Pacquiao, Save Us
October 6, 2007 is another day for Pacquiao fans to debate and possibly celebrate if the Pambansang Kamao will win over Marco Antonio Barerra. Of course, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, will stop, take a break and turn their t.v. sets on just to see Manny fight. Fact is, I’m not a fan, but of course, as the nation’s pride in the realm of boxing, I cannot help but be awed in him as well.
In recent years, boxing has had a firm hold on us Pinoys that even choosing who will sing our national anthem for boxing fights has become such a troublesome affair. Hopefully, Kyla will not screw this one like what Christian Bautista did on the Penalosa fight just a month ago. I mean, missing out several important lines from the Lupang Hinirang is such a terrible, terrible mistake. And I have to say, I pity Christian Bautista for his tarnished rep.
Not The Only Gay in the Village!
As we mentioned earlier this week, the National Coming Out Day is almost here. It’s a time of freedom, individuality, self-realizations and acceptance. It’s time to be out and proud!
You see our dear friends, it may have been the fault of this blog why some people haven’t yet come out or don’t want to come out. We are surmising that this is about our use of the term bakla, we have identified ourselves as bakla and some people associate the word bakla with the author of this blog or this blog. (feeling sikat no? feeling? We’re just kidding, you know that, right?)
Well it’s about time we came out and reached out with open arms and open legs to all our dear gay friends out there! baklang aj is not the only gay in this village! we don’t have a monopoly, nor do we have the intellectual property rights to the term bakla.
You too can be gay, you too can be Bakla! Bakla ka, bakla ako, bakla siya, bakla tayong lahat!
Kaya’t halina kafateed, makibakla, huwag matakot!
If you’re not gay but have gay friends and family members, or if you consider yourself a fab hag, or if you are straight and believe in the causes of the gay and lesbian community, this is your chance! Come out and support gay bloggers! You can do this by posting an entry about YOU coming out to SUPPORT the causes of the gay community (e.g. enactment of anti-discrimination bill) or just post any of these images below.
We’re all in this together! Come out, come out!
Don’t believe in a thing called Pinoy Gay bloggers? Check out this list of gay bloggers Read the rest of this entry »
I Can’t Believe I’m Editing
(cross-post)
I can’t believe I’m editing.
I can’t believe that I just apologized to the entire nation for a blog entry that wasn’t even in the blogosphere for two minutes before I pulled it out. It’s a cry and shame that here we are, in this day of “free speech,” that some of us bloggers are editing our entries for fear of international backlash.
Granted, I didn’t have to apologize. There’s just nothing in that entry that would make me do a Malu Fernandez. I didn’t even do anything wrong there. Yet the reason why I pulled out that entry at the very last minute is because of fear: I was afraid that some loony out there would demand that I “resign,” even if I’m conveniently unemployed. I was afraid that someone would start branding me names and make me part of the headlines. I can’t believe I even have to be afraid nowadays, even if I’m supposed to be protected by the Constitution, and even if I write through a very thinly-disguised pseudonym.
Read more here…
Mea Culpa (With Regard to a Delete)
(ok)
Because this is a bad time for ranting about entertainment-related faux pas, I apologize publicly for the entry I posted earlier, entitled “Presidential Slut,” later renamed into “Daily Show Calls Cory Aquino a ‘Slut.’” It was definitely not a lapse in judgment: I am not making excuses. I was only trying to point out something, but I decided to pull out my entry at the last minute for fear of a lawsuit or something to that degree. I very sincerely apologize to anyone who has read it or viewed it (which accounts for two people).
With the state of the Filipino blogosphere today, we all live under the fear of misinterpretation. I pulled out my entry at the last minute because of fear: I am afraid that somebody out there will accuse me of being “chauvinistic” or that I am an enemy to all. I do not usually pull out my entries, mind you, but these are bad times: we all are torn between speaking our mind and speaking about what’s on the mind of other people. I did not write said pulled-out entry to elicit traffic, but I wrote it because it is consistent with what I do: to write about the issues of our times. Yet in this day and age, struggling writers like myself are confronted with the problem of what to write about, to the point that we even struggle with our identity as writers.
The point behind that entry was to point out an important point: that we, as a people, can no longer laugh at ourselves anymore. Yet I will continue to write about things that are consistent with our times. I believe that blogging could be more than just a way to talk about ourselves, but to talk about ourselves as situated in society. Yet I exhort upon all blog-kind to write about the issues of the day, and for them to grow the courage of writing about these issues with more courage than I could muster.
My very sincere apologies.
Marocharim
Quick Blog Tip: Take Advantage of the Traffic Upsurge
The recent hullabaloo over the Desperate Housewives racist remark about Filipino medical practitioners has made quite an uproar lately. People began searching the net for news bits about the issue and most of those searches were directed to blogs who were (once again) the first ones to uncover the story.
I bet most of you have noticed it, if ever you blogged about the said issue, chances are that you experienced a certain increase in traffic thanks to those searches that I was talking about. Here in PinoyBlogero, my traffic skyrocketed since I made my post about the Desperate Housewives issue.
Yeah, the traffic was a good break for any blog. However, the main problem with this kind of traffic is that it only lasts for a short while. The increase in traffic would only leave a spike on our overall site traffic. Once people went on with their lives and have forgotten about this issue, we are back to those average hits that we once had before.
As short-lived as it is, we can always take advantage of the traffic upsurge while it lasts. PinoyBlogero tells you how.
How to Survive a Fast Food Joint
You can’t avoid a fast food joint forever. Sometimes, it’s the only option available. Or probably the only one which fits your budget or your time. Or maybe because your friends are egging you to join them.
Pinoy at Heart. Are You?
You know you’re STILL a Filipino at heart living abroad when:
- the only carb that matters to you is RICE.
- you eat the only carb that matters at least twice if not thrice a day!
- you eat at breakfast buffet, gulping your all you can eat bacon, sausage, corned beef and eggs with toast AND ALL YOU CAN THINK of is “damn, this is really great with rice!!”
- you have Silver Swan soy sauce, Rufina Patis, Jufran banana ketchup, Mang Tomas condiments in your shelves.
- you use Ginisa Mix, Sinigang Mix, Palabok Mix and any other Mama Sita or Knorr Mix as part of your cooking.
- you fry salted dried fish in your backyard or outside your home for all to smell, ignoring even the snare of your neighbor!
UPDATE: The PBS Search Engine
The PBS Search Engine now searches 100+ pinoy blogs from the 100 sites on its list.
If your blog is not yet on the list, you may submit it here.
Organ Trade in the Philippines: Signs of the Times?
In an article posted in the Sunday Telegraph News last September 23, a couple speaks of coming to the Philippines to look for a kidney for sale, since it’s “legal” to buy and sell kidneys in this country. The woman who is suffering from end-stage renal disease (ESRD) is currently surviving on regular dialysis. But if she is to have better health, she needs to have a kidney transplant as soon as possible. Due to the shortage of donors in Australia, she’s forced to look elsewhere for a new kidney. And since she’s part Filipino, she would have a better chance of finding a close match in the Philippines.
It seems, however, that the writer of the article failed to research some important things. If he or she had tried to search Yahoo! or google for news or articles about organ trading in the Philippines, the writer would have found that there’s a Philippine law citing it’s illegal to buy and/or sell kidneys in the Philippines, which is Republic Act No. 9208, known as the “Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003″.
The relevant information can be found in section3:
However, as we all know, even if something is illegal, it doesn’t necessarily mean that something isn’t being done.
There are numerous foreigners who flock to the country to have their kidney transplants, for reasons not so different from the woman from Australia. Most of these foreigners are sick rich men and women from the Middle East. And kidney donors that they find here are mostly Filipino men who live in the slums and work as tricycle drivers, factory or construction workers, or even unemployed. Both the donor and the recipient arrive in the hospital with numerous medical lab and diagnostic test results, usually done in some other hospital. Days after the operations are performed, a nephrectomy for the donor and kidney transplant for the recipient in the adjacent operating room. There will be two surgical teams, a group that will harvest the kidney. And the second group that will transplant the harvested kidney. Imagine the drama as the scene unfolds. Could the surgeon holding the organ container be feeling the weight of the significance of his burden to the two patients as he transports the valuable kidney from one operating room to another? Perhaps. And this drama happens almost everyday of the week in a tertiary hospital in Metro Manila and, most probably, in many other big hospitals as well.
Filipinos vs Desperate Housewives
It is very common for us to include a smelly Indian, bow-legged Japanese war-freak in WWII uniform or money-grubbing Chinese in our TV shows.
*cough*hypocrisy*cough*
*cough*double standard*cough*
