The Workaholic Me! - 2

Firstly, let me start by apologising humbly for disappointing all of you who were expecting weekly posts. I already mentioned that I am almost upto my nose with work and deadlines! I know it's not an excuse, but let's look at the bright side, because I have been so busy, I have so much to tell you all ;)

When I first wrote a post under The Workaholic Me, it was to be a one time post.. No recurrences. However, there is just so much to write that I thought, Hey, why not make it a weekly thing? But please be warned, I get into these moods where I will be a total workaholic for a week and then a total slacker in the other week- be it slacking or working, rest assured, I give it my 100% ;) My point here being, I might not be able to write The Workahoilic Me every week if it's a slow week, but you can be sure that it will appear every now and then! 

So, on to the me who can't rest if she gets started with some work until she finishes it! You might already know about my House listing for Economic Survey and Census, and if you don't, get enlightened right now by following this link!. And before you get your hopes up, I still haven't finished the data entry! The good news is, DNP hasn't asked about it yet, maybe becasue they understand the enormity of the work and that it wouldn't be completed so soon. But not to worry, with the help of my faithful Potayto, I hope to be done with it by today!  

 Last you heard, Jojo (my colleague at The Secretariat of The Fuvahmulah Atoll Council) was dividing the 8 districts into 27 blocks right? So after he divided them, I marked the blocks on each district map and started entering the data. This is where you see the real workaholic in me, because I entered the data at the office everyday, from 8 to 3, with the help of a cousin who volunteers there, Shafu, and after I come home, I call Potayto and we enter the data together from 4 to 7! I do not get paid for the overtime, but here I am, bringing work home and trying to finish it within the deadline! But alas, the workload is too much!

Even Shiakko, my younger sister, helped me once. But mostly it's been Shafu and Potayto, Potayto, more so! Looking on the bright side, I have finished 6 WHOLE DISTRICTS-yeah, that includes the BIGGER 4, hence, the excitement ;)) and half of one district. That was a really slow district because I had to find the names from the map and then search for the data for that house from the 20 or so pages of information (In other districts, the enumerators had written a reference number for each household so when I read off the number from the map, Potayto could look up the number in the list and read off the information almost instantaneously!) Nevertheless, I am determined to finish the remaining ones today, yes, working on a Friday, can I get any more obsessed with work? :P (And for those of you who are accustomed to Friday being the last day of the week, Friday for us, in Maldives is the weekend, Friday and Saturday, with the new week starting on Sunday!)

Here I mention guiltily, that my CPI work for the past two weeks are at a halt, because I was so busy with data entry. I did send December's CPI list on 6th January, just in time for the deadline (Deadline is 5th of each month, but 5th January was a Saturday so I got the extra day!). And I am sure I can send CPI of January by 5th February, but that is no small task either. Taking prices of over 200 products from more than 40 outlets is no small feat I tell you! 

Update on collecting the Key Indicator's list for MaldivInfo is, I have received the information from all the 8 Island Councils, last receipt was from Miskimmagu Council last night! You wouldn't believe how many times I had to call each council to get ALL the information. I called almost twice everyday since 14th January. Some councils were very cooperative and they sent it right before the deadline of 15th, but others needed more reminding and more bothering them to send me the data. Now that I have all the data, I have till 23rd to compile them, fill in any missing information from Fuvahmulah Atoll Council's database, and leave comments for each Indicator!

I had mentioned that the deadline for sending an updated map of Fuvahmulah as a whole for Census 2014 was 14th January. But Anys, a colleague at DNP, the one who is supervising the Map Updation extended my deadline to 20th January, after hearing my story. The thing was, I was so involved with House Listing and data entry (since it had a deadline for last Thursday), that I misread the letter DNP sent to me regarding the updation of maps. DNP had actually asked me to get the maps from the Island Councils, not update the maps myself! So ofcourse it was a huge workload off of me, but then I had to send the letters to the island Councils (I have to Thank Waheedhahtha for that, she prepared the letters for me,) giving them a deadline of 17th January, yes, yesterday. But even when I started calling them on 16th and after calling them several times yesterday, I'm still missing maps of 3 districts., 4 actually, the one sent by one dsitrict was in pdf format and I was unable to convert it to the required Corel Draw format (actually Jojo converted the autocade versions to Corel Draw format! Thank you Jojo!). So tomorrow I have to go to the office, on a Saturday, yes, AGAIN, call the people who are responsible for sending me the maps (I got their cell phone numbers, since I knew their work numbers wouldn't work on a weekend ;) ), get all the 8 maps, merge them into one, call Jojo, ask him to divide the whole of Fuvahmulah into 27 blocks (wouldn't be hard I hope, since he already did it for the House Listing! ;) ) and send them to Anys on Sunday! 

Well, those are my deadlines and targets for this week! Catch ya later! :D