we all love this new source of family bonding, and had i known playing wii was this fun, i'd have bought it eons ago. hehehe :)December 2, 2008 officially welcomes the Christmas season on campus. The traditional rites of lighting the campus will be at 6 p.m. at the Oblation plaza. It will be immediately followed by a concert entitled Tanglaw Sentenyal: Mga Tugtuging Pagdiriwang, featuring the UP Symphonic Band under the direction of Prof. Leopoldo Lopez, and the UP Symphonic Orchestra under the baton of Prof. Edna Marcil-Martinez and Prof. Rodney Ambat.
The concert repertoire includes classical celebratory music, music by Filipino composers, and Christmas carols where the audience will be invited to a community singing.
The concert is organized by the Office for Initiatives in Culture and the Arts (OICA) in cooperation with the College of Music.
Other activities are the following:
December 5, 5 p.m. Coral Building, Office of the Campus Architect: The opening of Designing Diliman, a centennial exhibition of the architecture, planning and landscape design of the UP Diliman (1939-2008). The exhibit showcases the campus as a veritable living laboratory of 20th century Philippine architectural styles and urbanist tendencies, with the exhibition locating the constituent structures within the contexts of shifting social environments, from colonial to national, from national to global.
The exhibit is organized by the College of Architecture Foundation for the Built Environment, Office of the Campus Architect, and OICA.
December 9, 5 p.m. University Theater: Karolfest, a choral competition featuring various student choirs organized by OICA, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, and the University Student Council (USC).
December 15, 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. University Theater: Hagikhikan 2008: UP Diliman Faculty Follies, a variety show featuring members of the University faculty showcasing their talents in acting, dancing, singing and entertainment.
December 16: Bisita Kultura, an annual project of OICA bringing musical performances to selected areas on campus:
10 a.m. Melchor Hall steps (performer/s, to be announced)
3 p.m. Gonzalez Hall steps, featuring the UP Woodwind Quintet
5 p.m. Palma Hall steps, featuring the UP Brass Quintet
December 17, 4 p.m. Academic Oval: The Centennial Lantern Parade.
Dear Multiply and real-life friends -
I have just added another job (but this is non-paying) on my career list: website column writer. (Is that the actual title? whatever... hehehe...) I'm super excited about this new adventure, and I hope we can go places together as I write about sights, sounds and the ins & outs of travelling. Below is my first article for World Class Filipino.
The site is on its beta-stage, but if you join now, we can grow together :)
Join and be proud to be a noy-pi! :)
-Apryll
- - - - -
http://www.worldclassfilipino.com/sections/wc-article/content/34/really-itchy-toes-and-feet
When Reginn invited me to write for worldclassfilipino, I graciously accepted. I am not a professional travel writer, nor am I a professional traveller (though I think some of my friends would disagree). But I've always wanted to write about travel and travelling... where to go, what to see, where to stay... the stuff most travel sites are made of, except that the articles would be written from my perspective, from my personal experience.
For me, travelling is not a time to rest and take a leisurely vacation, but a chance for me to immerse myself in a new place, discover a new culture, try out a new language, interact with new people... and have my pictures taken in front of monuments, parks, museums, building facades and what-have-you that I had only previously read about in books or had only seen on TV.
The truth is, I love to travel on a budget. I have even travelled without a budget. I get thrilled about planning trips. I am an eager tourist who loves doing "the touristy thing" - trying to cram all the must-sees in the X number of days on my itinerary, but only after I've spent some time imbibing the sights, smells and sounds of a new place, or a new city. I itch to travel - with or without money, with or without a companion.
I hope we get to travel together - YOU and me - as I tell you about the places I've been to, or want to go to, and YOU as you share with me where you want to go or what you want to learn about more.
Now let's get those itchy feet walking... and let the journey begin!
when he was only
By TOM RAUM and NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writers 7 minutes ago
ST. PAUL, Minn. - Cheered by a roaring crowd, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois laid claim to the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday night, taking a historic step toward his once-improbable goal of becoming the nation's first black president. Hillary Rodham Clinton maneuvered for the vice presidential spot on his fall ticket without conceding her own defeat.
Clinton praised Obama warmly in an appearance before supporters in New York, although she neither acknowledged his victory in their grueling marathon nor offered a concession of any sort.
Instead, she said she was committed to a unified party, and said she would spend the next few days determining "how to move forward with the best interests of our country and our party guiding my way."
Obama's victory set up a five-month campaign with Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a race between a first-term Senate opponent of the Iraq War and a 71-year-old Vietnam prisoner of war and staunch supporter of the current U.S. military mission.
And both men seemed eager to begin.
McCain spoke first, in New Orleans, and he accused his younger rival of voting "to deny funds to the soldiers who have done a brilliant and brave job" in Iraq." Americans, he added, should be concerned about the judgment of a presidential candidate who has not traveled to Iraq yet "says he's ready to talk, in person and without conditions, with tyrants from Havana to Pyongyang."
McCain agreed with Obama that the presidential race would focus on change. "But the choice is between the right change and the wrong change, between going forward and going backward," he said.
Obama responded quickly, pausing in his own speech long enough to praise Clinton for "her strength, her courage and her commitment to the causes that brought us here tonight."
As for his general election rival, he said, "It's not change when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush 95 percent of the time, as he did in the Senate last year. It's not change when he offers four more years of Bush economic policies that have failed to create well-paying jobs. ... And it's not change when he promises to continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave young men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians."
In a symbolic move, Obama spoke in the same hall where McCain will accept the Republican nomination at his party's convention in September. Campaign officials, citing the local fire marshal, put the crowd at 17,000 inside the eXcel Energy Center, plus another 15,000 outside.
McCain addressed a smaller crowd by design, an estimated 600 in his audience and another 600 outside.
One campaign began as another was ending.
Clinton won South Dakota on the final night of the primary season; Obama took Montana.
He later called Clinton to congratulate her on her victory. When she called back, Obama reiterated his offer to sit down at a time convenient for her, according to his spokesman, Robert Gibbs. He said there were no plans for a meeting on Wednesday.
Only 31 delegates were at stake in the two states on the night's ballot, the final few among the thousands that once drew Obama, Clinton and six other Democratic candidates into the campaign to replace Bush and become the nation's 44th president.
Obama sealed his nomination, according to The Associated Press tally, based on primary elections, state Democratic caucuses and support from party "superdelegates." It takes 2,118 delegates to clinch the nomination at the convention in Denver this summer, and Obama had 2,154 by the AP count.
There were more on the way, including Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, whom party officials said would make an endorsement on Wednesday.
Additionally, party leaders readied a statement urging uncommitted superdelegates in Congress and among the ranks of governors to state their preference by Friday. Several officials said that while they wanted to unify the party quickly, they were also determined not to appear to push Clinton out of the race, particularly since she will be returning to the Senate once her presidential bid is over.
Obama, a first-term senator who was virtually unknown on the national stage four years ago, defeated Clinton, the former first lady and one-time campaign front-runner, in a 17-month marathon for the Democratic nomination.
His victory had been widely assumed for weeks. But Clinton's declaration of interest in becoming his ticketmate was wholly unexpected.
She expressed it in a conference call with her state's congressional delegation after Rep. Nydia Velazquez, predicted Obama would have great difficulty winning the support of Hispanics and other voting blocs unless the former first lady was on the ticket.
"I am open to it" if it would help the party's prospects in November, Clinton replied, according to participants who spoke on condition of anonymity because the call was private.
Clinton's comments raised anew the prospect of what many Democrats have called a "Dream Ticket" that would put a black man and a woman on the same ballot, but Obama's aides were noncommittal. "We're not in the presidential phase here. We're going to close out the nominating fight and then we'll consider that," David Axelrod, Obama's top strategist, told reporters aboard the candidate's plane en route to Minnesota.
McCain's criticism of Obama referred to a vote last year in which the Illinois senator came out against legislation paying for the Iraq war because it did not include a timetable for withdrawing troops. At the time, Obama said the funding would give President Bush "a blank check to continue down this same, disastrous path."
Obama previously had opposed a deadline for troop withdrawal, but shifted position under pressure from the Democratic Party's liberal wing as he maneuvered for support in advance of the primaries.
Bill Burton, a spokesman for Obama, responded tartly. "While John McCain has a record of occasional independence from his party in the past, last year he chose to embrace 95% of George Bush's agenda, including his failed economic policies and his failed policy in Iraq. No matter how hard he tries to spin it otherwise, that kind of record is simply not the change the American people are looking for or deserve."
The young Illinois senator's success amounted to a victory of hope over experience, earned across an enervating 56 primaries and caucuses that tested the political skills and human endurance of all involved.
Obama stood for change. Clinton was the candidate of experience, ready, she said, to serve in the Oval Office from Day One.
Together, they drew record turnouts in primary after primary — more than 34 million voters in all, independents and Republicans as well as Democrats.
Yet the race between a black man and a woman exposed deep racial and gender divisions within the party.
Obama drew strength from blacks, and from the younger, more liberal and wealthier voters in many states. Clinton was preferred by older, more downscale voters, and women, of course.
Personality issues rose and receded through the campaign:
Clinton's husband, the former president, campaigned tirelessly for her but sometimes became an issue himself, to her detriment.
And Obama struggled to minimize the damage caused by the incendiary rhetoric of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, an issue likely to be raised anew by Republicans in the fall campaign.
Obama's triumph was fashioned on prodigious fundraising, meticulous organizing and his theme of change aimed at an electorate opposed to the Iraq war and worried about the economy — all harnessed to his own gifts as an inspirational speaker.
With her husband's two White House terms as a backdrop, Clinton campaigned for months as the candidate of experience, a former first lady and second-term senator ready to be commander in chief.
But after a year on the campaign trail, Obama won the kickoff Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, and the freshman senator became a political phenomenon.
"We came together as Democrats, as Republicans and independents, to stand up and say we are one nation, we are one people and our time for change has come," he said that night of victory in Des Moines.
As the strongest female presidential candidate in history, Clinton drew large, enthusiastic audiences. Yet Obama's were bigger. One audience, in Dallas, famously cheered when he blew his nose on stage; a crowd of 75,000 turned out in Portland, Ore., the weekend before the state's May 20 primary.
The former first lady countered Obama's Iowa victory with an upset five days later in New Hampshire that set the stage for a campaign marathon as competitive as any in the past generation.
"Over the last week I listened to you, and in the process I found my own voice," she told supporters who had saved her candidacy from an early demise.
In defeat, Obama's aides concluded they had committed a cardinal sin of New Hampshire politics, forsaking small, intimate events in favor of speeches to large audiences inviting them to ratify Iowa's choice.
It was not a mistake they made again — which helped explain Obama's later outings to bowling alleys, backyard basketball courts and American Legion halls in the heartland.
Clinton conceded nothing, memorably knocking back a shot of Crown Royal whiskey at a bar in Indiana, recalling that her grandfather had taught her to use a shotgun, and driving in a pickup to a gas station in South Bend, Ind., to emphasize her support for a summertime suspension of the federal gasoline tax.
As other rivals fell away in winter, Obama and Clinton traded victories on Super Tuesday, the Feb. 5 series of primaries and caucuses across 21 states and American Samoa that once seemed likely to settle the nomination.
But Clinton had a problem that Obama exploited, and he scored a coup she could not answer.
Pressed for cash, the former first lady ran noncompetitive campaigns in several Super Tuesday caucus states, allowing her rival to run up his delegate totals.
At the same time, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., endorsed the young senator in terms that summoned memories of his slain brothers while seeking to turn the page on the Clinton era.
Merely by surviving Super Tuesday, Obama exceeded expectations. But he did more than survive, emerging with a lead in delegates that he never relinquished, and he proceeded to run off a string of 11 straight victories.
Clinton saved her candidacy once more with primary victories in Ohio and Texas on March 4, beginning a stretch in which she won in six of the next nine states on the calendar, as well as in Puerto Rico.
It was a strong run, providing glimpses of what might have been for the one-time front-runner.
We also, by this collective statement, express our outrage and indignation at the official response to the recent revelations on the NBN-ZTE controversy. We call on the concerned public officers to do what is right.
Public Office is a Public Trust. This is the core principle of our republican and democratic nation. In the wake of the initial revelations of Mr. Jose De Venecia III, Chairperson Romulo Neri and the more recent revelations Engineer Jun Lozada, the silence and inaction of the President and the Ombudsman directly violate this core principle.
Under the Constitution, the Ombudsman is an independent Office—accountable to none save the people and the Constitution. It has the power to investigate on its own initiative, which power it has not effectively exercised. The current Ombudsman's dismal failure to investigate recent exposes involving Malacanang has created a perception that she is not independent. Her recent inhibition from investigating the NBN-ZTE deal is not sufficient and does not reassure. By simply remaining in office, she still has enough influence to ensure that the current investigation goes the way of the other major investigations—nowhere.
The President's own silence on this matter is totally unacceptable. The exposes have directly implicated her. The resources of government have been mobilized to suppress the truth—the Philippine National Police, the Aviation Security Command, and the Presidential Security Group have been implicated in detaining Jun Lozada without his consent; her former Chief of Staff and the current DENR Secretary have also been implicated; members of her official family, from the DENR Secretary, the Justice Secretary, the Press Secretary, the Cabinet Secretary have all diverted time and effort to protect her and her husband. Instead of adopting a policy of full disclosure, she has allowed her former NEDA Director General and acting CHED Chairperson to keep a selective silence—when summoned by the Senate but not by Malacanang. Her Justice Secretary has indicated that a parallel investigation will focus on the key witness rather than on the possible crimes committed by those whom Mr. Lozada has named.
We now make the following calls:
First, for those in government who have been implicated by key witnesses, as a minimum response, to take a leave of absence until the controversy is resolved.
For the President and the Ombudsman, while we have asked, at the minimum, for them to take a leave of absence, we say also: resignation is always an option.
Second, for the Department of Justice to immediately terminate its investigation which, on its face, appears irregular considering that there has been no complaint filed with the Department.
Third, for those that the Constitution has vested with mandate and jurisdiction, such as the Ombudsman's Office and the Office of the Special Prosecutor, to charge and prosecute those responsible.
Fourth, for all UP ALUMNI, specially those who have graduated from the College of Law, to be faithful to the interests of our people. For those privileged to have power by appointment or election, to exercise their discretion wisely and not serve the whim or greed of others. For those who have knowledge of what is legally or morally wrong, to be courageous enough to step forward and allow justice to be served. Our patience has been tested during the past years.
Once again, we are faced with yet another scandal involving allegations of corruption at the highest levels of power. We choose not to turn a blind eye or a deaf ear, but to be active, vigilant and responsible in demanding accountability from our institutions. It is only in doing so that we may prevent anarchy.
Malcolm Hall. 19 February 2008.
his name is on everyone's lips, especially mine. when i need a driver, companion, photographer, and all-around guy, nicx is the guy i call. he has never let me down. never, ever...
i wonder why he has never introduced any girl to me. i remember asking him before why i haven't met his girlfriend yet. he only said, "te, makuri kasi pumili ha ira ngatanan. mas maupay it diri ka nala mapili." (ate, it's difficult to choose among a lot of girls, so i'd rather not choose any one.) ayos.
so... nicx, happy, happy birthday!!! your future lies before you, so finish na your schooling... sige na... hahahaha...
balit, thanks for everything. i owe you bigtime, for never giving me any problems and heartaches and disappointments (wellll, except for that schooling thing...). i'm super proud of the person that you have turned out to be.
sana, sana you'll never get tired of being the brother and friend that you are to me. mwa!
| What Your Soul Really Looks Like |
 You are a grounded person, but you also leave room for imagination and dreams. Your feet may be on the ground, but your head is in the clouds. You see yourself with pretty objective eyes. How you view yourself is almost exactly how other people view you. Your near future is likely to be filled with great successes and accomplishments. You just need to figure out how to get there. For you, falling in love is all about the adventure and uncertainty. You can only fall in love with someone who keeps you guessing. |
| Your Theme Song is Born to Be Wild by Steppenwolf |
 Heavy metal thunder Racin' with the wind And the feelin' that I'm under" A total independent spirit, you can't be held down or fenced in. You crave the feeling of wind on your face... and total freedom. |
| You Are Very Sexy |
 You know you're sexy, and you're not afraid to put it all out there. And while you're very appealing, you're careful not to be trashy or over the top. Sexy is all about attitude. And you totally have the attitude that people love. How You Are Sexy You know what (or who) you want, and you're not afraid to go get it. What could be sexier than that? You accept your body as it is, and that's sexy. If you feel attractive, you are more attractive - no matter what your shape is. You feel gorgeous, and you always try to look your best. You make the best of what you've got. Totally sexy! You are open to all sorts of experiences, and you have a taste for the exotic. Your adventurous spirit is very sexy. |
| You Are a Total Brainiac |
 You're curious, thoughtful, analytical, and confident. You take on difficult subjects because you want to... not because you have to. No field of knowledge is too complicated or intimidating for you. You've got the brains to do anything you want. It's possible you end up doing everything you want. |
| You Are 74% Evil |
 Those who love you probably also fear you. A lot. |
