2 comments Wednesday, November 7, 2007

just received this in my email and since i don't really forward things in my email, posted it here instead.

~~~

Telltale Signs/ NO TEARS FOR ESTRADA
Rodel E. Rodis, September 17, 2007

On the day the Estrada verdict was announced last week, a retired man who needed my help in his claim for social security benefits in the Philippines professed sympathy for the former president, expressing his hope that he would be shown mercy because he had suffered enough.

Like most people, he had not read the 212 page decision of the Philippine Anti Graft Court (Sandigan Bayan), finding former president Joseph aka Erap Estrada Guilty of Plunder. If he had read the complete decision, he would have discovered the ironic connection between his problems with the SSS and the basis for the plunder verdict. (For the transcripts, log on to http://www.manilamail.com ).

It took six years for the Sandigan court to try the Estrada case, most of the delays caused by Estrada himself. At one point, he fired all his attorneys so that a mistrial could occur. But after the court provided him with new attorneys, which he promptly rejected, Estrada retained new counsel and proceeded with a strategy to run out the clock until his close personal friend, Fernando Poe, Jr. (FPJ), could win the presidency in the May 2004 elections and dismiss all the charges against him.

But when FPJ lost, Estrada had no choice but to finally deal with the prosecution's case by seeking to undermine the credibility of the court and by claiming that the trial is "politically motivated" to justify his removal from office. Very little was done by his lawyers to debunk the voluminous evidence presented in court.

In the course of the trial despite innumerable delays, dozens of witnesses described how Estrada collected billions of Philippine pesos in "jueteng" protection money which they regularly delivered in cash to his Polk Street mansion in San Juan in Metro Manila. It was like a mob scene from "The Sopranos". But the most damning witnesses against Estrada were those he appointed to public office.

Carlos (aka Chucky) Arellano testified that he was a childhood friend of Estrada who appointed him chairman and president of the Social Security System (SSS) in 1998. On October 6, 1999, he received a call from Pres. Estrada instructing him to buy Belle Corporation stock. He hesitated to do so, he said, because that decision belonged to the SSS investment committee which selected the stocks to invest in for the millions of Filipinos who had contributed to it. However, after further prodding from Estrada, Arellano unilaterally authorized the purchase by SSS of P900-M (pesos) ($20-M) in Belle stocks on October 21, 1999, just 15 days after he was directed to do so.

Federico Pascual testified that he was the president of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) in 1999, appointed by Estrada, when he was instructed to purchase Belle shares. He hesitated to do the president bidding, he said, because the Belle Corporation was involved in jai-alai and gambling and had a speculative flavor. But after receiving another call from Estrada on October 9, 1999, he went ahead and authorized the purchase by GSIS of P1.1-B (pesos) ($25-M) in Belle stock.

A close crony of Estrada, Jaime Dichaves, facilitated the transaction. Belle Corporation executives testified that they issued a cashiers check to Dichaves in the amount of P189-M($4-M) (International Exchange Bank Check No. 6000159271 dated November 5, 1999 ) as his 10% commission for securing the purchase by SSS and GSIS of close to P2-B (pesos) ($45-M) in Belle stocks.

Bank executives then testified that Dichaves deposited the 10% commission of P189-Mil. ($4-Mil) into the bank account of Jose Velarde, in Equitble Bank. Dichaves deposited an additional amount of P74-M (pesos) into the same account.

Clarissa Ocampo, an Equitable Bank manager, testified that she personally witnessed Estrada sign his name as Jose Velarde in withdrawing funds from the Equitable Bank, an allegation that was openly admitted by Estrada himself. Bank executives testified that there were Joint accounts in the bank of Jose Velarde & Loi Ejercito (Estradas legal wife).

Bank executives also testified that it was from this same Jose Velarde account that Estrada purchased the Boracay Mansion near Wack-Wack Golf Club for the use of his favored mistress, Laarni Enriquez. The man who facilitated the purchase of this mansion was Jose Luis Yulo who, because of this housing experience, was then appointed by Estrada to be his Secretary of Housing, replacing the very competent Karina Constantino-David.

The prosecution's evidence was just too over whelming, the Sandigan Bayan justices had no other choice but to find Estrada guilty of plunder, beyond a reasonable doubt. Sifting through the testimonies of eyewitnesses, one concludes that Estrada never believed that he would ever have to account for his actions so he didn't care who witnessed what he was doing. Transparency turned out not to be a virtue and stupidity not a viable defense.

But the joke was on the people. When GSIS and SSS bought Belle stocks, As instructed by then PRES. ESTRADA, in 1999, they were priced at P3.14 a share. One year later, on December 29, 2000, their value had sunk dramatically to 60 centavos a share. Two years later, Belle stock crashed to a staggering 40 centavos a share, from purchase price of P3.14 per share. Now they are virtually worthless! Two BILLION PESOS of the people's investments down the drain!

While I congratulate the Sandigan Bayan judges for finding Estrada guilty of plunder, my regret is that he was never charged for his possible role in the abduction and murders of Salvador "Bubby" Dacer, Emmanuel Corbito and Edgar Bentain.

According to members of his family, Bubby Dacer was bawled out by Estrada in Malacanang in November of 1999 shortly before he and his driver, Corbito, were abducted by members of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) headed by Gen. Panfilo Lacson and tortured and executed. The PAOCTF soldiers who admitted killing Dacer and Corbito pointed to Col. Glenn Dumlao as their commanding officer. Before he fled to the US , Col. Dumlao pointed to Col. Cezar Mancao and Col. Michael Ray Aquino as the officers who gave him the orders. Before they could point their fingers as to who directed them, Mancao and Aquino fled to the US upon instructions of Lacson. If Lacson had been fingered by Mancao and Aquino, would he have pointed the finger to Estrada?

Edgar Bentain was a casino worker at the Casino Filipino located at the Heritage Hotel in Manila when he secretly released to the press the videotape of Estrada playing high-stakes poker with his crony, Atong Ang. The videotape was then shown on TV to the embarrassment of Estrada who ordered an investigation into who leaked the videotape. According to Ador Mawanay's sworn testimony on August 17, 2001, PAOCTF men abducted Bentain outside the casino and immersed him with cement inside a drum and dumped his corpse in Pampanga. The leader of the PAOCTF team, he said, was Col. Michael Ray Aquino. Mawanay identified Estrada's son, Jude, as the man he saw give a black bag containing money to Aquino as payment for the killing of Bentain.
==============================

Who has really suffered as a result of the above?? Estrada or the Filipino people? Share this message to all Filipinos in your address book.

~~~

most of us already know the facts stated above. but looks like we need another reminder or even isang malakas na batok para maka-alala.

and this is the reason why this is stupid.

0 comments Thursday, October 25, 2007

Okay, I think I know what's wrong. A bit.

I have strayed from the master plan. All my plans, dreams back in college were nothing more than dreams, still - until now. Back then, I have this image of what I want to be at this point in my life. But sadly, I'm still nowhere near them.

I wanted to join JVP (Jesuit Volunteers Philippines) - a program which sends new graduates to far-flung areas of the country to help out in terms of education and whatnot, and maybe along with the process, learn something more about themselves. I wanted to become a teacher, or maybe even work for an NGO. I wanted to work for something which I know means something. To really make a dent in this word (yeah, I'm really idealistic). And not just work for money, nor for a job title.

Unfortunately, JVP didn't materialize because my mom would not hear of her unica hija being assigned for a year in some far-flung area of the country (obviously). And the teaching job went bust as well as soon as a few (well, maybe more than a few) discouraging remarks from some job interviews. Ie: "you don't have education units whatsoever, we can't hire you," and "you should just enroll at PNU, since we only hire from that school." Dear, I respect PNU, but you have one weird logic. I know I should have just fought and looked for another teaching job, but it gets disappointing and discouraging after a while, and it came to a point wherein my already below minimum self-esteem has had enough.

So I fell for a pit fall. So new college grads beware. Never accept a job for the sake of just getting some job experience to boost your resume in preparation for your second job. You might get typecasted. Just like yours truly. Which is perhaps the reason why I'm stuck in this job. Which is also perhaps the reason why I'm wasting away typing on my blogs, just whining and bitching about things that could've been.

Aaahh.. life.

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just my luck. a 20-something officemate who has the attitude and playfulness of a 6-year old found my blog. i'll never hear the end of this

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i just saw my payslip. god. it's enough to make me not want to work.

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taking my cue from here

virtual flowers for the Glorietta blast victims



all of us were saying that we could've been the ones who had been there during the blast as most of us consider glorietta our "third" home. but the reality is, for some reason, we weren't. and they were. it's about time we stop with the finger-pointing and conspiracy theories and just respect and offer our thoughts and sympathies to the families and loved ones of those who are affected by this tragedy. may justice be done and the victims rest in peace.

(i'm no photographer. so that explains the picture)

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I feel trapped.

There’s no other way of saying it. Last night, I cried without really knowing why. I don’t even know if I have a valid reason for it, but what I do know is that somehow it felt great afterwards. My boyfriend was decent enough to let me do my own thing. Sure he asked me about it, but when I assured him it wasn’t him or anything, he let me be. Bless him for that.

I’ve been thinking about everything a lot for the past few days. It gets harder and harder to peel myself off my bed everyday. I want to do something. Hell, I want to do a lot of things. And I don’t even know what they are. Crazy huh?

Good luck to me finding myself. But for now, it looks like I’m stuck here.

0 comments Friday, October 19, 2007

i just heard about this when my mom suddenly called me at the office at the middle of the day just to make sure that i wasn't at glorietta at the time. she shouldn't have bothered considering the state i'm in right now - it's my first day and the cramps make it hardly bearable to do much, let alone sit up. blame it all on the girly cramps and the laziness.

anyway, this is scary: blast hits glorietta mall
contrary to what first came to my mind, there was no foul play involved, the reason for the blast was a "ripping" lpg tank, and glorietta 1 and 2 were the ones affected. news are still patchy as of yet, but the good thing is, it looks like inquirer.net's updating the reports as facts come in, but hopefully no one's badly injured or hurt.

makes you think how vulnerable we all are.

update: (omg) now they're reporting that it's a bomb and not lpg. it's also reported that there are four fatalities and more than 40 people are injured =(

0 comments Thursday, October 18, 2007

this is interesting: don't make your cell phone your confidante

but wait. what do i do with my phone(s) now..

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i finished reading neil gaiman's stardust last thursday night, just in time to watch the film with my friend, rm at g4 - oha, iwas spoilers =D we met up at glorietta and grabbed some lunch at chef d'angelo before proceeding to the movie. what was notable about the said lunch was:



the dessert!! i think it was german chocolate - bittersweet chocolate ala-cheesecake style, the bottom part is similar to the one you get in an oreo cheesecake, while the middle part is moist chocolate!! hwaha, we were so full after the meal but i couldn't help but make some space for this baby =D

we then watched stardust, and ang galeng galeng. i share rm's sentiments by saying that robert de niro really stole the show on this one. haha, his character was quite a surprise =D while considerable changes have been made in the movie from the novel, they still managed to retain the main plot and even delivered it quite well. the movie also packed in more action, especially at the end, which was somewhat lacking in the novel. but whatevs, i love them both.

after stardust, i move on to:



according to the back cover, henry, the guy and one half of the novel's main characters/couple, "suffers from a rare condition where his genetic clock periodically resets and he finds himself suddenly into his past or future."

intriguing huh? i thought so too when i first saw it at fully booked, and which is why i had to buy it the second time around. i'm still not halfway through, but i have to say that the situation is pretty damn hard for the girl. not to mention that it sucks! which was made quite evident in the very first page:

clare: it's hard being left behind. i wait for henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he's okay. it's hard to be the one that stays... i wait for henry. he vanishes unwillingly, without warning. i wait for him. each moment that i wait feels like a year, an eternity. each moment is as slow and as transparent as glass. through each moment i can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. why has he gone where i cannot follow?

and here's another one, a conversation between henry and henry at 15 (i think). yep, there are sometimes 2 henrys because one is in that present, while the other time traveled forward/backward to it. so in this one, one of them is explaining to the other another older henry's explanation why they couldn't change some things in the past even if they try to:

he said that he thinks there is only one free will when you are in time, in the present. he says in the past we can only do what we did, and we can only be there if we were there.

* the time traveler's wife, audrey niffenegger, p.1, p.58

0 comments Wednesday, October 17, 2007

it's freaking slow!! as in.. grr

anyway, i saw this at a friend's blog and i just want to share it here. just scroll to the bottom of the list to find out the meaning for my marks =D

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch 22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife (currently reading it)
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a Memoir in Books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a Novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a Novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility*
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest*
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables*
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (ei ria, it's the book you want from fully booked)
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492 - present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
The Mists of Avalon*
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

~~
i have it but haven't finished it yet
i read and finished it
i haven't read it but saw its movie counterpart (does that count?)*
i finished and loved it

0 comments Thursday, October 11, 2007

i just got back at the office from a trip to quiapo manila to buy camera/lens filters (whatevs) which will be used for upcoming photo shoots for the calendar. only two of the stores i went to carry the specific filters we need. by the end, i forgot which of the stores i asked and ended up asking some of them twice! and some of the salesladies were already giving me strange looks. i then gave up and went back to the two stores to buy the filters.

afterwards, the driver and i dropped by balikbayan handicrafts at pasay rd to browse for possible gifts suitable for a foreign contact who's leaving to go back to his native land. the proponent specifically asked for crystal figurines depicting different pinoy aspects encased in glass. since i don't have a proper camera, ended up taking these pictures in my camera phone to show them. most of them are actually waaay out of their budget.



the art of lechon



a really good-looking but delicate bahay-kubo



an eternally-bound couple pounding rice



the king of our roads, the jeepney; and



a coconut tree

i'm wondering if i should just give them the "machete" statue in front of the store =D

oh, and i'm meeting a couple of friends for lunch tomorrow, and then its stardust for us =D

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i just finished reading ian mcewan's atonement a few days ago, and well, it was ok, although it was - sad. copied a few of the end's lines here

but what really happened? the answer is simple: the lovers survive and flourish. as long as there is a single copy, a solitary transcript of my final draft, then my spontaneous, fortuitous sister and her medical prince survive to love.

...

the problem these 59 years has been this: how can a novelist achieve atonement when with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also god? there is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. there is nothing outside her. in her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. no atonement for god, or novelists, even if they are atheists. it was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. the attempt was all.

p. 371, Atonement, Ian McEwan

so thus ends atonement. i'll just have to wait until the movie comes out.

and i move on to:



unfortunately, the cover i bought is not the same as the one above, its already the film cover. ohwell. i can't wait for the movie's release this week too =D

hehe. can you just tell that i'm in a novel to film reading spree. and the fact that the new fully booked in high street is just crammed full with books imaginable does not help too. and also the part that we're there almost every end of the week just to get starbucks in the third floor does wonders to my already empty pockets. haay.. but the new smell of books and print is just too good to pass up, and going through their front doors is just like cracking open a new book =D isn't she a beaut?


photo credit: www.southbound.ph
(since i'm too lazy to bring my own camera. i'll take pictures once i have the chance)

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i'm changing the face of my blog.. haha

~~

this is my nth blog this year. i have decided to make yet another one because my other blogs are currently getting clogged up by friends and officemates. what's so bad about this you say? well, i find that i'm getting a bit restricted in my writing because there's that nagging thought in my mind that someone i know will eventually read it. case in point, i'm currently pissed off with an officemate who's giving me the cold-shoulder for no apparent reason, and i can't rant about it in my other blogs because of my officemates who also lurk there. so this should serve as a warning to people out there who's thinking of pissing me off - haha

but seriously, i want someplace wherein i can air my thoughts without any fear of judgement whatsoever. besides, that's easier to do if you're just an anonymous blogger among tens of thousands of bloggers.

i'll also be cross-posting some non-personal posts from my other blogs as well =D

46 comments Tuesday, July 10, 2007

just got back from my 4 days, 3 nights vacation in palawan! bwahaha =D had a really, really great time, and it was well worth all the planning, trouble and moolah (it better be).

we flew out to puerto princesa on the 8am flight last thursday (7.5) and just got back on the 10 am flight yesterday (7.8), we took cebu pacific both ways. we almost postponed our flight out due to a meeting, but when i was ready to ask for the meeting to be rescheduled (because duh, we planned this vacation for a really long time, and for it to be postponed even for a few hours is not something i'm willing to take just for some meeting), my officemate called me up to tell me that it was posponed to monday (today), so whee!!


so we were at the domestic terminal at around 7am, checked-in and waited for our boarding time of 7.40. for some reason, 7.40 has come and gone and we still haven't boarded our flight. flights for kalibo and caticlan scheduled later than ours even boarded first. this is my first manila departure flight with cebu pacific (we always use pal in the office, centennial terminal is way way better than the domestic terminal, but they have the same terminal fee amount of php 200 - wtf??!!) so i have no idea if late flights are normal for them. anyway, we boarded at about 8 and by 8.20 we are on our way to puerto princesa =D also just realized in that flight that cebu pac does not give out snacks anymore - is this because they have super low fares compared to pal? they offer snacks for sale though, for the prices of either php 50 or php 100. when they announced this, i thought i was a price range, but their sandwiches and chips are priced at flat php100, and their juices/drinks are priced at flat php50 i think. well if you really are hungry, you don't really have a choice do you..
the arrival terminal at puerto princesa was really really crowded, as both flights from pal and cebu pac arrived at about the same time, and pal has this really really huge plane. my foot got hit by a falling stroller and rolled on by another one while we were claiming our bags. they also have this really funny guy at their pa system, one moment he was announcing:
"mr. elipante - ang sundo mo ay nasa..." - i pity mr. elipante

and in the next he's saying:"ang mga pasahero ng pal, huwag kayo magreklamo na maraming tao, malaki kaya eroplano nyo" - o diba, malinaw na explanation (because cebu pac and pal passengers are told to check out in separate doors, so the guard can check the baggages and receipts, and pal's door is way crowded than ours).

we eventually got out in one piece and scanned the crowd for our resort pick-up - we stayed at my friend's family's resort because they have way cheaper accommodation and tour rate packages than the hotels i know there, and well because it's my friend!! whom i haven't seen since college grad! we didn't have to scan long since we saw this guy holding up a sign with my name in BIG, BOLD letters - whoa. after a short ride to the resort and checking in, we then proceeded to nccc - their mall to buy some stuff and of course, food!! we also had lunch in giacomino's - this pizza place we found in front of nccc. i remember they have branches/kiosks here in manila but i haven't seen them here for the longest time. so i had to beg boyfriend to have lunch there, for old time's sake, and promised him that we can sample palawan food after that. we got spaghettti, chicken and pasta - and it was really good.
afterwards, we went back to the resort and got ready since the travel agency we booked ourselves on for our trip will pick us up for the city tour. we then proceeded to:
the city museum


i remember seeing this banga in history books and just had to take a picture of it, unfortunately, it's only a duplicate.


the butterfly garden:


where this two are sharing an intimate moment


crocodile farm:

where there are lots and lots of crocodiles





and other animals such as this very enterprising ang talkative eagle


and this very huge whale panga

iwahig penal colony:


where i bought my dreamcatcher


mitra's ranch with this view of honda bay




baker's hill with these cute miniature cakes

and their bread was really delicious. i love their mini asado - bite sized asado balls =D


afterwards, our tour group met up again and grabbed dinner at ka lui - which has an amazing atmosphere/ambiance (complete with these incredible masks)





and of course, really really amazing food at inexpensive prices - they even have free dessert! - fresh fruits in season topped with muscovado sugar and presented in a bowl of coconut =D


we were really very very lucky with our tour group. for some reason, we really bonded and ended up sticking with each other for the duration of our respective trips. we bonded over food - and got to sample different palawan restos for dinner in the process, and a lot of other stuff. it was really funny because we all got along really well considering we were all so different, one couple was a lakwatsera couple in their mid-30s, another was a balikbayan couple currently based in california in their mid-50s and are already a lolo and lola but who always takes the time for a vacation in their home country, another is a mid-20s quite famous travel blogger who plugs his blog in sites including the ateneo multiply group, and us - a not married couple in their early 20's who's quite new with this whole travel, tour, vacation thing. hehe =D


i just realized that posting my whole trip in one post is quite long, so i'll post another one some other time =)