Dirty Politics

I am not well-rounded when it comes to politics but through writing I will try it once.

A friend from the Philippines informed me about Arroyo’s admission of calling a particular Comelec (Commission on Elections) official regarding the turnout of last year’s presidential elections. Before that, my mother told me about the accusations being blamed to Arroyo’s husband, which were the same accusations that led to the ouster of former president Erap Estrada.

I am not turning partisan to either sides but please let me express what I am thinking right now.

It is quite shameful for the country to have these kinds of exposes. Having the highest official of the land conversing with a Comelec official during the canvassing of votes leads the common tao (Tagalog for “people”) none other than to think that there is a cheating underway. The power of the chief executive need not be expressed in horsepower or whatsoever physical unit. It is clearly understood by everyone as influence-her influence to make the election turnout yield to her side. Yes, yes, the accused is innocent unless proven guilty. But in the first place, just only for the sake of a clear conscience, she should not engage herself in these kinds of conversation. I believe that even though an election is an obvious manifestation of democracy-power of the people to voice out their opinion. It is in my solemn belief that God’s intervention, especially in this Catholic nation in Southeast Asia, is not just a small thing to take for granted. What I mean is, whoever is governing the Philippines in the Malacañang Palace at any given time has been selected or should I say, allowed by the Almighty to lead His Filipino people. Most of you will react, how about the not so good presidents? I would just say that they were also included in God’s plan to shape our little country. Remember that in the book of Job, God let the Devil send pestilence and misfortunes to Job-so that Job’s loyalty and faith to God be put on a test.

On wire-tapping

I am not sure if we should thank the wire-tapping technology for exposing these tapped conversations of Arroyo and Garci. Yes, may be for this instance, wire-tapping or in a more general term, spying, on someone else’s conversation helped the Filipino people know their president more. But on a general viewpoint, it is still an invasion of an individual’s privacy. It now gives me an idea how unsafe it is in this modern age of wireless technology. This leads me to think that this is not just the first time that Arroyo has been eavesdropped of her calls. Not even Arroyo was the first “victim” of this form of treachery. See how the Devil works by using what Man calls technology.

The Husband

I also feel shame (once again) for Arroyo, especially with what her husband is allegedly doing. I am not a member of any prosecution or defense panels but given that all allegations to Mike Arroyo were true, how shameful of him to repeat history that once overthrew Erap? They know that their critics are all eyes on them, and why still they have the guts to engage themselves in the collections from illegal gambling?

The Widow

I had never been a fan of Susan Roces but this is not the reason for me writing this portion of today’s article.

I was never impressed that someone who has no experience with politics will be righteous enough to take over millions of Filipinos under him or her. As I always heard from people before last year’s presidential election, “Yeah, he might be innocent with corruption and dirty politics. But it would be the advisers and people who would treat themselves as wise that would sweep FPJ away from having a clean administration.” I don’t know what made FPJ change his previous statement saying that never he would run for elections. And now, even after his death, his widow is trying her best to act the best role of her life.

Oh, well. May be it is the same reason that made Arroyo crap her nationwide announcement before that she herself won’t run for the seat anymore.

* I know many people might react positively or negatively with what I’ve written. Well, there are many ways to reach me.

遅刻！遅刻！(Chikoku! Chikoku!)* **

Whew! I slept early last night but I ended up almost running to school for my 10 o'clock seminar. My fault was I forgot to set the clock to wake me up before ten. Thursdays are usually my school-free day but as we are having this special lecture series for the week, my ever-loved Thursday has not been spared. My mobile phone has a wake up function set at 10 am and its sound was the one that woke me up.

My goodness! It's exactly 10 o'clock. I was wondering why the clock didn't rang but I immediately remembered that I was not able to set it. This would be my latest late in the whole lecture series. It was so shameful to the lecturer. I immediately got dressed up and brushed my teeth without eating anything and run to the street to wait for a cab. I'd rather shell out about a thousand yen just to buy a few minutes off instead of riding a bike. But heavens, no taxi had been passing for the five minutes that I'd been staying in the street. I decided to just go to school by bicycle then as I had no other choice.

The lecturer seemed to be anticipating my delayed arrival. He didn't erase the lecture notes on the board and he kept on writing stuffs in the remaining small spaces on the board. May be he knew that I could not understand much Japanese from his explanations and that I was only relying on any lecture notes that I could copy. My assumption got stronger as he started to erase what were written on the board as I begun to copy them a few minutes ago. Too bad, there was a professor attending the lecture for the day and he knows me. He might tell my professor that I arrived half-an-hour late in today's lecture.

I was not able to escape the temptation of feeling sleepy during the lecture. But I managed to keep myself awake as soon as I detected my drowsiness.

It was already lunchtime and I decided to have lunch in the university cafeteria instead of going home to save time and to make sure that I won't be late again as the lecture resumes in the afternoon. But as I finished my meal, my tummy felt awkward so I had no choice but to rush home.

I really like rushing so to keep the long story short, I arrived one minute late to the lecture venue. Not that bad as the lecture was just about to start the second leg of the lecture.

He dismissed us half-an-hour ahead of schedule. It was so nice, as I could go home earlier. As I was on my way home, I was thinking of downloading and installing Vine Linux in my computer so I can use Japanese Latex at home. Aside from that, I felt inspired to resume doing my composition writing homework in Japanese. Although I already have almost half-a-dozen of unsubmitted compositions for correction, I particularly finished my article about my family as I am planning to upload it in my home page. I was really inspired as I surprisingly ended up with at least three pages! Upon going back my Thai friend asked me how to cook "turon saging" which he began to like when I served it during our cherry blossom viewing last spring. As he was not still having his dinner by that time, and me craving for another dinner as I had mine at about five in the afternoon, went to the nearby noodle shop and sipped some hot soup and hearty noodle bowl.

After going back from the noodle shop, I revised my personal homepage by uploading my article about the family with its English translation. I am planning to upload most of my Japanese compositions and translate them to English (and eventually to Tagalog and Spanish) little by little so that I will have a bilingual personal home page when I finish it.

Got to take a look at my old blog site here in Angelfire and I noticed that I had better articles here than those in my blogspot account. Now I am confused as I have three blog accounts: this, the one in blogspot, and the one in multiply (not to mention the one in Friendster that I have no plans of developing.) Oh well, as you can see, I added another entry in my web log in Angelfire.

Hope to keep it active again. OK, gotta go... I really need to work on the report that I need to submit to the lecturer later today.

* "I'm late! I'm late!" in Japanese. From Rei Ayanami's line in Ep. 26 of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion.
** Originally posted in my Angelfire web blog on the same date.

My passion for missionary work under scrutiny

I slept a bit too late for the night or should I say too early for the day... approximately past 4 am to give you an idea. I am not really helping myself overcome my developing insomnia but I really need someone to talk to. A good friend kept me company by chatting with me through YM. It was not healthy physically to stay that late but it keeps me emotionally healthy and sane.

As an obvious result, I woke up late. About past 12 noon just only to attend the four-hour Japanese language teaching training course. Yeah, you got it right! I am attending a course on how to teach Japanese as a part of my volunteer work. In spite the fact that it is against my will to expose myself to extreme boredom for four straight hours in the middle of an all-Japanese audience, except me of course, I still convinced myself that I should go.

Everything was so perfect as I came just right in time in Kajo Central for the event. I proceeded to the fifth floor hoping that it would given a bit of a nice feeling making it on time this time-even though I know that the next two hundred and forty hours will be hard for me. But as I tried to enter the door, I saw that the sign at the door of the only room in the fifth level is different-not the name of the venue for the event.

Ok, the people left in the ＹＩＦＡ (山形市国際交流協会 Yamagata City International Friendship Association) told me that the meeting is being held at another building. They gave me a map and instructed me to go there. As not having been to the venue even just once, I don't know where it is actually. With a map and some courage, I asked two Japanese elderly people for directions. They whole-heartedly gave me the instructions and hoped that I would find my destination easily.

It was already a quarter before two when I was walking according to the directions that they had given me-according to the directions as I assume. Then after some minutes of not finding the venue, I started to worry. Am I still on the way? Or am I already lost? I've been walking quite far already and the sun was so hot that I feel more exhausted. I decided to get my bicycle from where I left it so that I can move around the place looking for the venue.

I got my bike but in my mind I was tempted not to go anymore. It was already 2:15 at that time-too late for arriving supposedly by 1:00 pm. I thought of meeting my friends instead and just tell the people in the YIFA that I wasn't able to find the way. Anyway, the session will be in Japanese and perhaps I would barely understand not even a bit of it. I was about to go back then when my heart spoke to me, "How could you do missionary work if your can not find places even though you've been already provided with directions?" Hearing these words, I made a firm decision of attending no matter how late I am.

I took the way that I walked a few minutes earlier. I went straight ahead for a few hundred meters. Then I found out that I can not see any building that fits the description of the venue. I prayed to God to please help me as I am already lost. My instinct told me to turn to the right of a simple road and to my very eyes I saw the building I was looking for.

The session already finished its first half and the people are having a break when I came. The Japanese people who know me greeted me. I asked for apologies for being so late. I just told them that I got lost find the venue. They smiled at me and told me that it was nothing to worry about as almost all of them also had a hard time looking for the venue and came about an hour late.

The second half of the seminar started and I was surprised that the speaker was very good. He is also Japanese-teaching Japanese people how to teach Japanese to foreigners (like me) in a communicative way. To my delight, I never found any difficulty understanding his talk. May be it was just because of his usage of words that are already in my Japanese vocabulary. But it was a very reason for me to enjoy the session and to find it too interesting and informative.

We had another 10 minute break before the last part and during that free time, two of my previous volunteer Japanese instructors saw me. They were surprised seeing me there attending the session as I was just a mere foreign Japanese language learning a year ago-and now I am with them attending the seminar as a Japanese language instructor myself. They expressed their joy that in a short span of time I became fluent in the language. (Although I myself think that I still have lots to learn.)

The seminar ended a few minutes past five. I saw another Japanese language instructor of mine as I left the conference room. I don't regret not seeing my friends in exchange of attending today's seminar. To treat myself, I bought some Japanese dishes in the nearby Viking shop (food are charged by the weight). おいしかったよ！（Oishikatta yo! It was delicious!)