Tag: August 31, 2008

JUST BY looking at all the gatherings and events listed for the WYD celebration that were held simulatneously in different venues, one will be overwhelmed and would probably wish he can attend all the events. Planning and time amnagement is really a key to be able to attend as many activities as possible.

Just like our experience as a group in the WYD, we really have to talk about our schedule and plan things all the time, and we really didn’t even have the chance to visit some of the beautiful places in Australi except for the famous Sydney Opera House and other venues in Sydney where the WYD major events were held like the Darling Habour, Southern Cross Precint, Domain, Hyde Park and St. Mary’s Cathedral.

FROM missing knives to abandoned fetuses, poignant images characterize the films featured in Cinemalaya 2008. The competition, which has always been a fertile ground for new talents in Filipino independent filmmaking, is now on its fourth year.

Out of 194, entries were whittled down to 10, all of which were shown last July 11 to 20 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. This year, none of the ten finalists dropped out of the running, a probable indication of the quality of these films. In a Philippine Daily Inquirer report, competition director Laurice Guillen said, “even if the themes are similar, the treatment is not the same.” Jay and Huling Pasada, for example, talk about the consequences of media on society, but they develop differently.

UST SINGERS instructor Fidel Gener Calalang stamped his mark once more as a world-class conductor after sitting as the only Filipino jury in the 20th International Festival of Academic Choirs Competition (IFAS) in Pardubice, Czech Republic last July 1 to 8.

“There were many different artistic elements of sounds presented by the choirs, making the competition this year more diverse,” Calalang told the Varsitarian.

Calalang is not new in the business, as this was his second time to be invited as a member of the jury in IFAS. It also helps that the outstanding composer and conductor has been to many prestigious musical events in the world and has received many awards, such as the “best conductor” at the 2002 Tonen International Choral Competition in the Netherlands, and the top prize at the 1999 International Composers Competition in California, United States.

NEITHER culture nor birthright can justify terrorism. The insurgency of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in much-criticized Mindanao is certainly not an exception.

With Moro rebels failing to get the government to sign a deal granting them territory, the MILF began a ruthless onslaught and devastated villages in North Cotabato and Lanao del Sur in August, leaving 49 dead and thousands homeless.

According to survivors, the rebels used civilians as “human shields” against the military troops sent to quell the insurgency. Aside from this, rebels who surrendered revealed that they were instructed to kill everyone who can resist and harm anyone who stood in their way regardless of age and gender, betraying the MILF’s lack of sincerity and commitment to peace.

IN TIME’s August 25 issue, columnist Samantha Power began unearthing the “soiled” motive behind Russia’s recent assault of Georgia through Thucydides’ realist hoe.

But midway in her commentary, Power later declared that more than “honor, fear and interest,” which for Thucydides were the slabs of meat that sparked the dogfight between the Athenian-led Delian League and the Spartan-backed Peloponnese in his History of the Peloponnesian War, there is another factor that the grand old men of history always tend to overlook—perceived humiliation, as far as insecurity is concerned.

MAKAILANG beses na nating narinig ang mga katagang, “Ang hindi marunong magmahal sa sariling wika ay mahigit pa sa hayop at malansang isda.” Nakakairita na nga itong marinig minsan lalo kung ika’y nasa loob ng klase ng Filipino. Higit pa siguro kung isa ka sa mga tulad kong nagtatanong kung mayroon na nga ba tayong sariling wikang mamahalin.

Sa ngayon, laganap ang tinatawag na “taglish” o “enggalog” na gumagamit ng Ingles at Tagalog ng papalit-palit sa pakikipag-usap at ngayon nga ay maging sa pagbabalita sa radyo, sa telebisyon, at dyaryo. Marahil ito na rin ang dahilan kung bakit naging patok sa masa ang ganitong uri ng pananalita.

Tama nga siguro ang isang bantog na pilosopo na si Michel Focault na ang lahat ng umiiral na kagawian ay itinatakda lamang sa pamamagitan ng mga ugnayan ng kapangyarihan (power relations).

MUCH hedging about the sinking of MV Princess of the Stars has brought to the public the discovery of a toxic pesticide endosulfan trapped inqside the transit ship.

Since human-interest stories were already juiced up regarding the event, the media then focused their reports on endosulfan which is still locked up inside the sunken ship.

But why place a toxic pesticide inside a passenger ship in the first place? For a while, Del Monte Philippines, Inc. and Sulpicio Lines, Inc. were embroiled in a finger-pointing hullabaloo before the Board of Marine Inquiry.

Del Monte said the cargo was labeled poisonous. Sulpicio countered: it wasn’t.

FRANCHISED foreign shows, adaptations of international telenovelas and imported TV series then dubbed in the Filipino language is the latest trend in the country’s television scene.

The idea may sound fascinating and its outcome may look very entertaining: voting for your favorite “scholar” inside the “dream academy,” seeing Filipino celebrities portray the characters of your once-loved Mexican telenovela about a girl who lived by the sea and conquered all obstacles of her love and life, or watching Korean actors “speak” in our tongue. But then this fad is slowly and obviously transforming Philippine primetime television into plain copycat.

HAS CHINA finally arrived in the big stage?

8/8/08 was a momentous date as China unveiled to the world a great part of its mystique by hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics. Some observers say that ours is the Chinese century and going by the lavish staging of the games, they are admittedly hard to dispute.

Since 1992, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have ranked China’s economy fourth in the world, next to the United States, Japan, and Germany. The Philippines was ranked 46th by the International Monetary Fund.

In 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization which led to agreements for a free trade zone with Southeast Asia. Seeing the situation, the country had a continuous economic expansion, superseding US—the first after almost 80 years.

THERE is a monkey wrench stuck in the country’s higher education system.

Over the years, Philippine higher education, once the envy of the region, has been undermined by the relentless mushrooming of universities and colleges, many of questionable quality, and the inability of authorities to enforce even the basic standards.

Poor-quality schools, many of them state-run or business-oriented, are in fact dragging down the national passing rates in board exams, barely producing graduates with minimum competence.

Experts blame the surplus of colleges and universities -- partly due to state sanction and also because of the prospects of quick profits in a sector considered immune from economic downturn -- for the moribund state of the country’s higher education system.