Bishop complains against Obli Run

Catholic university chaplain has barred students in Malabon from re-staging their annual naked "freedom run" around the campus to mark their fraternity’s anniversary.

Father Salvador Curutchet of the Institute of the Incarnate Word (Instituto del Verbo Encarnado, or IVE) has banned students of De La Salle Araneta University (DLSU-Araneta) in Malabon City from conducting a nude run as part of their fraternity's traditional anniversary celebrations.

The traditional nude run of the Alpha Phi Omega (APO) fraternity is most closely associated with the organization's University of the Philippines chapter and is popularly known as the "Oblation Run."

'It does not show our Christian values'

"I do not feel that students from a Catholic school should be running around the streets naked. It does not show our Christian values in the community," he told the Union of Catholic Asian News (UCAN).

An article on the UCAN website said that the run was scheduled for Tuesday and had the approval of the Malabon City Hall.

The Argentinean Curutchet, who has been the school's chaplain for five years, said he felt that it was not appropriate behavior for students from a Catholic university.

Permit granted by City Hall

Members of the APO international students’ fraternity staged a similar Oblation Run two years ago.

Randell Tupaz of the student affairs Office at DLSU-Araneta said that APO had a freedom run in 2008, marking the 50th year since the school charter recognized the fraternity.

"Just as they did in 2008, APO members went to the City Hall and applied for a permit to run naked around the streets outside the campus. The permit was granted by city officials again this year," he said.

He said that the run was canceled after Father Curuchet wrote a letter to the school administration advising them to stop it.

Luncheon instead

Tupaz said that the APO members did not fight the ban and pushed on with the 60th anniversary celebration by instead hosting a luncheon for its members and alumni. 

David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

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Francis M’s last blog entry swells with condolences from fans

Francis Magalona was bald but smiling in the last three photos in his last Web log (blog) entry.

He was then very optimistic he would win his bout with cancer.

“Good evening people. I am getting prepared for my 4th Chemotherapy cycle, and I will be admitted tonight at The Medical City. I will be doing some tests tomorrow, wish me luck," Magalona wrote in his blog dated Jan. 14, 2009

The “Master Rapper" was wearing his signature “3 stars and a Sun" t-shirt in the pictures.

When Vic Sotto broke the news live on “Eat Bulaga" that Magalona passed away on March 6, 2009, Friday noon, the singer-songwriter’s website was suddenly flooded with words of condolences from fans.

“We will miss you Francis M.... May you Rest in Peace!" wrote “ysel3", the first blogger who sent her condolences to Magalona’s website.

“We'll pray for you and thanks for being such a wonderful and great example for everyone of us. See you!!! We don't really expect that you will leave us all soon man," Ysel added.

As of 3 p.m. Friday, Magalona’s last blog entry got 700 comments, with at least 30 bloggers posting their condolences every minute.

Aside from the usual text comments, other online users posted pictures of the Master Rapper.

“Wartoys" posted his undated photo with Magalona saying: “Sir salamat dito sa ala-ala na yan. Miss you sir [Thank you for this memory. Miss you sir]. "

“Cr4y0n1", on the other hand, embedded an MP3 of Magalona’s “Super Proxy," which the singer sang with Pupil frontman and friend Ely Buendia.

“God bless sir Kiko... [As the song] super proxy [says] there’s no substitute for the real," cr4y0n1 wrote.

Meanwhile, “ceefive" of San Pedro, Laguna, was more poetic with her message, “At noon today you've bid goodbye, God is good, He's heard your cry; He knows what's best for everybody, May comfort be with your family." - Mark Joseph Ubalde, GMANews.TV

Goodbye Francis Magalona

For those of us who were able to enjoy the Bagets movie days, one will always remember Francis Magalona. Especially for those those of us who were so "ga-ga" over Aga Mulach and got cured by it when Francis Magalona came along.

Francis eversince then has re-invented himself from a dancer, rapper, singer, husband, father, among others. You will hardly hear any bad word or rumor being said about the guy. So you can say that he has lived his life well.

Knowing that he passed away with leukemia at age 44 (at Medical City in Mandaluyong) is quite sad. He is so young. What he went through is also a good reminder for us not to take our life for granted, despite what we perceive as far-fetch as we are still in our "youth" years.

(http://francismagalona.multiply.com)

Through social networks, Francis Magalona kept his fans & friends posted with his treatment. One of his latest entries even showed his photos as he went through his 4th chemo cycle then with supporters giving encouragement & prayers.

(http://happybattle.multiply.com)

There is also another blog, Happy Battle, that gets regularly updated by his wife, Pia, that gave progress as well on his treatment.

It can be fairly said that Francis is the 1st celebrity who used social networks to reach out and kept in touch with people, including friends and fans, that cared for him during the biggest battle of his life. Hoping that in the process, it will also bring courage to others who may be going through the same situation.


Rest in peace Francis Magalona.














David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

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Taiwan hits 6.4 Earthquake

The presidential office said he planned to visit Tainan on Thursday afternoon.
Earthquakes frequently rattle Taiwan but most are minor and cause little or no damage.


"Many people in my car were screaming," he said. "I was so scared that I couldn't make a sound. The train shook very hard and I thought it was going to overturn."
Rail service in southern and central Taiwan was suspended, as was the state-of-the-art subway system in Kaohsiung city, Taiwan's second largest with a population of 1.5 million. Kaohsiung is about 250 miles (400 kilometers) south of Taipei.
The Ministry of Defense said troops were dispatched to Jiashian to report on the extent of the damage.
In nearby Liugui an unidentified high school student described the quake as terrifying. "Everyone was running out of the classroom, and some people fell in the rush," she told ETTV.
No tsunami alert was issued. The quake was centered in the same mountainous region of rural Kaohsiung county that endured the brunt of the damage from Typhoon Morakot, a devastating storm that killed about 700 people last August.

In nearby Tainan, a fire broke out in a textile factory shortly after the quake hit, sending huge plumes of black smoke billowing into the air. Power outages struck Taipei and at least one county to the south, and telephone service in many parts of Taiwan was spotty.
Kuo Kai-wen, director of the Central Weather Bureau's Seismology Center, said the quake was not geologically related to the massive temblor that hit Chile last Saturday, but its intensity was unusual for the area.
"This is the biggest quake to hit this region in more than a century," he said.
The quake's epicenter was near the town of Jiashian, especially hard hit by last year's typhoon. A Kaohsiung county official told CTI TV news that some temporary housing built for typhoon survivors collapsed.

CTI said one person was slightly injured by falling debris in Kaohsiung, and a woman was hospitalized after a wall collapsed on her scooter in the southern city of Chiayi. Also in Chiayi, one person was hurt by a falling tree, government-owned Central News Agency said.
A spokesman for President Ma Ying-jeou said authorities had been instructed to follow the quake situation closely and take steps to mitigate damage and dislocation. Ma was widely criticized for his government's slow response to last year's typhoon.

However, a 7.6-magnitude temblor in central Taiwan in 1999 killed more than 2,300 people. In 2006 a 6.7-magnitude quake south of Kaohsiung severed undersea cables and disrupted telephone and Internet service for millions throughout Asia.
Taiwanese actor Chu Chung-heng said he and other passengers were close to panic when the high-speed train on which they were traveling was dislodged from its track by the quake.














David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

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Wala na gid? "on jed you tube video"

Ano masiling nyo?


David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

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Make a Difference

 Due to the many artists out there, it’s easy to get towed under and generally obscured from the public.

Make a Difference aims to do exactly that. This series of articles will hopefully make a difference to you as well as the artists featured weekly. Just by giving one minute of your time to write constructive comments, favourites and even watches will make a difference to these artists.

"The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place." 

   It all comes in a rush-first the air in my lungs, then the bright white light, and then the beeping sounds of the machines.
        Still blinded, all I can make out is whispering.
        Did you hear that? a familiar female voice asks.
        Hear what? This one is older, weary.
        I thought-he sounded like he was gasping.
        Honey. Let's not . . . jump to conclusions, says the older woman delicately.
        No, Mother, look-        My eyes are open, and all I can see is white.
        After they take me off the machines, she sits beside my bed, looking at me with her eyes huge. Like she can't believe that I'm real. Like she can't believe that I'm alive. Her hands are clasped so tightly in her lap that they are shaking, the knuckles blanched from the effort. Everything about her is held taut, and I can't tell if she's waiting to spring, or if she's trying to contain something.
        "Emma," I say, and she jumps. Swallows, once. "What?"
        "Do you have any idea-" she starts, then cuts herself off. Her voice is tight and pitched higher than it would usually be. She takes a breath and tries again. "Do you know what happened?"
        I open my mouth to answer her, and then close it again. "No," I say. "Not really."
        "You've been in a coma for six days," she tells me. The words spill out quickly, jumbled together and tumbling out like overgrown vines. She makes a small hiccuping noise and is silent again.
        "Six days?" I say. It feels shorter than that; it feels longer. I've been dreaming the entire time.
        "They told me you probably wouldn't make it," she tells me. Her voice is clearly trying not to reveal her state of shock. "I didn't want to believe them."
        "Did you, eventually?" I ask her, because I'm feeling weirdly curious.
        She looks down at her clasped hands and says, "Sometimes." I can tell that she's trying not to cry.
        "Em." She looks at me through her eyelashes, refusing to lift her head. "I'm here now, aren't I?" Slowly, I raise a stiff arm, and, feeling the joints creaking from disuse, place my cold fingers over hers.

II. The Only Moment We were Alone        The first time I met Dan, I spilled beer on his shoes.
        He was the music major who lived on the floor above me in college. My roommate, Tish, insisted on dragging me to one of her boyfriend's raucous parties, and that night I didn't have the willpower to say no. It had been the end of finals week, just before everyone left for home, and I figured that it couldn't hurt.
        Of course, I was wrong.
        I normally have an average tolerance for alcohol, but mixing an average tolerance with a rather out-of-control party never does anyone good. After having a few too many shots pressed into my hands, I couldn't tell the ceiling from the floor.
        Tish had no patience for a novice like me. She flagged down Dan, who had been sitting in a corner, someone's designated driver.
        "Dan, could you take care of her for a while?" I heard her ask.
        I felt myself being shoved, and then I felt myself crashing into someone, hands steadying me.
        "Easy there, sit down." I was eased into a seat. Then, "Tish, really-"
        "Look, it's just my roommate. I'll get her later, bring her home. Don't worry about it." Dizzily, I watched Tish push through a group of drunken dancers, leaving me alone with Dan, whom I had barely ever spoken two words to before.
        Dan looked down at me. "You must be Emma," he said, sounding weary.
        "That's me," I said. I still had a bottle of beer in my hands, but I had forgotten about it; I let my hand fall into my lap, spilling beer all over Dan's shoes.
        Dan sighed. "All right, big girl, let's get you sobered up."
        Dan helped me stagger into the bathroom and sit on the lid of the toilet, then locked the door behind us. He dug through the medicine cabinet for a cup, washed it out, and filled it with water from the sink.
        "Drink up," he said, offering it to me.
        "No," I said, pushing his hand away. Some water sloshed over the rim of the cup.
        "Come on," Dan said. "You'll feel better if you do." By this time my head was pounding; even if the water had been laced with arsenic, if he said that it would make me feel better, I would drink it.
        "Who are you?" I asked him between sips of water.
        He perched on the edge of the bathtub across from me. "I'm Dan. I live on the floor above you."
        "Oh," I said stupidly. "Right." I drained the cup; Dan sprang up and refilled it, handed it back to me.
        We went on in silence like this for a while: me drinking water and Dan refilling my cup every time it was empty. My head began to clear.
        "Sorry about your shoes," I said finally.
        "They were an old pair, anyway."
        There was another awkward silence. Then Dan said, "Do you hang out with Tish a lot?"
        I snorted. "No. I was just easily coerced tonight." I sighed. "I'm really sorry about your shoes."
        Dan cracked a small smile. "Don't worry about it, okay?"
        "I'll make it up to you eventually," I vowed, draining another cup.
        Dan got up to fill it. As he gave the cup back to me, he had a thoughtful expression on his face. "You know how you can make it up to me?"
        "How?" I asked. I watched him warily.
        "Let me take you out to dinner tomorrow," he said cautiously.
        "I'd say yes, but I might not remember that in the morning," I warned him.
        He flashed me a rare, wicked grin. "I think I'll risk it."

III. Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean        When you're in a coma, you feel like you're under a thousand feet of water. Everything is there, but it's either muted, or out of reach.
        You can sense brightness and darkness, but you can't quite remember what either of them are like, if they have a shape or a sound or a smell. You can hear snatches of conversation, but the sounds tangle themselves in your head, and you can't understand them. You can feel someone putting a hand on your forehead or stroking your fingers, but you feel like your body isn't really a part of you, like it all just belongs to someone else.
        Your life feels like it's been packed in cotton for safekeeping, put on hold and preserved so that you can resume it later. If you live to resume it later.
        Later, I tell Emma that I spent a lot of time dreaming. It's night, and she's climbed into the narrow hospital bed beside me, one hand clasping my own to her chest.
        "What did you dream about?" she asks me.
        "Once I dreamt that I was flying," I tell her, "but then I fell, and I guess the whole world was encased in this huge glass bubble or something, because when I fell I shattered it. There was glass everywhere, like rain. Except I looked down at my chest and there were these huge shards sticking out of it . . ." I stop, because Emma's fingers are tight around mine, and I realize that my description sounds too much like the accident put me in the hospital in the first place.
        "There was so much glass," she whispers, echoing my thoughts. "All over the road. So much of it. So much blood."
        I turn my head to look at her. She's staring at the ceiling, as if the blank tiles will tell her what she already knows, what she's already seen. I keep talking to distract her.
        "I dreamt about my mom," I say.
        Emma looks at me. "I thought you didn't remember her at all." My mom died when I was two.
        "I don't," I say, which is mostly true, "but there were-shadows of her. I can remember someone holding me. I can remember long hair in my face. Someone who smelled like clean laundry."
        "Can you miss someone you can't remember?" Emma asks me and no one in particular at the same time. She is reading my mind.
        "I don't know," I say. "Sometimes I feel like I do."
        Emma doesn't say anything, but I know she is thinking about it.
        "And I dreamt about you," I add, because I know she's been waiting for it.
        "Did you?" Her lips are close to my ear and I can feel her breath on my cheek.
        "Yes," I say. "I dreamt that you were nineteen again and spilling beer on my shoes."
        She smiles. "That was an awful night."
        "Really?" I say. "That was the best night of my life."
        "Better than the first time we had sex?" she asks slyly.
        "Clearly," I retort. "You gave me an excuse to get new shoes. How could that compare with sex?"
        Emma gives my shoulder a nudge in retaliation but doesn't argue. She just grins.

IV. Memorial        Six days is about the time that they start suggesting that you give up hope. They slip this idea carefully into their tones, their wording. They look at you with tired eyes and expressions that tell you that they'd really rather be somewhere else as their lips say, Things become more unlikely as time goes on, you know . . .        Six days is about the time that they start shifting their thoughts from He is alive and he has a chance, to He is dead and is taking up space on a bed that we can use for someone else. It's a business-like way of thinking of things, and when you're surrounded by death so much, I can see why you'd start to think that way. But the body on the bed is still my husband. The body on the bed still looks like him, although I don't know if it still thinks like him, behaves like him in its own little sleeping world. There were times where I wished I could flip open the top of his head, like in cartoons, to see if anything was going on in there.
        Six days is about the time that you get tired of holding nightlong vigils and of being worried and of hoping, although you don't say any of those things. You push the thoughts out of your head in case they bring something more horrible down with them. In case they bring bad karma, make things worse. And you feel guilty for thinking those things, because you're supposed to be a good faithful wife, and to be loyal and to hope. And then you just feel tired, the fatigue filling up any emptiness you feel, wiping out any room for thinking.
        Six days stretches itself into years, snaps back into seconds; time bends itself into a million different directions, and then comes back and taps you on the shoulder to remind you that it is still moving, and all you want to do is curl up in a corner and sleep.
        After Dan comes home from the hospital, I try not to tell him these things. Especially the last bit, because it makes me feel like I've abandoned him, even if it was only for a little while, while he's never abandoned me.
        Sometimes he asks about it: "What were you thinking, while I was in the coma?"
        And I'll say, "I was hoping that you'd pull through." And this is true, by all rights and means. And then I'll change the subject.
        But I know that a lie by omission is still a lie. It's my secret.

V. Your Hand in Mine        The second time I met Emma, she was still slightly hungover, and she was wearing a blue dress and a large white lily in her hair.
        "You look beautiful," I told her when she opened the door for me.
        She blushed. "Thank you." We stood there awkwardly for a moment. "I'll get my bag, and we can go."
        The restaurant that I chose was a safe one-Italian. We both got pasta. We talked about our majors-mine, music, and hers, English-our families, bad high school experiences. She was easier to talk to than I had anticipated.
        "You know, you've been living on the floor above me for six months, and I've barely spoken to you," she said during a rare lull in the conversation.
        "It happens," I said. "I hardly ever speak to my upstairs neighbors at home. Granted, they're a half-deaf old couple, but . . ."
        Emma was kind enough to laugh at my awful joke. "I wish I had met you earlier," she confesses, twirling pasta around her fork and not looking at me.
        "Should have spilled beer on my shoes earlier then," I said, laughing.
        "I'm never going to live that one down, am I?" she said, pretending to sigh dramatically.
        "I'll be on my deathbed and I'll remind you," I said.
        On the first Saturday that I'm home from the hospital, Emma and I lie in our bed, listening to the rain fall outside. She traces the new pink scars on my chest, and I reach over to stop her hand from moving.
        "Stop worrying," I say, answering her unspoken words. "I'm right here."
        "You weren't, for a while," she says. She's trying not to sound accusing.
        "But I came back," I say. I toy with her wedding ring, spinning it around and around her finger. "I'm sorry."
        "You don't have to be," she says.
        We lie in silence for a little while.
        "Did you really dream about me at that party?" she asks after a while.
        I laugh. "No," I say. "I dreamt about how you looked when we went on our first date. With the flower in your hair." I pull her hair away from her face, trace the outside of her ear. "I dreamt about our first kiss. It was nice."
        "The dream or the kiss?" she asks quietly.
        "Both," I say.
        "And now?" she says.
        "Right now is perfect," I say.
        I take her hand in mine, and lace my fingers with hers as the rain lulls us to sleep. 

David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

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