Skip to main content

Au revoir Louisiane

Farewell Louisiana. I hope to be able come back and visit. There is probably no state in the whole of the United States where I felt almost completely at home. The hospitality of your resilient people, and their warmth are what makes you weather the storms.

Of course I'll miss everything Southern. But it is likely we'll meet again sometime.

English again....

Now that I am in Memphis airport, Tennessee I just read about the trade of barbs between Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay and Senator Lito Lapid. And the whole thing is about English competency.

Binay says that being poor isn't an excuse for not being able to express oneself. Binay is may be correct. Lapid belongs to the 'silent committee" in the Senate. Well, a senator can express anything in the senate in any language! Have we heard anything from Lito Lapid?

We'll if he can't say much in the Senate. I don't think he can say much in Filipino.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Simoun's lamp has been lit, finally.. not by one but by the many!

"So often have we been haunted by the spectre of subversion which, with some fostering, has come to be a positive and real being, whose very name steals our serenity and makes us commit the greatest blunders... If before the reality, instead of changing the fear of one is increased, and the confusion of the other is exacerbated, then they must be left in the hands of time..." Dr Jose Rizal "To the Filipino People and their Government" Jose Rizal dominates the Luneta, which is sacred to the Philippine nation as a place of martyrdom. And many perhaps all of those executed in the Luneta, with the exception of the three Filipino secular priests martyred in 1872, have read Rizal's  El Filibusterismo . Dr Rizal's second novel is a darker and more sinister one that its prequel but has much significance across the century and more after it was published for it preaches the need for revolution with caveats,  which are when the time is right and who will in...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kung bakit dapat maging wikang pambansa din ang Ingles

Isang kakatwang eksena ang nasaksihan ko sa isang pribabdong opisina kamakailan lang. Dalawang empleyado ang inatasang bigyan ng solusyon ang isang isyu tungkol sa logistics. Ang isa ang tubong Davao at ang isa ay taga Iloilo. Ang unang wika nila ay Cebuano (Bisaya) at Hiligaynon (Ilonggo). Ang dalawang wika ay halos pareho ngunit may mga katagang iba ang kahulugan sa isa't isang wika. Ginamit nila ang wika nilang kinalakihan at hindi sila nagkaintindihan. Ang nangyari tuloy ay gumamit na lang sila ng wikang Ingles! Yung na nga rin ang sabi ko. Mag-English na lang kaya kayo! At bakit di wikang Filipino ang ginamit nila? Sa totoo lang, marami pa rin ang hindi bihasa sa Filipino upang gamitin ito sa mga larangan tulad ng logistics. At hindi lamang sa mga larangang teknikal, sa mga biyahe ko sa ibat-ibat lugar sa Pilipinas, ang mga naka-paskel sa mga CR o palikuran tungkol sa pagtitipid ng tubig ay naka sulat sa 1)Wika ng rehiyon 2) Wikang Ingles 3) at minsa'y sa wikang Filipino S...
Post a Comment
Read more

Leonard Co (1953-2010), Filipino botanist

With much sadness and shock I learned from WWF chair Lory Tan that internationally renowned botanist Leonard Co was killed together with a guide and a forest ranger last Monday, 15 November in a firefight in Leyte between Armed Forces of the Philippines soldiers and Communist guerrillas. As the Philippine Daily Inquirer reports it ,  Co and his researchers were surveying a forest plot of the Energy Development Corporation (EDC) for native Philippine trees and plants especially those that are in danger of extinction, like this Rafflesia flower (the picture I got from Dr Julie Barcelona's blog . Thank you Julie) The 41 year old Communist insurgency has again claimed another life of the best and brightest of the Philippines. In Leonard Co's case, a bright life that cannot be replaced. For he was one of if not the last of  the classically trained botanists in plant taxonomy and systematics in the Philippines. While one can learn the basics of these disciplines i...
6 comments
Read more