and somehow I think I'm starting to catch up. It is also part of my responsibility to ensure that we are able to obtain all the permits and licenses we need for the project on time. On top of all, I have to be involved with monitoring the budget and the timeline for the project.

I somehow knew what I was getting myself into. I've anticipated this much demand from the work before I even started. Because of this, I made it a point to devise a way to monitor everything I'm doing and everything I needed to do, since I'm just bad at remembering things. I made a system, and somehow the OC person in me just resurfaced:

- The OC notebook. Mark with the date (compulsive date stamping, actually). Write down one by one everything that has been done or has to be done or has been discussed for the day. Refer to for the next day. Make sure everything that needs to be done is addressed.

- Post-its, post-its, post-its.

- Gmail is my ultimate tool.

- Paper clips and more post-its. I put together all related documents and clip them together, then mark their purpose. Makes looking for files a lot easier.

- Task list. An excel file with different task items categorized according to different aspects of the project.

- My lovely laptop. Without which I am nothing.

My system somehow works. There's still a lot of keeping up to do, however. And everything is just bound to become more hectic in the days to come. I'm bracing myself for that.

My World Online

I'm not so sure why, but I have this certainty of who I am online, in a different way from who I am when I'm out in the world. My fancy for the online world has started back in high school, the time of 30-hour per month dialup that I had to share with my siblings. There was one summer that I had to live through without using the landline (during the times when cellphones were still as big as shoes and are too costly to have) and thus resorted to chatting online. A lot of connections have been going on online. My first boyfriend started courting me by sending a note online. I've had a fling who became a good friend whom I first met inside a chatroom. I've fought with and made up (sometimes) with some people online. I've had friends fly off one by one abroad, and we've kept connections through the internet. I've even practically worked through my group projects in the university by doing most of them online with my groupmates.

I've lived through the high times of MIRC, ICQ, and now it's YM. I've had email addresses at hotmail, lycos, edsamail, but the ones I'm now using are Gmail and Yahoo. I am currently a slave to Friendster and Multiply. I check them each and every day. My sister mocks me for remaining a slave to Friendster in this period when everyone is moving on to Facebook. But Friendster is still valuable -- for stalking, err, keeping up with friends I haven't seen and haven't spoken to in a long while. I'm still not going Facebook, only for the reason that I don't want to become a slave to another online group fad. But that can change anytime.

I've had but a few blogs - one on Xanga which I kept only a few months, one on Friendster which I update very rarely, one on Multiply which is probably the most updated blog, and two or three anonymous blogs somewhere out there, containing some of my random insane musings, but has not been updated for a long while. One thing that I learned from blogging is, however interesting you think your life is, there is only a very few people who are eager to know about it. And yet, I continue to blog, thinking that I do have something interesting to say.

I know I have interesting thoughts, intriguing ideas, hidden somewhere in the recesses of my brain. I am admitted that I am a seeker of attention both online and offline. And thus, the number of hits on my page do matter to me.

I still have a life outside cyberspace. I would not say I am a slave to the corporate world -- yet I still move in it. At the moment I would like to think that I have the best job in the world, however bloody challenging it is and however poorly it pays. I have a social life that's good enough for my standards. I continue to pursue some of my personal interests, like music and business. I say I have everything a young woman could ever need, but not exactly everything I could ask for. For one, I have a non-existent lovelife, but I'm good with not having to deal with that at the moment.

However, my cyber-life (no malicious thoughts, please) has become a very important part of my being. It has become more of a need than an extra - it's like midnight snacks... something that can be considered unnecessary, but something I've gotten so used to that I can't eliminate it from my life.