MikeLigalig.com

Filipino security guards during the early American occupation in the Philippines


photo courtesy of Duke University

Filipino Police in the early 1900s. Lupig Sila.


Image Courtesy of Duke University

Congratulations, Cel. You are now a Junior Member of Tubag Bohol. The first one, aside from the moderator. Kadaghanan nato mga Newbie pa.

I am pretty sure the next Junior Member would be Capitan Berong. He's making known to public what is not known about Bohol and the Boholanos.

I'm still a Senior Member, aiming for the Hero Member level.

Membership level is based on the number of posting you contribute to our site.

We're sharing lives here. We're sharing ideas.

All for the love of Bohol!

Hi Em,

Way sapayan. Kita-kits nya ta diri kada adlaw.
Hope u could other Boholanos to join us in Tubag Bohol.

We're sharing lives here. We're sharing ideas.

All for the love of Bohol.

God bless you, Em!

In response to Capitan Berong's suggestion, I will be setting up a web haven for Bohol Writers.

Kini magalangkob sa mga balak, sugilanon ug uban pang hagawhaw sa dughan sa mga Bol-anon.

Announce lang nako inig ma-finalize na.

Cheers,

hi maricel,

dili pud oy. naa pay lower. Japanese Yen. Korean Won. Daghan pa.
we are just alternating various currencies of the world every now and then.

How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? â€"Psalm 13:1

My friends Bob and Delores understand what it means to wait for answersâ€"answers that never seem to come. When their son Jason and future daughter-in-law Lindsay were murdered in August 2004, a national manhunt was undertaken to find the killer and bring him to justice. After 2 years of prayer and pursuit, there were still no tangible answers to the painful questions the two hurting families wrestled with. There was only silence.

In such times, we are vulnerable to wrong assumptions and conclusions about life, about God, and about prayer. In Psalm 13, David wrestled with the problem of unanswered prayer. He questioned why the world was so dangerous and pleaded for answers from God.

It’s a hard psalm that David sang, and it seems to be one of frustration. Yet, in the end, his doubts and fears turned to trust. Why? Because the circumstances of our struggles cannot diminish the character of God and His care for His children. In verse 5, David turned a corner. From his heart he prayed, “But I have trusted in Your mercy; my heart shall rejoice in Your salvation.”

In the pain and struggle of living without answers, we can always find comfort in our heavenly Father. â€"Bill Crowder

Not ours to know the reason why
Unanswered is our prayer,
But ours to wait for God’s own timeâ€"
To lift the cross we bear. â€"Anon.

When we pray, God wraps us in His loving arms.

Happy is the man who finds wisdom, . . . for her proceeds are better than the profits of silver, and her gain than fine gold. â€"Proverbs 3:13-14

When Betty Goldstein of Staten Island, New York, entered the hospital, her husband Ron wrapped her 3.5-carat diamond ring in a napkin for safekeeping. But in a forgetful moment, the 63-year-old Goldstein threw the napkin in the trash. When he realized his mistake, he dashed outside, only to see the garbage truck rumbling down the street. So he called the local sanitation department and got permission to follow the truck to a transfer station. Workers began sorting through hundreds of garbage bags and recovered the ring an hour later.

The writer of Proverbs urges us to search diligently for something far more preciousâ€"wisdom. In chapter 2, a father encourages his son to do whatever is necessary to get insight and wisdom. This strenuous search for wisdom is actually a search for God Himself (vv.3-5). In fact, inner happiness comes when man attains this wisdom (3:13). He encourages his son to search diligently for this rare jewel because wisdom is not usually discovered by the casual observer. Wisdom is discovered and enjoyed only by those who are diligent, devoted, and determined to seek it.

Let us devote our whole being to searching for that rare jewel of wisdom. â€"Marvin Williams

More valuable than diamonds rare
Is priceless wisdom from above;
With purest gold it can’t compare
Because it’s filled with truth and love. â€"D. De Haan

With all your getting, get understanding. â€"Solomon

We who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. â€"1 Thessalonians 4:17

My wife Luann has a folder she calls her “heaven file.” It contains articles, obituaries, and photos, along with cards from the memorial services of family and friends. She keeps them, not as a sad reminder of people we have loved and lost, but in anticipation of our glad reunion with them in heaven.

Paul wrote of this wonderful expectation to the Christians in Thessalonica, so they would not grieve like people who have no hope. “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout . . . . And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thess. 4:16-18).

This passage speaks of our future joy together in the presence of Jesus Christ our Savior. For now, we on earth have fellowship with the Lord, and we experience what hymnwriter Samuel J. Stone called “mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won.”

Much about the future remains a mystery, but we can confidently look forward to being in the presence of Christ with all the saints who have gone ahead. â€"David C. McCasland

When we asunder part
It gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart,
And hope to meet again. â€"Fawcett

God’s children never say goodbye for the last time.

Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. â€"1 Corinthians 10:12

There I was, sailing along on my rollerblades, my wife at my side. Suddenly, the wheels on my left boot began to wobble, and a second later I was face down on the asphalt. Just like that, I had a broken finger and some nasty cuts on my face.

This happened a couple of years ago, but the results of that fall are still fresh on my mind. The pain of falling is still with me, making me much more cautious on my rollerblades. Having fallen once, I take every precaution to avoid doing so again.

Falling isn’t good. But for anyone who has stumbled in life, something positive can resultâ€"if the fall leads to a more careful way of living.

Paul admonished, “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). Believers do fall. But when we do, our goal must be to learn from our error and to avoid a second spill.

If you have stumbled along the course of life’s journey, there’s hope. First, ask God for guidance, for He “upholds all who fall” (Ps. 145:14). Next, read the Word and begin to live carefully by its principlesâ€"“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:2).

Have you fallen? Ask God to help you get up and keep from falling again. â€"Dave Branon

We’re thankful, Lord, that when we fall
We can begin anew
If humbly we confess our sin,
Then turn and follow You. â€"Sper

When we walk in the Light, we won’t stumble in the darkness.

Can a man take fire to his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? â€"Proverbs 6:27

Aesop tells the ancient story of a boy hunting for locusts. The lad had caught quite a few when he saw a scorpion. Mistaking it for a locust, he reached out his hand to take it. The scorpion showed his stinger and said, “If you had but touched me, my friend, you would have lost me, and all your locusts too!”

There are some things you cannot embrace without losing what you have in the process.

King Solomon used a word picture of fire instead of a scorpion as he warned his son against the dangers of sexual sin (Prov. 6:27-29). As a wise father, he wanted his son to know that in this wonderful, dangerous world there are not only flowers and songbirds but also scorpions and fires.

Solomon’s warnings in the Proverbs were not just about sexual immorality. Together with the rest of the Bible, such insights help us to understand the wisdom of an eternal God who loves us far more than our own mothers and fathers do. His Word also points us to the One who can help us even if we have “grabbed a scorpion” or “built a fire in our lap.”

Life offers us choices. Christ graciously offers us forgiveness for what is past, and wisdom for what yet lies ahead. â€"Mart De Haan

Search out in me all hidden sin,
And may Thy purity within
So cleanse my life that it may be
A temple wholly fit for Thee. â€"Smith

The lessons of life are best learned when Christ is your teacher.

We walk by faith, not by sight. â€"2 Corinthians 5:7

Stephen Kuusisto grew up feeling a stigma about being legally blind. For him, sight consisted of a kaleidoscope of shapes, colors, and shadows. Privately he would press his face close to the page of a book and memorize street names in an exhausting attempt to appear more able to see than he really could.

When Stephen was 39, his life changed after he acquired an affectionate and carefully trained guide dog named Corky. In learning to use Corky to lead him, Stephen reflected on the growing trust in their relationship. He said, “Faith moves from belief into conviction, then to certainty. We are a . . . powerhouse!” When Stephen admitted that he needed the help of a sighted companion, a new world of freedom and mobility opened up to him.

Many believers blindly stumble their way through the Christian life in their own strength. Seemingly, they are unaware that God has provided a supernatural Guide to lead the way. Jesus said He would send us a Comforter who would guide us into all truth (John 16:13). When we confess all known sin and then depend on the Holy Spirit to guide us (Gal. 5:16,18), we become a powerhouse for God! “For we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). â€"Dennis Fisher

I’d rather walk in the dark with God
Than go alone in the light;
I’d rather walk by faith with Him
Than go alone by sight. â€"Anon.

Where God guides, He provides.

A righteous man may fall seven times and rise again. â€"Proverbs 24:16

During General Colin Powell’s tenure as US Secretary of State, he discovered that a speech he made to the United Nations had been based, in part, on wrong information. In his long and distinguished career, this was a low point and a blot on his record. “I’m disappointed,” he told an interviewer. “I’m sorry it happened and wish those who knew better had spoken up at the time, but there isn’t anything else I can say about it.”

Instead of being chained by the past, Mr. Powell says he has chosen to “focus on the front windshield and not the rearview mirror” of life.

All of us have something in our past that we regret doing. It may have been an honest mistake, a moral failure, or a foolish decision. We wish it had not happened, but it remains in our mind and often drags us down.

The writer of Proverbs said that “honey . . . is sweet to your taste; so shall the knowledge of wisdom be to your soul; if you have found it, there is a prospect [future hope], and your hope will not be cut off” (Prov. 24:13-14).

While the past remains part of our lives, it doesn’t have to determine our future. With God’s wisdom and the forgiveness He offers (Ps. 130:3-4; Acts 13:38-39), we can focus on the future with hope. â€"David C. McCasland

The vain regrets of yesterday
Have vanished through God’s pardoning grace;
The guilty fear has passed away,
And joy has come to take its place. â€"Ackley

It’s better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and despair.

They shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed. â€"Deuteronomy 16:16


As the first green heads of grain formed on the spring barley in Israel, workers would tie a ribbon around each budding stem to set them apart from the still immature barley. When this marked grain ripened, it was harvested for the temple in Jerusalem because God had commanded that when they came to the feast, they should “not appear before the Lord empty-handed” (Deut. 16:16).

In the Jewish calendar, today is the Day of Firstfruits. And though most Christians don’t observe this Jewish holiday, it’s a good reminder to ask ourselves: “What do I have to give to the Lord?” It can be easy to fret over what we think we must do to please Him so that we are not empty-handed. Some of us are so busy doing things to please the Lord that we forget to rest in what Christ has already accomplished.

Paul refers to the risen Messiah as “the firstfruits” (1 Cor. 15:20). This means that Jesus has gone ahead of us and stands before God to satisfy our required offering.

Believers also are called firstfruits. “Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures” (James 1:18).

Because Jesus is our firstfruits, we have infinite value and will never come before Him empty-handed. â€"Kevin M. Williams

For Further Study
Interested in learning more about biblical holidays?
Check out The Holidays Of God
by RBC staff writer Kevin Williams

When you give yourself to God, all other giving becomes natural.

Do not worry. â€"Matthew 6:25

Jack, a 15-pound, orange and white cat, took seriously his job of guarding his owners’ backyard in New Jersey. He often scared small animal intruders away, but the owners were surprised when one day they found him sitting at the base of a tall tree, looking up at a large black bear.

Jack hissed at the bear as it wandered into the yard from the nearby woods. The scared bear quickly climbed up a tree. How could a big black bear be afraid of a little kitty? What was he thinking!

Even more absurd are our thoughts of worry and fear when we consider that we have a powerful and good God who cares for us. Jesus told His disciples, “Do not worry . . .” (Matt. 6:25,31,34). He said we don’t have to be fearful or worried, because our heavenly Father knows our needs, and we are valued by Him (vv.26,32). He is perfectly willing and able to meet our needs.

When something concerns us, what’s our perspective? It’s not what we see but how we see it that reveals our attitude. If we look at life through the lens of our powerful and good God, we’ll trust Him instead of fearfully worrying. When our perspective is right, we can see God and His faithful provision. â€"Anne Cetas

When fear and worry test your faith
And anxious thoughts assail,
Remember God is in control
And He will never fail. â€"Sper

Worry is a burden that God never meant for us to bear.

We . . . are being transformed into [Christ’s] image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. â€"2 Corinthians 3:18


Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life has had an unbelievable run on the best-seller lists. Its phenomenal appeal reminds us that believers and nonbelievers alike have a deep longing for a clear sense of purpose. We all want to know that our lives are involved in something worthwhile. Without a strong sense of calling and purpose, life is nothing more than routine busyness.

Being a follower of Jesus gives us a distinct advantage when it comes to having a sense of purpose. The Westminster Catechism sums it up well when it says the “chief end of man” is to “glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.”

Glorifying God means putting His character, His will, and His ways into action in all that we do. The apostle Paul reminded us that we “are being transformed into [Christ’s] image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18). The purpose of our lives is to let others see what God is like as they watch and experience His love through us.

What a profound privilege it is to mirror God’s love, mercy, grace, justice, and righteousness to a world whose heart is “veiled” to God’s truth! (4:3-4). Our purpose is to show others less of us and more of Him. That’s living on purpose with a purpose! â€"Joe Stowell

So let our lips and lives express
The holy gospel we profess,
So let our words and virtues shine
To prove the doctrine all divine. â€"Watts

The Christian’s purpose is to promote God’s plan.

This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. â€"John 17:3

You always sit in the row ahead of Sam in church. You smile and say “Good morning” when you come in. You say “See you next Sunday” when you leave. But one morning, you add a little conversation: “Sam, could you give me a hundred dollars?”

Unfortunately, that’s the way some people treat the Lord. They have a Sunday-only relationship with Him until they need something. But God desires much more.

The Lord wants us first of all to know Him as our Savior. “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3).

After we become His child (1:12), God desires an ongoing dialog with us and a growing knowledge of who He is and who we can be with His help. He doesn’t want to be a Sunday-only acquaintance or Someone we cry out to only when we’re desperate. God wants us to have a personal relationship with Him. He also wants us to grow in our desire to please Him by obeying Him. “We know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments” (1 John 2:3).

God loves you and wants you to know Him. He does answer desperation prayers. But before you start asking, make sure you know Him personally. â€"Cindy Hess Kasper

The Lord wants more than platitudes
From those for whom He died;
He longs for us to know His love,
And in that love abide. â€"D. De Haan

Knowing about God may interest us, but knowing God will change us.

It is good to give thanks to the Lord, and to sing praises to Your name, O Most High. â€"Psalm 92:1

Psalm 92 is a “Song for the Sabbath day,” a resting place for those who are troubled.

The song begins with a commendation of praise: “It is good to give thanks to the Lord.” It does us good to turn from our unsettling and anxious thoughts to declare God’s “lovingkindness in the morning, and [His] faithfulness every night” (v.2). God loves us and is always faithful! He makes us glad (v.4).

Praise not only makes us glad, it makes us wise. We begin to understand something of God’s greatness and creative design in all that He does (vv.5-9). We gain a wisdom that is hidden from those who do not know God. The wicked may “flourish” and “spring up like grass” for a moment (v.7), but ultimately they will wither away.

The righteous, however, are joined to the One who dwells in eternity (v.. They “flourish like a palm tree” and “like a cedar in Lebanon” (v.12), symbols of graceful beauty and unbending strength. For they have been “planted in the house of the Lord” (v.13). Their roots go down into the soil of God’s faithfulness; they draw on His unquenchable love.

Give thanks and praise to the Lord today! â€"David H. Roper

Oh, render thanks to God above,
The Fountain of eternal love,
Whose mercy firm through ages past
Has stood, and shall forever last. â€"Anon.

A heart in tune with God can’t help but sing His praises.

We have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God. â€"Hebrews 4:14

Today is Ascension Dayâ€"a day that is often neglected. Coming 40 days after Easter, it marks the occasion when the risen Christ ascended to the Father in glory.

W. H. Griffith Thomas writes in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: “The ascension is not only a great fact of the New Testament, but a great factor in the life of Christ and Christians, and no complete view of Jesus Christ is possible unless the ascension and its consequences are included.”

Thomas then summarizes what the ascension means to believers. It speaks of an accomplished redemption (Heb. 8:1), the Savior’s high-priestly work (Heb. 4:14), His lordship over the church (Eph. 1:22), His intercession for us with His heavenly Father (1 Tim. 2:5), the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2:33), the Lord’s presence with us today (Matt. 28:20), and the expectation of His return to this earth (1 Thess. 4:16).

Think of it! Jesus not only died, but He rose from the grave, went back to the Father, and is interceding for us right now. And He is coming again.

May this Ascension Day be a time for special rejoicing and thanksgiving to God. â€"Richard De Haan

One day the grave could conceal Him no longer,
One day the stone rolled away from the door;
Then He arose, over death He had conquered;
Now is ascended, my Lord evermore. â€"Chapman

Jesus who died to save us now lives to keep us.

As the teenagers left Robin’s Nest orphanage near Montego Bay, Jamaica, many of them were in tears.

“It’s just not fair,” one girl said after their too-brief visit. “We have so much, and they don’t have anything.” In the 2 hours we visited, handing out stuffed animals and playing with the kids, she had been holding a sad little girl who never smiled. We learned that before she was rescued she had been abused by her parents.

Multiply this little girl’s plight by the millions, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. My teenage friends were right. It’s not fair. Abuse, poverty, and neglect have turned the lives of millions of little ones into a nightmare.

How this must grieve God’s heart! Jesus, who said, “Let the little children come to Me” (Mark 10:14), is surely saddened by the way these children are treated.

What can we do? In Jesus’ name, we can give monetary support to good orphanages. When possible, we can offer physical help. If we feel led, we can seek to provide homes for these precious children. And all of us can prayâ€"beseeching God to help those for whom life is so unfair.

Let’s show children the love of God through our hearts and our hands. â€"Dave Branon

Reaching out to needy children,
Showing them our love and care,
Is one way that God can use us
To bring hope in their despair. â€"Sper

Be Jesus to a child today.

You were not redeemed with corruptible things, . . . but with the precious blood of Christ. â€"1 Peter 1:18-19

A successful businessman made this statement: “Almost every religion talks about a savior coming. When you look in the mirror in the morning, you’re looking at the savior. Nobody else is going to save you but yourself.”

We as Christians do not agree with that worldview because it is in direct contradiction to the gospel. The Bible teaches the exact opposite of such a self-sufficient confidence. The apostle Peter said of Jesus: “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

In Romans 4, we have forthright teaching that it is by faith, not by what we do, that a relationship with God can be established: “To him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness” (v.5). And we read in Romans 3:28, “We conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.” By no meansâ€"not with money or good deedsâ€"can we secure God’s acceptance of our sinful selves.

We cannot save ourselves. We can be saved only by God’s Son, Jesus, who lived a sinless life, died as the perfect sacrifice for our sins, and rose from the grave. â€"Vernon C Grounds


Jesus gave Himself to give us salvation.

1 U.S. Dollar   =    P46.330
1 Euro           =    P62.265
1 Danish Krone =   P8.3589
1 Malaysian (R) =  P13.622

100 Japanese Yen = P38.0722

Hello Maricel,

Ang kabugnaw sa Denmark among sugaton sa mainiton namong paghinangop kanimo nga nahimo kang kabahin sa among pagtapok-tapok dinhi.

Magpaabot mi sa imong mga posting nga imo unyang ipaambit dinhi sa Tubag Bohol.

Dako usab namong kalipay nga gipasukipan mo sa hulagway ang imong profile ug nasud-ong namo ang imong matahom nga pahiyom uban ang imong kaluha sa kasing-kasing.

Hope to see you here everyday!

God bless,

www.mikeligalig.com

SANGGUNIANG BAYAN OF GUINDULMAN, BOHOL,
                                                                                     Petitioner,
A.M. No. MTJ-03-1487
December 1, 2003
                                   -versus -


JUDGE MANUEL A. DE CASTRO, ACTING PRESIDING
JUDGE, MCTC, GUIDULMAN-DUERO, BOHOL,
                                                                                    Respondent.



R E S O L U T I O N


AUSTRIA-MARTINEZ, J.:

Before Us is an Administrative Complaint against Judge Manuel A. de Castro, Acting Presiding Judge, Municipal Circuit Trial Court (MCTC), Guindulman-Duero, Bohol for violations of Administrative Circular No. 3-99, Section 1(f), Rule 116 of the Revised Rules on Criminal Procedure and Rule 2.01 of the Code of Judicial Conduct; for arbitrary release of the accused in Criminal Case No. G-1912[1] and for not imposing the proper penalty provided for in Sec. 90, R.A. No. 8550, otherwise known as The Philippine Fisheries Code of 1998. 

On May 20, 2002, the Sangguniang Bayan of Guindulman, Bohol (Sangguniang Bayan for brevity) passed Resolution No. 2002-05-109 requesting the Executive Presiding Judge of the Regional Trial Court of Bohol and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines to conduct and initiate an investigation regarding the alleged arbitrary release of the accused in Criminal Case No. G-1912. Said request was made as a consequence of the series of events which began in the early morning of May 17, 2002 when lawmen apprehended the boat captain and eight crew members of the fishing boat B/B Junida-J who were fishing within the vicinity of the municipal waters and fish sanctuary of Basdio, Guindulman, Bohol with a ring net (known locally as "licom"). Charges for violation of Sections 86, 90 and 96 of Republic Act No. 8550 were immediately filed with the MCTC, Guindulman-Duero, Bohol, presided over in an acting capacity by Judge Manuel A. de Castro (hereinafter referred to as respondent). In the morning of the very next day, a Saturday, two of the accused, namely: Narciso J. Jusay, Jr. (boat owner) and Rolando T. Amistoso (boat captain) were released from detention upon order of respondent. It appears that respondent held a court session on May 18, 2002, despite the fact that it was a Saturday, and proceeded to arraign both accused who pleaded guilty. A certain SPO1 Floro P. Felicia acted as prosecutor. Thereupon, respondent issued an Order dated May 18, 2002, which We quote verbatim:

Before summons could be served, accused Narciso J. Jusay, Jr. (Owner), Rolando T. Amistoso (Boat Captain), of B-B Junida-J, requested the court for an immediate arraignment because they will plead guilty and pay the penalty of fine as first offenders of the above-mentioned charged for Violation of Section 86, 90 and 96, RA 8550.

Accordingly, the Court conducted immediate arraignment of the said accused, and after they plead guilty, the Court sentenced them to pay a fine in the total sum of Five Thousand Pesos (P5,000.00), which is the fine imposable on first offenders of the above-mentioned charge: chan robles virtual law library

    WHEREFORE, let the persons of the accused Narciso J. Jusay, Jr. and Rolando T. Amistoso,[2] be released immediately from detention upon receipt of this order, and let also the fishing boat "B/B Junida-J, which was impounded by the Police authorities of Guindulman, Bohol, be turned-over to the boat owner.

    SO ORDERED.

Guindulman, Bohol, Philippines, May 18, 2002.
MANUEL A. DE CASTRO
Acting MCTC Judge

Fine paid under O.R. No. 12390582
In the amount of Five Thousand Pesos (P5,000.00)
Dated May 18, 2002[3] chan robles virtual law library

Surprised by such turn of events, the Sangguniang Bayan passed the aforementioned Resolution No. 2002-05-109 on May 20, 2002, and a copy thereof was received by the Office of the Chief Justice, Supreme Court on June 25, 2002. The same was referred to Deputy Court Administrator Zenaida N. Elepaño.
     .
On August 5, 2002, DCA Elepaño referred the matter to Executive Judge Dionisio R. Calibo, Jr., Regional Trial Court, Loay, Bohol for comment/appropriate action. Judge Calibo required respondent to submit his Comment/Explanation on the alleged arbitrary release of the accused in Criminal Case No. G-1912.

Judge de Castro submitted his Comment/Explanation on August 27, 2002.[4] He stated that at around 8:00 in the morning of May 18, 2002, a Saturday, SPO1 Floro P. Felicia arrived at his house and informed him that accused Narciso J. Jusay, Jr. and Rolando Amistoso are requesting for an immediate arraignment because they learned that respondent judge only serves the court of Guindulman on Fridays, and if they wait until that day, then the other nine crew members would be placed in the predicament of not having enough for their daily sustenance while the accused remain in detention and because they fear that their fishing boat, which has no safe anchorage, would be damaged; that they intend to plead guilty and pay the fine imposed by the court. Relying on such representation, respondent judge acceded to the request and commanded SPO1 Felicia to fetch the Clerk of Court for the formal arraignment of the accused.

Respondent held court session that Saturday and called the subject criminal case for arraignment, with SPO1 Felicia acting as prosecutor. While the complaint was being read, respondent noticed that although the charges were for violation of Sections 86, 90 and 96 of R.A. No. 8550, the facts alleged in the body of the complaint as well as in the affidavits of prosecution witnesses made out a case for violation of Section 90 of the aforementioned law only, that is, fishing with the use of ring net or "licom". Thus, respondent arraigned accused only on charges of violation of Section 90.[5] Accused Jusay, Jr. and Amistoso waived their right to counsel and pleaded guilty. Respondent then issued the Order in question and upon payment of the fine of P5,000.00, both accused were released from jail.

Reacting on the Comment/Explanation of respondent, the Sangguniang Bayan sent a letter dated October 2, 2002 to Executive Judge Calibo, Jr. and raised several issues, to wit: chan robles virtual law library

Now with the explanation of Judge Manuel de Castro, specific salient points/questions surfaced as follows:

    1. Whether an immediate arraignment on a Saturday is appropriate for a case as major as illegal fishing;

    2. Whether the problem on subsistence of the accused is sufficient reason to conduct an immediate arraignment;

    3. Whether the alleged arraignment was proper even if the Chief of Police was not informed and his supposed representative was not authorized and the prosecution witnesses were not called to attend; chan robles virtual law library
     
    4. The complaint as filed by SPO1 Henry Salada, PNP and approved by SPO4 Juanito Janiola, Acting Chief of Police, involved 3 principal accused and 9 accessories and yet only 2 accused pleaded guilty; chan robles virtual law library

    5. There is no satisfactory reason in reducing the three violations of the accused as pointed out by the prosecution to only one; and

    6. In the transcript of the stenographic notes during the immediate arraignment, the representative of the prosecution seemed not to act as one.[6]

On November 19, 2002, Executive Judge Calibo, Jr. accordingly conducted an investigation. He ordered the police officers involved to appear before the court so as to shed additional light on the incident. chan robles virtual law library

SPO1 Felicia testified as follows: At around 8:30 in the morning of Saturday, May 18, 2002, he was called upon by respondent to attend the arraignment of the accused because they will plead guilty. He denied the claim of respondent that it was he (SPO1 Felicia) who approached respondent Judge to request for an immediate arraignment for the accused. He was the one who represented the prosecution because at that time, the Acting Chief of Police was absent and there were no other senior policeman to appear for the prosecution. It was normally police investigator SPO1 Henry Salada who is designated to act as prosecutor, but at that particular time, Salada was also out on a follow-up patrol to locate the errant fishing boat, thus, he was the one who appeared for the prosecution, which he has already done several times in the past.[7]

SPO1 Henry Salada testified: It was the first time that an arraignment was conducted by the MCTC on a Saturday. He stated that SPO1 Felicia is not authorized to appear as prosecutor in the arraignment of cases, although it has been the practice of respondent judge to just call any of the policemen, in the absence of the Chief of Police, to represent the prosecution, usually in collaboration with a lawyer as private prosecutor. Moreover, SPO1 Felicia would appear for the prosecution only during regular hearings and never for an arraignment. This incident is the very first time that respondent judge called a police officer other than himself (Salada) to prosecute a case even if there is no private lawyer present during the hearing. During the arraignment, the Fish Wardens who assisted in arresting the accused and their crew were neither notified nor required to attend.[8]

SPO4 Juanito Janiola, Acting Chief of Police of Guindulman Municipal Police, testified, as follows: He had no knowledge about the arraignment held on that particular Saturday because he was out trying to locate the fishing boat. What was taken into custody were only the icer and the service pump boat, not the fishing boat itself, thus, the fishing boat was able to get away. When he returned to the police station at around 3:00 in the afternoon of that Saturday, he was surprised when SPO1 Salada asked him why the accused were released. That was the only time he was handed a copy of the assailed Order of respondent judge. SPO1 Felicia never informed him of the arraignment that took place. He did not leave instructions that in major cases, only someone who knows how to prosecute should represent his office because he did not expect that arraignment could be done on a Saturday. He was then surprised that the arraignment was done on a Saturday. That was the first time it happened and, in his opinion, the incident can be considered as an irregularity.[9]

The Provincial Legal Officer of the Province of Bohol also submitted his Comments.[10]

On January 27, 2003, the Office of DCA Elepaño received Executive Judge Calibo, Jr.'s "Investigation Report Relative to MCTC Crim. Case No. G-1912 as Requested by the Sangguniang Bayan of Guindulman, Bohol in its Resolution No. 2002-05-109" with the following findings:

    1. There seems to be a discrepancy between the claims of Judge de Castro and SPO1 Felicia. Judge de Castro's claim that it was SPO1 Felicia who informed him about the request of the accused for an early arraignment was denied by SPO1 Felicia who claims that it was the other way around, i.e., it was Judge de Castro who had him fetched to attend the arraignment; chan robles virtual law library

    2. There is no mention in the affidavit of SPO1 Felicia (Annex "N") as well as in the joint affidavit of the municipal fish wardens (Annex "O") that Narciso Jusay, Jr., the registered fishing boat owner, was among those apprehended by the team; in fact, he is not even mentioned by SPO1 Felicia in his affidavit. Yet, all of a sudden, at 8 a.m. of that Saturday, he was suddenly in court and allegedly arraigned together with the boat captain (as the diesel mechanic was at large). There is no way of finding out if the one who appeared in court as Narciso Jusay, Jr. was in fact not an impostor as he and the boat captain were not required to sign the judgment; chan robles virtual law library

    3. Judge de Castro should have issued a "Decision" not a mere "Order" (Annex "P"); chan robles virtual law library

    4. Although the "Order" mentions that the accused will plead guilty "as first offenders of the above-mentioned charged (sic) for Violation of Section 86, 90 and 96, R.A. 8550" (which involves three violations, and therefore, three separate sentences), he does not explain in his "Order" (actually, a Decision) why he imposes a total fine of only P5,000 for three offenses; chan robles

    5. There is nothing in the court record to show that the accused were duly informed about their constitutional right to counsel. The "Order" does not even mention if someone appeared for the prosecution; chan robles virtual law library

    6. It was not correct for the judge to conclude in his "Order" that the sum of P5,000.00 "is the fine imposable on first offenders of the above-mentioned charge inasmuch as the amount arrived at was purely the result of judicial discretion;

    7. The judge may have exaggerated the right of the accused to a speedy trial and negated the equally important right of the prosecution to their day in court and to due process. He could have given the prosecution a chance to amend its complaint, e.g. to expressly specify the violations committed under Sections 86 and 96 of R.A. 8550. For that matter, he could have waited for SPO1 Salada (whom he knows to be the police investigator-prosecutor of PNP-Guindulman and the one who prepared the complaint) to report on Monday. After all, as he pointed out, the arraignment would not take too much time and he can afford to be a little late in the other sala he has to attend to. In other words, his actuations did make him look like he was acting more like the counsel for the accused;

    8. The Provincial Legal Officer, Atty. Angel Ucat, notes in his Comments (Annex "L") that the earlier copy (Annex "Q") of the questioned Order (Annex "P") which his staff procured from the 9th MCTC (following the SB request to investigate the incident) does not contain the alleged superimposition of the name Rolando T. Amistoso in Annex "P" submitted by Judge de Castro to the undersigned;

    9. Curiously, Judge de Castro states in his Order "Let the fishing boat which was impounded by the police authorities of Guindulman, Bohol, be turned over to the boat owner." Actually, as SPO4 Janiola, SPO1 Salada, and SPO1 Felicia admitted, the fishing boat was never impounded as it disappeared after the incident;

    10. Finally, and what could probably be the blatant and undeniable irregularity in the questioned Order is why the respondent judge chose to impose only Penalty No. 2 (the fine) and ignore the Penalty Nos. 1 and 3 of Section 90, R.A. No. 8550.

      x    x    x                        x    x    x                        x    x    x

In other words, the non-imposition[11] of Penalty Nos. 1 and 3 is expressly provided by law; hence, not included in the discretion of the judge. Accordingly, the boat captain should have been slapped a penalty of imprisonment; only the owner should have been fined, not the boat captain; and the Order should have included the confiscation and forfeiture of the fish catch.[12]

On April 8, 2003, this Court issued a Resolution noting Resolution No. 2002-05-109, dated May 20, 2002 of the Sangguniang Bayan and treating the same as an administrative complaint against respondent and directing him to file his Comment on the matters raised in said Resolution No. 2002-05-109.

On June 9, 2003, we received respondent's Comment/Explanation dated May 19, 2003 which merely reiterated the statements he made in his Comment/Explanation dated August 23, 2002, submitted to the investigating judge.

The matter was referred to the Office of the Court Administrator for evaluation, report and recommendation, and in a Memorandum dated September 16, 2003, the Court Administrator found respondent judge administratively liable for the following acts: chan robles virtual law library

    (a) Violation of Administrative Circular No. 3-99 dated 15 January 1999 when he arraigned the accused on a Saturday. The aforesaid circular provides that court sessions should be held on Mondays to Fridays;

    (b) Violation of Sec. 1(f), Rule 116 of the Revised Rules on Criminal Procedure which requires the presence of the private offended party at the arraignment for purposes of plea bargaining, determination of civil liability and other matters requiring his presence;

    (c) Imposing a penalty of fine to the boat captain, who should have been meted the penalty of imprisonment of two (2) years to six (6) years, as provided in R.A. No. 8550; and

    (d) Committing undue haste in conducting the arraignment of the accused, thus giving the impression that he is partial in favor of the accused[13] recommending that respondent judge be fined in the amount of P20,000.00 for Gross Ignorance of the Law or Procedure with a stern warning that commission of similar acts in the future will be dealt with more severely.

We approve the foregoing findings and recommendations except as to the recommended penalty and some other modifications as will be discussed forthwith.

Verily, respondent judge committed serious irregularities in the procedures laid down by the Supreme Court, thereby giving the impression that he is favoring the accused to the detriment of the interests of the State.

Respondent set the arraignment of the accused the day following their arrest which is a Saturday. The holding of court session on a Saturday is a blatant violation of Administrative Circular No. 3-99, which provides that "[t]he session hours of all Regional Trial Courts, Municipal Trial Courts, and Municipal Circuit Trial Courts shall be from 8:30 in the morning to noon and from 2:00 to 4:30 in the afternoon, from Monday to Friday."

Worse, respondent failed to send a written notice of said arraignment to the offended party. Sec. 1(f), Rule 116 of the Revised Rules on Criminal Procedure requires such notice, to wit:

    (f) The private offended party shall be required to appear at the arraignment for purposes of plea bargaining, determination of civil liability, and other matters requiring his presence. In case of failure of the offended party to appear despite due notice, the court may allow the accused to enter a plea of guilty to a lesser offense which is necessarily included in the offense charged with the conformity of the trial prosecutor alone.

Considering that the offended party is the State, its representative, in this case, are the deputized Municipal Fish Wardens.[14] Respondent had no justifiable reason why he failed to notify them. Their names are mentioned at the bottom portion of the complaint. By setting the arraignment on a Saturday and failing to notify them, respondent eroded public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the Judiciary, clearly in violation of Rule 2.01 of the Code of Judicial Conduct, which provides:

A judge should behave at all times as to promote public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.

Absent a written notice duly sent to all parties concerned necessarily produces an impression of partiality of the court in favor of the accused. Respondent must know that it is not only the accused who has rights. The prosecution likewise has the right to a fair trial. Thus, in Dimatulac vs. Hon. Villon,[15] we held:

The judge's action must not impair the substantial rights of the accused, nor the right of the State and offended party to due process of law.

Indeed, for justice to prevail, the scales must balance; justice is not to be dispensed for the accused alone. The interest of society and the offended parties which have been wronged must be equally considered. Verily, a verdict of conviction is not necessarily a denial of justice; and an acquittal is not necessarily a triumph of justice, for, to the society offended and the party wronged, it could also mean injustice. Justice then must be rendered even-handedly to both the accused, on one hand, and the State and offended party, on the other.[16]

Furthermore, the indecent undue haste with which the accused were arraigned, the arbitrary imposition of penalties on the accused, the consequent release of the accused and termination of the case, constitute a patent denial of the prosecution of the opportunity to fully protect the interest of the State.

Moreover, we note that respondent failed to comply with the basic and fundamental constitutional mandate that no decision shall be rendered by any court without expressing therein clearly and distinctly the facts and the law on which it is based.[17] The "Order" issued by the respondent Judge fell short of the standard. As it is, the entire proceedings undertaken by respondent Judge in Criminal Case No. G-1912 is tainted with irregularity.

Further, as correctly pointed out by the investigating judge, if indeed the complaint was duplicitous, respondent could have given the prosecution a chance to amend its complaint, pursuant to Section 14, Rule 110 of the Revised Rules of Criminal Procedure, to wit:

SEC. 14. Amendment. â€" The information or complaint may be amended, in substance or form, without leave of court, at any time before the accused pleads; and thereafter and during the trial as to all matters of form, by leave and at the discretion of the court, when the same can be done without prejudice to the rights of the accused.

  x    x    x                        x    x    x                        x    x    x

If it appears at any time before judgment that a mistake has been named in charging the proper offense, the court shall dismiss the original complaint or information upon the filing of a new one charging the proper offense in accordance with Section 19, Rule 119, provided the accused would not be placed thereby in double jeopardy and may also require the witnesses to give bail for their appearance at the trial.

Finally, the penalty of only a fine of P5,000.00 imposed by respondent on both accused in the subject criminal case reflects his gross ignorance or absolute disregard of the provisions of Republic Act No. 8550.

In the case of In Re: Joaquin T . Borromeo, We held:

    This Court has repeatedly and uniformly ruled that a judge may not be held administratively accountable for every erroneous order or decision he renders. To hold otherwise would be nothing short of harassment and would make his position doubly unbearable, for no one called upon to try the facts or interpret the law in the process of administering justice can be infallible in his judgment. The error must be gross or patent, deliberate and malicious, or incurred with evident bad faith; it is only in these cases that administrative sanctions are called for as an imperative duty of the Supreme Court.[18]

In the instant case, the complained acts of the respondent judge are gross, deliberate and patently prejudicial to the interest of the judiciary.

Section 90 of said law, as earlier reproduced in the early part of herein Resolution, clearly enumerates the penalties that should be imposed on violators thereof. It specifically imposes a penalty of imprisonment from two years to six years on the boat captain and master fisherman of the vessel, a fine ranging from P2,000.00 to P20,000.00 on the boat owner/operator; and, confiscation and forfeiture of the catch. Clearly therefrom, the trial court may only exercise its discretion as to the amount of fine to be meted out on the boat owner, in this case, accused Jusay, Jr., but it is not within the discretion of the court whether or not to impose the penalty of imprisonment on boat captain Amistoso. Upon a finding of guilt, it is mandatory for the court to impose the penalty of imprisonment on the accused boat captain Amistoso. Respondent, in imposing only a fine of P5,000.00 for both the boat owner and boat captain, has not been able to justify why he disregarded with impunity the proper penalties that should have been imposed on the guilty offenders.

The actuation of respondent is a clear example of gross ignorance of the law or procedure. In De Guzman, Jr. vs. Sison[19] the Court held thus:

    To reiterate, observance of the law, which he is bound to know is required of every judge. When the law is sufficiently basic, a judge owes it to his office to simply apply it; anything less than that would be constitutive of gross ignorance of the law. A judge should be the embodiment of competence, integrity and independence. It is a pressing responsibility of judges to keep abreast with the law and the changes therein for ignorance of the law, which everyone is bound to know, excuses no one, not even judges. Indeed, it has been said that â€" when the inefficiency springs from a failure to consider so basic and elemental a rule, a law or a principle in the discharge of his duties, a judge is either too incompetent and undeserving of the position and the title he holds or is too vicious that the oversight or omission was deliberately done in bad faith and in grave abuse of judicial authority.[20](Emphasis supplied)

And although a judge may not always be subjected to disciplinary action for every erroneous order or decision he renders, that selective immunity is not a license to be negligent or abusive and arbitrary in performing his adjudicatory prerogative.[21] In the present case, respondent impudently misused his authority to impose the penalty under the law which we cannot countenance. If judges wantonly misuse the powers vested in them by law, there will not only be confusion in the administration of justice but even also oppressive disregard of the basic requirements of due process.[22]

Thus, we also find respondent judge guilty of the serious charge of Gross Ignorance of the Law or Procedure under paragraph 9, Sec. 8, Rule 140 of the Rules of Court, as amended, punishable with sanctions enumerated under Section 11, Rule 140 of the same Rules, to wit:

    Sec. 11. Sanctions. - A. If the respondent is guilty of a serious charge, any of the following sanctions may be imposed:
     
    1. Dismissal from the service, forfeiture of all or part of the benefits as the Court may determine, and disqualification from reinstatement or appointment to any public office, including government-owned or controlled corporations. Provided, however, That the forfeiture of benefits shall in no case include accrued leave credits;

    2. Suspension from office without salary and other benefits for more than three (3) but not exceeding six (6) months; or

    3. A fine of more than P20,000.00 but not exceeding P40,000.00. chan robles virtual law library

However, We note that there is nothing on record to show that respondent had been administratively charged with any wrongdoing in the past. Considering that this is his first offense and in the absence of proof that the acts were committed for monetary consideration, the Court finds it proper to temper the penalty to be meted out and extend liberality to respondent by imposing the penalty of fine of P40,000.00.

WHEREFORE, for Gross Ignorance of the Law and Procedure and violation of Rule 2.01 of the Code of Judicial Conduct, respondent Judge Manuel A. de Castro is FINED Forty Thousand Pesos (P40,000.00) with a STERN WARNING that a commission of similar acts in the future will be dealt with more severely.

SO ORDERED. chan robles virtual law library

Davide, Jr., C.J., Puno, Vitug, Panganiban, Quisumbing, Ynares-Santiago, Sandoval-Gutierrez, Carpio, Corona, Carpio-Morales, Callejo, Sr., Azcuna and Tinga, JJ., concur. chan robles virtual law library

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So many scandals and anomalous affairs both in private and public sectors have been left untouched and have been forgotten by our society's watchdogs. I know what these things are because I was working as a full-time journalist in our province, but I could not write them; I could not expose them because "I was just an employee."

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From "Strength For The Journey"

“Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD’â€"and you forgave the guilt of my sin” Psalm 32:5

A seriously disturbing commercial made its way to TV sets across America recently. The ad begins with a chauffeur opening the door of a stretch limousine for a woman who is dressed for a night on the town. As the limousine cruises to the airport, the driver looks back and tries to make conversation with the woman, who appears to be attempting to seduce him. As they continue along, the divider window in the car goes up and the camera cuts away to a shot of the car pulling up to the curb, where the driver gets out and opens the back door for his passenger. She climbs out of the car, hair neatly pinned up, dressed in a business suit, chatting away on her cell phone. While on the phone she leans in for one last flirtation with the puzzled driver, and then continues off to catch her flight. The commercial fades to the tag line: “What happens here stays here. Las Vegas.”

The message is obvious. Las Vegas is a place where you can pursue your lust and greed with abandon, somehow disconnecting it from the rest of your life and hiding it from friends and family. Check your morals at the door and revel in unbridled freedom. No guilt, no fear, no consequences. It is, they claim, an adult playground, existing solely for your indulgence and amusement, where your secrets are kept.

Before you start taking the bait “hook, line, and sinker” you need to know that what you do in Las Vegasâ€"or anywhere else for that matterâ€"doesn’t stay there. What you do is a part of you, and you’ll take it all home with you!

The words of King David provide ample warning for us. I would suspect that, with much of his kingdom away in battle, David assumed that “What happens in the palace stays in the palace.” However, his secret fling with Bathsheba was exposed all too quickly with the expanding signs of her pregnancy. His attempts to cover his tracks led him to one desperate scheme after another. Yet in the end, with the blood of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, on his hands, he found himself face to face with the prophet Nathan and the consequences of his sin exposed to all. His reign and service to the Lord would forever be marked by that tragic moment in his life.

More tellingly, Psalm 32 records that, even before the sin was publicly exposed, the pangs of David’s conscience kept him in anguish. “When I kept silent,” he writes, “my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer” (vv.3-4). He didn’t leave his sin with Bathsheba behind in the bed of adultery; he was crushed by the guilt and shame that he carried with him.

When we choose to sin, we do not leave the sin behind without a trace. If you belong to God, the indwelling Holy Spirit will sound the alarm. And though no one knows, we will be haunted by the fear of discovery and the loss of self worth. As Scripture says, “You may be sure that your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23)!

So join King David. Know the joy of being done with the cover-ups and finished with the secrets. Genuine confession before our loving and forgiving God will trigger His grace and forgiveness and will enable you to leave Sin City far, far behind!

YOUR JOURNEY…

    * Did the Holy Spirit spotlight any area of your life that needs to be brought into the light? Go before the Lord in genuine, heartfelt confession, acknowledging your need of His forgiveness.
    * What other lies does Satan try to feed us to convince us that sinning is worth the toll that it takes on our lives?
    * How can time in God’s Word and in prayer help us to more quickly recognize areas of sin and struggle in our lives?

From "Strength For The Journey"

In one of my all-time favorite Peanuts cartoons, Charlie Brown is standing on the deck of a cruise ship with a rather disheartened look on his face clutching his unfolded deck chair. Lucy, who always seems to have it all together, has already unfolded her deck chair and is waxing eloquently about life. She says to Charlie that some people set the deck chairs of life to look at all that has gone by, others set their deck chairs to look at all that is in the here and now, and that still others position their chairs to look at all that is ahead. To which Charlie responds, “I can’t even get my deck chair unfolded.”

My guess is that we’ve all had days when we feel more like Charlie Brown than Lucy. Down deep insideâ€"sometimes way down deep insideâ€"there is this nagging feeling that we don’t quite have life figured out. That when we are really honest with ourselves, life isn’t all we thought it would be. Shouldn’t there be something more than the endless to-do lists? And, why does the pressure to perform and prosper make us feel like the proverbial donkey chasing the carrot dangling forever in front of us? And why is it that when we take life by the throat and pull off a smashing success, it quickly morphs into a mere memory as life trudges on?

Want something moreâ€"something different? Then pack up your bags and enlist yourself as a Person of the Way. Join the revolution! The revolution headed by the world’s greatest revolutionary, Jesus. I’m not sure what you think about when the thought of Jesus crosses your mind, but my guess is that the word revolutionary rarely surfaces. Yet that is exactly who He is! Missing the point that Jesus came to spark a revolution in this upside-down worldâ€"a revolution to take upside-down people and turn them right side upâ€"is to miss the very heart of why He came and to miss the point of life as it is intended to be.

Jesus’ arrival on our planet was an invasion from another world to overthrow the ruthless regime of King Beelzebub and to set earthbound captives free. But the revolution doesn’t stop there. It’s about freeing us sin slaves from the grip of hell in every aspect of our lives. It’s about setting up a whole new way of thinking and living, about giving freed captives a life of purpose and significance. And I don’t mean that it is a revolution whose end game is to get you to go to church more, to keep more rules, or to get busy doing more jobs for God. We already have too many who are on that bandwagon yet have no clue about the revolution. This revolution is about changing the way we think, act, and react and then raising the torch and taking the way into every aspect of our livesâ€"into every encounter, every relationship, every responsibility, and every commodity we own.

If you see yourself as a follower of Jesus, but you still think about your money like everyone else; react to your offenders like everyone else; think about your career like everyone else; live with “you” at the center of your universe like everyone else; think about sex like everyone else; find life to be an endless string of random unfulfilling events like everyone else, then one thing is clear: You have missed the revolution.

YOUR JOURNEY…

    * In what ways can you say that Jesus has revolutionized your life? Be specific!
    * Do you still think about your money, career, sex, and relationships like everyone else? What would the revolution look like in these areas if you were a “Person of the Way”?
    * Plan to do one revolutionary thing today for Jesus. 

From "Strength For The Journey"

“You have forsaken your first love” Revelation 2:4

I must confess: I’m a romantic at heart, which means I love to hear stories of how people met and fell in love. What’s more, I love to hear stories of how they stay in love! Unfortunately, you don’t see too many 50th wedding anniversary celebrations these days.

Take Barb and Bob, for instance. Barb was a beauty queen who caught the eye of Bob, a talented athlete. It was love at first sight and romance at its best. Bob took great pride in his home and marriage, reveling in the fact that he was free to be a success in his profession because of his wife’s good work at home. She kept house, chauffeured the children, cooked, and accompanied him to social events.  Without realizing it, however, Bob was shifting from a vibrant relationship with his wife to a complacent involvement with the “institution of marriage” and the organization called home. The intimacy of their love for each other was fading, until one night Bob confessed that he had in fact lost his love for Barb.

If we’re not careful, the same shift over time can happen in our relationship with Jesus. It’s fresh and exciting at first, but after a while we find ourselves more into the “routines” of Christianity than into the Redeemer Himself. You know the routinesâ€"the things we started doing out of love for Jesus that now are done simply out of habit or, worse, guilt. Routines of teaching, Bible reading, prayer, witnessing, counseling, missions, note taking, conferences, and camps are all admirable; yet they can become dry habits if they are merely rituals without relationship.

In Revelation 2, Jesus is concerned about this slide from relationship to ritual in the lives of his followers at Ephesus. He notes that they are doing all the right things for the wrong reasons. They have, according to Jesus, lost their first love. But they had not simply lost it; our text says that they had abandoned it. Evidently, after falling in love with Jesus, their lives became distracted by the lesser things of this world, and “Jesus” became just another thing in their day-timer as they ticked off their to-do lists. Maybe you can identify.

So how do we keep that from happening? Here’s what Jesus tells the Ephesians to do: Repent! As He put it: “Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first” (Revelation 2:5). Jesus knows that duty without devotion is a mundane low-level experience compared to the heights of doing things that flow out of a heart that loves Him.

So He lovingly calls us to repent. Repentance literally means to turn around and go in the opposite direction. Thinking of your devotions and prayer life as a time of personal interaction with Jesus, of serving Him in your church as an act of worship to Him, of giving because you love Him, and of obeying because He is a leader you want to follow are all the kinds of change in attitudes that will recapture your first love for Jesus.

There are some things in life that we can never get back: our youth, the thrill of our first kiss, or our carefree college days. But doing all that we do because we love Jesus is a joy that can be reclaimed.

If you’re talking about loving Jesus the way you used to, then let’s hear it for the “good old days”!       

YOUR JOURNEY…

    * Stop and evaluate your relationship with Jesus.  Would you categorize your Christian experience as “duty without devotion,” or do you cultivate genuine, heartfelt love for Him?
    * What are the “systems” that, while good in and of themselves, could cause a subtle shift in your devotion to Jesus?
    * If someone were to ask you about the “good old days” with Jesus, how would you respond? If you have never experienced that type of relationship with Him, it’s not too late! See Personal Relationship with God to help you get started.

From "Strength For The Journey"

“The fire will test the quality of each man’s work” 1 Corinthians 3:13

A few years ago, a series of fires raged through parts of southern California, fanned by the notorious Santa Ana winds. Laguna Hills, a posh, picture-perfect community set inland from the ocean, was hit especially hard. Flames jumped from house to house, fueled by cedar roof shingles. The fire consumed everything in its pathâ€"with one exception. The home of building contractor To Bui stood tall. The contractor wanted his home to last, so he constructed his roof with concrete and tile. The fire tested the roof, found it inflammable, and skipped over it to more combustible structures.

We can learn a lesson from To Bui’s careful planning. Since God’s Word tells us that everything we do will be tested by fire, we should live in such a way that we bring to the fire of God’s testing things that will pass the heat test. In 1 Corinthians 3:10-15, Paul warns us about the danger of living lives made of things like wood, hay, and strawâ€"things that have no impact on eternity. Temporary things, whether wrong or right, that are of no spiritual consequence. Francis Schaeffer calls people who are rich in temporary things “ash-heap Christians” who, at the end of their lives, will be standing before God with nothing of lasting value to bring to Him.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in showing up before God knee-deep in ashes. That’s a really scary thought! But, I also know how easy it is to lose sight of our accountability in the last days and to easily squander our time, money, and relationships on the “here and now.” On what Jesus says are things that moths eat up and that thieves break in and steal (Luke 12:33).

The alternative is to live for the things built on Jesus’ foundation. Paul contrasts these works to wood, hay, and straw by calling them “gold, silver, and costly stones”â€"commodities that are not only fireproof but purified by fire.

So what would a life full of noncombustible works look like? What does it mean to live for the things Jesus was committed to?

First and foremost, Jesus was passionately addicted to one commodity on this planet: people. He knew that everything else is getting checked at the border! Prioritizing people and their needs is where noncombustible living starts. From the poor and the losers in life to the wealthy and influential, no one escapes the swath of God’s love and mercy. Even our enemies are worthy of the grace of God’s forgiveness through us. Colleagues at work, lost people needing a Savior, to say nothing of those closest to usâ€"spouses, parents, kids, grandkidsâ€"all are in need of a loving touch from us in the name of Jesus.

Then there is the capacity to fireproof our lives by using our time, talents, and gifts for things that are eternally important to Jesus. Serving His cause with our abilitiesâ€"even in the most menial tasksâ€"puts a little gold and silver in the backpack we are carrying home. Generously supporting God’s work with our financial resources and being willing to send our sons and daughters into ministry when they are called all load us up with things that pass the heat test!

The choice is ours: Ash heaps? or gold, silver, and costly stones? I’ll take the precious commodities route. How about you?

YOUR JOURNEY…

    * Take a piece of paper and divide it into three columns. Write “people” at the top of one column, “finances” in the second column, and “time” in the third. Jot down the specific resources God has given you and how you can use them for Him.
    * Are you living the life of an “ash-heap Christian”? Rate yourself on a scale of one to ten. A lower rating means you are living a combustible life. What can you do to improve?
    * Consider rededicating your life to the things Jesus is committed to. Pray and renew your promise to live for Him in all that you do, asking Him to help you use your relationships, finances, and time for His glory.

From "Strength For The Journey"

"Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth." Psalm 100:1

I’ll never forget my conversation with Erin, who is an accomplished violinist. As we were talking about violins, I asked her whether or not the coveted violins made by Stradivarius were really all that different. As you may know, on the very rare occasion when one becomes available it will sell for amounts of well over a million dollars. Because she had heard a Stradivarius played, she affirmed that the difference between a Stradivarius violin and even the best of the others was significant. Which then led me to ask her, “What makes the sounds from the Strads so great?”

Erin explained that Stradivarius lived in a small Italian village in the 1700s. Since he was too poor to buy fine wood for his violins, he pulled his wood from the polluted harbor of his village. Three hundred years ago, the harbors were the equivalent of our town dumps. They were a smelly, dismal stew of trash, human and animal waste, and garbage. 

As experts analyze the wood from these famous violins, they discover that microbes in the contaminated water had eaten away the inside of the cells in the wood. The only thing left of the cells was the superstructure. So, when a violinist plays a Stradivarius violin, it’s like an organ with thousands of sound chambers, each reverberating the sound of the bow moving across the strings.

What a great picture of what Jesus has done for us! Valueless and lost in the soul-rotting disease of our own sin, Jesus came and pulled us from the sludge. As the Bible puts it, He loved us while we were sinners. In other words, even though we had been eaten hollow by sin, He reached down from the cross and wiped us clean. And then He crafted us into priceless instruments to resonate the strong and distinct sounds of His love and grace and glory.

No wonder David wrote, “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness!” (Psalm 100:1 esv). And Paul reminds us that with the indwelling Spirit in control, our lives should be filled with “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Ephesians 5:19). Our lives should resound with gratitude and not grumpiness, thanksgiving and praise regardless of our life circumstances. When Paul and Silas sang in jail, believe me, the jailor had never heard anything like it before! Like the Stradivarius violin, the sound quality of the song that Jesus puts in our restored souls should be noticeably different than the other “violins” around us. The song we sing with our lives should be joyful and glad. And this difference is not just for our benefit, or the benefit of those around usâ€"it’s for the listening pleasure of the Master Creator.

Just as Stradivarius must have smiled at the sound of melodies played on his instruments, God delights in the beautiful songs that His instruments create when our lives are tuned to sing His praise.

YOUR JOURNEY…

    * Have you allowed God to rescue you from your sins through a saving faith in Christ? If not, pray and ask Jesus to forgive your sins. Ask Him to come into your heart and give you eternal life.
    * Meditate on Psalm 100 and ask God to show you new ways to worship and serve Him. Read and internalize the advice in Philippians 4:4-7 and Hebrews 13:15. What can you do to ratchet up the song in your heart and on your lips?
    * Which sins pull you back to the polluted harbor? Make a list, and spend time in repentance. Find an accountability partner to help you stay on track.
    * On an index card, write down three ways in which you want to be more set apart from the world. Keep the card in your Bible and pray about it daily.

From "Strength For The Journey"

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs” 1 Timothy 6:10

Any John Grisham fans out there? If I were to select a favorite character from his novels, Rachel Lane would top the list.

Rachel Lane, unbeknown to her, was the illegitimate daughter of a billionaire. Before she discovered her origins, she was called by God to go into the most remote part of the jungles of Brazil as a missionary. Grisham’s book, The Testament, follows lawyer Nate O’Riley deep into the jungle where he is assigned the task of finding and informing her that her long-lost father has died, leaving her his entire estate.

The climax of the novel, in my opinion, is when Nate finally finds Rachel in the heart of Brazil’s rain-forests. As he shares the news of her windfall, he expects that she will pack up and leave to enjoy the luxuries of her newfound wealth. But she turns down the offer! Needless to say, O’Reilly is stunned by her unwavering commitment to her calling and her love for the primitive people she has given her life to help. Her unique dedication to God and people above the seduction of money then opened the door for Rachel to share the gospel with her new friend Nate.

This encounter deep in the jungle of Brazil is a powerful illustration of the principle that Paul shares with Timothy in our text today. This verseâ€"often misquotedâ€"does not say that money is the root of all evil. Money is, in fact, a tool that can and should be used wisely and generously for God’s glory. Jesus himself often spoke about the importance of good stewardship in many of His parables, positively spotlighting good investors, wise stewards, and shrewd managers. So, it’s not money that’s the problem.

The problem comes when we stop managing money and, instead, money starts managing us! According to Scripture, greed is idolatry (Colossians 3:5), and as Jesus clearly warned, “You cannot serve both God and Money” (Matthew 6:24). And Paul adds that it is “the love of money” that is a root of all kinds of evil.

Interestingly, Grisham underscores the danger that money’s seductions can lead us into. Woven into the plot of The Testament are the stories of the numerous other descendants of the billionaire. While Nate is off searching for Rachel, the wannabe heirs are “piercing themselves with many griefs” by fighting for their share of the inheritance, purchasing expensive new cars, gambling away the funds, and generally giving full vent to their greed. What a contrast to the deep and significant values that drive Rachel’s love for God and people.

And though Grisham was writing fiction, he is on to something! We all know what it means to have money manage our actions and attitudes. Whether it’s the lure of a newer, more prestigious car, the pull of a bigger and better house, the drive to keep up with the Joneses, or just the adrenalin rush of shopping and spending, money is a master ready to make all of us slaves.

Thankfully, Paul provides a positive alternative to the love of money. In 1 Timothy 6:6, he redefines true gain by saying that “godliness with contentment is great gain.” And in 6:11 he calls us to “pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness and gentleness.”

Rachel had it right! Do you?

YOUR JOURNEY…

    * Has a “love of money” subtly crept into your life? In what ways?
    * Think back to a stage in life (perhaps it’s now!) when finances were tight.
    * How can (and should) those seasons draw you closer to Jesus? How can we as followers of Jesus pursue contentment, even in seasons of greater material prosperity?

From "Strength For The Journey"

“For great is your love, reaching to the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies” Psalm 57:10

Junior high school can be one long intensive seminar on drama in relationships. I am convinced that any psychological malfunction in my life today is directly traceable to those two years of school. Okay, maybe it’s not quite that dramatic, but junior high did teach me a little about fickle friendships.

I was minding my own business when one of Nancy’s friends came up to me and announced, “Hey, did you know that Nancy likes you?” To be honest, I had never given Nancy a second thought until that moment, but suddenly I was intrigued. My male ego was suddenly stirred and I liked the idea of being liked! So I passed my message back through the string of friends that had conveyed the message to me. That is, of course, how junior high romance works. I told my friend, who told another friend, who told Nancy’s friend, who then passed the message back to her.

“Joe says that he likes you too!”

But by the time my message got back to Nancy, she no longer liked me! For the first time I was singed by the fickle flames of romance.

A lot of our friendships are like that, aren’t they? We look back across the landscape of life and see different friends popping up here and thereâ€"our buddies from junior high, the girl we took to the prom in high school, the college roommates, the co-worker from the cubicle next to us. We realize quickly that many of those friendships, often consumingly important at the time, fade into dim memories leaving us thinking, “I wonder what happened to…”

Even more disconcerting is realizing how fickle we are in friendships. In honest moments, we could list the people we no longer get in touch with, or the phone calls we don’t return. In life, solid, faithful-to-the-core friendships are few and far between.

I wonder if you and I bring that same dynamic into our relationship with Jesus? When we first meet Jesus, He is everything to us! But as time wears on, we tend to drift away. When was the last time He heard from you? When was the last time you sat down to hear His voice and fellowship with Him?  As the old saying goes: ”If God seems far away, guess who moved!” You may have gone on to other interests, but thankfully He hasn’t lost interest in you. He, more than anyone else, remains there waiting for you as your faithful friend!

The psalmist often sings of God’s undying love for us. And I need to tell you that it’s not the kind of love that rides on emotions or favors. It is an expression of God’s enduring, rock-solid commitment to you as His beloved, and it is often linked, as it is here in Psalm 57:10, with His unfailing faithfulness. In fact, the psalmist literally cannot get his mind around the extensiveness of God’s love and faithfulness, conceding finally that God’s love “reaches to the heavens” and His faithfulness “reaches to the skies.” In other words, it is without limit and without end.

So when you receive word that God loves you, please know that it is not a junior high school fickle, fleeting kind of love. It is a life-changing, eternally satisfying offer of a fulfilling friendship with your Creator. Today He stands knocking at your door wanting to come in and spend some quality time with you (Revelation 3:20). Go ahead, open the door of your heartâ€"it’s your faithful friend!

YOUR JOURNEY…

    * In what ways have you experienced the fickle nature of human relationships?
    * How have those experiences shaped your understanding of a relationship with God?
    * Read Psalm 108:1-5. How do these verses encourage you about the faithful nature of God’s love?

From "Strength For The Journey"

“…Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” Colossians 2:3

Here’s some bad news: left to ourselves, we’re not very good shots when it comes to living. We are, at the core, sinful, which explains why we lead such “ready-fire-aim” kind of lives. We are a lot like the village idiot who prided himself on being a great shot. After he shot his arrow at the side of the barn, he would then paint a bull’s-eye target around the arrow, painting the arrow into the center of the bull’s-eye.

But the bull’s-eye of life is not an I-want-my-life-to-be-like-this-thank-you barn-side painting. The bull’s-eye for life as it’s meant to be is already painted by the good and righteous ways of God. And since we are not inherently righteous, but rather fallen and frail, missing the target is a regular event.

In Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, the character named Cassius gets it right when he explains:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Most of us excuse our miscues, or mistakes, by assigning them to fate and random bumps from the circumstances of life: “It’s not our fault. We’re victims. It’s in our stars.” But God’s take on our lives is that the fault does lie in us! Not that we are underlings as Cassius points out, but that we are born sinful, fallen, frail, and broken. By our very nature we’re wrong-headed. I have come to realize that my first instincts in a given situation are probably wrong. Granted, they don’t seem wrong. It seems right to get even; to stash away as much money as I can; to make sure that I am recognized and affirmed; to seek pleasure for myself; to live life to the full on my own terms; to do everything to dodge suffering and then resent it when suffering does invade my life; to try to be as strong as I can, because only the strong survive; and to yell at people who yell at me. But here is the warning: God says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death” (Proverbs 14:12)! And we are reminded in Isaiah that God’s ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts (Isaiah 55:.

So let’s fess up! We need help. Because we are bent in the wrong direction, we are in desperate need of God’s wisdom to live right-headedly. And, where is that wisdom found?

In Jesus!

Paul makes this clear when he writes that he desires that our hearts be encouraged so that we “may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that [we] may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:2-3).

Jesus knows the way. He has the wisdom to see life the way it should be lived. But beware! His wisdom will not seem right to you. He says to turn the other cheek, to die so that you can live, to give that you might gain, to forgive the same offense 490 times, to love your enemy, and to find meaning and productivity in suffering. Sound upside down to you? Sure it does. But it sounds that way, not because Jesus is upside down, but because we are.

The bull’s-eye of life is Jesus! Seek His wisdom and turn your “ready-fire-aim” life into blue- ribbon target shooting!

YOUR JOURNEY…

    * When was the last time you stopped to evaluate whether or not your response was the response that Jesus would prompt you to do?       
    * Today, assume that your instincts to given situations will probably be wrong. Aim your heart to His wisdom by searching the Scripture, seeking the counsel of a godly friend, or praying that God would give you the wisdom He promised in James 1. Don’t fire until He aims your life in the right direction.     
    * What areas of your life tend to misfire on a regular basis? Start seeking God’s wisdom in one of those areas, and ask for His power to hit the target of His righteousness. 

“The city [heaven] does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp” Revelation 21:23

Solar eclipses are an amazing phenomenon. As the moon slides between the earth and the sun, the sun’s brilliance gradually fades. Its light grows dim, as if there’s a layer of dust on everything you see. The effect is most dramatic on a bright cloudless day. While the eclipse is in full force, it’s easy to forget that the sun is still there in all its force and glory.

As amazing as a solar eclipse may be, more amazing is the fact that as followers of Jesus we often live with heaven eclipsed in our hearts. I don’t know what you think of when you think of heaven, but count on it, heaven is a glorious destination and, as Paul described, because of Christ’s presence there, it is far better than anything we could experience here (Philippians 1:23).

But heaven’s glory and the excitement of getting there often fades in the light of our dim view of heaven and the lure of lesser stuff here on earth.

If the word heaven evokes images of an eternity lounging on clouds, plucking out melodies on a harp, adjusting our halos, and singing in a choir, then no wonder that the brilliance of heaven may be going through an eclipse in your heart. It’s hard to muster a lot of enthusiasm if we think that heaven will be boring! But believe me, the God who died for you is not planning an eternity of boring assignments for you!

If your thoughts about what heaven may be like aren’t distorted, then you’re not necessarily off the hook. Heaven is often eclipsed in our hearts by the lure and glitter of earth-side stuff. It’s easy to think we can create heaven on earth by stacking up all that we think will make us happy and comfortable. Only to find that the initial thrill of it all quickly wears off as we disappointingly discover that there is no such thing as heaven on earth.

So let’s dismiss our twisted thoughts about heaven and forget trying to make heaven here on earth. Getting heaven in clear view starts by focusing on what we do know to be true about heaven. Your first thoughts no doubt are about streets of gold and gates of pearl. As spectacular as that might be, they are not the draw of heaven. We get used to stuff like that. The real excitement of heaven will be our eternal delight in living in the unveiled presence of Jesus, our Savior and friend! No matter how nice the place, it’s the people in the place who make the placeâ€"and in this place it is the presence of God in the new heaven and the new earth that will fill our hearts with delight and unfading joy. It’s the way it was meant to be before sin raped the landscape of our existence. It’s Eden all over again!

In this city there will be no power outages! Our text today tells us, “The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp” (Rev. 21:23). And this Lamb, who conquered death, guarantees that there will be no more sorrow, death, or dying. In fact, He Himself will wipe away all our tears (v. 4)!

De-eclipse heaven in your heart and live with something to look forward to!

YOUR JOURNEY…

    * Are you curious about what heaven will really be like? Read the following passages to get a sneak preview. Revelation 4; 21:10-27; 22:1-5.
    * Compare your thoughts of heaven with the truth of God’s Word. Create two columns on a piece of paper. In one column, brainstorm a list of prevalent thoughts about heaven. In the other column, write the truth about what the Bible says about that topic.
    * Pray and ask the Lord to keep the light of heaven alive in your heart. Thank Him for the promise of heaven for all those who believe.

For further teaching from Joe, you can obtain his book, Eternity,  DHP 2006 just click the link to the DHP web site

From "Strength For The Journey"

"For everything in the worldâ€"the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and doesâ€"comes not from the Father but from the world." 1 John 2:16

When I was a boy, one of the biggest annual events in town was the circus. My dad would take us early in the morning to watch the circus trains unload the tigers, lions, elephants, monkeys, and all the other animals and paraphernalia that made the circus so intriguing.

Once the circus was set up, great attractions were lined along the midway. The midway was the walkway leading to the big tent. Vendors hawked their wares, happy music played, the smell of hot dogs and cotton candy mingled in the air, and multicolored balloons bounced in the wind. With bursts of laughter and excited screams, customers twisted and turned on amusement rides. The midway was almost more than a boy could take.

The most intriguing sights of all for me were the sideshows. Large posters advertised all kinds of physical deformity and daring feats of braveryâ€"a man with three eyes, a bearded woman, sword-swallowers, and fire-eaters. I would pull on my dad’s hand and beg him to take me to see them, only to hear him say, “Joe, it’s a waste of money. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

This is the warning we see in 1 John 2:16. The world is a lot like the midway. Much of it is exciting. But as our Father walks us through experiences, He warns us of what will disappoint us, waste our resources, and distort and destroy us. It’s the sideshows that seduce us and endanger our experience here. Our world constantly puts us in tension with all that it offers.

This tension forces us to make up our minds about whom or what we will believe and follow. Will it be our Father or the sideshow?

When I grew up and went to the circus on my own, I couldn’t wait to put up my own money to see the sideshowsâ€"only to find out that my father had been right. My money was wasted.

It’s like that in life, but the stakes are far greater.
YOUR JOURNEY…

    * What sideshows threaten to seduce and distract me?
    * What will I do to turn from them?
    * How can I learn to follow Jesus more faithfully?
    * Where is my heart for God? for the world? How can I show my love for God today?

From "Strength For The Journey"

“You know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance” James 1:3

When our kids were growing up, we loved having picnics in the backyard. No picnic was complete without a plate full of big, juicy watermelon slices! From my kids’ point of view, part of the fun was playing with the seeds. As soon as a wet seed hit the table, they couldn’t resist the urge to press it with their thumb to see how far they could make it fly across the table.

I can’t help but think we’re a lot like that when life presses down on us. When the pressure gets too intense, we start looking for ways to bail out from under the thumb of circumstances that seem too much to handle. And all too often we are tempted to bail in terms of our attitudes, feeling angry, bitter, or even mad at Godâ€"or anyone else we can blame our problems on. Or, we are tempted to bail in our actions by refusing to persevere in righteous ways.

Thankfully, James offers some great advice about why it’s so important to stay under the pressure. He reminds us that God has a purpose in mind when He allows trials to press down on us. Like turning coals into diamonds, some things only happen under a lot of pressure. Staying under the pressure is how God tests our faith in order to make us “mature and complete” (1:4). But, if we bail in our attitudes or actions under the burden, we interfere with the productive intentions that God has for our lives.

It’s interesting that the Greek word James uses in our text for “perseverance” (v.3) is hupomeno. It’s derived from two Greek words: hupo (under) and meno (remain). James is making the point that in order to achieve God’s refining goals for our lives, we need to be willing to cooperatively remain under the pressure.

It boils down to whether or not you want comfort or character. You may think that life should be a bed of roses, but if that’s your take on life, you’re in for a big surpriseâ€"trouble happens! The issue is not if you will face trials, it’s how you will respond to the inevitable pressure that the problems of life bring.

It may be that you face pressure at work. In the face of a seemingly insurmountable project, it’s easy to think, “If I just fudge a little bit I could get this job done faster.” Or, when the problems at home won’t go away, we find ourselves wondering, “Maybe I’ll just leave so I won’t have to deal with this anymore.” The sin of pride causes us to respond to problems with thoughts like, “I don’t deserve this.” And soon our attitudes are in the dumper and God’s work is derailed.

In fact, the next time you’re tempted to bail on God and squeeze out from under the trouble, think of Jesus, who “humbled himself and became obedient to death” (Philippians 2:8. He “remained under” great suffering for the purpose of making you better.

So embrace the process and permit God to do His work of making you more mature and useable, for your good and His glory. Believe meâ€"the pain will be worth the gain!

YOUR JOURNEY…

    * Do you try to bail out from under pressure? Why it is hard to remain under it?
    * What are some reasons why you might try to bail on God’s maturing process in your life?
    * What are some steps you can take to be more committed to the process of growth?
    * Take some time to pray and thank God for His desire to produce maturity in your life, and then surrender to the process.

Hi Atty. Handel,

Some say Pandanon belongs to Cebu; some say it is one of Bohol's islets.
To be honest, I haven't heard of this island until I posted its picture in Tubag Bohol.

http://www.pandanon-island.com/ That's the island's website.

Hope this helps,

www.mikeligalig.com

Once you're a registered member (and it's FREE FOREVER) and you're logged in, you can use Tubag Bohol as an e-mail system in which you can send personal messages to other members, and these messages do not appear in public, only viewable by the recipients.

All you have to do is click one of the icons (Send Personal Message to...), or click the name of the member, and look for the button where you can use for sending personal e-mail.

The recipient will receive the message here through his or her personal inbox in Tubag Bohol under the Profile Section.

Hope this helps,
www.mikeligalig.com

Hello Varga,

You're most welcome here.

We're sharing lives in Tubag Bohol.

Feel free to contact me if you need assistance in our forum site.

God bless,
www.mikeligalig.com

from virginbooks.com



   1. Eat breakfast
   2. Get the hydration habit â€" and drink plenty of water
   3. Cut down on caffeine
   4. Get fresh â€" eat plenty of fresh food
   5. Eat five-a-day â€" fruit and vegetables
   6. Banish the frying pan â€" use low-fat cooking methods
   7. Eat good fats â€" top up your polyunsaturates
   8. Make it yourself â€" don’t rely on processed food
   9. Cut down on sugar and salt
  10. Finger on the pulse â€" eat more beans, lentils and wholegrain foods

The editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries have released 100 words which they believe every high school student should know before they graduate. Here's the list:


abjure
abrogate
abstemious
acumen
antebellum
auspicious
belie
bellicose
bowdlerize
chicanery
chromosome
churlish
circumlocution
circumnavigate
deciduous
deleterious
diffident
enervate
enfranchise
epiphany
equinox
euro
evanescent
expurgate
facetious
fatuous
feckless
fiduciary
filibuster
gamete
gauche
gerrymander
hegemony
hemoglobin
homogeneous
hubris
hypotenuse
impeach
incognito
incontrovertible
inculcate
infrastructure
interpolate
irony
jejune
kinetic
kowtow
laissez faire
lexicon
loquacious


   
lugubrious
metamorphosis
mitosis
moiety
nanotechnology
nihilism
nomenclature
nonsectarian
notarize
obsequious
oligarchy
omnipotent
orthography
oxidize
parabola
paradigm
parameter
pecuniary
photosynthesis
plagiarize
plasma
polymer
precipitous
quasar
quotidian
recapitulate
reciprocal
reparation
respiration
sanguine
soliloquy
subjugate
suffragist
supercilious
tautology
taxonomy
tectonic
tempestuous
thermodynamics
totalitarian
unctuous
usurp
vacuous
vehement
vortex
winnow
wrought
xenophobe
yeoman
ziggurat

Test you vocabulary. Can you define all the 100 words?

I suppose that a "chief legislative officer" should have some background in Philippine laws. He or she may not be a lawyer, but at least a law graduate, or a three-time bar taker (?) (like one political aspirant in our province). 

I guess it's a prestigious job because the lucky job applicant will be taking over the seat of the congressman's wife.

Wow! Only in the Philippines!

What's so special about the town of this congressman? Luoya pud sa mga town nga walay na-congressman.

Cap, do you own the compilation? I have an idea how to make a special site that is interactive and manageable so that others can add content/photos in real-time.

On the looming death of Friendster
From an article entitled: "How To Kill A Great Idea!"



By Max Chafkin
Published by Inc. Magazine (www.inc.com June 2007 edition)

Jonathan Abrams created the first online social network and enlisted Silicon Valley's best and brightest to run it. Yet Friendster flamed out spectacularly. What went wrong?

It's not easy being the brains behind one of the biggest disappointments in Internet history. Sure, there are those who describe you as a visionary, but in the same breath they'll deride you as a lousy businessman. Bloggers attack you, call you "a real a**" and "a very lucky idiot savant." Former investors badmouth you. Other entrepreneurs copy your ideas without giving you credit. The New York Times makes reference to your "ballooning ego" and the local Fox affiliate can't even get your name right.

Jonathan Abrams--founder of Friendster, the first online social network, and a pioneer of one of today's hottest trends on the Web--tries his best not to think about these things. And with two new companies, he has plenty to distract him. Last September he opened Slide, a stylish basement lounge in downtown San Francisco. And in March, he launched a new bid to make it big on the Web--Socializr, a website that lets users invite people to parties and other events.

And yet the story of how Friendster, once the hottest start-up in America, became the butt of a business joke continues to preoccupy him. And no wonder. By the rules of Silicon Valley, Friendster--a bold idea backed by experienced investors and the best managers money could buy--was destined for greatness. Instead, it failed spectacularly. "I did what you're always told to do as a young entrepreneur," Abrams says. "I brought on experienced investors to help Friendster fulfill its potential. But the all-star team was the curse of death."

If he had invented something as mundane as a brilliant customer relations management application, no one would know Jonathan Abrams's name. But as the creator of the first online social network, Abrams promised something truly exciting: to change the way people communicated with one another. As Fortune put it in October 2003, "There may be a new kind of Internet emerging--one more about connecting people to people than people to websites." In the months following its launch earlier that year, Friendster garnered millions of devotees, who used its name as both a verb and a noun. By the end of 2003, the company Abrams founded in his San Francisco apartment had raised $13 million from the same investors who'd backed Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO), and eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) and had appeared in scores of major magazines and newspapers. Friendster was a company the world could understand, participate in, and dream on. It was the next big thing.

Friendster is among the few start-ups that changed the world--but not as its founder had hoped. During March 2007, one out of every five Americans visited MySpace.com, a copycat site that was built in 2003 by Intermix and sold to News Corp. (NYSE:NWS) two years later for half a billion dollars. Those MySpace visitors listened to music, scoped out crushes, made plans with friends, decided that Stephen Colbert was cool--and in the process altered the way we think about and use the Internet. Meanwhile, Friendster fell to 13th place among social networks in the U.S. and saw its market share decline to 0.3 percent.

In the business and technology media, the fall of Friendster has been widely portrayed as an isolated management failure--with Abrams shouldering most of the blame. Indeed, Friendster now has the dubious honor of being the focus of a Harvard Business School case study on how not to manage a tech company. It ran out of money last year and was recapitalized at a valuation of $3 million, effectively making it a subsidiary of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of its VC investors. The recap stripped Abrams of his board seat and almost all of his equity. The founder, now an outsider, retains roughly 4 percent of the company, which has since received more venture capital but has yet to turn a profit. Most observers agree that while Friendster might still swing a modest sale, a big acquisition or an IPO is out of the question. "Everyone saw this as a no-brainer, as 'How could they screw it up?'" says Russell Siegelman, a general partner at Kleiner Perkins and a current board member at Friendster. "But not all the deals we do work."

Statements like that are just one more thing that gets under Abrams's skin. He's a prickly sort, with lots of opinions and little reluctance to share them. However, until I tracked him down at his bar last October, he had been uncharacteristically reticent about Friendster. But over the course of several hours (and during interviews in the months that followed), Abrams laid out a narrative that is decidedly different from the one put forth by the Silicon Valley VCs, bloggers, and journalists. He argues that Friendster fizzled not only because it fell victim to mismanagement, but because he embraced a system that is designed to create far more failures than successes. Friendster, he believes, was not simply a singular failure, but a systematic one. And he's determined that things be different with his new Web venture, Socializr. "In the old days, entrepreneurs would bootstrap and figure things out over the first few years," he says. "The VCs come in too early these days."

Abrams is not the only one who feels this way. "The basic venture capital system is structured so that there are built-in conflicts of interest between the VC and the entrepreneur," says Joel Spolsky, founder of Fog Creek, a New York City software company, and writer of the popular blog Joel on Software. It's a point that even some investors are willing to concede. "Most VC firms have adopted a model where they make 20 investments and have two hits," says Peter Rip, a partner with San Francisco-based Crosslink Capital, which has backed such companies as Good Technology and TiVo (NASDAQ:TIVO). The traditional VC model works fine for investors, since the returns from one Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) far outweigh the losses from nine Friendsters. It's fine for the VCs themselves, who reap healthy management fees regardless of the outcome. And it's fine for the network of professional managers who bounce from start-up to start-up, earning well wherever they go.

But it isn't much good for an entrepreneur who has a promising idea--and who would prefer odds that are better than 20 to 2. Spolsky believes that working with a VC imposes a level of risk that someone prepared to invest his life--not to mention his life savings--in a single enterprise simply should not tolerate. "An entrepreneur would rather have a 100 percent chance of owning an $80 million company than a 10 percent chance of having a $800 million one," he says.

Friendster never felt like a long shot to Abrams, who seemed to understand Silicon Valley as well as just about anyone. He came to Netscape in 1996 as a software engineer, having worked several years for Canadian telecom giant Nortel (NYSE:NT). He spent a year and a half at Netscape, writing code for the Navigator Web browser and immersing himself in the culture of the time and place, becoming a regular at meetings of the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs and the Software Development Forum.

Abrams left Netscape in 1998, and nine months later started HotLinks, an early foray into what is now called "social search." Abrams's idea--to organize webpages based on users' favorite sites--was prescient and would eventually appear in the form of successful ventures like Digg and Del.icio.us. Over the course of a year and a half, HotLinks attracted 500,000 registered users, but it ran out of money in the wake of the technology collapse. In the spring of 2001, HotLinks merged with a British software company, and Abrams left to work for another start-up.

As he suffered through the dot-com bust, Abrams began mulling a new idea: software that would somehow integrate one's online and offline identities. "The way people interacted online was either anonymous or through aliases or handles," he says. "I wanted to bring that real-life context that you had offline online--so instead of Cyberdude307, I would be Jonathan." Abrams was also mindful of Gary Kremen's Match.com, which eight years after its founding was finally coming into its own. Now part of IAC, the site was booking $76 million a year in revenue--roughly one-quarter of the $300 million online dating industry in 2002. Abrams saw that the cultural perception of online dating had changed. "All of a sudden, people who I would not think of as strange and desperate--normal people--were talking about using Match.com," he says.

Friendster crystallized in the summer of 2002 while Abrams was walking with a friend in a Santa Clara park. They were chatting about the online-offline problem and out popped the idea: Each person would have a standardized homepage, à la Match.com. But instead of simply advertising their interests and good looks, users could link their profiles to those of their friends, creating a network of connections that would mirror those that existed in the real world. His friend liked the idea, and Abrams started work immediately. Three months later, he had a prototype, which he posted on the fallow server of a friend's failed dot-com. He sent invitations to about 20 of his closest friends, unsure of what would happen next. "The least likely thing in my mind was starting another company," he says. "I wasn't sure what I was going to do."

Abrams's invention--which would be awarded patent number 7,069,308 four years later as a "system, method, and apparatus for connecting users in an online computer system"--was far more enticing than he initially imagined. As an online dating tool, it represented a potential improvement over Match.com because users could figure out if they had acquaintances in common with a potential mate, thus bypassing the awkward unsolicited e-mail in favor of an introduction by a mutual friend. But beyond its applications in dating, Abrams's software was compelling as a pure idea.

The beauty of Friendster was its exhaustively complete network. Every time a homepage loaded, Friendster's servers calculated a single user's connection to other users within four degrees of separation, which could mean hundreds of thousands of individuals. Because the network was constantly changing as new users joined and connected with one another, these calculations had to happen on the fly--in what would eventually amount to trillions of rapid calculations. The effect was to give users a vivid sense of how they fit into their social groups as well as into the larger world. Abrams, it seemed, had created a piece of software that could tell us who we were.

Prototype in hand, Abrams began looking for seed funding. He delivered his first pitch on Thanksgiving Day in 2002 to a former HotLinks vice president, Melissa Lloyd, over dinner with Lloyd and her husband at their home in Sun Valley, Idaho. Abrams's hosts had no idea what he was talking about but agreed to invest a few thousand dollars anyway. "We believed in Jonathan," Lloyd says. "So we said, 'Here's your money; we don't want to hear about it again.'" The Lloyds sent Abrams home with a check for several thousand dollars and eventually invested tens of thousands more. What happened next, says Lloyd, who now lives in Seattle, was "one of the most exciting times of my business life."

Over the next few months, Abrams rounded up $400,000 from a dozen investors. He opened Friendster in March 2003. The site grew virally as Abrams's friends invited their friends, and by June it had 835,000 registered members. Four months later, there were more than two million, generating some 10 million page views per day. The growth presented immediate engineering headaches. In theory, Abrams's intricate network was a beautiful thing. In practice, the constant calculations, which were being continuously served on millions of homepages, required more than a terrabyte of expensive RAM memory. By late 2003, load times regularly clocked in at over a minute and users were beginning to complain in blogs and forums. Abrams's software would need to be scaled somehow. "We would fix one problem, and then a few days later there would be another bottleneck," recalls Ian McFarland, a software developer who joined Friendster in April 2003. Simply buying enough servers to keep up with the growth was a major challenge.

The problem might have been solved if someone had reworked the software to ignore distant connections--for example, by calculating only connections between friends. But Friendster's engineers were so preoccupied with day-to-day slowdowns that they neglected to step back and ask what was causing them. Abrams, for his part, was distracted by business needs: hiring, recruiting investors, looking at partnerships, and--most time-consuming of all--public relations. Between March and October of 2003 Friendster was all over the media. Time called it one of the best inventions of 2003 and Entertainment Weekly named Abrams "Friendliest Man of the Year" in its annual "Breakout Stars" issue. With no outside PR help and no marketing personnel, Abrams handled everything from talk show appearances to chatting with reporters. While the press coverage was exciting--and undeniably helpful in building Friendster's user base and increasing its attractiveness to a burgeoning online ad marketplace--it monopolized his attention, preventing him from making even small fixes that would have dramatically improved the site's performance.

If the engineering challenges at Friendster were obvious, Abrams was having too much fun to worry. He assumed that with enough money and the right people, the problems would solve themselves. By July 2003, with the site pushing a million members, Abrams raised $1 million from Ram Shriram, an early investor in Google; Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal; and Tim Koogle, who'd served as CEO of Yahoo from 1995 to 2001. Three months later, he turned down a $30 million acquisition offer from Google in favor of a $13 million VC round from Kleiner Perkins and Benchmark Capital, at a valuation of $53 million. The deal, one of the first big transactions since the bursting of the tech bubble, was widely portrayed as the harbinger of a dot-com renaissance. In December, the Venture Capital Journal called social networking "the new Internet gamble," adding that "the Net is hot again."

Kleiner and Benchmark were, in fact, so eager to grab a piece of Friendster that they agreed to a highly unusual condition: a $4.7 million cash payout for Abrams. Nonetheless, Abrams believes he made a critical mistake in negotiating the deal. He kept about a third of the company's stock but no longer had control of the five-person board. The deal specified that "preferred" shareholders--the VCs--would pick two board members, that Abrams would pick two, and that there would be a tiebreaker who would be mutually acceptable to both sides. Abrams says he didn't pay much attention to the issue because he had resolved to let the experienced VCs take charge.

As Friendster entered 2004, Abrams tapped Tim Koogle to join the board; he took a seat himself. Roger Lee, a partner at Battery Ventures, took the mutual seat, while the preferred seats went to Kleiner's John Doerr, a director at Amazon and Google, and Benchmark's Bob Kagle, the VC who discovered eBay. Abrams agreed to let Koogle run the company as interim CEO while the two men focused on building a professional management team. To fix Friendster's engineering woes, they hired Jeff Winner, who'd co-founded Collabra Software, a business collaboration tool sold to Netscape in 1995 for $108 million in stock. John Briggs, a seven-year veteran of Yahoo, was hired as VP of product management. Mary Lou Song, employee No. 3 at eBay, was charged with managing the rapidly expanding user base. The CEO job went to Scott Sassa, who had been president of NBC West Coast, overseeing hits like The West Wing. He was a well-connected entertainment executive who could credibly strike content deals with traditional media companies.

Each of the new hires came to Friendster with strong ideas about how to make the company as big as possible as fast as possible, with an eye toward a big exit for the investors. With new rivals--most notably, MySpace and Facebook--emerging, they wanted to move fast. But agreeing on a game plan turned out to be a problem. "There was this leadership battle on top that was like a war in Valhalla," says Chris Lunt, who joined Friendster in 2003 and took over as director of engineering when Winner left in late 2004. "Everybody had their own agenda." The result was a kind of corporate schizophrenia. Rather than improving the software, Friendster went on a partnership binge, resulting in a hodgepodge of incongruous and poorly integrated features: blogs (with Six Apart), video sharing (with Grouper (NYSE:SNE) ), personalized searches (with Eurekster), VoIP (with GloPhone), and Internet radio (with Pandora).

The tenor of the board meetings quickly deteriorated, with Abrams becoming increasingly isolated from the board, which now also included Sassa. "We had an inexperienced founder and a lot of experienced and high-powered board members," says Kleiner's Siegelman. "There were too many cooks in the kitchen." Abrams, the board's chairman, hardly considered himself inexperienced and felt ignored by his five colleagues, who, he says, generally sided with Doerr. He was particularly vexed by the company's apparent obsession with partnerships. "At the board meetings they would say, 'We should do a deal with AOL (NYSE:TWX),'" he recalls. "And I'd be like, 'Guys, the site is not working.'" He never got anyone's attention, and in 2005 he was stripped of his chairmanship. He stopped coming into the office regularly.

In hindsight, the decision to marginalize Abrams, an experienced engineer, probably was a bad move. Rather than address the problem of too many calculations, Sassa opted to make massive investments in hardware and software in 2004. Under Winner's leadership, a team of engineers completely rewrote Friendster's code into a different programming language and spent more than $1 million on a Hitachi (NYSE:HIT) storage area network, effectively halting business development for six months. Although Winner claims the rewrite was successful, load times continued to be a problem as late as 2006, according to Chander Sarna, Friendster's current vice president of engineering. "The ex-Friendster people are not going to like me for saying this, but there was a lack of spending discipline," Sarna says. "There were very basic problems that good code writers should have fixed to begin with."

Whether or not it was a success, Winner's program was divisive. Many of the software developers considered the rewrite unnecessary, while the product development team complained that they needed to add features to the site in order to compete with MySpace. The result was constant bickering between cliques and side projects that went nowhere. Sassa, a Hollywood deal maker who had never closely managed engineers, lacked the technical expertise to moderate those disputes. "It was the most frustrating place to work," says Lunt. At the board level, Siegelman says, there was a realization that the management team was "dysfunctional," but the board was loath to micromanage. "The pot kept getting stirred, but nobody said, 'I'm turning down the flame because this isn't the right recipe,'" he says.

Meanwhile, scant attention was paid to Friendster's users. Lunt remembers marveling sometime in early 2004 at how Friendster's traffic would mysteriously spike at 2 a.m. Intrigued, he started looking at the site's log. Oh, my God, he thought, everyone is from the Philippines. He worked backwards, looking for "patient zero"--the first American to "Friendster" a Filipino. He found Carmen Leilani De Jesus, a 32-year-old marketing consultant and part-time hypnotherapist from San Francisco, the 91st person to join Friendster. She was directly connected to Abrams as well as to dozens of Filipinos, who'd in turn connected to thousands more. In fact, more than half the site's traffic was coming from Southeast Asia.

From a business standpoint, the revelation was devastating. Friendster, it turned out, was paying millions of dollars a year to attract eyeballs that were effectively worthless to its advertisers. Says Abrams: "We needed to make a tough decision"--either spin off the Asian business or become the No. 1 Filipino social network. But because the Filipino users had come by way of their American friends, there was no easy answer. If Friendster cut the cord to Asia--either by drastically cutting back on engineering resources or by kicking the Asian users off the site altogether--it risked damaging its American user base. The Carmens of the world might look for a less restrictive site.

Of course, that's what happened anyway. Unbeknownst to Abrams, Sassa, and Friendster's investors, demand for social networking was changing. The lure of Friendster--and, to a much greater extent, MySpace--was not the elegant web of connections but rather the opportunity to gawk at strangers. Rather than using Friendster to make dates, most of its users were simply cruising around and looking at the weird interests, pictures, and blog-droppings of strangers (including so-called "fakester" profiles of Jesus and Burt Reynolds). Real-life connections, the core of Abrams's vision, were not quite as relevant as he'd imagined. Thus, the free-spirited MySpace, which allowed anyone to look at anyone else's profile and didn't bother to calculate connections, took off. The site surpassed Friendster by the end of 2004 after only a year in business. A mere nine months later, it would be clocking 22 million unique users per month in the U.S., compared with 1.1 million for Friendster.

As MySpace pulled away, morale at Friendster plummeted. This was especially true among the engineering ranks--normally the workaholics in any tech start-up. "Week after week nobody was getting anything done," Abrams recalls. "You just felt like, what are we all doing?" (Sassa, who recently founded Uber.com, a social networking site, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Friendster board members Tim Koogle, Roger Lee, Bob Kagle, and John Doerr also demurred.) That summer, with four months of operating capital left in the bank, Sassa resigned. Kleiner Perkins promptly hired him as "CEO in residence," a position he would hold for just under a year. Without Abrams's knowledge, the board then offered the CEO job to Taek Kwon, a 31-year-old whom Sassa had approached as a candidate for a VP-level position. With the understanding that the VCs would inject more money into the company, Kwon agreed to become Friendster's fourth CEO in two years. Given his age and resumé--he had previously been an executive vice president at IAC's (NASDAQ:IACI) Citysearch--he was also the least qualified.

When Abrams was told of the hiring at a board meeting, he was irate. Several weeks later, he met Kwon for dinner at a South Bay restaurant. As they ate, Kwon grilled Abrams about missed opportunities: Why hadn't Friendster incorporated music or videos? What about a functionality that would allow users, and even companies, to invite people to parties? "I started laughing," Abrams recalls. They were all suggestions, he says, he'd been making for years. "That's when I decided to start a new company."

For his part, Kwon was heartened by the conversation, hoping that he'd have more success wrangling the board and controlling the engineers. The optimism did not last long. Shortly after the dinner, Kleiner's John Doerr called to inform Kwon that he was resigning from the board. A new round of VC funding was not discussed. By February 2006, Kwon had resigned and Siegelman had declined to participate in Kleiner's next fund. Abrams was off the board, and Friendster was on the auction block. No serious bids were made.

Following the dinner with Kwon, Abrams disappeared from a public life that had been packed with speaking engagements, television appearances, and magazine photo shoots with beautiful women. He traded those for the solitude of programming, spending 12 hours a day attempting to build a new company out of the event functionality he'd wanted to include in Friendster. He also threw himself into the opening of his bar, Slide. He told few people what he was doing. Auren Hoffman, a friend and now an angel investor in Socializr, says that in mid-2006 he mentioned in passing that he disliked Evite, the IAC-owned website that dominates the market for party invitations. "I don't know if I told you this," Abrams responded. "But for the last six months I've been working on something to kill Evite."

In his interactions with the rest of the world Abrams was more cryptic--even adversarial. He didn't bother to explain Socializr and gave no press interviews, even as he was attacked by bloggers who questioned whether he was really building a serious company. "Socializr in Private Beta, zzzzzzzz," announced a TechCrunch headline. "Will the new start-up be a lame burnout project or new life for Abrams?" asked ValleyWag.

Slide is located in an expansive basement next to one of San Francisco's biggest nightclubs. The name refers to its entrance: a spiral playground slide that patrons ride down into the bar. It's late in the afternoon when I arrive. The empty space is dark and hazy. Abrams gets up from a meeting with his partners and walks me to the far corner. We sit down in one of the deep oversized booths, which give the place the feel of a 1920s speakeasy. A crew sets up the stage for the night's entertainment, a turntablist called DJ Solomon.

As he leans back, tucking his legs under his knees in a yogalike pose, Abrams cuts the figure of someone far younger than his 37 years. Face fashionably unshaven, he sports a Puma track jacket, a black T-shirt, designer jeans, and a slight paunch. A waitress outfitted in a flapper costume--an evanescent white skirt over black leggings--serves us designer water while bizarre jazz reworkings of pop standards like Michael Jackson's "Beat It" play through the sound system.

Ask Abrams what he's learned and you're confronted with a torrent of mea culpas, disclaimers, and recriminations from a man who is at once bitter and resigned. "I take responsibility," he says. "I was naive. I thought these big-shot guys were going to help Friendster." His biggest regret, he says, was turning the company over to Silicon Valley's best and brightest. As Friendster sputtered, Abrams says, he suppressed his entrepreneurial instincts, keeping quiet when he probably should have been lashing out.

With Socializr, Abrams is doing what he would have done at Friendster if he'd stayed in control. "Friendster was never finished--it was a prototype that I stopped having the ability to develop," he says. Like Evite, Socializr helps concert promoters, bars, and anyone else who likes to host gatherings invite people to their events. Abrams hopes that lay users who receive invitations through Socializr will create profile pages on the service as well, which could develop into a full-fledged social network.

When you sign up--a process that takes a minute or so--Socializr offers to troll the Internet for things like your MySpace profile, your Flickr photos, and your LiveJournal blog, and automatically builds a profile that aggregates all of this information. Because this content is stored on other people's websites, bandwidth, processing, and storage costs are relatively low. "Now that there are 100 people who have copied my ideas with Friendster, being the 101st social networking site is silly," he says. "I'm building a product that can integrate with those sites." The software remains in development but has already earned some good reviews. "This wasn't designed by people eager to get in on the game," wrote a blogger for Wired.com. "It was designed by a crew of people who have been playing the game since the beginning."

But the most important lessons from Friendster have less to do with what Socializr does than with how Abrams plans to run it. Abrams was seduced by the experience of his "all-star team," assuming that talented people would come up with the right solutions. This time, he plans to favor quick and dirty engineering solutions over the elegant but not necessarily practical ideas that were imposed by Friendster's management. Having only two employees helps--as does making do with less than $1 million in angel funding. The idea is to grow slowly, have fun--and, above all, avoid hot-shot venture capitalists. "I'm hoping it'll be like 2002 and 2003, when I didn't have a lot of money and I got a lot done," he says.

But if he's not building a traditional VC-backed start-up, what is he building? Is it a hobby project or an IPO in the making? Here Abrams is less clear. Abrams has put none of his own money into Socializr. He is cagey on his timetables and plans for growth. When I ask him what Socializr might look like in three years, he laughs: "That's a long time for me." Coming as it does from the guy who invented social networking, the statement seems curiously unambitious. And then there's the question of why an active Internet entrepreneur would start a nightclub in the first place. Abrams says that Slide is neither a distraction nor a major financial risk. "As you can tell"--he gestures at the posh lighting, the attractive waitress, the abstract art--"I'm doing fine."

Abrams is alluding to his personal wealth, but his almost perky tone suggests his mental state, a hard-fought detachment that has allowed him to recover from failure. Abrams may be a cynic, but it's easy to forgive his cynicism--even if you blame him for the biggest tech flop since the bubble burst. After all, it's not often you encounter a visionary who has decided it's okay not to be one.

Max Chafkin is a staff writer for the magazine.

On the looming death of Friendster, Max Chafkin posed these 10 Questions for Friendster Founder, Jonathan Abrams.



By Max Chafkin (Inc. Magazine, June 2007 Edition)

What's your favorite part of a typical day?

After midnight, when people stop calling me. It's when I get to do some real work, programming on my laptop while I watch my TiVo (NASDAQ:TIVO). Usually I watch The Office, 24, America's Next Top Model, or some trashy reality TV.

What skill would you most like to improve?
Probably my skill at answering questions.

What's the accomplishment you are most proud of?

Opening my bar last September. It was a lot of work and it was something new for me.

Who is the smartest person you know?


I've only met her once, but I'd say Paris Hilton because she gets people to pay her for showing up at their parties.

What's the least glamorous thing you do regularly in the line of duty?
Reviewing legal documents.

What keeps you up at night?
I'm Jewish, so I worry about everything.

Who gives you the best advice about your business?

I don't think I have ever received great business advice. The best advice I've gotten has been from myself: looking at my mistakes and trying to avoid them the next time.

If you could go back in time and do one thing differently in your business, what would it be?

I think you already know the answer to that.

What do you look for in an employee?
I look for somebody who is hungry, scrappy, passionate, and connected to what we do.

What's the simplest thing you've never learned to do?

To dance. Did you ever see the episode of Seinfeld where Elaine dances? That's pretty much me.

Published June 2007

Intentional delays. More delays,  more money. Shame.

I memorized many of Yoyoy's songs, but not Butshikek.

My friend Sir Bob knew beforehand he won't be buying fireworks after elections.

Entering politics after a long hiatus wasn't a bad idea at all.

I believe that Sir Bob wanted to know how many people were sick and tired of a traditional political system.

The votes gained by Bobby, I consider, are "protest votes." It doesn't really matter how many of these protest votes are. For me the most important thing is that despite the hovering darkness over our political situation there is still a man like Bobby Cericos who dared to challenge the present corrupt power.

To quote Edmund Burke: "Evil triumphs because good men do nothing."

P.S. - When I talk about evil power, I am also thinking of the more than P200-million Talibon Dam that went down the drain.

Thanks, Cap. I've checked the site, and there are many interesting images there, particularly the picture of two Filipino police officers of ancient times. 

A father gives; IMF lends. These are two completely different scenarios.

A father cannot act like IMF, and IMF cannot act like a father. They stand in the opposite sides of the earth.

Quote from: Capitan Berong on May 29, 2007, 08:45:44 AM

Just to recall a notable case, in a conversation with a former governor of Zamboanga del Norte, he noted that vote buying in his province is not effective when price of copra is high !!!!

Please contemplate and let's try to focus ourselves to matters we can catalyze. Let's take a cue from the flick "The Butterfly Effect".



A powerful commentary. I want to laugh, honestly. Maybe we Boholanos should start planting coconut seedlings.

But the provincial government is so in love with palm oil trees.

While Angelo Balili deserves to be applauded in one way or another, I don't really appreciate his bragging about his looming candidacy - and he would always do it four or five months away from an election period, but when the final hour comes he would back out, and says this thing, that thing is unacceptable to him.

Well, if politics, whether politics in Bohol or in any Philippine provinces for that matter, is unacceptable to our Angelo Balili, then it would be more appropriate if he would just shut up and stop entertaining the idea of himself entering politics.

Personally, I admire Balili in a lot of ways. For one thing, he has brilliant ideas. I've heard him talking over a cup of coffee not long time ago.

I just wish he wouldn't mess up his life by forgetting political temptations.

Talk only when you cannot improve the silence.

Quote from: Capitan Berong on May 29, 2007, 09:03:26 AM
   

Paulino eyeing for the presidency of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP), Bohol Chapter?

For Andahanons, please restrain him and his mate in your town.

Makes me cry for Bohol .....

I won't cry... I WILL WEEP FOR MY DEAR BOHOL...

This was written before the election.
In support of Architect Bobby Cericos, I am revealing here some of my choices.

by www.mikeligalig.com

Kinsa Imong Botaran?

Bisan dili ko kampanyahon, mao ni ang pipila sa mga kandidato nga akong gituohan nga angayan moalagad sa katawhan.

Una sa tanan, sa akong lungsod sa Anda. Akong pilion si Flor Garcia. Nakahibawo naman ta tanan kung kinsa si Paul Amper ug ngano nga ang tawong naglantaw sa kaugmaon sa Anda dili gyud makabotar ni Amper.

Pagka-congressman sa ikatulong distrito: si Atty. Aleckoy Lim. Dili malalis ang pagkahigala namo ni Atty. Lim ug nasayod ako pag-ayo sa kinaiya niya: dili madinomtanon, sayon duolon, mahigalaon, mapainubsanon, matinabangon, maaghop ang kasing-kasing.

Nasayod ko nga ang mga nakaila ni Atty. Lim susama usab ug ipamahayag sa ako nang nasulti sa unahan. Andam usab ako mosaway sa akong mga higala kung aduna man akoy makit-an nga dili maayong binuhatan. Mao nga walay labot ang panaghigala isip basihan sa pagpili sa alagad sa katawhan.

Nganong dili ko makabotar ni Jala? Dili man sa ingon nga kung unsa ang punoan mao usab ang bunga. Ang ako lang gihuna-huna nga grabeha naman pud nako ka tonto kung mobotar ko ni Jala. Kamo nay mosumpay ana.
Nganong dili ko kabotar ni Balite? Bata pa ko sa Anda, nakaila na ko ni Balite. Akong lola kapitan sa among baryo sauna. Mao gitiman-an ko ang kinaiya aning tawhana. Kamo, nakahibawo man seguro mo sa akong ipasabot.

Nganong dili ko kabotar ni Rene? Hangtud nga mahatagan ug tin-aw ang misteryong nagpaluyo sa pagbaligya sa PPUD ngadto sa Salcon, dili ko kadawat nga si Rene ang mahimong congressman sa ikatulong distrito. Unsa naman kaha napoy ibaligya niya sa among distrito kung ma-congressman na siya?

Kinsay akong pilion pagka-gobernador?

Bobby Cericos akong gobernador. Kadaghan nako maka-estorya ni Bobby ug nakadayeg kaayo ko sa mga panglantaw aning tawhana.

Para gani nako si Bobby ang angayan mahimong presidente sa Pilipinas. Ang iyang mga huna-huna ug plano alang sa probinsya, kung suportaan lang sa pangagamhanan karon, mao ang makatabang sa paghaw-as nato sa kalisod. Kung si Bobby modagan man ug presidente sa Pilipinas, siya gayod ang akong pilion.

Pagka bise-gobernador: si Julius Herrera ang akong pilion. Wala man koy ikasaway ni Freda Tirol, apan para nako si Julius ang may labaw nga katakos mahimong bise-gobernador.

Kadaghan na usab ako makabati sa mga huna-huna ni vice-governor Julius Herrera, ug ako nakadayeg pag-ayo sa iyang mga lunsayng tinguha alang sa katawhang Bol-anon. Lahi si Julius nga pagkatawo: mobuhat lang ug maayo bisan ug walay pagpahibalo.

Pagka-mayor sa Tagbilaran? Sa akong pagpauli sa Bohol dili pa lang dugay, daghan kung nabati nga mga sugilanon mahitungod ni Atty. Dan Lim, apan wala dayon ko motuo kay lagi wa pa man usab ako maka-imbestigar kung unsa kini katinuod.

Para nako kung problema man si Dan Lim, siya gihapon ang angayan mahimong mayor sa Tagbilaran. Dan Lim gihapon ko.

Nakahibawo naman ta tanan sa panultion nga: “ang problema dili masulbad pinaagi sa laing problema.” Samot ka makaluluoy ang Tagbilaran kung mamayor (napud) si Joe. Nasayod naman ta nga sa sulod sa kapin siyam ka tuig nga siya ang nagdumala sa Tagbilaran â€" unsa may nahitabo sa Tagbilaran?

Pagka-bise mayor sa Tagbilaran. Dili pa lang dugay dihay mga e-mail gikan sa ginganlan ug Pito Honculada nga nagyagyag sa giingong pagkahilambigit ni Toto Veloso sa masiao ug mahjong. Ambot ug tinuod ba ni. Ang ako lang nga dili ko makabotar ug mga tawo nga may relasyon sa masiao ug mahjoyng. Samot ta ka uyayod ana.

Kung mopili ta ug konsehal sa Tagbilaran, ato lang seguroon nga dili ta mopili ug mga tawong hambogero nga magpatuotuo nga bright.

Daghan naman ko nailhan nga mga tawo nga makinaadmanon, apan wa man sila nagpagarpar nga sila bright. Ang tinuod bright magpakahilom lang kay nasayod sila nga ang Ginoo lang ang bright. Peligro ning mga kandidato nga hambogero. Pilia ang mga konsehal nga mapainubsanon ug dili k******n ug kwarta sa ubang tawo.

Sa laing bahin, nagpabilin nga si Gov. Erico Aumentado ang banggiitan nga politiko sa Bohol sanglit sa edad nga 27, siya napili naman nga board member sa atong probinsya.

Ingnon tang pulonga nga sa local Guinness record, si Gov. Aumentado ang nanguna â€" apan kung mapili si Jala nga bata nga wala nagpuyo sa Bohol ug walay kalibotan sa mga problema sa ikatulong distrito â€" mapapha na ang record ni Gov. Aumentado isip ang pinakabata nga politiko sa kasaysayan sa Bohol.

Mao, gobernador Aumentado, ikaw gihapon ang naghupot sa record karon. Ikaw nay mag-igo kung human sa imong kamatayon, ganahan ka ba handumon nga ang pinakabatang politiko sa Bohol nga napili ug board member sa edad nga 27. Anaa si Jala andam moilog sa imong record.

Kini mga sugyot lang ug huna-huna sa tawong dili makabotar kay nalayo man lagi ko.

Ikaw kinsa may imong botaran?
 
Want to react? register in this site. it's FREE

1 U.S. Dollar = P46.030
1 Euro = P61.936
1 Canadian Dollar = P42.591
1 British Pound = P91.298
1 Australian Dollar = P37.708
1 Bahrain Dinar = P122.06

Kindly check your inbox in your profile area here in Tubag Bohol.

I sent you an e-mail there.

God bless,

www.mikeligalig.com

Who is this Dandan Bantugan?
What is his reputation?
Is he honest about financial matters?
What is his caliber as city councilor?
Is he a brilliant lawyer?

I think these questions should be answered
first before Bohol councilors would entertain
the thought of voting for him in the PCL
presidency.

-Tubag Bohol Team

Written by Bingo Dejaresco III
Photos by mjtaburada of flickr.com





In heaven, they say, there is no beer - but with plenty of music.

Sing no sad songs, then, for Boholano musical great and one of the best icons of Philippine novelty music, Yoyoy Villame. This afternoon, he will be laid to rest in Calape town (in Bohol) where his heart truly belonged.

The Villame family who now resides in Las Pinas City, Metro Manila deemed it proper that the multi-awarded novelty singer-comedy actor be buried in Bohol. But whether in Las
Pinas City Hall, St. Peter's Chapel (Tagbilaran City) or in Sta. Cruz, Calape (where Yoyoy was born on November 18, 1932), there was no doubt that Villame was well-loved by people and will be missed by legions of fans everywhere.

Yoyoy Villame was also a popular four-term councilor of Las Pinas City.

SUDDEN DEATH

Yoyoy, 75, reportedly developed high fever and didn't go to the hospital for check up last week until Friday where he expired at 2:30 p.m. from cardiac complications resulting from fever and pneumonia at the Las Pinas Medical Hospital. According to family members, Yoyoy kept his physical condition to himself. Since he was a man of energy and humor, he was generally up and about.

Thursday night, Yoyoy refused to be admitted to the hospital, opting to go the following day. After the death of Tess (wife) due to a lingering bout with cancer, the novelty singer vowed he would not inflict undue concern on his family members when his time comes. He fulfilled his own prophecy by just staying in the hospital for a few hours.

We last saw Yoyoy early this year in a BAMMI (Boholano Association in Metro Manila) presentation in Intramuros Manila, where he even obliged a couple of songs to the delight of the Boholano crowd based in Metro Manila. He never fails to delight.

Although he had lost some weight over the last three years, the actor-singer made up for this by wearing mostly bagets clothing alongside spiked hair, at times. He can be down but never out, singer - daughter Hanna revealed. Father and daughter had been a "tandem" talent in many occasions. In fact they were in Davao doing entertainment stints for the May elections. Yoyoy Villame last performed at the Quirino grandstand during a miting de avance held there two days before the election.

Intense heat and fatigue may have caused the fever and pneumonia to set in on the aging Yoyoy.

NO PREMONITION

Yoyoy Villame, a ladies man (doubtless) because of his engaging personality, sense of humor and singing prowess, acted in about 50 films and produced 25 albums. His signature songs "Magellan," "I-Buchiki" and "Magexercise Ta," among others, were monster hits that appealed to all regions who were clamoring for an original, rhythmically winsome and catchy original Filipino sounds.

According to the family, the multi-awarded singer never gave any direct premonition about his sudden demise although he had shown signs of being lonely in the last few weeks. Lately, there was a strained look in his face, though, whenever he played his game of cards with friends, according to Gani, a close relative of his wife.

But after a television show three weeks ago, for instance, when asked by one of the performers that they should get together again, Yoyoy wearily answered: "Kung buhay pa ako." According to Olive, a daughter, the closest Yoyoy spoke about his impending departure was on the fateful Friday when he told a househelp Mercy "I am going abroad and believe me, I am not coming back." As usual, Mercy took it as another Yoyoy joke all have been used to.

Yoyoy Villame, may not have lived for that next reunion, but he will remain in the hearts of all Boholanos whom he had given much pride and laughter in his long and checkered career. Though serious in demeanor in real life (like most comedians including the great Dolphy), Yoyoy remained a simple man to the end, though he had been taken advantaged of by some people, Gani informs.

According to a neighbor, Yoyoy readily gave up piece of his land where he planted giant trees to give way for a new road without much ado. He was a good citizen.

MUSICAL ASCENT

Yoyo's fame started when the family of Leo Menesses put up a recording studio (Kinampay Records) to launch the singing career of one brilliant performer named Yoyoy, who was then working as a driver in their bus company called the MB Liner back in the 1970s.

Very few people recall that Yoyoy started with the Philippine army and then spent 10 years of his life plying the routes in Manila as a jeepney driver before his historic return to Bohol.

As one of the leading and pioneer radio stations in Bohol, Station DYRD (and the Bohol Chronicle) had many years of mutual partnership with the versatile singing star - playing his hits on the airwaves incessantly even against the warnings of conservative folks that the audience was not mature enough to develop the taste for novelty songs with often funny and sometimes outrageous lyrics. He was often interviewed "live" on the air whenever the versatile singer-comedian was in town.

Yoyoy will be long associated with Filipino and Visayan songs that often see the lighter side of things even in the most turbulent years of history and in the every day life of the beleaguered but hopeful Filipino. A group of Chinese, thinking wrongly that "I-Butchiki" was making fun of their race, sued Yoyoy in court. To their chagrin, however, the case never progressed because according to the judge none of the words found in the song were "Chinese."

His kind of music that made many of us laugh and cry (from too much laughter) will forever be our thoughts of him as well as his Boholano pride in converting his "matigas ang dilang Bisaya" into an asset rather than a liability that likewise endeared Yoyoy Villame to most people.

In fact, this heavy regional Visayan accent caused Yoyoy not to win the major prizes in many amateur singing contests in Manila. Little did he know - or we did - that this very derided characteristic of the Visayan warbler - would be the main weapon Yoyoy would later use to make the country discover the musical genius that laid latent in his creative soul.

Of late, Yoyoy was singing contemporary religious songs and he died a Christian.

Yoyoy is dead. But his songs linger forever.

- Bohol Chronicle-5/27/2007

1 U.S. Dollar       = P46.050
1 Euro               = P61.912
1 British Pound    = P91.377
1 Hong Kong ($)  = P5.8866
1 Brunei ($)        = P30.126
1 Bahraini Dinar   = P122.12
1 NZ Dollar         = P33.446

The secrets and scandalous transactions of our government officials, including anomalous affairs of private individuals in which public interest is at stake, will be exposed in Tubag Bohol.

If our media in Bohol cannot provide you an honest-to-goodness account of the true color of our government officials, then we will bring it up here. Only in Tubag Bohol.

That's one of the reasons why we are here. Join us now. Just register. It's FREE.

All for the love of Bohol, for the love of our nation!

Cap, i'll visit the link and copy the words from there so that it would be convenient for our readers. we will still place the link where the original article was taken from.

Quote from: Capitan Berong on May 24, 2007, 10:40:16 AM


We are calling the Boholanos from all over the world to share with us their travel tips. In this way, you can help Bohol's economy through the income generated by tourism-related activities.

Bohol on a Tight Budget
May 24, 2007
By Lito Cinco
Business Mirror

BOHOL is known for its 1,268 Chocolate Hills, its world-famous tarsiers and, lately, for the white-sand beach of Panglao Island.

The island province has been catching up fast with other regular tourist destinations like Boracay, Cebu and Palawan. And perhaps this is the reason why the price for enjoying Bohol’s attractions has been going up.

Still, for visitors on a tight budget, there is no reason why they cannot enjoy this beautiful place as long as they are willing to trade luxury and convenience for money, which is what this writer, his wife and teenage daughter did when they went on a three-day jaunt to the place.

Lodging places

ONE of the basic costs of traveling is lodging. Bohol does offer a lot of choices, depending on your budget. It is very practical to stay in the capital city of Tagbilaran, where there are also good hotels and pension houses. In our case, we stayed at Vest Pension House, a small but comfortable and clean place in Tamblot, just 10 minutes away by tricycle from the airport, the Island City Mall and the downtown area.

For the three of us, the room costs P1,300 per day, though you can make do with smaller pension houses below a thousand bucks. Tricycle drivers or taxi drivers can help you canvas for a place. My daughter and I extended for a day and stayed at a pension house which was walking distance from the airport for only P900.

Food

FOOD prices are cheaper in the provinces than Manila, provided you will not go to the pricey restaurants. It is even more economical just to buy food from a fast-food chain like Chow King or KFC and bring it to your room.

Transportation

FROM the airport, instead of hiring a car or a taxi, it is cheaper to ride a tricycle, which costs only P100 going to Tagbilaran. The flagdown rate for a cab is P35 and double the rate if you are going to Panglao or other out-of-town destinations. We also asked the rate for car rentals for out-of-town destinations. They charge P500 going to Panglao, at least P1,500 to Loboc, and between P2,500 and P4,000 to Chocolate Hills.

If these are a bit steep, try the buses and jeepneys, which is what we did. We took the jeep going to Loboc for the river cruise. The fare was P25 per person. The bus fare to Chocolate Hills in Carmen was P55 per person. A public van to Carmen, which would pass by the Chocolate Hills, costs P70 per person.

Where to go

FOR the Loboc River cruise, we paid P600 per boat for about an hour. There are floating restaurants that charge P250 per person, including lunch, but no one will stop you from packing your own lunch to save a little money.

This cruise is for those who just want to relax and look at the beauty of nature, the river’s crystal blue water, the forests, the green mountains and the twin waterfalls that feed the river. Loboc also has tame tarsiers that are already familiar with people and can even be touched, fed, even perch on your shoulders for photo sessions.           

Just a few kilometers away from the river boat stations, one can also stop by the Loboc Tour Park in Candabong featuring a native restaurant, caged tarsiers and a 300-meter-long carabao ride that goes into the forested area at the back of the park.           

Taking a habal-habal ride, an ordinary motor bike that usually accommodates three passengers, we went a bit further to visit a cave in Kaenok, Upper Bonbon, that is newly opened to the public. Habal-habal is a native word for mating animals, and that is how this ride got its name.

This is a three-chambered cave that is easily reached from the highway because there is a hundred meter-plus-long man-made trail going there. There is an entrance fee of P25 per person. What we missed, though, was the opportunity to visit the newly opened Extreme Adventure in Danao, about three hours away from Tagbilaran. From what the provincial tourism people told us, the outdoor adventure includes river tubing and river kayaking over the clear and calm waters of Wahig River; rappelling, caving and mountain trekking.

Of course, you have to pay for it. A one-night, two-day package costing P2,700 a person will already include transportation, accommodation, meals, guides, cave entrance fees and other incidentals. A minimum of six persons is required per package.

Another alternative place for nature-trekking that is nearer to Chocolate Hills would be the Sierra Bullones, an ecotourism nature adventure.

We also asked how much was a package for whale and dolphin watching on Pamilacan Island off Panglao, and were shocked by the P1,900-per-person price quoted by a tour operator. Local people, however, told us we can rent a boat in Alona Beach and spend maybe a thousand bucks for the boat rental. But for lack of time and money, too, we passed this one up.

You don’t have to break your piggy bank to enjoy Bohol as long as you know how to get by and around using public transportation, staying in pension houses, and eating in local eateries. Enjoy your stay.

Quote from: Capitan Berong on May 24, 2007, 10:49:27 AM


RP lagging behind
other Asian countries in e-commerce
By Jennifer A. Ng

THE Philippines has already been left behind by its Asian neighbors in electronic commerce (e-commerce) activity, mainly due to the high cost of putting up an e-commerce web site, according to a study conducted by government think tank Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), the think tank office of NEDA.

The PIDS study conducted by Dr. Gloria Pasadilla and April Lacson said this lack of local online retailers is compounded by the apparent aversion among Filipino consumers to use e-commerce.

“Ever since the dot-com boom, the Internet has been said to be a great equalizer as it provides more access to information and income generation opportunities. Unfortunately, it has failed. Still many Filipinos, with only 25 percent of an Internet population of 11 million being able to buy products and services online, and most of these from e-retailers based in the United States,” the study noted.

The rest, according to the authors, are wallowing in not being able to do e-commerce as they do not have credit cards or do not trust credit cards, and are limited to bank-to-bank transfers, cash on deliveries, mobile cash, or just plain hand-over-the-cash-to-the-cashier.

“Most Filipinos cannot make payments online when they want to buy a product from any web site here and abroad. Many would also like to tap the opportunities to be able to sell products and accept payments online, but are unable to do so because of the high cost of putting up an e-commerce web site,” said the PIDS study.

For the Philippines to achieve its vision of becoming Asia’s knowledge center and e-services hub, Pasadilla and Lacson said it should improve the access to telecommunications infrastructure of the large majority of the population and, at the same time, fill the gaps in legal and regulatory framework.

The PIDS study pointed out that the capacity and knowledge of domestic small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to effectively use e-commerce is still underdeveloped.

Let me fill in this gap. I can set up any website you want: personal or commercial at a surprisingly affordable price. Feel free to visit my site www.mikeligalig.com for details.

www.mikeligalig.com can build affordable e-commerce sites. feel free to visit my site for more details.

Quote from: Capitan Berong on May 25, 2007, 09:19:13 AM


Only in Bohol ....

I am informed that we have in Bohol the most expensive infrastucture project in the whole Philippines !!!!

This notoriety goes to the Bohol Irrigation Project Stage 2 (BHIP-2) now being implemented in northeastern Bohol covering some areas in San Miguel, Ubay and Pilar. Various sources from the media has referred to this particular project. It looks like the larger irrigation projects implemented in the province have always been tainted, like the Bohol Irrigation Project Stage I (Malinao Dam in Pilar) and the one that has grabbed attention lately, that one in Trinidad. Makes one wonder we may have overlooked the smaller ones which media has not taken fancy.

Hulat dinhi .... details will follow !!!! l

For more than three years I've been denouncing the shameless expenditures of these dam projects in Bohol.

I have all the documents to prove how the rape of public funds was organized by the Bohol officials. Remember the P200-million Talibon dam project. All the money had been spent, but no dam at all.

No one was tried in court.

I don't know if there is any journalist in Bohol who makes follow-ups to my multi-million dam exposes.

If none, we'll unmask this axis of evil power hovering over our beloved province.

We'll expose them. Here in Tubag Bohol.

Indeed we are trapped. We do not really know what to do. In the first place, even if a king would rule over  us, I mean a wise and good king (or queen - not like Gloria), but how about the subjects? will they obey the king? will they hear the king?

there are so many things to consider when we want to change the face of the government. but government is an abstract term. it has no face. everything boils down to flesh and blood, the people - these corruptible human beings.

i advocate for change of heart. i believe only the Lord Jesus Christ can save our nation from total spiritual and economic bankruptcy.

Russian writers Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Solzhenitsyn believe that a nation without God is doomed.

i don't think this country is recognizing God (the God in the Bible). the way we behave today, we exemplify a godless society. just think of the recent election results and how the poll was conducted.

Capitan,

would you like me to create a special website for all Bol-anon bisaya writers? it will be a subdomain to myhomeprovince.com or ilovemyprovince.org (i own these sites, too.)

i'll create this site today. i like your suggestion, capitan.

please help me then to invite the boholano writers to deposit their works in this upcoming site.

once madaghan na ang works na archive, then we can release a book by all bol-anon writers.

for the love of Bohol!

A forwarded message. thought this is a bit interesting.



Once upon a time there was a rich King who had four wives.

He loved the 4th wife the most and adorned her with rich robes and treated her to the finest of delicacies. He gave her nothing but the best.

He also loved the 3rd wife very much and was always showing her off to neighboring kingdoms. However, he feared that one day she would leave him for another.

He also loved his 2nd wife. She was his confidant and was always kind, considerate and patient with him.

Whenever the King faced a problem, he could confide in her, and she would help him get through the difficult times.

The King's 1st wife was a very loyal partner and had made great contributions in maintaining his wealth and kingdom. However, he did not love the first wife. Although she loved him deeply, he hardly took notice of her!

One day, the King fell ill and he knew his time was short. He thought of his luxurious life and wondered, I now have four wives with me, but when I die, I'll be all alone."

Thus, he asked the 4th wife, "I loved you the most, endowed you with the finest clothing and showered great care over you. Now that I'm dying, will! You follow me and keep me company?"

"No way!", replied the 4th wife, and she walked away without another word.

Her answer cut like a sharp knife right into his heart.

The sad King then asked the 3rd wife, "I loved you all my life. Now that I'm dying, will you follow me and keep me company?"

"No!", replied the 3rd wife. "Life is too good! When you die, I'm going to remarry!"

His heart sank and turned cold.

He then asked the 2nd wife, "I have always turned to you for help and you've always been there for me. When I die, will you follow me and keep me company?"

"I'm sorry, I can't help you out this time!", replied the 2nd wife. "At the very most, I can only walk with you to your grave." Her answer struck him like a bolt of lightning, and the King was devastated.

Then a voice called out: "I'll go with you. I'll follow you no matter where you go."

The King looked up, and there was his first wife. She was very skinny as she suffered from malnutrition and neglect.

Greatly grieved, the King said, "I should have taken much better care of you when I had the chance!"

In truth, we all have the 4 wives in our lives:

Our 4th wife is our body. No matter how much time and effort we lavish in making it look good, it will leave us when we die.

Our 3rd wife is our possessions, status and wealth. When we die, it will all go to others.

Our 2nd wife is our family and friends. No matter how much they have been there for us, the furthest they can stay by us is up to the grave.

And our 1st wife is our Soul. Often neglected in pursuit of wealth, power and pleasures of the world, however, our Soul is the only thing that will follow us wherever we go.

Cultivate, strengthen and cherish it now, for it is the only part of us that will follow us to the throne of God and continue with us throughout Eternity.

1 U.S. dollar = P46.0202
1 Euro  = P61.9310
1 UK Pound =  P91.3809
1 Singaporean dollar =  P30.0833
1 Hong Kong dollar = P5.88254
1 Denmark Kroner = P8.31045

By Rey Anthony Chiu
Philippine Information Agency

FIVE towns in Bohol toed the line for the administration and delivered a 12-nil by filling the straight roster for Team Unity (TU) and another five in Bohol’s 47 towns delivered 11-1, again for Unity.

Voters from Danao, Dagohoy, Buenavista, Getafe and Valencia put in the cleanest victory for TU in the 12 top Senate seats and relegated the Genuine Opposition (GO) to the next best slots.

This as the local Comelec bared that in the senatorial slots, the race has been tightly contested with a seven-four-one race for TU-GO-independent slot.

The best feat was Buenavista, (Bohol II) which put in a 12-0 for TU in 22 of its 35 barangays, so far the biggest delivered by a town, sources from the Commission on Elections bared.

Of the five, four come from Bohol II district while Valencia comes from the 3rd District.

In Bohol’s 1st district, the best the towns within the periphery of Tagbilaran City could do was to put in an eleven-one slate for TU.

Bohol 1 administration stalwarts Balilihan and Antequera put in 11-1 marks. Bohol II district’s Sagbayan and 3rd district’s Sierra Bullones and Lila complemented this record.

Even then, the local opposition see this as a major victory for them, and a no sterling performance for Bohol administration leaders who haven been selling Bohol as an Administration bailiwick.

As expected, Boholano TU candidate Cesar Montano topped the Bohol turn-out while Boholana wife of presidential aspirant Raul Roco only settled for the 14th post in a race that would only be getting the top 12 seats.

Also occupying Bohol’s top choices are TU’s Surigao’s Prospero Pichay, Quezon’s Edgardo Angara, Bukidnon’s Miguel Zubiri, Makati’s Joker Arroyo, Batangas’ Ralph Recto and Manila’s City Mike Defensor.

GO also earned a share with Loren Legarda, Manuel Villar, Manila’s Francis Escudero, Tarlac’s Benigno Aquino III while Independent Francisco Pangilinan claiming the remaining slots.

Following them are TU’s Vicente Magsaysay, GO’s Sonia Roco, GO’s Ping Lacson, Go’s Koko Pimentel, TU’s Tito Sotto, Chavit Singson, Tessie Oreta and GO’s John Osmena on the 20th slot, as of Friday morning.

Riza Madel Pamplona Ladeza, a six-year old from Carnava Drive, F. Torralba St. of this city, whose ambition is to be a teacher was chosen the weekly winner in the 4th BQ Mall "Little Big Star" search held at the BQ Mall Atrium last May 12.

Riza is the daughter of Engr. Rito and Flordelis Ladeza. She loves to read books, write, draw and watch her favorite shows on TV. Chicken adobo and Purefoods corned beef are her favorite.

She is a consistent honor pupil in her prep and kinder classes. Watch her wow the crowd with her singing and dancing talent in the grand finals of the "Little Big Star" search on June 3, 2007 at the BQ Mall Atrium.

"Little Big Star" search is held every Sunday until June 3, 2007.

The event is sponsored by Lucky Me, Purefoods/Hormel, Bohol Quality Mall and Dunkin Donuts. Registration is still going on.

For particulars, please call Elsie Jandayan at 411-3164 loc. 285 or 236.

As one of the top tourist destinations in the Philippines, Bohol will get a boost with the confirmed entry of SEAIR (Southeast Asian Airlines) Cebu-Tagbilaran-Cebu route, spicing up Tagbilaran City as a gateway.

The Boholano riding public will enjoy a 25-minute flight in its intended route.

Mary Anne Tan (Vismin manager - SEAIR), whisked the city Thursday for an ocular inspection of the Tagbilaran City airport and met with Tagbilaran ATO manager Edgar Solis to discuss technical aspects for such flight route.

She also made a courtesy call on Mayor Dan Lim. The newly reelected city mayor welcome the airline.

Johnny Enerio, SEAIR-Bohol GSA pointed out that the inaugural flight will be on June 15. He likewise bared that flight schedule will be four times a week with tentative departures at 7:45 a.m. on Mondays and Fridays, and 8:45 a.m. on Thursday and Sundays -

Passengers will have enough time to make the necessary Cebu outbound flights with PAL, Cebu Pacific, Air Philippines and SEAIR to other key cities in the country without passing by downtown Cebu with all the hassle of heavy traffic.

Upon presentation of the airline entry by Enerio to Gov. Erico Aumentado, the latter welcome the entry as it would complement the direct Manila flights, encouraging influx of visitors from Mindanao and Western Visayas.

SEAIR VP for operations, Capt. Tabora also assured the commuting public that SEAIR, now on its 12 years, had been known for its safe and excellent services especially that it had been catering to the Boracay market.

SEAIR is owned by Iren Dornier (based in Clark) whose grandfather is one of Germany's airline manufacturers. Its aircrafts plying the Boracay routes are Dornier planes.

It is also proud to introduce its Dornier-24 ATT, a unique amphibian aircraft still on its UNICEF mission flights but will be commercially available for exclusive charter by December 2007.

It might be serving the waters off Eskaya Resort, Bohol Beach Club, Panglao Island Nature Resort, among other resorts in Bohol before the end of 2007.

Enerio further bared that initially the Tagbilaran Cebu route will be served with a LET 410 UVP-E, a 19-seater class aircraft.

These type of aircraft had been serving the Cebu-Boracay/ Cebu - Surigao/ Cebu-Dipolog/ Cebu-Camiguin/ Cebu - Siargao / Cebu-Cagayan de Oro routes.

For more information, call or contact Golden World Services, 25 Maria Clara St. (Tel. No. 411-2588 ask for Carl Bryan Enerio/ Jessica Consolacion) or at ICM Travel Hub and your nearest travel agents in Bohol.

By ARIEL E. FULLIDO

They came, and conquered Manila, and now they will conquer Bohol. After years of waiting, Cueshe is finally here!

Globe G-Cash, in cooperation with Touch Mobile, presents the country's hottest pop-alternative band, Cueshe, in their biggest concert event this summer at the Island City Mall carpark, May 26, Saturday, starting at 7 PM.

There are three ways to watch the concert: 1) Use Globe G-Cash to purchase at Alturas Supermarket, Plaza Marcela, and Island City Mall, and present text confirmation at the concert gate; 2) Pay for Globe Handyphone and Globelines bills; or 3) Just simply buy Globe pre-paid load

worth P50 only. Globe booths will be set up in the concert venue in order to entertain all concert-goers.

Struggling for many years playing Top 40 music in bar joints, Cueshe has gone along way since they left Cebu, to fulfill a lifelong dream of a musical stardom in Manila. It was an uphill battle at the start but with their persistence, talent and hard work, everything came just like a thief in the night. Sony-BMG offered the band a deal and the rest-however clichéd it may sound-is history. The singles "Stay," "Sorry," "Ulan," "Can't Let You Go," and "24 Hours" from their debut album, "Half Empty, Half Full," became chart-toppers. The album likewise sold thousands, achieving the double platinum mark.

Accolades poured in, headlined by their big win at the 1st MYX Music Awards, bagging three major victories as Favorite Artist, Favorite Group and Favorite Song "Stay" out of four nominations. Viewers of musical variety show SOP voted the band as Best Breakthrough Artist in 2005 and Band of the Year in 2006. The band bagged the Hitmaker of the Year Award at the 2006 MTV Pilipinas Awards.

Cueshe had just showcased their much-anticipated second album, "Back To Me," which turns gold, selling more than 15,000 copies nationwide. It produced the hits "Back To Me," "Borrowed Time" and the Asian Treasures theme song "Walang Yamang (Mas Hihigit Sa 'Yo)." Likewise, the band has just released their latest single, "Bakit," which is dominating the airwaves.

While many of their contemporaries have languished far and long in the underground scene, Cueshe shot up seemingly out of nowhere in 2005 to eventually rule the airwaves faster than the proverbial bullet and now in the league with such top-caliber bands as Bamboo and Rivermaya.

No doubt, Cueshe is among the biggest pop rock acts in recent years. A tough feat for a band that had to overcome a variety of obstacles-including the near fatal motorcycle accident of vocalist Jay Justiniani in 2001, where all band members resorted to doing odd jobs just to sustain weekly jamming sessions in lieu of Jay's recovery.

Cueshe is composed of Jay Justiniani (vocals), Ruben Caballero (vocals/ guitar), Jovan Mabini (lead guitar), Jhunjie Dosdos (keyboards), Fritz Labrado (bass guitar) and Mike Manaloto (drums). The band name came from the "cue" in "banana cue," their favorite snacks after a rehearsal. The "she" part came from the band's female vocalist whom Jay replaced.

By ARIEL E. FULLIDO

The big sale is back!

Three of the biggest stores in Bohol - Island City Mall, Alturas Supermarket, and Plaza Marcela will have a simultaneous 3-Day Sale on June 1, 2 and 3, with up to 50% discounts will be given away on great selections at the Home & Fashion Department.

At the Island City Mall, shoppers can also avail of up to 50% off on selected items in the different participating tenants shops during the sale. The mall will also extend its mall hours until 12 midnight on June 2, Saturday, featuring hot commercial model/singer Mocha, and Manila's hottest pop/RnB band, Spin Art, which will perform at the Activity Center during the Midnight Sale. Local band Centerstage will perform as frontact starting at 7 PM.

THE Boholanos gave reelectionist Gov. Erico Aumentado a fresh mandate in the May 14 polls via a landslide win that is unprecedented in the annals of Bohol history in two ways.

The governor garnered 397,849 votes â€" 90 percent of those who exercised their right to suffrage. The remaining 10 percent was divided among Aumentado’s six opponents and stray votes â€" if any.

This Aumentado win is also the first time ever that a Boholano governor was elected to a third consecutive term.


In a statement issued following his proclamation Thursday, Aumentado thanked the Almighty â€" and the Boholanos for their trust and confidence that resulted to his overwhelming reelection for a third and final term.

The Provincial Board of Canvassers chaired by Election Supervisor Veronico Petalcorin, co-chaired by Provincial Prosecutor Macario Delusa with Bohol Schools Division Superintendent Cerina Bolos as member and secretary Thursday proclaimed Aumentado as winner at the Sangguniang Panlalawigan session hall at past 5 p.m.

“This historic mandate is both an inspiration and a challenge for me to pursue with more vigor our program of development for the province,” he said.

He considers his win also as “a humbling experience for one whose mandate carries a responsibility to serve the province with the highest expectation of the people to do more and more for its development.”

“Our campaign taglines have always been Together, Bohol Forever and Together, We Can Make a Greater Bohol . To achieve this enobling objective, we must have to strengthen the unity and cooperation of the Boholano leaders and our beloved people to the extent that we are willing to reach out to the political opposition in the province,” he said.

At the same time, he issued a challenge:

“We must have to heal and bind the wounds in the last political battle. Thus every Boholano is summoned to join in our efforts for unity and reconciliation which is the cry of the hour,” he added.

Aumentado who celebrated his birthday Friday, attributes his win to the blessings of the Almighty, his good governance and performance.


Earlier, the board proclaimed reelectionist congressmen Edgar Chatto and Roberto Cajes of the 1st and 2nd Districts and newcomer brand new lawyer Adam Relson Jala who replaces his father Eladio in the 3rd District.

The board also proclaimed Vice Gov. Julius Caesar Herrera, Provincial Board (PB) members Dr. Cesar Tomas Lopez, Alfonso Damalerio II and lawyer Jose Veloso for the 1st District, Amalia Tirol, Josephine Socorro Jumamoy and Ma. Fe Camacho-Lejos for the 2nd District, and Dr. Bienvenido Molina, Ester Corazon Jamisola-Galbreath, Josil Trabajo and Aster Apalisok-Piollo for the 3rd District.

Lopez is the incumbent mayor of Loon while Damalerio is the political officer of Chatto. Veloso is a reelectionist, as well as Tirol , Lejos and Galbreath.

This is a coming back for Jumamoy. She was a PB member before she assumed the mayorship of Inabanga nine years ago. Until her replacement is chosen, she is the president of the Bohol chapter of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP-Bohol). Also, until their terms end on June 30, Molina is the mayor of Alicia while Trabajo is the vice mayor of Carmen. Piollo is a practicing lawyer.

---The Bohol Standard 5/20/2007

By Rey Anthony Chiu

Sharing the elections assessment issued by the Philippine National Police (PNP) Bohol conduct was generally smooth.

Bohol Commission on Elections supervisor Veronico Petalcorin, in a radio interview a day after the elections issued the assessment despite isolated minor incidents that appear to be election related.

In the national scene, PNP chief Deputy Director Gen. Avelino Razon Jr said that as of 12 noon, Monday, PNP only recorded a total of 11 casualties - 4 killed and 7 injured. He said this was lower compared with 2004 record when 9 died and 22 were injured. In 2001, 14 died and 32 were injured.Petalcorin, who was at the provincial tabulation center for the canvass from the towns said the deputized agents have looked into Bohol’s peace and order situation especially during the elections.

In Alburquerque, local residents and the local police succeeded in apprehending at least two men and confiscated an armalite and two handguns as they were nabbed while in the vicinity of sitio Conan, East Poblacion (Epo), Pinsp John Gilbert Basalo of Camp Dagohoy said.

Reports said Albur police recovered an armalite rifle and two handguns from the group. Police also detained at least two suspects: Quirino Somorostro of Catarman Dauis and a self confessed minor from Causeway in Tagbilaran. Their other companions escaped before the police could get them.

In Ubay, a random checkpoint at Sitio Son-co Poblacion also bagged a handgun with two live bullets as police frisked Marcos Boncales of barangay Camalihan the night before the elections.

On May 14, Candijay police defused an explosive device hooked to the rice-mill circuit breaker. Chief of police, Inspector Hipolito Cepedoza said the device: two acetylene tanks hooked on the establishment’s power supply could easily raze the building on fire, had it not been discovered earlier. Candijay Mayor Sergio Amora owns the rice-mill.

Meanwhile, over complaints of massive vote buying, lawyer Petalcorin has advised to those who felt cheated to formally file charges. (rachiu/PIA)

BOHOL stands to get another P17-million worth of projects from the Local Government Development Program (LGDP), funded by the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID).

This after Gov. Erico Aumentado last week endorsed to LGDP Phase 1 Program Director David Goodwins his preferred tenderers for AusAID approval.

The governor’s endorsement or sign-off letter came after LGDP in Bohol under Partnership Adviser Rosalinda Paredes reported that the two-level assessment process for the tenders received has been completed.

The packages include the Bohol Integrated Water Supply System Master Plan (BHL-01) at A$248,309 and the Bohol Agricultural Value Chain Study (BHL-02) at A$127,097. These translate into P15 million but since another P2 million is allocated for capability building, the total assistance would be around P17 milion, Paredes said.

The LGDP generally acts as conduit for the AusAID funding. The nitty-gritty still goes to the Provincial Government Support Team (PGST) headed by lawyer Juanito Cambangay and the representatives of the Bohol Integrated Area Development (BIAD) clusters assessed and approved the preferred tenderers that Aumentado, as chair of the project advisory board, endorsed to AusAID.

In his letter, Aumentado said the Provincial Government of Bohol accepts and affirms the preferred tenderers which came out from the two-tiered selection process conducted by the Tender Assessment Panels (TAP) of both the Bohol Local Area Development Partnership (LADP) and the LGDP in Manila .

The letter gives the green light for Woodfields Consultants, Inc. (WCI) to implement BHL-01 and the Strategic Development Cooperation-Asia (SDC-Asia) to implement BHL-02.

At the same time, the governor reiterated his support and commitment within the context of his mandates under the project, to actively participate in related activities in the course of the implementation of the packages of assistance and provide in-kind counterpart contributions, if needed.

“We also express our hopes that the implementation of the packages of assistance will build the capabilities of LGUs in both water supply systems development and agricultural value chain,” he said.

Next issue: A closer look into how Bohol bagged the packages of assistance â€" or the activities before the sign off letter.

----- Bohol Standard - 5/20/2007

By Loy Palapos



The asphalt jungle, as a venue for the rat race, spells doomsday for the less earnest and the weak of heart. Many even decipher it as a do-or-die arena where the antagonists have to muster the art of annihilating the enemy in the most civilized manner. The contemporary jungle may be monickered in the most modern parlance; but just like the upheavals through the generations, it still sponsors the Darwinian dictum of “survival of the fittest.”

This is more pronounced in the business world. It is for this reason that he who defines himself as an effective businessman must be ready with his aces up his sleeves. Failure to respond appropriately to a crisis could usher in total disaster, that might as well be the end of his game. He must be updated with business climate and be alert at providing contingency measures, as the need arises.

Knowing Djingo Rama is being acquainted with a man who has gone through a rigmarole of highs and lows, of nerve-wrecking personal catastrophes and exhilarating family triumphs, of sweat, tears, and laughter. That he has gone through devastating ordeals that could readily derail an ordinary mortal, makes him an epitome of a survivor with feet firmly planted on the ground, but still keen enough to keep on rediscovering his potentials and reinventing himself to cope up with the trends.

Christened Zenaido Maslog Rama, he is the fourth of a broad of six children consisting of two girls and four boys. The eldest, Metodio, finished a Commerce degree at the De La Salle University, and is now based in Butuan City. Salvacion R. Temblor graduated at the Holy Ghost College (now College of the Holy Spirit) with a Bachelor’s degree in Home Economics, was with DTI as Senior Trade and Industry Development Specialist, and just retired recently. Cesar is a Civil Engineer from FEATI University and is a business entrepreneur in Tagbilaran City. Lorna R. Roluna is a graduate of Bachelor of Science in Physics at the College of the Holy Spirit, and now is a faculty of DCPNHS. The youngest, Buenaventura, graduated Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration at UB and is now based in California, USA.

Djingo saw his first daylight on June 5, 1947, just as the liberation of the country from the Japanese forces settled down, making him a part of the baby boomers. He started his studies at age seven at the Saint Joseph Jr. College (now Holy Spirit School). The Rama family migrated to Manila just after he received his elementary certificate. The boy from the province had to adjust to city life.

He enrolled at San Sebastian College for his secondary education. Considering the discipline and standardized training he experienced at SBC, he decided to continue his studies in the same school where he took up Bachelor of Science in Business Administration.

He learned the facts of life early. Family business reversal and change in family fortunes forced the fledgling Djingo to enter the world of business challenges at a most inopportune time. He became a salesman of Grolier International.

His efforts paid off; he excelled as top producer in his division. He also involved himself with Pacific Fund as an Account Executive, where he also excelled in selling. This early he realized the value of gutsiness and perseverance as basic rudiments in the business world.

The turning point of Djingo’s life took place in 1970. It was not part of his business plan, but it happened. He falls in love. The object of his affection was a beautiful teacher from Calape, Bohol who taught at Divine Word College (now Holy Name University). The name: Yolanda Ruiz Sepe. He decided to relinquish his single-blessedness; he and Yollie tied the knot on July 18, 1970. They have three children: Michelle, a Nurse; Donald, now married with two kids; and MD. All three are now residing in California with their mother Yullie..

Djingo first ventured in a single-proprietorship in 1973, when he put up D.R. Royal Sales, his flagship establishment, engaged in the distribution and sale of government office supplies and printed forms. Although a neophyte in a business already dominated by many ahead of him, he was undaunted. His determination bore fruits. He expanded to engineering equipment and supplies. Later, Djingo and Yollie put up another business enterprise to cater to Hospitals, plus laboratory supplies and equipment. The business climate turned out to be very positive to their new venture.

Yollie became a vital cog in their business. It was a hands-on policy the couple adhered to. There came a point when her job as an educator had to be sacrificed. Yollie had to resign from her job and concentrate on the family enterprises. It was also at this time when they decided to go into garment manufacturing, catering to hospital garments and school uniforms.

The couple does not believe in putting all their eggs in one basket. Aware of the need of transient and new families to live in a safe and decent environment in a fast growing city, they put up in 1988 the first ever Townhouse in Tagbilaran City. The new venture clicked. This made the couple decide to build more housing units. This led to the construction of Rama Apartments along F. Rocha Street.

Djingo’s rise in business is not just a product if wistful thinking. He has diligence and concentration seldom seen among young entrepreneurs. In his case, he stays focused on a project, even if at first pay-off is far-flung. And he works doubly hard. It is not surprising to see him already up and about at four in the moving daily, holding his rosary in prayer and ready to start his day with some business chores, which usually include out-of-town appointments.

Looking back at what he had gone through, Djingo can very much pride himself with a struggle well done. From nothing to something…it is a life worth emulating. Yet, he does not rest now bask on his laurels of success. He was trained to serve, following the Jaycee’s Creed which expounds, “Service to humanity is the best work of life.”

He had his firsthand taste of politics when he ran for a seat in the Sangguniang Panlungsod in 2001. The following election in 2004 he ran for Vice Mayor with Atty. Dan Neri Lim. The latter trounced the wife of the incumbent, but Djingo Rama took a back seat. This twice-in-a-row debacle could have intimidated the less persistent; but in his case, goaded by his desire to serve, the feat only whetted his appetite for public service.

Thus, he cast his lot once more in last Monday’s election, despite the gnawing fangs of previous electoral stings; and this time, the people started to wake up to his call. His winning the latest political derby signals his entry into a world that could put to good use the Jaycees’ Creed that has long been his philosophy in life.

As the late pro-people President once said, “Those who have less in life should have more in laws.” With this tenet, Djingo has resolved to reach out to the least of his brothers, and extend to them services government can offer and maximize the effects on them, so they too will feel being part of society. Progress, according to Djingo Rama, will take its course at the proper time and date. Misery cannot wait…action has to be now.

By Priscilla A. Richards
published in the Bohol Standard (5/20/2007)

Good day to all our readers I can now say I came, I saw and I have observed the Philippines campaigns and elections first hand?

I must say in comparison the election process is very different here and some what unfair n allot of ways.

I observed plenty of vote buying particularly amongst the mayor races here before and during the Election Day itself? For me it is sad to see that people here are that hard up and have to be bought cheap for the rest of what is to be the next three ears in their future?

I had heard allot of complaints from voters as they came up to me and seen me with my COMELEC ID on they immediately thought I was sent from the U.S.A. to observe any wrong doings here?

They also pleaded with me the voters to do something about the wrongfulness that was being conducted during the elections.

I asked them why they could not be the one to report to the COMELEC themselves.

Most of the same answers I got where they were afraid of any aftershocks that might happen if they were the ones caught reporting elections problems.

I had even encountered one instance when an incumbents mayors truck full of his campaign posters went inside of the City Central Elementary Campus full of his campaign staff and observed them handing out envelopes with carbon ink papers and P500.00 bills inside of them?

When I chased after them they ran off and one guy had dropped his envelope minus the money inside of it.

When I had asked the truck driver of this particular mayor what was his business to go inside the voting headquarters and remained parked for almost 40 minutes her ran like a bat out of **** into his parked campaign truck and headed very quick like to the gate going out to the main road.

When I had approached several of the guys I had witnessed getting envelopes I asked them what it was and how much was it that they had received they just laughed at me as if they thought it was pretty cool to be bought our dirt cheap.

I was amazed that the polls closed at 3:00 o’clock PM

I thought about the polls in my place closing at 8:”00 o’clock PM and allowing those who work days to be able to make it to the polls to vote as well.

I also noticed plenty of finished voters loitering around the election grounds when the voting was being conducted. There was not any uniformed guards or policemen who wanted to control the voters inside who where finished voting and should have been long gone from the premises after doing so.

The PNP on duty had informed me that they are only there to make sure the voting boxes are transported safely from the premises?

Plenty of tricycle drivers where upset with the results of the mayor win in Tagbilaran City, and plenty of the voters I had polled earlier in the day had made it sound like it was going to be a good possible chance of Joe Torralba winning over incumbent mayor Dan Lim.

Some voters said they had to leave spaces blank because they simply do not understand what’s going on with said particular resolutions.

The day after the election I headed to Guindulman to help in hosting and judging for a local barangay pageant for young girls and teen aged girls. The pageant was held in the basketball court just past the poblacion of Guindulman along the National Highway and during the event a motorcyclist had ended his life in front of the crowd as he had not been paying attention to the road and instead watching the event.

I was on stage going over the criteria of judging and next thing I knew he was crashing near to the stage and some one yelling “PATAY” the place had emptied out very fast with its some 200 plus persons in attendance.

The next night the disco had been cancelled for the barrio fiesta since the motorist had an accident there and died instantly in front of all of us the night before.

On the way to Guindulman that same day before the pageant I had seen another accident that involved a small car that was totaled out and multicab that was flipped over on its side.

Maybe it is not a good ideal to lock up the liquor for two days as both drivers where drunk after the liquor ban was life?

Even foreigners were banned from buying for the two days during the elections.

We do not even vote.

The liquor is not banned on Election Day back home.

I hope the people here can learn from this column on how it looks like from an outsider’s point of view and learn from it?

I personally fell aside from the vote buying it was very peaceful election on the local side.

Thank You!

Precious Thoughts

By Fred Amora (published in the Bohol Standard)

I am back after a short sojourn as I feverishly campaigned in my hometown Guindulman offering myself as town councilor.

I garnered a resounding 2,330 votes and these were “not bought”.

As almost all candidates scour all homes with their money ranging from P1,000 to P700 per voter, I was sitting in comfort knowing that one single vote counted in my favor would be victory enough for me.

I never joined the frenzy of vote-buying despite some financial offer from close friends and relatives. I would be fooling myself if I won knowing that the votes counted were product of vote-buying, a practice that had dealt a vicious cycle in our society.

What honor is there in winning, maybe as a mayor or a councilor, knowing for yourself you are not fit even to manage a mortuary association?

It breeds corruption as these elected officials will have to recover their spent money when in position. Ang naay kwarta dili matagbaw, mao nay tinuood; mao nga ayaw mo too nga sila gustong mosilbi ninyo.

It is foolish pride that enslaved these poor, stupid souls.

You are a winner (through vote buying but you know you are just fu...x#$! ! yourself).

Labina inig lingcod na, magjama-jama, pastilan looy ka sa tirade sa media. Kon onion-skinned ka the nearest thing isma-strke ka tungod sa mga pagsaway ug kaulaw sa posisyon nga dili jod unta para imo.

* * * * *

Next election, I think I won’t be joining the list of candidates.

I will turn 33 (?) in 2010, and that’s a God-ordained time for me to establish a new Church of the Final Millennium.

Sa akong bag-ong simbahan dili nako pa-apilon ang mga politico, ug kadtong mga taas ug garbo nga nagtoon kwarta maoy gamhanan ning kalibutana.

Kon ikaw na ang maong tawo, hala maayo pay magpabunyag kag sayo ni Fred Amora kay aron dili ka masugba’s kayo.

Bisan dollar pa dili nimo mapalit si Satanas kay iya jod kang angkonon aron naa siyay kauban sa way kataposang kastigo nga alang sa mga tawong pareho niya

Watch out for Fred Amora in his soon-to-be-launched ministry that

Nagsugod na raba ko ug pan- recruit. Obispo ang kinaubsang ranggo sa mo-apil sa akong simbahan.

* * * * *

Wanna’ join?

Motoo ka? (“Believe it or Not”, says Ripley).

Well anyway, to make it appear that I am not a sour loser, Congratulations sa tanang midaog sa miaging piniliay!

Ayaw mog paka-uwaw ha, kay inyong manang gusto nga tawgon mo’g Honorable.

Good luck!

Lesson for Today: “Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”

Bohol now has 23 new mayors and at least 34 new Sanggunian presiding officers as the un-official tally of votes build up at the tabulation centers here following the May 14 elections.

It was bloody for Bohol’s first district of 14 towns and a city, when 10 lost their mayors to new ones.

Winners are Jose Ugduracion Jr. (Alburquerque), Jaime Quibel (Antequera), Alvin Uy (Baclayon), Victoria Chatto (Balilihan), Sulpicio Yu jr. (Calape), Lloyd Peter Lopez (Loon), Leoncio Evasco Jr. (Matibojoc), Benedicto Alcala (Panglao), Ireneo Calimpusan (Sikatuna) and Luna Piezas (Tubigon).

Meanwhile Dan Lim lead the re-electionists in the district while Vito Rapal (Corella), Apolinaria Balistoy (Cortes), Luciano Bongalos (Dauis) and Roberto Salinas (Catigbian) retained their seats.

On the second district, winning the top town seats are neophytes Nino Rey Boniel (Bien Unido), Germinio Relampagos (Dagohoy), Jose Jono Jumamoy (Inabanga), Tesalonica Boyboy (Pres. Carlos P. Garcia), Apolinar Gumanid Jr. (San Isidro), Claudio Bonior (San Miguel) and Judith Cajes for Trinidad. The district has now evened the number of new and re-electionist mayors at 7 each.

Retaining their seats while proving their constituent’s confidence are Elsa Tirol (Buenavista), Hermogenes Diezon (Clarin), Louis Thomas Gonzaga (Danao), Theresa Camacho (Getafe), Jimmy Torrefranca (Sagbayan), Juanario Item (Talibon) and Eutiquio Boyles (Ubay).

In the third district’s 19 towns, only 6 have to get a fresh taste of new leaders while 13 still retained their seats.

New mayors in the district are Pedro Miasco (Alicia), Gregoria Pepito (Batuan), Manuel Molina (Carmen), Sylvia Adame (Dimiao), Ma. Fe Piezas (Guindulman) and Rosemarie Imboy (Loay).

Mayors Paulino Amper (Anda), Fanuel Cadelina (Bilar), Sergio Amora Jr. (Candijay), Manuel Tan (Duero), Myrna Scheurs (Garcia Hernandez), Exuperio Lloren (Jagna), Leon Calipusan (Loboc), Telesforo Balagosa (Lila), Stephen Rances (Mabini), Wilson Pajo (Pilar), Ceferino Digal (Sevilla), Simplicio Maestrado Jr. (Sierra Bullones) and Henrietta Gan (Valencia) retained their posts.

In the First district’s vice mayoralty slates, retaining their legislative powers are Cecilia Rebosura (Antequera), Edwin Ladeza (Loon) and Pedro Fuertes (Panglao).

12 of the 15 new vice mayors are Cirilo Jalad Jr. (Alburquerque), Marilyn Uy (Baclayon), Dominisio Chatto (Balilihan), Ruben Co (Calape), Necita Digaum (Catigbian), Epifanio Bolando (Corella), Rodrigo Dennis Uy (Cortes), Jaime Jimenez (Dauis), Gabino Redulla (Maribojoc), Tranquilina Maniwang (Sikatuna), Alfredo Batausa (Tubigon) and city vice mayor Jose Antonio Veloso.

Of the second district’s 14 towns, 10 have elected new vice mayors. They are Petronilo Justiniane (Bien Unido), Ronald Lowell Tirol (Buenavista), Allan Rey Piezas (Clarin), Antonio Puertos (Dagohoy), Wenceslao Lao (Inabanga), Nestor Abad (Pres. CPG), Narona Valerie Ann (Sagbayan), Eustaquio Flor (San Isidro), Jonathan Reyes (san Miguel) and Francisco Gonzales (Trinidad).

Reelected District veeps are Jose Cepedoza (Danao), Cesar Fuentes (Getafe), Restituto Auxtero (Talibon) and Galicano Atup (Ubay).

In the third district, elected new vice mayors are Basilio Balahay Jr. (Alicia), Domenciano Deligero (Anda), Roland Emmanuel Leyson (Batuan), Norman Palacio (Bilar), Anna Dy (Candijay), Ramonito Torrefranca (Carmen), Danilo Guevencan (Dimiao), Florencio Tejano (Loay), Luisito Digal (Loboc), Frederick Raut (Lila), Carlito Fernandez (Sevilla) and Jorge Buslon (Valencia).

Patton Olano (Duero), Miguelito Galendez (Garcia Hernandez), Marivic Golosino (Guindulman) Teofisto Pagar Sr. (Jagna), Esther Tabigue (Mabini), Adolfo Espuelas (Pilar) and Alfredo Gamalo of Sierra Bullones retook their legislative seats. (rachiu/PIA)

By Fred Amora

The congressional race in the third district is far from over as the close fight between former Gov. Rene Relampagos and lawyer Adam Jala, son of last-termer Rep. Eladio Jala rages on.

Congressional bet Rene Relampagos was leading Tuesday night at the NAMFREL tabulation center but Thursday morning, his closest rival Adam Jala, the congressman’s son, grabbed the lead and finally posted a winning margin of 2,975 over the former governor.

Jala garnered a total votes of 65,081 over Relampagos’ 62,106 from the 19 towns or 1,144 total number of precincts in the third district.

“I was cheated and I won’t just sit and allow cheaters to prevail over the true will of the people,” Relampagos told the STANDARD in an exclusive interview yesterday.

His lawyers are now studying their legal options to contest the electoral results which Relampagos said was a typical work of “dag-dag bawas experts.”

During the canvas of the results from the 47 towns and Tagbilaran City made by the Provincial Board of Canvassers, the camp of Relampagos questioned the PBC composition and alleged ‘tampered’ results from the towns of Loay and Sierra Bullones which could spell the winning difference between him and Jala.

The PBC was composed of Comelec Provincial Election Supervisor Atty. Vernie Petalcorin, DepEd Division Supt. Cerina Bolos and Provincial Prosecutor Mario Delusa.

Various issues were raised by the lawyers of Relampagos who branded the proceedings as typical of the shameful congressional hearings as the board of canvassers went on tabulating the questionable poll results.

“Our petition that the canvass be stopped was ignored and our protests were simply put on record as ‘noted’,” Relampagos lamented.

Relampagos cited Sierra Bullones results which totaled 3,956 votes for Jala but when it was submitted to the provincial board of canvassers (PBC) the figure allegedly ballooned into 4,568.

Loay was also allegedly manipulated by the dagdag-bawas experts.

“I had a comfortable lead over Jala of 2,306 but at the PBC, the lead was sliced to just 800 votes,” Relampagos confided to the STANDARD.

“I am thankful of the results particularly to those who supported me, but I won’t allow cheaters to go scot-free,” the former governor vowed as he intends to file an election protest, possibly at the Lower House Electoral Tribunal this week.

In an earlier press statement, Relampagos feared for possible ballot switching after a source informed him that the incumbent congressman allegedly was able to secure ‘blank official ballots’ from the Comelec, a laid-out plan in the eventuality of a small margin going in his favor.

JALA STATEMENT

Outgoing congressman Eladio “Boy” Jala, when asked for his comments over the Relampagos’ allegations, said he cannot blame the former governor because of the slim margin.

“But everything is according to God’s plan. The Almighty may have other good things for Rene. He should not prolong the pain. I would say we all must simply submit to the electorate’ will,” the outgoing congressman said.

The newly elected 28-year old third district congressman Atty. Adam Relson Lagrada Jala was out Saturday morning attending baptismal rites of a friend’s child.

“Looking the other way, if the election results turned out against Adam, me and my family were already prepared to accept such fate. In my personal life, I had also some losing times and I took it gladly,” Rep. Boy Jala said.

Meanwhile, the two other congressional bets, BM Dionisio Balite pooled only a total of 28,0076 while publisher and lawyer Alexander Lim had 16,737 votes.

So, Capitan, what form of government do you suggest?

Delaguna has said it right.

But it seems we are facing a dead-end road.

1 U.S. dollar =  P46.0205
1 U.K. pound = P90.8604
1 Euro          = P61.9149
1 Canadian dollar = P42.3442
1 Australian dollar = P37.7982
1 UAE Dirham       = P12.5332

For those who want to convert any type of currency to another type of currency, go to www.xe.com

Thanks, Capitan, for the suggestion. I think the link is enough to help our Boholano brethren.

Political dynasty only signifies that these people don't really want to work. Easy money. That's the only conclusion the world has ever known.

I stand corrected, Capitan. I remember now that I wrote a news about her before.

There should be more funds from the government for this purpose.

Now we know that you come from Sierra Bullones. Layo kaayo sa amoa.

I like your suggestion, Capitan.

I'll find a currency converter program that can automatically run in this forum.

Thank you, Cap.

Quote from: Bohol Philippines on May 22, 2007, 11:38:40 PM
Results of the recent election have made me sorrowful lately.

1. In the third district, a young boy who doesn't really live in his province has just been elected congressman, not because of his genuine desire to serve his yet-to-be-familiarized-with Boholanos, but because a father pushed him to wallow in the glory of political power, and they happened to be in the band of the corrupt Arroyo administration.

2. A 21-year-old kid has just been elected Mayor in Inabanga, not because of this kid's exemplary abilities and talents, but because this kid belongs to the incumbent power.

3. Dodong Alcala is back in Panglao as mayor. Do you know who he is? Ask those "wa nagpapalit ug P3,000." (per voter na)

4. Nila Montero lost to Pedro Fuertes in the Panglao vice-mayoralty race. Unthinkable. Nila has done so many good things for Panglao, but the people just forgot those things after they were injected with a megadose of amnesia worth P3,000. (per voter gihapon na).

4. Atty. Nuevas Tirol-Montes, a skilled and genuine lawmaker, was defeated by Toto Veloso, who has been allegedly linked to masiao and mahjong in Tagbilaran. Unthinkable.

5. The 2007 election is over. All is now quiet in Bohol streets and corners. And the P200-million Talibon ghost dam is a screaming insult to the Boholanos because the officials who are behind the scam remain in power.

Honestly, giluod ko...

I was a full-time journalist in our province for more than three years, and I know that those things that I mentioned above would hardly be tackled over the radio or in the newspapers.

Do you know why? Because there is another power that is in control of the press. Its name is money.

You can ask me more about this if you wish media-related confessions to flood in this forum...

Results of the recent election have made me sorrowful lately.

1. In the third district, a young boy who doesn't really live in his province has just been elected congressman, not because of his genuine desire to serve his yet-to-be-familiarized-with Boholanos, but because a father pushed him to wallow in the glory of political power, and they happen to be in the band of the corrupt Arroyo administration.

2. A 21-year-old kid has just been elected Mayor in Inabanga, not because of this kid's exemplary abilities and talents, but because this kid belongs to the incumbent power.

3. Dodong Alcala is back in Panglao as mayor. Do you know who he is? Ask those "wa nagpapalit ug P3,000." (per voter na)

4. Nila Montero lost to Pedro Fuertes in the Panglao vice-mayoralty race. Unthinkable. Nila has done so many good things for Panglao, but the people just forgot those things after they were injected with a megadose of amnesia worth P3,000. (per voter gihapon na).

4. Atty. Nuevas Tirol-Montes, a skilled and genuine lawmaker, was defeated by Toto Veloso, who has been allegedly linked to masiao and mahjong in Tagbilaran. Unthinkable.

5. The 2007 election is over. All is now quiet in Bohol streets and corners. And the P200-million Talibon ghost dam is a screaming insult to the Boholanos because the officials who are behind the scam remain in power.

Honestly, giluod ko...

Capitan,

it appears that the "prestigious girl" is a friendly Boholana.

Dear Friends,

Tubag Bohol is a growing community. According to our statistics,
the site is hitting 1,000 page impressions more or less in a day.

We turned a month old last week, and we now have more than 50
members, many of whom are based outside the Philippines.

All we want to do here is to give you power to share information
about Bohol and the Boholanos abroad. Of course, it's FREE. It's UNLIMITED.

If you're not yet a member, feel free to register now. It's FREE. It's easy.


All for the love of Bohol,

www.mikeligalig.com

Hello members and guests of Tubag Bohol,

You can now view results of the elections in Bohol.
Just browse the Bohol towns board.

Please help us spread this information to Boholanos abroad
by inviting them to drop by our site. Members can use this site to e-mail
the results to friends. Just click "send topic" in our message board.

Thank you!


Sincerely,
www.mikeligalig.com

P.S. If you're not yet a member of Tubag Bohol, register now. It's FREE! It's easy. It's fast.

hi Jasmin,

welcome to our growing community. we're glad you're here.
hope you could help us invite other Boholanos to join
Tubag Bohol.

and hope to see your posting here from time to time.

have you been to Bohol lately?

God bless,
www.mikeligalig.com

Mayor: Stephen Rances
Vice : Esther Tabigue

(to be updated)

Former Provincial PNP Director Sancho Bernales failed to capture Rances's seat. Among the issues that Rances was accused of was related to donations to food (pesticide) poisoning victims.

Mayor: Peny Digal
Vice : Lito Fernandez

(to be updated)