I need to explain to you a little about the setup at Ateno. The human rights office is at the end of a hallway and there is not enough room there for both Shivani and I. This mean that I work several offices down in the thesis centre which I prefer because it is a lot quieter and the air conditioning is way colder (18° v. 23°). The downside to this is that I am a little out of the loop; Shivani works 3 feet away from our boss and therefore is able to get more instruction in small increments where as I try to get big chunks apply them back in the thesis centre. This has not been a major problem until this week when I misunderstood who the audience for our ASEAN research is. I thought that we were supposed to be making a summary of how each of the ASEAN nations view human rights and comply with human rights treaties, this was incorrect. What we are supposed to be doing is making a persuasive document to convince different parties that ASEAN countries would easily be amenable to a human rights monitoring mechanism. Although this means that the work I have been doing for the last week will eventually become a small footnote at the end of the document, I am now looking forward to my work because I prefer writing a persuasive document, it is like the factum v. the open memo.

In addition to working in an office that fights corruption, all of the interns here have decided to start fighting corruption on a personal level as well. There is a campaign here called “Ako Mismo” which basically translates into “I Will”. The campaign is directed at getting people living in the Philippines so start respecting the rule of law at a small level with hopes that it will translate into a broader shift in the country. To join the campaign you go to the website and you make a pledge to do something such as “I will not run red lights.” You then wear specialised dog-tags to show that you are committed to a less corrupt Philippines. It is kind of like Lent except it does not end and you give up something illegal. There are lots of things that I could give up that won’t really make a difference since I don’t do them already so I decided to make a real commitment and that is to stop buying pirated DVD’s. I realise that this does not sound like much but I not really much of a bad ass so this is probably the worst corruption I have been involved in.

We have only been here for a few months but we already have a standing appointment at one of the local bars. It is called RJ Bar and on Tuesday night the same band always plays Rockeoke. We have been there enough that they point out their “Canadian friends” and the host now speaks in English instead of Tagalog. I love it because I am a terrible singer but because I can sing with a North American accent they think I am a good singer. It is a popular hangout for a lot of the Ateno law students so we get an opportunity so socialise with them as well. Based on their reactions I think is a little weird for them to see us in this situation though; normally they see us with the professor in the class room looking very dressed up and they go from this to seeing us very “relaxed” and singing at the top of our lungs.

The ILP exec should be proud, all of their interns in the Philippines are cutting work early today to make a flight to Palawan. I will blog when I am back.