Soul Pancake page 3

HOW DO YOU DETERMINE TRUTH

Even though fundamentally I'm not entirely sure that we humans can know anything with absolute certainty... I think truth as far as we are concerned is based solidly in perception. This of course makes truth more of a grey scale type thing rather than a black and white. Which is consistent with my view on truth.

So - in application, I am sitting on a couch. Well, that's true right? Maybe.
I'm sitting on something that I've been instructed is called a couch. Maybe.
I'm sitting? Maybe, maybe I'm sleeping. *pinches self* hurts, but does that even prove anything? I think that our brains are quite smart enough to trick us into just about anything. And if you disagree with me how do you explain delusions? So all I can really say is that my perception of the current situation is that I am sitting on a couch.

But lets go for something easier. Gravity causes objects to be attracted to each other. Yes! I know this. This I know because I've seen it a million times. I take a step and rather than floating toward space I come right back to earth EVERY time. The earth, being much larger than I am pulls me a lot harder than I pull it. And over and over again, gravity pulls things together. And so I know this to be true.

Done yet? Or are you thinking of swans already? Swans are white right? Except for the ones that are black. My point being that since we cannot possibly experience everything in the universe, how can we be sure of anything just because it happens the same way every time we see it? So to round everything back up - we can't be absolutely certain of truth in nearly any situation. Therefore the best we can do is determine truth based on our perception of the world and the situations we face.

Shortly after my last post my company made the decision that we weren't going to bid on the proposal that I was all set to work on. Bummer! Although now I'm so busy at work that I can't even tell where the time goes, so it's alright by me. I'll get to that in a minute. 


Thanksgiving was excellent. I spent Thursday and Friday in Chicago with my aunt and uncle and their darling children. Also my grandparents were there and James. We went back to Michigan on Saturday and I flew back to DC Monday evening. I bumped to a later flight for a really excellent travel voucher. 


When I returned to work Tuesday I was informed that I would be joining our Iraq Project Management Unit (PMU) which is a project in start-up. The org chart of this project calls for over 100 field office staff and they currently have fewer than 30 positions filled. It's incredibly busy right now with trying to set up the field staff and find an office space etc. So, lots of work to do.

I've also found another new business role to work on. I'm again trying to do an Expat recruit for a Nigeria trade facilitation project. The thing is that the due date is December 28th, typically we set an internal deadline and submit out proposals a few days early, and in this case we're setting our deadline as the Friday prior to Christmas which means that I have to have all of my positions filled by next Friday. I guess it's true what they say "when it rains it pours"!

After my Arabic class this week I visited the bookstore just down the street and got Soul Pancake which is a book that basically just has a bunch of life questions. So I'm going to pick a page and blog it. Will give me something interesting and possibly contentious to blog.

One last thing... the Best Buy commercial where the mom's are outdoing santa on buying presents really annoys me.

I've finally begun my first proposal role at work. Proposals are a really important part of our work, since that's how we get new work, but since the Arab spring and the uncertainty in the Middle East we haven't had a lot of requests for proposals(RFPs) come out of USAID this year. And even now, I am working on a bid for a project in Africa. 

So what happens is the USAID releases an RFP on a public website that our new business teams monitor and once a bid goes live we set up a team to work on it. That team puts together a really awesome roster of employees that we would hire, and a technical proposal of what work we would do. USAID then has two different teams that evaluate all submissions. The one team evaluates what we say we're going to do, and who we are going to have doing it. The other team evaluates our cost proposal to see who is promising to provide the best value for the project. 

The very exciting thing - that I'll try not to hope for because it's incredibly unlikely that I'll be the person to do this - is that some proposals require that the final product be hand delivered. Sure, you could trust FedEx to get your 5 binders to some foreign USAID location, but really... we're not going to let our future business hang on any of the postal services. So we do what's called a hand carry. That entails the company flying you to whatever country with the final proposal binders and your sole purpose is to deliver them to the mission on time, then you fly home. Or you take a couple days of vacation and then fly home. So, in a very small place in the back of my mind I'm saying "pick me!!!!" Will of course let you all know if I do get picked.

Well, I guess I'm blogging again. It's been ohhh... years since I last blogged. Since then I've earned a BA and gotten a decent job. (Yay me!)

I just got back from seeing the Breaking Dawn pt. 1 movie with my dear friend Barb. The movie was cheesy as expected, but I liked it nonetheless and very much look forward to the final installation of the series. And then on to the next cult following - Hunger Games, which looks to be very promising.

Pulled into the parking garage in my building to find another car in my parking space. Lovely. The guy at the front desk said call the police, so I did. Come to find out nearly an hour later that they can't do anything because management hasn't listed my name on the spreadsheet for parking spots. Awesome. As much as I really like having an apartment, I kinda hate living here. The rents in DC are so ridiculously high compared to what you're actually getting. It's really hard getting used to paying nearly 50% of my take home pay in rent especially considering that I don't live in a super nice place. I'm dreading next August/September when I will be searching yet again for a new residence.

I'm going to sleep now - tune in next time, or don't whatevs...