Typhoon Sendong and The Politics Of The Unprepared

One of the fatal flaws that we have as Filipinos is our lack of preparation, much more preventive preparation.  The tragedy that befell CDO, Iligan, and Zamboanga was something that could have been mitigated had their respective local governments saw fit to prepare its citizens for the eventuality of floods.  One local newspaper headline had the Mayor of CDO saying that nobody warned them of the typhoon and thus they were not prepared to handle it.  I thought it was a lame excuse for the city's top executive.  Typhoon Ondoy is still fresh in everyone's memory and every city and municipality should have already put in place a plan communicated to its citizens on what to do, and what to watch out for in case there is a typhoon.  Without this critical guidance from the local officials, the citizenry were practically sitting ducks when the typhoon waters rose bringing along with it illegally cut logs that rammed into their homes wrecking havoc to property and claiming lots of lives.

Working From Home Disasters

One of the biggest misfortunes about working from home is when natural disasters occur. That and site visits.

Most of the time, the byproduct of these disasters is the loss of electricity. This means that the work at home professional like myself will have no other recourse but to run to the nearest company office where there will always be standby generators and power is assured 24/7.

Hotelling

photo from josephsylvestconst.com

Since I've become a work at home professional, I have totally become paperless.  It's unbelievably liberating.  I can still remember when I worked in an office cubicle with all those binders and all those reports that I have to print out daily, monthly, quarterly. Ugh.

As somebody who never had any love for collecting all those papers, filing is, was, and forever will be my worst nightmare.  I am totally anti-filing!  Now electronic filing is an altogether different animal.  I have no problems with it.  It's just one of those things that come naturally.

Designing My Home Office

I've been designing or at least trying to design my own home office now that I spend more time in the province than in Manila as a work at home professional.  Our house in the province has an extra 12sqm that I can renovate and turn into my own home office.  Unfortunately for me, I don't have any idea how my office should look like.  I tried to conjure what an ideal home office should be but I couldn't get past a table and a chair.  Pretty plebeian I think, so I consulted the great Internet and it has shown me a lot of samples for a great home office.

One of the home office designs I like is this one.  This home office is designed by Christopher J. Grubb of Arch-Interiors Design Group Inc. www.archinteriors.com.  The photo is from www.hgtv.com.

Setting Up Conference Calls With A Bridge Line

photo from itelnet.com

As a work at home professional, every so often, depending on the circumstances, teleconferences is a must. You will have to talk to a group, a team or a committee to provide updates on a project you are working on. In the olden days, you will need to go to the office to use special equipment that can handle multiple callers at once. But even with those equipment that have a multiple-caller feature, sometimes the number of people who can call in is very limited.

The creation of a bridge technology changed all that. A bridge number or a bridge line, is a specific number that participants call and are asked for a participants passcode so they can join a call. The organizer of the meeting and owner of the bridge number or bridge line can then open up the call by entering the leader ID when prompted. Depending on your plan with the bridge line provider, the number of participants can be from a couple of people to hundreds, even thousands, especially if the bridge number is usually used for Global calls.

Work At Home Communication Tools

photo from kollewin.com

As a work at home professional, the most important part of the job is communication. Without it, the powers that be that pays our salary would have no way of knowing what we're up to. This part of our work is the main thing that convinces our employers that we are worth the salaries they are paying us.

Communication can either be oral or written. Written communications pertains to emails, text messages and even twitter- if your company has a strong social media culture. Oral communications will refer to your teleconferences, your one on one with your boss/es, your daily VOIP huddles or just about anything that requires voice communication.

The Gift Of Push Email

One of the most indispensable tool that I'm using with my work at home job is push email.  I'm lucky enough that my employer provides me with a Blackberry phone for my use.  With it, I get all my emails even when I'm away from my computer.  It also allows me to answer mails on the fly even when I'm away from my home office.

It's very useful as a portable tool which allows me the freedom to leave my house when I'm feeling pretty cooped up and wanted to get some fresh air.  This is most important for work at home professionals as we sometimes take advantage of our freedom of movement that we can't always get when we're tied down to cubicles.

I'm not yet sure if push email is possible if you don't have an enterprise plan for your mobile phone.  But if your area has a plan that provides for push email and the company that you work for encourages you to take advantage, then my strong recommendation is to go for it.  It's like bringing your office with you wherever you go.

Work At Home Pinoy

photo from bestpaidtostayhome.com

I am a work at home pinoy. One of the few lucky ones I think. I go to work in my pajamas, watch TV all day if I want to, as long as I finish my deliverables. I work for a voice at the other end of my VOIP phone, but I get my salary from the local office. There's a growing number of us work at home folks in the Philippines. Maybe a decade ago jobs such as mine would have been incomprehensible. But things are changing at a rapid pace because of technology.

In this blog, I will try to discuss the things that matter to folks like me who are given the privilege to work from home. Make no mistake about it, working from home is a privilege. And as such, it is something that cannot be taken for granted.