Corinne Bailey Rae in the MOBO* Awards

Corinne Bailey Rae took three awards, including best UK female. Her performance at the Royal Albert Hall harked back to the 1940s.

*MOBO - Music of Black Origin

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/5365978.stm

awww!

Baby and Dog (Cuteness!)

http://mfrost.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/babyanddog.jpg

Sleepy kitty!

http://mfrost.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/yawn.jpg

Cute Cat!

http://mfrost.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/kuva20112.jpgFrom http://mfrost.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/kuva20112.jpg

What I learned from my thesis defense

0) It pays to have the blessing of a terror adviser.

1) It's like having one answer for the panelists' million and 1 questions:

Panelist A: Two times two?
Me: 4
Panelist 2: Hundred five minus hundred one?
Me: 4.
Panelist 3: Four plus zero?
Me: 4.
Ma'am Helen: Are you sure?
Me: 4.
Panelist A: What's your name?
Me: 4.
Panelist B: Okay, you're done.
Me: 4.

2) Waiting in line is hell. I was originally scheduled for the first slot at 3, but I found out on D day that they moved me to the third slot. I was scheduled to eat a chocolate bar by 5!

3) Luigi says: It's worse in your head. Tama. Coz in my head, I was forever on the verge of farting, barfing or burping while defending. I felt no such compulsion while I was reciting. I did remember JQ, though, in the face of Ma'am Helen's twins.

4) The peanuts are both distracting and comforting.

5) I am not alone in saying that the ruling in that Emerald Garment case (Stylistic Mr. Lee, folks. Does that ring a bell?!) is wrong. It really is wrong! It's wrong! It's wrong!

6) Advocacy doesn't stop here. Atty. Elicaño asked me, "Then what will you do? Give me something concrete, short of impeaching all these SC justices who have no intellectual property expertise whatsoever." Hah. We'll see :)

How to eat cake like you are 8

Yesterday, I only had three flavors of cake to choose from. (The slice of cake goes free with a Red Ribbon meal.)There was mango, ube, and coffee crunch. Not in the mood for either ube or anything crunchy, I picked mango. Since I became aware (read: went to college) that other people in the world go hungry, I have consistently finished my plate clean as a way of expressing my gratitude (to I don't know who) for being in a position to have a plate filled with food. But yesterday, the slice of cake was a disaster. Its saving grace came in the form of mango bits fit for a hamster. I decided to forego all the bread and the icing, forked out the bits from the frost, and left my plate full of cake minus the mango bits.

It was exhilirating.

kids and the bible

Can you imagine yourself to be the nun that is sitting at her desk grading these papers all the while trying to keep a straight face and maintain her composure!

PAY SPECIAL ATTENTION TO THE WORDING AND SPELLING. IF YOU KNOW THE BIBLE EVEN A LITTLE, YOU'LL FIND THIS HILARIOUS! IT COMES FROM A CATHOLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEST. KIDS WERE ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS ABOUT THE BIBLE WERE WRITTEN BY CHILDREN. THEY HAVE NOT BEEN RETOUCHED OR CORRECTED. INCORRECT SPELLING HAS BEEN LEFT IN.




1. IN THE FIRST BOOK OF THE BIBLE, GUINESSIS. GOD GOT TIRED OF CREATING THE WORLD SO HE TOOK THE SATURDAY OFF.

2. ADAM AND EVE WERE CREATED FROM AN APPLE TREE . NOAH 'S WIFE WAS JOAN OF ARK. NOAH BUILT AND ARKAND THE ANIMALS CAME ON IN PEARS.
3. LOTS WIFE WAS A PILLAR OF SALT DURING THE DAY, BUT A BALL OF FIRE DURING THE NIGHT.

4. THE JEWS WERE A PROUD PEOPLE AND THROUGHOUT HISTORY THEY HAD TROUBLE WITH UNSYMPATHETIC GENITALS.

5. SAMPSON WAS A STRONGMAN WHO LET HIMSELF BE LED ASTRAY BY A JEZEBEL LIKE DELILAH .

6. SAMSON SLAYED THE PHILISTINES WITH THE AXE OF THE APOSTLES.

7. MOSES LED THE JEWS TO THE REDSEAWHERE THEY MADE UNLEAVENED BREAD WHICH IS BREAD WITHOUT ANY INGREDIENTS .

8, THE EGYPTIANS WERE ALL DROWNED IN THE DESSERT. AFTERWARDS, MOSES WENT UP TO MOUNTCYANIDETO GET THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

9. THE FIRST COMMANDMENTS WAS WHEN EVE TOLD ADAM TO EAT THE APPLE.

10. THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT IS THOU SHALT NOT ADMIT ADULTERY.

11. MOSES DIED BEFORE HE EVER REACHED CANADA . THEN JOSHUA LED THE HEBREWS IN THE BATTLEOF GERITOL .

12. THE GREATEST MIRICLE IN THE BIBLE IS WHEN JOSHUA TOLD HIS SON TO STAND STILL AND HE OBEYED HIM.

13. DAVID WAS A HEBREW KING WHO WAS SKILLED AT PLAYING THE LIAR. HE FOUGHT THE FINKELSTEINS, A RACE OF PEOPLE WHO LIVED IN BIBLICAL TIMES.

14. SOLOMON , ONE OF DAVIDS SONS , HAD 300 WIVES AND 700 PORCUPINES.

15. WHEN MARY HEARD SHE WAS THE MOTHER OF JESUS , SHE SANG THE MAGNA CARTA.

16. WHEN THE THREE WISE GUYS FROM THE EAST SIDE ARRIVED THEY FOUND JESUS IN THE MANAGER.

17. JESUS WAS BORN BECAUSE MARY HAD AN IMMACULATE CONTRAPTION.

18. ST. JOHNTHE BLACKSMITH DUMPED WATER ON HIS HEAD.

19. JESUS ENUNCIATED THE GOLDEN RULE, WHICH SAYS TO DO UNTO OTHERS BEFORE THEY DO ONE TO YOU. HE ALSO EXPLAINED A MAN DOTH NOT LIVE BY SWEAT ALONE.

20. IT WAS A MIRICLE WHEN JESUS ROSE FROM THE DEAD AND MANAGED TO GET THE TOMBSTONEOFF THE ENTRANCE.

21. THE PEOPLE WHO FOLLOWED THE LORD WERE CALLED THE 12 DECIBELS.

22. THE EPISTELS WERE THE WIVES OF THE APOSTLES.

23. ONE OF THE OPPOSSUMS WAS ST. MATTHEW WHO WAS ALSO A TAXIMAN.

24. ST. PAULCAVORTED TO CHRISTIANITY, HE PREACHED HOLY ACRIMONY WHICH IS ANOTHER NAME FOR MARRAIGE.

25. CHRISTIANS HAVE ONLY ONE SPOUSE. THIS IS CALLED MONOTONY

Levie-ism No. 2

"Ano'ng gagamitin mo? 'Yung makapangyarihang picture?"

what's a major turnoff?

When a guy throws more tantrums within 8 months than you did.

Partners and Marriage

PARTNERS AND MARRIAGE
By Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz

I have never met a man who didn't want to be loved. But I have seldom met a man who didn't fear marriage. Something about the closure seems constricting, not enabling. Marriage seems easier to understand for what it cuts out of our lives than for what it makes possible within our lives.

When I was younger this fear immobilized me. I did not want to make a mistake. I saw my friends get married for reasons of social acceptability, or sexual fever, or just because they thought it was the logical thing to do. Then I watched, as they and their partners became embittered and petty in their dealings with each other. I looked at older couples and saw, at best, mutual toleration of each other. I imagined a lifetime of loveless nights and bickering and could not imagine subjecting myself or someone else to such a fate.

And yet, on rare occasions, I would see old couples who somehow seemed to glow in each other's presence. They seemed really in love, not just dependent upon each other and tolerant of each other's foibles. It was an astounding sight, and it seemed impossible. How, I asked myself, can they have survived so many years of sameness, so much irritation at the other's habits? What keeps love alive in them, when most of us seem unable to even stay together, much less love each other? The central secret seems to be in choosing well. There is something to the claim of fundamental compatibility. Good people can create a bad relationship, even though they both dearly want the relationship to succeed. It is important to find someone with whom you can create a good relationship from the outset. Unfortunately, it is hard to see c learly in the early stages.

Sexual hunger draws you to each other and colors the way you see yourselves together. It blinds you to the thousands of little things by which relationships eventually survive or fail. You need to find a way to see beyond this initial overwhelming sexual fascination. Some people choose to involve themselves sexually and ride out the most heated period of sexual attraction in order to see what is on the other side. This can work, but it can also leave a trail of wounded hearts. Others deny the sexual side altogether in an attempt to get to know each other apart from their sexuality. But they cannot see clearly, because the presence of unfulfilled sexual desire looms so large that it keeps them from having any normal perception of what life would be like together.

The truly lucky people are the ones who manage to become long-time friends before they realize they are attracted to each other. They get to know each other's laughs, passions, sadness, and fears. They see each other at their worst and at their best. They share time together before they get swept into the entangling intimacy of their sexuality.
This is the ideal, but not often possible. If you fall under the spell of your sexual attraction immediately, you need to look beyond it for other keys to compatibility. One of these is laughter. Laughter tells you how much you will enjoy each other's company over the long term.

If your laughter together is good and healthy, and not at the expense of others, then you have a healthy relationship to the world. Laughter is the child of surprise. If you can make each other laugh, you can always surprise each other. And if you can always surprise each other, you can always keep the world around you new. Beware of a relationship in which there is no laughter. Even the most intimate relationships based only on seriousness have a tendency to turn sour. Over time, sharing a common serious viewpoint on the world tends to turn you against those who do not share the same viewpoint, and your relationship can become based on being critical together.

After laughter, look for a partner who deals with the world in a way you respect. When two people first get together, they tend to see their relationship as existing only in the space between the two of them. They find each other endlessly fascinating, and the overwhelming power of the emotions they are sharing obscures the outside world. As the relationship ages and grows, the outside world becomes important again. If your partner treats people or circumstances in a way you can't accept, you will inevitably come to grief. Look at the way she cares for others and deals with the daily affairs of life. If that makes you love her more, your love will grow. If it does not, be careful. If you do not respect the way you each deal with the world around you, eventually the two of you will not respect each other.
Look also at how your partner confronts the mysteries of life. We live on the cusp of poetry and practicality, and the real life of the heart resides in the poetic. If one of you is deeply affected by the mystery of the unseen in life and relationships, while the other is drawn only to the literal and the practical, you must take care that the distance doesn't become an unbridgeable gap that leaves you each feeling isolated and misunderstood.

There are many other keys, but you must find them by ourself. We all have unchangeable parts of our hearts that we will not betray and private commitments to a vision of life that we will not deny. If you fall in love with someone who cannot nourish those inviolable parts of you, or if you cannot nourish them in her, you will find yourselves growing further apart until you live in separate worlds where you share the business of life, but never touch each other where the heart lives and dreams. From there it is only a small leap to the cataloging of petty hurts and daily failures that leaves so many couples bitter and unsatisfied with their mates.

So choose carefully and well. If you do, you will have chosen a partner with whom you can grow, and then the real miracle of marriage can take place in your hearts. I pick my words carefully when I speak of a miracle. But I think it is not too strong a word.

There is a miracle in marriage. It is called transformation. Transformation is one of the most common events of nature. The seed becomes the flower. The cocoon becomes the butterfly. Winter becomes spring and love becomes a child. We never question these, because we see them around us every day. To us they are not miracles, though if we did not know them they would be impossible to believe.

Marriage is a transformation we choose to make. Our love is planted like a seed, and in time it begins to flower. We cannot know the flower that will blossom, but we can be sure that a bloom will come.

If you have chosen carefully and wisely, the bloom will be good. If you have chosen poorly or for the wrong reason, the bloom will be flawed. We are quite willing to accept the reality of negative transformation in a marriage. It was negative transformation that always had me terrified of the bitter marriages that I feared when I was younger. It never occurred to me to question the dark miracle that transformed love into harshness and bitterness. Yet I was unable to accept the possibility that the first heat of love could be transformed into something positive that was actually deeper and more meaningful than the heat of fresh passion. All I could believe in was the power of this passion and the fear that when it cooled I would be left with something lesser and bitter.

But there is positive transformation as well. Like negative transformation, it results from a slow accretion of little things. But instead of death by a thousand blows, it is growth by a thousand touches of love. Two histories intermingle. Two separate beings, two separate presence, two separate consciousnesses come together and share a view of life that passes before them. They remain separate, but they also become one. There is an expansion of awareness, not a closure and a constriction, as I had once feared. This is not to say that there is not tension and there are not traps. Tension and traps are part of every choice of life, from celibate to monogamous to having multiple lovers. Each choice contains within it the lingering doubt that the road not taken somehow more fruitful and exciting, and each becomes dulle d to the richn ess that it alone contains.

But only marriage allows life to deepen and expand and be leavened by the knowledge that two have chosen, against all odds, to become one. Those who live together without marriage can know the pleasure of shared company, but there is a specific gravity in the marriage commitment that deepes that experience into something richer and more complex.
So do not fear marriage, just as you should not rush into it for the wrong reasons. It is an act of faith and it contains within it the power of transformation.

If you believe in your heart that you have found someone with whom you are able to grow, if you have sufficient faith that you can resist the endless attraction of the road not taken and the partner not chosen, if you have the strength of heart to embrace the cycles and seasons that your love will experience, then you may be ready to seek the miracle that marriage offers. If not, then wait. The easy grace of a marriage well made is worth your patience. When the time comes, a thousand flowers will bloom...endlessly.

-----------------------------------------------------------
A beautiful piece. Pls pass it on specially to the young people who restarting to get into relationships or are in a relationship. It would save them a lot of heartaches and bitterness down the road.

What is laughter?

Laughter is the child of surprise. If you can make each other laugh, you can always surprise each other. And if you can always surprise each other, you can always keep the world around you new.
-Calsanz, Partners and Marriage

A fairy is born through a child's laughter. If it's a half-hearted laugh, the fairy is born with defects - smaller ears, one instead of two wings, or difficulty in making magic. This is why we must all laugh fully.
- a Disney publication on Tinker Bell

More on Guimaras

http://www.projectsunrise.org/

RENATO REDENTOR CONSTANTINO

RENATO REDENTOR CONSTANTINO

Irreversible: Incompetent Government Seeks Help for Oil Spill

National Disaster: Guimaras Oil Spill

Last August 11, an oil-tanker, M/T Solar I, carrying 2M litres of tanker fuel, sank at the Guimaras Strait located off the coast of Guimaras and Negros Occidental. 200,000 litres of oil were spilled.

The oil spill has now contaminated 239 kilometers of coastline and mangroves, affected 16 coastal barangays and displaced 2,000 fisherfolk. The 1,100-hectare Taclong National Marine Reserve was also heavily damaged.

The cleanup has been estimated to take 3 years.

What the national Philippine government has done so far is to probe into the cause of the spill to determine who will be liable for damages. Pres. GMA has created a Special Board of Marine Inquiry, spending tax money in the purpose. It must be noted that the owner of the oil is Petron, a 40% Phil. government-owned corporation.

An aerial photo shows a Philippine Coast Guard ship spraying dispersant to clean up the oil spill northeast of Guimaras island, central Philippines, August 18, 2006. Disaster workers and residents in Guimaras are attempting to contain last week's oil slick from a sunken tanker due to its impact on fish, plants, people and tourism in the area. Picture taken August 18, 2006. REUTERS/Leo Solinap (PHILIPPINES)

The effects are estimated to last for at least 2 generations.

Although some organisms may be seriously injured or killed very soon after contact with the oil in a spill, other effects are more subtle and often longer lasting. For example, freshwater organisms are at risk of being smothered by oil that is carried by the current, or of being slowly poisoned by long-term exposure to oil trapped in shallow water or stream beds.

Watch out for the weather, whatever you're eating in the next two generations, the displacement of many fisherfolk, and economic setbacks.

I heard they're shaving off the heads of convicts so that they could use the hair as a boom to absorb the sludge. Why not require all the salons to do that? Nobody's got much functional use for hair anyway.

Please Help the Philippines.

Below: Local residents, use rags and water to clean off some of the spilled oil that has collected at the rocks on the breakwater in Nueva Valencia town in Guimaras island after a tanker contracted by Petron, the Solar I, sank in rough seas on August 11 while carrying 500,000 gallons of oil. Coast guard officials struggling to contain a dangerous oil spill in the Philippines expressed frustration that a sunken tanker described by environmentalists as a "ticking time bomb" had yet to be raised.(AFP/Joel Nito)