Life is Simple,

Lest we forget, my dear brothers, young and old alike, Tau Alpha represents The Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece, more than merely being The Adventurers seeking personal satisfaction and glory. The adventure along the way should serve only to enrich our ideals in the ultimate goal of finding The Golden Fleece and not be the ultimate objective of our life’s journey.

To be a True Blue Tau Alphan, not necessarily to be the most eminent professionally and financially successful Tau Alphan, adorned with all the laurels, citations and recognitions of our achievements, a Tau Alphan should continue this never ending search for the truth in our daily lives. Regardless of the arduous path of the journey that one must endure in the gauntlets along the way, the Tau Alphan spirit should reign supreme in the hearts and mind of an Argonaut, in search of The Truth. It goes without saying that liars cannot be Tau Alphans.

It would be a great dishonor, tantamount to treason, to defeat this enduring Tau Alphan spirit all for the sake of assuring hold to power where it is vested on us. I myself have been struggling to keep to this straight and narrow path in search of The Golden Fleece and can only say that I have been a True Blue Tau Alphan at the end of this journey. Then and only then can I say that I have finally found the Golden Fleece.

To name a few I can remember, again this is limited to brods whom I have had the chance to meet and know, brods Boyet Ramos and Dante Madriaga, continue the search in their lives’s journey as Argonauts.

The ideals in Greek Mythology, in our case the journey of Jason and The Argonauts, provide us guides in our life’s philosophies and values to adhere to and hopefully pass on to the next generation. We can choose to ignore these ideals and even replace it with our own personal beliefs. Doing so, however, effectively detaches us from the heart of Tau Alpha Fraternity.

To laugh often and much;

To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;

To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;

To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;

To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.

This is to have succeeded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

I did not find the right category selection for this blog as the selection was limited, it should have been under human interest, so i ceated this category “Human Interest”.

We do go through life’s journey in what appears to be a pre-determined path we are not aware until we are about to reach the end of it all.

We all start with the stage I call “survival“, a period in our lives which differ from one person to another, depending on how well we had been provided for by our fathers, remember, our fathers, not mothers. I guess I am inclined to believe that fathers should be the family’s provider of the basics, food, shelter, strength, security and those sorts. The mother simply nurtures us till we do no longer need nurturing, again, period depends on how fast we have grasped life’s idiosyncracies ( did I get the spelling right?). This is also the stage when we start to create our dreams, having no capabilities of our own to taste, enjoy or experience the good and beautiful things beyond our reach. At this point, we simply need to survive and absorb everything that comes our way. we are practically helpless on our own, so we need parental and family support all the time.

Then we progress to a stage I call “reaching dreams” stage where, after having survived the journery at “survival“, we start to reach our dreams we had when we were still in “survival“. Along the way, we do reach some dreams and miss others but in the end, as they say, it is how your went through the journey that matters, not what you took along the way.

I guess I have passed these two stages of life’s journey and now has reached what I would call “curtain call” stage where after having gone through the “survival” and “reaching dreams” stages, we begin questioning the reason/s and purpose/s for why we had to go through these stages in life’s journey. Again, to others, there is a tendency to go back to the survival stage knowing that their own journey is nearing its end. Some people try to fight back the hands of time and try to go back to the days when they were still in the survival or reaching dreams stage. This is actually when we go way past these two stages without having added the spiritual content of our lives. A lot of people who had done so, are afraid to face the reality that their own life’s journey is nearing its end, these are the people who are afraid to reach the end of their journey because they had enjoyed much of the earlier stages of life and would want to freeze Father Time so there will be no end to what they have acquired, enjoyed, and experienced. But if we have built and nurtured our relationship with Whomever we believe Created us, and understand the reason/s why we were created at all, we shall not be afraid of the proximity of the end of our life’s journey for we could look forward to a new beginning, hopefully, when our life on earth comes to an end. To some, particularly the powerful and the successful, the inevitable end of the journey is a thought they would not even want to happen especially at the period when they are reaching their dreams.

To some people, again not all, it is how much or how many they carried through these stages that would influence their answers to the question of the purpose/s of our life’s journey. To others, its more what we want to leave behind to those still going through their own life’s journey, like the ladders left by the early climbers of Mt. Everest, makes the later climber’s efforts easier.

I guess I have long decided to go with the latter than the earlier as I have not read a single book that says we need them in the final stages of our life’s journey. As my soul moves away from my physical body to a previously uncharted course at the end of my life’s journey, I would love to look back and see who went to my funeral, what eulogies or curses they delivered, and those who were happy or cried knowing I have gone.

At this point, I still have to figure out the next stage and therefore do not have a name for it. I just hope I can leave something behind so it would be easier for those I would leave behind. God! I did my best with all the gifts that You have given me! Thank you for everything and forgive me for all the wrong things I have said and done and all the right things I have failed to say or do.

POSTED BY PALABOY NG SYDNEY AT 6:29 AM

TUESDAY, APRIL 6, 2010

I’ve always told myself that when I am no longer marketable for my professional skills, I shall start a career in writing. I would write about everything that I went through my life and hope that I can share the stories to others who may find solace and comfort in the fact that I did survive my life’s journey and touched quite a number of lives along the way.

When I first told this to my closest staff in a New Zealand factory that I used to manage, my friends told me that they would rather wait for the book on my life’s journey, one even further said he would rather wait for the movie.

Of course, it was a joke and its just one of the many light-hearted relationships I have built with the people that have dotted my life’s ups and downs. Funny that at my tender (?) age of 54, scarred and bruised through my life’s journey, I can still hope and dream that I would be able to write some stories that others would care to read in the future. Like many of my small dreams that I reached, I honestly feel that even if my life’s stories inspire only one person before my curtain call, I could consider my life not wasted. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that “To know that even one life breathe easier because you have lived, is the true meaning of success”, and I really believe him.

So here am I at another crossroad of my life’s journey, contemplating on the path that I should take among the options staring at me and waiting for my final choice. I know it would not be hard for me to choose which path to take because I have long set my simple life’s philosophy, that is to choose the path where lesser people will be hurt by my choice and with hope of finding new ways to share my life with those who may need my existence in their own life’s journey. I have gone through such crossroads in my personal and professional life both in the Philippines, New Zealand and Australia and I am happy to look back that I have randomly picked souls who needed me by their side until they no longer needed me. Of course there were people that were hurt and would be hurt by the choices I make, but I guess life is a simple accounting balance sheet, that is, for as long as the debit side far outweigh the credit side, my life would have been a productive journey and The Almighty One who gave me my life and all the skills, talents, and gifts would appreciate the net gain of my earthly existence.

My First Memories

I guess I should start from as far back as my memories would allow and the farthest back that I can recall was when we just moved to a new town east of Manila, Philippines. All I can remember was I had a brother a year older than me named Danny and three more older brothers Ferdie, Rod, and Lauro, in the order that they got involved with my childhood, and I had two sisters, Nene and Ate Belen.

I think I was only five years old then and we lived barely having nothing much but the clothes on our back. Later in life, my older brother Ferdie and sister Ate Belen would tell me the whole story why we ended up poor as a rat and starting over again in a new town.

I can remember the bare existence I came to see facing me right before my eyes but maybe because my young mind has no archives yet, everything were simply amusing to me than anything else, question keep arising in my mind, the whys and wherefores are like captions in every picture that my eyes can compose. Perhaps its because I was gifted by God with a very fertile mind, it kept a vast archive of pictures with captions and questions that I would later use as reference for my future decisions in my my life’s journey. Yes, I consider life more a journey than simply an inevitable existence and I honestly believe that the journey has a definite end.

How I Got to Start School

We were so hard up and my parents and siblings were too busy trying to find a way of living that they forgot that here I was growing up and needing to go through life’s normal channels, like school and careers and society. I remember one day I was relieving myself in our bathroom where I had to face a small window to do so and noticed that there were a lot of children at the big house at the back of our rented room so I asked my eldest sister, who has always been with me at home ever since I can remember, teaching me how to read, write, and mathematics, what is going on at the back house. My sister told me it is the start of the school year and the children are there for their first day in school. I asked my sister if I can be included in that school and that is the only time that they realized that I was already seven years old and needed to be enrolled for my first grade in school. We went to the school and inquired how I can be enrolled and among the requirements was a birth certificate to show that I am already of school age. Again, my family remembered that they have forgotten to get my birth certificate and had to get an alternative baptismal certificate from the Catholic Church. This time, they realized that I also have not been baptized, so my father hurriedly got two of his fellow bus drivers to come and become my baptismal godfathers for a quick ceremony intended simply to comply with the school’s requirements. Luckily, we got the baptismal certificate and I was accepted for my first grade. Later in life I would realize that much of my growing up years, I had to carve my own path and needed to gather as much knowledge, not only in school but in life, so the world was huge encyclopedia to me, with my mind archiving photos and moments in my waking hours and days and years.

My First Job

I did excel in my first grade because my sister had already taught me how to read, write, add, subtract, divide, multiply when I was around five years old, so my teacher decided to use me to teach a student with infected ears, Emilio, our daily lessons, since I was ahead of our lessons courtesy of my sister. This is also because maybe my teacher cannot stand the stinking smell of my classmate Emilio’s infected ear. In addition to this, my first grade teacher, Miss Estanislao, assigned me the task of buying her afternoon tea from a store next-door to our school, a bottle of Royal Tru-Orange and a pack of Skyflakes biscuits. Because we were so poor and we live just next door to my school, I never had any money for my snacks as I eat much at home before school, so I would not need snacks while in school. However, my fertile mind kept asking what the Royal Tru-Orange tastes like that my teacher wants it everyday, so I devised a way to be able to get the answer by sipping a bit from the straw on my way back to school. However, I noticed that every time I do so, bubbles stayed on the part of the straw above the soda line in the bottle, so I had to push them back to the bottom with a blow of air. Perfect, she would not have a clue that I sipped a bit of her soda. There was no way I could have a taste of the Skyflakes biscuits as its packaging was good that there is no way I could tamper with it without getting detected, so I had to accept the fact that I can never taste it so I kept my mind out of this idea. Funny that I have forgotten about this that an intimate friend of mine had told me lately that my age, 54 is actually the exact number of holes in a Skyflakes biscuit. This is an early lesson I would apply in much of my decisions in later years, that is you can achieve something you want without any problems for as long as you cover all the possibilities of the act. Of course, the purpose of the act is another thing, that is the reasons and the necessities of our acts would be dictated by the values and philosophies that we develop through our growing years. In my case, I had to put together all the pieces of the puzzle of life’s values and philosophis from the stories I heard my mother and father, in that order, would tell other people that I keenly listened to and kept a good archive in the back of my mind, hoping someday I can pick some clues from these archives for my future decisions to make in my life.

I did finish first grade at the top of my class and I was even part of the graduation program where I was part of a group that performed the native dance “maglalatik” and went up the stage with my mother pinning the “First Honor” ribbon on my chest. Luckily, a professional photographer snapped a shot of the event and sold the printed copy to my mother and this photo is part of the memoirs of my eldest sister Ate Belen.

The Realities of Life Unfolds

By my second grade in school, my heart and mind still at its purest form, I came face-to-face with pressure from my peers in academic excellence, so to speak. At this early age, I began to see beyond the basics of my social existence. I became aware of the importance of relationships in school, the community, and the world in general that would be critical to the recognition of your own existence. That it is not enough that you can master the lessons of the day in school and you will be assured of a hefty meal and comfortable bed to lay yourself to rest at the end of each day. I started to be see that academic excellence alone cannot be a guarantee of a good life, you need relationships and connections to the decision makers to enhance or at least compensate for whatever shortfalls you may have in your skills and capabilities, and that is what I did not have being a total stranger in this town with no known roots except my affinity to my uncle Martin, who runs a small bus company where my father worked as a bus driver and my brothers as bus conductors, bus inspectors, and carwash (actually bus washer) workers.

At this time, I came to realize that parental support in the community is a plus factor for being recognized in school as I saw relationships between my closest rival for the top honors in the class and their parents’ relationships with the teachers and staff of the public school i was attending. Somehow, their families knew each other while they have never heard of us except when the bell rings when they hear my family name, Manahan, and they tend to remember my uncle Martin, who owns the bus company aptly named Happy Valley. So, even though I am standing right in front of them, I do not seem to be someone or something of value except for reminding them of my uncle Martin, who owns the bus company. Almost always, the introduction ends with them remembering my uncle Martin than taking a closer look at me and my skills and achievements in school.

These hard realities of my early existence somehow distracted me from pursuing “academic excellence” and I started to focus on my relationships and existence in the community. This is the time I started to scout for people who could posssibly provide me the support that I would need in order to be recognized for my skills and cabilities. Having lost the focus on achieving “academic excellence”, so to speak, I slid into the second best in my second grade. I could not care any less who gets the top honors, I was busy head-hunting allies who could rescue me from being swallowed by the system. I looked around me then and realized there was no one I could hang on to for support in the school and community. I seriously considered establishing a personal relationship with the pharmacist on the shop next to our rented house because I had always liked the way she had carried herself, her kind words everytime we meet and the dignified way she dealt with her customers. But I never had the courage to get closer to her than sit in front of the pharmacy with my dog, Douglas. It was post World War II and almost every dog in the Philippines was named Douglas, after the saviour of the Philippines, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, with his welll remembered line “I Shall Return”.

On the other hand, my second grade teacher Miss Edna Jocson, the aunt of my classmate Nida Jocson, was always being fetched by her suitor, Mr. Cruz, also a teacher at the intermediate school across the block. So I never had a chance to even try to get closer to her and introduce myself as the son of a poor couple with much talent and skills in our daily lessons. Miss Jocson and Mrs. Cruz eventually got married and my second grade teacher became Mrs. Cruz. Mr. Cruz later became my gardening teacher in the intermediate grade. Again, he never remembered me as a former student of his new wife Mrs. Cruz.

By the third grade, I was lucky to have an old-fashioned single teacher Ms. Senga, who finally recognized my skills again and gave me all the advise I needed to refocus on achieving high grades in my academic studies. She further boosted my self-confidence by making me her student assistant in charge of distributing textbooks to my classmates and getting them back into the bookshelves after use. At the end of the school year, long after I have finished third grade, she would ask me to help her do the inventory of the textbooks issued to her for her third-grade classes and return them to the property custodian of the public primary school.

(pssssttt!, “this would be a long story, i am just in the first ten years of the 55 years i have used up and still using, so you have to wait patiently till I find time to continue, thanks for keeping me company, I promise I shall continue and finish this piece long before yours and my own life’s journey end”

POSTED BY PALABOY NG SYDNEY AT 6:32 AM

March 30, 2010 at 2:30pm

FIRST NOVENA PRAYER IN HONOR OF OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL HELP

Behold at thy feet, 0 Mother of Perpetual Help, a wretched sinner who has recourse to thee and confides in thee. 0 Mother of mercy, have pity on me.

I hear thee called by all the refuge and the hope of sinners: be then, my refuge and my hope. Assist me, for the love of Jesus Christ; stretch forth thy hand to a miserable fallen creature who recommends himself to thee, and who devotes himself to thy service for ever.

I bless and thank Almighty God, who in His mercy has given me this confidence in thee, which I hold to be a pledge of my eternal salvation.

It is true that in the past I have miserably fallen into sin, because I had not recourse to thee. I know that, with thy help, I shall conquer.

I know. too, that thou wilt assist me, if I recommend myself to thee; but I fear that, in time of danger, I may neglect to call on thee, and thus lose my soul.

This grace, then, I ask of thee, and this I beg, with all the fervor of my soul, that in all the attacks of hell I may ever have recourse to thee. 0 Mary, help me. 0 Mother of Perpetual Help, never suffer me to lose my God.-----3 Hail Marys.

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SECOND NOVENA PRAYER TO OUR MOTHER OF PERPETUAL HELP

0 Mother of Perpetual Help, grant that I may ever invoke thy most powerful name, which is the safeguard of the living and the salvation of the dying. 0 purest Mary, 0 sweetest Mary, let thy name henceforth be ever on my lips. Delay not, 0 Blessed Lady, to help me, whenever I call on thee; for, in all my temptations, in all my needs, I shall never cease to call on thee, ever repeating thy sacred name, Mary, Mary.

0 what consolation, what sweetness, what confidence, what emotion, fill my soul when I utter thy sacred name, or even only think of thee. I thank the Lord for having given thee, for my good so sweet, so powerful, so lovely a name. But I will not be content with merely uttering thy name. Let my love for thee prompt me ever to hail thee, Mother of Perpetual Help.---3 Hail Marys.

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THIRD NOVENA PRAYER TO OUR MOTHER OF PERPETUAL HELP

0 Mother of Perpetual Help, thou art the dispenser of all the gifts which God grants to us miserable sinners; and for this end He has made thee so powerful, so rich, and so bountiful, in order that thou mayest help us in our misery. Thou art the advocate of the most wretched and abandoned sinners who have recourse to thee: come to my aid, for I recommend myself to thee.

In thy hands I place my eternal salvation, and to thee I entrust my soul. Count me among thy most devoted servants; take me under thy protection, and it is enough for me. For, if thou protect me, I fear nothing; not from my sins, because thou wilt obtain for me the pardon of them; nor from the devils, because thou art more powerful than all hell together; nor even from Jesus, my judge, because by one prayer from thee He will be appeased.

But one thing I fear: that in the hour of temptation I may through negligence fail to have recourse to thee and thus perish miserably. Obtain for me, therefore, the pardon of my sins, love for Jesus, final perseverance, and the grace ever to have recourse to thee, O Mother of Perpetual Help.-----3 Hail Marys.

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O Lord Jesus Christ, who gave us your Mother Mary, whose renowned image we venerate, to be a Mother ever ready to help us; grant we beseech You, that we who constantly implore her motherly aid, may merit to enjoy perpetually the fruits of Your redemption, Who lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen.

REMEMBER, O MOST GRACIOUS VIRGIN MARY, THAT NEVER WAS IT KNOWN THAT ANYONE WHO FLED TO THY PROTECTION OR SOUGHT THY AID WAS LEFT UNAIDED......

April 3, 2011 at 10:39am

'He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.

Hinde Pa ! College Graduate na Ako Noong 1970 Nang Magsimula ang Dagat nang Basura

March 31, 2010 at 6:24pm

One of the false claims of Agent Orange to have swam through the sea of garbarge in Pasig River in his childhood. This was again confirmed by his wife, supposed to be a honorable member of the lower house, in a television interview by Karen Davila (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pVXNowfQWo).

The following historical facts proves the fallacy of his claim. Hindi pa siya nakaligo sa 'dagat nang basura' dahil college graduate na siya noong magsimulang maging 'dagat nang basura' ang Pasig River. Up to his teens in 1962, Pasig River was still clean and still being used for bathing and laundry.

'Early life and education (Agent Orange)

Manuel Bamba Villar, Jr. was born on December 13, 1949 in tondo, an impoverished and densely populated district of Manila.[1] He was the second of the nine children of his parents.[2] His father, Manuel Montalban Villar, Sr., was a government employee from Cabatuan, Iloilo, and his mother Curita Bamba was a seafood vendor from Orani, Bataan.[1] The family lived in a small rented apartment in a run down slum area, and later transferred to a house in San Rafael Village.[3]

Private Catholic School 1950s

Private Catholic School 1950s

As a child, Villar attended Holy Child Catholic School (1949+7 = 1956, Grade I +7 = 1963), a private Catholic school in Tondo.[4] He also assisted his mother in selling shrimp and fish at the Divisoria Public Market in order to help earn the money to support his siblings and himself to school.[1] He finished his high school education (1963+4 = 1967) at the Mapúa Institute of Technology in Intramuros.[4] He attended the University of the Philippines - Diliman and earned his bachelor's degree in business administration in 1970.[4] He returned to the same school to earn his master's degree in business administration in 1973.[4] He later characterized himself as being impatient with formal schooling, and eager to start working and go into business.[5] '

--- Excerpts from Wikipedia, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manny_Villar)

Pasig River in the 1960s

Pasig River in the 1960s

' Pollution increase (Pasig River)

After World War II, massive population growth, infrastructure construction, and the dispersal of economic activities to Manila's suburbs left the river abandoned. The banks of the river attracted informal settlers and remaining factories dumped their wastes into the river, making it effectively a huge sewer system.[3]

The increasing pollution in the river was first noticed in the 1930s when it was observed that fish migration from Laguna de Bay diminished. People ceased using the river's water for laundry in the 1960s and ferry transport declined. By the 1970s, the river started to give offensive smells and in the 1980s, fishing in the river became nonviable. Pasig River was considered biologically dead in the 1990s.[3] '

Excerpts from Wikipedia, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasig_River)

Meanwhile, an Asian Development Bank study reveals that Pasig River was still clean from the 1950s till the 1960 and started (take note started, meaning was still clean till the late 1960s) to deteriorate in the 1970s (from the above excerpt, Agent Orange graduated from the University of the Philippines in 1970).

Dagat nang Basura 1970s

Dagat nang Basura 1970s

' Deterioration of the Pasig River became noticeable during the 1930s when fish migration from Laguna de Bay started to diminish. Between 1950 and 1960, people's bathing and washing activities in the Pasig River obviously dropped. During this time, ferry boat transport also began to decline. By the 1970s, the river had begun to smell bad and, in the 1980s, all fishing activities stopped. '

Excerts from Urban Innovations: The Grand Canal of Pasig, Asian Development Bank (http://www.adb.org/Documents/Information/Urban-Innovations/Urban-Development/Grand-Canal-Pasig.asp)

Conclusion:

Therefore, Agent Orange was still a boy in the mid-1950s when Pasig River was still being used for washing ang bathing, was already a teenager in the early 1960s when the Pasig River is still being used for washing and bathing, although starting to decline, and finally, was already a college graduate when Pasig River started to develop into a 'Dagat nang Basura' in the 1970s, not during his childhood in the 1950s to the 1960s.

Lesson: You can fool some people, sometime, But you cannot fool all the people all the time.

May 3, 2010 at 6:36pm

As a requiem to the campaign period for the Presidential Elections 2010, it would pay to look back in hindsight the reasons why Manny Villar failed to convince the Filipino voters, particularly the really marginalized sector that he hoped will catapult him into the presidency.

Error No. 1. He underestimated the campaign of Joseph 'Erap' Estrada, with whom he shares the sentiments of the poor Filipino voters and thought that he could garner all their support in his favor to outbid Benigno 'Noynoy' Aquino III for the presidency. With both of Villar and Estrada now sharing 20% each, their combined support would have been enough to hurdle Aquino's 39% support base as of the last SWS Survey in mid-April 2010. Perhaps we could blame this on the immature advise he got from his closed group of young Senators and Congressmen in his team. Or if we could give them more credentials, we could blame it on his own influence on the decisions of his team, if we have to look at this failure from a different angle.

Error No. 2. Villar effectively used his advertising campaign but only managed to gain 'name recall' out of the billions of pesos he spent for his television advertisements with such powerful casts that include Dolphy, Manny Pacquiao, and Willie Revillame. Villar failed to include real and true messages into his campaign advertisements that when the veracity of his claims on his poor beginnings, swim in the sea of garbage, and the death of his brother due to lack of money, the lies stuck to the 'name recall' that his tv ads had successfully achieved. The 'name recall' in effect helped people remember that he has lied in his tv commercials. The 'name recall' was so effective that even Baby James blurted out his name during a campaign sortie of Aquino. However, it is how people remember you that matters in gaining their support and in this instance, people recall his name for the lies he made in his tv ads.

Error No. 3. He underestimated the power of the middle class which supported Aquino and who are the employers of most of his marginalized support base that had swung back and forth between Villar and Estrada, as can be noted in the rise in the support of Estrada everytime Villar's support dwindles.

Error No. 4. His standard reply to questions on issues of corruption in the C-5 Extension Project, the PSE meeting that helped launch the IPO for his holding company and his unloading of his shares one week before the crash of the IPO price which raked his group over 23 billion pesos at the expense of the investors who were sucked into the IPO of his holding company with the PSE, that these issues are simply politically motivated, did not hold water with the glaring confirmations of the events. Again, his standard reply was swallowed hook-line-and-sinker by his supporters from the marginalized sector but did not hold water with their employers in the middle class.

Error No. 5. His use of his mother, Aling Curing, to defend his lies also lost him support from the main support base as it was a totally opposed to the way Estrada shielded his mother, Dona Mary, through all the emotional and physical pain his ouster and eventual conviction for plunder would bring. Again, Villar did not recognize that he and Estrada were fighting for the support of the same group of voters from the marginalized sector.

Error No. 6. When he allowed Gilbert Remulla to meet the older Ampatuan in March 2010, in a desperate move to gain what Companero Alan Peter Cayetano termed as 'block votes', followed by the reversal of support of the younger Ampatuan from Villar to Aquino, which no Filipino voter would believe, unless they lived in a mental institution, Villar alienated himself from the vast majority of Filipinos, who condemned the Maguindanao Massacre.

Error No. 7. When he attacked Aquino personally with two fake psychiatric reports, he showed his irreverence to Aquino's martyred father, Benigno 'Ninoy' Aquino, Jr. and his late mother, Corazon 'Cory' Aquino, a fatal mistake not to acknowledge that one of the best traits of the Filipino is 'utang na loob'. Villar failed to realize that the Filipino people loved the Aquinos, if only for the sacrifices made by Aquino's parents for the restoration of democracy in the Philippines after over twenty years of martial rule by the late Ferdinand Marcos. Had he analyzed the life and love of Kris Aquino, Villar would have recognized and respected this deep love of the Filipino people for the Aquino family, out of 'utang na loob'. Kris Aquino has made disastrously serious mistakes in her personal and public life that would have been fatal to the career of any other public personality. But the fact that Kris Aquino survived all her personal and public crisis and remains the most sought after product endorser today, proves that the Filipino people has forgiven and will always forgive Kris on all of her past mistakes and wants her to stay with them in their daily lives.

By and large, these seven sins of Manny Villar sealed the fate of his ambition to take over Malacanang in 2010.

Sad knowing that Villar has gained much of where he is now from the millions of Filipinos who supported his business interests in the past.

25 June 2013,

Who we really are and who we should be.

In the course of our lives, we learn, we experience, we achieve, we fail, we enjoy, we endure, we look back and look forward only to find out who we really are from the very beginning. All the education, the values, the principles we gain are simply guides in finding out who we really are and what we really should be. The final years of our lives should be spent being what we really are and not what we were supposed to be according to norms and benchmarks of society. Lucky are those who were able to define themselves early in life as they have more time to enjoy and share their being with others that mattered most to them and spent time only on what is truly important.

20 May 2013,

My God, Why me?

When the worst comes our way we usually ask God: "Why me? I have been faithful?" But when we are Blessed with all the good things in life like beauty, brain, good fortune, we never ask the same question. Fortunately for me I once asked that question why I had the gifts bestowed to me a long time ago. Why me? The answer is because these Gifts if given to the greedy, the unkind, the wicked, will not be shared with the peopke whose lives I have touched.

21 November 2012,

Taking the less travelled path.

Sometimes, if not most of the time, I thought other people around me think the same way I do, forgetting that I did not take the tread-beaten path, usually where the grass can no longer grow from the countless feet that have taken this path. In most cases, those who took this tread-beaten path ended up reaching the same destination at taking this short, uneventful and safe route.

I took a less travelled path where the grass can still go greener and faced up to the challenges of each step, some battles I won, some I lost.

Today, looking back in hindsight, I am happy just knowing I did survive with my humanity intact.

I just hope my children will later understand it all when they reach the crossroads of their lives, hopefully not as difficult as the choices I had to make tomake their own life journeys less complicated.

There are times in our lives when things happen differently from what we have either planned or expected. Sometimes, we react wrongly to the frustrations and eventually bounced off tangent from our original intened path or direction. I guess the reason for all of these is that we do not really have full control of all the things that evolve in our lives, from childhood till parenthood.

I remember having planned my life while in college, after the Diliman Commune in January 1971 and after i joined a college fraternity. I have figured out that at 21, after college, I shall start my career at the bottom pit of the corporate hierarchy and stay 2-3 years at the most as a clerk/staff. I have to be a supervisor on my 3rd or 4th year of my professional career and spend another 2-3 years in a supervisory job and by the time I marry at age 27, I should be grooming myself to be a manager before the age of 30. I realized this when I noticed job advertisements for managerial positions always indicate an age requirement between 30-35 years old. Meaning if you do not make it in a managerial position after 35, you are a goner in the job market.

I have planned to marry at the age of 27 and marry and sire my first born to a 24 year old woman, have my first baby at 28, and have the second child 4 years later, planning for the worst that I cannot support two children at the same time going to college so the four-year space would give me a breathing spell that my first born has finished her four-year college education before the second child enters the university. Hoping for the best but planning for the worst became my personal strategy in all my future endeavours.

It would have been an ideal life that I would have coasted along at age 52 when my second child would have finished her four-year college education and hopefully would have retired from employment and started my business, with two college graduates to help me out. The reason for this is that my own mother died at age 66 and I was planning a life up to the same age, although there are reasons to wish that I live beyond 66 years.

As much as we plan our lives, life alters itself at certain points that in younger years, we look at as frustrating failures. Little do we realize when we were young that when life alters itself, it is actually God changing your life direction, regardless how well meaning and how well we plan our lives.

To be able to discern this, we would have established a very close personal relationship with our God and usually, this happens ony after a series of setbacks and we are left with no other recourse except Divine Mercy and Providence. Then and only then we realize our human limits and accept the will of God.

When life alters itself, we should look at it as an opportunity to know ourselves and acknowledge the wisdom of the reasons why we get off-tangent from our human aspirations. At this point, we should start accepting the Divine Will of God in our lives and discern these more as a benediction for our human imperfections from our God.

The color of God is purple, when you see a real purple sunset, God is letting you know he is still around us.

It takes a lot of courage to let go of your loved ones, if only to save them from the protracted struggle with your estranged partner. Unless you have Faith in Divine Providence, you will not be confident that in the end, God will take care of the things you have been deprived of the chance to do for your children.

There will come a point in our lives when we have to look back at the past and ask ourselves how well we have lived our lives. The lives we have touched, the souls we have saved, the inequalities we have balanced, and the conflicts we have resolved. Whatever we see behind us would make us confident or afraid of the imminent end of the life lease. How much have we really done to make our lives meaningful?

Charity has its own downturns, some people whom you may have showered with your benevolence would even think that the reason for such acts is your gullibility to their pretensions, again at the end of it all, it is between you and your God.

I have gone to where there are no defined roads that others did not dare venture to, I had hoped that my footsteps will leave a trail behind that others may follow. My friends and family may not understand the wisdom behind it, but in the end it is between me and my God.

Our life's philosophies and principles we gain from our own personal experiences, something not even your family would really understand the whys and the wherefores, but at the end of the day, it is between me and my God, not with anyone else.

I left New Zealand and the earthquake followed, I left Australia and the great floods followed, with enough Faith, we should really override our human instincts for material gains with the power of our intuition. It is through our intuition that God communicates with us. Similarly, I dissuaded a dear friend from going to Japan to work for the money, she relented and the earthquake, tsunami and the imminent nuclear meltdown followed, what better proof of being in the Potter's Hands with your Faith?

Just before the 25th Anniversary of the EDSA People Power Revolution, now senator Bongbong Marcos facetitiously said that had his father, the late Ferdinand Marcos, not been ousted in 1986, he would have turned the Philippines into the next Singapore.

Quite sad, for such brilliant minds to have such distorted views of history and social responsibilities.  Had he seen Philippine history with a very objective mind, he would have seen a golden opportunity to rise above his father's unused grave. 

Had Bongbong Marcos, Senator been true to his calling, that is to redeem the tarnished view of Filipinos on his late father and the rest of the marcos and romualdez families (from his mother's side), he could have taken this golden opportunity to rise to the level of a statesman ready for the presidency in the next elections. 

If only Bongbong Marcos, Senator read Philippine history correctly, before, during and after his father's two decades of rule, he would have instead said ' Had my father not been president of the Philippines, Singapore would not have grabbed the stature of the Philippines in Southeast Asia as second only to Japan in terms of economy'.  Prior to his late father becoming president, the Philippine Peso was almost at par with the Australian Dollar today vis-a-vis the US Dollar and far more valuable than the Singaporean Dollar at a stable exchange rate of P2 to US$1.  I knew it because I was already 12 years old when his late father became president for the first term. The Philippines was second only to Japan in terms of economic activities, only because the United States has infused US1Billion into the Japanese economy after the end of World War II for reparations on the effects of the two atomic bombs that were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, otherwise, Japan would have been second only to the Philippines in terms of economic activity. 

As a young boy,  I came to be aware of the late Ferdinand Marcos, who my own father idolized at the time after he defended himself while in prison against the murder charge on the late Julio Nalundasan, the opponent of Bongbong Marcos's grandfather in the elections.  My father so idolized the late Ferdinand Marcos that he named a brother Ferdinand himself.  So I was always aware of the late Ferdinand Marcos as a young boy.

I have chronicled the political life of Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. up until I went to the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Q.C. in 1970.  At that time the National Union of Students of the Philippines President, Edgar Jopson, was questioning then president Marcos if he intends to extend his term after his second term lapses and Marcos was so angry that he blurted out, who is this son of a grocer who would question me, yip yip yip, yak yak yak.  The following year, students took over the UP Diliman Campus in January 1971, the start of peope power movement to protest the obvious decline of the Philippine economy due to massive corruption in government infrastructure deals.  A year later in September 1972, Ferdinand Marcos Sr. declared martial law, as feared by then NUSP President Edgar Jopson in 1970.

Edgar Jopson, would later be killed by military operatives and shot in the face, to sow fear on any other citizen wanting to oppose the Marcos martial law regime.  More militant students soon followed the late Edgar Jopson, including eminent members of the UP academe that included now Communist Party Chairman, Benito Tiamzon, a scholar of then Senate President Jovito Salonga, Nilo Tayag, Professor Posadas, Romulo Kintanar, Popoy Lagman, and many more unknown nationalist students belonging to the Kabataang Makabayan (KM) and Samahan nang Demokratikong Kabataan (SDK) where I was a member with Benito Tiamzon, son of a rice farmer,  who is a childhood friend in Marikina City.

If only Bongbong Marcos, Senator, visits the Bantayog nang Mga Bayani in Quezon Avenue, Quezon City, he might perhaps understand the cost of the struggle to free the people from the chains of his late father's martial rule that enthroned their families among the oligarchs that his late father promised to eliminate, albeit, joined their ranks.

It would have been very nice to hear if Bongbong Marcos, Senator, would have instead delivered a speech before the 25th Anniversary of the People Power Revolution that toppled his late dictator father, along this line:

"I am Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., son of former president Ferdinand E. Marcos, and now a duly elected Senator of the Philippine Congress.  I thank everyone here today for giving me the opportunity to let you know how I have grown up and discerned the events of the last four decades that started when I was a young boy growing up in Malacanang Palace along the Pasig River.

As a young boy, I did not understand the whys and the wherefores of me growing up in a sheltered environment and enjoying the comforts of life that the average Filipino dies dreaming of.  I have gone through life and carved my own future hoping to emulate my late father's vision of a New Society for the Philippines.

Events of the 1986 Revolution have sort of given me the wider perspective of the whys and wherefores of my comfortable life that to this day, even my children are reaping he benefits of as well as the children of my siblings.  Perhaps, to some mediocre minds, it would be better for me to stay in the background and enjoy all t riches and comforts that our money can buy us.

I have chosen to run for the Senate of the Philippines and thank everyone who helped catapult me to a very honorable seat in the Senate of the Philippines.  After 25 years since we were flown out of Malacanang Palace, it is only now that I have realized that despite the good intentions of my late father, to lead the Philippines to a better and new society, many lives and limbs were lost, many brilliant minds were snuffed out, and many children were orphaned in the struggle to oppose my late father's rule.

Forgive me for having realized the pains and agonies that were inflicted on so many lives only now.  I have my own human limitations and imperfections, but I am proud to tell you that despite all of these, I still have the heart of a Filipino.  I, therefore, Bongbong Marcos, Senator of the Republic of the Philippines, humbly ask for forgiveness from all the families who have been hurt along the way.  My father was a Machiavellian and believes that the end justifies the means.  Although this is one of the important philosophies I have learned, it is not necessarily the best philosophy to lead a nation.

I have run for the Senate of the Republic of the Philippines with the future hope that I may be able to run for President, this time, to rectify all the ills and wrongs that have been institutionalized during the martial rule of my late father.  I do not intend to desecrate the memory of my late father, however, he having had a brilliant mind, I know he would understand that I am merely following his footsteps, but using a different philosophy, not the Machiavellian way.

I promise to utilize all the resources within my reach to heal the hurt, pain and sufferings of those who were victims of human rights violations during my late father's martial rule.  I hope you would help me along the way.

I will see you again in 2016 and hope you will give me the same trust and confidence that you have given to our new generation of leaders.

Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., Senator, Republic of the Philippines"

 ...... to be continued