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 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).

The IAmNinoy Campaign is a year-long celebration of the life and legacy of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino who was assassinated 25 years ago. 25 years ago, his death—like the death of Jose Rizal around 80 years before that—sparked a revolution. In 1983, it was as if hope itself died when Ninoy died on the tarmac of the airport that will one day be named after him. Three years later, millions went to the long stretch of EDSA (Epifanio de los Santos Avenue), to oust a dictator in a bloodless revolution—the first of its kind in the world.

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.

Yabang Pinoy is about getting back our pride of being Filipinos. It was founded by a group of Filipinos who realized that one of the biggest problems faced by the Philippines today is Filipinos not believing enough in their nationality. The goal of the “Yabang Pinoy” campaign is to unite the Filipino people in believing in themselves and in fellow Filipinos. And I think this is such a timely goal considering the myriad of things that have dampened our spirit about our country the past few months.

Our politics have given us infamy (we’ve been named one of the Most Corrupt Country in the world)—and Billions in debt. Our sports programs are in shambles—our brightest hope to win a gold in the Olympics, boxer Harry Tanamor, was humiliated in the first round. We also lost in tae kwon do. We also had rebel Muslim groups attack our towns and cities in the last couple of weeks partly because of a botched Peace Process, but also because there will never be lasting peace without a better quality of life for everybody.

Several weeks ago, Bill Gates stepped down from Microsoft. He will remain as Microsoft’s chairman and work on special technology projects, but according to Bill himself (we now call each other by our first names. hehe), great wealth brings great responsibility (oh, he just sounded a lot like Spiderman there) and his future work will include finding new vaccines and financing projects in the developing world.

Featured in this video are celebrities including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Brian Williams, Matthew McConaughey, George Clooney, Bono, Steven Spielberg and Jay-Z. Well, it helps that you’re really rich. And it helps that you’ve changed the face of the earth with Windows Vista. wahahahaha!

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.

This is a plug about an activity called IAmNinoy.

This August 21, we remember a Filipino who laid down his life for his nation, one who dedicated a life of service and sacrifice for his fellow countrymen: Ninoy Aquino. And in remembrance of his heroism, the Ninoy Aquino Foundation and the Ayala Young Leaders Alliance recognize the ability of the youth to be heroes in their respective fields. With this inspiration, 100 youth individuals from different backgrounds and sectors of society will given an opportunity to relive Ninoy Aquino’s heroism through a congress entitled, “iamninoy:’Connecting Young Filipino Leaders’” on August 22-24 at The Aquino Museum, Tarlac City.

Ducky Paredes wrote this article in Malaya. This is something that we probably suspect already. Now here are the numbers…

This is from the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Cool news story on what Jollibee is doing to help education in the country. I’ve always admired Jollibee as a company, and this is one other reason to admire them even more.
Serving a Real Need
By Tina Arceo-Dumlao
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 21:48:00 05/21/2008
MANILA, Philippines–Local firms whine all the time about the difficulty of finding graduates with the skills needed to make their businesses grow.
Human resource experts say that most of the new entrants to the labor force either know too much of what companies …