2009 in Review

Pro­fes­sion­ally, I felt I became a bet­ter per­son this year. I am blessed (and con­tinue to be blessed) to be in a good com­pany doing rel­e­vant work for other com­pa­nies and for the coun­try. I look for­ward to 2010 and the pos­si­bil­i­ties of mak­ing a pos­i­tive impact for the coun­try and government.

I also became more pro­duc­tive. I learned to use GTD and got to explore it to the hilt and make it the back­bone of my work­flow. I also dis­cov­ered the Pomodoro Tech­nique and its tool: the Pomodoro Timer. This tech­nique has com­ple­mented quite well with GTD and I highly rec­om­mend it. I’m also using sev­eral other God­send appli­ca­tions like EVERNOTE, and DROPBOX, which has helped me (and my office­mates) become more effi­cient and effec­tive in our work. Thank God for the inter­net, sometimes-free wifi and the Mac!

This blog got around 50,000 page views last year-or around 140 page views a day or 4,000 page views a month. Mod­est num­bers com­pared to big­ger blogs around, but who’s com­pet­ing any­way? As long as they were qual­ity page views and as long as they were able to help, inspire, and force the peo­ple read­ing it to think, I’m not com­plain­ing. This was also the year I started using net­work­ing sites to pro­mote the blog and to give other chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to our read­ers. We now have an ANGPEREGRINO FB Page. Be a fan, if you are not yet one. And you can also fol­low my ANGPEREGRINO TWITTER PAGE.

The coun­try went through a lot this year. In Jan­u­ary, for­mer Batan­gas gov­er­nor Anto­nio Lev­iste, for­merly mar­ried to Sen­a­tor Loren Legarda, is found guilty of homi­cide by a Makati City trial court in con­nec­tion with the 2007 shoot­ing death of his long-time aide Rafael de las Alas.

In March, the Eraser­heads finally fin­ished their FINAL SET. This for me is the “con­cert of the year” of 2009, Pussy­cat Dolls, the 2 Davids, and other for­eign acts be damned.

In May and June, we were scared by the H1N1 flu pan­demic. Our Depart­ment of Health scam­pered and pan­icked and tried to keep it under con­trol. They finally gave up after a few weeks and left us to fend for our­selves. Thanks to our rel­a­tively strong con­sti­tu­tions, we survived.

cory aquino died and on August 5, in a scene rem­i­nis­cent of the funeral of her hus­band, Cory was laid to rest as thou­sands upon thou­sands gath­ered along the streets and paid their last respects to the most well loved Philip­pine Pres­i­dent of recent times.

Three days later, Typhoon Kiko, in a por­tent of things to come, killed dozens of peo­ple, and affected over 28,000 people.

In Sep­tem­ber, at least nine peo­ple died after Super­Ferry 9 sank with over 960 pas­sen­gers on board sank off the coast of the Zam­boanga Penin­sula. Thirty more are still unac­counted for. And then the great Typhoon Ondoy, caused wide­spread floods in Metro Manila and sur­round­ing provinces, 25 provinces together with Metro Manila declar­ing a state of calamity and leav­ing 246 dead and 38 missing.

In Octo­ber, in a heist only seen in hol­ly­wood movies before it hap­pened, a rob­bery took place inside Green­belt 5 in Makati City.

Manny Pac­quiao kept his win­ning ways win­ning against Ricky Hat­ton in a shot heard around the world, and against a game but out­classed Miguel Cotto, and we hope he beats the shit out of Floyd May­weather in 2010.

In Novem­ber, Efren Peñaflorida was declared as CNN Hero of the Year, giv­ing us a non-Manny Pac­quiao proud moment prob­a­bly for the first time in 2009 (hehehe).

And just when things were look­ing up, the infa­mous Maguin­danao mas­sacre killed at least 60 per­sons. Pres­i­dent Glo­ria Macapagal-Arroyo responded to the news of the mas­sacre by declar­ing a state of emer­gency in Maguin­danao, Sul­tan Kudarat and Cota­bato City, and in Decem­ber declared Mar­tial Law in Maguin­danao, the first time since Mar­cos that Mar­tial Law was declared in our land.

These events have left a mark on us and we are for­ever changed by them.

Thank you 2009 and hello 2010!