Atheista -

I read a post at Pinoyexchange boldly proclaiming that some publishing house had the planner could ultimately trounce the Starbucks planner. The press release was a bit off-putting due to its seemingly targeted and boisterous nature but I decided to give it a go anyway. I had nothing to lose and planner to gain.

Speaking of lofty promises, the cover definitely follows up on that very off-putting premise. I don’t anyone who would proudly take this planner around and claim that it can go to toe-to-toe with a Starbucks planner. Why will it change your life? According to the content, all proceeds for this journal are going to the building of wells and schools, and the  planting of trees all over the world.  It sounds well-meaning and noble but when you factor in how cynical this generation is and how we all clamor for transparency in everything that we’re involved in, the message is quite vague. The URL of a site is supplied but it’s hardly the reputable charity or organization that would command instant credibility. While it’s not really a knock against the planner, what could have been a strong selling point for the product was lost due to insufficient substantiation and the use of motherhood statements. Continue Reading »

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photo by Ian Castañares

Thanks in large part to Wesoid and Harry, I was able to get a few hours off to attend the much anticipated launch of Up Dharma Down‘s sophomore album Bipolar. The records comes almost three years after the release their ground breaking debut Fragmented that saw the band gain accolades from mainstream music junkies as well as the hard-to-please music critics. Staying true to the their established style of textured arrangements and use of electronic samples, Bipolar comes across a richer and more cohesive collection of songs that combines both the familiar and left-of-center elements. Although it’s hard to even conceive the idea that vast improvements could still be attained after Fragmented but the general vibe of Bipolar lends an even more satisfying and transcendent musical experience. You can literally hear elements of rock, metal, electronica, blues and the lesser known subgenres of trip hop and post rock infused in some of the tracks.

The Hexagon Lounge at RCBC Tower provided a very intimate atmosphere for fans to hear the songs off Bipolar for the first time. Ian and I came early (around 7:30 PM) so we were able to squeeze ourselves to a nice spot just in front of the stage. I also had the chance to finally meet legendary Pinoyexchange poster loc0 (Carlo) after almost a decade of participating in the Music and Radio threads. The event was originally slated to start at 8:00 PM so by the time the gates were closed at 9:00, the venue was already packed and dozens of people were left waiting outside. I’ve had a similar bad experience when I showed up late for a Wolfgang “reunion” (read: minus Wolf) gig at Peligro a few years back so I knew better than to not take such call times seriously. Continue Reading »

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cross posted at Filipino  Voices

The Philippine General Hospital by virtue of being the largest government hospital serves more than 600 000 patients every year. Most of these patients are those who can’t really afford the high cost of health care in private hospitals and are left to duke it out with the limited beds and medical personnel in PGH. As big as PGH is and as enormous the government subsidy is for the hospital, the resources and manpower are definitely stretched to the breaking point. Despite having a steady supply of extra hands from the robust studentry of the UP College of Medicine and UP College of Nursing, logistical and financial limitations routinely frustrate both patients and health care providers.

Patients don’t have to pay doctors in PGH. Every patient who enters the hospital as a charity case will never be asked a professional fee no matter what the treatment for him/her will require. Even if one was to have an emergency surgery or spend weeks in intensive  care, no doctor will ever get even one cent from any patient. Unfortunately, treatment requires more than having the doctor lay his/her hands on the patient. For every move the doctor makes, he will likely require a diagnostic test in the form of laboratory or imaging procedures. Relative  to other healthcare delivery  facility, the discounted rates in PGH are probably among the lowest in the country but a considerable amount of patients still find paying for this relatively cheap services challenging. I’ve been forced to shell out some money to facilitate labs and I’m pretty sure that this is a very familiar story for a lot of med students.

It doesn’t stop there. The medicine is obviously not dispensed for free. Doctors in PGH double as social workers and philantropists in an effort to maintain the best possible standard of care in the face of really trying financial dilemmas. I’ve seen residents shell out thousands of pesos to pay for a patient’s hemodialysis. Medical representatives unwittingly help patients when they give doctors free drug samples. These colorfully packed brochures with one or two tablets eventually find their way to the bedsides of needy patients. Continue Reading »

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you’re probably aware that the US General Election is just around the corner. Given the electoral college system that the US employs, the goal for Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama is to carry a number of states that would allow them to come up with the necessary amount of electoral votes. The magic number for the US election is 270.

Four years ago, George Bush handily beat John Kerry 286 to 252. This was an especially traumatic blow to the Democrats considering how close they came to victory back in 2000 – Al Gore ‘lost’ to George Bush by about 500 votes in Florida thus swinging the final tally at 271 to 266. It’s also worth mentioning that Gore actually won the popular vote that year.

Winning and losing elections boil down to protecting states that are traditionally aligned towards a particular party and aggressively attempting to capture so-called swing or battleground states. These states are areas wherein the deficit between the supporters of the two parties are workable enough to merit allocation resources and valuable campaign time.

As it stands now,  Obama is poised to win the general election and if current trends hold, we  may very well see a landslide of Clintonesque proportions. According to CNN projections, the senator from Illinois just needs one more battleground state to clinch magic number while McCain needs to win every single one (and keep all the red states) to stand a chance.

But what if the rest of the world were to be given an opportunity to vote? Would the outcome be any different? Well, yes and no. No in the sense that Obama will still win. But here’s the big difference – it would be a literal landslide of apocalyptic proportions.

The Economist – easily the favorite publication of debaters worldwide — has assigned electoral votes proportional to a country’s population. Less populous countries like Fiji get three electoral votes while the more populous countries get to have 1,588 (India) and 1,900 in China’s case. Since the Philippines  is the 12th most populous nation in the world, we get 132 imaginary votes.

Just  look at that map! Save for three little smidgens of pink and red, the entire world is on the blue side. For those keeping tabs at home, the three countries that are leaning McCain’s way are the Eastern European nations of Macedonia, Moldova and of course, Georgia. All the rest are heavily slanted towards Obama and Biden. The score? Obama/Biden 8571 McCain/Palin 23.

You can still vote. As of this posting, Obama was leading 79% to McCain 21% among Filipino voters.

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The 2nd Annual Philippine Blog Awards definitely had  a  lot more media coverage relative to its predecessor. Aside from having representatives from TV stations (GMA 7/ QTV and TV5) new media content providers also joined in. Flippish put together this pretty cool video about the Blog Awards featuring some of the bloggers in attendance last September 21. I think I was on from 2:44 to 3:04. Hehe

The Filippish PBA Video

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