I got three minor subjects on my last semester in College namely: World Literature, Political Science and Rizal. Hhmmm….Rizal? Is there still a need? OMG! In my surprise, there is a big need. It surprised me because there is actually a law for it stating that no one is allowed to finish his course unless he has taken Rizal lessons and that law is under Republic Act 1425. I thought I got enough in my high school days but I was wrong. There are a lot more of what Rizal course is.

First is to understand the ordinary and extraordinary individual, the human person immortalized in our memory. It also aims to create an impression among Filipinos that Rizal’s life is worth emulating. It most have considered to rekindle the spirit of nationalism among Filipinos especially the youth for the greater glory of the country.

His works are said to reflect not because we’re forced to do it as a duty but it is relevant to our present time and place. Recognizing his ideals and thoughts, teachings and life values. (Don’t we have enough on our theology classes?!?tsk..tsk..tsk…). I still can’t grasp the point of studying it over and over again when as I observe my professor don’t even have that energy and interest to show off what Rizal’s story has. It’s totally a boredom class and I think of a better training to prepare us, much better than this subject can offer. Well, we can’t control everything we’ve wanted, same goes with the subjects we are ought to take.

Editorial:

Oil cartel

MANY Filipinos, particularly drivers and motor vehicle owners, feel helpless every time the country’s oil companies raise the prices of gasoline and other petroleum products, including liquefied petroleum gas.
   
Furious and frustrated, they want to know from the authorities if the price adjustments are justified or not, but the problem is the existence of a law which allows the oil firms to adjust their prices even without the approval of the government.
   
The controversial legislation, Republic Act 8479 or the oil deregulation law, stripped the state of its power to control the prices of imported crude oil and finished products.
   
But more than 10 years after the full deregulation of the industry, the people, particularly the consumers, are wondering whether the government has achieved its goal of breaking the “wings” of the oil giants.
   
Today, even Senate President Manuel Villar Jr. claimed that the simultaneous adjustments of oil prices indicate the existence of oil cartel which violates the oil deregulation law.
   
“Based on what the oil companies are doing, I have serious suspicions that a cartel is in operation. This is a clear violation of the law. Oil price hikes are simultaneously implemented in spite of the strengthening of our currency against the dollar,” he said.
   
Villar filed Resolution 216, urging the Senate committee on energy to look into the apparent lax implementation of safeguards in the oil deregulation law and the reported oil industry cartel.
   
In filing the resolution, the Senate chief underscored the urgent need to determine the usefulness of the hated legislation in preventing an oil cartel amid the unrestrained rise in oil prices.
   
It is not enough that we expose the existence of the oil cartel. After all, the authors of the law wanted to knock down the oil giants to spur competition in the industry.
   
In fact, the law penalizes cartelization and predatory pricing with three to seven years imprisonment and a fine ranging from P1 million to P2 million.
   
And since competition was not achieved, there’s now a need to amend it to prevent manipulation of prices by members of the oil cartel.
   
Or scrap it altogether.

Reaction:

I strongly agree to this editorial. Unfortunately, the author did not publish his name so I don’t specifically know who does deserve credits for this. Anyway, this editorial really helped awaken its readers of the vast unjustified reasons behind the unceasing increase of oil price despite the continuing strength of our peso against dollars. As we could remember, the most used reason to justify price increase over products such as oil and other basic commodities is the prevailing strength of dollars against peso. Well, but it seems it doesn’t apply anymore at this moment because Pres. GMA is really proud that peso is going strong as days pass by. But why nothing seems to be good with the going strong peso? Still, oil prices increases as much as the giant companies can. It feels so bad that even our government can’t stop this crisis. How much more to the poor people who can only afford to accept the reality that even how high the price is they have no choice but consume it?  This oil cartel thing caused this strong manipulation of prices among members. A prevailing truth of violation on Republic Act 8479 or the oil deregulation law. Can’t those people who are in position right now defend the poor Filipinos from all these injustice and prejudices? We have a law but are not strictly implemented. We can’t rely on law alone; it has to be back up with good arms.

Games UpLate Live is a late night game show of ABS-CBN co-produced with Endemol which airs after ABS-CBN News and Current Affairs.  The show is hosted by Jaymee Joaquin, it showcases various interactive games such as word games, anagrams, puzzles as well as math problem in order to win. It also features live chat services.Contestants are picked from the audience who downloaded products from ABS-CBN Interactive.

No offense to this giant network who produced this game show but for me it is deceptive. I stay awake very late until dawn while doing my projects and having my television on. For the past few months, I enjoyed watching this show but then for so long I came up with a reaction according to my firsthand observations. I consider Games UpLate Live deceptive to its viewers. We’ll get them deceived by easy games with prizes ranging from 1,000 to 30,000 or even more at times.  But consider the process: Per download will cost you 10 pesos and I’m pretty sure there are a lot of downloaders out there staying uplate to push their luck on this game. With all the tempting prizes, it requires nothing less but your day to day encounters on something or any vocabulary for example. With 10 chances to win and guess the word  in the game, only a few (2 or 3 ) will make it.  There are so many  ways for them to change the word behind the board  so the  contestant being called up won’t make it. And one more thing, for  an hour and a half, why only 2 to 5 people are being called? I guess Pinoys should take a little more caution to this deceptive people doing their best just to push through on their own selfish agenda. I don’t intend to convince any of my readers but I really feel good sharing my sentiments, my reactions, my opinions toward something especially if it is really something ought to be said and shared. For Games UpLate Live, if you really are not deceiving your viewers try to be more transparent. I’m part of this society and social awareness is much needed.

Political realism says “If you want to survive, even be successful, start by studying how people behave, not how they are ought to behave.” There is indeed a difference from how we behave within ourselves and in an association. It is a desire to placate; for the other and I have more or less power as persons to do each other harm. The desire for the good of others passes from potential to actual and issues in a working morality so soon as we can be sure of reciprocity. Thus, Niccolo Machiavelli shared this 10-Point prescription for an effective politcal leadership and I just wanted to share this to you. You might have that heart or interest in politics, this might help.

10-Point Prescription on Effective Political Leadership

1. The good prince(i.e. leader) must avoid being despicable and hated.

2. The best fortress for a state and its prince is the love of the people.

3. It is safer to be feared than to be loved, but it is best to be feared as well as to be loved.

4. The “good” prince should abstain from taking the property of others, for men forget more easily the death of their father, than the loss of their patrimony.

5. It is better to trust in your power than in the goodwill of others.

6. Legislate good laws and back them with good arms.

7. Laws are the ways of men and force is the way of the beasts, but you can not rely on law only.

8. Imitate the fox and the lion. The fox is shrewd and cunning, the lion is strong and brave. If you want to be one or the other, it is better to be the fox.

9. Do not put your trust on your mercenaries, for they can easily be bought by your adversaries.

10. Be prudent. Prudence is the ability of knowing the nature of difficulties and making that which is least harmful as good.

Most people would be glad to have some peace of mind in their lives. They would be happy to forget their troubles, problems and worries, and enjoy a few moments of inner calmness and freedom from obsessing thoughts. Of course, who wouldn’t?

What is peace of mind? It is a state of inner calmness and tranquility, together with a sense of freedom, when thoughts and worries cease, and there is no stress, strain or fear. Such moments are not so rare. Such moments that I am into right now. It has been a week or more of holding grudges and being eaten up by my own pride. I’m just so grateful of these few friends of mine that helped me realize that this pride of mine will never help the situation get better. Now, at least I could say I already knew the reason of this predicament of a certain someone dear to me. I just don’t know yet how things will turn out for the both of us. But a hopeful heart wishes for the best.

The least that I can do now is to wait and enjoy these few moments of inner calmness. Now, the question is, how to bring more peace of mind into one’s life, and more importantly, how to experience it in times of trouble. We might also ask whether it is possible to make it a habit, and enjoy it always and under all circumstances. That would be great, right? But tonight, I go back again to this learning that I believe I already have learned this before and that is - to be able to communicate your thoughts and most especially your feelings. More than a week of getting drown to my own pride was a waste, really a waste. And I had enough.

YEhey! I got an award from Anything Under The Sun

I’m giving this to Alma Ritchel Merin, the author of her very mysterious life blog. A very strong-willed woman who introduced me and inspired me to pursue my blogging career. She deserves the award because she’s truly an amazing blogger. She writes her thoughts and emotions and were able to convey them to her readers. She inspired me in her perseverance and she never get overwhelmed of life’s challenges to her. Instead, she embraces it with her willingness to succeed.

Student life is really on my nerves by now. I have been busy getting myself a real taste of the real world by grabbing that chance to work part time and of course, this passion and career in blogging. Now, me as a student is back. It doesn’t mean I’m letting go of my career but my student life is in fact adding more spice in this complex yet enjoyable life of mine.

Despite of the awful lot of assignments and documentations to do as part of the course requirements, ranging from minor to major subjects, I am certain that I’ll be making the most out of it.  Not to mention, the pressure  in time management really played and will forever play a very vital role of my survival. I have so much to share and let me begin it with this wonderful session in my class this evening. The past few happenings that transpired is enough to have me a feel for loneliness but now atleast a wonderful class discussion somehow ease that pain.

It may sound funny but tonight is the night that I fully understand how that concept of Polymorphism works. Polymorphism is in fact one of the most important concepts in Object Oriented Programming.  I was just so grateful that the proven effective and very kind teacher is with us to guide us along the way of our course in Free Elective which we will be learning about Java Enterprise Edition for the whole semester, which is also hopefully my last semester in College.

Java Platform, Enterprise Edition or Java EE is a widely used platform for server programming in the Java programming language. The Java EE Platform differs from the Standard Edition (SE) of Java in that it adds additional libraries which provide functionality to deploy fault-tolerant, distributed, multi-tier Java software, based largely on modular components running on an application server.

In our class, we are using Netbeans as our Integrated Development Environment, in short IDE. Java EE employs fully the concepts of Object Oriented Programming. This includes the concepts on classes where properties and methods primarily resides. Of course, the concepts of encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism and reusability plays a very vital role of the OOP technique which makes enterprise application development easy.

We were able to grasp easily and conveniently Java EE because of our basic knowledge in object oriented programming and our previous exposure in C#. The topic is indeed interesting considering Java EE is one of the most widely used platform for developing business solutions. It is also widely known for its feature which is portability. This means that Java applications will run over different platforms, whether it is Windows or open source platforms such as Linux. Well, that made it a lot more interesting, isn’t it?

In the genre of Horror movies, one comes to be the legendary tale of terror from the author, Stephen King entitled "The Mist". The Mist starred the three-time Oscar nominee, Frank Darabont reunites with horror-master Stephen King to write and direct this chilling adaptation of the author’s original short story of The Mist.

Plot:

Following a violent thunderstorm, artist David Drayton and a small town community come under vicious attack from creatures prowling in a thick and unnatural mist. Local rumors point to an experiment called the ‘The Arrowhead Project’ conducted at a nearby top-secret military base, but questions as to the origins of the deadly vapor are secondary to the group’s overall chances for survival. Retreating to a local supermarket, Drayton and the survivors must face-off against each other before taking a united stand against an enemy they cannot even see!

Few more days to wait because The Mist will be in theatres this coming November 23, 2007. OMG, I am a very big fan of movies in this genre. I can’t wait to see it in big screens. 

Facebook is a social networking website that allows people to communicate with their friends and exchange information. Launched on February 4, 2004, Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, a former member of the Harvard class of 2006 and former Ardsley High School student.

Facebook is not just merely a social networking website like of others but what made it more interesting especially to technology geeks is that they launched last May of 2007 an API(Application Programming Interface) that allows the development of applications to be used on the site, known as Facebook Platform. Just recently, they added new feature to it: Facebook Ads, a marketing initiative which includes a system for websites to allow users to share chosen information about their activities on the sites with their Facebook friends.This was introduced to me by Sir Eric and I found it really interesting and can’t just stop myself of being hooked with it.