View from Here

To all colleagues, co-advocates, supporters and friends - House Bill 6079 has been filed In Congress this year proposing to declare Filipino Sign Language as the national sign language and to be used in all language domains in the classroom, workplace, health facilities, courts and mass media. It shall be a landmark legislation as it addresses comprehensively the exclusion and discrimination that the Filipino Deaf community has experienced over the entire century in access to information and communication. At the House Committee hearing held last Oct. 16, 2012, THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION (SPED) HAS STATED THAT IT IS OPPOSING THE BILL. *(Note that it has been in SPED Policy since 1997 that Filipino Sign Language is to be the medium of instruction for deaf students) Participation by the Philippine Federation of the Deaf in the public Committee hearings on the Bill have been hampered by poor communications notice, and lack of official interpreting service. The Deaf community is invoking ...

What if Jesus Christ never died in the cross?    The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) Category: Movies Genre: Other Cool! Probably the most (unique) human portrayal of Jesus Christ  The irony that Jesus Himself was crucified when it used to be his job to make crosses for the Romans  Its deviation from the bible  The controversies in the release of this film Judas as Jesus’ trustworthy best friend.  Magdalene as Jesus' girlfriend  Jesus never giving in to Magdalene's constant seduction  You get to wonder if John the Baptist was doped or was just really weird  You get to see what if Jesus got older, got wives and got children  You get to see what Jesus’ temptations in the desert look like and how he growled at them  A sigh of relief at the last scene  Uncool-- I found the premise detached to stories of a younger Christ.  If you watched the movie, you could begin questioning why Jesus could ever ...

Arabian Nights (2000) (TV) Category: Movies Genre: Action & Adventure When Night Falls, the Adventure Begins! SYNOPSIS : Long ago, the Sultan Schariar has gone mad after getting traumatized at his near assassination in which his wife collaborated. When the Sultan discovered his wife locked in a passionate embrace with his only brother, he flings his sword at the prince and accidentally murders his adulterous queen. Tortured by his wife's ghost, the maniacal and cowardly sultan must marry another to save his kingdom. But being now suspicious to women, he wants to avoid future matrimonial disgrace by planning to have his bride executed the morning after the wedding. To prevent this, the Grand Vizier's daughter and a childhood friend of the Sultan, Scheherezade, offers herself to be that bride. Now, she must gamble that her plan will work as she tries to cure his madness by telling him story after wondrous story. A master storyteller herself, the n...

I discovered an art craft technique from a friend, which makes you glue stuff on things and also serves as your sealant. I bought both the Mod Podge Matte and the Mod Podge Dimensional Magic from a store called "Deovir" in SM North. The Mod Podge Matte gives your work a smooth  Matt finish while the Dimension Magic turns your work into some kind of laminated art. I decided to give my MP3 player a revamp (since it's old anyway) using these two Mod Podge products. So here I am brushing my precious Philips Raga audio player with Mod Podge Matte. I bought a very pretty gift wrapper patterned with flowers. It seemed like a nice color to go with my small silver gadget to I cut the right size and pasted it around the mp3 player. And to top it off, I got one of my sparkly buttons to glue onto my creation. I used the Mod Podge Dimensional Magic around the border of the button to seal  it. I am having some of my creations with the Mod Podge Dimensional Ma...

Jam: Martin, give an example of a common noun. Martin: SODA! Jam: Woooow! Sige nga, turn it into a proper noun? Martin: Ma'am COKE, Ma'am! Bilib talaga ako. I never even knew what a soda is until I was in college! I really enjoy my OJT at the Philippine National School for the Blind because of the seemingly surprising answers I get from the students, the conversations I overhear, their manner of speaking (they do invent a lot of words), their kalokohan , and their different personalities. My plight with the LRT and the loooong hours of travel do not even matter anymore. I just want to be there not just to inspire these kids, but to be inspired by them, their struggles and their curious nature. ~ Jam

Alvin and the Chipmunks Movie (2008) Category: Movies Genre: Action & Adventure i would have chosen national treasures over this movie any second if not for convenience. it was easier to go home from megamall than from greenbelt where 'treasures' was screening in advance. but no regrets! these chipmunks may be 5 times as annoying as your kid cousin or nephew, but their cuteness overrules any kind of negative reaction such as kicking the seat in front or walking out of the cinema. you might even think of pinching your seat mate, but definitely that will never be of annoyance. that may be because of... THEODORE!!! the film may have some gaps and i find it a bit short of action/chase scenes, but it is definitely worth watching even if you're not a fan - and even if you are loyal to the cartoon. add to that, their chimpmunky voices are a perfect blend. their harmony makes any cover song fun listening to - such as "bad day" by daniel powter. ...

Veteran actor-comedian Dolphy Quizon died Tuesday evening, a few days before his 84th birthday on July 25. Dolphy was taken to the Makati Medical Center June 9 due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and has been confined since then at the intensive care unit. I've read his bio in Wikipedia and he can be rightly called the "King of Comedy" for his comedic talent embodied by his long roster of works on stage, radio, television and movies. His beginnings as a struggling actor was what amazed me. Wikipedia on Dolphy World War II World War II -- Dolphy was about thirteen when World War II started. He did odd jobs including shining shoes; button-attacher at a pants factory; bottle arranger, classifying them according to size; stevedore at the pier; trading; and a horse and buggy driver. In his free time, he regularly watched stage shows at the Life Theater and Avenue Theater learning from his idols comedy duo Pugo and Togo, Robin "the fatty" Geronimo, an...

July 1, 2012 We studied Braille in our practicum class under Prof. Rocal. She invited the principal from the Philippine School for the Blind in Pasay as well as their coordinator to come to school and teach us to write and read Braille so we are better equipped in teaching children with special needs. Mrs. Rosalie R. Condes told us first how the blind are taught. Just like regular students, the blind are given "pre-writing" exercises. If 'seeing' children are taught how to scribble and have a good grip on their pencils, blind children are introduced with different textures to prepare them in feeling the braille reading materials. They are also allowed to explore the braille stencils before they are formally taught the letters of the alphabet. She also taught us a technique they use when they teach the parents of the blind students. By using egg cartons and egg toys, they are able to create a material that's big enough to show the class the positioning ...

I just saw this post on Facebook . I wish links to scientific papers are attached to these types of forwarded messages. Nevertheless, this is really interesting and I guess truthful based on people's experiences. Enjoy! MULTI-TASKING Women (Multiple process) Womens brains designed to concentrate multiple task at a time. Women can Watch a TV and Talk over phone and cook.   Men (Single Process) Mens brains designed to concentrate only one work at a time. Men can not watch TV and talk over the phone at the same time. they stop the TV while Talking. They can either watch TV or talk over the phone or cook. LANGUAGE   Women can easily learn many languages. But can not find solutions to problems. Men can not easily learn languages, they can easily solve problems. That's why in average a 3 years old girl has three times higher vocabulary than a 3 yeard old boy. ANALYTICAL SKILLS    Mens brains has a lot of space for handling the analytical process. T...

"Moments of Love" is a consequence of an old malfunctioning telephone.  The time-machine-like communication device connects the two phone pals, Marco (Dingdong Dantes) and Divina (Iza Calzado) who come from different time periods. They eventually fall for each other, literally giving meaning to the timelessness of love.  Reminiscent of "Somewhere in Time" and notoriously recognized as a rip-off of the Korean film "Il Mare," Moments of Love is short of good acting and character build-up. I understand though that Dingdong made a lot of effort to represent the character the best way possible. However, some of his excessive histrionics are uncalled for, which highlighted the film's shortness of emotional build-up. I just cannot understand how Marco could have fallen deeply in love with Divina to the extent that Marco cries and screams his throat off (in the course of a heavy rainfall of course) upon learning of Divina's death days la...

Pinoy inventor turns plastic into petroleum | ABS-CBN News This is really great news and a threat to oil companies. Great work Mr. Navarro! Nawa'y pumayagpag ang imbensyon na ito at maging huwaran kayo ng mga batang imbentor para mapabuti ang ating mundo.

Nothing gives me much satisfaction as playing the guitar and singing.  I learned to play the guitar at a young age -- courtesy of my uncle and cousins who would istambay * outside the house while drinking gin buko** or gin bulag , singing and playing the guitar. They taught me to play the chords and I just learned from there. I can say that I am a decent guitar player... I mean I strum the guitar and sing, but not really anything fancy like picking or plucking strings.  I was content with just strumming the chords and singing along with it.  Back in the Philippines, my sister Jam would play the piano and I would sing to any song.  We sing the songs from the songbook from beginning to end to our heart's content.  Since coming to America though, I decided to learn to pick and pluck strings.  I realized this after being exposed to so many talented acoustic guitarist YouTube sensations (this is another story).

I saw this video on a friend of a friend's facebook wall but when I sent the link to my bosses in the U.S., it was gone! Looked for it in YouTube and apparently there are hundreds of videos there tagged as "It's More Fun in the Philippines". Luckily, I found it again! I'm not sure if this is an official TV Commercial from the Department of Tourism but it better be because it's awesome!! Copy reads: "We're a country named after a Spanish King / To which an American general vowed to return, or as someone described our history, "300  years in a convent and 50 years in hollywood". / We're made up of 7,107 big, small, inhabited, tranquil, sandy, mountainous, rocky, foresty, elevated, underwater islands, and one of them, just for picnics. We call them Alabat, Almagro, Antocon, Binalabac, Batquis, Balanguingui, Calabugdong, Carabao, Cacatan, Diadekey, Doong, Deatoboato, El Fraile, Fuga, Guntao, Guimaras, Gingoog, Hermana Mayor, Ho...

Banco de Oro has become a fast growing bank ever since it was acquired by the Sy Group. Everywhere you go, you'll always spot a BDO branch or a BDO ATM machine. This is probably the best reason why I decided to open an account with them - besides the fact that most BDO banks are open until 5:30 pm so there's no need to rush just to beat the COB (close of business). Furthermore, BDO branches inside SM Malls are open until 7 pm so you can still pay your bills after you get off work. Anyway, as I've said, I just recently opened a passbook savings account with BDO and one of the first things I asked is if they have internet banking. The Account Officer was very kind enough to walk me through the process and it was after all fairly easy!

Now it's kuya to the rescue! Yipeeee!!!!

Our aratiles / aratilis tree is in our front yard and because it produces sweet red aratiles fruits daily, we can pick some of them for merienda every single day. Thank you God for blessing us with such a fertile tree! This is our pansungkit / pangsungkit. And here are the super red ones! You can pick some green-pink aratilis fruits too because they're also sweet. But since yesterday, we opted to just pick the red ones to give the pink fruits more time to ripen. And then here's our Papaya tree. Kuya Jun picked two of them! I did not expect them to be this orange !!!   Mama poured vinegar all over it and voila! Instant merienda! I'm ending this post with this picture because it reminds me of Trixie, my niece who lived with us in Bulacan for a few months. Whenever she spotted one, she would say "Beroroko!!!" - the Ilocano term for snail. I miss her, especially on a beautiful day like this!

I have always been interested to know more about the son-meets-father-19-years-later kind of life story of Juanito Furruganan, A.K.A. Juan Ponce-Enrile, the Senate President of the Philippines. Wikipedia doesn't have it but the link that I found does (see below). This is perhaps the most complete write-up I can find. Actually, I think it's the only one that exists online. And now that I'm looking at it again, I think it's an excerpt from the book entitled "Make My Day" by Hilarion M. Henares, Jr. This is an excerpt from that excerpt:    "In a small barrio in the sleepy coastal town of Gonzaga in the province of Cagayan, he was born and baptized Juanito Furruganan, son of a peasant woman called Petra Furruganan.      Juanito went to Aparri for his high school. He was good in math, wanted to be a scientist, and earned extra money by tutoring the daughter of one of the richest men in town. Rich bullies, consumed by jealousy, beat him ...