TAURUS - The Enduring One
Charming but aggressive.
Can come off as boring, but they are not.
Hard workers.
Warm-hearted.
Strong, has endurance.
Solid beings who are stable and secure in their ways.
Not looking for shortcuts.
Take pride in their beauty.
Patient and reliable.
Make great friends and give good advice.
Loving and kind.
Loves hard - passionate.
Express themselves emotionally.
Prone to ferocious temper-tantrums.
Determined.
Indulge themselves often.
Very generous.
....
Hmmm.
All I can say is, beware the ferocious (!) temper tantrums :P
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
Anxious/Excited
I had such a busy weekend and I was planning to write about it today -- a rally, becoming a fairy princess, and running 5km.
But this morning I received such great news, I just have to share it with everyone. (I will talk about my interesting weekend some other time. Perhaps when I have the photos.)
For today, this is all I can think of.
****
dear applicant to the Erasmus Mundus master EUROCULTURE,
Herewith I have the pleasure to send you, attached, a letter of provisional acceptance to the Erasmus Mundus master EUROCULTURE. The letter is in pdf.format (to open in Acrobat Reader).
Please closely read the contents of the letter and inform me within of next week if you accept the provisional placement in our masters programme 2008-2009.
On behalf of the Euroculture consortium,
Kind regards,
Mrs.Marloes van der Weij
Secretariat
Erasmus Mundus master EUROCULTURE
University of Groningen - The Netherlands
****
I have to wait until May to see if the provisional part will be dropped. But can I be a bit excited now? :P
Weeee! Europe, here I come! (Keeping fingers and toes crossed!)
But this morning I received such great news, I just have to share it with everyone. (I will talk about my interesting weekend some other time. Perhaps when I have the photos.)
For today, this is all I can think of.
****
dear applicant to the Erasmus Mundus master EUROCULTURE,
Herewith I have the pleasure to send you, attached, a letter of provisional acceptance to the Erasmus Mundus master EUROCULTURE. The letter is in pdf.format (to open in Acrobat Reader).
Please closely read the contents of the letter and inform me within of next week if you accept the provisional placement in our masters programme 2008-2009.
On behalf of the Euroculture consortium,
Kind regards,
Mrs.Marloes van der Weij
Secretariat
Erasmus Mundus master EUROCULTURE
University of Groningen - The Netherlands
****
I have to wait until May to see if the provisional part will be dropped. But can I be a bit excited now? :P
Weeee! Europe, here I come! (Keeping fingers and toes crossed!)
Monday, February 11, 2008
Fun Run!
DZMM “Takbo para sa Kalikasan”
It's on February 17, 2008, and will kick off at the Quirino Grandstand, Luneta. This is for the benefit of La Mesa Watershed and its continued rehabilitation, the primary source of drinking water of Metro Manila.
For those interested, you may call ABS-CBN at 4152272 loc. 5638, 5674, 5629, at 5641 or Rudy Biscocho 727.9987; 0918.9158536 Vasquez Madrigal Bldg., Anapolis, Greenhills 9AM-5PM. Registration is until February 15, 2008.
This was last year. Let's see if I can do it again this year! Yeah!
It's on February 17, 2008, and will kick off at the Quirino Grandstand, Luneta. This is for the benefit of La Mesa Watershed and its continued rehabilitation, the primary source of drinking water of Metro Manila.
For those interested, you may call ABS-CBN at 4152272 loc. 5638, 5674, 5629, at 5641 or Rudy Biscocho 727.9987; 0918.9158536 Vasquez Madrigal Bldg., Anapolis, Greenhills 9AM-5PM. Registration is until February 15, 2008.
This was last year. Let's see if I can do it again this year! Yeah!Wednesday, February 6, 2008
What is happening to our country?!?
PDI Editorial
6 February 2008
MANILA, Philippines -- Presidents have toppled Speakers before, but never in such gangland fashion. The removal of Jose de Venecia Jr. had all the elements of a Mafia assassination. False promises were made, not only to give De Venecia a false sense of security, but in order to deceive the public. Malacañang announced no action was to take place on Monday. In so doing, it hoped media and public attention would be deflected, and the risks of De Venecia making a harmful speech would be minimized since he wouldn’t have time to prepare, and the public wouldn’t be expecting it. The rubout would be neat, and clean.
This is why the impatience of Rep. Abraham Mitra of Palawan province was so unseemly, but so politically understandable. He swiftly moved to declare the speakership vacant, and then, during the two hours the session was adjourned, he kept urging its resumption regardless of procedures. In the caucuses that took place in the House during that two-hour lull, the marching orders from the Palace were clear: save congressmen some embarrassment by refusing a roll call vote, and deny De Venecia his swan song. But in the full glare of publicity, the Palace failed to achieve either. Instead of a surgical strike, every House member had to step up and do his part in the dirty deed.
We say dirty not in the sense that it was an unfitting end for De Venecia speakership -- the country gloried in his fall, we have to say. But in all the long history of bootlicking by the House of Representatives, never had it institutionally surrendered so abjectly, so cravenly, to executive influence as it did last Monday. For it elected, not just a Speaker handpicked by the Palace, which is par for the course, instead it elected three speakers: Prospero Nograles, and the Arroyo brothers, Mikey and Dato.
All the fig leaves meant to disguise the naked greed of the congressmen, all the orations about “reform” and “change” were shibboleths, words long stripped of their real meaning, concepts long ago discarded as outmoded by the House. They were excuses which time and again the congressmen who rose to register their votes revealed as secondary. To what? Their projects, their pork barrel. Taking turns to genuflect before the President’s sons, and their partners in politics, they voted not for change or reform, but for more of the same.
It was a vote of confidence in a system refined by the administration, with the enthusiastic participation, once upon a time, of De Venecia himself, where the House abandoned all fiscal independence and surrendered the power of the purse utterly to Malacañang. In that sense, De Venecia was killed by an instrument of his own making.
He shortsightedly believed that politics is a numbers game, not realizing, until the moment of his own political peril, that numbers in politics are written in the sand. He’d hoped to fatten his party at public expense, yet when another party proved better in mobilizing the cash, his party became an accomplice in his fall.
It’s a cautionary tale about power. But De Venecia’s fall is not the cause for public revulsion at what transpired in the House. Instead, it was the sight of old and young leaders united by avarice and blinded by ambition. The baptism into congressional politics received by the 84 neophytes at the House makes it truly deserving of what was said by Arsenio Lacson of Ernesto Maceda, who ironically sat as a witness to the Monday night rubout: “So young, and yet so…” All of them.
For the public, it was a sign that what the House has become will persist: a lapdog institution, with no sense of independence or integrity, heedless of its constitutional prerogatives. And of a unicameral pseudo-parliamentary system to come, ruled by a ruthless First Family of political buccaneers. No one can have any illusions, at this point, that their appetite, always unbounded, is now out of control.
We are reminded of how the Batasang Pambansa thundered its approval of Nicanor Yniguez’s proclamation of Ferdinand Marcos as the victor in the 1986 snap election. They were oblivious to the sentiment of the public, which consigned the dictator’s rubber stamp to the dustbin of history. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was as cocky then as the Arroyo brothers are now.
6 February 2008
MANILA, Philippines -- Presidents have toppled Speakers before, but never in such gangland fashion. The removal of Jose de Venecia Jr. had all the elements of a Mafia assassination. False promises were made, not only to give De Venecia a false sense of security, but in order to deceive the public. Malacañang announced no action was to take place on Monday. In so doing, it hoped media and public attention would be deflected, and the risks of De Venecia making a harmful speech would be minimized since he wouldn’t have time to prepare, and the public wouldn’t be expecting it. The rubout would be neat, and clean.
This is why the impatience of Rep. Abraham Mitra of Palawan province was so unseemly, but so politically understandable. He swiftly moved to declare the speakership vacant, and then, during the two hours the session was adjourned, he kept urging its resumption regardless of procedures. In the caucuses that took place in the House during that two-hour lull, the marching orders from the Palace were clear: save congressmen some embarrassment by refusing a roll call vote, and deny De Venecia his swan song. But in the full glare of publicity, the Palace failed to achieve either. Instead of a surgical strike, every House member had to step up and do his part in the dirty deed.
We say dirty not in the sense that it was an unfitting end for De Venecia speakership -- the country gloried in his fall, we have to say. But in all the long history of bootlicking by the House of Representatives, never had it institutionally surrendered so abjectly, so cravenly, to executive influence as it did last Monday. For it elected, not just a Speaker handpicked by the Palace, which is par for the course, instead it elected three speakers: Prospero Nograles, and the Arroyo brothers, Mikey and Dato.
All the fig leaves meant to disguise the naked greed of the congressmen, all the orations about “reform” and “change” were shibboleths, words long stripped of their real meaning, concepts long ago discarded as outmoded by the House. They were excuses which time and again the congressmen who rose to register their votes revealed as secondary. To what? Their projects, their pork barrel. Taking turns to genuflect before the President’s sons, and their partners in politics, they voted not for change or reform, but for more of the same.
It was a vote of confidence in a system refined by the administration, with the enthusiastic participation, once upon a time, of De Venecia himself, where the House abandoned all fiscal independence and surrendered the power of the purse utterly to Malacañang. In that sense, De Venecia was killed by an instrument of his own making.
He shortsightedly believed that politics is a numbers game, not realizing, until the moment of his own political peril, that numbers in politics are written in the sand. He’d hoped to fatten his party at public expense, yet when another party proved better in mobilizing the cash, his party became an accomplice in his fall.
It’s a cautionary tale about power. But De Venecia’s fall is not the cause for public revulsion at what transpired in the House. Instead, it was the sight of old and young leaders united by avarice and blinded by ambition. The baptism into congressional politics received by the 84 neophytes at the House makes it truly deserving of what was said by Arsenio Lacson of Ernesto Maceda, who ironically sat as a witness to the Monday night rubout: “So young, and yet so…” All of them.
For the public, it was a sign that what the House has become will persist: a lapdog institution, with no sense of independence or integrity, heedless of its constitutional prerogatives. And of a unicameral pseudo-parliamentary system to come, ruled by a ruthless First Family of political buccaneers. No one can have any illusions, at this point, that their appetite, always unbounded, is now out of control.
We are reminded of how the Batasang Pambansa thundered its approval of Nicanor Yniguez’s proclamation of Ferdinand Marcos as the victor in the 1986 snap election. They were oblivious to the sentiment of the public, which consigned the dictator’s rubber stamp to the dustbin of history. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was as cocky then as the Arroyo brothers are now.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Music and me
I have another blog, Soundtrack. I occasionally post songs on it. Song for the day. The song pretty much lets you know how I was feeling at that time.
Music is so much a part of my life. Every time I feel strongly about something, there is always a song to match the moment. I can’t imagine life without music.
There are so many times when I am all choked up with emotion and I feel like no one could ever feel the way I do at that moment. But then I hear a song blaring on the radio, and someone is singing about the exact same feelings I have. I just shake my head and wonder.
It still surprises me to find that human experience is, after all, human experience. But it somehow comforts me. It’s good to know you are not alone in your pain, or joy, or loneliness, or excitement.
I mourned my aunt with the help of Josh Groban’s To Where You Are. This guy, without his knowing it, helped me through my pain.
Cheesy, and embarrassing to admit, as it is, I wallowed with Mariah Carey’s My All after my first breakup. Pined after this crush and that with Annie Lennox’s Waiting in Vain. Dreamed about forever with someone along with Bonnie Bailey’s Ever After. Cried my eyes out with Siljie’s Fall when that forever didn’t come to pass.
On my happy days, I alternate between Katrina and the Waves’ I’m Walking On Sunshine, Corinne Bailey Rae’s Put Your Records On and Juice’s Best Days.
Billy Joel’s Vienna gets me thinking. Diana Ross’ Do You Know Where You’re Going To keeps me thinking.
When I feel lonely as hell, Remy Zero says the words I cannot say with his Save Me.
I even think up theme songs for other people. I keep insisting to Karen that Breathe's How Can I Fall is the perfect song, not for her, but for the men in her life. I used to tease my sister endlessly with Ariel Rivera's Getting to Know Each Other. She hated it.
I previously wrote about this rollercoaster love I’m on, and so the songs I identify with are as varied as can be. From the classic Fascination by Nat King Cole to pop sensation Gwen Stefani’s 4 In the Morning. From confident with Mary J. Blige’s Be Without You to confused with Tina Arena’s If I Didn’t Love You to content with Van Morrison’s Someone Like You and happy with Kaskade’s Never Ending.
The songs are really never ending. For as long as I live I shall be finding songs to keep me company. It’s the only way to keep me sane! :)
p.s. Maybe one day, when they make a movie about my life, they won’t need to worry about the soundtrack, because I’m already putting it all down for the record. Hahahaha.
Music is so much a part of my life. Every time I feel strongly about something, there is always a song to match the moment. I can’t imagine life without music.
There are so many times when I am all choked up with emotion and I feel like no one could ever feel the way I do at that moment. But then I hear a song blaring on the radio, and someone is singing about the exact same feelings I have. I just shake my head and wonder.
It still surprises me to find that human experience is, after all, human experience. But it somehow comforts me. It’s good to know you are not alone in your pain, or joy, or loneliness, or excitement.
I mourned my aunt with the help of Josh Groban’s To Where You Are. This guy, without his knowing it, helped me through my pain.
Cheesy, and embarrassing to admit, as it is, I wallowed with Mariah Carey’s My All after my first breakup. Pined after this crush and that with Annie Lennox’s Waiting in Vain. Dreamed about forever with someone along with Bonnie Bailey’s Ever After. Cried my eyes out with Siljie’s Fall when that forever didn’t come to pass.
On my happy days, I alternate between Katrina and the Waves’ I’m Walking On Sunshine, Corinne Bailey Rae’s Put Your Records On and Juice’s Best Days.
Billy Joel’s Vienna gets me thinking. Diana Ross’ Do You Know Where You’re Going To keeps me thinking.
When I feel lonely as hell, Remy Zero says the words I cannot say with his Save Me.
I even think up theme songs for other people. I keep insisting to Karen that Breathe's How Can I Fall is the perfect song, not for her, but for the men in her life. I used to tease my sister endlessly with Ariel Rivera's Getting to Know Each Other. She hated it.
I previously wrote about this rollercoaster love I’m on, and so the songs I identify with are as varied as can be. From the classic Fascination by Nat King Cole to pop sensation Gwen Stefani’s 4 In the Morning. From confident with Mary J. Blige’s Be Without You to confused with Tina Arena’s If I Didn’t Love You to content with Van Morrison’s Someone Like You and happy with Kaskade’s Never Ending.
The songs are really never ending. For as long as I live I shall be finding songs to keep me company. It’s the only way to keep me sane! :)
p.s. Maybe one day, when they make a movie about my life, they won’t need to worry about the soundtrack, because I’m already putting it all down for the record. Hahahaha.
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