Tag: October 5, 2006

LET THE American dream stay American.

Take that from S. Lily Mendoza, assistant professor in Culture and Communication at the University of Denver in Colorado, when the UST Publishing House launched the Philippine edition of her book, Between the Homeland and the Diaspora: The Politics of Theorizing Filipino and Filipino-American Identities, last Sept. 12 at the Faculty of Arts and Letters Audio Visual Room in St. Raymund’s Bldg.

RICO and Melanie Hizon are art patrons who travel a lot. On these globe-trotting trips, they discovered artist palettes of different shapes and sizes. After asking some local artist to paint on their palettes, the Hizons’ unique art collection was born.

“LO-FI”, “straight-to-amp analog”, “garage-jangled rock and roll for the underdogs and geeks” describe the music of the Sleepyheads.

Sleepyheads are among a growing number of Filipino independent bands that divert from mainstream music in seeking to re-invent genres of the past.

LANDMARKS sculptor Eduardo Castrillo is marking a milestone in his 40 years as the nation’s most renowned and dominant sculptor of national monuments.

Castrillo, who is celebrating his ruby anniversary in the art industry, opened an exhibit of concept drawings and photographs of his sculptures, “Castrillo at 40: Conceptualizing Symbols of Heritage,” last Sep. 22 at the UST Museum of Arts and Sciences. The exhibit will run until Oct. 30.

LIKE a street-smart Filipino, Godfrey Anijah-Obi, a Nigerian sophomore taking up Medical Technology, makes sure he leaves before 6:45 a.m. to avoid the turtle-paced Dapitan traffic, lest he comes late for his Clinical Chemistry at 7 a.m.

Another foreign student, Korean Vitna Kim, a sophomore from the Alfredo M. Velayo-College of Accountancy, never fails to surprise people whenever she rides a jeepney, reaching out her fare and saying “bayad po” in Korean twang.

The UST Conservatory of Music is playing extra-beautiful music this year as it marks its 60th foundation anniversary. The Conservatory is the country’s largest music school, with more than 600 students and a faculty of 80 professors and lecturers. It also boasts of a long line of illustrious alumni and music pedagogues and of its pioneering curriculum in music education.

UST IS not only the Catholic University of the Philippines with a capital “C.” With its handsome share of international students, it’s also a “catholic”—that is, a global—university.

While many Filipinos, including Thomasians, dream of studying abroad, more and more foreign students say that UST is no less a greener pasture to study in.

ON SEPT. 12 at the University of Regensburg, Pope Benedict XVI gave a lecture titled “Faith, Reason and the University, Memories and Reflections.” He proposed reason as a basis for the dialogue of the minds between Muslims and Christians. While this kind of dialogue may suit the Western mind, we suggest that for the Filipino (and perhaps) the Asian mind, the better basis is the dialogue of the heart.

HE SHALL be tall, with a bulging forehead and nose, a mole on the right cheek, shall rise from Arabia, shall be called from a cave and withstand attacks in the dessert.

So says Muslim sayings on the coming “Mahdi,” or the “Guided One,” who shall beat the “infidels” at the end of time.

Meet Osama bin Laden. He is tall, has a broad forehead, jutting nose, a black mole on the right cheek, hails from Saudi Arabia, received his “calling” from a cave in Afghanistan, and has survived his chasers (news of his death are reportedly goof).

ONLY four years since the Reserve Officers’ Training Program (ROTC) was made optional due to complaints of irregularities and abuses, a Senate bill and a counterpart House bill seek to reimplement a mandatory ROTC.

Both bills argue that since the enactment of Republic Act No. 9163, or the National Service Training Program (NSTP) in 2001, the ROTC enrollment has dropped from 250,000 to 80,000 in the national level. Without further explaination, Lim declares that patriotism is dying in the country.