November 6th, 2006 at 1:10 am There is no better way to start a long week than by spending Sunday with kids. I learned this last week when I was invited by my friend from Ictus, Ina Juan, to come to her birthday party at the cancer ward of V. Luna General Hospital in QC.
Our orgmates from Ictus chimed in and we all helped the sick kids, most of whom I think are terminally ill, paint colorful masks. Ina s parents and brothers were also there to help out. There was spaghetti and fried chicken for everyone, and all the kids went home with goodie bags filled with art materials and toiletries.
Everyone was happy, and I told Ina I ll probably celebrate my birthday the same way she did. For me it was the perfect party simple yet very meaningful.
That night, I rehearsed with Zann for my cousin s debut the next day where my aunt commissioned me to sing.
I think we finished at about 3, talking more than practicing just like Moira days. The songs I chose were Have A Little Faith In Me by Jewel and Time Of Your Life by Green Day, which I selected at the last minute because I thought it fit the occasion perfectly. Have A Little Faith In Me was a bit high for my range, but I insisted on doing it on the same pitch mainly because I really wanted to do that song for the longest time in the way it was performed exactly.
That song carries a distinct quality that has always had a huge impact on me I guess it s the way Jewel just brings it, y know?
Woke up early and skipped gym because I had to be in UP by 830am to participate in another Social Protection forum, work-related of course. I headed straight home because I wanted to get some sleep before the party at 7, despite the work for the Singapore trip that has been piling up on my desk.
Zann and I did a pretty good job with the surprise number for my cousin I think, because even though I was almost gasping for air at the bridge part, I got the overall effect I desired. Can t explain how though. Then of course we finished a bottle of red to load up before hooking up with Ruben who s anxiously waiting at 70s watching AC on his lone ass.
AC we paid 150 bucks to watch this band drill a hole in my head. I mean COME ON, that must have been the lousiest parody of rock and roll fusion I would never have paid 150 bucks for. Funny that I came all dressed to the nines at bistro, pearl bag and all, but with a Red Horse in hand.
Hehe. Beats staying at home man, spending a night with the boys even though I could care less about the band which was begging for a death sentence. On the way home, I was uber hungry as usual so thanks to Ruben s leftover onion rings, my tummy s anguish was immediately resolved.
Boy was I a work horse on this day! Had an eventful meeting with my boss in the morning, which is always a good way to start any day. She told me that she already submitted my recommendation to Annenberg, and will submit the one for Harvard soon.
What could I ever ask for pa in a boss?! I was busy the whole freakin day revising the country reports for the ministerial forum on families I just found out that one of the reports did not respond to one of the agreements in the first ministerial.
Nerd stuff forget it. But what really ticked me off was the artwork that I was asking for that came so late and me catching the people working on it playing games in their computer. Tangina nila, engaging in recreation while I was slaving my ass off waiting for their final lackluster output.
Aaaargh
That night, I celebrated Halloween with my choir mates in our traditional yearly get-together, brought a hat (which was supposed to be a headress, but it wasn t), ate lots, played Invisibles and saw The Others. We also planned our upcoming Christmas party, which is like the icing on the cake of every year. The theme that was agreed on?
The Christmas Belen, each of us portraying one of the characters: Joseph, Mother Mary, the 3 kings, shepherds, angel and even the darn animals. And among all of those, guess which I was auspicious enough to pick? The fuckin donkey.
I raised hell, but of course had no other recourse but to concede. Later the idea was questioned because it may be sacrilegous, so we might actually change the theme, which is very good news on my part.
The Rats struggled with CSNY s Carry On the harmony parts were just impossible to weave together.
Had a great talk with Andy and Butch afterwards, mostly about politics.
Talk about spacious in the tiny cocoon that is mag:net on a Friday night. We generated a measly 11 walk-ins, but the night was still incredibly fun.
Every gig night is fun. But Butch, Johnny, Tom and Andy chiming in about their carefree days is something you don t experience very often so that was a major highlight of the evening.
Went to Conspiracy for the Rakrakan Blueskrieg event, where our friends from Snakecharmer and Firebottle performed.
Blueskrieg is a 15-song compilation of original blues songs, in which unfortunately, the Rats was not able to participate. The night was fun, and despite the early warnings to Deltaslim that there was no way I m gonna get up on stage to sing, I relented at the jam sessions. I can t say no to these guys.
It s always fun just hanging out with all of them.
After the gig, we went to an obscure kebab place along Congressional where we fancied stories about weird movies and enjoyed the surprisingly sumptuous servings of chicken kebab and barbecue. Only then did I realized that there was also someone who appreciated the movie Adaptation apart from myself and it was really great knowing that, because for me that movie is a work of understated genius.
The same guy also saw Happiness, which is arguably the most disturbing collection of mishaps and daily atrocities which will leave an equally disturbing effect on the viewer. See it for yourself
David Bowie s A Reality Tour - the highlight for me was Under Pressure, which was sang with Bowie by the bassist, a gifted woman named Gail Ann Dorsey. Galing!
!!
The Break-Up - 5 stars, every man should see this film
June 6th, 2006 at 7:14 pm I chanced upon today s editorial of the Philippine Daily Inquirer and I couldn t help but respond.
Here s the article with my feedback below. Let me know what you think! =)
THAT the Philippine educational system is in a bad shape has been known for the past two or three decades, but nothing really radical has been done to correct the situation.
Remedies have at best been palliatives or stop-gap measures.
One recent example of a palliative is the creative arithmetic applied by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who, by decreeing the adoption of a double-shift schedule and a students to classroom ratio of 100 to 1, ldquo;miraculously rdquo; solved a very real shortage of 74,000 classrooms.
The classroom shortage is only a part of the whole picture of an educational system that is deteriorating, if not actually in a state of utter disrepair.
Every year, the complaints are the same: a shortage of classrooms, desks and textbooks and a lack of trained teachers. What is worse is that some of the textbooks have been found to contain many errors.
Because of the shortage of classrooms, some familiar scenes are expected to be repeated at the opening of classes this year: classes being held under the trees and in corridors and some, probably, even out in the streets.
Many students will have to bear the stifling heat in overcrowded classrooms that are made to accommodate 45 or more children.
During the rainy season, in some schools that have leaking roofs, raindrops will be falling on the heads of students. A teacher once complained that she had to use a part of her meager salary to buy a sealant to plug the big holes in the roof of her classroom.
We wonder how many rooms are like this?
The physical setting, of course, is secondary in importance to the content of education. But is it the ideal setting for students to be packed into small rooms like sardines, or be made to rush through several subjects in four-hour sessions, so that the next batch can be accommodated for the afternoon session?
And how can we expect students to learn a lot if five or six of them have to share one textbook?
The teachers are the key people in the educational system. But how can we expect the teachers to teach well if they themselves are ill-trained?
There are many stories of teachers who are semi-literate or who teach their students the wrong things, or who are just one chapter ahead of their students in digesting the books they use in teaching. The best teachers are leaving for jobs abroad, and the mediocre ones are left to teach the nation rsquo;s youth in the public schools. How can we expect our children to do well in school if they have poorly educated teachers?
Education is supposed to get the biggest share of the national budget, but it is not: Debt service gets the biggest outlay. (In the current national budget, the outlay for debt service is P301.7 billion, or almost three times the P102-billion appropriation for the Department of Education.
) It is education that will lift the nation from the morass of poverty and ignorance, but the government is not appropriating enough money for it.
In a stroke of serendipity, however, the recent incident where the President publicly rebuked acting Education Secretary Fe Hidalgo for not remembering her ldquo;creative rdquo; solution to the problem of classroom shortage has yielded a good result. Members of the bicameral conference committee on the proposed 2006 national budget agreed to increase the Department of Education rsquo;s P108-billion outlay by about P4 billion.
Any increase is welcome, but still it looks like a drop in the bucket when viewed against the vast desert of problems in which the educational system is slowly dying. The Department of Education has to be given a bigger outlay every year. New funds have to be allocated to build more classrooms and provide textbooks for the millions of students who report for enrollment in June.
A bigger outlay has to be allocated for teachers, to raise their salaries as well as to give them further education and training in their subjects.
The government has to put an end to the era of palliatives. A commission composed of representatives of the executive and legislative branches, the academe and the private sector should perhaps reexamine the educational system and propose reforms, not just in the infrastructure of the system but, more importantly, in the content of the teaching.
The rapid decline of education in our country has never left the public consciousness. It is always in the news - dismal conditions of schools, teacher exodus and error-laden textbooks, to name a few. The truth is, Philippine education is trapped in a vicious high demand-low supply cycle, just like every other social sector in this country.
And the needed reforms cannot be pursued unless the root of the problem, which is population growth, is perched at the top of the national agenda of the Arroyo administration.
Good education is the great equalizer of a divided nation. It can help the poor access more opportunities and secure a better quality of life.
At the same time, the rich who are educated can build on entrepreneurship and create jobs for the people. The President knows this, but she chooses to appease the Church and the entire nation through desperate quick-fixes to regain her popularity. With the education issue being underscored in today rsquo;s headlines, she immediately ordered the construction of makeshift classrooms, another temporary solution.
This predilection to short-lived remedies bears a cost to our future. For me, the only real panacea to our national woes is a policy on population control and its implementation. Controlling the population will lessen the number of people that are being served by the social sectors, such as education.
There will be enough classrooms. There will be enough schools. There will be an acceptable teacher to student ratio.
There will be more children who can go to school. Without a doubt, population control can save education, this country and its future.
May 13th, 2006 at 1:34 am This government sucks.
The irony is, I work for the Philippine government. I do not honor the President in her present capacity as a liar and a cheat and most recently, the champion of quick fixes. But I do honor and care about the people whose lives and bleak futures depended on the present leadership.
So instead of exhausting my energies worrying about the bitch in Malacanang, I have decided that I will simply take over this country. The deal is one year, and I am entitled to choose my interim government. I ll start by listing down my action plan.
1. cease population growth through a three-child policy and extensive promotion of birth control: Madam President, if you are deprived of the surreal pleasure of triple orgasms thanks to your useless FG, don t drag the whole country down with you!!
! families who live in squatter areas are apparently having so much sex that the terms birth control are synonymous to the absence of TV in the house. yes, sex has become a pastime.
the result? a massive family of 8 children, sharing a P20 meal that should last them a day. the long term impact?
malnourished children who have no access to decent education and health services because their father loved their mother so much he forgot to work. I m a faihful Catholic, but on this matter, the church is the narrow-minded culprit and Gloria is the lifeless puppet.
2.
increase tax revenues - fiscal reforms are being done, thanks to the adamant push of foreign investors. my lack of fiscal knowledge is pathetic, but one thing s for sure. despite corruption, the government needs to raise taxes and revenues to cover for all the subsidies that it assumed.
ask the economist near you for more details.
3. change the form of government - change it into anything that doesn t have 2 houses filled with pigs throwing away pork and development assistance funds like casino money
4.
invest on the Internet - pinoy, you need not leave this country to get rich if you only know how to operate like a computer maniac. heard about outsourcing? it s bigger than Keanna Reeves (whoever thought this name was cute deserves a punch in the groin), and it has only just begun
5.
encourage LGU participation - do you think Malacanang cares about your issues? not as much as your mayor does. government and foreign-assisted programs should always be devolved to LGUs, but the LGUs should be trained implementors.
it s the mayor s job to ensure that they are. then for every service his staff delivers, demand a feedback form and fill it out. don t expect a quick response though, and just think that he might have spilt coffee on your form while he was reading it.
if i find the urge to continue this, i ll add more to the list. need to sleep
April 6th, 2006 at 11:52 am Published: April 5, 2006
Filipinos thought they had put an end to electoral chicanery and governmental intimidation when they overthrew the Marcos dictatorship two decades ago. Unfortunately, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has completely lost touch with the ideals that inspired that 1986 people power movement.
Mrs. Arroyo is no Ferdinand Marcos, at least not yet. But this onetime reformer is reviving bad memories of crony corruption, presidential vote-rigging and intimidation of critical journalists.
Unless the Philippine Congress and courts find ways to rein in her increasingly authoritarian tendencies, democracy itself may be in danger.
This was not the outcome people expected five years ago when Mrs. Arroyo, then the vice president, was swept into power on a wave of popular discontent with her discredited predecessor, Joseph Estrada.
In those days, Mrs. Arroyo, a professional economist, was seen as an earnest reformer. She won further credit by pledging not to run for a new six-year term in 2004.
But then she changed her mind, and her style of government as well. Her narrow re-election victory became tainted after a tape revealed her discussing her vote totals with an election commissioner while ballots were still being counted. She survived an impeachment attempt over that incident.
But she was forced to send her husband into exile over charges that he took bribes from gambling syndicates.
Earlier this year she briefly declared a state of emergency in response to allegations of a coup threat that others disputed. Since then she has been intensifying pressure on a wide range of political critics and especially on the press.
Government officials have warned news outlets that they will be held to restrictive new guidelines, the justice secretary talks darkly about a journalistic watch list, and the staff members of a well-known center for investigative journalism have been threatened with sedition charges. No Philippine government has made such efforts to muzzle the press since the Marcos era.
President Bush has repeatedly hailed Mrs.
Arroyo as an important ally against international terrorism. He now needs to warn her that by undermining a hard-won democracy, she is making her country far more vulnerable to terrorist pressures.
March 28th, 2006 at 11:06 pm This was sent to me by my friend Joy Soyao.
Knowing my affection for the government, I actually enjoyed this. Read on..
ROBERT FULGHUM learned most of what he really needed to know about how to live and what to do and how to be - in kindergarten. Mine, I learned in Philippine politics. Most of these, just recently.
1. During elections, the lesser evil isn t really the best choice. It s still evil.
2. Voting is a right. Getting counted is a privilege.
3. Calling an election official is not illegal. Wiretapping that call is.
The first, a mere lapse in judgment; the second, a criminal act.
4. Philippine politics is not Mission Impossible.
In the movie, the tape self-destructs in five seconds. In this country, the (Garci) tapes didn t just dodge
deliberate destruction. It spawned several versions.
5. When caught cheating, deny. Then, lie.
Saying sorry is the last option. But never ever admit to doing anything. The formula worked for the president, it could work for anyone.
6. You cannot have a thinking president and a thinking vice president at the same time. One has to be mentally-inferior and less experienced to
achieve equilibrium.
7. It is easier to oust someone who s male and powerful than somebody who s female and extremely lucky.
8.
To err is not just human. It s presidential. To forgive may be divine, but utterly stupid.
9. The pork barrel per se is not evil or corrupt. Lawmakers are.
10. It takes two to tango but all of two Houses to Cha-Cha.
11.
Critical collaboration is the stance taken by oppositionists otherwise known as appointees-in-waiting.
12. Coup plotters always come in three types: the plain adventurist, the genuine reformist, and the former senator.
13. People who were ousted by previous people power revolts should not be at the forefront of another people power attempt. Else, it would miserably fail.
14. Seditious journalism does not guarantee high readership. A police raid does.
15. You want to become a newspaper editor, forget about taking a course in communications. Join the Philippine National Police instead, and strive to be
its chief.
16. When anti-riot cops bodily carry you off a rather peaceful rally against your will (as in the case of party-list Rep. Rissa Hontiveros-Baraquel), that s not an arrest.
That s to safeguard you from harm.
17. When children of deposed leaders [e.
g. Imee Marcos or Jinggoy Estrada] insist that the current occupants of Malaca ang are either thieves or crooks, believe them. They ve been there.
18. If you re a journalist and you wrote something deemed offensive by a politician, they call it libel. When a lawmaker says something defamatory
against anyone, they call it privileged speech.
19. The State of the Nation Address is when the country s most prominent and influential liars come together to listen to the country s biggest liar.
20.
When in UP, they are referred to as hard-line activists. In Mendiola, they are hardcore militants. In Congress, they are party-list representatives.
Simply put, there are NO Communists in this country.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:51 pm I don t know if anyone is even the least bit interested about the news these days. Apart from the overwhelming political crisis that we all unwillingly bear, there were crappy bits in the dailies yesterday about two politicians bickering and bawling at the Senate about the money they stole from the government.
I m talking about the gung-ho but unmistakably dubious Juan Ponce Enrile and his not-so-brilliant new nemesis Jamby Madrigal (first of all if you were named Jamby, would you even wanna be called that? sounds like a monicker for a flabby cartoon character to me or a brand of peanut butter maybe?) anyway, so Ms.
Jamby decides to actually make use of her esteemed role by looking into the sensitive issue of illegal logging. She discovers an anomaly, and decides to question the operations of San Juan Timber, which happens to be owned by JPE. As a rebuttal, JPE slams at Jamby and tells everyone that the Madrigals also have their own logging companies which they apparently obtained because of their close relations with the Marcoses, that Jamby s parents frequented Malacanang at the height of the regime and were guests at Imelda s lavish parties, and that her mom, according to Imee Ginatungan Pa Marcos, was in fact a Blue Lady (Blue Ladies were a group of Imelda s amigas with whom she had shopping sprees abroad).
Hahaha that was a lot of help Imee. Bottomline is, these two obviously corrupt individuals who belong to the higher echelons of society are washing their dirty laundry in public which I REALLY HATE! I mean COME ON!
The Philippines is playing with the poverty devil like a kid who just learned how to ride a bike. For God knows how many years now. The population is 85.
5 million, and our per capita income is 20 FUCKIN PESOS. What can one ordinary Pinoy, who was naturally borne into this poverty-stricken world, possibly live on?!
That amount won t even spare you a kilo of rice. Think about THAT before you brandish your sins in public. Mahiya naman kayo
June 23rd, 2005 at 7:58 am I read a touching article this morning by one of my favorite broadsheet columnists, Alex Magno.
In today s edition, he lauded Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin, the intrepid religious leader that helped topple the Marcos regime, who recently passed away. It saddens me that after the death of the saintly Pope John Paul II, another shepherd succumbs to illness and leaves a sea of humanity forlorn and lost in their search for spiritual freedom.
In a letter that was written by Ninoy Aquino to Sin (also published in today s issue of the Philippine Star), he gave thanks to the Archbishop for his spiritual guidance in the midst of political turmoil during those historic years in the latter part of the 70s.
He was pertaining to the encouraging wisdom that Sin so generously shared with him while he was behind bars. The politician understood his role as a political leader, a disposition that he held with conviction and that which also led to his incarceration. But what His Eminence stood for helped Ninoy understand that as a leader, he too was an appointed shepherd of God, a giver of wisdom and a stalwart of trust.
This remarkable friendship between the two may have been the most admired and successful partnership in recent Philippine history.
It saddens me because gone are the heroes in a time when the country has almost reached the unforgiving zenith of strife, extreme poverty and political distrust. Why can t we function without heroes?
Are they really instrumental to our progress? We are the ones who are living. Why do we live a life without hope?
I shudder at the thought of asking myself how to turn this one around.
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