Skip to main content

On the news very recently

The Philippine Daily Inquirer reports that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo plans to go back to teaching. The blurb quoted Mrs Arroyo's son Mikey.

I never had Mrs Arroyo teach me economics (only the indomitable Winnie Monsod). But in the words of Sister Lucy (the nun I helped in teaching science to indigenous Australian kids when I was doing my PhD in Oz) I would say "She would make a good teacher!'

Being a prof myself I immediately realised that Mrs Arroyo ran the country as if she were managing a rowdy freshie class. The freshie prof should be able to 1) Throw a bit of temper trantrums some of the time, 2) be imperious , 3) shut up psuedointellectuals and "philosophers" and 4) know what he/she's talking about and come to class prepared.

Mrs Arroyo for all her faults was extremely good at this. She would make a good PhD supervisor!

As for Mikey, the only way he could shed his "mama's boy" image is to do an act of rebellion that all normal teenagers do.

Statements like this

"I’m already near 40-years old and on my second term, and I have two kids. I suppose my mother would give me my independence”

don't help! I have a tip for Mikey. You have to match your mother's intellectual acuity!

Yesterday Rotary International had a letter to the editor asking readers not to link Joc Joc Bolante's name with the club.

The letter says

"While we acknowledge that Bolante distinguished himself as a Rotary officer, it is unfair to consistently link his name to Rotary in an attempt to demean the international organization. If the media were truly aware of what Rotary is all about, they would surely realize that linking Rotary to Bolante is hardly fair to all concerned."

and continues

"As Bolante has not yet had his day in court and undergone due process, the imputations of guilt and scurrilous behavior on his person are most unfounded and uncalled for and do not serve the interest of justice and fair play."

We have to disagree. I don't think reporters are demeaning Rotary at all. What they are saying is fact. Rotary International has stated it. Bolante distinguished himself in the club.

Also the imputations of guilt and scurrilous behaviour on Bolante's person isn't unfounded at all. If it were, why did US immigration detain him for two years?

While we leave it to the courts to make a public judgement on Bolante's innocent or guilt, that never stops people from making their own private judgement on his character. Rotary is a private organisation. Nothing stops it from making its own judgement of Bolante.

This is what Rotary fails to grasp. Washing its hands of Bolante hardly makes the club more respectable. Unless it expels Joc Joc from the roster, it has just to live with the fact that people will link Rotary with Bolante.

C'mon Rotary! Even employers have notices saying so and so employee is no longer connected with them. They need not even say what the reason was but it is sure that the employee no longer holds up to the company's standard.

Isn't the Four Way Test Rotary's golden standard? Does Bolante still live up to that?

Comments

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...

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...

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...