Actually, the Flickr version, that is. The website really has a lot of cool stuff going on, and this is one of them. Thise who love to take photos really should seriously consider uploading and managing them in this site.
Thanks to Dr. GP for introducing me to Flickr.
This article got my full attention because I am currently writing several chapters for a Science textbook for Grade III students based on DepEd's Basic Elementary Curriculum (BEC).
I really hope my being a stickler for precise data and information will help make the approval of the textbook faster. Just imagine the headache of having to redo the entire thing if it gets rejected (and my publisher might ask for my poor neck)!
For the meantime, read the related article here. The shocker is, only a handful of the textbooks out of 130 submitted and reviewed were accepted by the Department. Can you imagine decades of what may be inaccuracies and misinformation being fed to millions of Filipino children?
No wonder...
The Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) has released official photos of the new air terminal in Nichols.
Visit my travel / food blog here for the rest of the photos. Really looking forward to its opening! Our Filipino readers abroad who are excited to come home will soon use this terminal before the year ends.
Now if only they finally resolve the cases surrounding this structure before it rots.
There's really a limit to destruction and this is one of those which gets my goat (enough to cut short my holiday from blogging). While I have been a fan of the City of our Affections, I haven't been as kind to the destructive policies of Manila Mayor Lito Atienza.
Perhaps the Mayor should take inspiration from the fact the Manila was home to Southeast Asia's first botanical garden (the Mehan, now lost) and should do all he could to replicate what Tokyo has done to the Todoroki Gorge - a haven for flora, fauna, and people in one of the world's busiest cities.
Kim Atienza, in a letter to me a few months back, promised to work hard with his father to make my second home more livable. Perhaps it's about time I take him up to task for that promise.
by Paolo Coelho
One always has to know when a stage comes to an end.
If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters – whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.
Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?
You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won’t take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that.
But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.
None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back.
Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away.
That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts – and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place.
Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.
Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the “ideal moment.” Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person – nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.
Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust.
Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.
2 August 2005, NEW YORK — The Philippines will again take the center-stage next month when it assumes the presidency of the Security Council and also possibly convene and chair a summit of the leaders of the 15-member states that make up the most powerful organ of the United Nations.
Read the rest by visiting the website of the Permanent Mission of the Republic of the Philippines to the United Nations here. Must be the only Philippine Mission website that looked professionally done, aside from the Philippine Mission to the UNICEF.
These were to be disposed by somebody (name witheld to prevent lifetime embarassment) and earmarked for "donation" to only-God-knows-where.
How could we just throw away books? Sad, very sad.
1.) MGA IBONG MANDARAGIT by Amado V. Hernandez, National Artist for Literature (1973)
2.) STUART LITTLLE by E.B.White. This particular copy, with illustrations by Garth Williams, was printed in 1974.
3.) HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST ASIA by BR Pearn, Professor of History in the University of Yangon. I'm just fond of history books, that's all. This book, by the way, was published in 1970.
Before we throw away books, maybe we should look at them a little closer. We might just realize their value.
Incidentally, National Historical Institute (NHI) Executive Director Ambeth Ocampo has a similar article today in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Read it here.
Here are four books you might see beside my bed this month. For re-reading purposes only.
1.) Ramon Sunico's poetry in BRUISE: A 2-Tongue Job
2.) Ayn Rand's THE FOUNTAINHEAD
3.) Tony Perez's CUBAO 1980 (Found it in Manila for PHP 35! ; a seminal work!)
4.) Nick Joaquin's MANILA, MY MANILA (I still have the copy which the National Library was giving away free to visitors).
Dave Brubeck's LOVE SONGS. Tracks include My Romance, What Is This Thing Called Love, These Foolish Things, In Your Own Sweet Way, Somewhere, La Paloma Azul, Audrey, You Go To My Head (previously unreleased), Like Someone In Love and a perennial favorite, Besame Mucho.
Never mind that Mayor Lito Atienza cannot resist putting the 'LA' in Maynila (as in mayniLA) in italics to remind people of who's responsible for breathing life into one of Asia's oldest cities, at least we can get to enjoy the city most especially at night without fear of getting mugged or something.
I have uploaded a few night photos of the promenade beside the Pasig River here.
