Bakit wala man lang mensahe sa Canada?

Pangwalong araw na ngayon mula nang mangyari ang trahedya ng panghu-hostage sa Rizal Park kung saan namatay ang walo sa 25 turista na galing Hongkong ngunit wala pang mensahe ng pakikiramay or paghingi ng paumanhin sa pamahalaan ng Canada.

Hindi ba alam ng Malacanang o ng Department of Foreign Affairs na tatlo sa walong namatay ay Canadian citizens? Isa na namang katangahan ito kung hindi nila alam dahil napabalita sa mga diyaryo as Canada at Hongkong. Nabanggit na rin ng mga diyaryo dito as Pilipinas.

Ang tatlong Hongkong Canadian ay ang negosyateng si Ken Leung (58 taong gulang) at ang kanilang dalawang anak na babae na sina Jessie (14) at Doris (21). Nakaligtas Ang asawa ni Leung na si Amy Ng at Ang kanilang 18-taong gular na anak na lalaki na si Jason.
Inuperahan si Jason as utak dahil napukpuk raw siya ng malakas as ulo.

Humingi na ng paumanhin si Pangulong Aquino as pamahalaan ng Hongkong at China, na sumasakop as Hongkong. Bakit híndi niya ginawa yun as Canada?

Kahit ba sabihin mong hindi humihingi ang Canada ng paumanhin (at ayaw na siguro magdagdag pa sa problema ng Pilipinas) ay dapat naman magpadala ng mensahe si Aquino.

Hindi kaya siya sinabihan ng kanyang ni Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo? Pumalpak na sila sa tawag ni Donald Tsang. Hindi pa sila natututo dito sa Canada.
***
Mabuti na rin na binusalan na Philippine National Police as pagpapalabas ng ano man tungkol as imbestigasyon na kanilang ginagawa habang híndi pa natatapos lahat.

Ito ay inutos ni Justice Secretary Leila de Lima pagkatapos lumabas ang balita na lumabas daw sa mga naunang pagsusuri na lahat daw nab ala na nakita sa katawan ng mga biktima ay galing sa baril ng hostage taker na si dating Senior Police Inspector Rolando Mendoza.

Ibig sabihin noon, walang namatay sa “friendly fire” o bala na galing as mga pulis.

Maaring totoo. Ngunit sa ngayon, bagsak ang kredibilidad ng Philippine National Police at ng Manila police na siyang nagsagawa ng operasyun para i-rescue ang mga hostages ngunit trahedya ang nangyari.

Nagkatugma naman ang kuwento ng lahat na ang dahilan ng pagwawala ng hostage taker ay nang sapilitang inaresto ang kanyang kapatid na si SPO2 Gregorio Mendoza sa utos ni Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim.

Ngayon kung ano-ano ang nilalabas nilang impormasyun laban kay Gregorio. Marami raw siyang dating kaso. Panggulo na ito kahit pa totoo. Ang isyu ditto ay ang palpak na operasyun noong Agosto 23.

Ang sanay simpleng operasyun ng pulis ay nagiging krisis na rin sa diplomasya na apektado na ng ating ekonomiya. Katotohanan lamang ang makakaresolba nito. Kaya tigilan na ng mga sangkot na nasa kapangyarihan ang pagtatakip ng katotohanan.

Wait, there’s more!: Earn money from your blog! Sell link ads and blog your way to the bank.

Urbandub to perform live using an iPod Touch

In my recent visit to Power Mac GB3, I found out that Urbandub will perform live in some stores of Apple resellers. It’s interesting to see how they will perform live using an iPod Touch because I’m used to seeing Lalay and John jumping on the stage with their respective bass guitar and electric guitar. Read more for the Urbandub’s schedule.

Of course there’s no door charge/entrance fees. :)

September 4
3PM – Power Mac Center, Greenbelt 3
5PM – Digital Hub, Market! Market!
7PM – iStudio, Bonifacio Highstreet

September 5
3PM – The A. Shop, Podium
5PM – Power Mac Center, Trinoma
7PM – SW!TCH, UP Technohub

September 11
3PM – Power Mac Center, North EDSA
5PM – The A. Shop, Eastwood
7PM – SW!TCH, UP Technohub

September 12
3PM – iStudio, Bonifacio Highstreet
5PM – Digital Hub, Market! Market!
7PM – Power Mac Center, Greenbelt 3

Buglasan Festival 2010 Schedule

Preparations are now in full blast as the Province of Negros Oriental stages the annual Buglasan Festival 2010! Every year, all roads lead to Sidlakang Negros, the home of the Buglasan Festival for a week-long festivity.

During this time of the year, The Sidlakang Negros which is located in Dumaguete gets well decorated as this becomes the home of the festival for the next few days.

It is also during this time when the towns would go out of their way to promote the various tourist destinations, as well as sell local produce like fresh fruits, vegetables, native delicacies or even some handicrafts which is a perfect pasalubong gift!

buglasan festival 2010  00002

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Read the rest of Buglasan Festival 2010 Schedule



© Enrico Dee for BYAHILO, 2010. | Permalink | One Byahilo reader made a comment | Add to del.icio.us

Good Morning, Taipei!

Penman for Monday, August 30, 2010




I MIGHT as well have shouted that when we stepped off the plane a couple of weekends ago, since it was technically morning by the time we reached Taipei on a short two-hour hop from Manila. Landing past midnight in a foreign country was the real price we paid for availing ourselves of a ridiculously cheap budget fare on Cebu Pacific, which likes to sneak into Asian cities like Shanghai when everyone else is snoring.

I booked the promo flight online last April, aware of the possibility that we would be flying—if at all—into Taipei in the typhoon season. As it turned out, late August was steaming; we were soon dripping—not from rain, but from sweat. Our tour guide would later explain that, because of its topography, Taipei was a natural hothouse, a valley over which, to borrow an image from Steinbeck, the clouds closed in like a lid over a simmering pot.

The hotter-than-Manila weather was a novelty to Beng and me, because neither of us had been to Taiwan before, which was another reason we made the trip. We’ve made a pledge to travel together as much as we can—and as far as our meager budget will allow—before arthritis and dementia make even a trip to the bathroom too arduous to manage. We’d seen a ton of documentaries on Taiwan on Living Asia and the Discovery Channel, so we had some idea of what to look for and what to expect—the National Palace Museum was right on top of our list—but as always, you never know what’ll turn up until you actually get there. (I’d circled the charmingly named “Museum of Drinking Water” on my city map, but ran out of time to verify the oddity.)

So as soon as we woke up in our hotel at noon the next day, I went down to the concierge to book a couple of bus tours that would take us around the city and a bit of the island. Each afternoon tour ran for about four hours and didn’t cost too much—the city tour included the National Palace Museum and its entrance fee, for less than P1,300 per person (one Taiwan dollar is about P1.40). For just a little more, we also signed up for the next day’s tour of the old hilltop mining town of Chiufen and the northern coast.

I’m a great believer in package tours and bus tours, especially for first-time tourists, which was what we were. They’re cheap, they’re efficient, and they make sure you hit all or at least most of the tourist highlights. If I were in my 20s or 30s, I probably wouldn’t mind backpacking and darting off into strange alleyways with little more than The Lonely Planet Guide in hand, but in my 50s, I want a soft seat, air-conditioning, and someone to tell me what I’m looking at.

The tours were, as I expected, a great success. We gaped and gawked at the crown jewels of the National Palace Museum, which houses over 600,000 artifacts, much of it carted across the strait by the late Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek when he and his forces fled the mainland after Mao Tse-Tung and the Communists won the civil war in 1949. As a self-confessed teenage Maoist, I couldn’t muster a drop of reverence for Chiang, even as we stood at the foot of his colossal, Lincoln-like statue in his memorial. At the same time, I had to be quietly thankful that many of these artifacts escaped the destructive wrath of the Cultural Revolution’s Red Guards, who would have found such baubles as jade cabbages insufferably bourgeois.

Still better than guided bus tours, however, are the walking tours that literally ground the tourist in the everyday realities of a new city. At street level, some of these revelations popped out immediately:

- All taxis in Taipei are new, yellow, and spotlessly clean. Some drivers decorate their dashboards with huge, fragrant lilies.

- The sidewalks along the main roads are three meters wide. No vendors, no billboards, and, unless you look really hard, no cops.

- Taipei loves coffee, with homegrown coffee shops dotting the boulevards—Merry Café, Barista Café, Coffee+, eCoffee, Ikari Coffee, Is Coffee, Mr. Brown Coffee—aside from the inevitable Starbucks.

- Taipei loves English and an American education, with a whole street downtown devoted to review courses for the GRE, the GMAT, the TOEIC, the TOEFL, the IELTS, and whatever will bring your son Edison Chan or daughter Penelope Wong to Princeton.

- Clothes are expensive by Manila standards, but food is cheap and scrumptious (although I didn’t dare try the stinky tofu—that’s what it’s called, and it’s the honest, godawful truth).

- As with much of Asia (except, strangely enough, the Philippines), the night markets are the place to go for food and shopping. The sprawling Shilin Night Market goes on and on (as does the underground Taipei City Mall, beneath the main Train Station), offering everything from mushroom-rice balls to the new iPhone 4. (Shopping note: fellow Filipinos, get your iPhone 4, factory unlocked and at the cheapest global prices, from the online Apple Stores of Hong Kong and Singapore. You’ll need local friends in those places, though, whose shipping addresses you’ll borrow.)

- The fashion du jour for young women in Taipei seems to be—aside from hot denim pants—frilly, lacy, and flowery skirts, also worn short, of course. Beng couldn’t help noticing the ubiquity of short shorts in Taipei; on the racks of the Shilin stalls, they seemed to be no more than four inches from top to bottom. Everywhere we looked, long pairs of milky legs grew out of these shorts. I, of course, sympathized with Beng’s dismay, remarking for her benefit, “Ugh, isn’t she disgusting… and there goes an even more disgusting one… oooh, I can’t bear to look.”

- There seems to be a 7-11 around every corner in Taipei (alternating with its chief competitor, FamilyMart). When you step into one before noon, you’re greeted by the cashier with a chirpy “Good morning!” When you step into the same place at, say, six or seven in the evening, everyone behind the counter greets you again with, you guessed it, “Good morning!”

Good morning, Taipei!

List of Philippine Holidays 2011

Here’s the list of Philippine Holidays for 2011. It is just uncertain, whether President Noynoy Aquino will abolish the so called “Holiday Economics” where long weekends are observed.

January New Year’s Day.
February 25 EDSA Revolution Day.
April 9 Araw ng Kagitingan
April 21 Maundy Thursday.
April 22 Good Friday.
May 1 Labor Day.
June 12 Independence Day.
August 29 National Heroes’ Day.
August 31 Eid Ul Fitr **Date is subject for confirmation
November 1 All Saints’ Day.
November 30 Bonifacio Day.
December 25 Christmas Day.
December 30 Rizal Day.
31 Dec New Year’s Eve.



© Enrico Dee for BYAHILO, 2010. | Permalink | One Byahilo reader made a comment | Add to del.icio.us