badong, the latest victim

sab told me about teddy te's post.

my first reaction was, 'tangnang mga 'to.

wasn't it bad enough that under raul's deanship the better professors left the college? wasn't it bad enough that they put dean agabin on instructor status?. wasn't it bad enough that they installed professors who had no idea what "teaching" entailed?

dean badong is well loved. he taught us so well that even now, off the top of my head, i can answer questions about public office and administrative law. we have such fond memories of his stories in class, of him whistling "stella by starlight," of him teaching us what it was to be good by example, all the while teaching law in the grand manner.

these professors make me almost ashamed to be from the same college. the only saving grace is that people like badong and agabin come from the same place. like someone once said "up law has had its share of heroes and scoundrels."

go figure under which category those people on the public statement fall under.

do the math

the government subsidy for each inmate in the city jail is 10 pesos or roughly .23 cents per day.

that covers their food and who knows what else.

10 pesos for 3 meals. 3.33 pesos per meal.

i couldn't even begin to imagine living on that kind of budget.

get this. inmates are charged 10 pesos for every call they make or take. if their lawyers need to call them 3 times in 1 day, they pay 30 pesos.

i'm just a lawyer. mahina ako sa math. pero 'nyeta naman. kahit ako kaya kong i-compute yan. at kahit paano ko bali-baliktarin ang mga numero, hindi tatama.

what a fucked up system.

all work and no play...

makes you, well, you.

hmm. you probably don't even read this, but i suppose it's applicable to all workaholics out there.

you miss meals, breaks with your colleagues, and only manage to squeeze in coffee and cigarette breaks. you stay in the office late, you wear a permanent frown, you have practically cut yourself off from the rest of the living world.

but you know what? work will always be there. it will never go away. when you wake up tomorrow, it will be there waiting for you. you may manage to make a dent in your work load, but it will still be there.

but life? life is passing you by.

don't let it.

i'd take the jugs over the fox any day

"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is commonly believed to be the only English sentence devised to include all the letters of the alphabet. However, typesetters and designers have alternatively employed "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs."

-www.arcamax.com

the last time i checked...

i was still pinoy. so why is it that i've been receiving mails from people who claim to have added me as a friend on siliconindia which claims to be, and i quote:

"an invite-only career Indian community. You can use SiliconIndia to find a job or internship, network, and access valuable career information from peers and industry professionals."

what's this world coming to?

overheard

man 1: pang-ilan ka sa pamilya?
man 2: ah. second...second to the first.

what is my second language?

i was making burger patties earlier when i overheard a tv patrol host reporting about some guy named kimmel who made another comment about the Philippines. according to the report, this abc host said that filipinos probably don't speak english. you can read about that here.

i was taken aback. it's nothing new, really. i've heard this comment so many times, couched in different tones and tenors, and accompanied by various expressions. i have found myself explaining why i speak not just english, but GOOD english, all the time feeling outrage that these idiots who probably speak and write lousy english dare ask the question. (it's my blog. :D)

it's nothing new. but i was taken aback because for the the past 6 weeks i have been lamenting that my nephews and niece speak lousy TAGALOG. or as it's referred to now -- filipino. oh, they have the english language down pat, with one of them even using the word "minions" in an ordinary conversation.

i get pissed at the teachers who berate the children for speaking filipino. i get on my sister's case because she insists on talking to her children in english, even when they're at home. they probably couldn't speak filipino to save their lives.

and it's not just my sister's children. i see it everywhere. children who speak perfect english but who get tongue-tied when you ask them what "kisame" means.

where does that leave us?

english is our medium of instruction. according to our constitution, our national language is FILIPINO, but "for purposes of COMMUNICATION and INSTRUCTION, the official languages of the Philippines are Filipino and, until otherwise provided by law, English."

communication and instruction. filipino and english. it says "and" in the constitution. so why is it that schools employ one to the exclusion of the other? parents use one to the exclusion of the other.

why am i writing this in english?

shameful as it is to admit, i think in english. and i write english better than i do filipino. but like most from my generation, english was spoken in school, filipino at home (or ilocano for most of my classmates). it was an okay arrangement, i suppose. i mean, i still speak filipino well (and a smattering of ilocano), and i CAN write in filipino to save my life.

so why aren't things the same now? why does my niece's ate try so hard to speak english even though "look here" comes out as "look to here" or "shrimp" ends up as "shrim."

why?

i know my first language should be filipino, if not ilocano since i am from baguio. but i don't have the same confidence in my filipino speaking abilities as that of my english speaking skills.

going back to my opening paragraph, why did that kimmel comment not generate the same outrage as teri hatcher's comments about filipino doctors?

is it because it's true? is it because the so-called text speak is killing our language abilities (this is totally off topic, ano?). is it because we know that our english is declining, and in my opinion, so is our filipino.

so many questions generated by one comment overheard.

i laid down a policy in the house that the kids should only speak filipino when they are here. they are having a very difficult time of it, and mostly i relent when they talk to me in english.

i guess sometimes i would rather hear them speak english instead of having to listen to them murder the filipino language.

what is my first language?