Euro Filipino Journal: Journal

Balitang Kutsero

July 13, 2016 Admin 0

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In an interview with ANC News, President Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III said that he might pardon ex-prez Gloria Macapagal Arroyo if she showed remorse for the anomalies and scandals that had hounded her nine years in power. Yep, P-Noy told Gloria, “No remorse, no pardon!” 
 
After seeing P-Noy’s interview on her TV in her detention suite at the Veteran Memorial Medical Center, Gloria went to work and wrote her New Year’s Resolution. 
 
My investigative reporter James Macaquecquec, through his connections with Gloria’s jailers, got a copy of Gloria’s 2012 New Year’s Resolution and sent it to Global Balita. 
 
My New Year’s Resolution 
 
First of all, I would like to thank President Aquino for offering to pardon me provided that I showed remorse for the anomalies and scandals during my presidency. I am glad that P-Noy is keeping up with the tradition that I established when I pardoned former President Erap Estrada after he was convicted of plunder in 2007. I did it then out of my Christian upbringing, “To err is human; to forgive is divine.” I have always felt that my ascension to the presidency was a divine providence; thus, it was just natural for me to forgive those who erred. 
 
But what bothers me is that P-Noy offered to pardon me even before I was convicted of bogus charges of election sabotage in 2007! How could I have sabotaged the elections in 2007 when I was not even a candidate? P-Noy claimed that I cheated because all the 12 candidates on the administration slate won in Maguindanao. Well, there’s only one explanation why all my candidates won – it’s because of divine providence! There is no other reason. I did not err. 
 
However, in the spirit of Christmas, I have decided to demonstrate that I’m still a human being prone to making mistakes just like anybody else. In the nine and a half years that I was President, I made a lot of grave mistakes, to wit: 
 
1. I regret ousting Erap from the presidency in 2001. As his Vice President, I should have helped him succeed instead of plotting to remove him from office. 
 
2. I regret appointing Leila de Lima as Chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights. Had I known that she would bite me like a pit bull, I would have sent her to Tawi-tawi instead. 
 
3. I regret appointing Jun Lozada as technical consultant on the national broadband project. He turned out to be a whistleblower and exposed all the anomalies involving the NBN-ZTE project. Now, he’s going to testify against me in court. 
 
4. I regret not declaring martial law when I had a chance. If I did that I would still be in power and enjoying life in the Enchanted Kingdom. Now, my life is confined to a hospital suite with no kitchen, no telephone, no computer, and I am not even allowed to use a mobile phone. 
 
5. I regret not cheating P-Noy of the presidency in 2010 by fixing the Smartmartic automated election system. Mike promised me that if we did not cheat P-Noy, he would not prosecute us for graft and corruption. Mike was wrong! 
 
6. I regret coming back from my trips to Spain and Switzerland. If I did not return, I would have been free as a bird in Portugal where there is no extradition treaty with the Philippines. 
 
With my friend Merci Gutierrez impeached and resigned as Ombudsman and my protector Chief Justice Renato Corona impeached and may soon be convicted in a Senate impeachment trial, I have come to terms with my fate. 
 
With this silly gadget wrapped around my head and neck, I don’t have any options left except to put myself at the mercy of P-Noy. Yes, Mr. President, I am sorry for all the anomalies and scandals during my presidency. I was weak and indecisive and I allowed my husband Mike to the run the government the way he wanted it and did all those shenanigans. I tried to stop him but he became too powerful to be stopped. If there is one person who should go to jail, it’s Mike. 
 
I hope that P-Noy would pardon me. In good faith, I resolve to do the following: 
 
A. I will resign as Representative of Pampanga’s Second District. 
 
B. I will not get involved in politics for the rest of my life. 
 
C. I will ask Susan Roces for her forgiveness for cheating her husband Fernando Poe Jr. of the presidency in 2004. 
 
And since P-Noy only asked me to show remorse, I will keep the money I earned during my presidency. 
 
God is my witness, 
 
Gloria 
 
Jan 2012. Other works by Perry Diaz can be read on http://globalbalita.com/
 
 
 
 
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In an interview with ANC News, President Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III said that he might pardon ex-prez Gloria Macapagal Arroyo if she showe...

My Father's Long-Sleeve

July 13, 2016 Admin 0

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It is called boxing day here in U.K. and the events that transpired more than ten years ago are still fresh in my memory. I remember waking up early and rousing my brother from his slumber so we could depart early for our hometown and taking with us father’s long sleeve he asked us to bring. I was singing ‘Joy to the World’ on arrival at the doorstep with some look of reproof from my aunt on that morning of Dec’94. Having slept and watched over our house in San Fernando (about 45 minutes away) with my brother the previous night and returning to our hometown the following morning, I did not know that something terrible had happened after we left for San Fernando. They did not break the news to me until some time later, as I had gone out to see a friend, leaving my brother behind. It was only some time upon returning back to my aunt’s (my mum’s sister) house and with them insistong I go to my uncle (my father’s brother) that I sensed a dreadful thing had happened. 
 
I did not want to go and I recall my brother confessing calmly that ‘Father is gone’, fatally shot the previous night and succumbing to his wounds that same evening. The day before- that was Christmas day, father was only speaking to us to take with us on our return his long sleeve in San Fernando for their reunion. I thought it was normal to have a reunion since it was the yuletide season and New Year was fast approaching… I did not know that that Christmas day would be the last time I would see him alive and that it would turn out to be a different reunion… 
 
As with our customs and beliefs we had to bury father’s remains before New Year. After internment we had to wash ourselves in the river with burnt rice stalks on coconut shell poured on our heads and allow the river currents to take father’s clothes, including his long-sleeves, downstream. We also had to eat boiled but unripe bananas afterwards and smoke our bodies with the burning banana peels. 
 
I found myself huddled in father’s bahay kubo (nipa hut) on New Year’s eve refusing to join in the revelry. Staying in the bahay kubo brought back memories because this is where he used to spend his time when he retired and had it planted and surrounded with fruit trees. 
 
A serious man and a strict disciplinarian, father also taught us to fear God and to be honest especially with money but most of all he taught me to love history and fear the horrors of war. Having lived through the war he would recount the yonder days of the Japanese occupation [I wish that if a time machine had been invented I would already have hitched on it to save my father and correct the worst mistakes I have made in my lifetime and re-write the dark pages of history]. 
 
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~oOo~</div>
 
The season reminds of how the Philippines and America awoke to a new day when the Japanese fleet attacked Pearl Harbour on December 8, 1941, when our forefathers had to spend a different Christmas and New Year to fight as guerrillas. In his Christmas eve address to the American people in 1941, Roosevelt asks ‘how can we light our tree, how can we give our gifts…in a world at war, a world of fighting, and suffering and death…how can we put the world aside to rejoice in the birth of Christ?’ 
 
Indeed, how can we celebrate Christmas day and even New Years day with gladness in our hearts when South Korea and the Pacific is under threat of Nuclear attack, when we are living in a sham peace, when the spectre of a nuclear holocaust a thousand times more devastating than the atomic bomb is looming everyday around the world. The words of Albert Einstein is apocalyptic ‘I know not what weapons will be used in World War 3 but I know that sticks and stones will be used in World War 4’. We have seen the devastation caused by the atomic bomb to the population of Hiroshima and it serves as a grim reminder of what war can do for humanity. I stumbled upon this thought-provoking poem against war written by Martin Niemoller, a German anti-Nazi activist: 
 
“First they came for the Jews. But I didn’t speak up because I was not a Jew. 
 
Then they came for the communists. But I didn’t speak up because I was not a communist. 
 
Then they came for the trade unionists. But I didn’t speak up because I was not a trade unionist. 
 
Then they came for the Catholics. But I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. 
 
Then they came for me. And by that time no one was left to speak up.” 
 
Then they came for the communists. But I didn’t speak up because I was not a communist. 
 
Then they came for the trade unionists. But I didn’t speak up because I was not a trade unionist. 
 
Then they came for the Catholics. But I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. 
 
Then they came for me. And by that time no one was left to speak up.” 
 
Then they came for the communists. But I didn’t speak up because I was not a communist. 
 
Then they came for the trade unionists. But I didn’t speak up because I was not a trade unionist. 
 
Then they came for the Catholics. But I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. 
 
Then they came for me. And by that time no one was left to speak up.” 
 
Then they came for the communists. But I didn’t speak up because I was not a communist. 
 
Then they came for the trade unionists. But I didn’t speak up because I was not a trade unionist. 
 
Then they came for the Catholics. But I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. 
 
Then they came for me. And by that time no one was left to speak up.” 
 
The Nazis had set out to annihilate an entire race with their hatred of the Jews bringing it to a fateful conclusion when more than 60 years ago in answer to the ‘Nazi Solution to the Jewish Question,’ more than 6 million Jews were sent to their deaths by mass extermination in what is now called as the Holocaust. I pray that the this dark page of history will not get resurrected and rear its diabolic head again. I hope and call to mind the fervent speech of civil rights leader Martin Luther King in 1963… ‘I have a dream that the brotherhood of man will become a reality… when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Gentiles will be able to join hands and sing “free at last, free at last”….’.I say amen to the fulfilment of this dream—when this vision becomes a reality, when this dawn has arrived …when we will be free at last of our greed and bigotry, when we have risen above our prejudice for our fellowmen. When our troops and our Muslim brothers in Mindanao, the NPA’s and world leaders have embraced and decided to make lasting peace their New Year’s resolution can we truly celebrate Christmas with all of its meanings and call this year a truly New Year. 
 
While the birth of Christ, the Prince of Peace has been told and re-told many times, I am nonetheless glad to tell a parallel story I’ve read some years ago. A Hindu man was said to be walking one day in a field when he saw an anthill. A man was plowing that field and the Hindu man saw that it was heading directly towards the anthill. Being a Hindu he considers all creatures sacred even snakes and insects and he wanted to warn the ants of their imminent destruction. But how, he can shout but can the ants hear? He can write in the soil but can the ants read? Then he understood, that for them to understand him and warn them of their destruction he must first become an ant. We were the ants and in His humility He chose to be born not in a grandiose palace but in a lowly manger and in His love for us He became man. 
 
~oOo~ 
 
Kudos and more power to the performers of Pater Noster, a seafarers’story and play written by Ramon Tenoso and presented by Philippine Theatre U.K. which was shown last Nov 10-12 at Theatro Technis. It was truly an insight into the lonely life of a seaman, my brother being a seaman himself (I had an overnight stay in their ship catching squid when it was moored in Bataan some years ago but this was just one of their activities when not watching films). Some of the scenes were poignant especially the last part when the wife of Captain Zamora (played by our editor, Gene Alcantara), died. [On the subject of death I have asked myself where the dead go and was skeptical about ‘reincarnation’ until I have watched ‘The Boy Who Lived Before’ featured on a BBC documentary. I looked up and found several books in Waterstones whose author/s hold excellent journalistic/medical backgrounds who have done research and corroboration on children’s testimonies recalling past lives in India and Lebanon. Although their findings were not easy to dismiss as fantasy I still need evidence for a Filipino that was reincarnated. Indeed, we are just passers by here on earth and like actors on a stage have different roles to play but the love we give and how much we have loved is all that matters and all that is cherished when we cross that river were our ancestors have gone before us…] 
 
Do we see a future Philippine Bollywood here? We can only hope so…I have faith that noble things sprout as a seed …As a kid I remember going to the plaza during our town fiesta to watch the zarzuela and playing the part of a shepherd in kindergarten to enact what took place more than 2000 years ago in Bethlehem. 
 
I wish that you had a blessed Christmas and will enjoy a prosperous new year and “on earth peace, goodwill towards men” Luke 2:14… I also want to impart this text I received on New Year’s day – ‘always remember…life is short so 4giv quickly, laugh & luv uncontrollably & never regret anything that made u smile’. 
 
[2007]
 
 
 
 
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Articles Contributors Journal Perry Ostrea My Father's Long-Sleeve

It is called boxing day here in U.K. and the events that transpired more than ten years ago are still fresh in my memory. I remember wakin...

"Wondergrass"

July 12, 2016 Admin 0

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Vetiveria zizaioides L. Nash is the scientific name of a grass species found by scientists of the Farm and Resources Management Institute (FARMI) of the Leyte State University (LSU) in Baybay, Leyte to have properties of controlling soil erosion and rehabilitating poor uplands. Led by Dr. Edwin Balbarino, they came to this conclusion after testing various plants (including grasses) as contour hedgerows in barren and less productive upland farmers’ fields in the Leyte towns of Baybay, Hindang and Matalom. 
 
Popularly known as vetiver, the grass is a densely tufted perennial clump (clustered) grass with long and stiff leaf blades. Its leaf sheaths are closely overlapping, strongly compressed and keeled, creating a dense physical barrier at the ground surface. As the grass grows dense, it forms a thick hedge, making it a strong natural barrier to control soil runoff. It has a strong and dense root system that firmly holds the soil, making them withstand erosion even during heavy rains and intense flooding. 
 
Scientists also noted that the grass is versatile, growing well in both alkaline and acidic upland soils and could survive long periods of drought. Apart from that its sharp leaves and aromatic roots repel snakes, rats, and other pests. Vetiver requires minimal maintenance and does not spread to valleys since it does not multiply by seeds or rhizomes. 
 
From their researches, the LSU-FARMI research team devised the use of the grass as contour hedgerow and came up with the Vetiver Grass Technology (VGT) which they are now promoting. Farmers who were involved in the LSU-FARMI research project, particularly those who have decided to adopt the technology, claimed that with the use of vetiver as hedgerows, their crop production has dramatically increased. 
 
The use of VGT has spread to many parts of the country, not only in upland agriculture but also in road, irrigation, and dam projects to control siltation and stabilize slopes, hillsides, road canals, and embankments. 
 
But guess what. Vetiver is found in many parts of the country and has been traditionally used by rice farmers to strengthen rice paddies and stabilize canal embankments. This only confirms that there is a lot that could be learned from traditional farming practices and that new technologies can be evolved from them for the modern age. 
 
[2007]
 
 
 
 
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Articles Contributors Journal Jun Terra Philippines Science "Wondergrass"

Vetiveria zizaioides L. Nash is the scientific name of a grass species found by scientists of the Farm and Resources Management Institute ...

The Journal

January 20, 2016 El Talonggo 0

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<h1 class="entry-title">
The Journal</h1>
</header>
 
 Hello and welcome to EuroFilipino Journal. 

EuroFilipino Journal was originally published as an official magazine
 during the early 2000s. Following the initial publication of the 
journal, we decided to instead embrace technology and continue the 
Journal online, so that it is more accessible to Filipinos around the 
globe. 
 

This online Journal is currently a work-in-progress as we endeavour 
to upload the many wonderful contributions written for the Journal saved
 in our archives. 
 

If you would like to order a physical copy of the original 
EuroFilipino Journal that was printed in 2001, then please email 
emailfilipinojournale@gmail.com. 
 

Enjoy reading the EuroFilipino Journal, fellow Kababayan.
 
 
 
 
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Journal UK The Journal

The Journal Hello and welcome to EuroFilipino Journal. EuroFilipino Journal was originally published as an official magazine du...

Ghosts at Wrobla

September 30, 2002 El Talonggo 0

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo from <a class="_ZR irc_hol i3724" data-noload="" data-ved="0ahUKEwj04sqvrtLKAhXFGKYKHUnjCc4QjB0IBg" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gda%C5%84sk_ulice_Wr%C3%B3bla_i_Kurza.JPG">commons.wikimedia.org</a><a class="_ZR irc_msl i3591" data-i="1" data-noload="" data-ved="0ahUKEwj04sqvrtLKAhXFGKYKHUnjCc4QhxwICA" href="https://www.google.com/search?tbs=simg%3Am00&tbnid=UZg4AJ_Joy5UfM%3A&docid=OR4JzmwsWv8HAM&tbm=isch"></a></td></tr>
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— by Gene Alcantara 
 
Not many people believe in ghosts.  This much I know.  Or perhaps many people would rather deny the possibility of the existence of ghosts for whatever reason, than having to deal with the scary prospect of seeing a spectre.  They would say, “Hmmm, hard to believe.  Are you sure it was not the wind or just your playful imagination?”  Well, if only. As for me, well, I do believe in ghosts.  Or rather I have to believe because I have experience of them first hand.  Right in the very house I lived in on Wrobla Street in Warsaw for the last three and a half years.  If anybody had told me before I came that there was a ghost in the house I would probably have treated the matter with some skepticism (Oh, ok, trepidation, but only a bit!). My first experience of the ghost at Wrobla happened in the first year of my posting when I was on my own, about three years ago.  I was facing the oven about 10-11 pm at night heating up one of those frozen packets of Spanish Paella or Mexican chicken.  Suddenly at the periphery of my left vision I sort of detected a faint movement in the archway leading to the dining room.  Naturally I turned my head to look and when I did, all my hair stood on end.  I felt my scalp tingling as my hair rose of its own accord, and I knew fear.  For there was this white woman peeking at me with a smile, long dark hair flowing down.  My stomach was suddenly filled with ice but although the terrifying vision only lasted perhaps a second, it is permanently imprinted in my memory.  I am normally a brave man but I was scared and had to call my family in London to seek some comfort. That was really the first and last time I had an encounter with the apparition until in April this year, a female friend, Normie Lopez de la Rosa, who transferred from Turkey and had some psychic talent, attempted to treat another friend, Fe Grzybowski, whom she believed was being bewitched.  This she did in the house apparently through some sort of prayer and ceremony.  I did not witness this myself as I was away in Berlin at the time competing in an international public speaking competition.  Somehow the ceremony seemed to have perhaps opened some mystical doorway or triggered some psychic phenomenon because when I got back from Germany I started having strange and scary nightmares.  And my family, who had since joined me in Warsaw, started hearing strange noises at night.  No one would venture down into the basement laundry room alone once dusk fell, for Normie said that this was the place where the ghost seemed to hang around. To deal with the problem once and for all, we called in a priest from the huge Catholic church on Dominikanska Street who came, prayed and blessed all corners of the house.  Unfortunately I don’t think it completely got rid of the ghost but we somehow got reassured that we have involved a man of God. As for me, I tried to deal with the ghost also.  Normie said it was a young woman she saw in our laundry room.  I went down one evening to “talk” to  the ghost and ask that it not bother my family.  But the minute I stepped foot on the basement floor, my head was enclosed by a cold presence and my hair stood on end again.  So I beat a hasty retreat back up the stairs (I mean, I ran back upstairs!).  Since then the family ended up leaving the lights on on the stairs all night, and the radio on on low volume.  We even had a few icons hung around although they seemed never enough.  Somehow I would still be woken up at night by something touching my face or a noise or a bad dream. When my children Giselle and Terence visited from university in May and June, I deliberately did not tell them about the ghost that haunted the house at Wrobla.  But I did not reckon on my youngest daughter Melissa telling them not to enter the first floor bedroom because apparently that was where she once saw her electronic piano playing by itself.  They were skeptical at first, my teenage kids, but when one night Giselle woke up hearing and feeling footsteps in her room in the middle of the night, they became firmly aware of the ghost. Two friends of mine, Dee Calmel and Edyta Ganczarczyk, said perhaps that the ghost was interested in me, liked me, and probably was protecting me and the house somehow.  Carmila, my spouse, tried to be brave about it – she was not about to give me up for a ghost!  For if it was an unfriendly ghost it might have done us or our relationship harm.  It could even be apparently a naughty ghost who moved things around the house because  sometimes we ended up not finding things where we were supposed to have left them.  This last was true because looking back over the years, I have indeed lost or misplaced items of clothing and other small things and I had always suspected my cleaner Pani Grazyna of hiding them! Actually Wrobla was not my first experience of ghosts in Poland.  About two years earlier I went to attend a series of classical and jazz concerts sponsored by the British Council in Zabrze and in Tarnowskie Gory in the southern part of the country.  In winter it was, late in cold November.  The Zabrze event went very well and the following day I travelled to Tarnowskie Gory and looked for my hotel in the town.  It turned out that my hotel was some distance away in a village called Rybna.  It took the taxi about 20 minutes to get to the village across white fields.  The hotel was in fact a 200-year old palace called Palac Na Rybny, a magnificent green building right in the middle of this snow-covered estate with leafless trees around.  My room was a huge apartment on the first floor with impressive original 17th-18th century furniture and a palace room feel to it.  Only I could not sleep a wink, the bedroom felt very strange indeed as if there was somebody there watching me, and I kept hearing all sorts of peculiar sounds.  I thought there was a ghost in the bedroom.  I spent the night with all the lights on watching BBC World. So was I perhaps simply sensitive to supernatural things?  Well possibly.  The presence of a ghost in the house was further confirmed by an independent person.  At the end of July I ran an international health and safety course in Warsaw and hosted dinner at home one night for the participants.  A  Brazilian colleague, Alexander W, who was into yoga, psychic stuff and out-of-body experiences confided in me the following day while having lunch at the Patio Restaurant that he saw two manifestations in the garden of the house at Wrobla.  One was apparently a yellow circle of light/energy  normally associated with Buddhism.  When he asked if I was a Buddhist or have anything to do with Buddhism, I said no but that I did have a collection of amulets and charms from the Philippines, Hong Kong and other places which might emit such yellow light.  The other thing Alexander saw apparently was the ghost of a young woman standing in the backgarden.  He said that he did not feel anything negative about the ghost so it was possibly a friendly one.  In a way I was pleased by the fact that the ghost appeared a friendly one, but I was even more pleased to get confirmation that it was true that my house was host indeed to some supernatural presence, considering the skeptical tones some British colleagues made when they heard my story . My landlord, Jerzy Buczkowski, was sympathetic but adamant that nobody had died in the house.  It was a relatively new house and my predecessor and I were the only tenants.  So perhaps the ghost was of someone who died a long time ago, for who knows what the place was like over the long bloody course of Polish history? Another psychic friend in London, Diana Reed, gave me a smudge wand made of Taos sage, cedar and juniper, all sacred Native American herbs, to smoke the house out one night to clear it of the ghost.  The term ‘smudging’ is supposed to be the practice of cleansing ritual spaces, altars and tools with the smoke for purification and protection.  Well, I had not managed to do it despite repeatedly wanting to, with something else always happening, and so I eventually left the house with it undone at the end of my posting. The house at Wrobla was a lovely six-floor house, and I have many fond memories of living there.  Sharing the house though with a ghost did not really inspire much confidence especially at night when all one wanted and needed to do was to have some sleep.  Perhaps the female ghost was indeed looking after me and protecting the house, but it was not the kind of caring that I really would like to have.  Not in Poland.  Not anywhere else if I could help it. 
 
Written in 30 September 2002. Revised 9 October 2012.
 
 
 
 
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Continent Gene Alcantara Journal Poland Stories Ghosts at Wrobla

Photo from commons.wikimedia.org — by Gene Alcantara Not many people believe in ghosts. This much I know. Or perhaps many people wou...

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