Dear Loved Ones,
We Praise and Thank God for all the wonderful blessings He generously showered upon us for the month of October, the Holy Rosary/La Naval month as we look forward to His continuous Love, Mercy and Generosity for the coming months!!
La Naval is very special for us as we always join the Sto. Domingo procession in Pinas; our family is the sponsor of the ‘St. Thomas Kuong caroza’ and novena mass for many years already, and the tradition is continued by my husband Gerry. He reported that he saw all the friendly OP priests, e.g. the head of the Dominican Province in the Philippines, Fr. Ed Nantes (who was my classmate in UST Grad Ph.D.) and Fr. Arthur Dingel, who is the new Regent of the UST Faculty of Engineering. Fr. Art officiated during our 25th wedding anniversary at Sto. Domingo in 1999, and at the wedding of my daughter Sarah in 2002, also in Sto. Domingo. The two revered priests are in the loop of my Journals.
October 10 marked another milestone in my U.S. journey. Willdan Management decided that I was ready/ ripe to be set out as “consultant off home-base”. Since then, I am working full-time at the Sacramento County Sanitation District 1 (CSD1), which is located at the Mather Field (former U.S. Airbase now being used for commercial planes). Mather is just across from my Anatolia home. From the 30 minutes commute to my Willdan office, it is now just 5 minutes/ 5 miles commute to Mather for me. What a blessing! It’s like fish being thrown into water, how I love it here! During our ‘halloween party/meeting’ I was introduced as ”here to clean up our messy database to enable us meet our customers’ requirements, and staying until the end of the year”.
My project is highly technical, I extract data from their computerized Geographic Information System (GIS), (in Adobe, PDF format); pull up plans and profiles, identify underground utilities - upstream sewer manhole rim elevation, then pad elevation of all residential and commercial structures in the Sacramento region; build-up database for those which require sewer backwater flow valves to be installed, as part of upgrading/ improvement of facilities projects. Users of my report are home/property owners, contractors and other stakeholders. I need to be accurate since nobody else will check on my output. I also do quality assurance TV inspection of underground utilities pipe installations. The GIS is awesome, similar to ‘Google earth’, but with so much more information to pull out, so state of the art high-tech! I wonder when our public works system in Pinas can have even a fraction of the GIS system? Public works service here is overwhelmingly efficient!
Funny is my Willdan boss keeps calling and consulting on me, asking when I will be finished with my work here, after just one week. He said my stint here would only be for one month, so I was happy to hear that they expect me stay here until the end of the year! I told my Willdan boss I can finish my work in a month if he wanted me to, but I must ensure accuracy for quality output.
What my assignment here meant too was, I have to let go of Sean to drive the Chevy himself to and from school. So that is why God gave us the Grand Cherokee SUV for me to use, sooner than our January purchase plan. Mather is also just 5 minutes from my school NU where I have continuous monthly teaching assignments until December, which meant additional income for the expenses, more gasoline and insurance expense for Sean; but no complaints, the benefits far more outweigh the cons, especially the independence and maturity that is developing in my son. I have to impress upon him that with “freedom comes the big responsibilities.’ Thus, Everything happens for a reason, and Change is the only permanent thing!
I now have several contact addresses, at work:
Willdan:
Email: sgerardo@willdan.com ; Tel: (916) 924-0806
Sac County (CSD1):
E-mail: gerardos@saccounty.net ; Tel: (916) 876-6290
National Universsity:
E-mail: susan.gerardo@natuniv.edu
My primary e-mail is still this, and my home phone is: (916) 294 – 0806
Cell phone: (916) 532- 3249
Let us continue to pray for our country and people. God Bless us all!!!
Much love and Best Regards!!!
SUSAN BG
For my complete journals, please visit www.sbgerardo.blogspot.com Thank you!
