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Monday, April 11, 2005
Rama: Almost on vacation
By KARLON N. RAMA
STAGE FIVE
WORK takes its toll on people.
In the bewildering world of journalism – the daily dance with the 8 p.m. deadline – calls to respond to a breaking story that come with little or no prior warning and staying on top of a blitzkrieg of events, the only way to hold on to sanity is to master the rhythm of contact with work and the withdrawal from it.
I went on one such withdrawal last Saturday and, from the air-conditioned depot of people and computerized equipment I call the Sun.Star Cebu newsroom, escaped to picturesque Nalusuan Island Resort and Marine Sanctuary, a half-hectare islet on the far side of the extensive Olango Reef network in Cordova, Cebu.
Nalusuan Island sits in between the Hilutungan Channel, located northwest, and the Olango Channel, located southeast.
The islet, the farthest of a triangle (Hilutungan in the northwest and Kaohagan in the northeast), is a raised coral reef characterized by porous coralline limestone and small sinkholes, pitted groves and branching pinnacles.
In place of a beach is a long and wide sandbar, visible on low tide, of coarse-grained sand mixed with shell fragments.
The 14-room resort sits atop the raised coral reef and offers accommodation and facilities standard in most other resorts in Cebu plus more – pristine crystal-clear waters that say nothing but serenity and rest to all weary traveler and journeyman.
They also offer amenities designed to complete your stay – kayaks, snorkeling gear and diving equipment.
I guess it would be more accurate to say that my visit to the islet was only half a withdrawal since I went there because of work: A one-day team-building seminar with the top managers and supervisors of the Cebu Pacific International Language School (Cpils), based in downtown Cebu City.
The seminar, dubbed the Team Adventure and Discovery Training, was designed under the experiential education system, and was specifically programmed to cater to top and middle management people from various cultures.
Trainings under the experiential education system are more commonly referred to as adventure-based seminars and the most basic of such an undertaking proceed along the same lines as “urban races” where a group, divided into teams, are sent out to outperform each other in a day of intense physical action.
Television, thanks to the Amazing Race and the Eco-Challenge shows, has popularized the “expedition race” concept into the level of phenomena and a hodgepodge of outfits have surfaced to cash in on the popularity by offering their services.
However, most of the trainings given noticeably do not proceed beyond the level of sports and recreation.
Cpils management, through Grace Barbon, who I met as a student in the University of San Carlos Department of Psychology, approved the training module my fellow trainors in the Healing Home Center for Humanistic Services and I designed for the activity days before.
The participants were composed of 13 Filipinos, five Koreans – Edward Kim, Jun Son, Samuel Nam, Grande Park and John Jung – and an American, a diver by the name of Greg Rittger.
Cpils, as the name implies, is a language school that caters mostly to Korean and Japanese students trying to learn English.
They are based inside the Harbor View Hotel and provide services to some 400 foreign students.
Our training center, meanwhile, has been in existence as a training group since early 2002. Operating outside the Cebu Normal University (CNU), its services range from clinical counseling, testing, research and organizational development.
Working in tandem with expedition organizers, the center has held seminars for companies like Globe Telecom and organizations like the Hardwares Consolidated Inc.
The team of trainors commissioned for the project – myself, Emmanuel Hernani and Marty Sentina of the CNU, Ethel Jo of the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation and Jeanette Davis of Timex Philippines – formed outside the Eduardo Aboitiz Study Center just before daybreak, Saturday.
We rode together towards the Cpils campus along MJ Cuenco Ave. where two vans had been provided for our transportation, together with the participants, to Sitio Tonggo, Barangay Marigon-don, Lapu-Lapu City, where a motorized boat was waiting to bring us to the island.
The road trip from the Cpils campus toward Lapu-Lapu City lasted close to an hour, with the morning traffic and all that, and that time was spent creating solutions to several worst-case possibilities I had created in my head.
A lot of things could go wrong in a seminar involving transnational and trans-cultural participants and not all of the worst-case possibilities I had created had solutions.
I began feeling better after the group arrived in Sitio Tonggol, where one of the resort’s motorized outrigger boats was waiting to whisk us to the island. (To be continued)
(knrama@sunstar.com.ph)
(April 11, 2005 issue)
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