Lock Them Up

As part of our training for today, our facilitator discussed that it is important that one should be able to assess the personality type of a person. This is done by considering the level of one’s emotion and assertiveness.

Those with high emotion but low in assertiveness are like a Lamb. They are most concerned for the feelings of others and likes “warm” atmosphere. They sometimes have difficulty in making decisions because they don’t want other people to be offended by it. They are sometimes considered weak but in fact they can be very strong.

Those with low emotion and low in assertiveness are like the Owl. They are detail-oriented and needs to assess all the information. They tend to be routine-oriented and can seem “cold” or “stand-offish”.

People with low emotions but high in assertiveness are likened to a Bull. They are the leader-type person. They are used to getting their own way and wont settle for anything less. They also tend to flaunt their success.

Those high in both emotions and assertiveness are like the Tigers. They are imaginative and have fresh ideas. They are least concerned with logic and order, have a short attention span, and are often the “life of the party”.

Among these animals, I see myself more of an Owl. I think it is natural in me and reinforced all the more by the engineer’s way of life. Engineers are expected to be accurate and precise up to two decimal points. Hehehe. The trainor said a person can have at most two personality types. Given the chance, I want to develop the Tiger in me.

Always Something There To Be Funny

Was it last Thursday ng nag-session ang congress to decide on what to do with the impeachment case filed against the president? I really wasn’t able to learn what happened in the whole proceedings but there were some interesting observations I had upon watching it in the news.

Observation Number 1:
Iba talaga ang value ng showmanship lalo na kapag complete with props. I would like to think that it was the honorable Pateros congressman’s gimmick rather than mere coincidence that he went to congress bringing with him three pieces of ‘balut’.

Observation Number 2:
Sa Pinoy, lahat ng paghihirap ay maiibsan kapag may libreng lamang-tiyan. Marahil dahil sa tagal ng deliberasyon at pananalumpati ay natahimik na lang ang mga nanonood ng sesyon. Pero ng nag-motion na si Pateros congressman for providing a free food ay nabuhayan at naghiyawan ang mga tao.

Observation Number 3:
Ang Pinoy ay hindi patatalo. Nag-donate ka ng 5,000 pesos para sa pagkain, magdo-donate ako ng 8,000 pesos! Ah ganon ha, magdodonate din ako! Doble ng dinonate nya!

Honestly, there is no sarcasm intended. Natuwa lang ako sa mga bagay na ito na I think is very Pinoy. Hindi ka ba naging masaya sa kinalabasan ng impeachment complaint? Don’t worry, be happy!

Practicality Rules?

I just finished editing and updating my resume. I sent a copy to my cousin who will then give it to a manager she knows in their company. This is for an engineering position handling bill of materials and engineering change orders. Although I originally intended to stay in my current job for at least a month, I cant help but wish that I be hired in this company for several practical reasons.

1) closer to home = lesser expenses = bigger savings;
2) a big possibility that the salary offer will be better than my current job;
3) this will add up to a solid manufacturing experience which is an advantage if ever I decide to go abroad;
4) day-shift only;
5) mom approves this. ^_-

Keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best.

D’ Day

Today is my first time to work for a call center company. I am not actually thrilled by this idea but I decided to temporarily take this job and make the most out of it. With this experience, I expect my self to learn the following:

1. to thrive in inconvenience;
2. to conquer my fears; and
3. to improve my self-confidence.

I plan to attain all these in a month’s time. I hope I can be patient enough to see this through. Wish me luck!

Yummy Hypothesis by Mr. Nolasco

Today is the 128th birthday of the “Ama ng Wikang Pambansa”, Manuel Luis Quezon. However, I will not be featuring the former president’s life. Instead, I want to share with you this article by Rome Jorge about a man who have a revolutionized thinking regarding our language.

eBalita Guest Editorial:
Speaking in tongues–Pilipino-style
By Rome Jorge

It is not Linggo ng Wika; it’s Buwan ng Wika. It’s not Abakada and Tagalog; it’s ABCD and Pilipino. It’s no longer Taglish as a language borrowed and corrupted; it’s now translation and code switching as proof of comprehension and multilingual mastery. It’s more than just stodgy textbooks and formal oratorical balagtasan; it’s also a celebration of comic-book lore and street corner kwentuhan. It’s no longer Isang Bansa, Isang Diwa; it’s now Buwan ng Wikang Pambansa ay Buwan ng mga Wika sa Pilipinas.

Our languages are growing and changing. Beyond barely spoken formal-textbook examples, they are alive and screaming. And there’s no better proof than how 2006’s Buwan ng Wika brings together a man of immense academic credentials and invigorating ideas, National Language Commission (Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino or KWF) chairman and Doctor in Linguistics Ricardo Nolasco; and a man often underestimated by the intelligentsia: pop culture icon, author of 800 novels of which 200 were translated into films, and comic-book creator most noted for the modern mythology of Panday, Carlo J. Caparas. Poles apart, they are both speaking as one and celebrating diversity. So should we.

From August 1 to 31 we celebrate Philippine Languages Month in a way unheard of. From poetry competitions in panggalatok at the Pangasinan State University to the Gantimpalang Carlo J. Caparas Storytelling Competitions at the Marikina River Banks Center, events across the nation celebrate the 170 languages across the 7,100 islands of the nation, as well as the true champions of linguistic dissemination long derided by purist academicians: comic books, movies and television.

Nolasco explains, “Buwan ng Wikang Pambansa ay Buwan ng mga Wika sa Pilipinas is a pitch for linguistic diversity. Isang Bansa, Isang Diwa was the slogan during the martial-law regime and that promoted dangerous ideas such as that having many languages was disadvantageous to the country ­and that’s not correct.”

“We are 10th in linguistic diversity in the world,” Nolasco notes. “There are 7,000 languages among 200 nation states. Majority of people across the globe, even those from the most progressive countries, are neither monocultural nor monolingual.” Nolasco declares, “To be multilingual is the norm ­in the world and in the Philippines. We should not be ashamed of it; we should promote it.”

He elaborates, “Many think we have only one language and that is Pilipino and that the rest of the speech varieties are just dialects ­and we know that belittles these languages. The difference between a dialect and a language is mutual intelligibility. Example: if a Cebuano speaks his or her language to an Ilocano speaker, they won’t understand each other. Tagalog has many dialects: Tagalog Bulacan, Tagalog Quezon, Tagalog Batangas etc.­they all have their own accents but they all understand each other.

“I’m all for teaching English. But we should also teach Japanese, Chinese and Spanish. You cannot put all your eggs in one basket. It is true that you cannot survive the world without English. But you cannot survive if you know only English. To speak only one language is to be selected for extinction,” he opines.

As for Taglish (Tagalog-English fusion), he counters purists, contending, “The aim of literacy is a functional language.” He notes, “Whether Taglish is acceptable is not the point. If this is happening at the University of the Philippines [UP], what more in other places?” A study of Barbara Garland for the University of California documented UP students reading lessons in English, discussing them with teachers in Pilipino and Taglish, then answering exams and assignments in English again. “This is phenomenal. There is no better proof of understanding than translation,” cites Nolasco.

“If you talk about Taglish as a corrupted and borrowed language, then English is the most corrupted language,” Nolasco says. The etymology of the word “soldier” is French, “assassin” is Arabic and “boondocks” is Tagalog. “How did they modernize English? Why deny themselves the same strategy?” Nolasco reasons.

“Each of the languages a person speaks plays a different role in his or her life,” he notes. He explains that “nanay,” “mommy” and “ermats” all mean the same thing, but that there are some situations where one usage is more appropriate than the other. “Why worry? Kids know when to use it,” he says.

Instead, the forward-thinking linguist castigates conservative language czars: “Akala nila alam nila. Pero sa totoo lang hindi nila gets.”

He is even more unforgiving of self-proclaimed foreign experts on Pilipino language. “They thing they know,” he says of them. He illustrates that “hinalikan ko siya” and “humalik ako sa kanya” both translate as “I kissed her” in English. The difference is indistinguishable to a foreigner, but to a Filipino the former connotes brutish and the later respectful behavior.

He concedes, “Many students have been turned-off with the way the national language has been taught. Pilipino was taught using English categories with too much emphasis on grammar.” He explains that unlike English, any word in Pilipino can become a noun, a verb or an adjective with the proper affixes and suffixes.

Instead Nolasco likes to use metaphors we can identify with. The “pinakbet hypothesis” notes that just as this dish is comprised of various vegetables that have foreign origins (okra and eggplant are native species of Africa) yet still identifiably Ilocano in the way it is cooked, so too is our language made richer by foreign and regional ingredients used in our own unique way. The “sapin-sapin hypothesis” replaces categorization of Filipino words as nouns, verbs or adjectives and instead teaches the language by stripping down a word of its suffixes and prefixes step by step to arrive at the root word, much like the layers of the sweet rice cake.

This fresh approach to our language is already being implemented in the latest textbooks from the KWF and now sees its fruition in Buwan ng Wika.

Search and Found

A member of the barkada just recently acquired a small cottage which can serve as a rest house whenever he needs seclusion. The whole gang decided to have an overnight stay there and since you have to ride a boat in order to reach it, it was kinda exciting. It was a fun night filled with funny stories and alcohol but sadly an unexpected argument happened between me and one of the gals resulting for the guys to call it a night. Morning came and we are now preparing to leave the place when I discovered that my left shoe was missing. I tried looking for it everywhere but to no avail. I had a hunch that she (the gal I had argument with) hid it in order to get back at me. Since she left early, I can’t torture her in to revealing the location of my shoe.

That was last night’s dream.

I think I am now officially employed. I just signed a contract with a certain company and am about to start work next week. I am unsure of this decision for a lot of reasons but I decided to grab this opportunity instead of staying at home just surfing the net for the whole day. This job will be a test of my character. I am really not planning to build a lasting career here but I do plan of giving my best. As soon as a good opportunity in my previous industry opens up for me, I plan to continue on with what I have started in my career and eventually find a way to go abroad. But for now, I am now leaving my unproductive life and will undergo testing. I hope can still keep up with my blogging.

That is today’s reality.

A Big Mac Takes Hard Work

I was on my second year of college when I had a bite on my first Big Mac. Sure it was delicious but back then, I considered it expensive compared to my meager allowance. So I patronized their cheeseburger meal instead.

Nowadays, whenever I feel the urge to eat at McDonald’s, I’ll order for a Big Mac meal with a sundae hot fudge and that puts a smile on my face as big as Ronald’s.

Recently, I read in the news that the said burger is not only good in satisfying one’s hunger but is also an effective survey tool as well. Below is an excerpt of that article.

A Tokyo paycheck buys the most
Purchasing power also high in U.S. cities, based on Big Mac

Residents of Tokyo have the highest purchasing power in the world, edging out people in Toronto, Montreal, Los Angeles, Sydney, Australia, and London, according to a new survey by the Swiss banking giant UBS that uses the “Big Mac” as its benchmark.Tokyo scored at the top of the survey, which aims to eliminate variables such as exchange rates, even though it is one of the most expensive cities in the world, UBS said in the Prices and Earnings report released yesterday.

“Wages only become meaningful in relation to prices — that is, what can be bought with the money earned,” it said.

Purchasing power ranking of cities based on the number of minutes of work required to buy a Big Mac, according to a study conducted by Swiss banking giant UBS. The rating was based on the local price of the product divided by the weighted net hourly wage in 14 professions.

read full story here

Another source stated the working time needed (in minutes) to buy one (1) Big Mac:

(1) Tokyo 10; (2) Los Angeles 11; (3) Chicago 12; (4) Miami 12; (5) New York 13; (6) Auckland, New Zealand 14; (7) Sydney, Australia 14; (8) Toronto 14; (9) Dublin, Ireland 15;(10) Zurich, Switzerland 15
.
.
.
(61) Bucharest, Romania 69; (62) Sofia, Bulgaria 69; (63) Bombay, India 70; (64) Manila, Philippines 81; (65) Mexico City 82; (66) Caracas, Venezuela 85; (67) Jakarta, Indonesia 86; (68) Lima, Peru 86; (69) Nairobi, Kenya 91; (70) Bogota, Colombia 97

Sa Piling Mo Turns Adulterous?

I am really no Juday and Piolo fan but I must admit that at the early part of their telenovela entitled “Sa Piling Mo“, I thought that the series has a good plot. This thinking made me an avid televiewer of the said program. Of course we know that they will end up together in the end but I was curious how the events will lead to that conclusion. However, I slightly lost interest in the program when Adrian (played by Piolo Pascual) married Nicole (played by Rica Peralejo) while Jennifer (Judy Ann Santos) on the other hand, married Benicio (Albert Martinez). It only regained my interest when the story sped up in pacing after the said marriages.

Now for the second time around, I am losing interest again since I think the story is turning adulterous. Well they really haven’t done any sexual act yet, but I think fostering such feeling is inappropriate. Given the fact that both marriages weren’t working well and that it was destiny’s original plan that they end up together, I still think that they should formally settle their own marital issues first. I am not advocating divorce because I still believe in the sanctity of marriage, but if worst comes to worst, at least take the legal and necessary actions prior to committing in another relationship.

Maybe I am just being too conservative but with the way the story is unfolding, I don’t approve of where it is heading. They should have killed Benicio and Nicole first! Hehe. I also don’t approve of their encouraging friends Jason and… sorry i forgot the name. If I were their friend, “pag-uumpugin ko mga ulo nila para matauhan sila“.

Medyo baduy yata entry ko ngayon. Pero if you were able to follow the story and if you were their friend, what would you do? Just a hypothetical question.

Featured Artist: He Qi

Jeff showed me some of He Qi’s works and I instantly loved it! The painting have vibrant colors combined with geometric shapes and curves, and a Christian theme blended with a Chinese style. Okay enough of me. Know the author and see some of his works below. Just click on the first thumbnail and navigate throughout.

“Today, He ranks as arguably China’s most internationally
sought after contemporary Christian artist.”
~Far Eastern Economic Review~

Dr. He Qi was a professor at the Nanjing Union Theological Seminary and a tutor for master candidate students in the Philosophy Department of Nanjing University. He is also a member of the China Art Association and a council member of the Asian Christian Art Association.

He has been committed to the artistic creation of modern Chinese Christian Art since 1983. He hopes to help change the “foreign image” of Christianity in China by using artistic language, and at the same time, to supplement Chinese Art the way Buddhist art did in ancient times. In his works, He Qi has blended together Chinese folk customs and traditional Chinese painting techniques with the western art of the Middle and Modern Ages, and has created an artistic style of color-on-paper painting.

He Qi strongly expresses a type of aesthetics with a peaceful and stable composition. As we approach the new century with a jumble of conflicting emotions, He Qi affirms,”We need to hear a peaceful voice from the angel in heaven.”

write-up and pictures taken from heqiarts

Falling Down Means Standing Up

When I was a kid, I wanted a bike. Maybe it was because BMX bikes were the “in” thing back then. Since my father just arrived from abroad, my wish was granted. I had a blue one with two side wheels along with it. I was thrilled riding it at first until the time that my father insisted that I should start to learn biking without the pair of side wheels. It was then that I discovered the “responsibility” of owning a bike. If you want one and after getting one, you have to learn how to truly use it. If it wasn’t for my father’s threat of throwing the bike at me should I fail to balance myself, I would have gave up learning it.

Mom was always the protective one. After I experienced my first “semplang“, she said that I should stop using the bike. Dad disagrees. He said, “paano matututo yan kung hindi matutumba.” It was a wise advice.

Few are the times that I actually failed in my life. Not that I am a born achiever but because I tend to shun away from situations where victory is not that clear for me. Yes I know, that is not how you are suppose to handle life. That is why I am thankful that there are always chances to change. I know that I need to be bold, falling will be inevitable, but learning will be my reward. Let’s get it on!

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