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Thoughts on Reading ‘My Family’s Slave’

Some thoughts on reading Mr. Alex Tizon’s ‘My Family’s Slave‘.

At my age I remember the concept of ‘giving’ children away to other people as either ‘gifts’, as a way to pay debt or as a means of saving children from difficult or impossible lives. I do not consider this uniquely Filipino. I see it as a last resort way out of poverty and therefore would imagine this to happen even today in similarly impoverished situations.

I am convinced that many my age and older have first hand knowledge of similar events in the past or even until now. There are many families I am aware of that are living with so called ‘relatives’ that live in the same house and play with or take care of their children depending on their age but do not enjoy the same privileges. They have limited education, sleep in far worse conditions, and I suspect some may not receive wages. They however work tirelessly night and day for the benefit of the family.

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Trusting The Press

Randy David wrote the other day about how he noticed newspapers treated PNoy’s speech. In it he said:

President Aquino’s speech at the annual presidential forum of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (Focap) last Oct. 27 highlighted many aspects of this strained relationship.

 

In that speech, Mr. Aquino chose to dwell on his observations of media reportage during his presidency. He was candid and critical—a refreshing trait he does not hide regardless of the audience.

 

Interestingly enough, the media ignored his main speech and focused instead on his answers to questions in the open forum. If I had not gone to the government’s official website to check out the text of the President’s speech, I would not have guessed its topic from the news reports.

I remember that myself because the days after the only stories about him were about his love life, or some such triviality. It also reminded me of a similar situation. Continue reading “Trusting The Press”

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Opinion re Cable TV

After the recent re-installation of Cable TV in our household, I have come to the ff. conclusions:

  1. It is for the most part, a monstrous waste of time – Once you turn the TV on, you will inevitably find something interesting to watch. For example, I happened onto a 60 Minutes feature on the FBI agent who interrogated Saddam Hussein for the duration of his incarceration before being handed back to the Iraqis. The other day, I was also enthralled by a BBC documentary ftg. two nerdy guys trying to make a motorcycle to run on compressed air, in an effort to make a zero emission delivery vehicle for a sandwich manufacturer in London.

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Google’s Microsoftian Approach to Apps

Taking a very quick break to write thoughts about Google Apps. Quick as in Photoshop and my power editor are still open, so I’m writing this midstream into my work. I wanna write it down because surely I’ll forget.

Anyway I stumbled onto this Ars Technica Article re Google Apps, a thrust by Google to support independent application developers via handholding at the start of their project until they can spread their wings and fly so to speak. App development is a topic very close to my heart, being essentially the core of what I’m trying to do with the Exchanges, and having to do with the fact that I’m using subdomains under a main domain (exchange.ph), which I’ve always been convinced will eventually come together when time comes. As to how, I’ll keep that a secret, but it will one day.

So anyway, Google’s guys know this, and also know the considerable technical and cost issues one has to face whilst trying to get things going. I for example am paying a relatively tidy sum for hosting alone, just imagine the cost if I hired developers (I do approximately 90% of the work myself), and / or I wasn’t using a popular CMS. The more complicated the project, say it be Facebook, Imeem, or what Amazon Web Services are doing, the higher the cost. So Google pays for it all, along with provision of an authentication service (wow), a free database (although I gather from the article it isn’t a ‘traditional relational database’, what is it I wonder?), and Google’s BigTable Project among others.

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Pacquiao Fearless Forecast plus Other Thoughts

I’ve been scouring the Internet for the past hour trying to find a streaming live video, audio or otherwise any whatever sort of livecast to no avail. I’ve found a few but they aren’t free, and their amateurish looking sites don’t look very reassuring, so no go.

Jill’s household usually buys into whatever Sky offers during Pacquiao fights to watch it live, but I’m still suffering from heat fatigue I got last Friday when I stupidly took a walk under direct sunlight for almost an hour, making me sick. I had two events that day and by the second one that evening my muscles were cramping and I felt like collapsing. Anyway I’ve decided to rest in for the weekend, and maybe get some work in too.

So anyway here’s what I think: Pacquiao’s gonna win. Which round? I dunno. What do I base this on? Just the way he looks. I know it sounds corny, but he does look like he’s got the ‘eye of the tiger’, whatever that is. Win or lose, he’s really become more impressive than I originally sized him up to be, mainly because inspite of the fact that he has already achieved far more than our wildest dreams would’ve thought anyone could, he’s still at it, training like his whole survival is at stake.

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