where the moon shines

Today, friends and family in the US will be celebrating Thanksgiving and feasting over good food.

To celebrate with them, let me say thank you for the blessings I’ve received.

Thank you:

• for the good news I’ve received last week, and for the reason that make my colleagues at work happy for me.
• for the choices I made, that turned out to be the right ones. For the wrong turns I took, and the lessons I’ve learned from them.
• for the new friends I made this year. May I continue to get to know them, and have them in my life. I realize that I don’t have so many friends that I spend time with and that mostly I just have people I chat with when I’m at work. I pray though, that I continue to cultivate those relationships such that we truly become friends rather than just colleagues and lunchmates.
• for the birthdays we celebrated this year, and the ones we look forward to.
• for the freedom to express my views, that I am free to express outrage at the atrocity that was unleashed to 57 victims of the Ampatuan Massacre. 57 families cry out for justice, and the rest of the country cries out with them.
• for the opportunities to give back, no matter how small I fell those gestures have been. Deep inside I have guilt, for I know there is so much more I can do to help your people. Yet I don’t beat myself up for it, because I also know that I do what I can when I can. And I know you do not wish anyone to do good out of obligation, but rather of their own free will. Someday, I will find balance.
• for keeping us in good health, despite the many trips to the hospital this year. That there is no reason to file a disability appeal, is much appreciated.
• that though I leave home in the deepest hours of the night, you always keep me safe.
• that I have so many reasons to be happy and thankful, and not one reason to be sad.

Thank you for my blog readers too, and the comments they’d surely be leaving for this post.

The country is wrought with tension, as we bare witness to one of the most brutal killings we’ve seen in our modern history.

On Monday November 23rd, supporters of Vice Mayor Mangudadatu along with media practitioners covering the event, left their town of Buluan to journey to Shariff Aguak where his wife would have filed his candidacy for Governor of Maguinadanao Province. Despite their precautions, they did not make it to the provincial capital. In broad daylight, their convoy was intercepted by armed men (reported to be numbering upto 100). They were forced to a remote location (or locations) where the killings happened.

47 bodies found so far in shallow graves. Some of them beheaded, dismembered, even raped. Many of the reported 60-strong delegation who left Buluan were women and journalists.

I seldom read the papers these days. But today, I read all of the stories pertaining to the massacre, as told by correspondents of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. These are not fun, inspiring stories to read. But read them I must, for perhaps some of it might make sense to me. Since I heard the news, I could not comprehend what had happened. How could something this horrifying happen in these modern times? Perhaps, in our people’s long history it is no surprise to see word of tribal wars and clan wars. Of bloody feuds amongst people.

But one would think that such were a thing of the past. They belong in the history books. Not in present day Philippines. What happened in Maguindanao on Monday – that was merely a show of greed and cowardice.

Many point to the ruling clan, the Ampatuans, as the perpetrators of this barbaric crime. This clan holds many leadership political posts throughout the province, including the Governorship of Maguindanao and of the ARMM. They also secured GMA’s win against FPJ in 2004′s Presidential elections. It seems that to ensure their hold of the province beyond 2010, they’ve started early in terms of eliminating the competition. After all, if no one goes up against the elder Ampatuan for the gubernatorial race (just like last time), there’d be no reason for him to cheat.

The campaign season hasn’t even started and yet we already have these many casualties of election-related crimes. How many more lives will be lost in the run up to May 2010?

But this isn’t just an issue of election violence, is it?

For the first time, I joined in with this meme and here’s my Music Monday blog post. It includes the McLinky list of participants and you will notice that there are about 46 aside from myself. I tried to go through each entry, kick back and just do some sound tripping on this Monday afternoon. I was able to make it until #27 only.

Though I spent a lot of time going through the other bloggers’ entries, it was time well spent. It’s a much better use of my time than if I had to read through alli reviews, as well as lookup for more weight loss info, or compare what the diet pills work and what do not.

I’m glad I did Music Monday, I rediscovered some songs I already liked, while I was also able to admire new ones. It’s like my ears were opened up, hehe.

Let me share this video of Carrie Underwood, that I picked up from here.

I had blogged about my Starbucks Christmas, but had I known about the tie up between The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf – Tomas Morato and ECPAT Philippines, I would probably have skipped it and patronized this instead.

Then I realized, I don’t have to go through this promo just to support ECPAT and their current projects. I could just as easily come up with the money equivalent to twelve cups of coffee, and hand deliver it to ECPAT myself.  At least I would know that the full amount goes to a very good cause, and not just a portion of it. (So there, I was able to rationalize my Starbucks Christmas – I’d be supporting Spark of Hope which is another charity altogether, on top of supporting ECPAT)

Okay, so if I were to pledge the cash equivalent of 12 cups of coffee, how much money would I have to set aside? Say a drink costs 115 pesos, multiply that by 12… 1380 pesos. That looks like a lot of money if I had to dish it out one time big time. But come to think of it, my rubber shoes cost more than that…

Hmmm. I’m not aware how ECPAT accepts cash donations, or for what specific projects the donations would go to. I should probably get in touch with them and find out. If anyone’s interested in supporting their advocacy (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes) here in the Philippines (there’s an ECPAT International too, and local campaigns in many parts of the world), leave me a message and I’d be more than happy to pass along your contact details to their Info officer or Executive Director should you wish so.

Last week, while exiting ShopWise, Alfred asked me if it was possible to donate to a charity and they’d give us a card in return which we would then give as gifts to friends and family. Then we could say that we made a donation in their name, and they would actually believe us. Maybe we could do that with ECPAT.

Good deeds.

Having been to Greenhills three times in the past seven days (to have the PlayStation 2 serviced, or to return defective game discs, etc.) an idea came to me while we were on the cab home. We had just passed by a truck collecting dry garbage and I was going to comment on how neat and orderly it actually looked. Seriously. It didn’t look dirty and I doubt if it was all too smelly either. On the side of the truck, there was a huge sign about the garbage collector being a member of an organization of contractors in the Litex-Payatas dumpsite.

Immediately as my brain was processing that thought, another idea fired through – malls should have their own waste programs and recycling facilities. They can help save the planet, and still generate additional income for themselves. How much waste do you think is accumulated in Greenhills each and every day, specially during the holiday season? How about in the chain of SM and Robinson’s Malls?

I think that if they were really committed to doing their part in the fight to counter pollution and global warming, then they should put their money where their mouths are and invest on their own recycling facilities.

I mean, people troop to malls every weekend. We go during weekdays and there are still a lot of people there. So business is always on the up and up, from my point of view. They keep on renovating, to accommodate more shops. Then in recent years, we’ve seen more malls go the Ayala mall way of having Pay Lounges where you need to cough up ten pesos to use their well maintained American Standard toilets.  I actually like the concept. The restrooms are clean, and they smell wonderful. There’s always tissue, and soap, and even powder and hand lotion. But hey, I’ve gone so out of topic here…

So really, don’t you agree that the big malls should invest on their own recycling facilities? Or better yet, there should be legislation around this area. So that anyone in the business of malls, depending on some criteria (income, number of shops, etc.) should also submit an environmental plan then government and NGOs should monitor its implementation.

Just a though.