Cheap Chow

This weekend, news was shown about this journalist named Cheap Chow, errr... Chip Tsao who released an article about his views on the Spratly Ownership Issue between China and the Philippines. In the article, he called our country a "nation of servants".

This morning I was doing my morning routine of looking at news in inquirer and reading blogs of people and I saw a copy of the article posted in Gerry's blog (this guy has some interesting blog entries). The article has been taken down but you can read it at Gerry's.

This guys has written many "satire" articles which readers might call racists. This was actually at least the second time he has made racist remarks against Filipinos. The other one that I know of, also from the same publication, was made as an insult to Chinese made products. This was at the height of the poisoned milk controversy. You can read the full article here. In this article, he has made remarks of Pinoy nurses. Another article was about Western foreigners in China and how they are now not "fashionable" for HK women. You can read it from Friskodude's entry.

This guy just doesn't learn, doesn't he? I hope your Pinay maids are kind enough to not retaliate on your Cheap Chow, Mr. Tsao.

Sino Iboboto mo?

With the upcoming Philippine 2010 elections, it is only normal in our beloved country to discuss candidates even if it's still more than a year before the actual elections. Potential candidates at this time would start "Stealth Campaigning" (although stealth is a fallacy, kapalmuks eh) to determine if they have the capability to fool... errrr... convince people that they are the right ones for the job. At this point, I haven't seen any candidates yet that could help my motherland gain her dignity back. Viewing the news and seeing these potential candidates do their PR things, I realized what my standards are for my chosen candidates. I remember Carlos P. Romulo. Now this guy is a true hero for me. If he had run today I would have voted for him.

Years ago I read an article about him from Reader's digest (1989) I was walking around the mall one day and bought those cheap reader's digest compilations from a second hand bookstore. It so happened an article of Romulo was there. There were some anecdotes and the one that really captured my mind was the story about the UN flag. It turned out that there is a "dot" in the UN flag that was supposed to be the Philippines due to the insistence of Carlos Romulo. Now that is what you call true love for country. Simple, yes, but so meaningful. That story told me to fight for your country's dignity, even in simple ways. If there is any candidate as nationalistic as him, I can be assured that our country will survive.

Barack's budget priorities and Pinoy's Stagnancy

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I just watched Obama's second prime-time news conference and there was this question that gave me nostalgia of how our country was decades ago.

The question voices out the critic on White House budget which focus on education, health-care, and energy. The answer of Obama clearly shows what made him win the presidential elections: improving education, health-care and energy makes people grow.

This made me remember of how we were as a country. Decades ago, I remember going to IRRI for our field trip. I remember seeing the research done by the institute. I remember seeing many Thai and other foreigners that were at the institute to learn about IRRI's findings. Now, Thailand is one of the leading exporter of rice in the world. We, however, have become one of the biggest importers. The "teacher" has been surpassed by her "student". What happened?

Let's face it. One of the reasons for this is that Filipinos have gone stagnant. Science and technology evolved around us while we are concerned with politics. There are two reasons that I believed caused this. One, the government priorititized giving people food (not to mention robbing people's money lol) and Two, people became too contented of living the way they were living. In very simple terms, the people and the government have focused on picking food from the tree and not how to plant the tree. We rely on the "environment" providing us our food rather than producing it ourselves. When food runs out and no one helps us, we are dead.
For instance, I believe that signing international business agreements to find our workers jobs is not a good idea. We are now a country running on OFW remittance because of this. I hate that we are the world's source of laborers, maids and factory workers. We've become soooo dependent to other countries.

I just dread the day when our country becomes a bunch of "stone-age" people watching political drama in TV after a day of being slaves to "high-tech" foreigners.

R.I.P Master Rapper

Thank you for "Mga Kababayan ko" , "Kaleidoscope World" etc and all the good things you did for our country. Rest in peace Kiko.

Who are Filipinos?

This was THE question asked by Anthony Bourdain several times to different Filipinos who guided him throughout his tour around the Philippines in a quest to taste what is pinoy. And frankly speaking, similar to most Filipinos, would find it hard to answer this question. We have always had an identity crisis. With all the cultures we've been exposed to, as well as media influence, we have really lost the definite answer to who we really are. What trait is uniquely pinoy? The best answer for me is the answer given by Bourdain's Cebu guide. I think I would have given the same answer. What he was saying was that Pinoys easily and readily adapt to whatever situation there is. The culture is kinda secondary and is readily subdued in order to survive. Well, not necessarily bad though it may have some dire consequences in the future.

Hmm... makes me kinda wonder about that last statement. Is the reason for our poverty somehow connected to the notion that Pinoys are slowly adapting to being poor? I wonder...

The best thing about this coverage is that Pinoy food has been featured. And Anthony always had SMB Pale Pilsen in his hand. Way to go... Gosh seeing all that crispy awesomeness made me hungry...

Dragonball Movie

The new Dragonball: Evolution film is a case of directors and writers not knowing where their movie is based on. The story is quite far from what the anime originally is. The actors' portrayal of different characters is way way different from how these characters are written in the original story. This movie is marketed more for the special effects than the story. People might watch this simply for the curiousity in the title. I'm guessing all the fans and followers of this classic anime would be very much dissappointed like me. Dragonball started in me the love for japanese animation. Not Astroboy, not Voltes V, not Daimos. Don't get me wrong, Daimos and Voltes V are good. But Dragonball makes one want to watch the episode because the story is based on arcs, unlike Daimos and Voltes V where episodes are practically "stand-alone" except for the beginning and final episodes. I'm guessing a number of people would still go watch this. I imagine two people coming out from cinemas: (1) people disgusted (people who actually know the story) (2) amazed at the effect (people who haven't watched a single episode of DB).

Some people might say that, like Transformers, this movie is just an adaptation. Well I say this, at least the Transformer movie still followed some of the original transformer facts. And also at least the robots look similar to the original bots and created nostalgia among fans. This movie however would say, "wow, is that the monkeyboy Gokou?"

The cast suggestion below would have been better... I love the choice for Chao Zhu.