Life, Day by Day

This Christmas 2012 is probably one of the busiest holiday season ever for me.  It's weird because there are only a few relatives left here in my area, so except for the usual family gatherings on Christmas and New Year's eve, we have nothing planned.  However, there were so many other activities both at work and our volunteer organizations, invitations from friends for baptisms, weddings and other gatherings, that I found myself tired at the end of each day with no energy left to go online.  Or maybe because I am back at work and it now entails traveling (driving) a total of 40 or so kilometers a day. This situation should have given me a lot of stress but wonder of wonders, I actually did not mind not getting my daily 6-10 hours online fix.  Oh wow! I am not addicted to the internet!

After waiting for 4 months, my son and I were finally able to watch Samurai X aka Rurouni Kenshin last December 7.  The live action movie did not disappoint.  Of course, it was not exactly like the anime, but the essential elements were there...the blinding speed, the haunting scenery, the fight scenes (I do not condone violence but somehow in this movie, in spite of the blood and gore, the death scenes were somehow "dignified") and all the important characters. 

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah 1:5 Last December 12, I was up until 2 AM listening to the nominal voting of the RH Bill in the House of Representatives. Listening to our representatives both pro and anti-RH Bill, I was appalled by the line of reasoning of some of them. Some of the arguments used by those who voted NO are shallow and self-serving, like our economy is dependent upon OFW remittances and populating the earth with Filipinos. While those proponents of the bill (YES) have convinced themselves that too many Filipinos will be the destruction of our society, that the only way to solve poverty, prevent maternal and child death and espouse women's rights is to promote a contraceptive mentality amongst our people. They have convinced themselves that they are doing this for the Filipino nation, exercising sovereignty and the separation of church and state by no...

In the last quarter of 2011 I was out of work, and so one of the first things I did was to make credit card payment arrangements with their respective banks.  I already wrote about some of my experience with the banks here .  Then I saw this letter and this really made me laugh. This letter has been in circulation in the internet for several years now, allegedly written by an 86 year old woman to a bank. It has wrongly been attributed to being printed in the NY Times.  The real writer was Mr. Peter Wear and was first published in the Courier Mail in Brisbane, Australia in January 1999. It was not sent to a bank, but was written in a column called Perspectives.  It is very funny, but if like me you had some experience dealing with banks, you would understand the exasperation of this writer with modern banking and some of their policies. I can so relate with the content of this letter after dealing with one bank's delayed response, inept handling and really il...