A violent reaction to the fuckin' proposal of a ninth ray on our flag!

I have always been a reader of history and this same history dictates me to react to this bicameral plan to revise the present flag. I think our flag has been with us for the longest time, it served us in our time of darkness, our hard fought battles even up to now... why change it?

Let me quote the late great Teodoro A. Agoncillo on this issue:

"For us to add or subtract one or more ray in our flag is to twist the facts of the history of Revolution of 1986, since the flag was made in the crucible of the Revolution. An addition of a ray to the present eight rays of the sun would mean that the Muslims were the one of the first to rise in arms against Spain in 1986. This is not only unhistorical; it is also anti-historical, a clear case of prevarication of our history, for an addition of an extra ray to the present rays would create something out of nothing. The Muslims never participated in the revolution of 1986; nor did they participate in the war against the United States. On the contrary, the Muslim Sultan and his datus signed the so-called Bates treaty of 20 August 1899 by the terms of which the United States declared his sovereignty over the archipelago of Jolo and it's dependencies and in exchange for this, the United States agreed to pay the Sultan and his datus a monthly stipend. This agreement was concluded at a time when the people of Luzon and the Visayas, particularly Iloilo, Cebu, Samar, were dying to protect what was their own against the imperialistic pretensions of the Americans. These are the facts that cannot be blurred or erased by... mawkishness or by feeling of pakikisama. One thing is very clear: the Muslims never participated either in the revolution of 1896 or in the war against the Americans in 1899-1901.

There is one other point that should be emphasized in connection with the Muslim campaign to add a ninth ray to the present eight rays of our sun. And it is that the Muslims, in thus asking for a ninth ray, are inconsistent. They take pride in not having been under Spanish rule and were therefore independent. Being independent, they were not Filipinos, for they did not recognize the authority of Spain over them and refused to be subjects of king Philip II and the succeeding Spanish sovereigns. If they were independent and not Filipinos, why do they now ask to be retroactively under Spain who fought the revolution of 1896?

Let not our Muslim brothers destroy the history of the revolution by making it appear that they actively participated in that upheaval which led ultimately to Philippine independence... They should not intrude into the Philippine revolution of 1986 because they did nothing to help their Christian brothers in the struggle for freedom and independence... It is enough that they are represented in the present flag with one star; to ask for more is to abuse history."

So vivid and so true. I rest my case.

How to cook Tinola (Barci style)

Happy!

That's how I am, hours after posting my last entry I received some warm reception. Finally had my first comment here. Posted by a foreigner. At least now, I know this space is gaining some sort of fanfare and I'm not just wasting time here harhar!

Just another commercial before I post something about my life again.

I'm about to teach you how to cook a Tinola. Tinola is an old favorite Philippine dish, Tinola or chicken ginger stew as Wikipedia translates it, is a very easy to cook and is best suited taken during these cold and rainy seasons. Mind you: I'm not an expert cook but I've served this stuff to many's delight.

Warning: Please always be careful when handling sharp materials such as knives, keep out of children's reach, And please keep them out of people who have suicidal tendencies and people who have tendencies to run amok.

Now that I've gotten it out of my systems here are our ingredients:

• 1 kilo chicken, cut in serving pieces
• 2 sayote quartered
  
• 2 potatoes, quartered
• 1 onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 thumb-size ginger root, cut into strips
• 3 tablespoon patis (fish sauce, yeah that foul smelling one)
• 4 cups of water
  
• 1 bundle of chilli leaves (sili)
• Black pepper crushed
  
• 2 chicken bullion cubes

Procedure:

In your sauce pan, heat your cooking oil after a minute or two saute the garlic, onion and ginger until it's natural fragrance reaches your nose, add the patis and the chicken bullion (this is the trick, because the bullion itself is a ready mixture making your tinola as tasty as you want it to be) add the Chicken let it simmer (is this the correct term?) with the bullion and the other spices, leave for 7-8 minutes.

Pour in the water, add some black pepper for more taste. Add the potatoes, you want them soft but not so soft as it was mashed. Cook for 3-4 minutes. Add the sayote, again you want this soft but don't over do it. Let it cook for another 4 minutes. Remember that you can add some patis if your still not satisfied with the taste.

Lastly, add the sili leaves.

Turn off the heat, put it in a serving dish, and voila! You're ready to eat your tinola...



PS. Please don't send me hate mails if your tinola don't taste good, you're the one who cooked it not me. I just gave you some instructions. hehe...

Until next time again! :D

Episode Five: College: OGEC

I was a Fine Arts student.

When I was starting out my college career I was advised by a girl friend of mine (girl-friend not girlfriend) to enjoy the days as it will come as fast as it came. Need not to say her prediction seemed to me as true. Coming from a Catholic school with very strict environment, college was very refreshing. I had all the time in my hands nobody was rushing me, there was no torment. Maybe that's the reason why I appreciate FEU more than my kindergarten, grade school and HS alma mater. Although I must say that the high standards that my school gave me prepared me well fro the college algebras, english, and a lot of the basic stuff. That I am most thankful.

Also in FEU I got to have a wide variety of choices when it came to meals, not only do FEU have a canteen but students were allowed to lurk around the whole of Manila if they wanted to buy foods elsewhere, in my former school sadly that was not the case, it's either you rely on your "baon" or go to the gold-digging canteen where meals are served at the minimum at a very high price!

I think FEU gave me the school I wanted all along. As I said I respect my former school but compared to FEU I love the latter more.

Ok here's some story about my days in FEU:

When I was in FEU there was this OGEC curriculum (OGEC stands for Office of the General Education curriculum), it was imposed to all first year students so that most of the minor subjects could be taken up during the first year without any major subjects so that if a student decides to pursue a different course different from his/her first choice he/she won't be hassled changing courses because all subjects taken up are minors. So you see it was not known to me until my very first day. So to my surprise when I got into the room designated for me when I applied for my schedule, there were guys who were into accounting courses, psychology, nursing and others.... I was like "Whoah! am I in a twilight zone?" turns out I was one of the only few who did not know of the current policy.

Within the next few days I assembled a new group, comprised mainly of a geek, a coño, a pasaway, a nerd and two stoic guys (one was me). Our favorite "ulam"? Monggo soup by Manong Dugyot. Our geek friend had this shack apartment just beside FEU and we would camp there during breaks, at the lower portion of the apartment was a mini canteen by Manong Dugyot (I codenamed him that because he was like an arabic guy that don't take a bath), there were 6 of us and the coño guy can't argue with our preferential place for food or be doomed to eat alone. That how we were until we finished the first sem of the first year.

Around this time I realized:

1. I had this character to bring people together, even though not as leader but as a bridge.
2. Girls get attracted to me, even I don't know why. I'm stoic remember?
3. I was still in the upper levels of each of my class.

It was the first in a long while that I had girl friends (again not the romantic side but friends), and I love them they were morale boosters for me. Alas, Come 2nd sem all the allies I rallied to my side were lost to me. We ended up not being classmates anymore, and I was left by my lonesome again without any classmate from the previous semester.

2nd sem, First year: I had new friends whose image were meaner, bigger, we had a grand time tripping. We were not the "It" boys but my pals had the making of Mafia members. They looked brute but are really friendly. It was at this time I had my first difficulty in college. Logic.

Logic was easy, problem was that subject's schedule was too early for a teener coming from Cainta to abide to. I was most of the time tardy at sessions thus not understanding the subject altogether. At mid-term my grades for the subject still hangs in the balance, last time I checked I was near 5.00 or failure. It was also true for half of the class. I felt so tense, nearly hopeless. I even informed my mom that I might flunk it... But then again, I think the "One Above" never wanted me to fail, I doubled my efforts of coming to school our class was at 9:00 and now I was waking up at 5:00 at 6:00 am I was on my way to school. Fuck the LRT-2 then, the traffic that it's construction yielded was just too much sometimes I would arrive at my designated room 5 minutes before the Logic subject. Imagine a 3-hour travel everytime!

Somehow I sighed some relief as I was quickly getting the groove from the subject, although I would sometimes arrive weary-eyed, sleepy, I still was catching up with the lessons. Finals came and I had 2.50 voila! What was wonderful for me wasn't for my other classmates a quarter took the plunge.

First year is finished at last. OGEC was over, on with the next nightmare!

But that's for the next ish peeps! Until then... Don't break a leg.

About the Author: Episode Four: College, the application

Year 2000 AD. I was in a mad dash of applying to a new school, You see our school (Cainta Catholic) is offering college courses but none of those interests me, you see I'm into the arts and the courses offered there is for teachers, another thing is that I already abhor being there being in the school since Kinder it made me too familiar to be happy... I need to be in a new environment.

The first university I tried out was none other than UP. Here's the story: UPCAT was held every August if I'm not mistaken. The school made it very easy for us since they volunteered to do the test enrollment for us, we just added a few peso on their account for them to do so (it's better and it's hassle free).

After we got the schedule for our test me and a friend of mine whom we fondly call "monyo" (that's demon in a different lingo)went to the UP wars. Unfortunately for us we got separated with our classrooms where we would take the test, so I took with me my mom and my little sis (I hardly know the UP compound which has the biggest cusp of land if I ever saw one) to accompany me to the battle field. My loving mother, concerned as she was as always gave me a hamburger meal as "baon". So on to the testing area I went. Before starting the exam the proctor asked us to surrender all our means of communications as to defeat any temptations of fraud during the exam. To my surprise everybody got up (except me) and surrendered their cellphone right in front of the white board area. I felt a little slighted by this gesture which kinda hurt my pride.

On to the test, due to the earlier incident I was hardly able to focus and would entirely cram every time an exam is about to finish (subjects for the exam include general science, math, english, history and social sciences and current events), on that tense moment I remembered my "baon" so I slipped my hands to the side of my bag's pocket and began to unwrap the burger goody (it was allowed to eat inside since the tests began at exactly 12 nn up to 3 pm), it was then that I realized that the aroma of the burger was already traveling fast inside the air conditioned room and my test mates where already eying my booty, I then concluded that they forgot to take food with them during the duration of then exam... Ay! Caramba! Sweet Revenge harhar!

I also tried out other colleges such as: PUP, FEU and TUP.

The most challenging for me was PUP, we excused ourselves for our classes for 4 days just to secure a slot for it's entrance exam... Why? The process includes falling in line behind a kilometer long barrage of students, all those student form different schools and different provinces trying to cram their way into what remains to be one of the most cheapest and notable state colleges in the country.


Next stop for me was FEU... FEU is a one day stop and process is amazingly fluid. Maybe because it was a private college. TUP was the last stop, my mom forced me into it although it was not very preferential for me (I get up late and the school is in Taft I don't know what time I had to get myself up just so I can make it in time during classes).

Courses I penned for the entrance exams at the schools aforementioned:

UP: Fine Arts
PUP: Architecture (Fine Arts was my supposed to be course but it was to be offered the next year prior to my enrollment)
FEU: Fine Arts
TUP: Fine Arts

Results:

UP: Flunked but had a score of 2.50, I think their passing rate was 2.25.
PUP: Got 99% in history. Average of 88% for the test. Lowest was Science at 80%
FEU: Never got the grade but they said I passed. I felt the test was for formality and they were getting me anyway.
TUP: Guess what I finished the whole exam at exactly 45 minutes... With surety in my answers, the proctor was stunned, I said their test was so easy. He got my paper and kinda separated it... I was thinking I got politicized there.

Overall the hike and traffic and the stress got the better of my 10 pounds as I became much lighter when we finished the entire process.

So I got .500 batting mark. College here I come! (I guess you know what college I chose later, if not look at the picture above and get a hint.)

Disclaimer: Picture not mine. Got it from the net. :D

Enjoy the next issues! :D

District 9: A commentary on the *fuckin' prawns (pronounced as fukin proons)

Epilogue: This might disappoint those who have previously read my blog, please excuse me for deviating my topic for awhile from a little auto-biography of myself (if you haven't been bored out already) to this.

Disclaimer: The image used herein is something that circulates from the web. No copyright infringement intended. Another thing reading this might preempt what you'll see and think of the movie in general.

Story: I was so bored this afternoon that I decided to treat myself to a movie house. Since District 9 gave so many critics I've read a huge fuzz I decided to check it out myself. So finally I cashed out 110 PHP for a de luxe seat, while smiling intently on the gorgeous lady handing out the tickets (really loved the face... well anyway) and buying myself some soda before proceeding to the cinema itself.

Not really known to check time, I was caught off-guard, because when I seated the movie was very near it's end (so you see it spoiled the excitement of the ending), oh well. I content myself looking at the other viewers lip locking inside the theater house hehe.

It took 15 more minutes or so to the actual ending of the movie and another 20 minutes before the next showing or directly after the trailers of the next up and coming movies (am I being redundant? next and up and coming?). Waiting wasn't all that boring, I even noted some movies I might hunt in the following days (like Sherlock Holmes and The Christmas Carol by Disney) so that made me very content. Come the featured movie.

I know Peter Jackson for his Lord of the Rings and Kingkong and I came to know he wasn't a slouch on the production and the film sequence. And I wasn't disappointed with the graphical production of the movie. The story hits another fresh approach, set in Johannesburg, South Africa the actors naturally spoke in thick African accent a huge deviation from the regular American and British accent we're accustomed to. Another thing is we were used to Aliens tearing us and terrorizing humans. In this movie we are the ones who make them submit to our rules.


The film kicks off with a documentary type of movie... You know interviews, the kind that documents life situations here's the plot: a huge alien ship landed to earth and has since set in Johhanesburg for the last 20 years. You can say that after all those time the aliens and the locals have grown accustomed to each other enough for them to huge barter trade to get what each camp wants from the other. The aliens, camped in what the government calls "district 9" settles for cat food (they seem to have a very big liking for it) and they trade their weapons for a hundred thousand cans of those.


The aliens would have develop tantrums and would eventually attack the local citizens, causing casualties and damage to both sides, irking the natives which requested the government to relocate the disastrous prawns as the locals call them because of their shrimp-like features. This makes the best entrance for our main hero, Wikus. Wikus was a member of the MNU, the private company contracted by the government to carry out the relocation. While doing his job Wikus accidentally sprays a a fluid to his face after raiding a house and confiscating a silver canister. After the incident Wikus fell ill, was brought to the hospital wherein they found a gradual transformation on his side from human to prawn starting from his severed hand which got injured in a previous incident during the raid.


You see MNU or the Multinational United is a big weapons distributor and have long wanted to incorporate the aliens own weaponry in their arsenal since the alien weapons are operate through alien biological means the MNU can't operate one alien weaponry. Wikus was then seen as a link by the MNU as to operate the alien machinery for personal gains. As they tried to put their experiment on him Wikus overpowers his captors and manages to escape... Here starts to cat and mouse chase between the fugitive and the corrupt company.


Wikus in despair came to the place he knows he might not be searched... District 9. Here he befriends Christopher Johnson and alien who owned the silver canister that spayed the black liquid on Wikus face and the key for him to regain his human form as Christopher told him that he knows how to cure Wikus' illness. So the two breaks in the MNU building to retrieve the canister. After the break-in and return to district 9 Christopher informs Wikus that he has decided to seek help from his people before curing Wikus' ailment which would take 3 years. Frustrated, Wikus knocks Christopher out and powers up the spaceship which was the command module with the help of Christopher's son. Moments after lifting off, MNU soldiers destroy one of the ship's engines with a missile, causing it to crash land nearby.


From the ship, Christopher's son activates the mother ship. Wikus gets into a robo-suit and uses it to rescue Christopher from MNU mercenaries and provide him with cover while he makes his way to the command module. Promising Wikus that he will return in three years to reverse his transformation, Christopher summons a tractor beam which lifted the module into the mother ship. After decades of hovering above Johannesburg, the mother ship leaves with Christopher and his son on board.


Some light moments: To cover up the events Wikus was accused of having sexual intercourse with the aliens therefore contracting himself of the alien form. After making his way to a local gang to retrieve some weapons for their assault in MNU, Wikus was taunted by the members because of the report for he was pictured in a "doggie-style" position. He was tatunted even more because of the questions: "Did you use condom?"


Some intriguing questions:

1. Why did the aliens drop the module in the first place? If it was what they needed to get out of the planet why then misplace it underneath?

2. How did the aliens and humans understand each other? The aliens were using a different language but Wikus and the locals seem to understand them...


3. Why were the gang members allowed inside District 9?

4. If the command module was that small, How come so many alien crop up in Johannesburg?


Overall, the movie receives a 3.75/5 from me. It's a fun watch and never a dull moment, although some technicalities in the story took some leverage from me.

For those of you who have yet to see the movie please watch the trailer through this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6PDlMggROA


For the next post I promise to continue on what I've left for episode 3. Until next time folks, Keep on reading.