Girls living in poverty are uniquely capable of creating a better future. But when a girl reaches adolescence, she comes to a crossroads. She either get a chance, gets educated, stays healthy and HIV negative, marries when she chooses, raises a healthy family, and has the opportunity to raise the standard of living for herself and those around her. Or not. This engaging video artfully probes deeper into the “girl effect”.

Found out the other day that 72 people dancing to Thriller beat the previous world record of 63.

NEW YORK (AP) - Michael Jackson himself wasn’t there. But there were just enough of his fans on hand to take a shot at breaking the Guiness World Record for the number of people dancing to “Thriller.” Madame Tussaud’s wax museum in New York says 73 fans turned out to dance around Jackson’s own wax figure to do the dance to his biggest hit. The previous record was 62. The event was to mark the 25th anniversary of the release of the Thriller video.

Don’t send out congratulations cards just yet. Guinness says it will review tapes of yesterday’s event before confirming the records — a process that could take two weeks.

What about this? I’ve written about them last year. Around 1,500 inmates/prisoners of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines.

I am posting this statement by some of the most respected faculty of Ateneo de Manila University. Most of them I know and some of them were my teachers. I do not intend to fight with anyone about this. But I want you to read it, because it opens up the discussion and makes you think. Honestly, I am sick and tired of people taking a stance without reading the whole bill and just obeying “what the Catholic Church says.” Fundamentalism happens precisely because people do NOT think and just follow blindly. There is a reason why we have a conscience. And there is a reason why we can think.

Now if after reading this, in your conscience you decide to go against the RH Bill, well and good. At least you thought about it already. That is all I ask really for. :-)

I hope we have a campaign like this in our country. I could see it happening. It would have Angel Locsin, Diether Ocampo, Piolo Pascual, Dingdong Dantes, Marian Rivera, Kristina Halili, Iwa Moto, Cristopher De Leon, Vilma Santos, Erap, Manny Pacquiao, Loren Legarda, Sharon Cuneta, Richard Gutierrez, Aga Muhlach, Heart Evangelista; the best celebrities of the two best networks in the country (for the non-Filipinos, you might want to google all those names).

Today is the feastday of Cagayan de Oro City, where I grew up. I lived there until I transferred here in Manila after high school. Here is a rundown of posts I have written that has some connection to my City.

Manliness is an ART. More appropriately, it is a lost art. Consider these numbers:

Now this is a really long post. So just read this on your free time. This was something I got years ago and I’ve added to it over the years.

Let me just say that it’s really worth the read, specially for my fellow Filipinos, and also for my foreigner readers who know Filipinos (this might be a good way to know us even more). With all the bad news going around, notwithstanding the SONA of the President last week, there are still a lot of things to be thankful for. Let’s start with these ONE HUNDRED things.

Nostalgia Manila
URL: http://nostalgiamanila.blogspot.com/
Nostalgia comes from two greek words: nostos (returning home) and algos (pain). So that nostalgia is the pain a person feels when he wants to return to his home. Nostalgia is being homesick.
In an age where the world was huge and leaving your native land on a boat to travel elsewhere means never coming back to see it again, then nostalgia makes real sense.
But in our present age where the world is increasingly becoming smaller and smaller due to modern technology, nostalgia is about remembering with some …

Carlos Celdran’s Tours
URL: http://celdrantours.blogspot.com

Carlos Celdran is someone who is trying to change the way people see Manila, one step at a time. And he does this via his tour-slash-history lesson-slash-play-slash-production number. I joined his Intramuros Tour two weeks ago with my officemates and I had done his Binondo Tour awhile back. And I found both tours to be very good.
Just as the tour is not your typical “on your right is the Church of San Agustin run by the Agustinians, etc. etc.”, Celdran is not your typical tour guide. …

Got the chance to join Carlos Celdran’s Intramuros Tour last Friday. It was a great experience. And it made me think about a lot of things afterwards. I will be talking about the tour itself on Monday, in AngPeregrino Recommends. Right now though are random (and not so random) thoughts about our way of looking at ourselves as Filipinos, about our national soul, and on our cultural identity crisis.

Conrado de Quiros once told a story about Jose Rizal who boarded a boat bound for the south. While on the upper deck of the boat, where the well-off passengers were, he met a Spaniard. The Spaniard was amazed that he spoke Spanish very well. Rizal replied that he had studied and lived in Madrid and Barcelona for some time. The Spaniard was impressed.