Cory Aquino dies

President Cory Aquino died today, she was 76.

Here's the news from the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

I hope the Filipino people will still remember what she did during the People Power revolution. Lately though, it seems that the newer generations are tired of fighting.

Jackie Chan Commercial

I got some responses from my post about "Weird Jackie Chan Commercial". I said on the post, "I guess in Asia this ad makes sense. But in the US, they don't get it."

If that offended anyone, I apologize.

I did not mean to offend Americans. I was basing that comment based on what I read from Gizmodo, which is an American company and based on some comments on Digg. I should not have generalized.

What I should have said was, "I guess in Asia this ad makes sense. But in Gizmodo, they don't get it."

Here's the ad again. Cheers!

Seth Rogen Talks About Being Rejected by Megan Fox

Weird Jackie Chan Commercial

I guess in Asia this ad makes sense. But in the US, they don't get it.

Yahoo Search is Dead

Yahoo search died today. If all goes well, Microsoft's search engine called Bing will be taking over Yahoo Search. Microsoft launched Bing two months ago and currently owns 8 percent of the U.S. search market.

This partnership/takeover is a way for both Microsoft and Yahoo to fight against Google who owns 65 percent of the U.S. search market.

In the deal, Microsoft will provide the search engine and Yahoo will provide their experience in selling advertising. In terms of payment, Yahoo will get 88 percent of the search advertising revenues on Yahoo owned sites every year for the next 5 years.

This is good for Microsoft since they don't have to pay anything upfront and they immediately get ad selling experience and access from Yahoo. From the looks of it, Yahoo might be getting the bad end of the deal as they only get paid on searches in Yahoo sites while Microsoft gets paid on every search whether Yahoo or Bing albeit only 12% on Yahoo sites. But easy enough for Microsoft to eventually draw users to Bing instead of Yahoo in the future.

Once Microsoft gets all the knowledge, database and access to Yahoo customers, guess where that leaves Yahoo?

I feel sorry for Yahoo. It was such a great site when it started. I remember using it all the time before Google came along. I stopped using Yahoo when they concentrated more on being a portal than a search engine. They started outsourcing their search engine to Inktomi, then to Google, then bought out Inktomi to have more control of their search and compete with Google.

The main problem with Yahoo for me was that it was too busy. It like it better when it was simple back in 1995, even the 1997 page was still ok. But when they started adding more stuff to their page in 2000, I started looking to other search engines.

I also found Google's search result to be better than Yahoo's. Who knows, maybe in a the next 5 years, I might switch to Bing.

Funny Filipino Signs 3

Funny Filipino Signs 2

Funny Filipino Signs

Man Builds Toothpick City

SONAmamitch

GMA delivered her SONA on Monday declaring that after her speech, she will step down from the stage, but not the Presidency. Following that her Presidency doesn't end until next year.

Riiight....

Somehow, I just can't trust what she says. It's not only me, but pretty much most of the country can't trust her words. She's a master of saying something that doesn't mean anything.

She talked about the strong economy. By strong, they usually mean the US Dollar to Peso rate. But not really the core economy strength since you would probably notice businesses are suffering and there are more poor people starving.

She hit back on her critics. Even saying that if you want to become a President, don't say bad words (obviously to Mar Roxas).

What else...oh right, she said that she has no time to play politics because there's a lot of work to do. She's very hardworking you know. The only problem is, hardworking doing what? I'll leave that to your imagination.

I'm gonna stop here, it tires me just to talk about her.

Halo Legends

For Halo fans, here's the new Halo Legends Anime trailer that was shown on San Diego Comic Con '09

Halo Legends at IGN.com

How Would You Know You're At A Filipno Party?

HOW WOULD YOU KNOW YOU'RE AT A FILIPINO PARTY?
Simple !

You're an hour late and there's still nobody there!

There's enough food to feed the Philippines.

You can't even get through the door because there's a pile of 50 shoes blocking the way.

You see a huge fork and spoon on the wall, a framed picture of the Last Supper, a huge Santo Nino, and a barrel man.

They' re singing "Peelings" on karaoke.

There's a piano in the living room for decoration.

You are greeted by a Tita Baby and/or a Tito Boy.

The older men are in the garage playing posoy-dos, or poker or 31, the women are in the kitchen gossiping, or are playing mahjong,the other people are in the entertainment room singing karaoke, and the kids are outside the streets running around unsupervised..

There's goat 'pulutan' beeing cooked.

There's a crazy woman with a camera going around the room snapping away and yelling,
"Uy peeeek-chuuur! "

You enter a family party and you "Mano" to half the old crowd and when you leave you have to say goodbye to EVERYONE that's related to you as a sign of respect. You end up saying hello and goodbye for a total of 30-40 minutes.

You know you're at a Filipino party when you hear a male's voice on the karaoke trying to emulate Frank Sinatra's "My Way".

Women are still doing the line dance to "todo todo ".

When there's at least one or more with the name : JP,JJ, JT,TJ,DJ,AJ, RJ,LJ, Lingling, Bingbing, Tingting, Dingding, Wengweng, Bongbong, Dongdong etc.

All the old aunties and guests are already wrapping up food to take home.

You have the Pacquiao fight on the illegal cable boxes on the 70" LCD in the movie room,
The 10 yr old 50" CRT in the living room,
The 15 yr old 30" tube in the breakfast nook,
The 20 yr old 15" tube in the kitchen,
The 30 yr old 13" tube in the garage
And the Little portable by the BBQ grill,
Because TVs are NEVER retired in a Filipino household, they merely get demoted to whichever room doesn't have a TV yet(hahaha), then it ends up in the balikbayan box to be sent to a relative back home, and it ends up being the main TV at the house again.


The aunties & guests are showing off their "designer" Louis Vuitton and Coach bags that they secretly bought at a swap-meet.

Someone is always in the kitchen constantly cleaning up, and you're not sure if she's the maid or a relative, so you greet and kiss them on the cheek anyway.

Relatives/friends will ask you where you work and if it's a retail job or if you work at an amusement park, they'll ask if you can get them a discount.

The lumpia is gone in 5 minutes and they are frying up another batch.

They play "Achy-Breaky Heart" over and over again.

What starts as a religious gathering turns into an illegal gambling set up by the end of the night!

OH DI BA? (Oh you see?) >>>>>ARE YOU NOT PROUD BEING A FILIPINO?

ANONG SAY MO! (What can you say!)

Tron Legacy

So I guess Tron 2.0 is going into production. Here's the concept art shown at Comic Con '09.

Let's hope it actually gets made.



Here's an even better trailer.

Ninja Assassin

Check out this blog. It's full of videos and info about the Ninja Assassin movie.

http://ninja-assassin-movie-trailer.blogspot.com/

Sho Kosugi is in the movie. If you remember (I do), he used be in a lot of movies as a ninja in the 1980s.

Here's the link to the movie site.

http://ninja-assassin-movie.warnerbros.com/

Here's the trailer.

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

Moon landing hoax?

Do you believe the moon landing was a hoax? Do you think that the moon landing was just taped in a soundstage? If you want evidence that the moon landing is real, look no further than photos from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Don't see it? Check out NASA's website for details.

Filipino and Honesty

Remember my post about the Filipina who returned $2.1 million and was rewarded by the Philippine government?

Read the last part of this article by Ramon Tulfo in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

All I can say is, I rest my case.

Rice Crisis?

Read this editorial in the Philippine Daily Inquirer about global warming. It mentions that sea level will rise because of global warming.

What got me concerned was the report that rice yields in the Philippines could drop by 50 to 70 percent by 2020. That's a scary and sad at the same time.

The Philippines was always considered to be a rich country pretending to be poor. Rich in the sense that the Philippines has abundant natural resources. From rich soil, good climate, mineral resources and rich ocean resources.

Unfortunately for the Philippines, years of abuse and exploitation by the government has denuded the forest, polluted the oceans, gave away mineral rights for bribes and neglected all the potentials of the country.

To read that rice production will drop by 50 to 70% is shocking. Considering that the International Rice Research Institute or IRRI was established in the Philippines. A lot of Asian countries like Vietnam and Thailand envied the Philippines in the 1970s because of that and went to the Philippines to learn rice production.

These countries used to import rice from the Philippines. Thirty years later, these countries like Vietnam and Thailand are now exporting rice TO the Philippines. What happened?

Can you just imagine the massive famine that will happen if rice production in the Philippines dropped by half? Just look at what happened in 2007 and 2008 when agricultural prices shot up. Didn't the Philippines have a rice crisis?

Famine is not the only problem. When this happens in the Philippines, just imagine how bad the peace and order situation would be. These are the things that worry me about the future of our children.

Filipina Maid Returns $2.1M

Read this article from the Philippine Daily Inquirer about a Filipino domestic helper fro Nueva Vizcaya returning cash and cheques worth $2.1M she found in a garbage can in Hong Kong.

Because of that, she is going to be given commendation for her honesty by congress and she would receive the commendation from Speaker of the House Prospero Nograles.

She will also receive P150,000 from Nueva Vizcaya Rep. Carlos Padilla and the Nueva Vizcaya provincial government. In addition to that, her two children will also receive scholarships.

Is it just me or does this seem wrong? Why are we awarding and commending people for honesty? Seriously, why? Don't get me wrong, I have no objection of giving her a monetary award. But why?

Isn't honesty supposed to be a given? Isn't it that all people should be honest? Why give an award for something that you should be doing anyway? Should we give an award for people taking a bath or brushing their teeth? (Ok, maybe we should give an award for those to minimize the body odor and bad breath).

As the Michael Jackson song goes, "if they say why, why, tell them that it's human nature". It's supposed to be human nature to be honest. The problem is, honesty is so rare now in the Philippines that we give award to people for being honest.

That's just sad. We should punish dishonesty. But we shouldn't honor honesty because that's supposed to be a given. It is expected.

I'm not naive, I know there's a lot of corruption going on. I know people lie all the time. I just find it sad that the Philippines has to give awards for honesty. We have lost so much of our values as a Filipino people. We expect to be lied and cheated that we are surprised if someone is honest.

So much for values education. We have lost so much of our values in the last 20 years.

You become your thoughts

I was reading an interview of Quincy Jones about his weirdest recollections of Michael Jackson at Men.Style.Com. He was talking about Michael Jacksons transformation into a white man, his death and other weird things he did.

It's mostly weird stuff about Michael Jackson he was talking about, but the one thing that really got my interest in the whole interview was when Quincy Jones said that he has been in the hands of Nobel doctors at the Karolinska hospital in Stockholm. He said that he has learned so much about the human mind and body and that the doctors there talk about how you become your thoughts.

It starts with one thought and if you sit there and stay hung up on one negative thought, you will become that thought. That if you start thinking about darkness instead of light, or fear instead of love, you'll get in trouble.

While this is nothing new to me. It kind of sums up the whole life of Michael Jackson. It seems like it's one whole insecurity after another. His nose job and his bleaching to become white so that he won't be black. It's kind of crazy since I happen to think he was more handsome before his nose job and his bleaching.

Then there was his Neverland Ranch and playing with kids. Most people say it was because he never really had a childhood. But as Quincy Jones recommended a book called Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart. The book says that the statute of limitation has expired on all childhood traumas.

Quincy says in the interview, "Get you stuff together and get on with your life. Stop whinin' about what's wrong, because everybody's had a rough time, in one way or another."

Profound.

The silence is deafening

Reading the Philipine Daily Inquirer today, I just can't help but admire the gall of the politicians and government employees today. Take a look at this article by Juan Mercado on how GMA is keeping silent over her plans in 2010.

Not only that, it seems that her silence has infected other government officials like Presidential Commission on Good Government Chair Camilo Sabio is doing the same thing when he was asked by Senator Juan Ponce Enrile about his trip to Europe with his family and entourage on whether government sequestered fund where used.

His answer? “I’ll answer questions at the proper time and at the proper forum”.

This is the kind of government the Philippines have to live with. A government with no accountability.

The silence is deafening.

Happy Canada Day!

Today, Canada is 142 years old.

Happy Canada Day!