The 2010 elections will be the most interesting election as far as my voting career goes.
This one sees the most number of voters actually interested in participating and exercise their right of suffrage. In our home alone, our yayas and driver actually voluntarily registered without my knowledge when my kids went to register. And 3 of my 4 kids are first-time registered voters.
The list of possible presidentiables has been one surprise after another — the Noynoy factor arose only after Tita Cory’s death; Mar Roxas, a strong presidential contender slides down to be Noynoy’s VP running mate; Erap declares he will run again; Chiz Escudero pulls the rug from under everyone’s feet by suddenly announcing he is leaving NPC (and is now keeping everyone guessing if he will run for President or not).
This is the first time that elections will be conducted using an automated process.
As of this time, major online news sites have created sections just for posts on the upcoming elections and many bloggers have either written about election-related issues on their own blogs or have come together to put up blogs dedicated solely to 2010.
Blog Watch will contain features, commentaries, news, voters’ education and election awareness campaigns, videos, informal polls and similar informative items.
Do visit Blog Watch regularly and be thoroughly informed before 2010.
Not only is it our right to vote. It is also our right to see to it that our votes are properly counted. And in order to vote properly, we must know all the issues as well as the backgrounds and platforms of all those running for office.
Over a year ago, I discovered Nestle Fitnesse cereal. It went well with my being a yoga practitioner as it was light enough for me to munch on even before a yoga class without that heaviness that goes with eating. Yet, it provided the energy and fiber that I needed. It was a healthy snack that I always had around the house. In fact, while many take their cereal with milk, I took mine straight out of the box. It was something I could just continue snacking on.
When I took on a consultancy project, I found myself staying late in the office. Again, Nestle Fitnesse cereal was my constant companion. I had a resealable container in one drawer always filled with the cereal. I especially liked the variety that had fruit in it.
See? Here is my current supply of Nestle Fitnesse & Fruit!
Now, guess what! Nestle Fitnesse is offering a challenge to all of you to get into the FASHION AND FITNESS mode.
If you’re wondering what the “14 DAYS” is on the lower right of the box, that’s exactly how long one of my favorite snacks is giving you and up to 8 of your friends to lose some pounds and win an entire designer’s wardrobe. And I don’t mean just any kind of wardrobe. Handpicked by the country’s top editors, the shortlisted wardrobe is a dream come true for a fashionista. “For the prizes in NESTLE FITNESSE’s 14 Days to Show off Your Shape, we found out what some of the country’s most stylish people want to have in their closets,” shares Myra Garcia, Consumer Marketing Manager, Nestle Fitnesse . “And in doing so, we were able to shortlist what’s arguably the most coveted designer wardrobe to hit Manila.”
Start your way to a fit life and get rewarded with a set of clothes that will make you look good in a new body.
Take a look at 3 of the 8 designer items up for grabs by the winners:
7FORALLMANKIND
KATE TORRALBA
RHETT EALA
Are you tempted already by these luscious clothes? I am!
The rules are simple and fun, actually. Here are the mechanics:
14 Days to Fitness and Fashion So what do you have to do to get a crack at Manila’s most coveted designer wardrobe? Simply form a team of 2-8 members, and using Nestle Fitnesse’s 14-day meal plan, everyone in the team has to lose at least 2 pounds in 2 weeks. “No, 2 pounds is not that daunting, it only needs a few diet tweaks,” quips Myra Garcia. She explains that participants only need to replace breakfast and one of the main meals – either lunch or dinner–for 2 weeks. She adds that to exercise as well as eating plenty of fruits, vegetables and low-fat, carbohydrate rich foods is the best way to complement the 14-day regimen. And as part of the challenge, participants also need to chronicle their 14-day regimen via an online “fitness diary” accessed at www.fitnesse-14days.com<http://www.fitnesse-14days.com> . The Top 10 most popular FITNESSE 14-day diaries will make it into finals. The Nestle Fitnesse 14 Days to Show off Your Shape will kick off on November 14, Saturday, 9am, with the voting period lasting from November 15 to December 3, 2009. And as adjudged by Manila’s top style icons the winners will be announced on December 10, 2009 in a special fashion show. “People who’ll join this challenge will have nothing to lose but pounds,” jests Myra Garcia. “Not only do they win the fashionista closet of their dreams, but they walk away with health tips, tweaks and tricks during their 14-day challenge and continue on living a healthier, fitter and a more runway-ready lifestyle.” For more information about Nestle Fitnesse’s 14 Days to Show off Your Shape, please log on to www.fitnesse-14days.com<http://www.fitnesse-14days.com> .
In the aftermath of Typhoon Pepeng which devastated Northern Luzon, much of the relief efforts were concentrated on providing food, clothing and shelter for the displaced families. Recovery and rescue efforts filled most of the efforts in the hours right after Typhoon Pepeng passed over the area.
While all these are indeed needed for the basic survival of families, what has been largely forgotten or neglected was the state of mind of the youngest victims of this natural calamity — the children of Baguio, Benguet, Pangasinan and surrounding areas.
Recognizing this need, my friend Cathy Babao-Guballa put up Bearhugs for Baguio. Cathy is a regular writer for the Philippine Daily Inquirer where she has a Sunday column, Roots and Wings. She is also a blogger at Midlife Mysteries and Grief is a Journey (she put up Griefshare, a grief support group in the Philippines). Together with her daughter, Cathy co-wrote a children’s book, Heaven’s Butterfly, to help small kids cope with grief. So Cathy knows her stuff when she realized that just as much as they needed rehabilitation on a physical level, the children had to be aided in coping with the psychological trauma from this disaster.
Below is the message that Cathy posted on her Facebook wall:
BEARHUGS FOR BAGUIO-The children in many of Baguio’s evacuation centers have been severely traumatized by the typhoon. Reports say that many of them stare blankly at walls, and have no appetite. A stuffed toy is a small thing, but for a child who has been through a nightmare such as the recent floods and typhoon, it can mean everything and help him or her, break out of that shell. Together with PINE, a Baguio NGO, a group of friends and I are trying to raise at least 500 bears or stuffed toys to send to Baguio’s children. If you would like to donate your old teddy bears or stuffedtoys, please email 10000bears@gmail.com or send a text message to 0917-529-1964 so we can advise you of the drop-off point. Thank you very much!
If you have teddy bears and other stuffed toys lying around your homes, if your kids have outgrown these, and if you find it in your heart to share the joy of hugging a stuffed toy with a child who has known nothing but suffering these past weeks, please send an email or text the mobile number indicated.
I have been meeting up with friends who had toys to donate. If you will be in any blogger events in the coming days, I can receive the toys on behalf of Cathy.
As of this writing, the plan is for a volunteer friend of Cathy to bring the toys up to Baguio on October 25.
If you gave me a choice between ice cream and a slice of chiffon cake, I would choose the ice cream. Every time. Oh yes, I loved cheesecakes and chocolate mousse, the desserts that are more melt-in-your-mouth type rather than the spongy, cakey ones.
When Red Ribbon hosted the mommy bloggers one afternoon in order to introduce their new, surprise ‘White’ cake, I went to the event more out of curiosity over the kind of cake that was going to be launched. The weather that afternoon was not very cooperative as it rained cats and dogs just as I was on my way to the Libis branch. There was a time when I thought of just turning back as I did not want to risk getting caught in a flood just to try a cake.
It was an intimate affair as only mommies and a few kids were present. There was the usual round of introductions and opening remarks as well as a sneak preview of the cake which turned out to be the White Forest Cake.
I actually felt excited listening to the presentation as they described what the White Forest Cake was made of. For one, it was all covered in white chocolate shavings. Mmmmm… Then the piece de resistance was… oh my, long-stemmed maraschino cherries. LOTS of them, sitting right on top of the white chocolate shavings. I was not disappointed when they brought out the actual cake. Unlike many photos where the advertised picture is sometimes far off from the real thing, the White Forest Cake looked exactly like it did on the tarp inside the room.
We all started clicking away with our cameras taking shots from every angle. What else does a blogger do but take lots of pictures, right?
But here’s the part that really surprised me. When I was finally given a slice of the cake to sample, I was actually looking forward to taking that first bite. No, I was not disappointed. There were cherry bits folded into the chiffon cake together with cream filling, the chiffon was very light (cloud-like) and unlike a lot of cakes that are too sweet for my taste, this one was JUST RIGHT!
See how nothing was spared to fill the innards of this cake with cream & cherry bits? Yummy!
When the event ended, I was one of those left behind at the branch because the car was still fetching my children. That was a blessing in disguise because Red Ribbon’s branch head offered me still another slice of White Forest Cake. Yes, by this time I no longer minded eating another serving!
Red Ribbon also gifted us all with our very own White Forest Cake so I was really excited to have the kids try it as I knew that if I loved it, they were sure to do so too.
If there is one gauge of a cake’s success, I would say it is the length of time it takes to consume. I had another meeting that evening so the cake was sent home ahead for the children to have for dessert. I was lucky I still had the chance to eat a slice the next day because with my 4 kids and a nephew at home, the White Forest Cake was gone within 24 hours. Now you know why I have no family pictures with the cake…
Luckily, October is the month when 3 of my family members have birthdays. Maybe that’s a great excuse to go get another White Forest Cake from Red Ribbon. 🙂
Tropical Storm Ketsana which was overly underrated by everyone since it was just like a typical storm passing over our lands, unexpectedly dumped one month’s worth of rains in just about 6 hours, flooding most of Metro Manila and catching everyone unprepared.
Typhoon Parma, which at its strongest was a Category 5, missed Metro Manila by a miracle but slammed into Northern Luzon, lingered, went out into the South China Sea, drawn back to Northern Luzon by another super typhoon east of the Philippines and devastated Northern Luzon a second and a third time. Several dams had to release water to ease the pressure on its walls but the amount of water released and the speed with which it ran down the surrounding areas, caught many people unprepared in the middle of the night. By morning, so many people had drowned, were caught in landslides, homeless and cut off from the rest of the island.
The damage is not only to agricultural farm lands and personal property. The trauma owing to loss of lives has hit both young and old. We are still in the midst of understanding exactly what has happened and WHY it happened.
The Philippines has always been in the path of typhoons. I remember as a young girl, typhoons were regular fare. Once in a while, a pretty strong one would hit but these were few and far between. Why is it that these days, the typhoons’ intensity has grown immensely that Category 3 or 4 storms are coming in more regularly?
I can only think of one thing: CLIMATE CHANGE.
Today is Blog Action Day 2009 and the theme, very aptly, is just that – climate change. It’s not a concern for just a community or country. This affects all of us on planet Earth, whether we live in a 1st world country or a 3rd world nation like the Philippines. The bottom line for us all is this – if we want to have a shot at surviving on this Earth much longer, we need to take better care of Mother Nature because all the abuse that we have reaped on it for decades is boomerang-ing and coming back to us with a vengeance.
In my own country, there are so many points of action that the government and the individual citizens can take to reduce the dire effects of climate change:
1. Urban planning that makes sense – My heart was heavy as I watched a show with a highly respected urban planner who said that Metro Manila had an urban plan from 32 years ago which was never implemented. Instead what happened was that people were allowed to set up house and purchase land in places designated as no man’s land (meaning, it was not safe to build on it) or to put up houses, malls and other buildings in areas designated as agricultural land or park areas. Had we heeded this plan and had our government had the willpower and tenacity to carry it out, there would be no people stranded in low-lying areas which were designated as unsafe for housing and yet were somehow allowed to build on it.
2. Strict recycling policies – Enough of the start-stop programs! We used to have recycling programs which stated which kind of trash should go in the color-coded trash bags. There was a time when I saw green, black, yellow, even red trash bags in the supermarkets and citizens were supposed to segregate properly or else trash would not be collected. So what happened to that program? I don’t see it being followed although here at home I still try to segregate those which are non-recyclable from those that are. I heard that even during the short life of that program, there were people who diligently segregated trash, only for some garbage collectors to dump them all together once these reached the waste dumps.
3. Cut out the plastics! – Truly, we are choking our planet slowly to death with plastics. In fact, while relief operations are a welcome sight these days, they pose another threat, which is the proliferation of plastic bags and pet bottles which may not be properly disposed by the flood victims. I hope we get to the day when all of us will use biodegradable materials in all our products and deliberately buy eco-friendly products instead of those which further harm our planet.
4. Support the Kyoto Protocol – This map, taken from Wikipedia, shows the countries that have ratified this agreement to reduce greenhouse gases.
I am happy to note that the Philippines has signed this treaty (although signing and doing are 2 different things!). What saddens me is that the United States is shown here as NOT having any intentions of ratifying the agreement. All I can think of now is — WHY?????
5. Actively support the move to renewable energy – My dear friend, Vince Perez, who used to be Energy Secretary, is now very actively involved in a company called Alternergy, which aims to be the leading renewable power company within emerging countries in Asia. Bravo, Vince! We need more proactive people like you who are trying to reduce our carbon footprint and seek alternative energy sources. He and his partners are looking at harnessing the power of wind, small hydro, biomass, geothermal and solar resources. I hope the next administration, come 2010, and all succeeding administrations, will put its executive power solidly behind companies and efforts such as this.
If we address these 5 items above as starters and we move both as responsible individual citizens, as a nation, and as a community of nations, I believe we can still mitigate the dire and fatal effects of climate change.
3 servings of Del Monte Fit ‘n Right Fruit Snacks daily.
1 goal.
The two deejays of Magic 89.9 — Joseph Paul Javier, aka Mojo Jojo, who co-hosts Goodtimes with Mo, and Eric Virata aka Slick Rick of Boys Night Out — gamely got into the challenge on who can lose more weight.
Here are their BEFORE stories:
Slick Rick: I have to say that I’m a happy- go-lucky guy, but of course there are times that I have insecurities about my weight and appearance. I envy the people that can lose weight really quick and I’m not part of that lucky group.
Mojo Jojo: When I was a teenager, I used to be quite athletic. However, when college came along, I found that my physical activities took a back seat to studying and hitting the books. Then when I started working, I really let myself go. And with my metabolism no longer that of a teenager, shedding the extra weight became more difficult. When they weighed me in at the beginning of the challenge, I was really shocked that I have ballooned to 183 pounds! It was a realization for me that I really had to change my lifestyle… more so than the reason of “just looking good”—it was time to think about my health.
At the end of eight weeks, while Mojo came out with an impressive 17 lbs. weight loss, Slick Rick lost a total of 20 lbs. making him the winner of the weight loss face off!
If the two deejays are happy, their family and friends are happier. Listeners of their station call in to say that they have been inspired. They are also saying that they would not mind undergoing the same regimen because of the healthy snacking alternative offered by the New Fit ‘n Right Fruit Snacks. Health experts agree and added that eating the right foods with regular exercise like brisk walking can definitely help lose or maintain one’s weight.
Del Monte Fit ‘n Right Fruit Snacks is the only low calorie snack with 300mg of L-Carnitine that is clinically proven to burn fat! Fit ‘n Right Fruit Snacks is made with real fruits and it has no added sugar.
Del Monte Fit ‘n Right Fruit Snacks are available in all leading supermarkets (Mixed Fruit, Pineapple or Pine-Orange). SRP: P 25.00 for Mixed Fruit and Pineapple and P28.50 for Pine-Orange. All variants are available in convenient single serve cups with spork.
In the aftermath of Typhoon Pepeng which devastated Northern Luzon, much of the relief efforts were concentrated on providing food, clothing and shelter for the displaced families. Recovery and rescue efforts filled most of the efforts in the hours right after Typhoon Pepeng passed over the area.
