Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Just came from the HMO orientation of the school's employees before lunch today.

It was like a typical faculty meeting with people questioning left and right why something is like this or why it isn't like that.

Which is a waste of time because most of the answers that the liaisons gave was that that was what was agreed on during their last contract renewal.

So if it was anyone's fault, it was that of those who entered into the renewal negotiations without informing the employees afterwards through a memo.

Or, at least, they could have surveyed the faculty about the benefits they wanted before entering into the renewal negotiations.

The other stock answer, if the first one wasn't true, was "we'll check with our office".

Although there were two offenses made by the orientors that the employees took personally.

First was in response to questions about why only up to five thousand pesos would be covered for pregnancies, and only for those below 35 years old.

The orientor joked - badly - that they considered pregnancy as a vice.

One of my co-teachers, above 35, married and not yet decided on having a baby, reacted to this, so the orientor backed down with an apology.

The other slip of the tongue was calling acupuncturists, chiropractors and other non-traditional alternative "experimental" health practices as quacks, which another teacher was against.

I guess there was also a momentum to asking pointed questions though, because there were even notifications that what they said were covered and what was on the slides were not consistent.

The truth is though, that of course there were changes to their regular slide presentation during the renegotiations. They didn't want to have to edit their file just for us, and thus that's why they had a special sheet in the brochure with benefits that are exclusive to our school (stemming from the negotiations) and that's why they also clearly stated which parts of the slides were not true for our school.

Session 1823 really is a culture used to complaining and getting their own way. Class dismissed.