Tag: December 13, 2006

A LONG season of giant lights, colorful rice cakes, evening Masses, gift-giving, festivals, and reunions with friends and families are the things Filipinos abroad miss most during Christmas.

For Thomasians and former Varsitarian editors Ricardo Endaya and Bernardo Bernardo, the best gift to fellow Filipinos abroad is to be their own Santa and to make Christmas distinctly Pinoy.

Santa in Kuwait

AKO SI Anne, isang cancer survivor.

Bisperas ng Pasko nang malaman kong mayroon akong kanser sa matris. Dahil 17 taong gulang pa lang ako nang panahong iyon, hindi makapaniwala ang mga doktor na sumuri sa akin, at maging ang aking pamilya nang sabihin ko ang masamang balita. Iyon ang unang pagkakataon na ipagdiriwang ko ang araw ng Pasko sa ospital kapiling ang mga batang may kanser. Mapalad na lamang ako dahil maagang natuklasan at naagapan ang pagkalat ng cancer cells sa aking katawan. Ngunit marami sa mga munting anghel na nakasama ko ang malubha na ang kalagayan.

REDEN and Rose Antolin’s Christmas wish for their child is not extravagant, as what other parents may wish for. Theirs is fairly simple—justice for their son Randall Von Antolin.

The Sports Science major was shot by still unidentified hold-up men last March 14 along P. Noval St. after he refused to surrender his belongings to them. He died minutes after he was rushed to the UST Hospital. This Christmas will be the first for his family without him.

A BEVY of brilliant filmmakers proves again that Philippine cinema is not a dying industry.

Stories of survival, dream-catching, inner battles, hauntings, reincarnation, vengeance, and social realism comprise most of the films in the 8th Cinemanila International Film Festival, which ran from Nov. 3-15 featuring 50 digital films, “shorts,” documentaries, and music videos screened simultaneously at the SM Mall of Asia, SM Megamall, SM North EDSA, National Center for the Culture and the Arts auditorium, and Greenbelt Ayala Cinema.

WITH modern textiles, the art of traditional Ilocano weaving maybe seeing the end of its tether.

But Ilocano culture advocates led by Museo Ilocos Norte curator Al Valenciano sought to preserve the craft via an exhibit, Abel Iloco: Hand Woven Textiles of Ilocos Norte last Nov. 7 at the UST Museum of Arts and Sciences.

“The idea of the exhibit was basically to inform and to document the dying art and industry of weaving,” Valenciano said. “We only have 200 weavers aged between 40 to 50 years old, with no willing successors to inherit their craft.”

PICTURE this: Students packed at corridors taking up their major subjects. Some end up in distant stairways for their lessons as classes are held outside classrooms.

No, this is not scenario from a typical public school, but from the UST Conservatory of Music, one of the two only Centers of Excellence (COE) in music education in the country as declared by the Commission in Higher Education (CHED).

THE DEATH of a Physical Therapy (PT) student that had been initially ascribed to a lab experiment with naphthalene was actually caused by an autoimmune disease, the victim’s mother said.

Elvira Pangandian, mother of PT sophomore Camille Joy Pangandian, said that Camille had died of systemic lupus erythematosus (lupus) disease, instead of the naphthalene she used in an experiment during her General Organic Chemistry class.

THOMSASIAN media icon Eugenia Duran-Apostol, founding publisher of the Philippine Daily Inquirer and this year’s recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, was named by Time magazine as one of the 60 Heroes of Asia over the past six decades.

Apostol was cited by Time along with Inquirer editor in chief Leticia Jimenez-Magsanoc, as the “dynamic duo” who sparked the non-violent Edsa Revolution that overthrew Marcos.

THE OFFICIAL newsletter of the Faculty of Sacred Theology, Inter Nos, was elevated to the Hall of Fame of the Catholic Mass Media Awards (CMMA) for winning the Best Student Organ for College for three consecutive years during the CMMA night last Nov. 10 at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium, RCBC Plaza in Makati City. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was guest of honor.

THE UST Social Research Center (SRC) appealed to senators to deny the ratification of the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) that seeks to remove barriers to investments and the trade of goods and services between the two countries, in a hearing of the Senate Committee on Trade and Commerce last Nov. 27.