on faith...

it's the year of faith and i'm renewing mine. does it matter what one believes? there are many utterances to this question like "religion is not a creed to be believed but a way to live." for me, it matters though. without internal conviction to what you believe, there can be no real faith. "the faith of millions, the credentials of The Catholic Church" is one of the most indispensable books i own. the pages have started turning yellow and falling apart yet all i need to know about my faith is here.

 

foreign aid transparency hub

Folks, I would like to encourage you to regularly visit FAiTH (Foreign Aid Transparency Hub) to check the inflow of pledges and gifts for the typhoon haiyan project. the site also describes the designation of the fund and to whose accountab...ility. the site also gives the public a chance to comment and discuss about the fund. i already posted my first comment. this is a government site. let us make use of this site to voice out our concerns.

on joey ayala's new version of lupang hinirang

i watch avidly TED presentations in north america and this is the first time i learned about TED Diliman if not because of Joey Ayala's presentation. i wouldn't say that he "tampered" the Lupang Hinirang because he did not actually change the melody of the anthem. he did a great job in "CORRECTING" the phrasing of the words to something more intelligible when sung. my late father who is a guitarist and a singer of kundiman was very particular in phrasing and accenting words in a song. i believe this is a very important thing to consider, just like correcting a first draft of an essay or any works that need tweaking for correctness. that is the same thing that Mr. Ayala shared to us. life and society evolves and so is music and song. i believe that changing the word "mamatay" to "magmahal" is not a crime considering the state of our country at present compared to the time when the anthem was conceived. that was the era when filipinos were in the midst of fighting for our country's independence from foreign colonies. thanks joey for creatively pointing out what should have been corrected long time ago.

TED talks are for people who have big and small ideas to share and his presentation is MERELY AN IDEA. there remains no act of trashing the anthem. true to many of us, we have ideas too. the only reason why they are not out there because we are not as brave as mr. ayala. i hope after his presentation, he will, should i say, be compelled more to take this up to the proper government agency. and as you all very well know, there is one constant thing in this world, that is CHANGE and change is something that many of us is struggling to adapt. when new things are thrown to us there is this feeling of the "new" as overtaking our minds and being and thus we resist to shake off the "old". i'm not saying that there is something wrong with the old. i just believe that every chance of transformation is an opportunity to look at what else is there in us. somehow, we have to accept that there will be people out there that can make a change, better change. accept the good change and we will evolve. mr. ayala being on stage with his ideas emphasized the "trying" and that is what everyone must see.

on philippines' emergency relief operations

base on what I have read, it seems that the relief operations are moving in a very slow pace. If I’m not mistaken, there are more foreign military presence in the rescue operations than that from our own government. I may be wrong and I’m not writing this to add to the bashing to the president’s governance, the government itself, senators and other officials but to share what I think are the weak points in the rescue operations and the infrastructure plans especially to natural disaster inflicted regions that should have been done eons ago. On the aftermath of the storm it was already determined that the roads are unpassable therefore what could have been decided at once for alternative measures are by air and sea. Helicopters could drop food supplies and if there is not enough air transport, the government could have requested use of private helicopters from private organizations. Survivors in Ormoc, Tacloban, Leyte, Samar have already lost their houses so at the moment they have nothing to look forward to there which means these survivors must be relocated to a region where all the operations and logistics could be very well performed. It is a huge struggle to disperse medical teams, distribute relief aids, and much more to strategize channels of communication if the survivors are randomly scattered in various areas. These isolated clusters of survivors must be all gathered in or relocated to perhaps in Cebu or Davao. Before the calamity, Yolanda’s coming was already announced so it has been expected that the local government and jurisdictions, to name Department of Health and Department of Social Work, started planning on emergency preparedness, preservation, relief and recovery plans, have assessed susceptibility and determine risks involved and alternative plans. As well, the same plans should be also implemented by local communities of various regions. I trust that all these have been done before the onslaught, but looking at how these are being done, I am starting to doubt that the disaster planning and strategy measures had infact ensued.

according to typhoon statistics, Philippines gets 20 cyclones in a year. I was only 5 years old when Yuling and Sening made a landfall and caused havoc to our country. Forty three years passed since my first experience of Yuling and still our country remains groping in the dark on evacuation centre management. Have there been funds allocated for capital projects like building evacuation shelters not only for flood but also for other disasters like earthquake, equipped with necessities like toilets and water tanks? The answer, I believe, is explicit by the way the past and current calamities are handled and from the stories, photos and dissatisfied comments of Filipinos nationwide. There must be a huge and significant overhaul to be done in order to strengthen the capacity of our government’s response for the sake of its countrymen especially in times of natural disasters. It is certainly is high time for Philippines to experience a momentous change.

photo courtesy of newsinfo.inquirer.net

diverting energy to helping. . . .

slowly, in my mind, all that is happening back home on how the relief and rescue operations are beginning to give light. there will always be two sides of the story and it is a must for us that we hear both sides for reasons that are up to ...you to decide. it looks so bad and grim, but eventually things will move on and the survivors will be given the necessary help they needed. just like one art...icle i read, which is also true to life, "things get worse before they get better". i've been doing some reading around as well on how other countries fared well on their calamity operations and found out that haiti and india and other countries had the same problems in logistics and implementation. we carry a variety of sentiments towards our government and its jurisdictions and the system itself. we have all the right to rant and rage. i read peque gallaga's sentiments and that of Marvin Xanth Geronimo from Tacloban, the spat between korina sanchez and andrew cooper, and Karl Gaspar's status who mentioned that somehow their operation in their compound in tacloban are operating smoothly. i read rappler, interaksiyon and other media that i think give responsible and unbiased reportings. most of all, i read john crowley's write up "stop catastrophizing relief effors in the philippines" which explains how "scaremongering" is undermining delivery of supplies. i suggest that you read this one to somehow take you to the other side of the story. i, too, shared my own rant and rage and that is all i could do. but it is very exhausting. it is very tiresome to read all the bashings, the anger and all the pessimisms around. more so, it is so exhausting to write the disappointments i have and have now decided to divert my energy to helping.


Read "Stop Catastrophizing Relief Efforts in the Philippines" | TIME.com ideas.time.com