Igoy's Nest

A Welcome Ornithological Phenomenon

2009-04-06T02:43:00.000-07:00

At 4:00pm on April 6,.m y son John noticed a beautiful green bird perched on our shaded clothesline. Appreciating its beauty, he called his brother Joseph and they took pictures of the parrot-like bird. It is resplendent in its cool and soothing shades of green.

After a few photo shots, the bird flew some feet away to the steel backdoor. It perched on the black-painted steel grills, some 9 feet from the floor. It was so tame and it was never intimated by our raucous presence.

To test whether or not its welcoming attitude is authentic, I climbed up the steel door and came a foot near it. The beautiful creature didn't budge. It warmly obliged to the camera clicks and the soft wows of the group.

In no time, the family became superstitious. John ventured, "Could the bird be Yam?", noting the diverse shades of green which was Yam's favorite color. How come it suddenly appeared at a time when we were preparing to visit Yam's grave? Any message being sent through the bird? Or is this meek and elegant member of the aves a reincarnation of the lively and lovely Yam?

For the past week, Yam didn't have her usual flowers since Mom had a trip to Manila. We were readying ourselves to go there for an afternoon walk and to bring some fresh flowers. It was also an opportune time for the visit of a long-time friend from Baguio who just arrived a day before.

Whatever, this green creature's visit is just so pleasurable and soothing. Superstitious or not.

John Ryan "JR" de Guzman

2009-03-11T01:10:00.000-07:00

I occasionally watch the Richard Gomez-hosted game-show, "Family Feud". But today's show was extra-special because the challenger team was headed by a special person - John Ryan "JR" de Guzman from Pampanga.

I first met JR de Guzman on September 30, 2006. At that time, our daughter Yam just had her bone marrow transplant and it would take about 14 days for her new marrow to produce her own blood. She needed massive blood transfusion and we were scouring the whole of Metro Manila for friends and acquaintances who could donate blood. My son John, a member of the Alpha Phi Omega (APO) Fraternity, got hold of an APO directory that included the members' contact numbers. He texted more than 50 of them.

Among the few who responded was JR. He braved the aftermath of typhoon Milenyo and travelled all the way from Pampanga to Asian Hospital in Muntinlupa to donate his life-saving blood to a child he doesn't know. He arrived at about lunch time, lined up for screening with other potential donors, and eventually had platelet extraction through an apheresis machine by evening time. His travel, queueing, screening, waiting and extraction took him more than 14 hours. We had him in for the night where we were staying and that time served as our only bonding time. After breakfast the following day, we brought him to SM-North Edsa where he waited for his bus back home.

JR and my son John maintained communication after that. When Yam passed away, we informed him about the loss of his "kadugo". Though we never had the opportunity to be close to each other, we always felt a special affinity to him.

So, when John mentioned that JR and his family will challenge the family that won Php1.65M in Family Feud, we were excited. I came home early and didn't get out of the house anymore to make sure I watched the episode. And I didn't regret. The de Guzman family won handily over the Grande family. And they won the Php150k jackpot in a dramatic fashion - scoring exactly the last 10 points needed to win the jackpot at the last question.

The de Guzmans return tomorrow (March 12) to defend their crown, and hopefully to win more in the game. We're happy for JR and his family. Above all, we're happy to see on-TV-screen a person who helped extend the life of a child he didn't know - our daughter, Yam.

Thanks and thanks again, JR. May you have a fruitful, happy life.

PZFUGLHKKZKT

Angara denies cut in budget of some SUCs

2009-01-06T17:28:00.000-08:00

Angara denies cut in budget of some SUCs
12/30/2008 | 10:54 PM
gmanews tv

MANILA, Philippines - Administration senator Edgardo Angara on Tuesday denied reports that the Senate has cut the budget of some state universities and colleges (SUCs) when it passed its version of the 2009 proposed national budget.

"(That is) not true. In fact, I am giving some SUCs extra budget for research and development," Angara said in text message to GMANews.TV. He did not elaborate.

He said the research and development funding, especially in times of desperation, is very important to find new ways of livelihood such as new skills, training of people "so that when the good times come back, there are people who are prepared."

In an interview earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri said the senators put more funding in the research and development.

"The fund for research and development will be put together as pool of resources that the universities and colleges can tap," Zubiri said.

He added that the research and development fund is intended to address the issues on food and energy as well as poverty mitigation to address the looming global recession.

House Minority Leader Ronaldo Zamora has warned against a showdown between senators and congressmen in the next meeting of the bicameral conference committee because of the reported cuts made by the Senate on SUCs in the provinces.

He said the senators cannot expect the congressmen to agree on the cuts it made on the academic institutions in their areas.

Among the schools that received cuts in the Senate version of the budget were the Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State University which lost P9 million; Batanes State College, P3 million; Cagayan State University, P9 million; Isabela State University, P30.5 million; Nueva Vizcaya State University, P18 million; and Quirino State College, P29 million.

Other that received cut were Bataan Peninsula State University, P9 million; Pampanga Agricultural College, P2 million; and Ramon Magsaysay Technological University, P14 million; Bicol University, P3 million; Camarines Sur State Agricultural College, P29 million; Partido State University, P19 million; Capiz State University, P3 million.

Cebu Normal University, P12 million; Cebu State College of Science and Technology, P6 million; Negros Oriental State University, P9 million; Siquijor State College, P23 million; Samar State University, P14 million; J. H. Cerilles State College, P19 million; University of Southeastern Philippines, P44 million; Davao Oriental State College of Science and Technology, P4 million; Mindanao State University, P21.5 million. - GMANews.TV

CHED not worried over budget cuts for 21 colleges

2008-12-30T17:00:00.000-08:00

http://philstar.com/Article.aspx?ArticleId=427887&publicationSubCategoryId=63

CHED not worried over budget cuts for 21 colleges
By Rainier Allan Ronda Updated December 30, 2008 12:00 AM

Commission on Higher Education (CHED) chairman Dr. Emmanuel Angeles III is not worrying over the reported cut on the budget of some 21 state universities and colleges (SUCs) made by the Senate, saying any such move would still be decided in the bicameral budget committee.

According to Angeles, he had not yet received any official word of a big cut in the budget of certain SUCs.

“I am not aware of it, nasa bicam pa yan (it’s still in the bicam),” Angeles told The STAR in a phone interview.

He, however, admitted that any large cut made in the budget of SUCs would work to the disadvantage of the educational institutions, especially in their capacity to improve their faculty and facilities.

“If they have expansion programs to accommodate more poor but deserving students, or if they have plans to improve their facilities to raise the quality of instruction, these will need more funding,” Angeles said, adding if their budget was reduced, the SUCs “cannot expand.”

CHED, he said, cannot step in to help since it has a separate budget with its own allocations.

“CHED has its own mandate to fulfill,” Angeles said.

Guarded optimism

Meanwhile, Malacañang appealed yesterday to the senators to reconsider their move slashing the budgets of some educational institutions.

“We hope the Commission on Higher Education or the SUCs themselves can be given a chance to appeal or argue for the restoration of the slashed amount in the bicameral conference committee,” said Presidential Adviser for Political Affairs Gabriel Claudio, referring to the body composed of representatives from the Senate and the House of Representatives that would reconcile their respective versions of the P1.415-trillion national budget for next year.

He expressed optimism that the matter would be resolved as soon as the bicameral body meets.

“This (cuts) after all, is a move of the Senate and not yet in the bicam. Let’s see whether the House would disagree or agree with this move. At any rate, this can easily be threshed out, that’s why we have the bicam,” he said.

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita last week expressed optimism that the proposed outlay would be ratified in Congress within January to allow the government to immediately undertake pump-priming activities to insulate the country from the global economic crisis.

Senators, however, increased the subsidies for next year of most government-owned tertiary level schools.

The increases range from a low of P634,000 to a high of P362 million. A large number of these schools received an additional P1 million.

The University of the Philippines, the country’s premier state university, received the biggest increase of P362 million from the Senate after its 2009 budget was raised to P6.8 billion or equivalent to the combined budgets of 47 state colleges and universities from the Ilocos Region, the Cordilleras, Cagayan Valley, Central Luzon, all the way down to Southern Tagalog and the Bicol Region. – Paolo Romero

2009 Budget for SUCs Slashed

2008-12-30T16:58:00.000-08:00

I hope I am not inflicting damage to your vacation mode with this disturbing news item. If the Senate's budget version materializes in the final 2009 GAA budget for SUCs, it can be disastrous for the concerned SUCs including USeP and DOSCST. I hope the amount for the USeP budget cut (Php44M is a misprint. In any case, there is still little time to work this thing out with the Senate while the 2009 budget has not yet been signed into law.

http://philstar.com/Article.aspx?ArticleId=427709&publicationSubCategoryId=63

Senate slashes budget of 21 state universities
By Jess Diaz Updated December 29, 2008 12:00 AM

The Senate has cut the 2009 budgets of 21 state colleges and universities in the provinces by P323 million.

However, it increased the subsidies for next year of most government-owned tertiary level schools. The increases range from a low of P634,000 to a high of P362 million. A large number of these schools received an additional P1 million.

The University of the Philippines (UP), the country’s premier state university, received the biggest increase of P362 million from the Senate. That raised its 2009 budget to P6.8 billion.

Sen. Edgardo Angara, who recommended the reductions and augmentations as Senate finance committee chairman, was UP president during the Marcos years.

UP’s subsidy next year is equivalent to the combined budgets of 47 state colleges and universities from the Ilocos Region, the Cordilleras, Cagayan Valley, Central Luzon, all the way down to Southern Tagalog and the Bicol Region.

The Eastern Samar State University, located in one of the poorest provinces in the country, received the smallest augmentation - P634,000. That increased its 2009 budget from P144.5 million to P145.2 million.

In the Ilocos provinces, the Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State University lost P9 million in the senators’ version of the 2009 national budget.

All five state schools in Cagayan Valley suffered collective reductions of P89.5 million. The Batanes State College lost P3 million, Cagayan State University, P9 million; Isabela State University, P30.5 million; Nueva Vizcaya State University, P18 million; and Quirino State College, P29 million.

In Central Luzon, the budgets of Bataan Peninsula State University, Pampanga Agricultural College and Ramon Magsaysay Technological University were cut by P9 million, P2 million and P14 million, respectively.

In the Bicol Region, Bicol University lost P3 million; Camarines Sur State Agricultural College, P29 million; and Partido State University, P19 million.

There’s only one state school in Western Visayas that suffered a cut of P3 million – Capiz State University. Capiz is the home province of Sen. Mar Roxas.

In Central Visayas, the 2009 budgets of Cebu Normal University, Cebu State College of Science and Technology, Negros Oriental State University, and Siquijor State College were slashed by P12 million, P6 million, P9 million, and P23 million, respectively.

In the Leyte-Samar provinces, Samar State University lost P14 million; while in the Zamboanga peninsula, J. H. Cerilles State College lost P19 million.

In the Davao Region, University of Southeastern Philippines was stripped of P44 million and Davao Oriental State College of Science and Technology, P4 million.

Mindanao State University in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao lost P21.5 million.

House Minority Leader Ronaldo Zamora, a member of the House panel in the bicameral conference committee on the budget, told The STAR that there would be a “showdown” between senators and congressmen on the Senate-approved cuts for state schools.

“We have no problem with the suggested augmentations. It is the reductions that will be sticky and contentious. They (senators) cannot expect congressmen in the provinces and districts where the affected schools are located to agree to those cuts,” he said.

“For instance, how can you expect Congressman Tony (Antonio) Cerilles (of Zamboanga del Sur) to support the P19-million reduction for a school named apparently after one of his relatives?” he asked, referring to J. H. Cerilles State College.

In addition to schools, the Senate reduced the subsidies of four specialty hospitals in Quezon City by a total of P347.5 million.

The Philippine Heart Center suffered the biggest cut of P181 million. Senators reduced its budget from P417 million as approved by the House to P236 million.

The National Kidney and Transplant Institute, also known as Kidney Center, lost P117 million, bringing its 2009 funds down to P198.5 million.

Even the specialty hospital for children, Philippine Children’s Medical Center, was deprived of P47.5 million. That reduced its budget to P251 million.

The Lung Center of the Philippines suffered the smallest reduction of P2 million. Its budget was cut to P161.6 million.

Senators slashed various appropriations and realigned the reductions to their pet projects and favorite agencies.

John Remembers Yam

2008-10-24T15:43:00.000-07:00

A few days after Yam's 13th birthday, her elder brother John remembers her with a blog. John was the stem cell donor to Yam's bone marrow transplant in September 2006. He first made his blood donation to her maternal grandmother in 1998 when he was barely 15. He had been donating blood whenever he can.

John's blog about Yam can be accessed HERE.

Or, you can type this link: http://rjvb.blog.friendster.com/2008/10/thirteen/

Oprah Winfrey's Stanford Commencement Address

2008-08-26T23:43:00.000-07:00

Stanford Report, June 15, 2008 (Stanford News Service)

Oprah talks to graduates about feelings, failure and finding happiness

Following is an edited transcript of Oprah Winfrey's speech at Stanford's Commencement ceremony Sunday, June 15, 2008

L.A. Cicero

Winfrey wielded her familiar and forceful presence, updating the metaphor of the moral compass by calling feelings the “GPS system for life.” She went on to say, “Even doubt means don’t. This is what I’ve learned.”

Thank you, President Hennessy, and to the trustees and the faculty, to all of the parents and grandparents, to you, the Stanford graduates. Thank you for letting me share this amazing day with you.

I need to begin by letting everyone in on a little secret. The secret is that Kirby Bumpus, Stanford Class of '08, is my goddaughter. So, I was thrilled when President Hennessy asked me to be your Commencement speaker, because this is the first time I've been allowed on campus since Kirby's been here.

You see, Kirby's a very smart girl. She wants people to get to know her on her own terms, she says. Not in terms of who she knows. So, she never wants anyone who's first meeting her to know that I know her and she knows me. So, when she first came to Stanford for new student orientation with her mom, I hear that they arrived and everybody was so welcoming, and somebody came up to Kirby and they said, "Ohmigod, that's Gayle King!" Because a lot of people know Gayle King as my BFF [best friend forever].

And so somebody comes up to Kirby, and they say, "Ohmigod, is that Gayle King?" And Kirby's like, "Uh-huh. She's my mom."

And so the person says, "Ohmigod, does it mean, like, you know Oprah Winfrey?"

And Kirby says, "Sort of."

I said, "Sort of? You sort of know me?" Well, I have photographic proof. I have pictures which I can e-mail to you all of Kirby riding horsey with me on all fours. So, I more than sort-of know Kirby Bumpus. And I'm so happy to be here, just happy that I finally, after four years, get to see her room. There's really nowhere else I'd rather be, because I'm so proud of Kirby, who graduates today with two degrees, one in human bio and the other in psychology. Love you, Kirby Cakes! That's how well I know her. I can call her Cakes.

And so proud of her mother and father, who helped her get through this time, and her brother, Will. I really had nothing to do with her graduating from Stanford, but every time anybody's asked me in the past couple of weeks what I was doing, I would say, "I'm getting ready to go to Stanford."

I just love saying "Stanford." Because the truth is, I know I would have never gotten my degree at all, 'cause I didn't go to Stanford. I went to Tennessee State University. But I never would have gotten my diploma at all, because I was supposed to graduate back in 1975, but I was short one credit. And I figured, I'm just going to forget it, 'cause, you know, I'm not going to march with my class. Because by that point, I was already on television. I'd been in television since I was 19 and a sophomore. Granted, I was the only television anchor person that had an 11 o'clock curfew doing the 10 o'clock news.

Seriously, my dad was like, "Well, that news is over at 10:30. Be home by 11."

But that didn't matter to me, because I was earning a living. I was on my way. So, I thought, I'm going to let this college thing go and I only had one credit short. But, my father, from that time on and for years after, was always on my case, because I did not graduate. He'd say, "Oprah Gail"—that's my middle name—"I don't know what you're gonna do without that degree." And I'd say, "But, Dad, I have my own television show."

And he'd say, "Well, I still don't know what you're going to do without that degree."

And I'd say, "But, Dad, now I'm a talk show host." He'd say, "I don't know how you're going to get another job without that degree."

So, in 1987, Tennessee State University invited me back to speak at their commencement. By then, I had my own show, was nationally syndicated. I'd made a movie, had been nominated for an Oscar and founded my company, Harpo. But I told them, I cannot come and give a speech unless I can earn one more credit, because my dad's still saying I'm not going to get anywhere without that degree.

So, I finished my coursework, I turned in my final paper and I got the degree.

And my dad was very proud. And I know that, if anything happens, that one credit will be my salvation.

But I also know why my dad was insisting on that diploma, because, as B. B. King put it, "The beautiful thing about learning is that nobody can take that away from you." And learning is really in the broadest sense what I want to talk about today, because your education, of course, isn't ending here. In many ways, it's only just begun.

The world has so many lessons to teach you. I consider the world, this Earth, to be like a school and our life the classrooms. And sometimes here in this Planet Earth school the lessons often come dressed up as detours or roadblocks. And sometimes as full-blown crises. And the secret I've learned to getting ahead is being open to the lessons, lessons from the grandest university of all, that is, the universe itself.

It's being able to walk through life eager and open to self-improvement and that which is going to best help you evolve, 'cause that's really why we're here, to evolve as human beings. To grow into more of ourselves, always moving to the next level of understanding, the next level of compassion and growth.

I think about one of the greatest compliments I've ever received: I interviewed with a reporter when I was first starting out in Chicago. And then many years later, I saw the same reporter. And she said to me, "You know what? You really haven't changed. You've just become more of yourself."

And that is really what we're all trying to do, become more of ourselves. And I believe that there's a lesson in almost everything that you do and every experience, and getting the lesson is how you move forward. It's how you enrich your spirit. And, trust me, I know that inner wisdom is more precious than wealth. The more you spend it, the more you gain.

So, today, I just want to share a few lessons—meaning three—that I've learned in my journey so far. And aren't you glad? Don't you hate it when somebody says, "I'm going to share a few," and it's 10 lessons later? And, you're like, "Listen, this is my graduation. This is not about you." So, it's only going to be three.

The three lessons that have had the greatest impact on my life have to do with feelings, with failure and with finding happiness.

A year after I left college, I was given the opportunity to co-anchor the 6 o'clock news in Baltimore, because the whole goal in the media at the time I was coming up was you try to move to larger markets. And Baltimore was a much larger market than Nashville. So, getting the 6 o'clock news co-anchor job at 22 was such a big deal. It felt like the biggest deal in the world at the time.

And I was so proud, because I was finally going to have my chance to be like Barbara Walters, which is who I had been trying to emulate since the start of my TV career. So, I was 22 years old, making $22,000 a year. And it's where I met my best friend, Gayle, who was an intern at the same TV station. And once we became friends, we'd say, "Ohmigod, I can't believe it! You're making $22,000 and you're only 22. Imagine when you're 40 and you're making $40,000!"

When I turned 40, I was so glad that didn't happen.

So, here I am, 22, making $22,000 a year and, yet, it didn't feel right. It didn't feel right. The first sign, as President Hennessy was saying, was when they tried to change my name. The news director said to me at the time, "Nobody's going to remember Oprah. So, we want to change your name. We've come up with a name we think that people will remember and people will like. It's a friendly name: Suzie."

Hi, Suzie. Very friendly. You can't be angry with Suzie. Remember Suzie. But my name wasn't Suzie. And, you know, I'd grown up not really loving my name, because when you're looking for your little name on the lunch boxes and the license plate tags, you're never going to find Oprah.

So, I grew up not loving the name, but once I was asked to change it, I thought, well, it is my name and do I look like a Suzie to you? So, I thought, no, it doesn't feel right. I'm not going to change my name. And if people remember it or not, that's OK.

And then they said they didn't like the way I looked. This was in 1976, when your boss could call you in and say, "I don't like the way you look." Now that would be called a lawsuit, but back then they could just say, "I don't like the way you look." Which, in case some of you in the back, if you can't tell, is nothing like Barbara Walters. So, they sent me to a salon where they gave me a perm, and after a few days all my hair fell out and I had to shave my head. And then they really didn't like the way I looked.

Because now I am black and bald and sitting on TV. Not a pretty picture.

But even worse than being bald, I really hated, hated, hated being sent to report on other people's tragedies as a part of my daily duty, knowing that I was just expected to observe, when everything in my instinct told me that I should be doing something, I should be lending a hand.

So, as President Hennessy said, I'd cover a fire and then I'd go back and I'd try to give the victims blankets. And I wouldn't be able to sleep at night because of all the things I was covering during the day.

And, meanwhile, I was trying to sit gracefully like Barbara and make myself talk like Barbara. And I thought, well, I could make a pretty goofy Barbara. And if I could figure out how to be myself, I could be a pretty good Oprah. I was trying to sound elegant like Barbara. And sometimes I didn't read my copy, because something inside me said, this should be spontaneous. So, I wanted to get the news as I was giving it to the people. So, sometimes, I wouldn't read my copy and it would be, like, six people on a pileup on I-40. Oh, my goodness.

And sometimes I wouldn't read the copy—because I wanted to be spontaneous—and I'd come across a list of words I didn't know and I'd mispronounce. And one day I was reading copy and I called Canada "ca nada." And I decided, this Barbara thing's not going too well. I should try being myself.

But at the same time, my dad was saying, "Oprah Gail, this is an opportunity of a lifetime. You better keep that job." And my boss was saying, "This is the nightly news. You're an anchor, not a social worker. Just do your job."

So, I was juggling these messages of expectation and obligation and feeling really miserable with myself. I'd go home at night and fill up my journals, 'cause I've kept a journal since I was 15—so I now have volumes of journals. So, I'd go home at night and fill up my journals about how miserable I was and frustrated. Then I'd eat my anxiety. That's where I learned that habit.

And after eight months, I lost that job. They said I was too emotional. I was too much. But since they didn't want to pay out the contract, they put me on a talk show in Baltimore. And the moment I sat down on that show, the moment I did, I felt like I'd come home. I realized that TV could be more than just a playground, but a platform for service, for helping other people lift their lives. And the moment I sat down, doing that talk show, it felt like breathing. It felt right. And that's where everything that followed for me began.

And I got that lesson. When you're doing the work you're meant to do, it feels right and every day is a bonus, regardless of what you're getting paid.

It's true. And how do you know when you're doing something right? How do you know that? It feels so. What I know now is that feelings are really your GPS system for life. When you're supposed to do something or not supposed to do something, your emotional guidance system lets you know. The trick is to learn to check your ego at the door and start checking your gut instead. Every right decision I've made—every right decision I've ever made—has come from my gut. And every wrong decision I've ever made was a result of me not listening to the greater voice of myself.

If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. That's the lesson. And that lesson alone will save you, my friends, a lot of grief. Even doubt means don't. This is what I've learned. There are many times when you don't know what to do. When you don't know what to do, get still, get very still, until you do know what to do.

And when you do get still and let your internal motivation be the driver, not only will your personal life improve, but you will gain a competitive edge in the working world as well. Because, as Daniel Pink writes in his best-seller, A Whole New Mind, we're entering a whole new age. And he calls it the Conceptual Age, where traits that set people apart today are going to come from our hearts—right brain—as well as our heads. It's no longer just the logical, linear, rules-based thinking that matters, he says. It's also empathy and joyfulness and purpose, inner traits that have transcendent worth.

These qualities bloom when we're doing what we love, when we're involving the wholeness of ourselves in our work, both our expertise and our emotion.

So, I say to you, forget about the fast lane. If you really want to fly, just harness your power to your passion. Honor your calling. Everybody has one. Trust your heart and success will come to you.

So, how do I define success? Let me tell you, money's pretty nice. I'm not going to stand up here and tell you that it's not about money, 'cause money is very nice. I like money. It's good for buying things.

But having a lot of money does not automatically make you a successful person. What you want is money and meaning. You want your work to be meaningful. Because meaning is what brings the real richness to your life. What you really want is to be surrounded by people you trust and treasure and by people who cherish you. That's when you're really rich.

So, lesson one, follow your feelings. If it feels right, move forward. If it doesn't feel right, don't do it.

Now I want to talk a little bit about failings, because nobody's journey is seamless or smooth. We all stumble. We all have setbacks. If things go wrong, you hit a dead end—as you will—it's just life's way of saying time to change course. So, ask every failure—this is what I do with every failure, every crisis, every difficult time—I say, what is this here to teach me? And as soon as you get the lesson, you get to move on. If you really get the lesson, you pass and you don't have to repeat the class. If you don't get the lesson, it shows up wearing another pair of pants—or skirt—to give you some remedial work.

And what I've found is that difficulties come when you don't pay attention to life's whisper, because life always whispers to you first. And if you ignore the whisper, sooner or later you'll get a scream. Whatever you resist persists. But, if you ask the right question—not why is this happening, but what is this here to teach me?—it puts you in the place and space to get the lesson you need.

My friend Eckhart Tolle, who's written this wonderful book called A New Earth that's all about letting the awareness of who you are stimulate everything that you do, he puts it like this: He says, don't react against a bad situation; merge with that situation instead. And the solution will arise from the challenge. Because surrendering yourself doesn't mean giving up; it means acting with responsibility.

Many of you know that, as President Hennessy said, I started this school in Africa. And I founded the school, where I'm trying to give South African girls a shot at a future like yours—Stanford. And I spent five years making sure that school would be as beautiful as the students. I wanted every girl to feel her worth reflected in her surroundings. So, I checked every blueprint, I picked every pillow. I was looking at the grout in between the bricks. I knew every thread count of the sheets. I chose every girl from the villages, from nine provinces. And yet, last fall, I was faced with a crisis I had never anticipated. I was told that one of the dorm matrons was suspected of sexual abuse.

That was, as you can imagine, devastating news. First, I cried—actually, I sobbed—for about half an hour. And then I said, let's get to it; that's all you get, a half an hour. You need to focus on the now, what you need to do now. So, I contacted a child trauma specialist. I put together a team of investigators. I made sure the girls had counseling and support. And Gayle and I got on a plane and flew to South Africa.

And the whole time I kept asking that question: What is this here to teach me? And, as difficult as that experience has been, I got a lot of lessons. I understand now the mistakes I made, because I had been paying attention to all of the wrong things. I'd built that school from the outside in, when what really mattered was the inside out.

So, it's a lesson that applies to all of our lives as a whole. What matters most is what's inside. What matters most is the sense of integrity, of quality and beauty. I got that lesson. And what I know is that the girls came away with something, too. They have emerged from this more resilient and knowing that their voices have power.

And their resilience and spirit have given me more than I could ever give to them, which leads me to my final lesson—the one about finding happiness—which we could talk about all day, but I know you have other wacky things to do.

Not a small topic this is, finding happiness. But in some ways I think it's the simplest of all. Gwendolyn Brooks wrote a poem for her children. It's called "Speech to the Young : Speech to the Progress-Toward." And she says at the end, "Live not for battles won. / Live not for the-end-of-the-song. / Live in the along." She's saying, like Eckhart Tolle, that you have to live for the present. You have to be in the moment. Whatever has happened to you in your past has no power over this present moment, because life is now.

But I think she's also saying, be a part of something. Don't live for yourself alone. This is what I know for sure: In order to be truly happy, you must live along with and you have to stand for something larger than yourself. Because life is a reciprocal exchange. To move forward you have to give back. And to me, that is the greatest lesson of life. To be happy, you have to give something back.

I know you know that, because that's a lesson that's woven into the very fabric of this university. It's a lesson that Jane and Leland Stanford got and one they've bequeathed to you. Because all of you know the story of how this great school came to be, how the Stanfords lost their only child to typhoid at the age of 15. They had every right and they had every reason to turn their backs against the world at that time, but instead, they channeled their grief and their pain into an act of grace. Within a year of their son's death, they had made the founding grant for this great school, pledging to do for other people's children what they were not able to do for their own boy.

The lesson here is clear, and that is, if you're hurting, you need to help somebody ease their hurt. If you're in pain, help somebody else's pain. And when you're in a mess, you get yourself out of the mess helping somebody out of theirs. And in the process, you get to become a member of what I call the greatest fellowship of all, the sorority of compassion and the fraternity of service.

The Stanfords had suffered the worst thing any mom and dad can ever endure, yet they understood that helping others is the way we help ourselves. And this wisdom is increasingly supported by scientific and sociological research. It's no longer just woo-woo soft-skills talk. There's actually a helper's high, a spiritual surge you gain from serving others. So, if you want to feel good, you have to go out and do some good.

But when you do good, I hope you strive for more than just the good feeling that service provides, because I know this for sure, that doing good actually makes you better. So, whatever field you choose, if you operate from the paradigm of service, I know your life will have more value and you will be happy.

I was always happy doing my talk show, but that happiness reached a depth of fulfillment, of joy, that I really can't describe to you or measure when I stopped just being on TV and looking at TV as a job and decided to use television, to use it and not have it use me, to use it as a platform to serve my viewers. That alone changed the trajectory of my success.

So, I know this—that whether you're an actor, you offer your talent in the way that most inspires art. If you're an anatomist, you look at your gift as knowledge and service to healing. Whether you've been called, as so many of you here today getting doctorates and other degrees, to the professions of business, law, engineering, humanities, science, medicine, if you choose to offer your skills and talent in service, when you choose the paradigm of service, looking at life through that paradigm, it turns everything you do from a job into a gift. And I know you haven't spent all this time at Stanford just to go out and get a job.

You've been enriched in countless ways. There's no better way to make your mark on the world and to share that abundance with others. My constant prayer for myself is to be used in service for the greater good.

So, let me end with one of my favorite quotes from Martin Luther King. Dr. King said, "Not everybody can be famous." And I don't know, but everybody today seems to want to be famous.

But fame is a trip. People follow you to the bathroom, listen to you pee. It's just—try to pee quietly. It doesn't matter, they come out and say, "Ohmigod, it's you. You peed."

That's the fame trip, so I don't know if you want that.

So, Dr. King said, "Not everybody can be famous. But everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service." Those of you who are history scholars may know the rest of that passage. He said, "You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato or Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love."

In a few moments, you'll all be officially Stanford's '08.

You have the heart and the smarts to go with it. And it's up to you to decide, really, where will you now use those gifts? You've got the diploma, so go out and get the lessons, 'cause I know great things are sure to come.

You know, I've always believed that everything is better when you share it, so before I go, I wanted to share a graduation gift with you. Underneath your seats you'll find two of my favorite books. Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth is my current book club selection. Our New Earth webcast has been downloaded 30 million times with that book. And Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future has reassured me I'm in the right direction.

I really wanted to give you cars but I just couldn't pull that off! Congratulations, '08!

Thank you. Thank you.

Overcoming Grief

2008-07-20T10:21:00.000-07:00

(I started to write this piece many months back. For some reasons, I just couldn't complete it. Sometimes it takes time to understand your own feelings. I still couldn't say that I fully understand this phenomenon of grief. After all, our learning is a continuing process and is influenced by multiple events)

Experts say that when you lose a loved one, you grieve through stages. These are:

1. Shock and numbness, wherein events seem to lose their importance after the death of a loved one. This stage is nature's way of enabling you to do things necessary to carry on.

2. Emotional turmoil, where extremes of emotion are commonly felt throughout the bereavement. The emotional support, sympathetic ears and reassuring words of friends and loved ones may be most needed.

3. Emptiness, where you face the loneliness that follows death. The care of other people are a major help in your need and where ties with family and friends are important.

4. Acceptance. In due time, renewed zest for life will follow bereavement and grief. Life will regain its spark, and you will be on an even keel again.

When Yam peacefully died in her sleep months ago, the family was unusually calm. Clasped into each other's hands, we surrounded her as the medical staff documented the event. Being around an ill person who has become unresponsive to medication prepares you for the inevitable. And watching her deteriorate daily led us to expect this natural conclusion.

But, unusually calm? Perhaps it was more apt to say we were numbed. Knowing that this event is going to happen provided us the cushion to avert the shock. The usual events that follow death like the wake and the funeral were emotionally profound. I believe they are necessary for the whole family to experience as they signify the completion of the cycle of birth to death. The funeral is a public act of finality to a loved one's physical presence.

To signify closure to this event, each member of our family not only threw into the grave a select flower or two, but spaded soil into the grave to bury and lay to rest the loved one who died.

I believe we need not overcome grief in the sense that we conquer it. The void in one's life caused by the departure of a loved can never be filled by anyone. This is why overcoming grief, to me, is best achieved by living with it, finding its meaning and not allowing it to rule or ruin your life. Grief due to the loss of a loved one is part of life. Recognizing it at such makes you whole.

Strength and Courage

2008-06-19T15:02:00.000-07:00

(During the two years that we cared for our daughter until after she passed away, we heard of friends who tell us how strong we were. Of course we were encouraged by this compliment and it kept us going. But many times I thought about what "strength" really meant. An unknown author compared "strength" witth another character trait, courage, and one can better understand. This is insightful)

It takes strength to be firm.
It takes courage to be gentle.

It takes strength to stand guard.
It takes courage to let down your guard.

It takes strength to conquer
It takes courage to surrender.

It takes strength to be certain.
It takes courage to have doubt.

It takes strength to fit in.
It takes courage to stand out.

It takes strength to feel a friend's pain.
It takes courage to feel your own pain.

It takes strength to hide feelings.
It takes courage to show them.

It takes strength to endure abuse.
It takes courage to stop it.

It takes strength to stand alone.
It takes courage to lean on another.

It takes strength to love.

It takes courage to be loved.

It takes strength to survive.
It takes courage to live.

-- Author Unknown

Birthday - A Celebration of Life

2008-06-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

(I posted this in the other site. But I now feel this has its proper place here, too.)

Today (June 18) is my birthday ('ty - first). I don't usually celebrate it. But I think some people are happy that on this day 'ty-one years ago, I was born. Celebrating this day is thus a celebration of life - mine. And I thought it best to celebrate it with others whose lives hang on the balance.

In memory of Yam who was with me on few occasions in the past doing similar thing, I chose to be with pediatric cancer patients at the Davao Medical Center. There were 12 of them at this time. The visit and the day's rewards were enormous. Aside from seeing most of the kids' smiles, I realized how fortunate I was, I am and I can still be.

My wife Emma rushed from her work and was with me. She took these pictures. Shiena Payno, a child life coordinator of Kythe, Incorporated, who works with the kids, was so kind to accommodate us into what they're doing.

This day, what I could have spent for myself with friends at a birthday party for myself, went to the kids. Not much, but enough to make some kids contort their faces into a genuine smile. Not much, but enough to make them and their parents feel loved and cared for - even by a couple of strangers, who are strangers no more.

As Einstein once said, a life lived for others is worth living.

(Thanks to those who greeted me on this day. And to those who'll read this. Ha ha ha, wala tayo ngayon - para sa mga bata muna)

HONORING A FATHER ON FATHER’S DAY

2008-06-14T01:34:00.000-07:00

While thanking my friends through an email, I remembered one of my friends’ Dad. I read his Dad’s name printed at the top row, fourth column on a large brass plate at the Philippine National Red Cross building in Port Area. Those in the list were there because they donated at least 50 bags of their precious, life-saving blood.

So I sent an email to my friend. He responded saying his Dad donated blood more than 150 times. Oh, that's one for the books - one that requires a fervent sense of purpose and commitment. Since blood donation is as frequent as every quarter, his Dad could have donated blood consistently for about 40 years.

I postulated that the sense of mission of my friend’s Dad is rooted in a profound personal experience. I later learned that his (Dad’s) mother died due to loss of blood when she gave birth to him (Dad). My friend also related the story of his Dad’s College of Law classmate who could have survived an accident if he had blood transfusion.

My friend’s Dad is a great person. I wondered how much greater he could have been if he grew up with a doting mother around. Back in high school, our whole class (and more) frequented their home. We noisily frolicked in their swimming pool, boisterously played in their basketball court, often times raiding their refrigerator. Such a warm, caring and loving home. And though I haven’t personally met my friend’s Dad, I knew we each have a place in his big, big heart - including our individual mischief.

Why am I honoring my friend’s Dad and not mine? I am honoring him as a symbol of the many great Dads out there, including mine. I’m honoring him as a representative of those who regularly donate blood and, in effect give the gift of love and life. Few do so as a matter of duty, but many do so with a sense of purpose and as an act of love. In the same manner, some Dads are Dads as a matter of duty, but most are Dads because of a sense of purpose and love.

When my daughter was sick of leukemia, she needed multiple blood transfusions. We had to scour for blood donors when the blood bank is short of stock. In cases of platelet transfusion, we needed a live donor. Looking for a donor, especially when you have exhausted your friends and relatives, can be tiresome and tedious. Beyond using your charm, the donor should have a desire and commitment to save life.

In the two years that my daughter needed blood, we experienced a very efficient system at the Red Cross national office. We called the Red Cross office up, placed a request, asked confirmation when the blood is available, then took it at the appointed time. More important than the dedicated employees, the system worked most of the time because of committed donors like my friend’s Dad.

We count ourselves very fortunate for having good, loving and caring friends. And we count it a blessing that our friends have great Dads - who made our friends as great or greater.

Happy Fathers Day to all great fathers out there.

Molder of Dreams

2008-06-05T23:54:00.000-07:00

(I thought I posted this on this site. I heard this recited by USA Teacher of the Year awardee Guy Doud. For a teacher in the Philippines where the teacher has "ang gaan-gaan ng sweldo at ang bigat-bigat ng trabaho", the reward rests in lives changed for the better)

by Clark Mollenhoff of the Des Moines Register

You are the molders of their dreams
The gods who build or crash their young beliefs of right or wrong.
You are the spark that sets aflame the poets hand
Or lights the flame in some great singer’s song.

You are the gods of young the very young.
You are the guardian of million dreams.

Your every smile or frown can head or pierce a heart.
Yours are one hundred lives – one thousand lives.
Yours is the pride of living them, the sorrow too.
Your patient work, your touch, makes you the god of hope.
That fills their souls with dreams, and makes those dreams come true.

Empathy and Compassion

2008-05-30T02:12:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday my daughter Janice sent a text message to me saying she's arriving late. She's going with friends to a funeral. Her classmate's Dad just died.

May 28 was the burial. My daughter asked permission to attend. I volunteered to drive for her and a couple of her friends.

I do not personally know the bereaved family. But my daughter was insistent she must go. She felt her presence can comfort her classmate somehow. I knew it would, so I was sure my time will be well-spent.

We attended the mass at the Assumption. After that, the throng of mourners trooped to the burial grounds at Orchard. Upon arrival, the mourners were seated and after settling, some songs were sang. A brief silence ensured after the songs, then the widow went up front and thanked those who were present. She was deeply emotional. We understood. And we wept with her.

When it was time for all the family members to take a last look at ther departed for the last time, it was an extremely emotional sight. One of the three children couldn't contain himself. He was trembling and almost collapsed. Fortunately, he was propped up by relatives.

I was moved. I can feel what they felt. I can put myself into their shoes. I knew what they were going through. And I was thankful I was there to add to the salve that eased their pain. Even if I was silently there. Even if they didn't know me.

But I knew some of those in the crowd. So I slipped an envelope to one of the widow's colleague and requested that she gives it to the widow. Surprisingly, the widow knew me. She saw me a few times when my daughter was still going to school. And she knew what we just went through. She understood, she was thankful, and she instanly and easily related. I felt sorry for them, I felt relieved and I felt happy that I was there. I felt I was able to walk with her in her shoes.

I was thankful that I went to the burial with my daughter. I was glad I had the opportunity to extend a bit of help. I knew it somehow eased a burden. In attempting to ease the pain in others, I felt better with my own pain.

Empathy - that's putting yourself in others' shoes. Compassion - that's walking with others in their shoes.

It's quite awkward. But it works - for both the walker and the owner of the shoes.

Continuity

2008-05-28T16:40:00.000-07:00

Anyone who undergoes crisis in life gets stalled somehow. Some important things need to be set aside. Schedules are reset to give focus on urgent matters. Finances are reworked. Often finances dry up in so short a time especially in cases of a major accident, illness or death.

After going through our daughter's two years of illness that ended in her death, we've been to the depths so to speak.

In spite of the fiery trial, we say we are more than fortunate. Relatives, friends and many others rallied behind us. They provided continuity to our lives. Though we had to take occasional and extended leave from work, our career somehow did not suffer. My wife's even took some positive turns as her role in her organization became more pronounced. And while I took a turn to a less stressful and more independent assignment, it is no less personally rewarding.

After four months of our daughter's illness in 2006, our life-savings were wiped out. We stared at raising a 7-figure budget for her continued medical expense. We say God provided our needs, moving the hearts of people who in turn extended their helping hands to us. I always wax emotional whenever I remember how much love and care we received from countless people, often times I feel we did not deserve. While my family sold some properties, we have not been tried to the point of blood.

People who reach out to others could be God's way of providing fluid continuity in peoples' lives. He did so greatly to us. Many times during those two years, we could have stalled. But somehow, we kept moving on because family and friends were simply there by our side. Old friendships were renewed, lost ones were regained, new ones emerged. Indeed you know who your real friends are when you're down and we realized we have many, Big, big thanks to you guys. I guess no one could be more proud at how much and how far family and friendship provide a solid support system.

We thus count it a joy to have undergone a fiery trial though we admit we sometimes felt abysmally down during those times. But God always provided a way out, often in ways we never imagined and in ways that displayed His glory. God indeed provides continuity through people.

Now, it is our turn to provide continuity to others' lives. And while we did so in minor ways during those two years, we can do it in a more active way now. We just started by placing a modest donation in the name of some friends to the Child Life Program of Kythe at the Davao Medical Center for pediatric cancer patients. We also committed to assist a leukemia survivor to college and enable her to appreciate and fulfill her life dreams.

Honestly, I feel a little discomfort writing about what we do (because I may not even be able to make a dent). But continuity to our own life and to others' lives is our individual and collective responsibility. We owe ours to many others, we owe it to others who need us. We just need to open our eyes, reach out, or be sensitive to others' needs.

Continuity - this is life. It is what life is all about.

Yam's 40th

2008-05-27T14:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, May 27, was Yam's 40th day. It was so quiet at home. Our silence was gladly diverted to Yam's pictures. On her framed picture, she exudes tranquillity and joy. Her eyes glitter, her smile captivates, her countenance radiates life. She hugs on to Ashlee, her brown cuddly bear given by her Tita Helen in June 2006.

After breakfast, the three of us at home went onto our chores for the day. Quietly and purposefully.

At about 4 in the afternoon, it was breezy at the Forest Lake, Davao City where Yam was laid to rest. Where I stand gave me the best vantage look at the gently flowing Davao River and the luscious vegetation nearby. The undulating terrain exemplifies the waves of life and the serene environment suits my mood. The soil on Yam's plot was freshly cleaned up. The grass has taken root, thanks to the frequent afternoon rains.

I began to mutter words and phrases I used to tell Yam when she was still around. A long silence, then prayers were said, but not very long. Tears flowed, but weren't buckets-ful. Memories flashed, but weren't in torrents.

We have accepted. We are moving on. But the grief lingers. We terribly miss a characteristic laughter, a gentle voice, a trusting heart. But deep within us, we silently nod in trust and gratitude at God’s unfathomable and infinite wisdom.
----

(Our special thanks to Manny Mascunana who offered a mass for Yam at the Carmelite in Cebu, and to our friends and relatives who offered their prayers for Yam where they were on this day. God bless us all.)
(Yam's elder brother Joseph posted in his site his thoughts on Yam's 40th day.)

CHIBISUKE (written by Yam in May 2007)

2008-05-23T19:42:00.000-07:00

(This was posted by Yam on her Multiply site sometime late May 2007 just before her elder sister enrolled at UPDiliman. She was into those anime thing which perhaps made her familiar with words like chibisuke. She was back to school June to August but reverted to home study in September. We wish she could have written more. But she was either busy with home study or was on treatment. She was so fond of bantering with her sister who, in turn, was so Ate to her)

hindi niyo siguro alam yang word na 'chibisuke'...well, merong storya yan...nakakatuwang story...

kanina kausap ko ung 'genius' ko na ate(sa phone, syempre)nasa manila siya eh...tapos nag-usap sila ni mommy...tapos kinausap niya ako...

nag-usap kami ng mga sooooooooo out of dis world na mga bagay...tapos dumating kami dun sa topic na LAST MONTH pa namin pinag-aawayan. yung pag-spell ng word na chibisuke.eh kasi ang pag pronounce nyan na word is chi-bi-ske.syempre kung i-spell mo yan ay chibiske pero noooooooo! hindi ko alam bakit ganyan yung spelling nya.tanungin nyo ung mga hapon.hehe...anyway,since 'genius' nga siya tinanong ko ulit siya kung paano i-spell ung word...

C-H-I-B-I-S-K-E-E
yun yung sabi niya na spelling...syempre mali diba? chibiski na ang pagbasa nun

C-H-I-B-I-S-C-K-E
mali parin.syempre tawa ako ng tawa kasi ang tagal tagal na namin yan pinagaawayan...tapos try siya ng ibang letters na kasunod ng S...yun nga nung sabi niya na C-H-I-B-I-S-U-K-E (himala!!!) eh tama yun eh...syempre sabi ko tama...sabi nya nalaman daw niya yun kase naalala niya yung sakura...eh pag sasabihin ko yun na name sakra ung pag-pronounce ko...

MERON PANG ISA!!!!! hehehe...

tapos na yung chibisuke thingy...pero humirit pa yung ate koh!! (grabe talaga yun eh...) nagtanong ako sa kanya kung meron siyang tv sa kanyang kwarto...(dorm eh) sabi niya wala...pero sabi niya meron sa lobby...syempre naman! kung walang tv eh di mababa yung fun nila diba? sabi din niya malaki daw...so, nagtanong ako... plasma? alam niyo ba anong sabi ng 'genius' ko na ate? huh? huh?
??????

ito lang ang sabi niya--

ano yang plasma? syempre tawa ako ng tawa!!! isang up diliman na student? ndi alam ano ang plasma? so in-explain ko sa kanya...blah, blah, blah...tapos sabi niya, oo lagi, hindi na ako genius!...(bumigay din!!!) so syempre ni lait-lait ko muna siya...tapos sabi ko isusulat ko ito sa multee...mwahahahaha!!! yun...doon nag-start kung bakit ko isinulat itong beri so ambot na story...so, sa ate kong .HINDI na genius-hhahbhleeeehhwwwww!!!

Yam's Article Published in Big C Magazine

2008-05-11T13:13:00.000-07:00

I received a package through the mail last Friday. Upon receipt, I knew from my heart what was inside and that I had been expecting this. Within my expectation is something that could have changed due to a recent event.

Opening the package and going through its contents brought me a pleasant surprise and a deep feeling of elation - one that made my day and many days to come. It was a copy of the April-June 2008 issue of the Big C Magazine, a three-time CMMA award-winning magazine about cancer, and in it is Yam’s article on her journey with leukemia. She submitted the article mid-February, shortly before we brought her to Asian Hospital for check-up. On the cover is Toti Fuentes, a well known singer, composer and musical director.

Both Toti and Yam have things in common. They are both in the magazine because they had cancer. And they both passed away before the magazine came out, leaving behind them volumes of fond memories to loved ones and to many others

To access Yam's article, click HERE.

Grief and Relief

2008-05-05T16:25:00.000-07:00

When a loved one dies does grief automatically overcome the bereaved family?

I guess not really. When Yam expired in the evening of April 17, we sort of expected the event coming. We just didn’t know when and how. Our second son, Joseph, saw it all – how Yam peacefully made her last two gasps, then expired. Mom and Janice were also in the room, John and I were rushing in.

When the hospital staff finally documented the fact and declared Yam lifeless, I calmly requested for family private time. The hospital staff obliged and we locked the room. We silently wept, clutched on to each other. Each of us knelt or stood beside the bed and held the lifeless body of our dear “bunso“. Breaking the silence after a long interval, we took turns in hugging her while she was warm. We thought it was important to accept that a loved one has just departed. And we were all there by her side.

We then took a brief time to send a message to our relatives and closest friends. And then back to Yam’s bedside. Shortly thereafter, our closest Davao-based friends informed us that they were coming. We alerted the hospital staff to allow us more time with Yam as it was normal to take the body to the morgue in an hour. They acceded to our request.

When our friends arrived, we hugged, sang songs and wept while sitting around our dear departed. We talked and focused on immediate concerns. We sorted out what family members needed to do, while they volunteered to do other necessary tasks. After about an hour, we called in the hospital staff to do what were necessary. It was time to rest in order to face another day.

We saw to it that each family member was involved, but not taxed. We figured that we needed to work by pairs, except for Dad who needed to get arrangements fast and smooth. By the time Yam’s body was ready for viewing, a handful of colleagues were there to extend condolences.

The wake brought us pleasant surprises and realizations. Yam's classmates and friends came as did Dad's and Mom's as well as her siblings' friends and colleagues. Close relatives arrived from Luzon. Calls, text messages and emails were received from all corners of the world.

But we didn't expect there were many more to come. Yam's teachers and school administrators were there. Wreaths and flowers arrived from some important people. Parents of Yam's classmates came. And there were some whom we absolutely have no connection with, who just mentioned they heard about Yam and were touched by her life story. And then there were the text messages and emails from many others, some who have not met Yam but read about her story.

The burial rites were simple. It was held at the cemetery chapel. We saw to it that we were on schedule. Pastor Mark Pineda of the Pujada Community conducted the rites. Dr. Caridad Fiar-od gave the first eulogy on behalf of Yam's relatives, friends and supporters all over. Teacher Rose Zosa talked of Yam as her student. Kaling Reyes, Yam's classmate, read Karla's (Yam's best friend) email. Dad then outlined some lessons learned from Yam's life and times then thanked everyone for everything. When it was time to lower the casket, light-green balloons were released to the air. The mourners bade their last goodbye, dropping their choice flowers down the casket. Then the bereaved family members gave the event its closure by spading in the first batch of soil that buried the casket.

There were 21 vehicles that ferried the mourners. Four buses, 4 vans and the rest were private vehicles. (May we thank PWC, UPMindanao, DNSC, DOSCST, SPAMAST, USeP, PWC, ATI-RTC, APO, Dole-Fil, Globe, Greg and Chic Mendoza, the Magdoboys, the Pujada Community, Abe, the Trio of Irvin, Lou and Malou, and to everyone who assisted in one and many ways. We also thank many others who stood by and supported us all the way since Yam got sick (no order of priority): our relatives, PCSO, First Hand, Outreach Asia, Pisay74, Bibaknets, Semians, Pisay75, NSDB-PNC7405 Alumni, the Macasaets, Pres Emer Roman, UPMin, DOSCST and Mati community, PASUC, Annabel Vega-Ganal, Atnet's Friends, Yam's physicians and nurses, and many, many others).

In sum, grief seem not to overtake the bereaved all at once. There were things that needed to get done, there were customs and rites to follow, and there were people to share with and who shared. And when people shared and were shared with - they relieved the grief many times over. The customs, rites, symbolisms and ceremonies are time-honored and time-proven ways to relieve the grief and salve the pain of the bereaved.

I remember what a high school classmate once wrote, which I paraphrase: "Joy when shared by many, multiplies in awesome proportion. Sorrow when shared by others, divides infinitesimally." How great are the ways of the Creator.

Next Article: "O Death, Where is Thy Sting?"

When Death Stared At Us

2008-05-02T16:06:00.000-07:00

Yam was 10 years old in 2006 when she was diagnosed of leukemia. She had 3 courses of chemotherapy, then a bone marrow transplant – all in 2006. She bounced back to wellness quite fast, was back to school and did things she was happy doing. She was back, not exactly to her old, but to a new, normal. She was happy as she always was and we were extremely happy, too, as did her friends and her many supporters. Death stared at us, but Yam saw victory from its very threshold.

A year after transplant, she had two bouts of infection that needed hospitalization. In both, she bounced back pretty well. But this March to April episode? It was just simply too long. Will she bounce back as she always did?

Yam’s pediatric-hematologist-oncologist wasn’t exactly comfortable when she examined her on February 29. She advised us to go to Manila to check on the skin rashes. But the slight eye bleeding bothered her, more so because Yam’s platelet count was normal. Déjà vu? This was how Yam appeared when she first saw her in April 2006.

After 23 days in two hospitals in Manila and so many days at a Davao hospital, we kept facing a blank wall. So when we were informed of the relapse on the night of April 12, we were devastated but weren’t exactly caught off-guard. We felt the same feeling we had two years back when we were first informed she had leukemia, back but this time we were a little bit numb. And on the educational side, the information somehow explained the fever that refused to go away and the bone marrow that didn’t produce enough normal blood cells.

The following day, I got hold of the telephone and talked lengthily in succession to Yam’s two pediatric-hematologist-oncologists. I gathered that the prospect for remission is slim (very slim). To achieve remission requires high-dose chemotherapy. And post-remission long-term survival and quality of life are uncertain. This time, the battlefield consists of highly resistant cells. And the body may be too tired to withstand episodes of more furious battles.

Getting together as a family on that Sunday, we wondered why we called in a pain management specialist a few days before. We reflected on the occasions when we asked the doctors directly about Yam’s chances. We asked why Yam told her Mom, “Mama, ayaw na” but kept on fighting just the same. We felt some relief on why we entertained letting go at some moments of helplessness at the sight of a lovely but terribly sick child. We wondered why Dad was so restless until he took counsel with a minister. And we were thankful that all of Yam’s siblings had been with her for days by now.

Coming home from work on the weekend of April 5, Yam’s Kuya John stayed for the week. On April 10, her Kuya Joseph arrived from Manila and all three siblings took turns in cheering Yam up and getting involved in various chores at home and in the hospital. Now complete as a family, we all bowed down to God by Yam’s side and solidly and in unison asked Him for one great miracle. We then PUSHed (Pray Until Something Happens) together every day.

In the evening of April 15, after intensely going though the medical chart and looking at Yam’s clinical condition, two of Yam’s doctors jointly talked to us (Mom and Dad) in a room. While in discussion, three of our closest friends in the city, were waiting downstairs to visit. The meeting with the doctors was tearful and delved on matters of fact. We were clearly briefed on possible scenarios. We were clarified on possible options and assured that choices were clearly ours. After the doctors left, it was our turn to talk with our closest friends. By then, we weren’t holding back. We talked about and prepared ourselves on things that can happen. We felt so comforted and reassured by friends so avid and loyal.

The next day, we took care of Yam and carefully observed her behavior and responses. She was restless, had moments of incoherence and sudden surge of energy. On intervals, she asked for her favorite shake, drinks and ice cream - with complete specifications. It was a joy for the family to satisfy her whims. In the afternoon, she rattled off some names. We frantically called the person by cell phone when we recognized the name. She got to listen to her Kuya John assuring her he’d be by her side come evening time.

The morning of April 17 has given us perhaps the most profound experience the family ever had. As early as 7am, Yam’s doctors visited. Mom has to call Dad at home to rush up. Dad had to pass by a potential blood donor to make sure blood is available. After all, Yam’s blood counts were bottom low.

Upon arrival at the hospital, the doctors told us what they see. They have dealt with so many cases like Yam’s and can read the signs so well. And having understood what they were saying, we asked for family private time.

Dad assured Yam we all loved her so dearly and we would not like to let her go, if we had our way. But we are ready to let her go if she believed Jesus was her Lord and Savior. She nodded as she did when her Kuya Joseph asked the same question a few days back. Dad assured her that the family will be okay, that we will take care of each other and we will be by her side.

Mom assured her that Jesus will meet her where she goes and where she goes there will be no more sickness, pain or suffering. In her innocent voice, she blurted, “Sama kayo”. Mom then explained that each of us have our own appointment with the Lord and that we will all be together in the future. To which she asked, “Kailan?”

The siblings then took turns talking to her, whispering to her and hugging her, to which Yam responded in warm and quiet affirmation. She then requested her intravenous connections removed, to which Mom explained that it was needed for infusing her optimum comfort medicines. It was about 11am, Thursday, 17 April.

By 7:45 pm, Yam had her last two gasps of air and peacefully expired in her sleep. Death kept staring at her.

(coming… “O Death, Where Is Thy Sting?)

Romancing A Deadly Disease

2008-05-02T10:54:00.000-07:00

(Two things: First, I had difficulty choosing the title for this piece. As a compromise and to capture my ambivalence, I place both titles. Second, my daughter Janice and I visited the House of Hope at the Davao Medical Center yesterday. We met with Xai of Kythe Foundation which is playing an enormous role in improving the lot of pediatric cancer patients in the hospital by providing psycho-emotional help as integral part of the healing process of the patients. During our talk, Xai affirmed the therapeutic effect of blogging not only for the blogger but for the readers as well.)

When our daughter Yam spent 23 days in two hospitals in Manila and was transferred to a Davao Hospital on March 25, we never doubted she will bounce back to wellness. Her March 10 engraftment analysis showed 100% donor's graft and therefore was leukemia-free. Although her CT scan showed a spleen enlargement, a developing abscess in the liver and some nodules in her lungs, she was being treated with high-end anti-biotics. While she tested positive for the dreaded cytomegalovirus, she was immediately given treatment. Her persistent menstrual bleeding was likewise minimized and controlled.

As she did in two previous bouts with infection, we knew she will bounce back. She had the best doctors we knew of and she was receiving utmost hospital care. She had strong will and spirit, we had friends and family support, we were focused in providing everything she needed, and we had prayer warriors backing us up.

When we decided to transfer to a Davao hospital, we went through elaborate preparations to eliminate possible medical risks. The doctors ascertained her medical condition, set into motion the treatment regimen and made the necessary medical abstract and endorsements. We made special travel arrangements with the airline while a long-time friend provided the hospital to airport vehicle.

At the Davao end, hospital transfer arrangements were done and so with the airport to hospital transport. Yam's Davao doctor was ready to visit, the hospital staff was alerted, the hospital room was prepared so Yam was immediately whisked to her room without going through normal procedures. Yam seemed to have just transferred to another hospital room with a three-hour travel interval. It was also a change from her Manila-based male doctors to her Davao-based female physicians who all previously handled her since 2006.

So far, so good. Medications were administered as planned and adjustments were done when needed. On March 29, the cytomegalovirus test was negative. Yam's Ate Janice also arrived from Manila and beefed up family support. Yam's tutor Chirlen had been around to assist in many ways and her Kuya John was just 3 hours away. Mom stuck by her side on a 24/7 in spite of becoming accessible to her work and workmates. Dad was hovering around, always ready to get outside-the-room needs met. Yam's menstrual flow also stopped.

But the fever just won’t go away. The blood counts just wouldn’t rise. The energy just seems to dissipate. The body began to waste away. The petechiae became visible and began to enlarge. The “drug of last resort” wasn’t getting the job done and had to be stopped. The shift to other antibiotics didn’t get the fever off at all. And the blood transfusions were needed every other day. Signs of allo-immunity became apparent as the platelet count rises after infusion but quickly plummeted down in a day or two. Yam’s bone marrow was simply immobilized. Yam was not improving, she seemed not responding to medications.

On April 12, her laboratory tests showed she relapsed. Leukemia was back to her frail body.

(Continue to ... “When Death Stared At Us”)

Thanks To All

2008-04-30T15:12:00.000-07:00

Yam Bayogan, who was diagnosed of acute myelogenous leukemia in May 2006,
peacefully expired at 7:45 pm on April 17, 2008 at the Davao Medical School Hospital.
She was laid to rest on April 22, 2008 at the Forest Lake Cemetery, Davao City.

We THANK the Great God, who knows what is best for each of us.
We also THANK our relatives, friends, colleagues, institutions as well as Yam's school,
schoolmates and friends, and many others who showed us
what authentic loving and caring is.

We will miss Yam's lively disposition, infectious smile and inspiring courage.
But these will live on to carry us into living our own lives more meaningfully.

2007 Bar Exams Yield 3 Lawyers in the Family

2008-03-29T13:41:00.000-07:00

(This seems out-of-place in this site, but I can't resist the urge of placing this entry here if only to demonstrate that education is a never-ending endeavor)

Browsing through the 2007 bar exam passers as it was published today, I read at least three close relatives making it. Whew!!!! Three lawyers immediately added in the family.

Joseph A Akilit is a first cousin. He finished BS Civil Engineering way back in the 1980s at the St. Louis University in Baguio City. He was Number 2 in the Civil Engineering Board exams the year he graduated and took it. He took up Law when he was in his late 30s and is now a full-pledged engineer-lawyer.

Michael Alinao is a nephew by cousin Felicitas Akilit-Alinao. Michael is thus a nephew of Joseph. He earned a BS Mechanical Engineering at the University of the Philippines, Diliman in 2002 or thereabouts and passed the Mechanical Engineering Board Exams that year. For some reasons, he decided to take up law instead of practicing his profession. Grabbing my cell phone last night to make a call, I was able to talk to his girlfriend, Tin, who is also to take the bar exams this year.

Christina Forayo is a first cousin. She is the daughter of my aunt, Lolita Paulo-Forayo, a teacher. When she was taking the bar, I would text her before and after the day's exam and ask how she did. She wasn't really so confident she'd make it. Could she be a beneficiary of the examiners' decision to lower the passing score from 75 to 70 thus increasing the number of passers from 5 to 22%? A few years back, Christy's older sister, Maribel, took the bar exams but missed the grade.

There are now four lawyers in the family. The first is Atty Tomas Bayogan who passed the bar in 1980 and has been a practicing lawyer since 1981 after a brief stint in Congress.

CONGRATULATIONS TO JOSEPH, MICHAEL (BIMBOY) AND CHRISTY!!!!

Future of RP education bleak, MDG goals unmet as deadline nears

2008-03-27T06:55:00.000-07:00

By BRENDA BARRIENTOS and ALLAN VALLARTA

GMA News Research

03/25/2008 | 06:17 PM

The writers attended a seminar-workshop on Reporting on the MDGs last year sponsored by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and the United Nations Development Programme.

Conspicuous are the five empty seats in Erlinda Numeron’s small class of 35. Numeron teaches second grade at Malixi Elementary School, and five of her students have left without finishing the term.

Within any given school year, the increasing number of empty seats inside Malixi’s classrooms is a common sight; most of the students who drop out are the children of farmers.

Malixi Elementary School is a barangay school nine kilometers from the town center of Tagbina in Surigao del Sur. Tagbina is a farming community, with most residents making a living out of coconut farming and kopra production.

These children in Numeron’s class, and all the other children who fail to make it to school, are the concern of government officials tasked to meet the country’s commitment to the Millenium Declaration.

In September 2000, the Philippines committed to improve the lives of the poor and signed the Millenium Declaration along with 191 countries. This entailed a commitment to achieve the eight Millenium Development Goals (MDGs).

Among the MDGs, the lag in universal access to primary education is most pronounced. In fact, MDG monitoring notes that access to primary education worsened in school year 2005-2006, with the enrollment rate dropping more than 10 percent from the 2000 figures.

Groups monitoring the MDG may have fair reasons to doubt that the Philippines could meet the target of 100 percent primary education to all Filipino children by 2015.

Sixty-year old Numeron has spent almost half her life teaching in Malixi. “Ang pangunahing dahilan kung bakit kakaunti lang ang pumapasok sa eskwelahan ay ang layo ng tirahan ng mga estudyante sa paaralan. Karaniwan sa kanila ay naglalakad ng 1.5 kilometers araw-araw para lang pumasok sa eskwela," she says.

Children leave their houses before daybreak to get to class on time, trudging on dirt roads for most of the kilometer-long walk ahead.

Poverty compounds the problem. Midway through the school year, Numeron says, parents will ask the teacher to excuse their child. The child has to stop schooling to contribute to the family income.

In the just released Philippine Poverty Statistics, Surigao del Sur is among the top 20 poorest provinces in the country with almost half of its families considered poor.

These days, however, Numeron has something to be optimistic about. “Mag-uumpisa na kami magbigay ng bigas sa mga estudyante namin," she says.

The Department of Education’s School Feeding Program gives out a bag of rice to each student to encourage them to attend class. In Malixi, the supply is limited: only pre-school and grade 1 pupils will be taking home those 1-kilo bags of rice everyday.

Halfway to the hurdle

The UN Millennium Declaration laid out the MDGs as a worldwide agenda to reduce poverty and all its forms by 2015.

The MDGs deal with the following major issues in the country:

eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
achieve universal primary education
promote gender equality and empower women
reduce child mortality
improve maternal health
combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
ensure environmental sustainability
develop a global partnership for development

Seven years to the deadline, or halfway through the hurdle, the National Economic Development Authority says the country has made advances in terms of poverty reduction, nutrition, reducing child mortality, combating HIV and AIDS, malaria and other diseases and access to safe drinking water.

However, efforts seem to have fallen short on the other targets.

The Philippine Midterm Progress Report published by NEDA report says that in all the three indicators to achieve the universal primary education – elementary participation rate, cohort survival rate and completion rate – the probability of attaining the 2015 target was consistently assessed as “low."

Says NEDA, “The country needs to work harder on targets concerning universal access to education, maternal mortality and access to reproductive health services."

Looking at school year 2005-2006, the NEDA report says only eight in 10 elementary-age children are in school (participation rate). Only seven in 10 will reach Grade VI (survival rate). And only seven will get to finish elementary education (completion rate).

The numbers in Tagbina, Surigao del Sur may seem to represent this picture. DepEd records show Tagbina’s cohort survival rate of 65.01 percent in the school year 2005-2006. This means roughly seven in 10 students in Tagbina get to the sixth grade.

In Malixi Elementary School, teacher Numeron says about 20 students from grade 1 to grade 6 drop out each year. This school year, five of Numeron’s second grade students have already left school.

The failing numbers, whether in small towns like Tagbina or in the national level, have not been lost to record-keepers.

Candido Astrologo Jr. of the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) says the Philippines lags by 15 years in terms of primary education. “Instead of improving in meeting the target for education, we are lagging behind kasi ang rate of progress natin ay nasa 1990 pa. Parang hindi tayo umuusod nyan," he says.

MDGs Rate of Progress at National Level
MDG Goal and Targets	Current level (%)	Target by 2015 (%)	Current Rate of Progress (%)	Required Rate of Progress (%)	Probability of Attaining the Targets
Net enrolment ratio	84.44	100%	-0.05	1.37	Low
Cohort Survival Rate	69.9	84.67	0.09	1.48	Low
Completion Rate	67.99	81.04	0.11	1.3	Low

Source: Philippine Midterm Progress Report on the MDGs 2007, NEDA and UNDP

Armed conflict, poverty, nutrition

In the past three years, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) has the least number of students able to make it to the sixth grade, and also the least number of students who get to complete their elementary education.

Metro Manila, the Ilocos Region, Cagayan Valley, Central Luzon, and CALABARZON posted the best numbers in terms of participation and cohort survival rates.

Prof. Leonor Briones of Social Watch Philippines says the armed conflict in Mindanao has directly affected access to education.

“Kung peaceful, makakapag-aral ang mga bata," says Briones. “Kung hindi peaceful ang lugar, hindi makakapag-aral ang mga bata. Mayroong correlation, not only with education but also with health and all the other MDG goals. "

In 2006, the UNICEF commissioned a study to look into the possible effects of armed conflict to children, women and communities in the countryside. Findings show that children in conflict areas in Mindanao stopped going to school when they left their homes to escape the fights between the military and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

The study cited other reasons such as the distance of the schools from homes, lack of money, and the need for children to work to support their families.

Former DepEd undersecretary Juan Miguel Luz says getting children enrolled in elementary school is not really the problem; the high dropout rate is.

MDG monitoring notes that dropout rates at the elementary level has been increasing from 2001 to 2005.

Luz explains that children tend to drop out of school within grades one to four.

“If you want to manage them properly, we need to keep them in school up to grade 4. So what you need to do for grades 1, 2 and 3 is ‘in-school feeding’," he says.

Poverty and poor nutrition are what’s taking children away from school, Luz says. He explains that one in every three school-age children is malnourished.

In nine regions with high prevalence of underweight children, eight posted low probability of meeting the MDG target for education. These regions include Bicol, Eastern Visayas, Mimaropa, CARAGA, Western Visayas, Zamboanga Peninsula, SOCCSKSARGEN and Northern Mindanao.

Region	Prevalance of underweight school-age children 2003	Probability of achieving the MDG goal in education
Bicol	36.1	Low
E. Visayas	35	Low
Mimaropa	32.2	Low
CARAGA	31.7	Low
W. Visayas	30.8	Low
Zamboanga Peninsula	29.9	Low
SOCCSKSARGEN	29.7	Low
Ilocos Region	28.8	High
N. Mindanao	26.7	Low
C. Visayas	25
ARMM	23.7
Calabarzon	22.5	Low
Davao	22.3	Low
CAR	21.7	Low
Cagayan Valley	19.5
Central Luzon	17.7	Low
NCR	15.7

SOURCE: National Nutrition Survey, 2003: FNRI and NSCB

Poverty incidence data also shows most of the poorer regions register low probability of achieving the MDG in education. These regions are Caraga, Zamboanga Peninsula, Bicol, MIMAROPA, Northern Mindanao, Eastern Visayas, Soccsksargen, Western Visayas, Davao and CAR -- all with poverty incidence higher than the national average.

REGION	Poverty Incidence	Probability of achieving Goal 2
Caraga	47.3	Low
Muslim Mindanao	45.7
Zamboanga Peninsula	44.1	Low
Bicol Region	40.5	Low
MIMAROPA	39.7	Low
Northern Mindanao	37.9	Low
Eastern Visayas	35.5	Low
SOCCSKSARGEN	32.0	Low
Western Visayas	31.3	Low
Davao Region	28.1	Low
Cordillera Administrative	24.8	Low
Ilocos Region	24.4	High
Central Visayas	23.7
Cagayan Valley	19.3
CALABARZON	14.9	Low
Central Luzon	13.7	Low
National Capital Region	5.0

SOURCE: Poverty incidence, 2003: NSCB and Philippines Midterm Progress Report on the MDGs, 2007

The relationship between poverty and education is clearly noted by the MDG monitoring in the NEDA report: “It is interesting to note that participation rates in primary education by region is inversely correlated with the incidence rates for food and overall poverty."

Budgeting for education

Financing the MDGs is crucial, says Prof. Briones.

“Do you know Alice in wonderland? Alice in Wonderland, she just keeps on running just to stay in the same place. Now, that’s the problem of education and health. Even as they keep on running, they just stay in the same place because the demand is getting bigger," she says.

Government estimates in the funding of the MDGs are in the billions of pesos – P2.4 B from 2007-2015, says the CPBD.

NEDA says the biggest funding gap in is on basic education and poverty reduction.

In the Philippines, there is no question that education is a priority. The Constitution clearly states that education must get the biggest share of the budget. In reality, however, debt service takes the biggest chunk.

From 2000 to 2008, the budget for education has been increasing in actual amounts, but its share in the national budget pie has in fact been getting smaller.

In 2000, the budget for education was only 17.12 percent of the national budget; by 2008 this has decreased to 14.82 percent.

The government think tank Congressional Planning and Budget Department notes, “The 2008 education budget was only 2.5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The international standard is 6 percent of GDP."

Also, the budgeting for education does not seem to match the MDG in primary education.

While elementary level gets the lion’s share of the education funds, the data also shows that its share in the total education budget has been decreasing.

“Clearly, underinvestment in basic education coupled with unabated increase in student population and widespread poverty has resulted in dismal educational performance," the CPBD says in its 2008 Analysis of the President’s Budget.

Seven years to the deadline, the Philippines is playing catch up to the MDG deadline. The MDG monitoring report is a mixture of good news and bad news. But NEDA chief Augusto Santos says the good news outweigh the bad.

Unfortunately, the update on the education goal has not been a cause for celebration.

However, both government and critics agree that what is important is the commitment.

“More than reporting how the Philippines has fared in meeting the MDGs, this Report reaffirms the country’s commitment and it’s resolve to pursue affirmative action especially in mobilizing much-needed resources to meet the MDGs," Santos says.

Prof. Briones agrees. “Commitment natin yan," she says. “Kailangan naman kumilos ang Pilipinas…every year mino-monitor, kinu-compare ang Pilipinas sa ibang bansa. Ayaw naman ng gobyerno nating magpahuli." --GMANews.TV/GMA News Research

River of No Return

2008-01-26T11:45:00.000-08:00

Whistling while walking on his way to his farm in a small, craggy mountain village in the Cordilleras was a normal routine for the 74 year old Juan Og-an Bayogan. On a clear August morning in 2004, he embarked on this same routine to help his wife harvest rice from the little paddies he worked on for the last five months or so. But for some unknown reasons, he decided to take the less familiar, rugged but shorter route. Rather than the smoother, paved but longer path.

On this shorter route, he had to cross the old river that provided irrigation to his rice paddies and given him a refreshing bath every time he passed by. Little did he know that this little mundane break from the normal would cost him his life.

As he hopped from one stone to another to avoid getting wet, he slipped while stepping on a moss-covered rock, and fell down with his head hitting the rock. Knocked down unconscious due to the impact, he slid down to the water, unable to cry for help. And all alone in this seldom-trodden path, he bled and apparently drowned to his death. His body was recovered the day after.

Juan Og-an Bayogan was my father. His untimely death bought us grief in the family. We lost an honest and hardworking man who lived life simply but with wisdom and meaning. But the family went through the ordeal gracefully.

Our townfolks were a tremendous help. They retrieved his body and brought him to town manually. During the wake, they did most of the routine chores, giving the bereaved family the time to grieve.

My father had a keen sense of humor. Days before his death, my mother often heard him sing, "there's a river, called the river of no return..." And on that fateful day, he crossed his river of no return.

Pusan Point and the Millenium Sunrise

2008-01-26T11:39:00.000-08:00

January 2000. Pusan Point in Caraga, Davao Oriental is the easternmost land point in the Philippines. It is about 82 kilometers or less than 2 hours drive from Mati, the capital town of the province.

Before the turn of the century, there was much hype on the millenium sunrise at this idyllic place, a thing which people in the locality were happy about. The phenomenon called Millenium Sunrise (because the first sunrays to hit the country on the new millenium) became a selling point to attract tourists to this very beautiful place. The drive to the point is interesting. The road varied as it went uphill, winded through coconut trees, carved along slopes that revealed interesting geology and pierced through coastal areas that were soothed by the Pacific breeze. If one is adventurous, there can be thousands more of interesting activity options along the way.

My wife and I, together with some friends, were there in early November of 1999 when preparations for the influx of tourists were still underway. On the week prior to new year of 2000, the Provincial Governor invited government officials including those from Manila to a week-long set of activities in the area.

Then came the day when the millenium sunrise would have been a millenial spectacle. Groups of people arrived the day before including the media people. But just like the few days before, New Year's eve was drizzling with overcast skies. The sun rays penetrated through the clouds, which hid the sun from the waiting and expectant crowd.

The morning passed with the millenium sunrise hardly fulfilling its much-vaunted hype. We joked that our friends who were there at Pusan with excitement, saw the sun already risen. But we saw a great sunrise while having an interdenominational millenium worship services at the capitol hills 82 km away down south.

But all was not lost for nature lovers. I am sure they enjoyed the spectacle of the pacific waves rising up like geysers as they ram against the stone wall dividing the land and sea. I am also sure those who tasted the coconuts from the area would have partaken of the sweetest young coconut juice in the Philippines, if not in the world. The adventurous could have also trekked into a couple of nearby caves that are rarely visited by spelunkers. And for those who travelled by day, they could have appreciated along the way, the scenic Pujaday Bay - whose panorama is the most beautiful I ever have seen and lived near and around.

Survival of the sickest

2008-01-18T10:57:00.000-08:00

Eureka!
By Queena Lee-Chua
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:48:00 01/19/2008

MANILA, Philippines—I spent last Christmas immersed in a provocative book titled “Survival of the Sickest,” written by Sharon Moalem of New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine. A researcher in the cutting-edge fields of neurogenetics and evolutionary medicine, Moalem believes that many of the diseases today once evolved to help our ancestors combat epidemics or just plain survive.

For instance, Moalam states that diabetes, which is such a killer now, started to help our forefathers survive the sudden cold of an ice age about 13,000 years ago. “Faced with year-round frigid temperatures, their insulin supply slowed, allowing their blood sugar to rise somewhat,” Moalam says. Experiments show that when blood sugar rises, the freezing point of blood becomes lower, which means that blood needs a colder temperature to freeze.

“They urinated frequently, to keep internal water levels low,” Moalem continues. “Suppose these people used their brown fat to burn the oversupply of sugar in their blood to create heat. [This might have given them] enough of an advantage over other humans, especially if the spike in sugar was only temporary, to make it more likely that they would survive long enough to reach reproductive age.”

Moalem cites evidence to support his theory. One, the wood frog uses high blood sugar to keep itself from freezing in the winter. Two, rats exposed to cold temperatures become resistant to their own insulin; in short, they become diabetic. Three, in cold areas, more diabetics are diagnosed in colder months (between November and February) than in the hotter months (between June and September) and in fact, children are most often diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in the fall season.

Also, a study of more than 250,000 American veterans who are diabetic revealed that their blood sugar levels increased in the cold months and dropped in summer.

“Diabetes,” says Moalem, “has some deep connection to the cold.”

Fine, that was then, but diabetes now kills rather than helps. Why? Today, most diabetics have little brown fat and little exposure to constant cold. So they have no use and no outlet for the sugar accumulating in their blood. Diabetes has now become a disease.

Hypertension, slave trade

Statistics show that African-Americans have rates of high blood pressure almost double that of other Americans. Why? Perhaps diet, but many non-African Americans also eat junk food and fatty stuff. Perhaps genetics, maybe Africans really have genes for hypertension. But no, Blacks living in Africa do not have the same rates of high blood pressure as blacks in America.

Moalem gives another startling explanation. Salt can raise blood pressure, and research has shown that indeed, Africans are especially sensitive to this. But what caused this? Moalem’s answer: the slave trade.

“When Africans were taken to America against their will by slave traders, they were transported under horrible conditions—they usually weren’t fed or even given sufficient amounts of water,” Moalem says. “Their death rate was very high. It’s possible that those with a natural propensity to retain high levels of salt had a better chance to survive—the extra salt helped them maintain enough water to avoid fatal dehydration.”

The capacity to retain extra salt helped the Africans then, but now, with the modern American diet too high in fat and salt, African-Americans sadly have increased rates of high blood pressure.

Moalem gives many other examples of today’s deadly diseases, which our ancestors needed in ages past. The book also provides a lot of interesting theories, such as how tanning salons can help lower cholesterol, how iron overload helped people survive the plague, and why the common cold is a nuisance but will most likely never be really dangerous.

“Survival of the Sickest” is engaging, witty and fascinating. Highly recommended not only for doctors and health care providers, but also for all of us who want to understand our health and ourselves.

“Survival of the Sickest” by Sharon Moalem (William Morrow, 2007) is available in Powerbooks.

Hard Work

2008-01-16T23:06:00.000-08:00

John Gokongwei , Jr.
Ad Congress Speech
Nov 21, 2007

Before I begin, I want to say please bear with me, an 81-year-old man who just flew in from San Francisco 36 hours ago and is still suffering from jet lag. However, I hope I will be able to say what you want to hear.

Ladies and gentlemen, good evening. Thank you very much for having me here tonight to open the Ad Congress. I know how important this event is for our marketing and advertising colleagues. My people get very excited and go into a panic, every other year, at this time.

I would like to talk about my life, entrepreneurship, and globalization. I would like to talk about how we can become a great nation.

You may wonder how one is connected to the other, but I promise that, as there is truth in advertising, the connection will come.

Let me begin with a story I have told many times. My own.

I was born to a rich Chinese-Filipino family. I spent my childhood in Cebu where my father owned a chain of movie houses, including the first air-conditioned one outside Manila . I was the eldest of six children and lived in a big house in Cebu 's Forbes Park .

A chauffeur drove me to school everyday as I went to San Carlos University , then and still one of the country's top schools. I topped my classes and had many friends. I would bring them to watch movies for free at my father's movie houses.

When I was 13, my father died suddenly of complications due to typhoid. Everything I enjoyed vanished instantly. My father's empire was built on credit. When he died, we lost everything-our big house, our cars, our business-to the banks.

I felt angry at the world for taking away my father, and for taking away all that I enjoyed before. When the free movies disappeared, I also lost half my friends. On the day I had to walk two miles to school for the very first time, I cried to my mother, a widow at 32. But she said: "You should feel lucky. Some people have no shoes to walk to school. What can you do? Your father died with 10 centavos in his pocket."

So, what can I do? I worked.

My mother sent my siblings to China where living standards were lower. She and I stayed in Cebu to work, and we sent them money regularly. My mother sold her jewelry. When that ran out, we sold roasted peanuts in the backyard of our much-smaller home. When that wasn't enough, I opened a small stall in a palengke. I chose one among several palengkes a few miles outside the city because there were fewer goods available for the people there. I woke up at five o'clock every morning for the long bicycle ride to the palengke with my basket of goods.

There, I set up a table about three feet by two feet in size. I laid out my goods-soap, candles, and thread-and kept selling until everything was bought. Why these goods? Because these were hard times and this was a poor village, so people wanted and needed the basics-soap to keep them clean, candles to light the night, and thread to sew their clothes.

I was surrounded by other vendors, all of them much older. Many of them could be my grandparents. And they knew the ways of the palengke far more than a boy of 15, especially one who had never worked before.

But being young had its advantages. I did not tire as easily, and I moved more quickly. I was also more aggressive. After each day, I would make about 20 pesos in profit! There was enough to feed my siblings and still enough to pour back into the business. The pesos I made in the palengke were the pesos that went into building the business I have today.

After this experience, I told myself, "If I can compete with people so much older than me, if I can support my whole family at 15, I can do anything!"

Looking back, I wonder, what would have happened if my father had not left my family with nothing? Would I have become the man I am? Who knows?

The important thing to know is that life will always deal us a few bad cards. But we have to play those cards the best we can. And WE can play to win!

This was one lesson I picked up when I was a teenager. It has been my guiding principle ever since. And I have had 66 years to practice self-determination. When I wanted something, the best person to depend on was myself.

And so I continued to work. In 1943, I expanded and began trading goods between Cebu and Manila . From Cebu , I would transport tires on a small boat called a batel. After traveling for five days to Lucena, I would load them into a truck for the six- hour trip to Manila . I would end up sitting on top of my goods so they would not be stolen! In Manila , I would then purchase other goods from the earnings I made from the tires, to sell in Cebu .

Then, when WWII ended, I saw the opportunity for trading goods in post-war Philippines . I was 20 years old. With my brother Henry, I put up Amasia Trading which imported onions, flour, used clothing, old newspapers and magazines, and fruits from the United States . In 1948, my mother and I got my siblings back from China . I also converted a two-story building in Cebu to serve as our home, office, and warehouse all at the same time. The whole family began helping out with the business.

In 1957, at age 31, I spotted an opportunity in corn-starch manufacturing. But I was going to compete with Ludo and Luym, the richest group in Cebu and the biggest cornstarch manufacturers. I borrowed money to finance the project. The first bank I approached made me wait for two hours, only to refuse my loan. The second one, China Bank, approved a P500,000-peso clean loan for me. Years later, the banker who extended that loan, Dr. Albino Sycip said that he saw something special in me. Today, I still wonder what that was, but I
still thank Dr. Sycip to this day.

Upon launching our first product, Panda corn starch, a price war ensued. After the smoke cleared, Universal Corn Products was still left standing. It is the foundation upon which JG Summit Holdings now stands.

Interestingly, the price war also forced the closure of a third cornstarch company, and one of their chemists was Lucio Tan, who always kids me that I caused him to lose his job. I always reply that if it were not for me, he will not be one of the richest men in the Philippines today.

When my business grew, and it was time for me to bring in more people- my family, the professionals, the consultants, more employees- I knew that I had to be there to teach them what I knew. When dad died at age 34, he did not leave a succession plan. From that, I learned that one must teach people to take over a business at any time. The values of hard work that I learned from my father, I taught to my children. They started doing jobs here and there even when they were still in high school. Six years ago, I announced my retirement and handed the reins to my youngest brother James and only son Lance. But my children tease me because I still go to the office every day and make myself useful. I just hired my first Executive Assistant and moved into a bigger and nicer office.

Building a business to the size of JG Summit was not easy. Many challenges were thrown my way. I could have walked away from them, keeping the business small, but safe. Instead, I chose to fight. But this did not mean I won each time.

By 1976, at age 50, we had built significant businesses in food products anchored by a branded coffee called Blend 45, and agro- industrial products under the Robina Farms brand. That year, I faced one of my biggest challenges, and lost. And my loss was highly publicized, too. But I still believe that this was one of my defining moments.

In that decade, not many business opportunities were available due to the political and economic environment. Many Filipinos were already sending their money out of the country. As a Filipino, I felt that our money must be invested here. I decided to purchase shares in San Miguel, then one of the Philippines ' biggest corporations. By 1976, I had acquired enough shares to sit on its board.

The media called me an upstart. "Who is Gokongwei and why is he doing all those terrible things to San Miguel?" ran one headline of the day. In another article, I was described as a pygmy going up against the powers-that- be. The San Miguel board of directors itself even aid for an ad in all the country's top newspapers telling the public why I should not be on the board. On the day of reckoning, shareholders quickly filled up the auditorium to witness the battle.

My brother James and I had prepared for many hours for this debate. We were ne rv ous and excited at the same time.

In the end, I did not get the board seat because of the Supreme Court Ruling. But I was able to prove to others-and to myself-that I was willing to put up a fight. I succeeded because I overcame my fear, and tried. I believe this battle helped define who I am today. In a twist to this story, I was invited to sit on the board of Anscor and San Miguel Hong Kong 5 years later. Lose some, win some.

Since then, I've become known as a serious player in the business world, but the challenges haven't stopped coming.

Let me tell you about the three most recent challenges. In all three, conventional wisdom bet against us. See, we set up businesses against market Goliaths in very high-capital industries: airline, telecoms, and beverage.

Challenge No. 1: In 1996, we decided to start an airline. At the time, the dominant airline in the country was PAL, and if you wanted to travel cheaply, you did not fly. You went by sea or by land.

However, my son Lance and I had a vision for Cebu Pacific: We wanted every Filipino to fly.

Inspired by the low-cost carrier models in the United States , we believed that an airline based on the no-frills concept would work here. No hot meals. No newspaper. Mono-class seating. Operating with a single aircraft type. Faster turn around time. It all worked, thus enabling Cebu Pacific to pass on savings to the consumer.

How did we do this? By sticking to our philosophy of "low cost, great value."

And we stick to that philosophy to this day. Cebu Pacific offers incentives. Customers can avail themselves of a tiered pricing scheme, with promotional seats for as low a P1. The earlier you book, the cheaper your ticket.

Cebu Pacific also made it convenient for passengers by making online booking available. This year, 1.25 million flights will be booked through our website. This reduced our distribution costs dramatically.

Low cost. Great value.

When we started 11 years ago, Cebu Pacific flew only 360,000 passengers, with 24 daily flights to 3 destinations. This year, we expect to fly more than five million passengers, with over 120 daily flights to 20 local destinations and 12 Asian cities. Today, we are the largest in terms of domestic flights, routes and destinations.

We also have the youngest fleet in the region after acquiring new Airbus 319s and 320s. In January, new ATR planes will arrive. These are smaller planes that can land on smaller air strips like those in Palawan and Caticlan. Now you don't have to take a two-hour ride by mini-bus to get to the beach.

Largely because of Cebu Pacific, the average Filipino can now afford to fly. In 2005, 1 out of 12 Filipinos flew within a year. In 2012, by continuing to offer low fares, we hope to reduce that ratio to 1 out of 6. We want to see more and more Filipinos see their country and the world!

Challenge No. 2: In 2003, we established Digitel Mobile Philippines, Inc. and developed a brand for the mobile phone business called Sun Cellular. Prior to the launch of the brand, we were actually involved in a transaction to purchase PLDT shares of the majority shareholder.

The question in everyone's mind was how we could measure up to the two telecom giants. They were entrenched and we were late by eight years! PLDT held the landline monopoly for quite a while, and was first in the mobile phone industry. Globe was a younger company, but it launched digital mobile technology here.

But being a late player had its advantages. We could now build our platform from a broader perspective. We worked with more advanced technologies and intelligent systems not available ten years ago. We chose our suppliers based on the most cost-efficient hardware and software. Being a Johnny-come- lately allowed us to create and launch more innovative products, more quickly.

All these provided us with the opportunity to give the consumers a choice that would rock their world. The concept was simple. We would offer Filipinos to call and text as much as they want for a fixed monthly fee. For P250 a month, they could get in touch with anyone within the Sun network at any time. This means great savings of as much as 2/3 of their regular phone bill! Suddenly, we gained traction. Within one year of its introduction, Sun hit one million customers.

Once again, the paradigm shifts - this time in the telecom industry. Sun's 24/7 Call and Text unlimited changed the landscape of mobile- phone usage.

Today, we have over 4 million subscribers and 2000 cell sites around the archipelago. In a country where 97% of the market is pre-paid, we believe we have hit on the right strategy.

Sun Cellular is a Johnny-come- lately, but it's doing all right. It is a third player, but a significant one, in an industry where Cassandras believed a third player would perish. And as we have done in the realm of air travel, so have we done in the telecom world: We have changed the marketplace.

In the end, it is all about making life better for the consumer by giving them choices.

Challenge No. 3: In 2004, we launched C2, the green tea drink that would change the face of the local beverage industry -- then, a playground of cola companies. Iced tea was just a sugary brown drink served bottomless in restaurants. For many years, hardly was there any significant product innovation in the beverage business.

Admittedly, we had little experience in this area. Universal Robina Corporation is the leader in snack foods but our only background in beverage was instant coffee. Moreover, we would be entering the playground of huge multinationals. We decided to play anyway.

It all began when I was in China in 2003 and noticed the immense popularity of bottled iced tea. I thought that this product would have huge potential here. We knew that the Philippines was not a traditional tea-drinking country since more familiar to consumers were colas in returnable glass bottles. But precisely, this made the market ready for a different kind of beverage. One that refreshes yet gives the health benefits of green tea. We positioned it as a "spa" in a bottle. A drink that cools and cleans.thus, C2 was born.

C2 immediately caught on with consumers. When we launched C2 in 2004, we sold 100,000 bottles in the first month. Three years later, Filipinos drink around 30 million bottles of C2 per month. Indeed, C2 is in a good place.

With Cebu Pacific, Sun Cellular, and C2, the JG Summit team took control of its destiny. And we did so in industries where old giants had set the rules of the game. It's not that we did not fear the giants. We knew we could have been crushed at the word go. So we just made sure we came prepared with great products and great strategies. We ended up changing the rules of the game instead.

There goes the principle of self-determination, again. I tell you, it works for individuals as it does for companies. And as I firmly believe, it works for nations.

I have always wondered, like many of us, why we Filipinos have not lived up to our potential. We have proven we can. Manny Pacquiao and Efren Bata Reyes in sports. Lea Salonga and the UP Madrigal Singers in performing arts. Monique Lhuillier and Rafe Totenco in fashion. And these are just the names made famous by the media. There are many more who may not be celebrities but who have gained respect on the world stage.

But to be a truly great nation, we must also excel as entrepreneurs before the world. We must create Filipino brands for the global market place.

If we want to be philosophical, we can say that, with a world-class brand, we create pride for our nation. If we want to be practical, we can say that, with brands that succeed in the world, we create more jobs for our people, right here.

Then, we are able to take part in what's really important-giving our people a big opportunity to raise their standards of living, giving them a real chance to improve their lives.

We can do it. Our neighbors have done it. So can we. In the last 54 years, Korea worked hard to rebuild itself after a world war and a civil war destroyed it. From an agricultural economy in 1945, it shifted to light industry, consumer products, and heavy industry in the '80s. At the turn of the 21st century, the Korean government focused on making Korea the world's leading IT nation. It did this by grabbing market share in key sectors like semiconductors, robotics, and biotechnology.

Today, one remarkable Korean brand has made it to the list of Top 100 Global Brands: Samsung. Less then a decade ago, Samsung meant nothing to consumers. By focusing on quality, design, and innovation, Samsung improved its products and its image. Today, it has surpassed the Japanese brand Sony. Now another Korean brand, LG Collins, is following in the footsteps of Samsung. It has also broken into the Top 100 Global Brands list.

What about China ? Who would have thought that only 30 years after opening itself up to a market economy, China would become the world's fourth largest economy? Goods made in China are still thought of as cheap. Yet many brands around the world outsource their manufacturing to this country. China 's own brands-like Lenovo, Haier, Chery QQ, and Huawei-are fast gaining ground as well. I have no doubt they will be the next big electronics, technology and car brands in the world.

Lee Kwan Yu's book "From Third World to First" captures Singapore 's aspiration to join the First World . According to the book, Singapore was a trading post that the British developed as a nodal point in its maritime empire. The racial riots there made its officials determined to build a "multiracial society that would give equality to all citizens, regardless of race, language or religion."

When Singapore was asked to leave the Malaysian Federation of States in 1965, Lee Kwan Yew developed strategies that he executed with single-mindedness despite their being unpopular. He and his cabinet started to build a nation by establishing the basics: building infrastructure, establishing an army, WEEDING OUT CORRUPTION,providin g mass housing, building a financial center. Forty short years after, Singapore has been transformed into the richest South East Asian country today, with a per capita income of US$32,000.

These days, Singapore is transforming itself once more. This time it wants to be the creative hub in Asia , maybe even the world. More and more, it is attracting the best minds from all over the world in filmmaking, biotechnology, media, and finance. Meantime, Singaporeans have also created world-class brands: Banyan Tree in the hospitality industry, Singapore Airlines in the Airline industry and Singapore Telecoms in the telco industry.

I often wonder: Why can't the Philippines , or a Filipino, do this?

Fifty years after independence, we have yet to create a truly global brand. We cannot say the Philippines is too small because it has 86 million people. Switzerland , with 9 million people, created Nestle. Sweden , also with 9 million people, created Ericsson. Finland , even smaller with five million people, created Nokia. All three are major global brands, among others.

Yes, our country is well-known for its labor, as we continue to export people around the world. And after India , we are grabbing a bigger chunk of the pie in the call-center and business-process- outsourcing industries. But by and large, the Philippines has no big
industrial base, and Filipinos do not create world-class products.

We should not be afraid to try-even if we are laughed at. Japan , laughed at for its cars, produced Toyota . Korea , for its electronics, produced Samsung. Meanwhile, the Philippines ' biggest companies 50 years ago-majority of which are multinational corporations such as Coca- Cola, Procter and Gamble, and Unilever Philippines , for example-are still the biggest companies today. There are very few big, local challengers.

But already, hats off to Filipino entrepreneurs making strides to globalize their brands.

Goldilocks has had much success in the Unites States and Canada , where half of its customers are non-Filipinos. Coffee-chain Figaro may be a small player in the coffee world today, but it is making the leap to the big time. Two Filipinas, Bea Valdez and Tina Ocampo, are now selling their Philippine-made jewelry and bags all over the world. Their labels are now at Barney's and Bergdorf's in the U.S. and in many other high-end shops in Asia , Europe , and the Middle East .

When we started our own foray outside the Philippines 30 years ago, it wasn't a walk in the park. We set up a small factory in Hong Kong to manufacture Jack and Jill potato chips there. Today, we are all over Asia . We have the number-one-potato- chips brand in Malaysia and Singapore . We are the leading biscuit manufacturer in Thailand , and a significant player in the candy market in Indonesia . Our Aces cereal brand is a market leader in many parts of China . C2 is now doing very well in Vietnam , selling over 3 million bottles a month there, after only 6 months in the market. Soon, we will launch C2 in other South East Asian markets.

I am 81 today. But I do not forget the little boy that I was in the palengke in Cebu . I still believe in family. I still want to make good. I still don't mind going up against those older and better than me. I still believe hard work will not fail me. And I still believe in people willing to think the same way.

Through the years, the market place has expanded: between cities, between countries, between continents. I want to urge you all here to think bigger. Why se rv e 86 million when you can sell to four billion Asians? And that's just to start you off. Because there is still the world beyond Asia . When you go back to your offices, think of ways to sell and market your products and se rv ices to the world. Create world-class brands.

You can if you really tried. I did. As a boy, I sold peanuts from my backyard. Today, I sell snacks to the world.

I want to see other Filipinos do the same.

Thank you and good evening once again.

Education crisis deepens

2008-01-04T10:38:00.000-08:00

DepEd gets into heart of systems breakdown

By Fernando del Mundo
Inquirer
First Posted 03:05am (Mla time) 06/06/2007

(First of three parts)

MANILA, Philippines -- The official figures remain grim as some 20 million students troop back to classrooms on Monday at the opening of the new school year.

Out of 10 students entering Grade 1, six will complete the elementary course, four will get through high school and two will enter college, according to the Department of Education (DepEd).

“We do not know if the two who will enter college will get a degree or even a job,” says Alice Alafriz Pañares, deputy director of the DepEd’s National Educators Academy of the Philippines.

Problems bedeviling the Philippine education system had been festering for the past three decades before officials agreed they had reached a critical stage. The analogy is made of a frog placed in a kettle of water that is put to a boil. The frog will not know it is dying until it is too late.

Experts both in and out of government say there are no quick fixes to the nation’s education woes. A band-aid approach, which is essentially what’s in place, will not do.

“The situation remains dismal,” says former Education Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad. He says the tragedy is manifested in the very fundamental problems of access, a high dropout rate and a very low reading proficiency.

“Half of the country’s student population is not even in school,” he says.

Abad recalls a national test on reading given to about a million Grade 6 students in 2003. He says it showed that 99.4 percent of those who took the test were unprepared to enter high school.

An analysis of the data showed that the level of proficiency of the Grade 6 students was only at Grade 4. When examined further, it was discovered that these students could not follow instructions and could not understand the questions well.

For years, says Abad, teachers who did not wish to be accused of incompetence gave “wholesale” passing marks.

In 2002, the late Education Secretary Raul Roco implemented a new basic curriculum. A product of years of study, it whittled down 10 subjects taught in the public schools to five -- English, Science, Mathematics, Social Studies and Filipino.

Art, Music, History, Physical Education and Culture were crammed under Social Studies.

Goal is functional literacy

“The idea is to develop functional literacy,” says former Education Undersecretary Fe Hidalgo, who took charge of the department for over a year after Abad quit in the midst of calls for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s resignation over charges she stole the 2004 election.

“Every child should be a reader, functionally literate, be able to understand and apply in daily life the result of reading and numeracy,” Hidalgo says.

Another issue that has come up of late was a legislative proposal -- known as the Gullas bill -- to use English as the medium of instruction, reversing the current bilingual policy (English and Filipino) in a bid to raise language proficiency.

Some schools have been experimenting with using the lingua franca of the region -- there are 171 dialects across the country -- in Grades 1 and 2 to increase the level of comprehension before going into the bilingual policy in Grade 3.

It is a costly exercise as it means translating all the dialects into English and Filipino. To go straightaway to English can be doubly taxing both to teachers who do not have the competency to teach it in the first place and the students who have no clue. Some experts say this should be done progressively, starting in Grade 3.

Dangerous legislation

“The problem is not poor English,” says Juan Miguel Luz, president of the International Institute for Rural Reconstruction and a former education undersecretary who calls the Gullas measure a “dangerous legislation.”

“It is poor English, Science and Math skills. Weak English proficiency is not the sole determinant of poor overall achievement, it is merely a factor,” he says, pointing out the Chinese or the Japanese will never throw out Mandarin or Nippongo in favor of the King’s English.

Asked if she was satisfied with the Roco initiative to rouse the education system from its death throes, Hidalgo replies, “Of course not,” citing a whole range of problems.

Among others, she cites education’s allocation in the annual budget. Although it now comprises 13 percent of the pie -- the biggest share -- it still lags behind the budget allocation to education of neighboring countries, which is upward of 20 percent.

There are sectors critical of the new curriculum and want some changes.

Music is gone

Concert pianist Reynaldo Reyes, 73, grieves that music has been effectively scrapped from the school curriculum. He is critical of how music had been taught, which essentially was about organizing rondallas. But, he says, “at least, it was there.”

The little time allowed for Physical Education has deprived the nation of a pool of athletes to choose from in fielding representatives to the Asian Games and the Olympics.

For a nation that has been left behind by its neighbors in manufacturing and agriculture, its services sector should be strengthened, experts say. But when call centers can only accept 10 applicants out of 100, there is something terribly wrong somewhere.
Without access to material wealth, the only way to social mobility is a good education and when even that is not available, the poor have no way out of the rut, says Arsenio Balisacan, director of the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture based in Bangkok.

Pump-priming

The Arroyo administration in recent years has made huge investments in building and repairing schools to achieve its goal of providing free universal access to elementary and high school education.

It has been updating textbooks and teaching manuals, mobilizing resources from businessmen and private companies in exchange for tax incentives and tapping funds from international agencies.

In May 2006, Ms Arroyo authorized a “pump-priming program” to train and help teachers gain expertise in Mathematics and Science. Some 17,000 teachers entered the program initially last year, attending courses in summer or enrolling for regular semestral work.

Economics professor Edita A. Tan says the Roco curriculum is on the right track in reallocating of more time to them.

“The big question is how do we improve the teaching and learning of the core subjects,” she says.

“There are teacher training activities but they are of limited reach. Remember that there are about 500,000 school teachers and only a few thousands go for summer training program,” says Tan.

A summer will not do

“A summer of training will not produce English, Math, Science expertise. It takes time to achieve expertise in a field. Most of our Math and Science teachers have not majored in their teaching fields. They have to major in these fields to achieve competence to teach them,” she says.

Tan says another problem is that very few universities and colleges produce quality teachers.

Just the cost of training people who will train the teachers is staggering, say DepEd officials.

Education Secretary Jesli Lapus has devoted most of his time -- since he was appointed to the helm of DepEd in August -- planning to fast-track projects to improve learning facilities and teacher training.

“You have to think out of the box,” says Lapus, a three-term congressman and former banker.

Learning via satellite

Lapus is in the midst of negotiations with China to provide initially half of the 50,000 schools nationwide 10 television sets each to receive learning materials to be transmitted via satellite.

Another of his priority projects is to design a program for legislation that will address the skills and jobs mismatch in the employment market. It’s the paradox of a surplus of graduates that cannot fill half a million waiting jobs.

Lapus repeatedly talks of encouraging high school graduates who cannot immediately afford a college education to go to technical and vocational schools and at least be assured there will be a job waiting for them at any point in their studies.

It is a program that has been successfully implemented in the United States and Europe for high school graduates who cannot pass college entrance examinations.

There’s still a long way to go, but there are determined moves to reach the goal of improving education one tortured step at a time.

“We’re getting into the heart of the systems breakdown,” says Lapus.

The Crisis of Public Education in the Philippines

2008-01-04T10:33:00.000-08:00

By Ronald Meinardus

According to the human capital theory, the economic development of a nation is a function of the quality of its education. In other words: the more and better educated a people, the greater the chances of economic development.

The modern world in which we live is often termed a "knowledge society"; education and information have become production factors potentially more valuable than labor and capital. Thus, in a globalized setting, investment in human capital has become a condition for international competitiveness.

In the Philippines, I often hear harsh criticism against the politics of globalization. At the same time, regarding the labor markets, I can hardly think of another nation that is so much a part of a globalized economy than the Philippines with nearly ten per cent of the overall population working beyond the shores of the native land.

Brain drain. Apart from the much debated political, social and psychological aspects, this ongoing mass emigration constitutes an unparalleled brain drain with serious economic implications.

Arguably, the phenomenon also has an educational dimension, as the Philippine society is footing the bill for the education of millions of people, who then spend the better part of their productive years abroad. In effect, the poor Philippine educational system is indirectly subsidizing the affluent economies hosting the OFWs.

With 95 per cent of all elementary students attending public schools, the educational crisis in the Philippines is basically a crisis of public education. The wealthy can easily send their offspring to private schools, many of which offer first-class education to the privileged class of pupils.

Social divide. Still, the distinct social cleavage regarding educational opportunities remains problematic for more than one reason. Historically, in most modern societies, education has had an equalizing effect. In Germany, for instance, the educational system has helped overcome the gender gap, and later also the social divide. Today, the major challenge confronting the educational system in the country I come from is the integration of millions of mostly non-European, in most cases Muslim, immigrants. Importantly, this leveling out in the context of schooling has not occurred in this part of the world. On the contrary, as one Filipino columnist wrote a while ago, "Education has become part of the institutional mechanism that divides the poor and the rich."

Let me add an ideological note to the educational debate: Liberals are often accused of standing in the way of reforms that help overcome social inequalities. While, indeed, liberals value personal freedom higher than social equality, they actively promote equality of opportunities in two distinct policy areas: education and basic heath care.

For this reason, educational reform tends to have a high ranking on the agenda of most liberal political parties in many parts of the world.

This said, it is probably no coincidence that the National Institute for Policy Studies (NIPS), liberal think-tank of the Philippines, invited me the other day to a public forum on the "Challenges on Educational Reform." With the school year having just started and the media filled with reports on the all but happy state of public education in the country, this was a very timely and welcome event. I was impressed by the inputs from Representative Edmundo O. Reyes, Jr, the Chairman of the Committee on Education of the House of Representatives, and DepEd Undersecretary Juan Miguel Luz. Both gave imposing presentations on the state of Philippine education.

Although I have been in this country for over a year now, I am still astonished again and again by the frankness and directness with which people here address problems in public debates. "The quality of Philippine education has been declining continuously for roughly 25 years," said the Undersecretary -- and no one in the audience disagreed. This, I may add, is a devastating report card for the politicians who governed this nation in the said period. From a liberal and democratic angle, it is particularly depressing as this has been the period that coincides with democratic rule that was so triumphantly and impressively reinstalled after the dark years of dictatorship in 1986! Describing the quality of Philippine school education today, the senior DepEd official stated the following: "Our schools are failing to teach the competence the average citizen needs to become responsible, productive and self-fulfilling. We are graduating people who are learning less and less."

While at the said forum, more than one speaker observed that the educational problems are structural in nature, I missed propositions for reform that are so far-reaching to merit the attribute structural.

Gargantuan problems. While the Undersecretary very patiently and impressively charted out the four policy directions of the political leadership of his ministry (taking teachers out of elections, establishing a nationwide testing system, preserving private schools, raising subsidies for a voucher system), to me -- as a foreign observer -- these remedies sound technocratic considering, what one writer in this paper has recently termed, "the gargantuan magnitude of the problems besetting Philippine basic education."

Let me highlight two figures: Reportedly, at last count more than 17 million students are enrolled in this country's public schools.

At an annual population growth rate of 2.3 per cent, some 1.7 million babies are born every year. In a short time, these individuals will claim their share of the limited educational provisions.

"We can't build classrooms fast enough to accommodate" all these people, said the DepEd Undersecretary, who also recalled the much lamented lack of teachers, furniture and teaching materials.

In short, there are too little resources for too many students.

Two alternatives. In this situation, logically, there exist only two strategic alternatives: either, one increases the resources, which is easier said than done considering the dramatic state of public finances, or one reduces the number of students.

This second alternative presupposes a systematic population policy, aimed at reducing the number of births considerably.

But this, too, is easier said than done, considering the politics in this country -- or to quote Congressman Reyes: "Given the very aggressive and active intervention of the Church addressing the population problem is very hard to tackle."

Dr. Ronald Meinardus was the former Resident Representative of the Friedrich-Naumann-Foundation in the Philippines and a commentator on Asian affairs. E-mail comments to liberal@philippines.fnst.org

Business World Internet Edition: June 30, 2003
© All rights reserved

Solving the Philippine education crisis

2008-01-04T10:29:00.000-08:00

Manila Bulletin Online
June 17 2007
Dr. Eduardo P. Garrovillas, Jose Rizal University

THE crisis in Philippine education is definitely very complex. Currently, there are three high-profile solutions being offered to address the crisis.

One. Philippine Business for Education (PBEd) has come up with its own solution to the problem. Composed of mega-business leaders in the larger society and business-based advocates for educational reform, PBEd is advocating the following: 1) adopt global standards by lengthening the basic education cycle from the present 10 years to 12 years; and 2) improve the resources made available to the education sector e.g., by offering better pedagogy, pursuing manageable pupil/teacher ratios, providing better textbooks, and improving the curriculum to at least include UNESCO’s "four pillars of education" (i.e., learning to be, learning to know, learning to do, and learning to live together) and to assist every school in the country to perform better. On the other hand, Education Secretary Jesli Lapus is "hesitant" to add two more years to the education cycle for obvious economic reasons. He believes that the education system’s problem is "primarily one of a lack of resources instead of simply a misallocation of resources". The education chief has cited that our neighbors in the ASEAN spend 20 percent of their national budget on education while we allocate only 12 percent. DepEd needs to fund the construction of 8,000 more classrooms and the hiring of 6,000 additional teachers for 2007, outside of the proposed R134 billion education budget, the bulk of which goes to the payment of salaries of teachers and personnel.

Two. Quite recently also, the Personnel Management Association of the Philippines (PMAP) offered its own solution to the problem. The group hosted a tripartite summit for government, industry, and academe to solve the mismatch between jobs offered and the skills provided by the country’s educational system. Human resource practitioners have been saying that the mismatch is "a weird sort of scarcity amid plenty that is being accentuated by the rapid growth of business process outsourcing (BPO) and the globalization of the Philippine labor market". The summit revealed interesting information on skills-jobs mismatch, as synthesized and articulated by Dr. Vincent K. Fabella, president of Jose Rizal University, who represented the education sector in his capacity as president of COCOPEA, the largest federation of associations of colleges and universities in the Philippines. He said that fastgrowing industries like pharmaceuticals, banking, consumer goods, hotels and restaurants, semiconductor, information technology, telecommunications, retail and call centers, are looking for people who have good communication skills combined with strong analytical and conceptual skills, are assertive, flexible and mature, have initiative, and possess a global perspective and socio-economic-political awareness -- basically "soft" skills that a good liberal education can provide. He added that while the country needs more technical human resources such as programmers, engineers, architects, physicists, welders and pipe fitters, the 21st century workplace and knowledge economy demand no less than a good liberal or general education for these people of the hard sciences to make a difference. Dr. Fabella asserted that universities must reengineer or kaizenize its liberal education curriculum; that there is a compelling need to strengthen it to complement the academic preparation of our graduates, especially from the technical or hard science courses, to be able to rise to the challenges of the 21st century workplace.

Three. Congress has proposed a "scientific solution" to the education crisis, which is to allocate a R4.7billion fund for its food for schools program or feeding program in the form of rice distribution to school children. They call it "scientific" because the proposal is allegedly backed up by scientific studies showing that malnutrition is behind the poor performance of our school children in Mathematics and Science, the reason why our pupils ranked 37th out of 38 countries who participated in international examinations for the said subjects. According to an Asian Development Bank study, poor nutrition among children can whittle down the IQ by 10 to 14 percent.

Synthesis. The first two solutions are neither foolproof nor perfect, but nevertheless each could merit a passing grade either under a preliminary evaluation or a cursory analysis as in a typical case-method classroom approach. Proposal one, for instance, in light of the global standards, should in fact be explored and pilottested by policy-makers and leaders of the basic education sector (elementary and high school), before it gets drowned out by protests from parents, or shut down by detractors of change. Specifically, it may be good to analyze whether the economic downside of adding two more years to the cycle could be offset by its resulting advantages over the long haul. On the other hand, for the tertiary level, solution two, the strengthening or kaizenizing of the liberal education curriculum to meet the needs of today’s workplace is quite doable vis-à-vis the growing accreditation mode among colleges and universities. It is also safe to conclude that solutions one and two are honest, objective, and wellmeaning attempts to solve the problem, bereft of any self-serving hidden agenda.

However, the third solution, being proposed by administration congressmen, is an insult to the intelligence of every decent-thinking Filipino. Rice distribution to school children is definitely not the solution to widespread malnutrition in our public schools, but rather and quite obviously, another fertile opportunity for graft and corruption. We will not debate on the science of malnutrition and its effect on IQ, but it doesn’t need a lot of brainpower to uncover the real motive. This is another form of a "grand deception", to borrow the words of the Supreme Court’s ponente on the infamous People’s Initiative. As viewed by many, the R4.7 billion feeding program for school children is another version of the fertilizer scam payola (R728 million) in the offing, only on a much bigger scale; a very obvious political gambit in the runup to elections.

The Filipino nation should commend PBEd and PMAP for their patriotic efforts to offer solutions to the Philippine education crisis and for their attempts to arrest the "downward spiral" of the quality of education in the country. They are lighting a candle; they are not cursing the darkness. Until a better alternative is found, quality education is still the key to national development and to our competitiveness in the global marketplace. Education is everybody’s business. It is too important to be left to the claws of rapacious and self-serving politicians.

Teachers Can't Teach

2008-01-04T10:05:00.000-08:00

Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:29am (Mla time) 01/05/2008

In Baguio City earlier this week, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was said to have expressed alarm over the deterioration in English proficiency of public school teachers. “We have to make sure their English is good,” the President said as she ordered the release of P500 million for teachers’ English training. “Really, English is not proceeding anywhere as fast as Math or Science... It is deteriorating. Something must be wrong with the educational system.”

She was right, of course, but barely. English proficiency among teachers is deteriorating, but so is Science education and Mathematics too. And it is not just something, but a lot of things that are wrong with our educational system.

The results of the National Achievement Test given in 2004 say it all. In that test, covering English, Math and Science, only 2.1 percent of all high school seniors scored 75 percent or higher. In the Math test, 12.9 percent passed with a grade of at least 75 percent. In English, only 6.8 percent made the grade. And in Science, less than 1 percent (0.7 percent) got a grade of 75 percent or better.

The performance of high school freshmen was even worse. In the 2004 High School Readiness Test, covering the same three subjects, less than 1 percent (0.52 percent) scored 75 percent or better in all three subjects. If the passing mark was lowered to 50 percent, only 7.4 percent of the students would have passed the test.

And how do Filipinos students compare with others? The Trends in International Math and Science Survey (TIMSS) conducted in 1998 ranked the Philippines fourth from last among 39 countries that participated in the survey. Five years later, in 2003, the Philippines was No. 41 among the 45 countries that took part in the TIMSS.

Educators have cited a host of reasons for the dismal state of Philippine education, including the lack of teachers and classrooms as well as the error-filled textbooks and instructional materials. But way up there among the major reasons should be the poor preparation and training of teachers. In a recent assessment test conducted by the Department of Education, only 60 percent of public elementary school teachers passed the English proficiency test. Among secondary school teachers, only one out of every five who took the test had a grade of 70 percent or better.

The problem couldn’t get any worse than the situation in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. According to a study done by USAID, the English proficiency of many teachers in the ARMM is only as good as the average Grade 2 or 3 pupil in public elementary schools nationwide -- meaning they can barely understand, much less speak, the language, given the very poor scores earned even by high school students in the National Achievement Test. The study said the ARMM has “the lowest student academic achievement owing largely to the poor competencies of teachers.”

Education Secretary Jesli Lapus is fully aware of the problem, and has no intention of hiding it. Noting that those who took the nationwide English proficiency test were full-fledged teachers, he wondered: “How many thousands of students are affected by this?”

The answer is quite obvious from the results of various achievement or aptitude tests. The lack of English proficiency among teachers particularly is critical in the light of the government policy mandating the use of English as the medium of instruction in three subjects -- English, Math and Science -- starting in Grade 3 and in all subjects in the secondary school level. If teachers don’t even know the language in which they are supposed to communicate with their students, what can they teach?

Lapus has acknowledged that Philippine education is faced with “a myriad of problems.” But there is no dearth of sensible proposals to solve them either. Another education summit, like what the President wants held later this month, and another master plan, such as she ordered to be put together, won’t improve the competence of our teachers or the quality of education. What is needed is the will and resolve on the part of the administration to commit the resources needed to fix these problems.

Intangible wealth of nations

2007-12-22T09:36:00.000-08:00

By Artemio V. Panganiban
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 03:54:00 12/23/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- A distant cousin of mine, "Kadyo" (nickname for Arcadio), was a taxi driver in Metro Manila. He zigzagged in and out of lanes, passed red lights, choked already clogged intersections ignoring the crossing vehicles, and drove in the opposite lane blocking the in-coming traffic. But wonder of wonders, he has not been fined or haled to court for any traffic violation.

Miracle of the three "L's." When I asked him how he has escaped sanctions for his traffic violations, he bragged: "It's simple. Usually, there are no policemen. During the few times that there were, I would argue I passed only a yellow, not red, light. If the policeman ignores my 'lusot' (bluster), I threaten him with a suit and boast that I had a good lawyer. No, not you Coya. My lawyer is Manuel A. Roxas (sheepishly pulling out a hundred-peso bill in which the photo of President Roxas is imprinted). If 'lagay' (bribery) does not work, I use 'lakas' (influence) by crowing that the mayor is my cousin. Yes, 'lusot, lagay, lakas,' these three 'L's' have enabled me to feed my nine children, the eldest of whom has just passed the nursing board exam."

Kadyo in America. That was 15 years ago. Last August, my wife and I visited my sick brother in Vancouver. Thereafter, we flew to Las Vegas en route to see our children in the United States. There, we watched some shows (Celine Dion, The Producers, Mystere and Lani Misalucha). Driving the cab we hailed on "the Strip" one evening was Kadyo!

I was, of course, surprised to meet him there, and even more startled to see him driving so carefully and observing all traffic rules. He explained that his eldest child, who was employed 14 years ago in a nearby hospital, was allowed to bring in her parents. "I do not use the three 'L's' here because I would get into trouble with the police and lose my license. I just follow all rules. I earn enough without having to use bluster, bribe or influence. In America, one only needs to be industrious to live comfortably," he mused.

Kadyo is typical of many Filipinos who violate traffic rules here, cheat in paying their taxes, employ legal short cuts, and patronize politicians to be able to land a job or to secure a government contract. But once they are in America, or in other developed countries, they obey all laws, dutifully fall in line and enjoy the blessings of life by just doing their work diligently. To forge ahead, they do not need to peddle influence or polish their bosses.

World Bank Report. For the longest time, I had been wondering, why does the Filipino worker mightily succeed when he is in the United States, but not when he is back home? Another heart warming fact: according to our consul general in New York, Cecilia Rebong, the Filipino professionals in the United States earn comparatively more than their counterpart native Americans. Why? The answer may lie in a World Bank (WB) report on the "Wealth of Nations."

The study shows that if the total wealth or "capital" of the United States were distributed evenly, each person there (including Kadyo) would have access to $512,612 in capital, compared to only $19,351 in the Philippines. That is why industrious and law-abiding Kadyo earns more there than here; and more than other drivers there.

To be sure, the WB explains that there are really three kinds of wealth: (1) natural capital--"the sum of nonrenewable resources (including oil, natural gas, coal and mineral resources), cropland, pastureland, forested areas and protected areas"; (2) produced capital--"the sum of machinery, equipment, and structures (including infrastructure)"; and, (3) intangible capital that encompasses raw labor, human capital (the sum of knowledge, skills and know-how of the population), social capital (the level of trust among people in a society and their ability to work together toward common goals) and the quality of institutions essential to good governance, like an independent judiciary, clear property rights, effective revenue collection, nonpolitical military, credible elections and stable rule of law.

Worldwide, natural capital accounts for only 5 percent of total wealth, produced capital for 18 percent, and intangible capital for 77 percent. On the average, every one in the world has a total wealth of $90,000, an amount available to those in Brazil ($87,000), Libya ($89,000) and Croatia ($91,000). This world average is much more than the Philippines' $19,351, broken down into $1,549 natural, $2,673 produced and $15,129 intangible.

While natural resources help, they are not the most important wealth. Singapore has zero natural capital but is credited with $79,011 produced capital plus $173,595 intangible capital for a total of $252,607. Japan has only $1,513 natural (same as ours) but has $150,258 produced plus $341,470 intangible for a total of $493,241.

Conclusion: The WB study shows that more than three-fourths of the total wealth of the world is intangible. Further, the most significant elements of intangible wealth are education and the rule of law. These two facts imply that while the natural resources and infrastructure priorities of President Macapagal-Arroyo deserve some attention, the much more important focus should be on our intangible capital, like the primacy of education, the promotion of the rule of law, and the strengthening of our democratic institutions. These are the truly lasting legacies.

DOSCST's 18th Anniversary - Reflections

2007-12-14T10:43:00.000-08:00

December 13, 2007

It's DOSCST's 18th year. Returning there after my last day of service on July 13, these are a few of the little things that warms and continues to warm my heart, not necessarily in order:

1. Several of the College's graduates during my watch are now in the College's employ - either as faculty members or administrative staff. Many have a healthy sense of mission and have a conscious effort to improve themselves.

2. Some of the pillars and the pioneers of the College mix well with upcoming leaders, and together, they reliably hold on to some traditional-but-never-outdated academic values like excellence, integrity and service. The inter-age group mix would assure the smooth passing on of invaluable academic traditions that rightly anchors the college as an institution.

3. The idealism of many colleagues remain. Many hold on to values that matter most in institution building. They are keenly discerning of people's behavior and exercise wisdom as best as they could. These are the people who provide stability to the college. I continue to admire them.

4. The indicators of a well-rounded, achieving institution are there:

recognition in academic pursuits through exam performance
research and extension outputs, and community projects
continuously improving academic facilities
preservation and development of culture and arts
modest sports program

As Dr. Ortiz, the founding president, said in her anniversary message, the years spent at the helm of a growing institution could be the most trying times, but the most personally rewarding as well. I add - the best reward of service is for your colleagues and former clients to grow as better individuals and members of society. The better reward that I wish to see not so long from now is for some colleagues and many of our students to eventually outdo us in service and in life. Only then can we say that we have done our part of leadership.

Salutation to 3rd DOSCST President

2007-12-14T09:55:00.000-08:00

13 December 2007

(I am posting here my salutation to Dr. Grace Lopez during her investiture as 3rd President of DOSCST. I am reconstructing the message from memory as I did this extempo)

Good afternoon everyone.

More than ten years ago, I had the privilege of being chosen to head this College. As I reported for work, I felt the daunting task of filling the big shoes left to me by my predecessor, Dr. Julieta Ortiz. She didn't only leave strong foundations for the College to grow from, she also left indelible marks of service and leadership.

I knew from where I was starting from that I couldn't fit into the big shoes left so I decided to follow in Dr. Ortiz's footsteps. I carefully studied how she laid down the academic, human and physical infrastructure of the College and how she faced the challenges of birthing and caring for a fledging institution with fortitude and singleness of purpose. I did my best to understand the internal and community dynamics that are potent and inevitable factors to institution building and discerned how best I could harness key players into effectively playing their respective roles.

My ten years, I would say, had been good years for the College as it developed from a Level 1 to a Level 3 SUC in spite of its being "small" in age, size and budget. A cursory look into all Level 3 SUCs immediately shows that DOSCST has the smallest budget and is one of the "youngest". This growth amidst the challenges was due mainly to doing the things that matter without fanfare.

So, my first wish or advise to Dr. Lopez - follow into the footsteps. But this time with greater strides. In the two weeks that I purposely spent to interface with Dr. Lopez before moving to another institution, I observed her work ethic and philosophy. These, plus her love for her work and people will carry her through.

In this special occasion, I also well remember Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Computers. He dropped out of Reed College but stayed on anyway to attend classes that interested him, specifically calligraphy. Ten years later with Apple, they developed the Mac with all those beautiful and proportionally spaced fonts that we all enjoy today. The company was so successful but success can be coupled with interesting twists and turns. At some point in the company life, he was fired. But he went back to his creative activities, started a company called NeXT which soon became the most successful animation studio in the world. Soon after, Apple bought NeXT and Steve Jobs is back to Apple with a technology that forms the heart of the company's business. All these is due to his passion for his work, his hunger to create. So my second advice, which is related to the first is, stay hungry. Stay hungry for achievement, for service, for things that matter.

The story didn't end there. Steve Jobs eventually contracted a deadly disease. He had a rare form of cancer and upon diagnosis, he was adviced to "go home and get his affairs in order". But until today, we see Steve Jobs turning out new products - ipods, iphones and all those nano-gadgets - with zeal, excitement and energy.

We realize that God doesn't give us everything, but He gives us enough to get our missions done. So, my third advice - stay healthy as you can be. That would be enough to get your own mission done.

All my best wishes to Dr. Lopez and the institution. And if I have to repeat what I'd been saying all along, it is my call for the college workers to support Dr. Lopez even more than you supported me and my predecessor. By doing this, you are not only helping the institution grow and achieve its purpose. You also help yourselves and above all, convey to the clients the services that they deserve and fulfill the reason for this institution's being.

Why Henry Sy Believes the Philippines Is Not Hopeless

2007-12-08T14:21:00.000-08:00

"I am optimistic that we can achieve a better future. It is not true that the Philippines is a hopeless case." 82-year-old SM Group and Banco de Oro founder Henry Sy recently told The Philippine STAR. "I am an immigrant who came here at 12 years old, spoke no English or Tagalog, but I came to appreciate the natural beauty and many economic advantages of the
Philippines more than many other people do, and I kept working and investing with positive thinking."

The exclusive three-hour interview took place at his simple but elegant bungalow in North Forbes Park , Makati City, and at Tanabe Japanese Restaurant in his SM Mall of Asia in Pasay City .

In the over two decades I have known the legendary rags-to-riches taipan and shopping mall pioneer, Henry Sy has become more mentally sharp and energetic than ever before. He is strong despite his weak knees, which occasionally forced him to use the wheelchair when we briefly toured his newest pride and passion at the SM Mall of Asia.

PHILIPPINE STAR: Congratulations on the success of the SM Mall of Asia. What did your competitors say about your biggest shopping mall project yet?

HENRY SY: I called Robinsons mall boss John Gokongwei, Jr. to personally invite him to the blessing of the SM Mall of Asia, but he said he couldn't make it. Even though we are competitors, I do not think Gokongwei has any complaints about me.

Your executives tell me that one million people came to the SM Mall of Asia on your first day, May 21, then 400,000 came the next day, Monday. Why are people coming here, when this location is not along a highway like SM Megamall or at a crossroads like SM North Edsa ?

A lot of the customers to this mall came from the provinces and they enjoy touring the place. It is not only constructing the place that creates a good mall, we at SM create destinations using continuous research, studies and new ideas to match the needs and wants of the people. Doing a mall is not only construction of the physical place, what's important is the merchandising mix. We strive to serve the convenience of the public. We want shopping at our malls to be a unique and an enjoyable experience.

Why did you build an Olympic-sized ice-skating rink in this mall?

Very few people know this: I love skating and bowling. I used to roller skate a lot in my youth on Taft Avenue, Manila . That's the reason why there's always a skating area in all my SM malls. I want more people to share my love for skating.

When you were a kid, what was your original ambition?

I have always wanted to be a businessman. No other ambitions. I just wanted to be in business, even when I was a child in Fujian province, South China .

Why did you invest P7 billion in Mall of Asia's 500 outlets, 180 restaurants and other facilities, at a time when the Philippine economy is not that strong?

It's investment that manifests my strong confidence in the Philippine future. I hope this biggest mall project will have a positive impact on the Philippine economy and I hope to encourage other business people to invest, too. Not everything I do is purely for money. Of course, as a businessman and as head of publicly listed companies, we have to earn, but at this point in my life, there are other considerations more important besides just money. I took a risk and invested in SM Mall of Asia because I wanted to create something that could contribute to Philippine tourism growth. If I am only after profits, the easiest way is for me to construct high-rise condominiums here along the seashore facing Manila Bay , or I could just develop high-end subdivisions here and subdivide the lots to cash in quickly with big profits. But constructing this mall is a long-term investment; it is proof of my faith in the future of the Philippine economy. I wanted to build a beautiful destination for shopping, wholesome family-oriented entertainment and leisure. That church outside this mall, I donated it to
everything from the structure, the land, to the interior furnishings and decor and it's not for profit.

What else do you wish to achieve after the SM Mall of Asia? What other big projects can we expect from you?

My biggest wish is for government, the private sector and all of us to work together to make the Philippines the best tourism destination in Southeast Asia. This is the reason I am always optimistic that the Philippines is not a hopeless case, contrary to what a lot of cynics claim. What Thailand can offer in tourism places and services, we in the Philippines can match, except for our past reputation in peace-and-order problems. That's what has held back our tourism growth. Philippine economic prospects are very good; we just have some problems in the investment environment which the government is now rectifying. Other export industries often rely on imported raw materials and the Philippines often only earns the labor input, but in the tourism industry, the Philippines can earn as much as 80 percent for every dollar spent here on food, shopping, entertainment, hotels, transport, etc., while 20 percent probably goes to imported liquor and other luxury goods. I am into tourism with Tagaytay Highlands, & Taal Vista Hotel. We shall keep investing in new tourist-friendly malls, we are now master-planning a new 5,700-hectare seaside tourism project called Hamilo Coastal in Batangas, and many others.

Why do you think the Philippines is ideal for tourism?

First, there's the location: we are just two to three hours from all the major Asian cities like Singapore, Malaysia, China , Hong Kong, Taiwan, and others.
Second, our people are famous for the best service in Southeast Asia .
Third, people here are proficient in English.
Fourth, the Philippines has many naturally beautiful tourist destinations, beaches, thousands of islands, unique flora and fauna, vast fishery resources, and others.
Fifth, the Philippines is excellent in entertainment, which is important in tourism. Look at the singers and bands in top hotels, from Shanghai to Seoul to Tokyo, many of them are Filipino entertainers.
Sixth, you do not need much capital or foreign investments for tourism development.
Seventh, Philippine hospitality is better than others in ASEAN culture just look at the people's smiling faces. In our Chinese language, we call this "ho khe chieng", or people who are warm and hospitable in welcoming clients and guests.

There are many more advantages. I could spend all day and all night talking to you about the tourism potentials of this country.

What are your suggestions on how to build up Philippine tourism?

I have a very simple formula based on common sense that will help accelerate Philippine tourism growth: the government should improve the peace-and-order situation as well as the international image of the Philippines on this crucial issue. The government should upgrade infrastructure, there should be a strong information campaign worldwide to promote the Philippines as an ideal tourism destination. In a recent event of HSBC, a TV talk show host
of CNN asked for my advice to politicians and I shared only a few words of advice: work more, talk less. Government every year claims over two million tourist arrivals.

What do you think should be the ideal number of tourists coming to the Philippines annually?

Our target should first be to attract five million tourists in the first five years, then go for over 10 million in 10 years. Every time I meet President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, I always tell her this dream of mine and my excitement about Philippine tourism potentials because I know she really wants a better Philippine economy.

In this era of globalization, SM is also going international like the western multinationals Walmart, Carrefour, Metro, and others.

What are your plans in China ?

We have four major projects in China . In August or September this year, we shall inaugurate our new mall in Chengdu City , the capital of the 100-million- people Sichuan province. China is a dynamic place, it is amazing in progress.

Why is it that your children did not grow up spoiled, and seem to have imbibed your work ethic and business acumen? How did you train them?

I think it's their innate natural drive. I also trained them in the importance of hard work. Even while they were in high school, my children used to spend their free time working at our SM Department Store in Makati.

Who among your six children like Tessie, Elizabeth, Henry Jr., Hans, Herbert, and Harley will become your future successor and the leader of the SM Groups next generation?

I cannot for now ascertain who will be the leader. We are organized as corporations, publicly listed firms. Whoever becomes the leader of the next generation shall rise based on merits and abilities. Unlike other top Chinese business families in Asia, which favor male sons over daughters, all my six children are treated equally. My eldest child Tessie is hardworking
and very capable; it doesn't matter that she's a woman. She always wants to learn and she is a fast learner.

A billionaire asked me recently who is richer, you or Lucio Tan?

How can I know for sure who is bigger in net worth when each person has his own strengths that not everyone fully appreciates? I don't like to say this guy is the biggest in wealth, because some people have wealth which is hidden and isn't that a fair point of view?

John Gokongwei Jr. told me that when he first applied for a loan with PBCom it was not approved, and it was China Bank's Dee K. Chiong and Dr. Albino SyCip who approved his first loan of P500,000 in 1950.

What about your first loan?

I don't usually like to get loans. In fact, the reason why we did well and completed our first mall project, SM North Edsa, even after the 1983 economic crisis and after the Ninoy Aquino assassination, was because we had very little loans then. I got my first credit line in 1949, it was from China Bank and they lent me P1 million. My credit line was approved by Mr. Yap Tian Siang in their head office before at Juan Luna Street, corner Dasmarinas Street.

Did you ever imagine in 1949 that you would someday own more than 70 percent of China Bank, and that you would have Banco de Oro and soon, possibly, Equitable PCIBank?

No, I never imagined then that I would own banks. You know, despite our many shareholdings in China Bank, the Dee family of the original founder has managed the institution so professionally and profitably, we never attempted to change the incumbent chairman Gilbert Dee or president Peter Dee. We are not that greedy, it's not good. I don't believe in wanting both power and financial gain. Even those executives who have been with China Bank for many years, they are still there. If a venerable institution like China Bank is doing so well, why make changes?

Is it true you already own 11 percent of San Miguel Corporation?

I have invested a lot in that well-managed company, but I do not want to mention figures.

What are the business principles or strategies that made you successful?

I would not classify this as a secret to success, but one of my lifelong practices is to pay my obligations on time, especially my suppliers. Even in my early years as retailer, I didn't delay my payments to suppliers, because I tell my kids that we have to be considerate to suppliers and think of their own "hinyong" or how they have to protect their sense of trustworthiness with others. If it's time to pay others on Monday, we would already deposit the money in their bank accounts on Friday, so they need not even come to our office to collect.

Your SM Cinemas do not allow R-18 or For Adults Only movies, including The Da Vinci Code. Are you a Catholic or is it just your wife?

I am Catholic, but yes, it's my wife Felicidad Tan Sy who is the most devout among us in the family. She devotes almost all her time and money to the Catholic Church.

Your SM Group leases out or has retail businesses in millions of square meters of prime commercial space. When you came to the Philippines as a 12-year-old boy, how big was the sari-sari store of your father and what was its name?

It was a small "ha-ya-tiam" , it had no name. It was located on Echague St., which is now Carlos Palanca Sr. St. in Quiapo, Manila . It was only about 30 square meters in floor area.

Why did you cry when you first saw your father in his store?

I cried because I saw how hard the life of my father was as a small shopkeeper. He worked from early morning to late at night every day. He would go to "chay-chi-khaw" area or Divisoria to buy goods, carrying them himself on his back in order to resell in the store. I learned the
importance of honest hard work, frugality, and discipline from his example.

Where did you and your father sleep at night, on the second floor or at the back of the store?

Our sari-sari store was so small it had no back or second floor, we just slept on the counter late at night after the store was closed.

When you were a kid and you saw your father struggling with his sari-sari store, did that motivate you to aspire to become Southeast Asia 's Shopping Mall King ?

As a kid, I had the will to strive for excellence and to overcome the hard environment, but I never imagined attaining big success. Whatever I have achieved did not happen overnight; ever since my teen years I have devoted many, many years of my life to non-stop studying, diligent work, and dreaming of a better future.

QS Top Universities

2007-11-22T04:50:00.000-08:00

Source: THES - QS World University Rankings
Copyright © 2004-2007 QS Quacquarelli Symonds

UP is tied with two others for #398.

The Turtle and Hare Revisited

2007-11-04T14:54:00.000-08:00

(I found this article in the blogsite “Sonny’s Porch”. We all know the story. But most know only the first episode. The series of sequels is as important, or more important, than the first. In almost every workplace, steep competition seems to take the form of "I win, you lose" or worse, "If I don't win, no one would" situation. This short-sighted, self-serving paradigm has always preceded a seldom-embraced yet readily recognized win-win principle.)

(You may also check a technical article that uses the title as a vantage point)

Once upon a time a tortoise and a hare had an argument about who was faster. They decided to settle the argument with a race. They agreed on a route and started off the race. The hare shot ahead and ran briskly for some time. Then seeing that he was far ahead of the tortoise, he thought he’d sit under a tree for some time and relax before continuing the race. He sat under the tree and soon fell asleep. The tortoise plodding on overtook him and soon finished the race, emerging as the undisputed champ. The hare woke up and realized that he’d lost the race. The moral- “Slow and steady wins the race. This is the version of the story that we’ve all grown up with.”

THE STORY DOESN’T END HERE

there are few more interesting things…..it continues as follows…… The hare was disappointed at losing the race and he did some soul-searching. He realized that he’d lost the race only because he had been overconfident, careless and lax. If he had not taken things for granted, there’s no way the tortoise could have beaten him. So he challenged the tortoise to another race.

The tortoise agreed. This time, the hare went all out and ran without stopping from start to finish. He won by several miles. The moral - ” Fast and consistent will always beat the slow and steady. It’s good to be slow and steady; but it’s better to be fast and reliable.”

THE STORY DOESN’T END HERE

The tortoise did some thinking this time, and realized that there’s no way it can beat the hare in a race the way it was currently formatted. It thought for a while, and then challenged the hare to another race, but on a slightly different route. The hare agreed. They started off. In keeping with his self-made commitment to be consistently fast, the hare took off and ran at top speed until he came to a broad river. The finishing line was a couple of kilometres on the other side of the river. The hare sat there wondering what to do. In the meantime the tortoise trundled along, got into the river, swam to the opposite bank, continued walking and finished the race.

The moral - “First identify your core competency and then change the playing field to suit your core competency.”

THE STORY STILL HASN’T ENDED

The hare and the tortoise, by this time, had become pretty good friends and they did some thinking together. Both realized that the last race could have been run much better. So they decided to do the last race again, but to run as a team this time. They started off, and this time the hare carried the tortoise till the riverbank. There, the tortoise took over and swam across with the hare on his back. On the opposite bank, the hare again carried the tortoise and they reached the finishing line together. They both felt a greater sense of satisfaction than they’d felt earlier.

The moral - “It’s good to be individually brilliant and to have strong core competencies; but unless you’re able to work in a team and harness each other’s core competencies, you’ll always perform below par because there will always be situations at which you’ll do poorly and someone else does well.

Teamwork is mainly about situational leadership, letting the person with the relevant core competency for a situation take leadership. Note that neither the hare nor the tortoise gave up after failures. The hare decided to work harder and put in more effort after his failure. The tortoise changed his strategy because he was already working as hard as he could.” In life, when faced with failure, sometimes it is appropriate to work harder and put in more effort. Sometimes it is appropriate to change strategy and try something different. And sometimes it is appropriate to do both.

The hare and the tortoise also learned another vital lesson. When we stop competing against a rival and instead start competing against the situation, we perform far better.

To sum up- the story of the hare and tortoise has much to say:

Chief among them are that fast and consistent will always beat slow and steady; work to your competencies; pooling resources and working as a team will always beat individual performers; never give up when faced with failure; & finally, compete against the situation - not against a rival.

CASE OF COCA-COLA

When Roberto Goizueta took over as CEO of Coca-Cola in the 1980s, he was faced with intense competition from Pepsi that was eating into Coke’s growth. His executives were Pepsi-focussed and intent on increasing market share 0.1 per cent a time. Goizueta decided to stop competing against Pepsi and instead compete against the situation of 0.1 per cent growth. He asked his executives what was the average fluid intake of an American per day? The answer was 14 ounces. What was Coke’s share of that? Two ounces. Goizueta said Coke needed a larger share of that market.

The competition wasn’t Pepsi. It was the water, tea, coffee, milk and fruit juices that went into the remaining 12 ounces. The public should reach for a Coke whenever they felt like drinking something. To this end, Coke put up vending machines at every street corner. Sales took a quantum jump and Pepsi has never quite caught up since.

Cholesterol - What you can do to lower your level

2007-11-02T04:41:00.000-07:00

Cholesterol is a type of fat made by your liver. Some cholesterol comes from the food that you eat. Foods that come from animals - such as eggs, meat and dairy products - have cholesterol in them. Foods that come from plants don't have cholesterol. But it's not just the cholesterol in foods that counts. Foods high in saturated fat (hydrogenated vegetable fats, tropical fats (coconut and palm oil), and animal fats) can also raise your cholesterol level.

Why is a high cholesterol level unhealthy?

Some cholesterol is needed for good health but too much cholesterol in your blood can raise your risk of having a heart attack or stroke. The extra cholesterol in your blood may be stored in your arteries (large blood vessels) and cause them to narrow. Large deposits of cholesterol can completely block an artery. If an artery that supplies blood to your heart becomes blocked, a heart attack occurs. If an artery that supplies blood to your brain becomes blocked, a stroke occurs.

Cholesterol travels through the blood in different types of packages called lipoproteins. Low-density lipoproteins (LDL) deliver cholesterol to the body, and high-density lipoproteins (HDL) remove cholesterol from the bloodstream.

Too much LDL cholesterol is bad for the body because it builds up in the arteries, while the HDL form is good because it helps remove cholesterol from the bloodstream. It's the balance between the different forms of cholesterol that tells you what your cholesterol level means.

When should I start having my cholesterol level checked?

If you are 20 years or older, talk to your family doctor to see whether you should have your cholesterol tested. If you have no risk factors, routine screening usually begins at the age of 40 for men and 50 for women or earlier if they have stopped having regular menses.

How often you have your cholesterol level checked depends on your age, family history and what other risk factors for heart disease you have. If your cholesterol is up, your family doctor can also advise you when to have follow-up cholesterol levels done.

Other risk factors for heart disease

Being a man of 45 years of age or older
Being a woman of 55 years of age or older
Having a male parent, grandparent or sibling who had heart disease before age 55
Having a female parent, grandparent or sibling who had heart disease before age 65
Smoking
Having high blood pressure
Having diabetes
Having a total cholesterol: HDL cholesterol ratio above 4
Having an LDL cholesterol level above 2.0 mmol/L (in the presence of other risk factors)
Having an HDL cholesterol below 1.0 mmol/L
Being very overweight
Having excess fat around your waist (more than 102cm for men and 88cm for women)
Having already had a stroke or a heart attack
Having already had angioplasty or heart surgery
Not exercising
Metabolic syndrome
Being on hormone replacement therapy for more than 5 years

What is Metabolic Syndrome (or Syndrome X)?

It is a condition involving the combination of risk factors for heart disease such as being overweight ( or excess abdominal fat), high cholesterol, high glucose and high blood pressure. Since each of these risk factors individually puts you at risk for heart disease, having 3 or more of them together increases your risk 6 times more for a heart attack or stroke. Syndrome X is the result of inactivity and a diet rich in saturated fats. It can be controlled with lifestyle changes such as healthy eating, exercise, weight loss and smoking cessation.

What should my cholesterol level be?

Your doctor will measure your cholesterol level. If the total level is high, a second test may be done to measure the levels of HDL and LDL.
If your total level is high because of a high LDL level, you may be at higher risk of heart disease or stroke. If your total level is high only because of a high HDL level, you're not at higher risk.
Target LDL, HDL and total cholesterol:HDL levels
Your doctor can determine your target levels based on your risk factors for heart disease using your age, gender, total and HDL cholesterol, blood pressure level, medications and smoking status

Target LDL, HDL and total cholesterol:HDL levels

An LDL cholesterol level of less than 3.0 mmol/L is best
An HDL above 1.0 mmol/L is best
If your risk is low, your LDL cholesterol should be less than 5.0 mmol/L and total cholesterol HDL-C ratio should be less than 6.0
If your risk is moderate, your LDL cholesterol should be less than 3.5 mmol/ and total cholesterol HDL-C ratio should be less than 5
If your risk is high, your LDL cholesterol should be less than 2.0 mmol/L and total cholesterol HDL-C ratio should be less than 4.0
An HDL cholesterol level of less than 1.0 mmol/L means you're at higher risk for heart disease.
If you have diabetes, your LDL should be less than 2.0 mmol/L.
If you've already had a heart attack your LDL needs to be less than 2.0 mmol/L.

What can I do to improve my cholesterol level?

You can do a number of things to improve your cholesterol level. Eating healthy food can help lower your LDL cholesterol level, and a healthy diet may help protect the body from the damaging effect of cholesterol. You can raise your HDL cholesterol level by quitting smoking if you smoke, losing weight if you are overweight and exercising.

Following a healthy low fat diet almost always lowers cholesterol levels. If healthy eating, exercising and other changes don't work after about three to six months, your family doctor may want to discuss using medicine to lower your cholesterol level. This is a lifelong treatment, so it should be thought about only if healthy habits don't work.

What sort of foods are healthy choices?

Lowering your cholesterol level by eating healthy foods low in fat is easier than you might think. It mostly takes a bit of common sense and a real interest in improving your health. You don't have to quit eating your favourite foods, although you might need to eat them less often or sometimes replace them with healthier choices. Foods low in total carbohydrates, saturated and trans-fatty acids, but high in complex carbohydrates, protein, mono- and polyunsaturated fat can help you lose weight.

Eat more of these foods:

Omega-3 fatty acids from fish and plant source

Fish, poultry without the skin, lean beef
Skim or low-fat milk
Sherbet, sorbet, ice milk
Egg whites
Steamed vegetables
Baked potatoes
Clear soups
Unsaturated vegetable oils: corn, canola, safflower, sesame, sunflower, olive, soybean
Angel food cake
Graham crackers, animal crackers, fig bars, vanilla wafers, lady fingers
Pretzels, air-popped popcorn, bagels, English muffins
Pancakes or cereal with low-fat milk
Fruit

Eat less of these foods

Sausage, organ meats (like liver)
Whole milk
Ice cream
Egg yolks
Buttered or fried vegetables
French fries
Creamed soups
Saturated fats: butter, coconut oil, palm oil, lard, bacon fat
Cheesecake
Pastries, doughnuts
Potato chips
Refined carbohydrates and sugar
Eggs and bacon

Revised 2007
The College of Family Physicians of Canada

Siya iman di taay

2007-09-10T22:41:00.000-07:00

"Siya iman di taay."

I hear my grandfather, Paulo Bayogan, again. With his signature grin, he usually blurts this phrase out whenever someone or something falls short of his expectation. The grin masks a tinge of frustration tempered by a profound display of peace and contentment. The grin undeniably exudes faith and confidence that all is, and will be, well. Watch out - the grin is never understood as a sign of resignation. It displays the silent resolve that goes with the courage of facing reality.

In my adult life, I keep playing back my grandfather's grin - so indelibly-etched in my memory bank. The grin is not like that of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland, it is definitely for real. I play it back when in a state of quandary or certainty, when in the midst of trouble or ease, when in the face of failure or success.

I believe I fully understand his message: Success in a task or in life (as most define success is) is no big deal. Living life as best as one could and being the best one can be is what's important. Being contented with what you have, but never be contented with what you are because you can be still be better than that is the heart of the matter. In other words, the heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. The Kankanaey phrase "Siya iman di taay" exemplifies these. I'm sure the phrase has no exact English equivalent and this is how language displays its inherent beauty. It can be deeply cultural.

In the three years that I lived with him from age 9 to 12, I heard him say this many times. As a subsistence farmer in the rugged town of Tadian, Mountain Province, he knew of no better life than go to his small patches of land tending rice, corn, camote and vegetables to feed his family. He did this in a seemingly routine manner. Each time I asked him a mundane question, he replied with a seminal statement, always with a ready smile on his face.

My grandfather was a simple, happy man. He lived life to the fullest. He passed on much of his wisdom, his life values to those he loved. And if one could discern some success among us, I attribute that largely as his legacy.

Whenever I remember my grandfather, I remember this phrase, "Siya iman di taay."

The Week After: How The USEP President Was Chosen

2007-09-02T18:53:00.000-07:00

31 August 2007.

This afternoon was the turn-over ceremony from the outgoing to the incoming president of USEP. From Dr Julieta Ortiz to Dr. Perfecto Alibin. Ceremony was simple and fitting. The former cited her most important accomplishments and posed vital challenges for the incoming President, including projects that must see their full fruition. The latter pledged continuity and the best that he can do. With the ceremony being simple, the incoming President did not give specifics on his programs. The best time to do this is perhaps in a more suitable forum. The new President officially assumes office September 1.

When the search for USEP President began, the Search Committee Chairman, Commissioner Jun Ocampo said, "The main purpose of the search process is to look for a President who is 'better if not as good as' the incumbent." He repeated the same statement during the public forum for the aspirants.

The Search Committee was constituted by the Board of Regents six months prior to the incumbent's end of term. It consisted of Commissioner Saturnino Ocampo, Jr (CHED Commissioner as Chairman), President Victor Barroso (PASUC Representative), AMC VP Stephen Antig (private sector representative), Dr. Dionisio Damole (faculty representative) and Miss Emiere Daplin (student representative).

The search went through a series of meetings to come up with a criteria for choosing the President, agree on the search procedures and come up with a schedule of activities. In coordination with the University, the Committee published the search in national and regional dailies, in addition to announcements through recognized national associations of universities and colleges like the PASUC and COCOPEA. The search was also prominently posted in the University's website including the schedule of activities.

By the set deadline on June 4, five submitted their applications: Dr. Perfecto Alibin, Professor 6, USEP; Dr. Jonathan Bayogan, President, DOSCST; Dr. Rolando Hechanova, Professor 6, SKPSC, Dr. Edgar Ignacio, President, NORMISIST; and Dr. Rodulfo Sumugat, VPAd, USEP.

July 6 was scheduled for the public forum and the panel interview. The public forum is the venue for the applicants to present their vision, mission and programs to the university stakeholders while the panel interview is done individually by the Committee to further assess the applicants. A thorough review and assessment of the applicants' credentials was also done by the Committee. After this, the Committee sits to consolidate and finalize its report based on the set criteria. Only four the applicants were present during the July 6 activities as Dr. Ignacio withdrew his application three days ahead.

After the process, the Search Committee finalized its report, sealed it and submitted the envelope to the Chairman of the Board of Regents. Such report will be opened during the meeting when the BOR deliberates and elects the next President from among the applicants. The report should guide the BOR in choosing the next President.

The Search Committee came up with these results:

1. Quantitative Ratings and Rank

Applicant	Rater 1	Rater 2	Rater 3	Rater 4	Rater 5	Mean Score	Sum of Ranks	Absolute Rank
PA Alibin	71.0	84.4	91.0	86.6	83.6	83.32	13	3
J A Bayogan	87.2	85	83.2	88.0	87.6	86.20	8	1
RF Hechanova	81.2	83	85.8	86.8	80.0	83.36	13	2
RC Sumugat	72.8	77.4	91.6	64.4	77.0	76.64	16	4

2. Qualitative Assessment

Applicant	Strengths	Weaknesses
PA Alibin	Open-minded Able to present good IGPs	Not so familiar with some policies in higher education Fond of motherhood statements Some plans not advisable and not suitable for the institution Does not know much on some issues he talks about Paradigm is perceived to be defective
J A Bayogan	Personable Articulate Knows what he is talking about	Perceived to have the tendency to just continue predecessor’s programs
RF Hechanova	Self-assured Honest Focused on his ideas and plans Perceived to be most acceptable to the community being an outsider	Does not appear/look like a president compared to other candidates Some plans perceived to be unattainable in 4-year term
RC Sumugat	Perceived to be familiar with the job Plans are perceived to be attainable to respond to current issues in the institution	Too cautious and not willing to take risks Not able to show clear understanding of RDE Fond of motherhood answers and statements Was not able to answer some questions squarely Has a pending case for reckless imprudence resulting to homicide

The Board of Regents meeting was scheduled on August 23, 2007 which was about 7 weeks from the public forum. The election of the President was done as the last item of the agenda as agreed upon by the members of the BOR. There was not much deliberation. The Search Committee report was handed to the BOR members, who were given a brief period to browse it. Election procedure was discussed then the brief interview was done to each of the applicants.

The election then proceeded. The result: 6 voted for Dr. Alibin, 4 voted for Dr. Bayogan, no votes for both Dr. Hechanova and Dr. Sumugat. The election result was immediately conveyed to the applicants who gathered inside the meeting room to congratulate the President-elect.

As is commonly practiced, the oath-taking immediately followed to enable the President-elect to assume office upon the expiration of the incumbent’s term.

The Hour After...

2007-08-25T17:19:00.000-07:00

23 August 2007. At 8am today, the Board of Regents (BOR) of the University of Southeastern Philippines meets to choose its next President. I am one of four whom the Board will choose from.

More than a month earlier, the Search Committee completed the search process by summarizing the results of evaluating the applicants’ qualifications, facilitating the public presentation and conducting thorough interview. The Committee worked on the premise of looking for a “better if not as good as the incumbent” president.” The Committee worked within a framework of competencies that a University President should have and how the nominees or applicants measured up to these competencies.

Rumors earlier flew (which were eventually validated) that I have the edge because I topped the ranking in the search process by a substantial margin. I am also the only one with presidential experience having served for 10 years as president of DOSCST. My track record is likewise viewed well.

On the other hand, it is the numbers that count. So, power brokers in the University had been moving for months to promote the candidacy of a long-time professor in the university and a three-time presidential aspirant. Supporters approached members of the BOR for their vote and political endorsements were secured. White papers against other applicants (with me as primary target) were widely circulated. Mock elections and straw voting were held at the right time to determine the popular choice that was promoted for the BOR members to vote for. The numbers were set and their confidence was sky-high that the presidency is in the bag for them.

The other two candidates also worked their way through the voting members. One had an endorsement from a top government official. Some pressure were allegedly placed on university employees for endorsement but such did not push through. The other had a string of endorsement letters from politicians in addition to personal follow up with the appropriate offices.

The stage was therefore set so that each was hopeful, if not confident, of bagging the position. By 8:30am, all four were ready for final scrutiny by the BOR. This process was set as first in the agenda, but was placed last for some reasons. So, the four candidates waited the whole morning, sitting together in one table. Each kept his cards close to his chest and no one ventured into serious talks as to what they can do together post-election time. Anyway, everyone knows that only one will win.

After lunch, the board discussed for a while, then called in each candidate for a brief interview. Really brief, some 6 minutes each. Then the election.

Result: Dr. Perfecto Alibin was it. I lost. Reports say the voting was 6-4. This was the most logical score since there must be a majority vote. From my own reckoning those who voted for me were: CHED Commissioner Nenalyn Defensor, President Julieta Ortiz, Senate Representative Aliaga (upon instruction from his principal, Senator Cayetano) and DOST Representative Ed Tesorero. The rest voted for Dr. Alibin.

As we were called in, I congratulated the President-elect and wished him well. In the cacophony of things at that moment, I guess he faintly recognized my gesture. The oath-taking followed immediately as is commonly practiced. Then, we went our separate ways.

Immediately, I convinced myself of the result. I realized two of those I counted in my favor were really not. One was really never on my side. The other perhaps didn’t cast the vote as the principal instructed. The rest were expected to vote for the other side. Whichever, the reality is here, and the effort to move on with it begins now.

It is the numbers that counted - this is the reality. But how did the numbers come to be? This is another reality.

"Siya Iman Di Taay"

2007-08-19T16:11:00.000-07:00

"Siya iman di taay."

I hear my grandfather, Paulo Bayogan, again. With his signature grin, he usually blurts this phrase out whenever someone or something falls short of his expectation. The grin masks a tinge of frustration tempered by a profound display of peace and contentment. The grin undeniably exudes faith and confidence that all is, and will be, well. Watch out - the grin is never understood as a sign of resignation. It displays the silent resolve that goes with the courage of facing reality.

In my adult life, I keep playing back my grandfather's grin - so indelibly-etched in my memory bank. The grin is not like that of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland, it is definitely for real. I play it back when in a state of quandary or certainty, when in the midst of trouble or ease, when in the face of failure or success.

I believe I fully understand his message: Success in a task or in life (as most define success is) is no big deal. Living life as best as one could and being the best one can be is what's important. Being contented with what you have, but never be contented with what you are because you can be still be better than that is the heart of the matter. In other words, the heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. The Kankanaey phrase "Siya iman di taay" exemplifies these. I'm sure the phrase has no exact English equivalent and this is how language displays its inherent beauty. It can be deeply cultural.

In the three years that I lived with him from age 9 to 12, I heard him say this many times. As a subsistence farmer in the rugged town of Tadian, Mountain Province, he knew of no better life than go to his small patches of land tending rice, corn, camote and vegetables to feed his family. He did this in a seemingly routine manner. But deep down, every whack of the bolo, every strike of the crowbar, every lift of the farm tool, a life lesson is learned. Each time I asked him a mundane question, he replied with a seminal statement, always with a ready smile on his face.

My grandfather was a simple, happy man. He lived life to the fullest. He passed on much of his wisdom, his life values to those he loved. And if one could discern some success among us, I attribute that largely as his legacy.

Whenever I remember my grandfather, I remember this phrase, "Siya iman di taay."

Get Out or Get In Line (Elbert Hubbard)

2007-08-07T17:30:00.000-07:00

by Elbert Hubbard

(JAB's Note: I am reprinting here a timeless article. Please read it well. It is profitable in its relevance, value and wisdom. You can likewise find this among the articles found in Foundations of Living. Click this in the INSPIRATIONAL LINKS sidebar if interested.)

IF ALL THE LETTERS, messages and speeches of Lincoln were destroyed, except that one letter to Hooker, we should have a good index to the heart of the Rail-Splitter.

In this letter we see that Lincoln ruled his own spirit; and we also behold the fact that he could rule others. The letter shows frankness, kindliness, wit, tact, wise diplomacy and infinite patience.

Hooker had harshly and unjustly criticized Lincoln, his Commander-in-Chief, and he had embarrassed Burnside, his ranking officer. But Lincoln waives all this in deference to the virtues that he believes Hooker possesses, and promotes him to succeed Burnside. In other words, the man who had been wronged promotes the man who had wronged him, over the head of a man whom the promotee had wronged, and for whom the promoter had a warm, personal friendship.

But all personal considerations were sunk in view of the end desired. Yet is was necessary that the man promoted should know the truth, and Lincoln told it to him in a way that did not humiliate nor fire to foolish anger; but which certainly prevented the attack of cerebral elephantiasis to which Hooker was liable.

Perhaps we had better give the letter entire, and so here it is:

Executive Mansion,
Washington, January 26, 1863

Major-General Hooker:

General: I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course, I have done this upon what appear to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it is best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you.

I believe you to be a brave and skillful soldier, which, of course, I like.

I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right.

You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable if not an indispensable quality.

You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm, but I think that during General Burnside's command of the army you have taken counsel of your ambition, and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country, and to a most meritorious and honorable brother officer.

I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and the government needed a dictator. Of course, it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it. And now, beware of rashness; beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.

Yours, very truly,

A. LINCOLN

One point in this letter is especially worth our consideration, for it suggests a condition that springs up like deadly nightshade from a poisonous soil. I refer to the habit of sneering, carping, grumbling at and criticizing those who are above us.

The man who is anybody and who does anything is surely going to be criticized, vilified and misunderstood. This is a part of the penalty for greatness, and every great man understands it; and understands, too, that it is no proof of greatness. The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure contumely without resentment. Lincoln did not resent criticism; he knew that every life must be its own excuse for being, but look how he calls Hooker's attention to the fact that the dissension Hooker has sown is going to return and plague him! "Neither you nor Napoleon, were he alive, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it." Hooker's fault falls on Hooker, others suffer, but Hooker suffers most of all.

Not long ago I met a Yale student, home on a vacation. I am sure he did not represent the true Yale spirit, for he was full of criticism and bitterness toward the institution. President Hadley came in for his share, and I was supplied items, facts, data, with times and places, for a "peach of a roast."

Very soon I saw the trouble was not with Yale, the trouble was with the young man. He had mentally dwelt on some trivial slights until he had got so out of harmony with the institution that he had lost the power to derive any benefit from it. Yale is not a perfect institution - a fact, I suppose, that President Hadley and most Yale men are quite willing to admit; but Yale does supply certain advantages and it depends upon the students whether they will avail themselves of these advantages or not.

If you are a student in a college, seize upon the good that is there. You get good by giving it. You gain by giving, so give sympathy and cheerful loyalty to the institution. Be proud of it. Stand by your teachers, they are doing the best they can. If the place is faulty, make it a better place by an example of cheerfully doing your work every day the best you can. Mind your own business.

If the concern where you are employed is all wrong, and the Old Man a curmudgeon, it may be well for you to go to the Old Man and confidentially, quietly and kindly tell him that he a curmudgeon. Explain to him that his policy is absurd and preposterous. Then show him how to reform his ways, and you might offer to take charge of the concern and cleanse it of its secret faults.

Do this, or if for any reason you should prefer not, then take your choice of these: Get Out, or Get in Line. You have got to do one or the other, now make your choice.

If you work for a man, in heaven's name work for him!

If he pays you wages that supply you your bread and butter, work for him, speak well of him, think well of him, stand by him and stand by the institution he represents.

I think if I worked for a man I would work for him. I would not work for him a part of the time, and the rest of the time work against him. I would give an undivided service or none.

If put to the pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.

If you must vilify, condemn and eternally disparage, why, resign your position and, when you are outside, damn to your heart's content. But, I pray you, so long as you are a part of an institution, do not condemn it. Not that you will injure the institution, not that but when you disparage the concern of which you are a part, you disparage yourself.

More than that, you are loosening the tendrils that hold you to the institution, and the first high wind that comes along, you will be up-rooted and blown away in the blizzard's track, and probably you will never know why. The letter only says, "Times are dull and we regret there is not enough work," et cetera…

Everywhere you find those out-of-a-job fellows. Talk with them and you will find that they are full of railing, bitterness and condemnation. That was the trouble, through a spirit of fault-finding they got themselves swung around so they blocked the channel, and had to be dynamited. They are out of harmony with the concern, and no longer being a help they had to be removed. Every employer is constantly looking for people who can help him; naturally he is on the outlook among his employees for those who do not help, and everything and everybody that is a hindrance has to go. This is the law of trade, do not find fault with it; it is founded on Nature. The reward is only for the man that helps, and in order to help you must have sympathy.

You can not help the Old Man so long as you are explaining in undertone and whisper, by gesture and suggestion, by thought and mental attitude, that he is a curmudgeon and his system dead wrong. You are not necessarily menacing him by stirring up discontent and warming envy into strife, but you are doing this: You are getting yourself upon a well greased chute that will give you a quick ride down and out.

When you say to other employees that the Old Man is a curmudgeon, you reveal the fact that you are one; and when you tell that the policy of the institution is "rotten," you surely show that yours is.

Hooker got his promotion even in spite of his failings: but the chances are that your employer does not have the love that Lincoln had - the love that suffereth long and is kind. But even Lincoln could not protect Hooker forever. Hooker failed to do the work, and Lincoln had to try some one else. So there came a time when Hooker was superseded by a Silent Man, who criticized no one, railed at nobody - not even the enemy. And this Silent Man, who ruled his own spirit, took the cities. He minded his own business, and did the work that no man ever can do unless he gives absolute loyalty, perfect confidence and untiring devotion.

Let us mind our own business, and work for self by working for the good of all.

Friendship and SEM

2007-08-07T17:13:00.000-07:00

August 7th, 2007 by jbayogan

Thirty-two years ago this month, eight teenagers founded a fraternity. A frat in a female-dominated school at a time when fraternities were frowned upon and banned in all campuses. After all, it was still martial law.

As classes started in June, two of the founders agreed to convince others to join. I was the eighth and the last to accede amidst my protests against the necessity of initiation rites, much more hazing.

Not surprisingly, initiation rites commenced soon after the eight firmed up their commitment. At one time, four served as “masters” and the other four as “neophytes”. Then the roles inter-changed. Initiation rites included reciting a credo, going through humiliation and obedience rites and yes, the much-vaunted hazing - all as means to cement brotherly relationship.

Each was required to read Saint Exupery’s The Little Prince focusing on its sections on relationships. We all read through and discussed the relationship-building episodes of the Prince and the Fox, the Prince and his Rose. We differentiated the vanity of focusing too much on “matters of consequence” and the essence of doing and living with, and for, others. The child-like but incisive look into the value of relationships as well as human fivolities were taken to heart.

Eight weeks passed and the finals came. Quietly, we packed our bags and travelled from Manila to San Luis, Pampanga. It was to a farm with a secluded farm house, away from the peering eyes and ears of the locals. Arriving at lunch time, we were treated to a decent meal.

Then the afternoon rites. My memory partially fails me, but vividly I remember each of us wading through the irrigation canals, the rice paddies, then off we went back to the farm house. After dinner, we recited our credo. Then as the paddling ensued, we each recited, “It is the time you wasted for your rose that makes your rose importaaaaaaaant!”, “It is only through the heeeearrrrt that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye!” We also did a copycat from the Valachi Papers where we signed our credo on a piece of paper, crumpled it, set it afire, then allowed it to completely burn on our palms. The emotional final rite was the singing of the SEM anthem, Bridge Over Troubled Water, where each sang (perhaps in 8 voices) with tears streaming down our cheeks. I don’t remember now, but it is very likely that our mucuous membranes were also active. Then the tight bear hugs and the characteristic Semian hand shake.

Thus, on August 15, 1975 in San Luis, Pampanga, the Society of Emancipated Men (SEM) was born. There were eight of us who lay claim to its birth: Hernando Cao (thank you Brod and rest with your smiles and the assurance that your ideals are well alive), Ricardo Pascual (now in Australia), Crisostomo Mago (now in Canada), Manuel Mangrobang III (now in San Jose, California), Patrick Okubo (now in Baguio City), Zaldy Cabangcala (Rizal), Raul Guerrero (Chicago, Illinois) and me (Jonathan Bayogan, Davao City).

Through the years, there were additions. The second batch included: Rene Espano (Manila), Romeo Isaac (Manila), Michael Arteche (Singapore), Levi Descallar (Australia), Marlon Tecson (Manila), Arnel Raymundo (New York) and Carmelo Tubal (Stockton, California). Fifteen (15) souls after 2 years.

Then, Felsimore Gumtang (Manila) in 1979, Manuel Ramirez (Dharan, KSA) in 1980. And finally, Rey Vencer (Iloilo), a couple of years after.

Attempts at recruitment were made after that but were not as successful. Each one then needed to build his respective career and start a family. And none was anywhere near our alma mater, the Philippine Normal University, to recruit members.

Thirty-two years after, the brotherhood proved and continues to prove worthy of the word. Through thick and thin, we thrived. We connected and still do. We communicate as much as we can. We mutually assist and do essential things together and for each other. We send greetings on special days and messages of affection and support.

Thirty-two years by now, and we lost our dear brod Hernan. Some went to far places to permanently reside there: Manny in San Jose, California, Raul in Chicago, Ric and Levi in Australia, Mike in Singapore, Montits in Saudi and Chuck in Canada. But the heart that binds each Semian to another continues to pump, transcending space and time.

Thank you dear brods for 32 meaningful years. Advance happy 32nd Anniversary. I know we all look forward to many more years living the Semian virtues of friendship and brotherhood, the way we best understand both.

Like the Perennial Grass

2007-07-20T17:14:00.000-07:00

21 july 6:00am
by jon bayogan

This week (16-21 july) was spent in slow, playful and matter-of-factly motion. I attended to the normal documents needed when one is a new employee: medical, clearance, filling out of forms, adjusting to a new office environment and the like. I talked to my new superiors, discussed my assignments and went through the first days without fanfare.

"Freshman jitters" it would seem. And simple as it appears. Except that I am a contender to the university presidency. The latter made my coming to the university more colored than if I came fresh into the faculty all by itself. And to make things rife with speculations, I am coming in at a time when inside information on the ranking may have leaked out.

So, during my first week of service and displaying the likeness of Philippine politics, there were insinuations, innuendoes and outright lies peddled to paint how bad a person I am. The rumor mill was alive, and anonymous papers with bits and pieces of information coming from tainted sources were spread by people who don't even know me. Next time, intimidation may be resorted to. The cost of leadership is indeed steep and high. It is not for the faint of heart.

The truth is, I have no consuming ambition nor an inordinate desire to land the presidency. Just like in my previous posts, I only have a consuming desire to serve well and to do the best that I can. This desire is coupled by a sincere effort to find how and where I could serve best. I believe in the integrity of the selection system and in what little things I can contribute to the service. My desire for a leadership position has always been tempered by my belief that the position looks for the man and not the man looking for the position. Thus, I have no deliberate effort, and have not put up a machinery, to tilt things in my favor, or to get me to the top. I will not step on anyone just to prop myself up the ladder. I will respect the wisdom of people involved in the selection and will gladly submit to their exercise of this wisdom.

In the end, I believe the scenery will soon stabilize. And like the perennial grass, the tough will thrive and grow well at whatever circumstance.

A roadmap for science

2007-07-19T15:46:00.000-07:00

By Queena Lee-Chua
Inquirer
08/04/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- In most schools, science teaching is vertical, handed down by teachers to pupils. Yet when learning stresses inquiry and discovery, even young students can develop ideas about how the world works, and experiment using simple tools. Children are naturally curious, and with proper guidance, they can develop logic and rational thought.

In Renaissance Europe, talented people had patrons, such as Carl Gauss in math and Michelangelo in art. In ancient China, the way to a better life for ordinary folk was through scholarship, particularly doing well in the civil service exams. A wise emperor decided that the nation needed leaders who had merit, rather than those with family influence.

“Scholarship became highly prized, since it won recognition and reward from the highest power,” says the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST). “Without continuing support for young talent and genius, institutions of research and scholarship will soon become a bureaucracy.”

Making science a priority

In their annual scientific meeting, NAST recommends the following strategies to make science a national priority.

The government needs to enact strong S & T policies and give more budgetary provisions for such development. Centers for the identification and nurturing of talent should be strengthened. Teachers should be trained in better methods of instruction to motivate our youth to pursue these fields.

The industry and the private sector need to reward the technology career path similar to that in say, marketing and finance. Because of the lack of financial rewards, many of our talented scientists tend to pursue MBAs rather than continue in their chosen fields. Our businesses must support markets for local technologies.

Schools need to strengthen math and science education. We need to benchmark with our neighbors (who rank among the best in the world) and set goals for achievement. Today’s science leaders need to mentor the younger generation.

A pool of efforts

Take veterinary education. Practicing vet Benedicto A. Santiago lists the various business opportunities for vets -- from working in clinics and zoos, to marketing supplies and feeds. He urges vet students to become entrepreneurs, and schools must offer courses on this.

“Government should minimize red tape to make our country a haven for doing business,” he says.” Currently, the World Bank ranks the Philippines 126 out of 175 countries, almost near the tail end of the worst places to do business.”

Science education needs to be innovative. Drexel H. Camacho of Intel Technology Philippines Inc. talks about “a powerful methodology for improving thinking, producing systematic innovation and creating novel inventions.” The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving has been used in industry, but educators need to become aware of its potential.

Ma. Theresa T. Payongayong of the University of the Philippines in Diliman insists that philosophy is needed in making sense of local science. “Philosophy begins with wonder. It consists in forming hypothesis through deduction, induction, critical thinking and analysis. Through philosophy, science can become a journey through which teachers are adept at listening to the students’ inherent capacities of wonder, reflection and continuous learning.”

“We need to produce thinking human beings rather than talking machines,” she concludes. “What puts us humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom? Reason.”

Ten Years, Move On...

2007-07-19T06:41:00.000-07:00

18 july, 7:48pm

by jon bayogan

Finally, it is over, and done. My DOSCST stay, that is. It was 10 years and 29 days, officially. Ten years as president, 12 days as OIC-president and 17 days as professor. It was the longest, continuous period I ever stayed in one place, a full 20% of my life to date.

July 16, Monday, was my first day at USEP, the third day today (July 18). All slow, uneventful days, as if with a big feeling of letdown. In reality, there is that real feeling indeed - fatigued, heavy, drained, worn out. But feeling new, optimistic, propitious.

Ten years is ten years and one just couldn't "throw" any portion of that away. Great time, great experiences, great lessons, great people, great colleagues. Not all, actually, and that is because life offers diversity of experiences; not just white or black but a variety of shades in between. Definitely no regrets, and a few disappointments.

It was a good time to move, it was the right time to move. I never doubted there was at all a need for me to stay any longer. It was the best time to pass on the baton. Some were eager it should have been earlier, some wanted that I held on. But most knew it was my call and respected it when I answered the call.

Of course, I would have wanted to say "thank you" to all and I mean to all colleagues. Well, I did, but missed some people I would have thanked and said good bye, too. So here's my special thanks and goodbye to them and to all (as DOSCST colleagues, anyway). Friendships will remain forever, specially those that are rooted right.

I wish everyone well in your present undertakings and wish you even better things in your future concerns. It was great knowing you and working with you. Sooner or later, bits of fine memories of the ten years will occasionally flash back, fresh and ever green. And, like good music, these will pleasantly reverberate and fill the air - to nurture the soul.

Thanks to all: faculty, staff, students and the community.

18 Rules For Life

2007-07-19T04:38:00.000-07:00

1. Pursue Achievable Goals
2. Keep A Genuine Smile
3. Share with Others
4. Help Thy Neighbors
5. Maintain a Youthful Spirit
6. Get Along with the Rich, the Poor, the Beautiful, & the Ugly
7. Keep Cool Under Pressure
8. Lighten the Atmosphere with Humor
9. Forgive the Annoyance of Others
10. Have a Few Pals
11. Cooperate and Reap Greater Rewards
12. Treasure Every Moment with Your Loved Ones
13. Have High Confidence in Yourself
14. Respect the Disadvantaged
15. Indulge Yourself Occasionally
16. Surf the Net at Leisure
17. Take Calculated Risks
18. Understand "Money Isn't Everything"

Stay Grateful (Rey Vea)

2007-07-19T04:36:00.002-07:00

Reynaldo B. Vea, Ph.D.
Commencement Speech
University of the Philippines at Diliman
April 22, 2007

A thousand life and career trajectories; a common origin

From hereon out you will all be flying off in career and life trajectories as many as there are of you here this afternoon. If a commencement speaker had to prescribe formulae for success without lapsing into platitudes, I say I would not know how to do that. And this is because you each would have a different measure of success. Is it how big a fortune I will be able to amass? Is it how comfortable and quiet a life I will be able to secure? Is it how beautiful a family I will be able to raise? Is it how much happiness and fulfillment I will be able to derive from my work and creation? Is it how full a life of the mind I will be able to live? Is it how well I will be able to be of service to my countrymen, to humanity, to God? Or is it some combination of the above?

While I cannot offer formulae, I can, however, share some lessons and attempt to impart perspective. With your indulgence I will show one specific trajectory, namely, mine. I will also paint you a picture of the world today as I see it. I hope these will help you plot your own trajectory

Dimensions of a UP education: the maelstrom and the gauntlet

When I entered UP in 1969, a war was raging in a neighboring country, Vietnam. A so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, then not yet known to be bloody, was in full swing in another neighboring country, bamboo-curtained China. The battlecry “make love not war” reverberated in US campuses. Barricades were once again sprouting up in the storied streets of Paris. Bearded, cigar-chomping romantic figures were leading Latin American revolutions.

Closer to home, the intellectual ferment and the academic debates between the so-called progressives and reactionaries in UP were rising fever pitch to the plane of action, helped along by the increasingly violent actions of a nascent dictatorship and by now-iconic images of the times that were clearly “a-changing”, as Bob Dylan puts it,

The hottest bed of clamors for change was UP, and it was hard not to be swept into the maelstrom. Stark poverty in rural and urban communities tugged at still-properly-placed young hearts. Blatant corruption in high places tested the limits of forbearance. Brazen violation of civil liberties provoked the loss of political meekness. And wave upon wave of mass actions made it easy to find a way to get involved.

This was the gust of historical wind that buffeted several batches of students of UP and other schools who, coming out of high school, mistakenly thought that their lives would follow the straight and narrow as had those who had gone before them. They were not passive elements, to be sure. They huffed and they puffed and got tossed around, too. They made history as much as experienced it.

Although one could not find it in the curriculum, this experience on the streets I consider to be a part of my UP education. Students of other schools could likewise claim it to be part of their education. The classroom simply spilled onto the street. And vice-versa. Revisiting the past and examining the present in the classrooms led to attempts at the reshaping of the future on the streets. Dramatic events on the streets in turn enlivened and enriched what otherwise would have been staid, less-than-relevant classroom discourse. It was simply an expression of UP education at the time. It taught me politics and the historical process like nothing could.

These lessons indeed came at a very steep price, including lives lost, lives of close friends even. We are proud of what we did. The regret would have been if we had not answered the call of the times. But it is nothing to crow about. A previous generation suffered a shooting war. My own mother, here with us this afternoon, was on the Death March for 3 days from Cabcaben to Balanga, Bataan. It is also something not to be wished upon any other generation. We certainly did not wish tumultuous times upon our own kids when they were in College. Young people should be able to concentrate on scholarly pursuit to better serve the nation and humanity later.

Was I glad and am I ever grateful that this great University, which has seen its fair share of rebellious students over the decades, took me back into its fold after my 20-month incarceration. This afforded me a chance to experience the other dimensions of University life and to finish what I had set out to do years before.

Academic life at the College of Engineering was tough. First there was the gauntlet of departmental exams in the engineering sciences that one had to go through. Then came the professional courses in which the faculty basically gave no quarters in upholding standards. What was “so UP” about it all, I believe, was the time spent in studying the underlying principles of and in deriving formulae to represent physical phenomena. This deep understanding enabled one to work from first principles when there were no sample problems and solutions to bank on. It has always served me well as a practicing engineer and as an academic.

Drinking from the fireman’s hose; standing at the frontiers of knowledge

Nothing boosts the trajectory of an academic career like a graduate degree. My UP credentials and the good work of UP alumni who studied before me helped me get admitted to the best engineering schools in the world. My faculty position at UP also certainly helped me obtain the scholarships I needed to afford my studies.

Getting an education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is, as they say, “like drinking from a fireman’s hose!” One is simply bombarded with too much content. These educational materials all come from a body of knowledge that people working across continents and across time have assembled. When Isaac Newton said figuratively that he was able to see as far as he did because he was standing on the “shoulders of giants,” he was referring to this fund of knowledge. Eventually, in one’s own field, one gets to appreciate the shape and form of this fund of knowledge and to understand the process by which it grows. Eventually, too, one gets to intimately see the envelope of this body of knowledge beyond which nobody knows anything anymore. To an academic no experience could be more exhilarating. To be given a chance to push this envelope even in the minutest degree felt almost like a privilege.

At Cal Berkeley, I was able to make a bigger but still humble contribution. While a master’s degree may in general require only the solution of a nontrivial problem, which leads to a minor contribution, a doctoral degree requires original work, which by its very nature should be more significant. As a newly-minted PhD, one can, for a second, stand at the frontiers of knowledge, arms akimbo, knowing that he knows more about a particular subject than anybody else in the world, past and present.

The generation of new knowledge: the need for it and the freedom to do it

I stand in awe of the capability that MIT and UC Berkeley have built over the years in generating new knowledge and new technologies. I marvel at how they have wielded the principles of academic freedom, collegiality and tenure as instruments to further individual and institutional excellence.

The fact that the best US schools were so far ahead of us in this regard did not bother me any. The heights they had attained simply felt so out of reach of Philippine schools.

What bothered me a lot in the early 90’s, though, was how the schools in neighboring countries had charged so far ahead of us in this respect while we were still reeling from the debilitating effects of a long period of misrule. And these schools have sustained their momentum to the present, despite the hiccup of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, while we are still bogged down and unable to get our politics right.

It is important for us to learn how to generate and manage knowledge because knowledge is the coin of present-day economies.

The field of chemistry bloomed in the 19th century. Multi-awarded writer John Horgan of the Scientific American states that by the 1930’s Linus Pauling had shown that all chemical reactions could be explained in terms of quantum mechanics. Yet a lot has to be learned in applied chemistry. Physics was the science of the 20th century. Stephen Hawking declared in his book A Brief History of Time that physics is on the verge of putting together a unified theory of the basic forces of nature that could unlock the secrets of the origins of the universe. There are still basic questions to be answered and the field of applied physics is wide, wide open. According to UC Berkeley biologist Gunther Stent, Watson and Crick’s discovery of the DNA in 1953 has left three unanswered questions for biology: how life began, how a single fertilized egg develops into a multicellular organism and how the central nervous system processes information. Getting answers to these basic questions should keep scientists very busy in the 21st century, which many say will be the century of biology.

Out of what some people term as the “explosion” in basic and applied scientific research have been developed technologies that have become the enablers of global businesses and national economies. As early as 1957, MIT economist Robert Solow calculated and showed that technology is responsible for about 80% of growth. New York University’s Professor Lev notes that in the manufacturing economy of the 1970’s the market-to-book ratio of Standard and Poor’s 500 corporations ran at about 1:1. At the turn of the century it was at about 6:1. High flyers like Microsoft at one point came in at about 25:1. The books were not showing value that the markets knew about! This value that goes unreported in traditional accounting methods is attributed to so-called intellectual capital, some of it ingrained in corporate culture and much of it embedded in technology. According to Fortune magazine, when the Pentium chip came out, ounce for ounce, it was about 40 times more expensive than gold. It was not due to the material because the chip was mainly just plain silicon, one of the most abundant materials on earth. Rather, it was the technology and the knowledge embodied in the chip that made it so valuable.

We have upon us a knowledge-based economy and in such an economy nothing could be of greater strategic value to a country than the capability to generate new knowledge and technologies. In his book Building Wealth Lester Thurow of the Sloan School of Management states that one of the more robust conclusions of economics is the high social returns of R & D spending, which for the U.S. has been estimated at 66%.

If we are not content to be the modern-day equivalents of “hewers of wood and bearers of water”, then not having R & D capability is not an option. I hope that some of you out there would feel challenged enough to be part of such a big endeavor to develop R & D capability. It could be a good career trajectory.

It is a good time to be a graduate, a tough time to be “nationalistic”

As surely as the intangible world of knowledge has dramatically expanded so has the physical world rapidly shrunk.

Transportation, information and communications technologies have so battered down the constraints of time and space that business operations on a global scale have become commonplace. Businesses naturally seek places where it is cheapest to produce and markets where it generates the most profits. If one company would not do it then some other competitor company will. If one country would not find a way to participate in the interest of its own people then some other competitor country will. The very logic of the situation makes globalization inexorable. One can stem the tide no more than one can keep this venerable University from turning 100 next year.

But there are concerns. A basic one is that there is yet to develop a global political and regulatory system to tame such a galloping economic phenomenon. In an earlier period, technological developments had enabled local and regional economies to become national in scale. By and large, the development of national governments has been able to cope with such economic upscaling.

Global companies have to decide which part of their operations shall be done in-house and which shall be outsourced, which shall be done onshore and which offshore. They look upon the world as their source of manpower and of services. On the flipside, a professional or a service firm in any country can look at the entire world as the source of job opportunities. It can be said that the market for human resources and for professional services has by and large gone global. The McKinsey Global Institute, for one, estimates that 52 % of all engineering jobs are globally resourceable. The corresponding figure for accounting is 31 %.

What the emergence of a global knowledge-based economy means for young people like you is that the possibilities for employment and for the establishment of businesses are vast. There are more kinds of businesses to engage in, businesses the exciting models for some of which are waiting to be devised by you. There are more types of knowledge-based jobs to do, jobs for which UP graduates are eminently prepared. There are a lot more choices of places to work and live in, places which are rendered more accessible by modern transport systems and in which loneliness is mitigated by the vanishing cost of communications. The world is figuratively at your doorsteps. Under such a situation, it is as extremely hard to follow, as it is to give, advice that you should be “nationalistic” by staying in the Philippines.

The hot button and the cold advice

Now, that is a hot button.

Policy makers and administrators of the Republic are rightfully concerned about a “brain drain.” If health and IT professionals, engineers, accountants, airline pilots and other professionals leave in droves, who will be left to serve Philippine needs? In the engineering sector we are worried enough to want a count of engineers still in the country and to project how many will still be here in the years to come given the present graduation and offshore hiring rates. There is after all a projection by McKinsey Global Institute that if current hiring rates persist there will be a “constraint” in the supply of suitable or qualified young – meaning 7 years or less out of school - engineers globally by the year 2015.

For UP administrators there is double the concern because tax money went into its students’ education. Furthermore, it is always assumed that it is part of UP’s mission to contribute to national development.

It is not an option for UP and other schools to tailor fit their curricula solely to local needs because Filipino professionals who stay in the Philippines must also be trained to international standards. This is because Philippine and Philippine-based companies have global markets and connections as well. Furthermore, our own people deserve no less than world-class professional services. And what would a UP education be if it were not at the highest standards? There simply cannot be a dichotomy of curricular standards.

Albeit highly unlikely, the best thing that could happen is for everyone to stay home permanently and share the burden in the awesome task of developing Philippine society so that it becomes a player to reckon with on the global stage and so that eventually the life chances of the ordinary Filipinos in the Philippines do not become stunted or stymied.

However, I say that it isn’t fair to ask everyone to permanently stay and work in the country. But neither is it fair for us, UP alumni, not to give back to the country and the University that have given us so much.

To those already itching to grab global opportunities, I say work in the country for a number of years after graduation – heal the sick, help design some urban area, create some fine works of art, teach the children, do multimedia, help build roads and bridges, do research on some social issue, engage in some entrepreneurial activities, work in a bank, show an example of good local governance, do some lawyering, some marketing etc. I have a feeling that this is already happening anyway. And when you eventually find yourselves on distant shores, make giving back part of your trajectory. The ways are many, some of which you yourselves should be able to think of. Share your expertise. Share your resources. Help build up the University’s endowment fund. Come back and work here again. Invest in the Philippine economy.

The world is much changed from the one we knew way back when. And in ways that many, including us, would never have imagined. Dominoes never toppled, and Vietnam now competes for foreign direct investments. China lifted its bamboo-curtain and rises quickly not on wings of ideology but of market economics. The mighty-looking Soviet Union simply crumbled under its own weight. Che Guevara remains a popular, romantic figure but only innocuously on t-shirts and posters. Only a few years ago there was talk of a “Pacific Century.” But then came the 1997 financial crisis and the dramatic rise of India.

As each of you mull over your individual opportunities you no doubt also think about how the Philippines can get it right. How can there be a national consensus and united effort to bring the country back to the top of the heap? Each generation of young men and women faces its own challenges. And the challenges for each generation change with its growing influence through the years. The time of being allowed to decry without being held to resolve problems soon comes to pass. UP graduates are eventually called upon to give of themselves. One finds that it is just as hard, if not more so, to make a cusp with one’s hands in which to cradle this society as it is to clench a fist in times of danger. But give of ourselves and give back we must.

Steve Jobs told Stanford graduates 2 years ago to “Stay hungry!” Although I am certainly no Steve Jobs, I say to you, “Stay grateful – to the Filipino people who helped see you through school; to the beloved alma mater which will help see you through your career; and to your parents and loved ones who have seen you and will continue to see you through life.”

Stay grateful.

Congratulations and thank you very much!

Get A Life (Jose Dalisay Jr.)

2007-07-19T04:36:00.000-07:00

Address to the Graduating Class
UP Baguio, 23 April 2005

Let me thank you, first of all, for the honor of addressing you, the graduating class. I had always dreamed of doing this-preferably as a valedictorian, but that was not to be, so I must settle for second best, the role of the guest speaker.

I hope you will not be offended or disappointed if I say that what I have to tell you today is something that I have already told many other students on other occasions-chiefly, my classes, and a year ago, the newest members of the honor society of Phi Kappa Phi. But this is a message that I would like many more thousands of Filipino and especially UP students to hear-and you don't even have to be an honors graduate or a scholar to listen to it, although it's been part of the UP tradition for us to consider ourselves scholars, despite that "3.0" in Math or that "INC." in Philosophy.

Former President Nemenzo-whom I was privileged to serve-was frankly not too fond of the phrase iskolar ng bayan to describe the UP student. We are all, of course, scholars of the people in this university, in the technical sense that our studies are subsidized by the sweat of the poor, whose hopes we bear upon our shoulders.

But the President's point was that scholarship remains a distinction to be earned not merely by scoring well in an entrance examination, but by adopting a lifelong attitude of critical inquiry and rational judgment.

This, sadly, is something that many of us lose upon our entry into the University and our immersion in its life-not only its intellectual and academic life, but also its social and professional life. The curiosity ends, the magic fades, the writing dries up, and we retreat to a cocoon-to a dimly lit room marked "Me & Myself"-there to spend the rest of our career sulking over the next fellow's promotion and so-and-so's research grant.

Five years ago, when I submitted myself for the chairmanship of the Department of English and Comparative Literature-among the oldest, largest, and historically most contentious of UP departments-I gave the usual homily about achieving excellence in teaching, research, and extension work.

And then, I said-and I quote from my vision paper-"I expect our members to be actively engaged in interests other than their immediate subjects-in social and political concerns, in creative projects, in new technologies-to save them from the kind of small-mindedness or tunnel vision that can result from locking yourself up at the Faculty Center. In other words, get a life."

"Get a life" has been one of my lifelong mantras. I have always believed that while a formal education is a wonderful thing, what I call an active life-with all its serendipitous detours and little accidents-is even better. It is a cliché by now to say that there are many things we can never learn in school-but for those of us who are in school, it is even more important to remember this.

As a mentor to many young students, I have always advised those burning with the desire to teach or to go on to graduate studies-in other words, those who want to stay in the university-to spend a few years first outside of it, so they can get a sense of what everyone else goes through. And then they can return, enriched by their experience.

Let me repeat that to make things very clear for you: if you want to teach well, first spend a few years outside of school, and take a job that will put you in touch with everyday realities-sell insurance or pharmaceuticals, deal with customer complaints, do volunteer work among the poor-before deciding, with the intelligence of experience, whether the academic life is indeed for you.

Don't teach because there is nothing else you can do. We already have too many teachers whose minds have become very small from being boxed in. Teach because you have something to teach, something more than what your own teachers gave you, which is your own well-formed sense of the world.

This is also true for those who want to become writers and artists. A master's or a PhD in creative writing won't make you a good writer if you don't have the talent and the sensibility of a writer to begin with. Graduate school can help you deal with the discipline of writing and the rigor of criticism; it can open your eyes to other possibilities and teach you technique. But it won't give you material, it won't tell you how to feel, it won't hit you in the gut and leave you breathless.

I always tell people who ask me what the secret of good writing is that "To write well, read well." To that I should add "live well," by which I don't mean sipping the finest wines and driving the fastest cars-although that would be nice-but rather partaking of as rich a range of experiences as you can, away from the home, the office, and the library.

When people I value dearly complain to me about the emptiness and confusion in their lives, I feel terribly inadequate and inutile because I know that only they can ultimately help themselves. But there is a principle in fiction writing-in plotting and characterization-that might offer a solution to the perplexed. When my writing students tell me that they no longer know what their characters should do to solve their overwhelming problems, I tell them to take their characters out-literally and figuratively. Get them off their butts, make them walk, make them ride the MRT, put them on a ferris wheel, bring them to the Navotas fish market at four in the morning. Too many stories try to resolve themselves in small cafes and bedrooms, behind shut doors and windows, in exchanges of airy witticisms that display nothing but the writer's own vast vocabulary but limited talent.

Some of the best things happen when we step outside of our own lives and begin to be engaged in those of others. Often, the answers to our own problems lie in others, and in their larger predicaments. While involvement in a great cause can also create its own kind of blindness to everything else, I believe that, at least once in our lives, we should embrace a passion larger than ourselves; even the disillusionment that often follows can be very instructive, and will bring us one step closer to wisdom.

One of the best ideas I ever heard came from a friend whom I used to play billiards with until the wee hours of the morning: "Everyone," he said while cleaning up the balls on the table, "should be entitled to make at least one big mistake." I would not have been the writer I became if I had chosen the safe path and stayed where I was supposed to be. It took me two years to finish my MFA, and only three to finish my PhD. But before that, it took me 14 years to get my AB.

At 12-like your chancellor-I entered the Philippine Science High School. As my parents never tired of telling anyone who cared to listen (and even those who didn't), I was the entrance-exam topnotcher of my batch, No. 1 of about 6,000 examinees. However, what my parents didn't say was that after my first year in Science High, I was going to be kicked out-with a 1.0 in English and a 5.0 in Math. What happened? Well, you might say that I got a life. From the grade-school nerd who read two books a day in our all-boys Catholic school, I suddenly discovered girls, parties, and fun. What did I do? I used my 1.0 in English to save my 5.0 in Math, by writing a letter of appeal that began with "At the outset, let me say that I bear malice toward none." I guess it worked, because they put me on probation for a year, and I survived PSHS by the skin off my teeth.

At 16, I entered UP as an industrial engineering major-and promptly got a 5.0 in Math 17, for too many absences-the bane of the arrogant Science High graduate, even the perennial flunker like me who thought he already knew more Math than he needed to know.

At 17, still a freshman, I quit college-over the tears of my mother, whose fondest hope was for me to graduate from UP just like she did. I wanted to join the revolution, like many of my comrades; at the same time I was impatient to get a job. At 18, I was working as a newspaper reporter covering hospital fires, US embassy rallies, suicide cases, factory strikes, and typhoon relief operations. I spent most of my 19th year in martial-law prison. At 20, I was a husband and father. At 26, I took my first foreign trip. At 27, I learned how to drive-and went back to school. At 30, I got my AB, and decided that what I wanted to do was to write and teach for the rest of my life, so here I am.

I have been shot at, imprisoned, and worst of all, rejected by more crushes than I care to remember. Aside from my abortive career in journalism, I once worked as a cook-waiter-cashier-busboy-janitor, cutting 40 pounds of pork and chicken every day before turning them into someone's dinner. Much earlier, I worked as a municipal employee, checking the attendance of Metro Aides at seven in the morning, and then I studied printmaking and sold my etchings cheaply by the dozen in Ermita. Incidentally, it was at that printmaking shop that I met my wife June, who's here with me today, and for whose patience with my colorful moods I am forever grateful.

Some of these events have found their way to my writing; most of them have not and never will. I believe that creative writing should generate its own excitement, beyond whatever may have happened to the author in his or her own life. But neither can I deny that my outlook has been influenced by what I have seen out there, as bright, as indelible, and as disturbing as fresh blood.

If we are to abide by the Phi Kappa Phi motto to "let the love of learning rule humanity," we should first ourselves be ruled by the love of learning-learning from books, and learning beyond them.

On the other side of the equation, let me observe that there is, today, a nascent but disturbing strain of anti-intellectualism in Philippine politics and society. The vulgar _expression of this sentiment has taken the form of the suggestion that we can dispense with brains and education when it comes to our national leadership, because they have done us no good, anyway.

It is easy to see how this perception came about, and how its attractiveness derives from its being at least partially true. Many of our people feel betrayed by their best and brightest-the edukado, as we are called in our barangays-because we are too easily bought out by the powers that be. Marcos and Estrada had probably the best Cabinets in our political history, well-stocked with prestigious PhDs from places like Oxford and Stanford; but in the end, even they could do nothing against their President and his excesses.

For us UP graduates, the seductions of power will always be there. Power and wealth are also very interesting games to play, and few play them better than UP grads-the power side more than the wealth, as I suspect that Ateneans and La Sallites are better at making money than we are.

But even these can put you out of touch. I have friends in Malacañang and Makati who seem to have lost all sense of life, thought, and feeling on the street, beyond what their own commissioned surveys tell them. Worse, they seem to have lost touch with their old, honest, self-critical selves. They forgot all about Sophocles and poetry and mystery and music you can't buy at the record store.

To be a UP student, faculty member, and alumnus is to be burdened but also ennobled by a unique mission-not just the mission of serving the people, which is in itself not unique, and which is also reflected, for example, in the Atenean concept of being a "man for others." Rather, to my mind, our mission is to lead and to be led by reason-by independent, scientific, and secular reason, rather than by politicians, priests, shamans, bankers, or generals.

You are UP because you can think and speak for yourselves, by your own wits and on your own two feet, and you can do so no matter what the rest of the people in the room may be thinking. You are UP because no one can tell you to shut up, if you have something sensible and vital to say. You are UP because you dread not the poverty of material comforts but the poverty of the mind. And you are UP because you care about something as abstract and sometimes as treacherous as the idea of "nation", even if it kills you.

Sometimes, long after UP, we forget these things and become just like everybody else; I certainly have. Even so, I suspect that that forgetfulness is laced with guilt-the guilt of knowing that you were, and could yet become, somebody better. And you cannot even argue that you did not know, because today, I just told you so.

You graduates of UP Baguio have an additional mission: to remind the country and the world that Baguio is far more than the bigshots at the Country Club and the beggars on Session Road. It is both, but more. Baguio occupies a special place in the Filipino imagination, or perhaps the Filipino fantasy of escape, something that I, as a lowlander, have fed into since my first visit here as a four-year-old boy in October 1958, taking the train to Damortis and the bus up Naguilian. You are privy to realities that escape the weekend tourist, and those realities deserve to be shared by you.

Let me end with five brief exhortations, of the kind we've been hearing since elementary school:

First, read a good book. Not another novel, if you're already a writer, nor another paper on the molecular theory of turbulence if you're already a physicist. Perhaps we should exchange books, for the purpose of-using one famous definition of education-turning an empty mind into an open one.

Second, learn how to play the guitar. By this I mean find some form of artistic expression, or some source of artistic pleasure. The solace of art is often the truest and the most enduring.

Third, learn how to swim. Be independent, and learn how to fend for yourself. But also learn how to swim so you can save others from drowning. Lord knows this country needs all the lifeguards it can find.

Fourth-and they didn't say this in grade school-have fun. Too many academic papers deal with the sources of our sorrows-as if we didn't know them, already. Give us something to feel good about, and find us the way to happiness, now and forever. It doesn't sound like a scholar's task, but if happiness isn't worth our minds and labors, what is?

Lastly, get a life-and get a good one.

Congratulations, and thank you all.

Stay Hungry (Steve Jobs)

2007-07-19T04:35:00.000-07:00

Commencement Speech at Stanford, 2005

by Steve Jobs

Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.

This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I'd been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, "Toy Story," and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Thank you all, very much.

Get A Life (Anna Quindlen)

2007-07-19T04:34:00.000-07:00

Commencement Speech

by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anna Quindlen at Villanova University

I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree; there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account but your soul. People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've gotten back the test results and they're not so good. Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the center of the universe.

I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make my marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cutout. But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, or at best mediocre at my job, if those other things were not true. You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay-check, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast? Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which you stop and watch how a red tailed hawk circles over the water or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and first finger. Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you.

And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beers and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough. It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live. I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived.

The Filipino Spirit is Rising

2007-07-19T04:28:00.000-07:00

By Antonio Meloto

Antonio "Tony" Meloto, the visionary and driving force behind the Gawad Kalinga movement, was conferred a Doctorate of Humanities, Honoris Causa, by the Ateneo de Davao. He delivered the following address to the graduates of the university, a challenge actually, for patriotism and heroism. The same message will be given to eight other colleges and universities who have asked Tony Meloto to be their commencement speaker for 2007 -- The publisher

TODAY, I feel intelligent. Not only am I addressing some of the brightest minds in Mindanao, but I am also being honored by this prestigious university with a Doctorate in Humanities, Honoris Causa.

This is the first doctorate that I have received and I am accepting it in all humility and pride as recognition of the nobility of the cause and the heroism of the thousands of Gawad Kalinga workers that I represent.

Thank you Fr. Ting Samson and Ateneo de Davao for bestowing the highest academic degree on a man who was born without a pedigree- the "askal" (asong kalye) who went to Ateneo and came back to the slums to help those he left behind.

To a person like myself who did not excel in Ateneo in my pursuit of a college degree, receiving this Ph. D. is extremely flattering being fully conscious that my principal role in this movement is to be the storyteller of the many who put in the sacrifice and the hard work and yet have remained mostly unrecognized.

It is also exhilarating because it builds on the growing global awareness, triggered by Gawad Kalinga and other movements that have not given up on our country, that the Filipinos can and will build a squatter-free, slum- free and hunger- free Philippines by committing their collective genius, passion and strength towards restoring the dignity and the potential for excellence of the poor, the weak and the powerless.

The Filipino spirit today is rising wherever he is in the world. He is starting to discover that he has the power to liberate himself from being a slave of the past - that he can remove the label stuck to his soul as a second class people from a third world country - that he can correct the scandal of history of being the most corrupt in Asia despite being the only Christian nation, until East Timor, in the region.

In the right setting the Filipino has proven that he can be law-abiding, hardworking, honest and excellent.

Over the years, I have not met a Filipino beggar in my travel to the US, Canada and Australia...not a single beggar that I have seen or have heard of out of more than 2 million Filipinos in the US; many Caucasians, Afro-Americans and Latinos -- yes but no Filipinos. Clearly, it is not the nature of Filipinos to beg if he is in the right home and community environment.

The mendicant culture in his native land is man- made and artificial and can therefore be unmade and corrected if we give him back his dignity which is his birthright as a son of God.

In the same vein, we know that the Filipino is not lazy. Time Magazine in its 2006 article on Happiness identifies the Filipino as one of the ethnic groups in America least likely to go on welfare. How many of us know of friends and relatives who would take on two or even three jobs in pursuit of their dreams for a better life. Hardworking when motivated, resilient when tested - that is the Filipino...that is us. It is no surprise therefore that the average income of the Filipino- Americans is higher that the US national average; the former slave is now richer than the master in his master's home country.

We must believe that we were designed for excellence. World- class Filipino doctors and nurses are healing the sick of America and Europe. Our sailors dominate the seas in every mode of marine transport for commerce and pleasure providing every imaginable form of service - and often always, they are the best navigators, the best chefs, the best entertainers.

Thriving economies in Asia carry the mark of Filipino managerial expertise in their start-up stage. Filipino CEOs, CFOs, COOs captain top multinational corporations carrying on the proud expat tradition of SGV's Washington Sycip, PLDT-SMART's Manny Pagnilinan, P&G's Manny Pacis and many others.

Sadly, we are top of the line, crème de la crème, the best of the best elsewhere in the world except in our homeland. While the Jews and the Arabs were busy building abundance out of their desert, we were busy creating a desert out of our abundance.

Let us put a stop to our inanity and hypocrisy. Let us stop cracking jokes about our shame and misery. Instead let us celebrate with our hard work and integrity the return of our honor and pride as a gifted people, blessed by God with this beautiful land. Let us honor every great deed, every sacrifice, and every kindness that we extend to our disadvantaged and needy countrymen.

Let us put an end to our lamentation. We have suffered long enough. For 400 years, we have been gnashing our teeth, blaming one another, stepping on each other and yet have the temerity at the end of the day to ask God why this is happening as if it was His fault. It is now time to hope, to care, to work together and to rejoice.

Yes, we will rise as a nation if we nurture this emerging beautiful spirit of the Filipino and cultivate an intelligent heart. How? When we show our love for God by being our brother's keeper- giving land to the landless, homes to the homeless and food to the hungry. This is about love and justice in a country where the majority of our people are landless, millions of them living in shanties and slums and 17% of them experiencing hunger in a rich and fertile land. This is not about charity but about authentic Christian stewardship and nation building.

We will rise as a nation when rich Filipinos will consider the poor as an heir, like our youngest child, equal in worth and dignity with our own children, deserving an equal share in our children's inheritance. A beautiful spirit and an intelligent heart consider the poor as family, see the face of Christ in them, and see the paradise that every slum community can become. That is why every GK home is beautifully painted and the standard of landscaping of every GK village is Ayala Alabang or Ladislawa in the case of Davao.

When we build first world communities for the poorest Filipino, we give them dignity and first world aspirations that will motivate them to dream bigger and work harder with support and nurturing. A recent study of GK Brookside, Payatas conducted by the UP Diliman College of Economics revealed an amazing result - the confidence and self-respect of the residents, many of them former scavengers, rose from 17 percent before GK to 99 percent after GK; 93 percent consider themselves better off in terms of quality of life and 96 percent believe that their economic situation will improve in the future. Clearly the spirit of the poor is rising because those with the most share their best with the least.

This nation will rise if her sons and daughters abroad will see wisdom in helping not just their relatives, which is an admirable Filipino trait, but also the poor they do not know who need help the most.

Last night, I arrived from a one-week trip to the US for the world premiere in Chicago of "Paraiso," the Gawad Kalinga movie, and to attend GK events in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The movie was a big hit but the bigger hit for me was the phenomenal response of our patriots in America to help the motherland by building self-reliant and sustainable GK communities.

The UST Medical Alumni Association of America Board was planning not just building more houses but also hospitals and community health programs through Gawad Kalusugan. USTMAA president Dr. Primo Andres is building a beautiful GK Village for his wife, Sylvia in Panabo, Davao where she comes from as an expression of his deep affection for her. Another Davaoeno, former Cabinet Secretary Cito Lorenzo, joined me in booming Las Vegas to honor Filipino entertainers and realtors who are investing in the rebuilding of their home country.

Passion for the Philippines was evident everywhere I went. From successful young San Diego businessman Tony Olaes who spoke about sleepless nights in his excitement to help fund 20 new GK villages with his Filipino business partners to the SouthCal Ancop Sikad Bikers pedaling to build Sibol Schools and the Bayanihan Builders who are retired professionals in Los Angeles repairing homes of neighbors to raise resources to build homes in Bicol, to the 8 nurses in NorCal working extra shifts to fund their individual GK villages. The Filipino exile is waking up and starting to unleash a stream of Patriot Funds that will augment the OFW flow in fuelling the Philippine economy.

Today, I am here to salute the beautiful spirit and the intelligent heart of the people of Mindanao. Many of our volunteers here, like many in other parts of the country, build homes for the poor when they themselves do not own land or home. Christians here, starting with caretakers from Couples for Christ set aside fear and comfort to serve our fellow Filipinos in Camp Abubakar and other Moslem GK communities. Your students are going out of the classrooms to learn about life and love of God and country by serving in poor communities.

The LGU of Davao led by Mayor Duterte and many throughout Mindanao are doing massive land banking in solidarity with our conviction that no Filipino deserves to be a squatter in his own country. And many families here are starting to understand that giving a part of their land to give dignity and security to the landless and homeless poor is not only right with God but also builds peace, triggers economic activity, improves land values- creates a win- win situation for all.

And to you my dear graduates, what can I say? Congratulations of course for finishing what you began and for joining the ranks of the elite few of the Filipinos with a college degree. I thank your parents for their sacrifice and for giving us sons and daughters who will steward this country better than us.

You are entering adult life equipped with a degree from a respected university at an auspicious time in the life of our country. It is your destiny to reach maturity during this great season of hope, this exciting time of awakening, this period of great challenge and heroism.

You have the choice and the opportunity to correct the mistakes of our generation and build a future full of hope in this country. You can be the new breed of political leaders who will gain your mandate through visible and quantifiable performance, rather than mastery of the art of winning elections through cheating and corruption. You can be the new captains of business and industry who will work for profit with a conscience, expanding the market base by wisely investing in developing the potential of the poor for productivity.

You can be the new elite of this country who will not be happy to send your children to exclusive schools and live in exclusive subdivisions if out of school street children are ignored and Lazarus continues to live as a squatter outside your gates.

Who can stop us from claiming our Promised Land? Spain is not our master anymore. America is not our master anymore. Japan is not our master anymore. Our enemies are not the corrupt politicians, the greedy rich, the lazy poor, the religious hypocrites and other convenient scapegoats. Our enemies are not out there anymore. Our enemies are now within us.

We have compromised our values and tolerated corruption. We have lowered our standard and tolerated poverty. We have sacrificed the truth for hypocrisy. We have chosen convenience for vision, popularity for leadership -and have chosen despair over hope.

Do we fight or do we run? Is there a King Leonides among you who will fight for honor and freedom? Are there 300 Spartans among you who will confront our enemies with extraordinary courage and love? Can you be the army who will lead our people to victory following the path of peace? Are you the generation of patriots who can shout to the world that no Filipino will remain poor because you will not allow it; that no Filipino will remain a squatter because you will not allow it; that no politician will remain corrupt because you will not allow it?

If you are, then join us in Gawad Kalinga. Together, we can build a great nation, first world in the eyes of God and respected by other great nations. Godspeed to you our patriots and heroes. God bless our beloved Philippines.

(Speech delivered during the Commencement Exercises at the Ateneo de Davao University, March 31, 2007)