Kapanalig Sa Wala

Update

2010-08-08T12:42:00.003+09:00

I have decided to update this blog but with less about atheism and more about some other stuffs. First an update related to my post "Back To Work". I was granted a 90-day temporary visa for "designated activities" with the activity "preparing for departure." On the last day of my visa, I flew back home to the Philippines and after a month, I started a bar in Laguna. I only closed it a little over a month ago as it didn't work as I wanted it to be. It ran a total of 9 months. It was fun and a good learning experience. Here's the post-mortem of what mistakes I committed and my explanation on why it happened. When I started it, I had a very clear picture of what I wanted to do. I wanted to operate a small bar that can be run by at most, 2 people. The four things that should be maintained with high standards are (1) the beer should be ice-cold, (2) the toilets should be very clean, (3) should be air-conditioned, (4) plays great music. My biggest mistake was that I didn't stick to my plan. My plan was to put up a bar in Laguna first not mainly for profit but more for learning the ropes, then I'd close it and move the business to a more profitable location either in Valenzuela City near Fatima University or in Meycauayan, Bulacan near Meycauayan College. Also part of the plan was that there would be no live bands. But things gone out of hand, the next thing I knew, we were hosting live bands regularly which greatly increased our operating expenses (show bands are paid per head, while equipment is rented per piece). It went on for nine months in the red before I finally pulled the plug. Mistake number two is that I let it run indefinitely without a clear time frame of goals. The third mistake I did was that I didn't put everything that's needed to make it succeed like capital infusion was done more like piecemeal rather than right from the beginning. There was a good reason why I shouldn't have put all the capital upfront but now with the benefit of hindsight I am inclined to say that it was not a good reason. The root cause of the issues is that I didn't have a business plan worked out on paper that include the financials and the time-frame for measuring milestones. So next time I do it, I'll write one up so I can have clear guideline on how to execute it. There are other valuable lessons I learned mostly on operations, marketing, and financial analysis but I don't want to go into details here.

Reading List

2010-01-20T23:32:00.003+09:00

I haven't posted in a looong while so I am updating and so I will have something new to read myself :) . The reason is because I have been away from this space for a year now. I also haven't been reading fiction, science, and philosophy books lately. My list of recent books are very far from what I had been reading until last year. Nowadays, I'm consumed by something else. Here are the last books I have read, most recent first:

Bankable Business Plans - by Edward Rogoff (almost finished now)
The Soul Of The Corporation - by Bouchikhi & Kimberly
Financial Statements, A Step By Step Guide... - by Thomas Ittelson
Financial Intelligence For Entrepreneurs - by Berman & Knight
Fooled By Randomness - by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Selfish Gene - by Richard Dawkins (first 3 chapters only)
Inside The Black Box - by Rishi Narang
Optimal Trading Strategies - by Kissel & Glantz
Game Theory, A Very Short Introduction - by Ken Binmore
Value Above Cost - by Donald Sexton

What I noticed is that I haven't slowed down reading - I have read all of them in the last two months - but my interest had changed significantly though I'd like to go back to reading more of the philosophy/fiction/science books. Three of the books above are about things related to my work (Narang, Binmore, Kissel & Glantz), the others except Dawkins (which I dropped for the meantime) are for general financial knowledge or related to business & branding. The Dawkins book is somewhat related to the Binmore book on game theory though they deal in different areas of knowledge. I don't have books on queue so I may finally go back to Dawkins.

Weird Day

2009-06-26T23:39:00.004+09:00

Something unusual happened today. Two things really and that made the day unusual as a whole. Well, some things happen that are not usual but recently, nothing much out of the ordinary has been happening because my daily routine has become very predictable, with me being out of work. I got invited by one of my job agents with whom I had been communicating by phone and email a lot, to finally meet in person and have lunch together "to put a face to the name" so to speak. I went to Shibuya to meet him in front of 109. We went to this Italian restaurant since I had been to his first choice of restaurant twice before. (The Tokyo Brights used to meet there which I had attended on a few occasions.) As we were talking about life and the small things we never talk about on business calls, the order seemed to had been forgotten so we followed up with the waitress. I could tell my agent was irritated, he asked for the manager but there was no manager. The waitress was very apologetic and was really trying very hard to speak in English and offered us to take have salad bar for free. When we were paying, they refused our payment so our meal was free and the while staff floor was really very apologetic. I felt sorry for the waitress. I wasn't very hungry. I had breakfast at ten. My pasta turned out to be okay, seafood in basil sauce.

On my way home, I discovered I lost my 10,000 yen bill I put in my back pocket earlier. Something that hasn't happened to me before. I never put bills in my back pocket and I never lost any money since I've been to Tokyo more than nine years ago. I put it in my back pocket because I was in a hurry for my lunch appointment and my wallet was inside my bag. I was in Shibuya Hachiko crossing at exactly 12 noon, the appointed time (the beauty of the train system here), and met up with the agent 5 minutes later. I knew when I put it there that there would be a big chance of losing it but somehow I banished the thought. I was thinking I'd buy a good quality Japan-made, half face, motorcycle helmet with it on my way home - if I can find one within that budget. I guess buying the helmet is postponed for another day.

Wanna get rich?

2009-05-21T21:57:00.003+09:00

In the past few months, I have encountered quite a few threads in the various forums I participate in including the two mailing lists for Pinoy Atheists and Filipino Freethinkers. These alleged financial coaches/advisers/gurus ask questions like Is a real estate property an asset or a liability? or Is buying and selling of stocks investing? As I see these financial gurus or coaches invade the various online forums making such silly questions, my SCAM meter started to move to the right. Eventually, these guys will make a pitch to find out the answer by going to another website. Or at times, they'd ask you to read Robert Kiyosaki, the inspiration guru himself. Say who? So now I am trying to get hold of one of his book which I found out has been consistently at the top of the NY Times bestseller list. What is this book about? I have heard it a few times already before this whole thing seemed to have suddenly exploded among the Pinoy. 2 million copies sold in the US alone! I checked Amazon to read the 1-star rating and most of the reviewers who gave 1-star are fairly consistent about what think the book is about. I'll write about this more as I gather more information.

Back to Work

2009-05-11T22:52:00.004+09:00

I'm back to work at least on this sorry space - my blog needs a lot of love from me. I lost my real job last December the day before I was really supposed to take my annual year-end vacation. So while in Manila, I extended my vacation by a week. It's the busiest Pinas vacation I have had so far, ironically, but for a reason. I have been putting the foundation to my cushion catch-net. Since I came back from that vacation I haven't found a new job yet although I have had interviews. It's as if the job market here has ground to a halt. Officially, my last day on the payroll was three months later after I received my termination. I was told that it is a legal requirement in Japan and I find it very favorable to the workers. So that means, even though I lost my job in December, I really lost it in March. During this time, I have to heed the lesson of free market capitalism to re-tool but I choose to just re-sharpening my skills since I decided to stay within the same job description for my next work, whether it be here or elsewhere. I have been reading books that are mostly technical with the exception of a book on the Enlightenment (I'll write about this later) and a book on marketing. My fallback is that, if within two more months (conditional to my application for temporary visitor visa being granted) and still no job here, I'll be executing my "Exit Japan" and "Hello Laguna" plans simultaneously. The marketing book is for the "Hello Laguna" plan where I'll most likely be spending my time looking after a business I have been putting up, the reason I was always busy on my vacations. Sounds like not finding a job here is the perfect excuse to be in Laguna longer and longer if only I can afford not to have a steady income for a year or so. There is no point staying here longer than six months without a source of income as savings dwindle faster than anywhere else. The only regret I'll have if finally I have to leave is that the things I have spent years accumulating here, things I really like, I may have to throw away as the cost of shipping them to Manila is very prohibitive not to mention how our customs officials do their work. (I have first hand experience on how they can be so makapal ang mukha.) These big item things have only sentimental value for me but they cannot be sold here anymore even at a discount except for a few items and yet throwing them away also entails paying for their disposal. Looking ahead, l have to hurdle one result still pending with the immigration bureau regarding my visa extension. After that, the only remaining issue is the job itself but whether I get one or not doesn't matter much now as I have already prepared for my exit with my parachute. I hope it will work. Its success depends squarely on how much I can commit to it. Needless to say, I am determined and convinced I can make it work within a reasonable time. Let's see.

Atheism is a religion in the guise of science?

2009-02-21T10:50:00.004+09:00

Somebody commented in the Darwin Day 2009 post about me supposedly as "really zealous in being a member of the religion called "atheism" in the guise of science" and that he would just pray that blah blah blah. Here is another example of somebody who just doesn't get it. I replied to him that "atheism is not a religion nor is science" and that "everybody, including theists appreciate science." He wants to see atheists who happens to love science as having a religion called science which is actually atheism. At first I thought he was being funny but he was not. He was just being irrational. He has deceived himself with mixing obviously different things. If he can just do an honest inquiry into this reasoning anomaly, he can surely find out what is religion and what is science and what their basic differences are. Religion oftentimes, and this is specially true to the Christian religion with which he is subscribed to, will ignore science if that is what's needed in order to keep its truths. Science on the other hand is concerned about reality and how it operates, (and if I may add just to be in context) REGARDLESS of religious truths. Scientific truths are not absolute and may one day be overturned by new discoveries. They operate quite differently when it comes to finding out the truth. For example, many truths in Christianity usually come from some near absolute if not absolute source of authority like the pope or the bible while truths in science doesn't hold such authorities to high esteem. What is important in science is that these hypotheses be testable/verifiable and falsifiable. So it may be that this indifference of science to religious truths is at the bottom of his assertion? And then there is the atheism being a religion. Well as they said, only if being bald is called a hairstyle. This so very cliche now: atheism is the lack of belief in gods. Although there are religions that are atheistic in that they don't have gods (so I heard but I myself don't know), if by religion he meant believing in something, and making this object of belief an object of worship, then atheism having no belief on gods obviously doesn't have anything to function as an object of worship. So he must be saying that instead of god, I believe in science, and am a devout believer of it to the point of worship? Now, "devout" is a religious word that has no place in science and I think this gives him away. He may be wishing that atheists in general must believe in something in place of their gods, in my case I am devout about atheism or science, only to reassure himself that we, despite of the opposing position about god, are actually in the same boat. That atheists are religionists too. No, sir. Thank you. My atheism is about being free from your religion (of Christianity). I don't wish to replace it with another crap.

Darwin Day 2009

2009-02-12T07:09:00.002+09:00

Today we celebrate the 200th birth anniversary of Charles Darwin. Happy birthday Charles!

Filipino Freethinkers website launched

2009-01-29T15:08:00.004+09:00

A new website, FilipinoFreethinkers.org was launched today. It will serve as the jump-off site for the upcoming First Filipino Freethinkers' Forum to be held on February 28, 2009. For more details please visit the site or join Pinoy Atheists on Yahoo! groups.

Evolution of Thought

2008-12-01T01:22:00.006+09:00

I have rediscovered reading when I got my first credit card, I browsed Amazon for music CDs of bands I used to listen to as a teenager. In one of the days I was browsing music, I naturally jumped to browsing books. I originally only had computer books in mind but that quickly changed to books that I would have learned had I access to them as a teenager. I'd like to read them because I wanted to learn, to understand, and to straighten things out about the things that I only had a vague idea of, but occupied my thoughts before, or simply I wanted to know more. As a child, I used to read books but I had very limited access in that the libraries in my place did not stock good books. They mostly stocked textbooks. Another reason was that in both grade school (public) and high school (Catholic), reading books was not encouraged. I'd say the teachers were close to being indifferent about reading books outside the normal class topics. I think this is because the teachers themselves were product of the same environment where indifference to books is common. When I rediscovered it much later, I felt some regrets that I didn't rediscover it much earlier that I could've. But what is past is past and here I am in another cycle of slow pace, I am reading books in a much slower pace than I did a few years ago when I used to read about two hours a day. Now I could only devote an hour if I am not so tired. My interests vary. Surveying my shelf, my books are heavy on science, specially evolutionary biology, a surprise now given that as a teenager, I thought I didn't like biology. I thought it was a boring science. As it turned out, it's because we were being taught the small picture, the leaves and twigs without giving us the unifying principle behind it, the trunk, and the roots where the concept got it's heritage. The great biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky once famously remarked that

Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.

If one understands biological evolution, one cannot but wholeheartedly agree. When I started reading books again, one of the first books I read was Charles Darwin's Origin Of Species. As a teen I had this partial knowledge of evolution theory. Partial because as a teenager I already had ideas about what is evolution (as obviously as it sound, I understood it then as change over time) but I was totally clueless about how organisms could change over time. (Not that I know now completely though.) I got these ideas mainly from watching television programs on archaeology, anthropology, and geology on government operated television channels. The Marcos-era government-run TV channels were a lot better than our current crop of stupid private television channels, including those run by religious corporations. I think the pre-Cory channel 9 was run by very literate people, probably going all the way up to Malacanang. Nowadays, I don't watch any Philippine TV which I now consider as contributing to the further dumbing down of the Pinoy society, but I digressed. Going back to the topic, after reading Darwin's book, sometime later I read Thomas Malthus' essay on population and now reading Adam Smith's Wealth Of Nations. Reading Smith now is for purposes of understanding his ideas and not merely being able to say Invisible Hand without knowing the ideas behind it. In the course of time, I come to read the works of Milton Friedman, F. Hayek, Ayn Rand, and other authors, even Thomas Friedman! I now think that the ideas come back in many forms and in different spheres of knowledge and don't stand on and by itself. Ideas of course have their own heritage as Newton once wrote (paraphrased) that he saw further because he was standing on the shoulders of giants. What I am talking about is that ideas have parallels in other fields while they may not be related, and that ideas also have some evolutionary characteristics though it doesn't seem Darwinian at the core. There are some form of cross-germinating other fields with novel insights in other fields that may or may not be related at all. For example, here is a short list of books that I think have parallel/overlapping ideas:

Origin of Species (Charles Darwin) - This book about biological evolution asserts that nature acts as a sieve that "favors" changes that confers very small advantages to individual organisms, change that accumulated over time produce different species. Darwin called this Natural Selection. (Approximates the best biological "designs" for a given environment.)

Structure Of Scientific Revolutions (Thomas Kuhn) - This asserts that scientific theories change over time or oftentimes completely overturned, such that what what is earlier accepted as scientifically true may at times be considered obsolete or patently false. Kuhn called these upheavals in thought as paradigm shifts and gave as textbook example the changes in the theory on gravitation from Aristotle to Galileo to Newton to Einstein. (Approximates truth.)

Popper Selections - (selected essays of Karl Popper edited by David Miller) - Popper was a prominent 20th century philosopher of science. This book gathers some of his writings about "truth" and how we may approximate it. He asserts that there is Truth but it's not provable since there is no absolute authority on Truth. Instead, we have conjectures, the falsehood of them can be established, and so must be discarded, or it's truthfulness stands as long as if it survives the assaults to falsify it through critical rationalism. (Approximates truth.)

Logic (Immanuel Kant) - This small book serves as an introduction to Kant's philosophy on truth. He asserts that definitions of concepts can only be approached asymptotically, that synthetic definitions are impossible while analytic definitions are uncertain, and that only constructive synthetic definitions can both be logical and certain. (Approximates truth.)

The Wealth Of Nations (Adam Smith) - This book on economic theory asserts that an economic system where the individuals are free to do as they choose will, as a consequence advance the common good. (Approximates the common good.)

Other prominent books with similar or overlapping concepts are An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Malthus, Anarchy, Utopia, and State by Robert Nozick, and On Liberty by John Stuart Mill. I'll write about them sometime next.

Sometimes, reading some passage in one book brings back memories of another such that I find myself cross-referencing them. This has told me somehow that I need constant re-reading of the packages of books read in the past in order to cement the concept, to make it more concrete, and less abstract.

The Church on Reproductive Method

2008-10-22T01:16:00.005+09:00

The only approved family planning method by the Church are: billings ovulation method (BOM, sometimes called incorrectly as rhythm method) and abstinence. So if one is not to run away from the consequences - pregnancy - the drill should be like this:

a) If you are and not planning on having a baby, then it's abstinence.
b) If you are planning on having a baby, use BOM to find out when the woman is LIKELY to get pregnant and during this time have sex with her. You do this with BOM so that you have sex only when she is most LIKELY to be fertile.
c) go back to a)

I don't know if that's how the RCC really formulates it but that's the only way I see it. If the RCC say that BOM can be used in order to AVOID pregnancy, then doesn't it contradict the responsibility-with-the-consequence part?

I found this article making the same point:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-contraception_thinkjul27,0,221957\
1.story

The RCC say that the purpose of sex should be for reproduction. It means, almost like a moral duty, that you have sex only if you want to have a child, and if you know about BOM, use it to time when to have sex. That's the highest and purest way, morally speaking. Or if man/woman are ignorant about BOM, try and try until you succeed. Otherwise, if you don't want any child, it should be strictly abstinence. That is NOT natural. "Natural" is a lottery. Men cannot tell if the woman is fertile (unlike other animals e.g., dogs and chimps) so the main rule of reproduction is to have sex as many times as possible without regard to BOM. If a Catholic doesn't want to have another child, there should not be any question to the only method allowed - abstinence. Unfortunately, the RCC also says jerking off is absolutely not allowed and that if you do it, god will know and IN FACT god is keeping a book counting how many times you jerked off. This is the reason why there are no males in heaven except a few who were run over by cars right after they had their confession.

Awareness

2008-09-29T00:08:00.000+09:00

One cannot fathom the possibility of changing the society to accept atheism if one is not known to be one in his own immediate environment - friends, family, and even neighbors. If you are not an out-of-the-closet atheist, you cannot appreciate the changes in people's perception when they are confronted with the real thing. To most Pinoys, a non-believer is an unimaginable being but here I am and I am real. And more, I belong to a growing community. They cannot dismiss us if we have a case. If we can argue well our position, we can either gain respect or get derision. Personally I'd prefer respect but I can also take derision if that's the price of being intellectually honest to myself. In the end, one ends up in one hand real friends who will respect your views despite the vast difference because they saw beyond your atheism, and on the other hand may lose superficial friends. I think religious differences, which I take to include non-religion, in matters of personal relationships should take a backseat but if the other party cannot do that, it will surely result in rough roads ahead that can also mean separating. It's gotta be painful if he/she is a very close friend or family but I wouldn't know since so far I have been in good terms with all of them.

Secularism

2008-09-26T03:05:00.003+09:00

I just posted a small article about the path to secularism as mandated by the Philippine constitution. I have been trying to do this for some time and only now I had the motivation to actually write. You see, I write my articles very slowly because I am a bad writer. I have plenty of ideas but most of them are not concretized into a whole. I will continue to expand this thought and will continue to revisit it as I learn more about it.

Bonifacio's Death

2008-08-29T00:19:00.003+09:00

In the last couple of days, after finishing reading Stephen Jay Gould's The Lying Stones Of Marrakech, I picked up this small book, almost like a booklet, The Tragedy Of The Revolution by Adrian Cristobal. I am a big fan of history but recently I haven't been reading Philippine history due to lack of books accessible enough to me with living outside the country. I have in my shelves here a few books I picked up in one of my visits to PowerBooks during one of my vacations. All in all there are exactly six small books comprising what I call my Filipinana section. Three of them are about Andres Bonifacio the Katipunan Supremo; the other two Bonifacio books are by Ambeth Ocampo. I quickly finished Cristobal's book and while reading it, it made me realize that I really need to go back to reading more about Philippine history since the book showed that I am grossly ignorant of a lot of the details in the most important episodes of the history of our people. I knew that Bonifacio was killed by fellow Filipinos but I never knew more than that. He was portrayed as an unfortunate casualty of the revolution, his death was brought upon by his own short temper in the Tejeros Convention. While reading Cristobal's book, I felt angry about the circumstances surrounding the hero's death. In sweeping the historical narrative into a cohesive whole historians seemed to have sanitized the past such that we forget that the people involved are individuals not without their own (good and/or evil) motives and convictions. In the second book i am reading now by Ocampo, there is the excerpt of the memoir of Gregoria De Jesus, Bonifacio's widow, narrating about her two-weeks search for the remains of her husband without getting any meaningful help from people who could have easily shown her the exact spot. According to Cristobal, Bonifacio fell victim to a conspiracy by the Magdalo faction to remove him so that the Katipunan would be under the new revolutionary government that they were to form. Cristobal provided good arguments in this view, in that it was not necessary to kill Bonifacio in order to achieve their aim. I am now going to trying to read additional documents that can shed more light into what he called the tragedy of the revolution.

Beijing Olympics

2008-08-25T01:42:00.003+09:00

The 2008 edition of the Olympics has closed a few hours ago. I must say I truly enjoyed following the day to day events now that I am rooting for the athletes of the nation of my residence - Japan. Japan had less gold medals than it hoped to get before the games started but national pride in this nation is not tied to the performance of its athletes abroad so even though the gold medal haul is less than hoped for, it doesn't seem to matter a bit. As they say, they did their best and they are happy with what they have achieved.

Most matches by Japanese athletes and the most important matches, for example the swimming races that Michael Phelps participated in, and athletics, were broadcast live in terrestrial digital TV and in high definition and it was really a spectacle to behold. I was impressed by the camera shots and instant-replay, in slow motion, you can see the sweat and almost feel the emotion of the athletes. One big advantage of this Olympics is that the timezone is almost the same as Tokyo's so there's no waking up in early morning to catch the matches, for example, to catch Wimbledon live, I had to stay awake up to 4am at times. China has done a great job in organizing this Olympics. I hope the British can do as well in London 2012. I also hope Tokyo will bring The Games to this city in 2016. It's still far but I have been here almost nine years now and looking back it doesn't seem that long a wait. I like the festive atmosphere when something non-political but big is happening like when Manila hosted the SEA Games or when Japan co-hosted with Korea the World Cup in 2002.

hb4110.net

2008-08-13T01:13:00.000+09:00

We are currently in the process of putting up a website to support the consolidated Reproductive Health Care Act now filed in the 14th Congress. Once it's setup, we'll let everybody know. Please keep yourself informed by reading the bill yourself first-hand and maybe you can write your congressman to express your support for this very important but still pending legislation.

Support HB4110 or Reproductive Health Care Act

2008-08-10T14:23:00.003+09:00

We the undersigned express our support of HB 4110, The Reproductive Health Care Act.

We fully support the bill’s principles as laid out in Section 2.

We all hope for a healthy Filipino society. We believe the bill will help us build such a society where reproductive health care is available to anyone and everyone, free of discrimination on age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, and religious affiliation or non-affiliation. Where policies concerning reproductive health care that affects everyone is not dictated by any particular religion or belief system. We believe in the right to choose one’s method of planning a family and spacing children, or to choose to have no children at all. The rights of the individual to choose according to his conscience don’t fall under the aegis of self-proclaimed moral authorities of the religious establishment.

The Philippines is a nation of diverse religious beliefs/non-beliefs. No single belief system represents the whole diversity of Filipino religious and non-religious thought or belief nor does any of its leaders speak for all its adherents. The continued opposition by the leaders of certain sects is a clear encroachment on the rights to free choice on reproductive health methods and services of every Filipino, and trample on the rights of those who do not adhere to their beliefs. We strongly condemn the negative campaign being waged by these leaders to mislead its adherents by misrepresenting the bill’s content, and by resorting to using dogmatic, unscientific, and outmoded beliefs to support its arguments.

We strongly support the legislation because we believe this is for the well-being our nation in particular and humanity in general as we face the future of a planet with limited resources.

Please read the bill here: http://dirp3.pids.gov.ph/population/documents/HB4110.pdf

Please sign the petition here.

FanBox, spam machine

2008-08-03T00:25:00.002+09:00

I just visited this site because I am getting annoyed by the spam it is sending to my mailbox and one of the things that struck me was their service described: "Spam-Free Web-based Email." I marked it as spam in my account for now.

Atheism and Agnosticism

2008-05-14T02:05:00.000+09:00

Atheism and agnosticism deal with the concept "god" in different spheres. Agnosticism is about not having knowledge about god or its existence while atheism is about not having a belief in the existence of god.

Agnosticism = lack of knowledge
Atheism = lack of belief

I think that nobody has true knowledge of the existence of god. Therefore, everybody is ultimately and technically an agnostic. A form of weak atheism is also referred to as agnostic atheism. There is a middle ground between theism and atheism in the technical sense since there are those who are "undecided" and some of them prefer to call themselves among many terms as non-theist or post-theist or what-not. Agnosticism is not a middle ground between theism and atheism since agnosticism is present in the whole set. But in practice, those who are at the atheism end of the spectrum, live in a world where gods are not part of reality.

Earthquake

2008-05-08T02:09:00.003+09:00

A series of small earthquakes with the strongest registering a magnitude of 6.7 in the Japanese scale hit the Kanto region of the main island of Japan. The epicenter is just north of Tokyo where it was felt as M5.0 in Ibaraki and Tochigi prefectures. My area is lumped together with the rest of Tokyo's 23 wards, where it's reported that we just felt it as M3.0 though I'm close to Saitama prefecture which in turn lies immediately south of the two prefectures earlier mentioned. Saitama felt the quake as M4.0 strong. It's my first time to be caught in this apartment with a moderate quake and while the stronger one lasts and frankly I felt scared with the doors and tables shaking and making noises. I work up earlier around 12MN because I left the idiot box on but couldn't sleep again. It's amazing how quickly the earthquake data is gathered here. The publicly funded TV network NHK flashes the data on the TV oftentimes while it's happening! It hope it's the last for this time. I plan to go to sleep now and forget about it.

Tiebreaker

2008-05-08T01:53:00.003+09:00

Tiebreaker. That's what Clinton called Tuesday's primaries result where she won (by the skin of her teeth) Indiana with her 51% to Obama's 49% but lost in North Carolina by double-digit margin, (42% Clinton, 56% Obama). Only somebody in denial can call that a tiebreaker since Obama widened his lead in both popular vote and pledged delegate. She also reportedly lent another $6.4M to her campaign. The wisest decision she can make as a candidate in the coming days is conceding the race to Obama. More and more Clinton is appearing to be the desperate candidate.

Mojoey's Atheist Blogroll

2008-04-28T23:21:00.001+09:00

This site is is now officially listed in Mojoey's Atheist Blogroll.

"The Atheist Blogroll is a service provide to the Atheist and Agnostic blogging community. The blogroll currently maintains over 650 blogs. Membership is limited to Atheist and Agnostic bloggers."

If you are maintaining an atheism or an agnosticism blog, please consider joining the atheist blogroll.

US, self-appointed global cop

2008-04-27T23:23:00.002+09:00

This is a reply to a thread currently being discussed in the Pinoy atheists mailing list.

Do the neo-cons really believe in the Christian solution or is it only a card they they use to rally the gullible American majority into any war it fancy? Is McCain a religious nut just like Bush is? The greatest puzzle for me is why did the Americans voted that idiot TWICE into the White House. The Americans must really be proud of their president.

Just a curiosity, do you guys think that the neo-cons have not lost some credibility or do the majority of Americans still buy the fear that they manufacture? Will it more likely that they will vote for McCain or with the Democrat? How about Clinton, has she expressed an unequivocal commitment to a US pull-out if voted? I think Republican or Democrat, it doesn't really matter since the US will continue to be in Iraq indefinitely as much as can be possible. History is replete with examples including the Philippines. According to Dean Jorge Bocobo, the Philippines is the first Iraq. He's got a point. If not for Marcos - one of the good things that he did as president - who re-negotiated the "lease" of the US bases from 99 years to 25 years which expired in '92, and for Erap, one of the good things that he did as a senator who voted against its extension, the American "global cop" will still be in Subic and Clark and the US service-men out of reach of our courts. It's a complete disgrace to us as a nation that only a full-blooded Am-boy can accept. That's what the Americans want, if possible, from all the nations that host their bases. Unfortunately, the Philippines was too weak economically to escape the unequal "partnership". This is what will eventually happen with Iraq. The government will be handed over to the Iraqis but the US bases will stay. The Americans will do all the best they can to prevent an anti-American Iraqi president from being voted whether the US president be a religious nut
or otherwise.

Post-meet-up

2008-04-24T02:02:00.007+09:00

I came back from the meet-up about two hours ago. It was as expected a lot of fun. I met two new people both Japanese. It's unusual in the sense that most Japanese people I suspect are not into religion and consequently irreligion should not be a big deal with Japan being a country teeming with heathens. All in all, seven people attended. I almost couldn't make it though as when I was leaving work, something urgent came up - a production problem. I was just too happy after I got hold of the morning support guy in the US to take over n look after the problem even if it's a Tokyo- local issue. I arrived at Gonpachi restaurant about five minutes past eight but it seemed that they haven't started yet. (It's supposed to be have started at seven.) Of course we talked about the evil of religion and how religion skews the view of reality of what otherwise appear to be normal people. Beers were drank and yakitori (焼き鳥) were eaten and ideas exchanged for 2 1/2 hours before we decided to call it a day. We parted ways at Shibuya (渋谷) station around 11:15 - just about the right time to catch one of the last trains of Saikyou line (埼京線) towards Saitama (埼玉県). It's 12 midnight at the station. Another interesting day has ended.

Sorry, no pictures about the meet-up.

On Tuesday we are planning to visit together the exhibit on Charles Darwin currently being held at the National Science Museum in Ueno (上野). Hopefully, I can take pictures.

Tokyo Brights meet-up tomorrow

2008-04-23T00:22:00.005+09:00

Click here to check out
The Tokyo Brights Meetup Group!

Tomorrow I will be attending the Tokyo Brights Meet-up group. The group meets every third Thursday of the month except tomorrow which will happen on a Wednesday. It will be my second time to join the party. I joined last January but I failed to join the two succeeding meet-ups because I was out of the country. Again, it will be in Gonpachi in Shibuya. I like the place. They say it's the inspiration for the last scene of one of the Kill Bill movies but I've never seen any of them.

Re-learning Some Things

2008-04-13T17:51:00.004+09:00

I am re-learning some of the things that I dropped. One of them is playing the guitar. I first learned the basics of guitar playing when I was a sacristan. I was about fourteen then. I had this friend who seemed to had been carrying all the problems of the world on his shoulders and the way he chose to cope with it was to turn a little into himself and learn the guitar in the kumbento. The first and only song I learned and used to play then was the older version of Santo, Santo, Santo which required only a small set of very simple chords and where the transitions between those chords are much easier. Whenever we had the chance on the guitars (I think there were two guitars which were not always idle), we'd start strumming that song. The elder sacristans and church choir members would tease us and they'd be right that we would be singing the same song over and over and over again. Years passed and my friend went on to have his own electric guitar gifted to him while I moved on to different things. He has progressed enough to playing his favorite songs on his guitar and even got to play with his own band while I almost forgot all about it. But I learned the guitar basics such that I never had to re-learn it again. From time to time, opportunity to play the guitar arose but it required developing the habit which I didn't. My younger brother bought his own guitar which I used to borrow and practiced with but I never really quite progressed beyond simple strumming. Eventually I had accepted that maybe I never really had what it takes to play it. I think I am better at singing than at playing any musical instruments so I envy those people who can really play well, like my cousin who could play well the accordion before he was able to read and write. Whenever I pick up the guitar to strum a few chords of simple songs, I'd listen to my playing and I wouldn't be satisfied to the point of frustration. Or I'd start singing and my chords will quickly deteriorate into abhorrent noise. Maybe I was consciously trying to play it rather than using more ouido. Some years later, I'd still be playing the same set of chords as Santo, Santo, Santo but this time it's the simplified chords of The One I Love by REM but whenever I do, I still remember my sacristan days. It was short-lived but I had plenty of good memories about it.

Yotsuya Church

2008-04-03T00:32:00.007+09:00

They say the churches of Europe, where religion is declining, are sometimes filled to the brim not by Europeans but by Filipinos. This is true also in Tokyo. There is Yotsuya (四谷) Catholic church in Shinjuku (新宿). Shown in the picture taken sometime in 2006 were our kababayans and their half-Filipino half-Japanese children starting to come out of the church after the Sunday English mass. I don't go to Yotsuya to hear mass. I go there to see people or accompany my family there. I usually just stay outside the church ogling the pretty girls that pass by, and which by the way has become so rare now that the Japanese government has come under fire from the US government on the trafficking of women. I saw one statistics some years ago that say nine out of ten Filipinos in Japan are women, most of them working or has worked as hostesses in Filipino bars. Filipino bars aside from Filipino stores is where you can find the Philippine flag displayed. My poor countrymen who are so devout believers will brave the uncertainties of life in a foreign land of heathens and yet their god seemed to have chosen to make the heathens to be more economically free than the devotees who work and pray for a life that's a little bit better than a life of poverty. Such irony for the believing Pinoy!

Bookmarks

2008-03-08T21:03:00.007+09:00

I have just wrapped up reading Ann Gibbons' The First Human: The Race To Discover Our Earliest Ancestors. It's a short book of about 240 pages so I was able to finish it in a few days. I would have finished it even earlier if not because I haven't fully picked up the habit of using bookmarks for all the books that I read. In such cases I'd fold the page where I'm at but even that I consciously avoid because it makes the book look ugly later. I am now starting to re-read Sean Carroll's Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science Of Evo Devo And The Making Of The Animal Kingdom. I had attempted to read it before but dropped it after probably finishing the Introduction. I went to a cafe so I can have my Saturday cup of cappuccino and started reading it. I could not remember where I stopped the last time so that I had to restart from the beginning. But this time I am definitely going to use a bookmark. Another book that I have been reading which I had started even before I started reading the Gibbons book and which is almost finished is Steve Gould's Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. I'll finish it shortly tonight. With it I used a bookmark, the kind they give away for free at some cafes here. When I do use a bookmark, I still find myself re-reading portions I have read previously because I don't stop at the end of each chapter or another suitable area like the end a well-defined section. This is often the case with me with books I read on my commute when I don't have complete control on the time I will arrive at my stop will be about enough time I'd need to finish the current section/chapter. To aid me in this case, I let the bookmark give me a hint on where I should resume my reading. If the front side of the bookmark is facing the left page, I stopped at the left page. Otherwise, I should resume on the right page. If I stopped in the upper portion of the page, I put the bookmark on the upper portion of the page; otherwise, I put it at the lower portion. It does help me save some time except when I really need to re-read the last few sentences or even paragraphs so that the train of thought will be picked up where I left off. With books I read at home and if I don't have a bookmark (sometime I am too lazy to get one even when there are many available!), I try as much as possible to stop at the end of each chapter.

By the way, the Gobbons book is a good historical sketch of how anthropologists/paleontologists
race against each other in finding hominid fossils that could shed light on our origins. Together with the book by Gould - also a historical sketch about paleontology dealing with the Burgess Shale fossils - the two books are very informative and give us an idea of how much discipline is required by serious paleontology. In the cover of the Gibbons book pictured above is the fossil nicknamed Toumai or Sahelanthropus Tchadensis.

Mere Belief and Mere Atheism

2008-02-01T00:25:00.000+09:00

Mere belief and mere atheism are amoral philosophical positions. Some people spent a good deal of time and effort to seek his/her answers. I applaud them regardless of the outcome. Some people are just lazy to seek their own answers and take it for granted. It's not a fault and it doesn't matter. In any case, we cannot fault people who honestly believe or disbelieve for whatever reason they may hold or not hold and by the amount of effort he exerted to support his position. But we do take interest in people who will coerce others to subscribe to their own philosophical/moral position by using threats or abuse mentally (teaching children punishment of hell for "sins") or physical harm and even murder (Crusaders & jihadists). I subscribe to the idea that individuals are free to believe what they believe or not believe as long as it never harm another person and that he has no right whatsoever to force this belief or non-belief on others. So the communists did bad things to persecute the believers and the Catholics and Protestants did bad things to persecute the heretics.

Theism (belief in god(s)) or atheism are fundamentally amoral -isms. It's in the conclusions that supposedly follow from these two -isms that address morality that gets us into trouble.

The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare, Unread Edition

2008-01-25T01:30:00.000+09:00

When I was a high school student, I used to hang around in the school library. It's a smallish library with books that were mostly textbooks. Uninteresting. But there was a cabinet that contained great books that still looked so new with crisp pages including a collection of books titled The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. I wanted to pick up those books and read them but the glass cabinet was padlocked, with a sign that read: For Teachers Use Only. I bet those books remained unread for a long, long time since I left that school. What a waste.

Dear God

2008-01-15T06:57:00.000+09:00

Dear God, I hope you got the letter and I pray you can make it better down here...

This is a work in progress. I will still do some minor edits later after I have reviewed it. I just want to see it earlier so I am posting it now. If you have any suggestion or critique, please let me know.

Two Books

2008-01-11T23:32:00.000+09:00

If you will be exiled to the moon for a year and are allowed only to bring 2 books, which books will you bring?

My choices will be:
1) The Wealth Of Nations by Adam Smith
2) The Descent Of Man by Charles Darwin

I know you will say they are boring books so why did I choose them? They are two books that I think so important that I find many books that I have read so far reference them. Each book is more than 600 pages long so it will take me some time to complete and probably do a 2nd reading to understand them. I keep putting them down each time I attempt to start reading them so it's like if I'm left with not much choice but to finally finish them.

The reason I ask is that I would like to know what 2 books each one of us put great value. I might consider adding them to my future reading list too.

Organizing Eyeballs (EB)

2008-01-10T01:44:00.000+09:00

Organizing eyeballs require communication. Constant communication building up the the headcount and disseminating information in a timely manner. I have had experience only in organizing small eyeballs where there are only less than 15 participants. The advantage of small groups is that it doesn't require a lot in terms of reserving venues. You just meet-up and can decide right there which place you want to sit for a chat be it restaurant or cafe. Recently, I tried to organize one for the Pinoy atheists but I didn't have time myself so it was a resounding failure. I have been organizing meet-ups and I was busy with my high school reunion meetings to have time to look after the PA meet-up. I have been doing this with the various groups I help keeping in touch. I have a group each for my HS and college friends, and a newwave music group. So far I have been most successful with the three having organized meet-ups for as much as twenty-five people excluding children. This was mainly because venue is not much of a problem in Laguna where most of my high school friends are. But organizing a Pinoy atheists EB is always difficult. Some wise guy once said organizing atheists is like herding cats. It has been proven once more that he is right on the money.

Get The Scarlet Letter

2008-01-07T02:43:00.001+09:00

If you are maintaining an atheism blog, you might consider being listed in the Out Campaign.

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-25T01:01:00.000+09:00

I tried my hand at creating a small video from a slide-show. Enjoy and please feel free to comment and/or criticize! BTW, the song title is Ask Me Jon by the Ocean Blue.

Edit. I have made 3 small edits on the original video. Here is an updated version.

New Old Blogs

2007-12-24T16:25:00.001+09:00

I have moved a few posts from the other blog that I have been rarely posting to and which is about technology and geek-speak. I am shutting it down. They are mostly under the tech tag.

Filling Empty Book Shelves

2007-12-24T14:30:00.000+09:00

If you have books lying around the house that you want to sell for cheap, please drop me a message kapanalig_sa_wala-at-yahoo.es (replace -at- with @). Please send me the titles and with the price and the conditions. I prefer books on history, Filipiniana, literature specially Philippine literature, philosophy, and art. No romance books please. I will be in Manila from time to time, I can contact you for a meet. No rush.

Foie Gras

2007-12-23T19:16:00.000+09:00

I was in the the office today from 8:30 in the morning until about 6:00 in the evening. Except for the short break around 10:00 am to pick up a ham and cheese sandwich and a big cappuccino from the cafe at the basement, I didn't take another break until about 4:30 in the afternoon. As a result, I was starved. I work in a really expensive portion of the city and I didn't intend to spend a small fortune for a quick meal so I went to the supermarket also located at the basement. I took a banana, a chicken and rice noodle salad, and what is labeled as something with (テリネ) terrine, salmon pie, and foie gras pate. I was so tired such that I merely mumbled when the lady behind the cash register asked me something and I think I said "はい、お願いします" without really understanding what she said. Back to my desk, and after a detour to the loo and the vending machine to get my limone tea, I thought to myself I should start with the foie gras as it looked - おいしいそう - so tasty. But wait a minute. Where's the chopsticks? So that's what the lady was asking me about! Anyway, the basement is too far to go back to and I most probably somebody else has been keeping some disposable chopsticks around and sure enough just a few desks away, I found them. Great foie gras using chopsticks! I took a bite and savored it. It really is so tasty! Why didn't I know about this before? Right then I decided that it's never to late to learn a few more things about it so I turned to the net to find out more about this very tasty something. But what I found out almost made me choke for two reasons. First is reading how foie gras is prepared force-feeding the goose or duck to make its liver grow abnormally bigger and second, because literally, foie gras is French for fatty liver! I know of a disease in humans of the same name and I thought it could not be any different given the way its preparation has been described. I was diagnosed with a fatty liver two or three years ago so I know it very well to make my imagination run weird things. I don't usually eat liver, except the occasional chicken liver and the canned liver spread. Moral of the story is the old cliche that if you want to enjoy what you're eating, don't bother finding out how it's prepared. I heard from my very knowledgeable ex-manager how some great tasting tender juicy Japanese beef are prepared but that's another story. Will I have foie gras again? I love steaks. Maybe I'll have foie gras with it occasionally.

Sorry, I forgot to take a picture. :)

Books On Origins

2007-12-16T22:41:00.001+09:00

The books currently in my small shelf. This section is where books on science and religion are lumped together. Due to lack of space (space is a premium in Tokyo!) and from time to time I ship my books to the Philippines such that they don't accumulate here. Shipping them over has its downside and upside. The downside is that I cannot just pick up a book if I like to. The upside is that I get to keep them even if they are so inconvenient for me. I'd rather ship it than give them to others here as what is customary once there is a space crunch at home.

I just got news that the first shelves in my home mini-library in Laguna are almost done. I hope they look good. My shelf here is one of the cheap assemble-yourself type so there's not much joy looking at the books since the shelf is so ugly. I may get the chance to come home yet this New Year's and I am excited with the book shelves. If it looks good, I'll take a picture and post it here.

The small purple book above is the Jefferson bible. A curious book the verses of which were based on the Christian bible and compiled by Thomas Jefferson, handpicking the non-supernatural portions of the four gospels and arranging them chronologically as he thought the events "happened". The huge book is Stephen Jay Gould's Structure of Evolutionary Theory. I still have to read it.

Clutter

2007-12-15T16:02:00.000+09:00

I just realized how cluttered my desktop has become in just a week!

Here is another shot taken a bit later. No wonder I couldn't find small items when I need them.

On the pictures is six-year old Yuki's monitor, an Eizo FlexScan L557. On the foreground is AnnieHall, the 3 year old PowerBook G4 I am using. I think the flat screen can be used in the Philippines. I read somewhere it's dual rated with 100/240 VAC but I couldn't confirm it yet. If so, I'll bring it home one day to make space to my desk and give me some legroom since Yuki's half tower is bulky, noisy, and dissipates a lot of heat, specially in summer. And besides, I have been using AnnieHall all of the time now proving that I don't need a Windows desktop any longer.

(This post has been moved from another blog I am thinking of shutting down.)

Obligatory Post

2007-11-28T00:43:00.000+09:00

Low Red Moon by Belly is playing on iTunes. I don't know what to write about. All I know is that I have to write something. This blog has been desolate for quite some time now. Neglected. I had been busy with a lot of things lately, mostly work or work-related. Nothing fantastic about if you may add. Something that wont go away and wont let up anyway. I am giving myself a small break tomorrow so tonight I can stay awake longer than what have been my recent usual bedtime. I may not be home by year-end. Everything is still not so sure given that I am responsible for a delivery of something important that cannot be delayed. I have to stay in the office even a few days of missed work-days can be fatal. I am writing this as a filler. So that the archive will not look ugly. LOL. Maybe I should talk more about work and less about other things since it's work that keeps me busy for most part of each passing day. As a matter of fact I came in late this morning at 10:15 right to the minute that I promised my team I would be in. There was the regular fire drill but I didn't participate. I told them my role this time is to be the unknown casualty to be discovered under the rubbles or the ruins after the fire shall have been been contained. I just came in, dude. Didn't want to waste my time, or what's remaining of it on something I think I am already certified given that I had participated in it twice or three times before... After getting coffee it's even 15 minutes shortened and yet the amount of work to be tackled for the day was unchanged and unapologetically keeping my mind busy... I'd better start digging in soon. Tomorrow morning I shall not be in the office though I may find myself logged in from home just to check on the guys and fire off some emails to make sure things don't stop and wait for my input when it's needed. I am but a small part of a huge machine we call The Corporation. This particular corporation happened to have some 100,000s moving parts. Each part has its designated role much like in a socialist state. Each role is deemed necessary though the degree of importance vary by degrees or orders of magnitude. There is a rationale behind each moving part however small. Just like there is a rationale for each moving part of a real mechanical apparatus like typewriter or a computer keyboard even. I fool myself that I am a part that is essential though I'm not. I can be replaced anytime. A commodity. I know this and I understand its implications. One day I may find myself replaced but the machine will continue to move on.

Unconditional Pardon?

2007-09-24T09:32:00.000+09:00

Today's news item almost made me fall off my seat:

"...deposed president Joseph Estrada on Sunday strongly indicated he would accept an unconditional pardon that would involve no admission of guilt, if Malacañang offered it to him."

This Erap guy is still in denial. By now, he should accept reality. He was found guilty beyond reasonable doubt so he is not in the position now to lay down any terms for his pardon. But we cannot really blame him. The GMA administration, it looks like, is willing to trivialize the otherwise very significance of Erap spending the rest of his life rotting in jail, deservedly if I may add, for serious crime of corruption, under the preposterous guise of "national interest" according to Interior Secretary Puno and according to the same news item. National interest my ass? Reducing if not eradicating corruption is for national interest. What he should look at, in the name of national interest, is how to reduce corruption under his responsibility.

This is what is so wrong in our country. Justice is prostituted by those in power. Petty criminals or even those that are just falsely-accused rot in jail even before their cases get resolved, if at all, while the rich and powerful talk about pardon for very serious crimes. To Mt. Puno, please use your time for more important matters please.

OFW Assistance Or Burden?

2007-09-23T02:10:00.000+09:00

I am an OFW. I mean, I now call myself an OFW. I don't like the term. It's not necessary. Or it's not necessarily applicable to any Pinoy who happen to be working outside the country because we all have our different reasons. One valid reason is that our government is grossly inefficient and our society is generally corrupted. I started to call myself an OFW because I was forced into it by our government. I hate dealing with our government bureaucracy. It always set me into cursing for the small stupid things that it makes you do before you can complete something, like filling out government forms. Let me narrate my latest story about this OFW thing. You can call it a tragedy, a comedy, or horror, depending on your mood. Here it goes. I went into a short holiday last month. All in all, I was in the country for about nine days. I didn't get an Overseas Employment Certificate or OEC (which always get me into trouble at the immigration) this time since going to the Philippine embassy in Roppongi is out of my way. I figured, I'll just have to get an OEC before I leave and before I check in my baggage because the last time I left the country, I was turned back by the immigration officer to get an OEC but that's another tragedy to narrate for another day. So departure date, the morning flight was delayed by four hours because there was a typhoon raging in Tokyo. I went to the OWWA office of the old terminal to get an OEC. The guy told me I needed to give him an updated copy of my e-ticket that reflects the flight time as 13:30, not 9:30 as the original flight time was. He said he needed it because I am a chance passenger. I explained that I was not a chance passenger, my flight was delayed by four hours because of the typhoon but he insisted. Knowing that I cannot win an argument against one-track mind people like him (I've dealt with his kind many times), I left and decided to check in first. (For those of you who have not heard of an e-ticket, your flight booking is stored in a system that is accessible anywhere given the right permission so what you have is a printout copy of your flight booking. It's a better system compared to traditional ticketing in the sense that if you lose your ticket printout, you can request a new one and you are guaranteed to get it since it's just a matter of printing out the e-ticket details again.) Anyway, since I thought I can get it only from the check-in counter since the airline doesn't hold office outside the terminal, I had no choice but to get inside the terminal and check into the counter and get it from the airline officer at the check-in counter. I queued up outside the airport terminal and finally was able to get to the check-in counter after about twenty minutes. I requested the lady if she could issue me an updated ticket that reflects the new flight time but she said they are not issuing such kind, and besides my printout is still valid and because there is no need of such updated printout. I said the guy at the OWWA would not take that explanation but she said that my flight details including the delay is posted in the OWWA office as well. Ayun naman pala. Okay, I had to go back to the OWWA office to give exactly that explanation. Since I already checked in, I had to exit through this small door which is right next to the OWWA office but I would have to surrender my boarding pass to the lady guard who will then give me the usual "bilisan mo, malapit na boarding ng flight mo" crap (translated: hurry up, your flight is close to boarding). She never fails to give me this each time the system gives me a hard time. So I got my small piece of cardboard that will serve as my claim ID when I come back to get my boarding pass. Thirty minutes later, I was back to the OWWA office. I queued and waited for my turn. There were about two dozen Pinays also queued up. When it was my turn, the guy said I was in the wrong queue but he signalled the next guy to take my case anyway so that I didn't have to go back to the end of The Right Queue. I tried looking for any sign or instruction that could possibly give me a hint which one is the right queue but there was none, as I suspected. Somehow, they think OFWs have some kind of power to tell which is the right queue or there would be a lot of cussing around the place because people are in the wrong queue half of the time (there are only two queues at the moment). The other guy gave me a form and told me to fill it up and go to the other end of the floor to get further instructions. The guy and lady at the other end examined my passport and had it photocopied. Then he told me to go back to the other end. I had to queue again to be fair to every other OFW. When again it's my turn, the guy told me I was in the wrong queue again. I would have argued but I thought I needed to exercise restraint because at this moment I was at their mercy, they can further delay me. The last time I tried arguing with the another OWWA employee during another earlier vacation, the OWWA employee tried to hoodwink me by inserting my Alien Registration Card between the receipts and telling me he already gave it back but I never took my eyes away from it so I was able to get it back. Going back to the story, he told me he could not issue my OEC yet unless I gave him a copy of my boarding pass. WTF?!? This doesn't make any sense at all! This statement put me into semi-argumentative mood in order to sway their mind why for the life of me, do they need that for? I said it's just the boarding pass, what's it got to do with all these? My flight was to board in the next sixty minutes and besides, they should know that the guards take the boarding pass when passengers exit the airport terminal. Hindi talaga pwede, balikan nyo na lang po. I stepped outside the office seething with anger now since I fail to see the point at all. The existentialists must be saying: I told you so. A lot of the fellow OFWs heard me curse "putang-inang OWWA talaga 'to kahit kailan pahirap!" as I walked away from the counter. I stepped outside and went to the terminal exit next door to get my boarding pass back but the security guards, including the lady security guard who was holding my boarding pass, wont let me even explain why I seem to be trying to enter the terminal through the exit door which is absolutely not allowed, and which I wasn't trying to. I tried to explain that I only wanted to get my boarding pass back which is right there with the lady guard. They told me I had to use the entrance door to get back inside. No lady, I am not trying to get inside. I am just trying to get my boarding pass which you are currently holding. As I tried harder to argue, yet another guard started to walk my way motioning that they are not interested in what I was saying, telling me to go back and use the entrance door. Fuck! I went to the entrance door jumping the queue since I could not lose another thirty minutes. The guards at the entrance told me to go back to the end of the queue since it's not fair for other passengers but what is fair in this scheme of things anyway? I explained that I already checked in and I am just going to get my boarding pass. After awhile they let me in. Once inside again, again I jumped the queue and went straight to the X-Ray machine and walk straight through inside. If I had a bomb, I could have easily did it. What security! I went straight to the lady guard and told them why they had to make me go all the way to the entrance door when all they had to do was give me back my boarding pass which was right in her hands. Obviously, they sensed that I was already angry and told me that I shouldn't be angry because they were just doing their job. The government must have been paying them to be stupid because that seemed to me to be what they were doing - to be complete stupid automatons unable to think on their own. I got my boarding pass now after badmouthing them. Another fifteen minutes later I was back in the OWWA office photocopy machine to have my boarding pass copied. I went back to the OWWA officer to give him the copy and he game me my OEC. I swear to the devil, I would have turned terrorist if they told me to go back again. Now my flight is about boarding time and I still had to go through immigration. I went to the entrance door jumping the queue again and again the guards told me to go back to the end of the queue. After a minute of argument, they let me in. I jumped the queue again in the X-Ray machine and went to immigration.

That's it.

If I may suggest a few improvements into the system. Here they are:

1) After check-in passengers should be allowed to get outside the terminal again without surrendering their boarding pass to the stupid guards at the exit door. There is absolutely no point for them to hold a passenger's boarding pass should the passenger need to exit the terminal.

2) Have a more efficient method in OWWA. Get another fecking photocopy machine right next to the guy at the counter who needs them copies. Don't have to require copying the boarding pass. They already copy the passport and visa and the ticket. It's more than enough information. In fact, don't require copies of the ticket as well. It's just a waste of paper.

3) OEC can be in the form of a sticker that is attached to the passport like a visa. It should have a fixed-term validity that is as good as the passport, say five years, and optionally applied at the same time as the passport, paid-for once. On immigration, it takes validity (exemptions) if when leaving the country, the OFW has a work visa.

4) Abolish the government.

The Origins Library

2007-09-22T14:42:00.001+09:00

The Origins Library. That's how I fancy the name of my future self-sufficient library that will house, hopefully, a comprehensive collection of great books on origins, most specially, human origins. I have started to collect the books by the greatest evolutionary biologists like Theodosius Dobzhansky, Sewall Wright, R.A. Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane, Motoo Kimura, John Maynard Smith, Stephen Jay Gould, Ernst Mayer, George Gaylord Simpson, Richard Dawkins, and of course Charles Darwin. A lot of things have been discovered, new ideas introduced, and old ideas refuted since Darwin. Evolutionary theory has undergone many revisions in the course of the last hundred and fifty years that Darwin's ideas are not sufficient to understand evolution in its current incarnation. I would like to get as many books as possible that contributed immensely to the current understanding and/or consensus on evolution as well as the current issues and debates peripheral to the theory. Aside from evolutionary biologists, I would also like to include books by Frans De Waal and Jane Goodall of which I have a few already, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas. I will post the list of books in a website I would like to build in conjunction with it for purposes of "advertising" it to the community. I would like it to be accessible to college students taking up biology as well as to teachers of science. I am still thinking of how best to manage it since the books are not so cheap specially if preference is given to hardcover editions over paperbacks to make them last longer.

The Origins Library, founded 2007.

Of Spambots

2007-08-26T02:34:00.000+09:00

I have added the "Humanizer" mod into the Philippine Atheists forum. From now on, spambots must contribute to the debate: the forum will now require that spambots express an opinion on the existence of god, in short, more human than robot. Soon we will see them categorized into two camps: on one side are believer bots, and on another, the non-believer bots. I am sorry to say agnostics wont be able to join the forum. :D Just kidding! Try it, you may be surprised that your answer may be acceptable.

Lost in Akihabara

2007-08-12T16:07:00.000+09:00

Akihabara is a district of Tokyo. It is the unofficial geek Mecca to the technology religious. I will never be lost in its streets. I guess I know its streets very well now. I have bought a lot of stuffs from there, including the used 14" CRT monitor for Hiroko, the first and cheap PC I built here to help me fight boredom in my serviced apartment. In Akihabara you'll find all kinds of things and merchandise and services that target the otaku. There were lots of people and there are girls dressed in different costumes called cosplay in Japanese. (Another place where cosplay is common is at Yoyogi Park in Harajuku.). Anyway, I went to Akihabara today straight from work around 3pm. It was very hot this afternoon but there were many people as usual, including the gaijins carrying big Laox paper bags filled with shopping merchandise as if it's the only store out there. I had to check at Tsukumo on what is the latest and hottest gadgets if I want to build a new PC. Based on what are now abundantly available, it looks like super-cooling your PC is now a necessary part of any new PC as a big portion of the 1st floor is dedicated to all kinds of schemes to cool the CPU, the case, the memory, the video card, etc. I was surprised at myself because nothing that I saw appealed to me. I usually get excited at seeing new motherboards and new peripherals but today I didn't have the urge to buy anything yet. I was kind of hoping I would be able to find a cable that will convert VGA or DVI into D4 for my TV but I was not so eager to look for it as well, and maybe I already saw it but I suddenly became uninterested. I went next to Yodobashi Akiba, maybe I can take a peek at the latest iMac released just last Monday. It was sexy. I would like to have one. Again I started to think about having Yuki exiled to Laguna to make some room in the 4.5 tatami room where I have my stuffs. Oh, I wish things will be so much simpler than getting caught in a desire for something I don't need at all. But who could not be tempted, 24" of beautiful pixel real-estate enough for an xemacs and many X terminals to be visible at the same time! No, I wont get lost in Akihabara, but I easily lose the sense of time, as I drift from store to store not just gawking but most of the time able to touch and feel and play around with the latest geek toys.

Each time I visit Akihabara, I had had to buy something, anything, before I can really go home. And if I didn't set out to buy anything in particular, I usually ended up buying something I didn't have immediate need for but still related to electronics. One time, I was so desperate I just picked up a Philips screwdriver just so I could start for home. Today I bought a cheap but cute red camera bag. It was 7:30pm and I was starving already so I had to really get going. I think it's a steal with it being a practical thing to buy.

Picture above is the Akihabara JR station on the side where Akihabara UDX building is located.

(This post is copied from another blog I am thinking of shutting down. 12.24.2007)

Of Macs and Men

2007-08-08T16:19:00.000+09:00

Whenever we visit Ginza, we always drop by the Apple Store. There, you can check the latest products and try them out. I love the latest notebooks specially the black 13" MacBook with a widescreen aspect ratio. I wish I have a penny for each of the things I want, but here in Tokyo where space is a premium, you can only have one (or two?) of them at a time. I am seriously considering ditching Yuki, my Athlon PC running Win2k, to make space for an Apple computer but I don't have a new home for her yet. I think I should ship her to Laguna but I have taken good care of her that parting with her will not be easy. And besides, she's got choice parts when I built her a good five years ago. She is sexy in the all-aluminum case, with a 500 watt power supply. I have not replaced a single part since I built her and I only re-built her OS once in her first year. Recently, Win2k support has been discontinued such that I have not been getting anymore OS update. This means, her OS is now officially, frozen in time, waiting to be euthanized when no more new software will be compatible out-of-the-box for her to run. Consider the latest digital cameras and mobile phones. The latest of these gadgets are no longer supported directly so I had to use a cheap flash card reader if I need to upload pictures. Going back to Macs, I thought I should get a Mac mini instead so that I can still use the monitor and the keyboard, and ship only Yuki's brain out but I read somewhere Mac minis are no-brainers but the next option is a PowerMac which I think is too costly for my own purposes as most of the time I will only be using her for no-brainer tasks like emailing and browsing porn so it wont really matter that much if I use a mini. Add to that the fact that it's simply too bulky for Tokyo reality. I may decide yet, when Leopard starts shipping.

The truth is, for a year now, I had been itching to give Yuki a make-over. I have not built a new PC for over five years and new technologies have been around and old ones that she was built upon have been obsoleted. I need to to be able to feel the new hardware whenever I click the mouse or save a file. But Yuki has been performing well. She has been hit by a few worms before that I had to remove manually and she always came out less and less prone to infection with every OS updates, maybe because the worm-making industry had shifted its effort to XP a few years ago. Since she has continued to give good service, I intend to reward her by not upgrading any of her parts and OS until they're really broken. I reckon I can still get good service for a few more years without breakage but Apple is really dishing out good arguments for it. The only complaint I have for Yuki is that she is a little bit noisy, with her three fans. (She has five but I disabled the two.) Well, let's wait a few more months then...

On Adobo

2007-08-08T01:08:00.000+09:00

One casual moment, my manager told me about his mother who likes to cook chicken avocado which he said is a Filipino dish but surprisingly there's no avocado in it. I was a bit puzzled because I never heard of such a dish before so I asked him more questions. Finally, I figured out he was talking about chicken adobo so I explained to him what is adobo. I explained to him (I could be wrong) that adobo is a Filipino dish, the main characteristic of which is that it has vinegar in it. It doesn't matter what kind of vinegar, as long as it has vinegar. That not all Filipino dishes with vinegar are called adobo while no adobo has no vinegar. No vinegar, you don't have adobo. (This is not the fact it seems.) But there are many ways of making an adobo, and none of them are more adobo than the others. For example, in eastern parts of Laguna, there is a very common but different kind of adobo - cooked with coconut milk - while I have never encountered it elsewhere, it seems like it's quite well-known in the whole country. On our part, we call it, adobo sa gata (adobo on coconut milk), and it's usually chicken.

Based on the above, it now seems that the word adobo is a generic term, and based on the above-cited Wikipedia article, is in fact, Spanish in origin, which means marinate. Not a surprise of course given that the Philippines was under Spanish rule and cultural influence for over three hundred years. So adobo means different things to different Pinoys, and non-Pinoys for that matter. There is a standard-carinderia adobo and sub-culture adobo cooked in a non-conformist kitchen. Arguably, today's adobo is not the same as yesterday's adobo since ingredients also change over time. Whereas now we use commercial vinegar, my grandparents used vinegar from Balian (Pangil, Laguna) which also implies that tomorrow's adobo will be different still. At any given time, there will be an adobo dogma and adobo heresy. There is traditional adobo and fusion adobo. I bet that if adobo ever attains international recognition (doubtful), in the same way that pizza or chopsuey did, it will be a relative adobo to the culture it finds itself into. Indian adobo will be spicy, while Japanese adobo will definitely have mirin in it. Perhaps a Korean adobo will have a hint of kimchi and a Saudi pork adobo, though a valid theory, is less likely to exist in practice at all, the idea itself considered absurd/heretical by the gastronomical orthodoxy held by the zealots but nonetheless merits serious attention that holding the concept in public discourse must be punishable by public decapitation. Yet all of these variations are adobo in their own right taken in their respectively proper context. As long as adobo cannot be reduced to mathematical and mechanical means, adobo will continue to be a concept with different meanings and different degrees of having the quality of adobo-ness taken from different vantage points.

Pictured above is a mean pork Adobo with hard-boiled egg, Tokyo, circa 2007 CE.

Niigata Earthquake Today

2007-07-16T15:43:00.000+09:00

Niigata prefecture (and Northern Nagano prefecture) was hit by strong earthquakes again today. The earthquakes are strong enough to be felt in Tokyo, where I live, as intensity 4 in the Japanese scale. Japan is probably the most earthquake prone country in the world. Ever since I came to Japan more than seven years ago, I could not remember a single year that an earthquake of considerable magnitude didn't strike, somewhere in the country. Here is a running list of earthquakes that has hit the country, updated automatically I presume: Japan earthquakes. What is very interesting though is how they have managed to live and deal with this type of natural disaster. For example, earthquake bulletin is really impressive, with reporting on the epicenter, the magnitude, and the depth of the earthquake are flashed on TV as it happens, followed immediately by the tsunami bulletin. Even the newsroom while the earthquake is happening are sometimes shown. For example, today's strong earthquake bulletin included footage of the Niigata newsroom. Because of these strong earthquakes that strike Japan in a regular basis, Japan maybe the most earthquake-aware and earthquake-ready population. Niigata was hit by a M6.8 (Japanese scale) earthquake three years ago. That year, the people most affected by the quake had a difficult winter. I hope the damages this time would be less.

Did Rizal Retract?

2007-07-10T23:46:00.000+09:00

Rizal was not Catholic. At least for most of his adult life. He was most probably a deist like most freethinkers of his time. Sabi ng Katolikong Simbahan si Rizal daw ay nag-retract ngunit walang matibay na prueba ang Simbahan. Maliban sa testimonya ng pari, ang "ebidensiya" ng Simbahan ay isang sulat daw na pinirmahan ni Rizal nung araw bago siya pinatay. Yung dokumentong ito ay "nawala" daw kasama na rin ng dokumento ng di umano'y Katolikong kasal ni Rizal kay Josephine. Hindi maipakita ng Katolikong Simbahan ang dokumentong sinasabi kahit na mailang ulit na hiningi ng pamilya ni Rizal. "Natagpuan" lang ang mga mahahalagang dokumentong ito noong 1935, o 39 na taon matapos ma-firing squad si Rizal. As suggested already, the Catholic Church should submit the supposed retraction letter to an independent forensic investigating body, for example, the FBI, to settle once and for all the issue that the retraction letter is not a fabrication but the Church has not been frorthcoming in this regard.

Venus Doing Good

2007-07-07T02:01:00.000+09:00

It's 2:00 AM and I am supposed to be asleep. Tomorrow i need to be at the office for some very important work. I came home late just one and a half hours ago having left the office around 10:30pm but dropped by the Izakaya where some friends are having a quick chat over beers and Japanese food. Then Wimbledon! I caught Federer's match against Ferrero where the world number one disposed of Ferrero in four sets. Next up is the Venus Williams Ana Ivanovic game which Venus won to advance into the final. Williams owned Ivanovic. The first set just ended after 35 minutes with the set going to Williams at 6-2. The second set also went to Williams with some spectacular play. I am rooting for Williams to win Wimbledon for the fourth time and she is now waiting for her opponent, most probably world number one Henin. I think Venus will beat her convincingly. Let's see.

The Power of Prayer

2007-06-28T23:11:00.000+09:00

Everytime I leave the office, I say my goodbyes to the people who are still working. In IT, you know a lot of developers do it as programming is a creative process. I have a few colleagues who are Pinoys and I always make it a point that I'd drop by their cubicles before I leave. My favorite expression to them is Magpakabait ka (be good). This evening, it's my turn to be left behind and W, my Pinay colleague who sits next to me, said the same thing. "Yes, I will," I replied. Then put my hands together as if in the act of praying. She said, being good is doing good not in praying to be good. Now, this is what I also believe. Being good has got nothing to do with praying. She said, it's like praying to be rich. You can pray all you want but no amount of praying, if praying is all you do, can make you rich. You have to work (hard) for it. That is obvious of course. What is not obvious for the believers though is this: you need not pray at all in order to accomplish anything, including getting rich. Prayer has got nothing to do with work. I asked her if she's heard about Occam's Razor. She said she haven't so I proceeded to explain it to her. What you have just told me is practical Occam's Razor. I will give you another example. I have this paper cup on my table. I placed it in front of me and pretended I was praying. I told her, I can pray all I want but the paper cup wont move, no Divine Intervention coming my way. I know it and she knows it and you know it but if you are a fanatic, you wont be able to accept it, but it's true nonetheless. What I can do is use my hand to move the cup, which I did. Normally, one would not see anything unusual in this simplistic exercise. It's not an issue as moving the cup is a straightforward undertaking where there are not much unknowns involved. But as more unknowns are added into the situation, as more ignorance is involved, bigger and bigger portion of the exercise are attributed by the religious that a Cosmic Force is out there helping us thus, "sa awa ng diyos, nailipat ko yung tasa." Such is the supposed power of prayer. To me, it's nothing but a function of the believer's ignorance and misguided belief.

I Love My Pointers!

2007-06-23T16:16:00.000+09:00

As I mentioned in the earlier post, I am very reluctant to switch to Java as my main programming language at work. Why? I guess one reason is that I have this fetish of feeling the wires of the machine in my own programs. I don't want to stay away from the 0s and 1s. As much as possible, I like to have the illusion of control on my pointers, memory, and registers. I tried looking for assembly language work but they were scarce then, and scarcer now than before, so I settled for C programming. When I first did C++/C programming, I immediately loved it. My cousin wanted to have a pulldown menu system in his Clipper application and I volunteered to write one for him, in C. I read up on how to interface Clipper with C modules. It was sweet. I like to visualize my functions on how they will look in the stack, how my data structures will populate the heap, what the application footprint will be. Because of this, I was slower than necessary in finishing my programs. I tend to do premature optimization and always conscious of memory footprint and application performance. This is a product of my abnormal passion to do assembly programming. I remember in COBOL class, my teacher Miss Chua noticed that I was having trouble with my workstation so she approached me to ask me what seemed to be the problem with my COBOL program. The assembly language program I was debugging in the COBOL lab was hung and even a Ctrl+Alt+Del wont do to abort it as the BIOS interrupts were messed up already. Yes, that was DOS era and I am talking about BIOS, interrupt handling, and a COM program as opposed to an EXE program. I was debugging a small COM program that's supposed to be for my Operating Systems class under Mr. Didulo, a memory-resident utility I affectionately called Looney Tools. It was made to intercept the BIOS keyboard interrupt and scan the key combination of Ctrl+Alt+T and it will kick in, much like the Borland Sidekick. She asked me if I wanted to do my COBOL machine problem in assembly. I restrained myself so I wouldn't get into trouble any further but deep inside of me, I wanted to scream: YES! Fuck COBOL, give my pointers back!

13 Years Of Being A Code Monkey

2007-06-19T16:11:00.000+09:00

Next month, I shall have been programming, officially as my job, for thirteen years. In all these years I have done mostly C++/C programming in various platforms including DOS, Windows, and now UNIX (Solaris). But nowadays, I have been spending less than half of my time on programming and finding myself doing more and more of paper pushing, chasing signatures, and being the dump site of the miscellaneous stuffs that other co-programmers don't want to do - mainly, paperwork. I am starting to feel I am losing that technical side the more I do this. Part of this is that I have been resisting being absorbed by the Java wave as I seem to be reluctant to spend considerable effort on getting acquainted with the Java class libraries. I have been doing mostly C++/C programming and with which I feel I am still not an expert, yet I must build my skills again from the ground up for yet another programming language. I have many books that I have yet to read but my motivation is so low. Part of this is because I don't see myself as programming in Java full-time but rather, the skills that I need to acquire is to give me a certain level of proficiency where I can jump into the code and fix small items to help the team by focusing on the things that don't seem trivial and easy while others devote their time and energy on solving the biggest issues of the day. Any problem that will require longer time to do than a day or two will just drag on and on as I get interrupted with the other stuffs that I would be looking after, e.g., replying to trivial queries from other groups, attending meetings, reporting status, and so on. I know this look like I am stuck badly but I see something at the end of all this. I know there is some value in what I do but I cannot give a name to it somehow. At any rate, I can go back to programming any time if I choose to yet I haven't done so. I am at the crossroad. I am re-thinking my next move all this time. Meanwhile, I am giving myself a few petty projects that should finally help me re-gain that competitive technical skills that I will be needing in the next few months.

Independence Day

2007-06-12T00:18:00.000+09:00

In my opinion, you don't have the magnitude to imply things like what you belive in, because if there's no God then you wouldn't have a purpose at all in this world even if you control the whole world with your computers.

If you will read "The Purpose Driven Life" and "Five People You Meet in Heaven" by Mitch Albom you'll be enlightened.

Believe you me I got this piece of unsolicited advice from somebody who admitted he got agitated because I wrote a statement of fact: that I don't believe in the concept of god. Based on this mere statement, he was able to write a lot about me. Frankly, I don't know how to react to his post because I don't like to stir the forum with a non-issue. But I think he read too much between the lines, flamed me, but got a blowback instead. Good for him.

I must tell him though, that the people who read The Purpose Driven Life are still in doubt about (a) their purpose, or (b) their life. Seriously though, I haven't read that book myself and I will do so only if somebody will lend me his copy - by all means, let me see if I will be enlightened! Do I need a purpose in life? Naaah. I am happy with what I have and what I am and what I live for. It doesn't sit well with me the idea that there is some cosmic force (farce?) out there that is interested in my life and how I live it, whether I screw up or not.

Happy Independence Day. I hope today your mind is free.

New Dawn Fades

2007-06-10T01:04:00.000+09:00

I am listening to Joy Division - my reliable source of self-induced depression. This song is one of the most intense I've ever heard and is a personal favorite.

New Dawn Fades (by Joy Division)

A change of speed, a change of style
A change of scene, with no regrets
A chance to watch, admire the distance
Still occupied, though you forget
Different colours, different shades
Over each mistakes were made
I took the blame
Directionless so plain to see
A loaded gun won't set you free
So you say
We'll share a drink and step outside
An angry voice and one who cried:
"I'll give you everything and more,
the strain's too much, can't take much more."
Oh, I've walked on water, danced with fire
Can't seem to take it anymore
It was me, waiting for me this time
Hoping for something more
Hoping for something else
Me, waiting for me this time
Hoping for something more.

Here is a great acoustic cover by John Frusciante. Please take note that the lyrics is somewhat different.

Zard Vocalist Sakai Izumi Dead At 40

2007-06-09T16:14:00.000+09:00

I was shocked and saddened to hear the news, though a week late, about the passing of Sakai Izumi, the vocalist of the very popular J-pop group Zard. When I first came to Japan, I immediately felt at home because of J-pop. I bought this cheap component system with MD player/recorder entirely from the points I got when I bought my SLR film camera from Yodobashi. I would borrow CDs from this CD/video/DVD rental shop near my place in Hatagaya (near Shinjuku via Toei Shinjuku line) and I'd record them in MDs. Zard was one of the bands I liked listening to because of the very enthusiastic beat that made me feel light and happy. Zard's melodies set me into an optimistic mood.

Here is one song I like to listen to.

She will be missed by fans.

Being Blunt

2007-05-30T00:28:00.000+09:00

My manager and a peer were discussing their project this morning and joking about it while I was staring at my PC when I thought I heard my name mentioned again so I peeked behind my monitor and asked them what it was they're discussing. They were telling me, as a kind of joke, that my manager should first convince me about something (I didn't really catch what it was) because I am hard to convince, as I am an atheist. My manager said, "but he is not an atheist" and turning to me repeated it, "you are not an atheist" and I replied: "What is it to you? Is it relevant to your project?" Yes was my peers reply. I asked them again, "how is my lack of belief relevant to your discussion or project?" My manager insisted that I am not an atheist. But I stood firm and asked him again "why is my belief a relevant subject in our work environment?" Sensing that I was serious, they changed the subject. Sometimes, you have to be blunt in order to deliver the message.

PhilippineAtheists.Org Is Offline

2007-05-28T02:13:00.000+09:00

It will be back soon. Apologies.

Rebranded!

2007-05-28T02:00:00.000+09:00

I have renamed the blog from Pinoy Infidel, Inc. to Kapanalig Sa Wala to give it a more Pinoy flavor. Also, I have revived a dead blog to separate my posts that are not about atheism.

Voter registration

2007-05-26T19:28:00.000+09:00

I was able to vote in the last election but not without a slight snag. My name was still in the voters' list but when I was to cast my vote, my name was crossed out already in the list inside the precinct (not the one posted just outside). The chairman (I don't know her) was for a moment at a loss. I insisted that I be allowed to vote and she relented.

My question is, how does the COMELEC decide who should be struck out from the list and who decides? What are the criteria used? I have been abroad for over seven years now but I always make it a point to come home to Laguna at least three times a year. I am building my residence in Laguna and am planning of opening up my business very soon, right in the same barangay where I am a registered voter. I have vested interest in the future of Laguna and have as much the same right to vote as anybody who is staying in Laguna.

Inefficient utility company or deliberate?

2007-05-25T23:55:00.000+09:00

I was in the Philippines during the last election. During the ballot counting, as this is not without precedent in in my hometown, power was cut-off many times, and at least in one instance, only in the portion where ballot counting was happening. This happened in the second level of the public market which is temporarily converted into public high school classrooms. I posted this in the community forum, just to ask the question since it seems it has not been mentioned at all:

I am wondering why the brownouts were never mentioned at all? Is it not important?

I was in Ibaba and in the upper palenke during the ballot counting and in one instance, the brownout hit only the upper palenke while in the heat of counting the ballots. After sometime, Ibaba had the power restored but the upper palenke continued to have no power for some time. It's totally irrational. It makes one think that it can only be explained as a purely deliberate action by somebody playing tricks on our townfolks as it happened a couple of times. I am not saying it's this or that camp. It could very well be just a prank but I am not sure if any effort has been made to find out why power was lost only in the upper palenke during the crucial moment of ballot counting. I have never seen anything like it before.

Just wondering.

I am waiting for the first ad hominem I'll get with this post. Pinoys are very sensitive and always resort to ad hominems as if it's always the best argument.

Freethought discussion group

2007-05-10T00:16:00.000+09:00

I will be experimenting on organizing an informal group of freethinkers or with people interested in what freethought is about. When on vacation in the Philippines, I spend most of my time in my hometown in Laguna so I think it's better to have a local group there where it will be more convenient for me. So far, I have received no email. I will keep the thread alive in case somebody notices, or maybe it will take off one day. One day may be months and months ahead. I'll be waiting. Anyway, my library is still not setup. I would like to have a plan of the library to be built soon. I will be stuffing it with books on history, philosophy, science, and religion. I envision a cafe+library style venue where there are few coffee tables next to the bookshelves. I already shipped many books but they are languishing in the stockroom waiting to be re-discovered. I will make sure the library will be available by the end of this year.

Updated PA.org Forum

2007-05-05T01:43:00.000+09:00

I took advantage of the Golden Week holidays to update the Philippine Atheists forum consolidating forums and posting initiating a few new topics. Hopefully, I can sustain this for some time until it becomes self-sustaining.

Re-organizing Pinoy atheists

2007-05-02T00:35:00.000+09:00

There is again an initiative to register a truly atheist organization for and by Pinoys. This time, it's being started by somebody new to the Pinoy Atheists mailing list. If you are interested, please visit the Pinoy Atheists for details.

Priest as drinking buddy

2007-05-01T01:10:00.000+09:00

This article from the Inquirer reminded me of an occasion many many years ago. When a HS friend of mine had his son baptized, one of the godfathers was the Paete parish priest of the time, also named Tony. He was a drinker and being the priest that he was, he can really sing (I always think priests are good singers) likes to sing as well. In fact, he had his own karaoke machine to bring along with him. While drinking, he told us stories and anecdotes about sex. Yes, he was a priest; a Catholic priest. I wonder where he is now?

After Holy Week

2007-04-11T02:14:00.000+09:00

Somebody commented that Holy Week must be the happiest holidays in Paete. I can only agree with him. It's during this time of year that friends and family alike gather together like that other holiday - Christmas - only better: no pesky ina-anaks. LOLs. The good part of Holy Week is that Christians or more precisely the Catholics and Aglipayans are not supposed to be obviously happy during this time and must pretend that they are grieving, and hence must not be somewhere else having fun like the heathens in Boracay. So your typical Paetenian Catholic family finds itself holed up in a small town of about 20,000 people with nowhere to go but in spite of it are genuinely happier. What I like about this special week is that people are up and down around town on slippers and pambahay endlessly checking the on-going preparation for the evening prusisyon. Most probably I'd bump into somebody I haven't seen for years. This year, I couldn't take a break since I have a more important reason to take my vacation next month. I wish I can take my usual vacation during next year's Lenten season. Until then, belated Happy Holy Week to the Paetenians!

A Matter Of Inconvenience

2007-04-09T00:11:00.000+09:00

I am starting to have a reputation in the office regarding my non-belief. I don't know why it had to be so since our company values diversity highly and put it in concrete written policy for everyone else to understand. Every opportunity, the word "diversity" is emphasized. Something that I fully believe to be sincere and effective. I believe religion has no place in our work environment so this incident came as a real surprise for me. Just the other day, A, was talking with R about something related to their project when I passed by them. I had to excuse myself since R was blocking the aisle. Then out of the blue R called on me and ask me: you don't believe in anything do you? I was a bit taken off. It was loud enough for everybody to hear and I can say I was a little bit "embarrassed" by the frankness of the question. I said, of course I believe in something. Please be more specific. In god. R: you don't believe in god do you? No, I don't. A: what? I am sure you must believe in something higher or anything like that. If you define god, I may answer in the affirmative. Now if you'll excuse me. Why did they have to do that? I never discussed my atheism with them. In fact, I don't discuss my atheism at work. Specially at work. It's a non-issue. I work in a company of diverse culture and presumably of belief. But could it be that some people simply assume that this diversity doesn't extend to non-belief in the same sense that many Filipinos simply assume that freedom of religion does not extend to freedom from religion since the constitution clearly states god almighty. Why does atheism seem inconvenient to the average believer? If I don't believe in their god, why is it a big deal? It's not that people of other religions share their belief so why is atheism being singled out?

Rizal No Retracto

2007-03-22T03:00:00.000+09:00

I found a gem of a blog. I am sure I will be back for more.

Short Film: Qwerty

2007-03-19T23:12:00.000+09:00

In the Pinoy Atheists mailing list, somebody posted a link to a short film by one Paolo Dy. My knee-jerk reaction was that I thought it was lifted from an X-Files episode. Maybe it's just a coincidence but the many similarities cannot be denied. Of course I wish it's really an original by a Pinoy artist but I have to entertain my doubts. Today I have some time so I searched the net to be sure that my initial reaction carried some weight. I found the actual episode titled Conduit and it was first aired in late 1993. A few links will help, here and here, with the latter even have a snapshot of the mosaic of the missing girl, Ruby.

How did it happen?

Maybe some alien civilization had abducted Paolo Dy in his childhood and implanted in his memory this particular episode of the very popular TV series, or maybe there was a time machine and the X-Files script writers saw Dy's short film and used it as a sub-plot to an upcoming episode back in '93. Maybe Dy watched this episode (very likely given the popularity of the TV series) and the memory quickly settled in his subconscious and this short film is some sort of an artistic Freudian slip. Whatever the case may be, and if I find some time, let me try visiting the nearest Tsutaya shop and borrow some old DVDs so I can make a better comparison. For now, all I can say is: the truth is out there.

BTW, the short film itself is not bad, to the credit of Mr. Dy.

Philippine democracy is a farce

2007-03-07T00:01:00.000+09:00

If the Filipino masses are intelligent enough to collectively arrive at decisions that are well argued and well thought of, our democracy will be a lot better shape than it is now. With the upcoming election, it's so obvious that our "democracy" is a cosmic farce. It will be proven once again when the votes are cast and counted, the winners announced. This is true at the local level, this is true for the national level. Our criteria and mechanism for choosing our public servants and leaders are irrational and not reliable. It is to the interest of the powers-that-be that the status quo be undisturbed. They need to keep the masses in line in order for them to continue to rule and enrich themselves. Our system is nothing but a public battle ground for families aspiring for power. Some things never change. We still have the ago-go Oreta of the Aquino clan as Exhibit A for this madness. We have old dynasties persisting, and new ones in the making. To my fellow Pinoys: congratulations, you deserve the clowns.

I Make People Sick?

2007-02-16T02:59:00.000+09:00

Somebody, told me a few hours ago:

pinoy_atheist2000 (2007/02/15 21:47:56): Your presence makes me sick

[sic]

I guess I can live with that. I don't have time to be bothered by people who have so much time in their hands that even my existence becomes an issue. Get a life, dude! Or better yet, get a girlfriend!

I Was Once An Atheist

2007-02-15T00:47:00.000+09:00

I often hear the score: like you "I was once an atheist" but I weighed the evidence and found {Jesus Christ|Allah|Natalie Portman} to be real! While I'd prefer not to doubt their sincerity, the phrase has become too common that it has now almost achieved cliche status. Now I take it as the usual yadda yadda you can skip to arrive at the point he/she is trying to make, and that is: I know the emptiness of your (atheism) argument because I have been there already and it ain't any better. I wasn't really a true believer so I cannot counter with "I was a believer once". All I remember is that I finally accepted "god" is nothing but an excuse not to pursue the big questions any longer. Once you accepted the "god did it" hypothesis as fact, all the important questions fall in the proper places, i.e., under the philosophical rug.

Confrontation or Tolerance?

2007-02-01T02:07:00.000+09:00

It's been a long time since this has been last asked. Are you for spreading atheism by openly engaging the religionists in debates or are you for a live-and-let-live approach?

When it comes to religion, I used to think that "live and let live" is a nice approach that avoids direct confrontation with the believers but if the belief is so stupid, I am for the open engagement, or on/about areas where religionist thoughts hold sway. Philippine society is soaked in religion and superstition even now that letting the religionists and superstitionists run the show is not good for our general health as a nation. I hope slowly we can weigh in on the public debate concerning policies that have basis on theism but that affect us all nonetheless.

Delusion & Reality

2006-11-12T10:12:00.000+09:00

"One man's delusion is another man's reality."

I heard a creationist tell me once before. Not that I subscribe to it but the die-hard creationists believe their world in as much as we do our own - and so to them, in some aspects of 'reality' with which we don't agree, am delusional, e.g., evolution. Taking this view will make the statement above 'true' based on their own POV. I don't think that my atheistic POV and their theistic POV are part of the same legendary elephant since atheism is the negation of theism - gods cannot exist and not exist (now nor before) at the same time. Although there are only two possible outcomes to the question 'does god exist?', it should be easy to decide which one is true and which one isn't true, right? It doesn't look like so clean given all types of variations of opinion in the spectrum . For me atheism is most probably true that I now take it for granted that it can be false. I'd say atheism is true by default - until theism is proven. (I hear the howls of the theistic defenders in the list now.)

But... I don't think the belief in a being called 'god' in itself is delusional. Delusion is too strong a word for me. But when the believer attaches many attributes and events to this 'god' such as that this 'god' is an active agent in their day to day lives, hhmm.... I believe that there are probably ET life waiting out there to be discovered but I don't think that intelligent ET have invaded our planets abducting humans (most specially American citizens) and experimenting on them.

About two weeks ago we bought this 500-piece jigsaw puzzle and started solving it but not before I took one piece and hid it in the binder on top of my PC table. As the puzzle requires a considerable effort, we only managed to finish 2/3 of it with the 1/3 lying unfinished for a week before it caught the fancy of my 4-yr old daughter again. So then we completed it except for one piece missing. I tried looking for it in the binder but it wasn't there anymore so I gave up. A few days later, my daughter found the missing piece under the rocking chair. When I asked her where she found it (it's a different piece from the one I first hid which I now presume to had been found by my wife earlier and put back into the puzzle box), my daughter said the fairy took it from the binder where she saw me looking days earlier, and the fairy moved it under the rocking chair. I told her that fairies are not real but she insisted so I did not pursue it. Is my daughter delusional? I'd think she has been deceived - that fairies exist - so I am reminding her from time to time that fairies are not real - just stories for kids. God is also just a story or but unlike fairy tales, it's one tale that most of us will be believing well into adulthood. Kids are fine for sometime believing in fairies but as for adults? I'd still say that most have been honestly deceived but if believers say their 'god' started talking to them, say to invade Iraq, that is delusional.

All For A Pack Of Lies

2006-10-31T01:19:00.001+09:00

These soldiers died as well as tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, all for a pack of lies.

Pesky Born Again Christians

2006-10-09T23:43:00.000+09:00

Once again, in a public forum, I found myself at odds with a born-again Christian who is so "sure" he holds The One Truth(tm). The discussion was for awhile about why the woodcarving industry of Paete has been on the decline while at the same time that of Betis (Pampanga) is slowly taking the title away from Paete. The first post was by a young priest commenting on the quality of religious carving from Paete in particular, based on a recent personal anecdote. Then out of the blue, this born again Christian, like a true disciple of his faith, started preaching on the Catholic "sin" of idolatry supposedly by commissioning graven images. While I would say the born again Christian have some small plus point on this issue (if the god of the bible exists of course) about what the bible say about graven images (of dead people also called saints by the Catholics) even if it's just for "veneration" (what does it really mean anyway), I find it funny only because I think both Catholics and born again Christians are arguing about something, in my view is completely worthless. At least some believers are honest to admit what is essentially very close to agnosticism. For example, one wrote

"sa pagkaka alam ko walang sinuman ang nkaka alam kung sino at saan ang daan para maligtas" [AFAIK, nobody knows who (will be saved) or which way is salvation].

And another replied:

"Base sa likas na kakulangan ng tao, ay totoo ang sinabi mo na walang sinuman na nakakaalam kung sino at kung saan ang Â“kaligtasan. Itong kaisipang ito ay Â“pinagtitibayÂ” (?) ng seglar (secularist/humanistic/anthropological/rationalistic) na kabihasnan." [Based on the limitation of humans, what you said is true that nobody knows... This is reinforced by secular (humanistic/anthropological/rationalistic) civilization]

If only they can translate that "nobody knows" into something else altogether and stop arguing about it since if "nobody knows" about the topic, how do we suppose the discussion will be meaningful? You will find the rest of the postings here.

Affable Atheist

2006-09-17T02:30:00.000+09:00

Affable atheist.

The Unholy Father Apologizes

2006-09-17T02:11:00.000+09:00

Holy Cow! Mr. Pope apologized to the Muslims. It's a good sign or what? This pope guy is not "sinless" or "holy" - whatever those words mean. He is just as human as anybody else, prone to commit mistakes. Haha.

Anger with Pope Benedict XVI had intensified across the Muslim world Saturday, uniting Sunni Islam's leading authority, Malaysia's moderate premier, and Afghanistan's extremist Taliban militia.

Now, that's a potently dangerous mix of nutcases to get angry at the pope, don't you think? Is Mr. Pope afraid of going to heaven now courtesy of a fatwa?

OFWs as Export Commodities

2006-09-10T22:59:00.000+09:00

Japan and the Philippines signed a free-trade agreement. Its most important feature is the provisions on the movement of labor. Rather than bringing the jobs home, this fake Arroyo administration sees OFWs like myself as export commodity. When I was to leave for Tokyo last June, the immigration officer held me until I produced a POEA permit. I don't usually get an OCW permit because of lack of time and to avoid the hassles of dealing with the bureaucracy. But if I didn't get the permit, I had to pay for travel tax and terminal fees for me and my family. Last June, I had to pay for three people, but still I had to go back to the POEA because the immigration officer wouldn't let me leave, which I could not afford. At the POEA desk, I had to argue with the guy on the desk because he was not very quick in processing my request, my flight was close to boarding and he was not in a hurry at all pausing to listen to his colleagues gossip. After getting my POEA permit, I went back to the desk where I earlier paid for my travel tax then terminal fees if I could get my money back (1,600 + 550 for three people or about 6,500 pesos). They said I can only get my refund from the main POEA office, which I suppose is the one in EDSA corner Ortigas avenue, and which is like saying: good luck dude. We always have to pay dearly for our government's inefficiencies. After going back to the immigration officer with the permit, she had to give me a lecture about the importance of getting the POEA for my own protection from my employer. I told her I work for a very good company, which is a fact. This company has done me more good than any of our government agencies, save the public school system. (I attended a public elementary school.) She insisted that I was making a mistake by not availing myself of the POEA permit, that if in case problems erupt in the country where I work, I will be helped by OWWA because I am registered. BIG DEAL. The war in Lebanon highlighted what kind of help I shall be expecting if and when that actually happens. The OWWA didn't have the funds nor the muscle for such a situation. Our govenrment is so weak and ineffective when dealing with events outside our country, and yet, one of the main push of this government is to continue to commoditize its citizen, to deploy to all corners of the world. If penguins hire househelps and nannies, we'd be in Antarctica.

Our government negotiated the free trade agreement with Tokyo which includes the provision for the deployment of nurses and caregivers. The pact is about free trade. We get electronics, in exchange, the Japanese gets our nurses among other commodities. Fair trade?

Deja Vu

2006-09-08T00:49:00.000+09:00

A few hours ago as I just stepped into the elevator at the train station, I had my book (The World Is Flat by Friedman) ready on this page with my index finger acting as bookmark. I had been reading the book in my commute and it was such a good read I could not close it even as I walk to the turnstiles. Just as I stepped into the lift, I opened the book to continue reading it, I had a deja vu. Not only that I thought it was queer coincidence but a few moments right before the deja vu happened, I thought I predicted that I would be having the deja vu. Afterwards, I kept on thinking how was that even possible? In the end, I thought when I first got hold of the book, I must have casually opened it in that exact page and read a paragraph or two, but which I already put deep in my subconscious for forgetting. Then since I take the elevator quite often, the memories of both events were combined to make the collage that is the deja vu. Plausible? Hhhmmm....

Book on Japanese Occupation in Ilo-ilo

2006-07-26T01:08:00.001+09:00

I just finished reading this book by Jose Maria Lacambra, Rising Sun Blinking: A Young Boy's Memoirs Of The Japanese Occupation In The Philippines published by Sinag-Tala Publishers. The copyright says that it's published in 1994. I picked it up in one of those numberless visits to Powerbooks' Filipiniana section but I kept on putting it down after starting to read it a couple of times. A few days ago, I ran out of light and small books to read on my commutes to and from the office so I picked it up again and at last I was able to finish it. I found it a good book overall and at only PHP100.00, it's a steal. Google only managed to give me 2 links to it when I turned to the web to see if it has caught the fancy of somebody else and posted some more info about it or the author online. The book is a light read and is only 250 pages but it did manage to capture some of the characteristics and traits of the Pinoys. I give it a four out of five stars and recommend it to all Pinoys most specially to Ilonggos and Guimaras islanders.

Tommy's Story

2006-06-08T02:05:00.000+09:00

This is about the story of Tommy on which I was commenting on in one of the forums I participate in.

-------------------
a wrote:

Dear ----:

I guess the story is really told from the perspective of the instructor, John Powell. And you are correct, there was no direct mention on why Tommy was looking for God. However, Tommy did say the following:

Oh, yes, very sick. I have cancer in both lungs. It's a matter of weeks....
Well, it could be worse.
Well, like being fifty and having no values or ideals, like being fifty and thinking that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real biggies' in life.

But of course! Thanks for pointing it out. Not believing and having no values nor ideals are two separate things. This makes the story suspect because it is associating atheism with *vices* when it's not really necessary. I searched for it in the net. Although Mr. Powell is still alive to confirm the story to be "true", unfortunately Tommy is no longer here to dispute it. For the sake of discussion, let's asume the story is true. But first, we must admit that one can be a believer, be fifty and think that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real biggies' in life. This is so obvious now even as we speak.

As for meaning, one can be a non-believer and still find meaning (think Sartre here). Meaning is not the monopoly of (Christian) believers.

On Kant (so far I have only read his introduction to his philosophy Logic so I may be off the track here. This is how I'd put it using my own understanding.), if there must be an absolute code of morality - The Right Thing (tm) - then even a god must be governed by this absolute code. For example, if murder in any context is absolutely unjustifiable, then even god will have to abide by it. But if god is exempted, i.e., if a god sanctions murder (e.g., god of the Old Testament) and if this is justifiable simply because it's god (I have heard this often enough that even genocide is justified if it's god who is doing/ordering it) then there will be no absolute code of morality because god must be following a separate rule (murder is okay), while humans follow another set (murder is unjustifiable). But.... if there must be just one absolute set of values (e.g., murder is in any time and all cases is absolutely unjustifiable), then this absolute must be above both gods and humans alike. That god must abide by this same absolute code, it then follows that the same absolute code can and must be existing independently of the gods. Therefore you don't need a god in order to have absolute set of values. OTOH, if god is required in order to define this absolute moral code, again morality becomes arbitrary because god can say murder is a virtuous act and because it was god who said so, it becomes absolutely the right thing to do, magically. If, as you say, human minds can grasp these supposed absolute code of morality, why do we *have* cultural relativism? And why is morality evolving? Whereas slavery and race segregation used to be acceptable in the southern states, they are not now? And very recently, the Philippine congress moved to abolish capital punishment whereas it was re-instituted as lately as 1993?.

I personally believe that people do the right thing because they think it's the Right Thing to do given the context or circumstances. Man is capable of weighing the quality and consequences of his actions and act morally. Even if there is indeed an absolute code of morality, it still doesn't follow that there must be a god who put it there (Occam's Razor). It's just there. Now, Tommy could have been a better person than he already was without having to believe. This reminds me of this challenge made by one fundamentalist Christian website on whether turning to atheism could make an ex-believer a better person for example by making him stop beating his wife. The idea being, that there have been atheists who have lead sinful lives but who have stopped beating his wife after turning Christian. The question that should have been asked in the first (Christian) case was pointed out by one visitor is that, why despite being a Christian would one would lead *sinful* ways and want to beat his wife?

I apologize if I seem to be out of context. This being under the inspirational and spiritual. I just think that if a story should inspire us or uplift our "spirits", it must not come at the expense of other religion or in this case, non-belief. Just in case you are wondering, I do have very strong opinion against religion (not on belief itself) and its effects to our society but I put it somewhere else. For me, mere belief and non-belief are not ethical systems by themselves.

Silly Music Videos

2006-05-22T02:38:00.000+09:00

I'm an 80s person. The hair, the Molly Ringwald movies, and the silly music videos.

Oh, would if I could go back to the time of less care and worries.

Catholic Education: Good or Evil?

2006-05-18T01:19:00.000+09:00

My 3 1/2 year old daughter is attending a Catholic-run yochien since they came back last week. This morning, they had an activity for the Marian Festival. They had to bring flowers and offer them to, I presume to be, a graven image of Mary. My wife told me my daughter was asking her WHY do they have to offer flower to it. I couldn't remember if she told me what answer she gave her. I was alarmed because my daughter is just 3 1/2 years old. Even the coloring materials are pictures of Mary! My wife is Catholic. Because the yochien is near our place it is very convenient for us but I feel uncomfortable about the quick turn of events. My wife thinks it's okay because my daughter can always change her mind later just as *I* changed my mind on the matter. I am not worried about that. What I am worried and against is that why do they have to put the kids at such tender age to such activities centering to what I think is a LIE. I am afraid it's gonna make an impression on her and may confuse her later on. I plan to convince my wife to transfer our daughter to another non-religious yochien next year. It's gonna be a long argument about something that I had been avoiding for the longest time. I had given her many reasons why those activities are bad but since she is herself Catholic and a believer, she is quite irritated by my arguments and wont entertain anymore of it so I usually stop before if I see signs of breaking point. I will continue next opportunity to again argue my case but I would like to ask others who have been in the same situation before what have they done, by experience, given a similar situation and what have been the results.

I have many friends who are of different beliefs but at the same time were also Catholic-school educated since, they say, in their place the Catholic-run schools are simply the best in their country. This is of course debatable given that being religion-run, the world-view and frame of reference itself may exclude the teaching of more "radical" theories because the education policies are being decided by religious orders who have something to protect. This is exactly like in the high school I attended where sciences were deplorable. For example, biology should teach evolution as a science devoid of any references to religion but all I could remember being taught were taxonomy, cells, basic anatomy.

Gloria Should Learn Honesty From Singapore's PM Lee

2006-05-09T02:42:00.000+09:00

Letter I sent to INQ7.net just now. Please refer to this link for further reference.

---------------------

Dear Editor,

That the Philippines is truly the basket case of Asia is no longer disputable. Why we are a long way to go in the Asian Politician Honesty survey. Take for example the recent elections in Singapore where PM Lee said:

"What is the opposition's job? It's not to help the PAP do a better job ... because if they help the PAP do a better job, you're going to vote for me again and they're going to be out of a job for a long time. So their job is to make life miserable for me... Suppose you had 10, 15, 20 opposition members in Parliament. Instead of spending my time thinking what is the right policy for Singapore, I'm going to spend all my time thinking what's the right way to fix them, to *buy my supporters votes*, how can I solve this week's problem and forget about next year's challenges?"

On fixing the votes, it seems that Gloria needs to learn a lesson or two from PM Lee about honesty. Why say "I'm sorry" when you can just brag about it?

Sincerely,

CC: INQ7.net feedback
PDI feedback
blog

She Is Not My President

2006-05-07T23:29:00.000+09:00

I have been listening to the voice recordings including the "Hello, Garci" and the "I'm Sorry" speech by Gloria. There are many things wrong with it. This president is making us look like fools. She is not my president.

Numbing Pain

2006-05-07T01:13:00.000+09:00

For the past six hours I have been feeling a slight discomfort. My chest muscles and neck seems to be numbed I have to exert some effort to really ignore it. Must be caused by my erratic schedule the past few days, being holidays here - oversleeping and eating unhealthy food at the wrong hours and intervals. I will try to go sleep now.

The Doctor Is Out: A Reaction

2006-04-29T12:49:00.000+09:00

There is this tragic story in the INQ7.net today (4/29/06) about a doctor studying to become a nurse so she can leave for the US. I am not a nurse but I can sympathize with the author being an "OFW" myself. I spent six years trying to "resist assimilation" by rejecting the invitations of my college friends who had shipped out to the US, Europe, and Singapore within the first three years of their IT careers. I can say, I was not in financial want but eventually, me too had to fly out. I would have stayed longer were it not for more reasons not entirely everything economic. Now, I am not sure if I can ever go back because to do so, will mean having to give up the small conveniences you can enjoy by living in a more egalitarian society. Every time I come back for a vacation, I get frustrated and distressed by what I see. I would like our nation, our people, to change for the better, to progress in terms of human spirit, to mature intellectually and economically, for our government and society to address the current gross inequity amongst our people and be the latest Middle Class Economy, so that our doctor neighbors like Czarinah Pagay will no longer find a reason or the need to fly-out, to make a forced-move career-change midstream. Our society need not aspire to be an economic powerhouse like Japan, or a military powerhouse like the US, all she needs is to provide equal opportunity for everyone to choose the kind of life they want to live, with no second class citizens. To let everybody be in control of one's fate provided he/she respects the rights of others to be equal to his/her own. I'd bet that what most would want are just the bare minimum, the basic things like health, food, shelter, literacy, security, peace and quiet, and the small savings that will help us get through our retirement in simple comfort. I am sure many of us - a minority - have already achieved some or all of those wants I mentioned - our bottom-line - but I am also sure that we wish the same bottom-line to be available for the big majority as well as this reduces our anxiety on a day to day basis not having to trouble ourselves with the thought that our neighbors are practically starving or even dying of diseases that could have been prevented were it not for the cure not forthcoming because the doctors are out.

Sincerely,

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INQ7.net Feedback
Pinoy Atheists, off-topic
Joseph
Eric
Max
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CHEd To Investigate Pangilinan

2006-04-27T22:52:00.000+09:00

The news item today about CHEd ordering the investigation on the recent heckling of PGMA in Cavite State University by graduating students led by Maria Teresa Pangilinan for purposes of imposing sanctions to the protesters, is truly nauseating. What should be investigated is the vote stealing by PGMA which is the root cause of all these. These people - Arroyo and her lapdogs - are really shameless. If there is somebody or something that warrants immediate, thorough, and impartial investigation, it's the biggest theft of all - the presidency itself.

-------------------------

Above, modified slightly and sent to INQ7.net feedback section:

The news item today (PDI, 4/27/06) about CHEd ordering the investigation on the recent heckling of PGMA in Cavite State University by graduating students led by Maria Teresa Pangilinan for purposes of imposing sanctions to the protesters, is truly nauseating. Arroyo should not be surprised by the heckling at all. As the cliche goes, "respect is earned." These people - Arroyo and her lapdogs - are really shameless. If there is something that warrants immediate, thorough, and impartial investigation, it's the biggest theft of all - stealing the presidency itself. It is the root cause of all the mess our nation now finds itself in.

Incoherent Article in INQ7.net

2006-04-18T01:59:00.000+09:00

This is a letter I sent today to INQ7.net. The article is a confused one about secularization or so it seems. Click on the link and go judge for yourself.

----------
Dear Editor,

This is about the article titled "Gullibility" (PDI 04/17/06) by Antonio Montalvan II. I don't quite understand why a paper of your stature allows articles of such low quality to be printed in its pages. This must be one if not the most incoherent article your paper ever allowed to see print. I understand that the amount or articles that the editors have to sift through on a daily basis is just enormous but this one at least should not have been allowed to pass even an assistant proofreader's eyes if only to correct the atrocious sentences.

I originally set out to rebut the assertions he made against secularization but the gist of his message escaped me completely.

Please take this constructively.

Thank you.

Refreshing Lenten Season Article

2006-04-16T18:56:00.000+09:00

Dear Editor,

I would like to congratulate Neal H Cruz on his article about the origin of the bible which appeared in Inq7.net (4/12/2006) titled "Where did the Bible come from?" As our country celebrated the Lenten Season, it's refreshing to read somebody who tries to
shed light on the origins of the bible under the light of historical facts. It comes as a respite for irreligious people like me when the whole week newspapers are filled with tiring articles about faith and religion.

Sincerely,

Letter sent to INQ7.net feedback and cc'ed a couple of friends.

Holy Week in Paete, Laguna

2006-04-12T23:58:00.000+09:00

If you have visited the Philippine Atheists web recently, I posted two pictures of the traditional afternoon procession of the dead Christ in Paete, Laguna. This procession is called locally as Dapit. In my whole life, I have been only a spectator of the Friday events, except one time when my college friends came over for a visit. But I used to participate in the Wednesday events way back before then. Dapit starts at around 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon so the sun is still blazing and hot. The poon is brought to the Catholic church for the mass later in the evening followed by the evening procession. Here are more pictures that came with those I posted in the website.

In the first set of pictures, the figure is taken from the Catholic church and brought to the house of the family who owns it. Then on Friday afternoon, it's taken out for Dapit (the pictures I took) going back to the church for mass. The Friday evening procession is the "main event" of the Holy Week celebration in this town of about 23,000 people. I hope others will post more pictures later. It's only today I learned that there are more ceremonies/rituals with the same poon.

These Holy Week events have become a popular tourist attraction for some time now. It's also the time where townfolks who have settled elsewhere come back and visit their remaining relatives which is one good reason to go home on these days as the town comes alive with plenty of out-of-towners. It's also the perfect opportunity to catch up with old friends who take their vacation during this time of year to come home.

On Good Friday, no marching bands will accompany the processions, neither will the bells be knelt. Instead, pieces of metals attached to small planks of wood will be used like clappers (forgot what its called) together with split bamboos are used throughout the procession for sound effects. The bells will not be knelt until early morning of Easter, when another procession traces its way across town with the poon Risen Christ.

PhilStar Quote of the Day

2006-04-09T20:56:00.000+09:00

From PhilStar.com today:

"There would be no crown-wearers in heaven had Christ not been the cross-bearer on earth."

I wonder what this means? I wonder what's going on inside the head of whoever is responsible for these quotes appearing in a respectable nationwide broadsheet?

Waiting For A Week Or Two

2006-04-01T11:22:00.000+09:00

...for your letter to the editor to be published may be a good idea. I sent an an email about the main editorial (3/21) and it got published just today. I sent that a few days earlier than the one I sent about Orbos' column. (See previous post.) I should watch out for the change of title though because it looks like they do that fairly common. Or maybe I have been choosing bad titles. :)

Spreading Lies and Half-truths

2006-03-27T02:01:00.000+09:00

In his column Moments in the article titled "Spread light, not lies" (Mar 26, 2006), Orbos started off with telling a lie masquerading as a "good" story. Of course we know that the story is just fiction. When you tell that to the kids, let them know that it's just a story created to promote a lie at the expense of non-believers. In the same article, he wrote "A Catholic dines at a restaurant and orders shark, dolphin and whale meat. Told that there was none, he right away orders roast beef, lechon and steak thinking that, at least, he tried to order fish." Well, the thing is, only shark is a fish. Dolphins and whales are mammals. Talk about spreading lies and half-truths.

Sincerely,

------------------

I sent the above letter to the editor of Inq7.net, a shorter version of the previous post.

Spreading Lies

2006-03-27T01:30:00.000+09:00

In the INQ7.net article yesterday (Mar 26, 2006), the priest Jerry Orbos in his column Moments : Spread light, not lies he started off with telling a lie masquerading as a "good" story.

THE story is told about an atheist couple who had a son. Both parents never told their child anything about God or about Jesus. One night, the couple had a fight where the father shot the mother and then shot himself. It all happened in front of the child. The child was sent to a foster home. One day, in a Sunday School, the teacher held up a picture of Jesus and asked if anyone knew who it was. The child in our story raised his hands and said: "That's the man who was holding me the night my parents died.

Of course we know that the story is just fiction. When you tell that to the kids, let them know that it's just a story. Just like Jesus Christ is just a story. In the same article, he wrote:

An example of the absurdities of a liar: It's Ash Wednesday. A Catholic dines at a restaurant and orders shark, dolphin and whale meat. Told that there was none, he right away orders roast beef, lechon and steak thinking that, at least, he tried to order fish.

Well, the thing is, only shark is a fish. Dolphins and whales are mammals. Talk about spreading lies and half-truths.

Duh? Atheism List?

2006-03-26T01:21:00.000+09:00

The Pinoy atheists are in a cunundrum. A poll was conducted to determine if the atheism list should rid itself of a believer who has made it a point to make it his turf and think it’s his right to defend his belief when it’s being attacked by atheists. Does that make sense? But it seems it does to some atheists if we are to take the result of the poll as an indication.

It’s only in Pinoy atheists where a Christian runs amuck and atheists think that such behavior is necessary for the health of the discussion, or to serve as a reminder of how far stupidity can go. The same nutcase claimed that “god is energy” and the resident irreligious members think that they are learning from such claims. It’s also in Pinoy atheists where posts by believers - believer really, since there is only one very active nutcase - is a good percentage of messages. It’s only in Pinoy atheists where you can see that believers complain about being provoked by atheists (duh? as expected since atheists are irreligious) and getting sympathies from the atheists! On first glance, an atheist who is willing to join might mistake the list as an INC-ADD debate list and turn away. No end to be in sight, the debate has caused undue distress to some of the early members who never intended the list to degenarate into its current state where discussions have been hijacked from being mostly secular to just about anything nonsense and a long parade of name calling. If there are topics that the non-believers try to bring up for secular discussion, they are quickly lost in the longest raging debate that should have been moot and academic in an atheism list.

PhilStar.com Daily Quotes

2006-03-21T23:51:00.000+09:00

From the PhilStar.com main page today (3/21/2006):

"No trial would cause us to despair if we knew God’s reason for allowing it. "

This PhilStar feature - quotes at the bottom of the main page - is now a source of humor for me. Sometime ago, they had this really stupid quote:

"The question is not 'Where is god?' but rather 'Where isn't He?'"

Whatever the question is doesn't really matter. What matters is the answer. Chuckles. If they are not so sure about the question, why do they seem to be so sure if the answer really constitutes knowledge?

Letter to the Editor - Orwell's "1984"

2006-03-21T19:11:00.000+09:00

A few minutes ago, I sent this letter to the editor of Inq7.net.

This appeared in your editorial today (Inq7.net, 3/21/2006):

"'1984' is a chilling portrayal of a totalitarian society. It was meant to be prophetic, and it came true in Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Mao’s China and Kim Il Sung’s North Korea. It is happening in other countries now."

Orwell wrote "1984" in 1948 (published 1949), well after the downfall of Hitler's Nazi. Stalin's term of office started in 1924 and ended in 1953. The purges under Stalin's rule started even before the second great war or a decade before the book was written. The book therefore is not prophetic inasfar as the two cases are concerned.

What This Is About

2006-03-19T02:54:00.000+09:00

This is my space for writing anything not necessarily about atheism nor geek stuffs. Instead, I will put my thoughts on many other things that interest me. I figured, maybe the reason why I was not very productive writing is that because I am trying to write on one area only suppressing my ideas about my other interests - because the outlet is a very narrow one. So here you go, a new blog! I deleted my earlier blog in another blogging service. I hated that blog. And the colors, pamatay!