Tag: May 30, 2007

WHEN I found out that my works were accepted to the 8th UST National Writers Workshop, I braced myself for a put-down. I had attended several peer-critique sessions and a couple of university-wide literary workshops before, so I was somewhat familiar with the feeling of standing in the middle of the battle-ground of letters, vulnerable to all sorts of bashing. But this was a national workshop, surely a bloodier battlefield that I would be entering. My works were my only armor, my only shield that would have to endure the assaults of the panelists and the fellows.

IN FIFTY years, the sun will die, and as a result, the Earth will suffer an endless winter. This is the premise of the movie Sunshine, about a team of astronauts sent to revive the sun by detonating a bomb on its weakening portion.

MOST people battle sunburn and eye damage with products boasting of absolute protection against harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays. But UV beams are not that simple and easy to sweat off.

Perceived by many to exist as a single type, harmful UV rays actually have three kinds based on their effects on human health and environment, namely UVA, UVB, and UVC.

SUMMER is a great time for picnics and cookouts, but beware! Eating grilled meats like isaw, adidas, dugo, and barbecue has been found to increase the risk of cancer.

According to Evelyn Ladines, chair of the Department of Food Technology of the College of Education, carcinogenic substances are formed in meats when they are grilled at high temperatures. “The higher the temperature used to grill the meats, the more carcinogens are formed,” she said.

“THE CHILD is father to the man,” is a famous Freudian maxim. It means that a child’s critical years—zero-five years old—can spell his adult character and destiny. It’s a proverbial thought on the effects of motherhood to an infant. A mother not only influences her child’s thoughts but also shapes her child’s mind in his early years.

In developmental psychology, maternal care and touch are said to determine the type of person an individual becomes from the first three years of his life when he hardly recalls anything due to infantile amnesia.

ASIDE from feasting on iced fruit shakes, swimming on pools, and basking on sea waters, Filipinos have found another way to beat the summer heat. With the relaxing mood, the music style bossa nova is the cool thing this hot season.

“Bossa nova is supposed to be cool, slow and everything that is used to describe the feeling during a sultry afternoon under the sun. It’s the soothing music during summer,” Conservatory of Music professor Ruben Reyes told the Varsitarian.

Bossa Nova flavor in OPM

JUST like their antique collections, Philippine museums gather dust, with the dwindling number of visitors every year. It’s a fact that drives the National Commission for the Culture and Arts (NCAA) to tap teachers to encourage their students to rediscover the country’s museums, as young people of older generations did during their time.

Unlike before, schools now seldom organize field trips to museums and science centers, as these establishments fail to compete with commercial malls and theme parks.

WITH its wide reach, Philippine television has become the top advertising medium during elections. In the last elections, TV networks also became a venue for the electorate to get to learn about the candidates and their platforms.

The two leading stations, ABS-CBN and GMA, came up with their own comprehensive coverage of the election in partnership with reputable media and business groups.

AFTER his renowned researches on colonial train stations and lighthouses, UST Architecture professor Manuel Maximo Lopez del Castillo Noche continues his heritage scholarship with his next stopover: colonial bridges.

“One of the most unusual Spanish-built infrastructures that do not really beam into the radar of most people are bridges,” Noche told the Varsitarian. “Bridges are integral in communication and in transportation of people and goods although their existence are taken for granted.”

“Automaton - n. a machine or control mechanism designed to follow automatically a predetermined sequence of operations or respond to encoded instructions.”

-- Merriam-Webster Dictionary

EVERY gadget reaches a temporary end in its lifetime, and a Psi Automaton is no exception. Now, I am ready to shut down and recharge for a bigger challenge in an afterlife popularly known to most graduates as the “real world.”