Philippine Transportation Famine

Managing to get on a bus at 8am can be one of the greatest struggles one could face in a Monday morning. A skillful commuter requires the quintessential qualities of determination, knowledge, foresight, and a bit of luck combined in equal proportions. He must have the running stamina to catch the still running bus, adept in anticipating where the bus would park (while also anticipating the exact point where the bus’ door will open), and the most important, fight his way through the sea of barbaric people wanting to get in. This is a competition where the winners get the seats, while the deprived few are left to stand up in the middle aisle of the bus.

Every single day you have to compete with the professional who is already running late, the student whose first class for the day is about to start, the excited tourist whose spirit you can’t keep down, and of course, the job hunters about to get to an interview. While the aforementioned job titles seem to be the most educated of the Filipino bunch, do not let them fool you! Once the bus goes to a halt, there’s no telling on what they can carry out in order to to get in. They can nudge you with their sikos, use their arms to block your way and secure theirs, and shove you till you out of the sea of passengers. 

With the current state of the transportation in the Philippines, I now declare that we are in the state of Transportation instability! Our people have resorted to violence (see previous paragraph), fighting among themselves, because of this scarcity, the law of supply and demand of transportation is still far from being satisfied, the fuel prices increase each time I watch the TV, and the transportation groups go on to a strike every now and then.

I say we provide more buses of better quality! Let us have those double decked buses they have in China to accommodate more people and at the same fuel expense and lesser effort. Let us convert those near empty buses going to Pasay and Cubao to the jam-packed Avenida buses instead to balance the supply and demand. Let us have a separate license for bus drivers so that they would know that they need to stop while their passengers are alighting, that swerving is not cool, and that passenger hoarding leads to further traffic.

I think I should seriously run for public office someday. 

Photo from www.panoramio.com

The Extinction of the Happy Meal

Ever noticed the brand new design of the McDonald’s food chains today? 

From being the children’s haven complete with the playground area to a modernized fast food restaurant it currently is, one cannot forget the good’ol bright yellow and red color hues that used to festoon every outlet. The new food outlets now sport similar colors yet of a more dull shade. Bright red to dull red, bright yellow to dull yellow. Okay, I am not making sense but I hope you're getting the idea.

How to Start a Porn Blog

A lot of niche blogs are currently mushrooming over the net. Blogs on food, photography, music, and other interests have already gained considerable influence and following. But have you ever stumbled upon someone blogging about pornography? Given the big bucks that the porn industry gains, plus the huge number of virtual voyeurists, I am certain that this idea would be a big hit! Not that I am for these types of blogs but think about it, these blogs could haul all the advertising conglomerates and turn this taboo niche into a money making strategy. 

I am sorry to burst your bubble but this entry won’t teach you how to technically start a porn blog.(sorry for the misleading title) But rather I shall share to you my concept of a porn review blog should I decide to start one. 

Here they are:

How Blogging could Revolutionize Philippine Education

In Francis Bacon’s “Of Studies”, he said that it is in the act of writing that makes a man precise and it is in reading where a man is made whole. Granting that the first statement is true, I wonder why hasn’t blogging been utilized in educating the youth? In an article by BBC News UK entitled “Academics give lessons on blogs” by Shola Adenekan, it was mentioned that Warwick University already noticed the benefits of blogging and gave its students free space on their server, allowing them to have their own blogs for academic and personal use. 

While we may not have the monetary resources to provide computer stations in every school similar to the university above, we have internet cafes in every corner and street. We have cafes going low as 5 pesos per quarter-hour and 15 pesos for a whole. With regard to the issues of that keeping a blog may be too tedious, we now have blogging platforms such as Blogger, Wordpress, and Tumblr where setting up a blog only requires the technical skills of clicking, dragging, and reading instructions.

I dream of a Philippines where you no longer take the hassle of printing out college papers only to be read by your professor, kept in a cabinet, and disposed of when the semester ends. 

By blogging, you take your papers/essays/reflections to the next level by sharing to the online community your work. This allows students to:

• Share their perspective on different issues that plague our country today. This may contribute to the holistic development of students making them socially aware and proactive citizens
• Become more accurate with their facts and more responsible for what they write since they are accountable for what they post
• Interact with other people via online means by reading, subscribing, and commenting on other’s post as blogging is a form a social media.
• Improve their grammar and writing styles. According to educationworld.com, several researchers already stated that students who blog “write more, write in greater detail, and take greater care with spelling, grammar, and punctuation, when they are writing to an authentic audience over the Internet”.
• Be exposed to different perspectives, opinions, and experiences that may facilitate their understanding, enrich their knowledge, and supplement their learning obtained from the traditional classroom set up. This is in congruence with an article by Stephen Downes (2004) where he said that the blogging, especially those that reflect the teachings in class, brings life into learning.

This can also have a beneficial effect for the faculty members should they make their own academic blogs since blogging can be employed as a means of:

• Distributing supplemental notes online in a jiffy so that it could be accessible to all
• Having as an out-of-the-classroom interaction venue where students can post questions about the topics left unanswered or unasked in class.

In a nutshell, I believe blogging can be an effective tool in revolutionizing the Philippine educational system. Just imagine your teacher requiring the class to come up with their blogs where they can post their reflections and essays. The teacher gives then feedback in the form of comments left on the student’s blog. Wouldn’t that be more convenient and cost effective than the students printing their work and submitting it personally to the teacher who is then left with layers and layers of paper? 

*Click the names of the author for the complete source material
Photo from here

QUIET!!!

Why can’t the world just shut up?

Contrary to my verboseness in my writing, you’d normally find me sitting there, sulking in the corner, quietly minding my own business. Because I, of all people, happen to enjoy silence as much as I would devour a double down sandwich within five minutes. And if you happen to disturb me in my so called mute sanctuary, I would (a) on the most favorable of circumstances, just let that little disturbance slip off and pretend like it didn’t happen (b) be civil enough to tell you to shush up or (c) ragefully snap and transform myself into a 6-month starved lion ready to take you down anytime, anywhere. And oh, I just noticed how the word “ragefully” was underlined with red in my word processor. I love making my own adverbs. Thanks for the correction, but I’d have to ignore you for now MS Word.

I am especially enraged during times when my classmates seemed to have mania of the vocal chords, their voices sprouting from every direction I don’t know where, while I, being their Class President, is trying my best to announce something. How I hate those moments! Faced with a highly trained 45-man noise battalion who mercilessly weren’t so forgiving, I know I wouldn’t win.

Well, genius as I am, sort of discovered a very innovative solution: a microphone. That time, no one in the noise battalion dared to stand up and compete with me and my much, much better arsenal. I owned them, hurling higher decibelled words which outdone the battalion’s weapons, thanks to the built in speakers in the classroom. It was my personal Hellenistic age! Although the glorious golden days were only short lived until the skills lab custodian went beserk, reprimanding me of causing too much noise. I had to suffer a long sermon then. And that was five minutes post-discovery of the wondrous microphone. Boohoo.

The preschool teachers must have something in them that lures their students into silence. I remember my grade school days in O.B.Montessori when we would play “The Silence Game” where we would rest our butts on the little pink and yellow chairs, place our hands in our laps, zip our mouths, and stare blankly to your seatmates’ sipon smeared faces without saying a word . I loathed that then but now, I deem it very useful.

High school days came and the “Silence Game” was replaced by  “The Noisy List”. And I, being a human chat box would always top the list written in the least unnoticeable corner in blackboard. I was really noisy when I was young. I also remember the dramas and tampuhans behind those lists, especially the one when a classmate of mine allegedly accused the Noisy List lister of the day of injustice which was then followed by a inter-girl group derby. I can’t belive were that gullible.

Sometimes I wish that some brainiac would discover a remote that could mute the entire surroundings. And if that brainiac do come up with something similar that and sell them to the public , he will definitely make a market composed of me and other noise Nazi’s. I can just imagine myself hoarding the shops,buying myself two pieces so that if the other one gets broken, I’d still have one as reserve until I buy another one. And probably on my second trip, I’d would have saved some money to buy those hyperdecibelled people their own silencers.

While the materialization of that ingenious idea looks too distant, I’d have to start in conceptualizing it, just to speed up things.