for those staying up tonight, the 2005 philippine sona (state of the nation address) is going on @ 7/25 4pm over there (which means 1am pacific time). you can go here for more info and watch live video when it happens. if that doesn't work, go here and click on the news stations (dzbb or dzrh) to listen to it.
it'll be interesting to see how gma explains herself. some of the opposition are boycotting this, and massive protests are sure to happen outside.
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
updates and pi motor vehicles
first, an update on the political situation in the pi...
um well nothing big has happened yet. although there are many groups joining the "gma resign" bandwagon, the bishops and the military haven't joined it yet. this is in addition to former president fidel v. ramos's now public support of arroyo. so unless she gets impeached or something really crazy happens, she's going to remain in power.
arroyo's big day is on the 25th, when she has to make the state of the nation address. you know the protests will be waiting outside the batasan pambansa.
---
from motioncars.com
can you name the car above?
this is the honda jazz, one of the cars sold in the philippines that's either not sold here or sold here in a different name.
one of my cousins from the pi recently came to la for 2 weeks. he loves cars, and he told me about this neat site. it's one of the best places to go to if you want to know more about all the different kinds of cars that help make traffic in manila a living hell.
when i was there 2 years ago the suv was very popular. yeah they used up a ton of gas but the suv helps in 2 ways imo: they help you get through minor flooding and the hundreds of buses that'll try to run you over in edsa will sorta take you more seriously....or maybe not.
any of you out there ever try to drive in philippine traffic?
i can say that i drove a car once in the philippines...sure it was in a gated subdivision w/ no traffic, but hey....
driving over there is well, different.
um well nothing big has happened yet. although there are many groups joining the "gma resign" bandwagon, the bishops and the military haven't joined it yet. this is in addition to former president fidel v. ramos's now public support of arroyo. so unless she gets impeached or something really crazy happens, she's going to remain in power.
arroyo's big day is on the 25th, when she has to make the state of the nation address. you know the protests will be waiting outside the batasan pambansa.
---
from motioncars.com
can you name the car above?
this is the honda jazz, one of the cars sold in the philippines that's either not sold here or sold here in a different name.
one of my cousins from the pi recently came to la for 2 weeks. he loves cars, and he told me about this neat site. it's one of the best places to go to if you want to know more about all the different kinds of cars that help make traffic in manila a living hell.
when i was there 2 years ago the suv was very popular. yeah they used up a ton of gas but the suv helps in 2 ways imo: they help you get through minor flooding and the hundreds of buses that'll try to run you over in edsa will sorta take you more seriously....or maybe not.
any of you out there ever try to drive in philippine traffic?
i can say that i drove a car once in the philippines...sure it was in a gated subdivision w/ no traffic, but hey....
driving over there is well, different.
Monday, July 11, 2005
filipinos and baseball
with the mlb all-star game tomorrow, i decided to take a look at the state of philippine baseball today. the info is out there online but a bit hard to find.
philippine baseball has a glorious past. the game was introduced during the u.s. colonial period in the philippines. it was pretty popular in the 30s when the rizal memorial stadium was built.
picture from titansbaseballclub.org.
there was also a renaissance in the 50s when according to this the ny yankees visited the philippines and put on quite a show.
right now, though, it's pretty bad. basketball is by far the dominant sport in the philippines, and as with all sports over there, funds for training players and building good facilities are far from adequate. when i visited 2 years ago, my cousins loved to talk about the nba w/ me. and during my stay there i heard nothing about the sport of baseball.
my best memory of anything related to philippine baseball is unfortunately a dubious one. i do remember watching the 1992 little league world series on tv w/ my parents when a team from zamboanga city in mindanao crushed the long beach team 14 to 4. some time later though, the philippine team was stripped of their title when it was discovered that the team had players that lived outside of zamboanga city and that were over the age limit. from that point i stopped hearing about the philippines' participation in little league baseball.
despite all this, however, baseball still thrives among some filipinos. although not too well-known, there are several recreational teams/leagues in the metro manila area and elsewhere. several filipinos have made it to the major leagues, most notably benny agbayani (born in hawaii), most known for his stint w/ the new york mets. another filipino player who made it was one bobby chouinard, although looking at his profile here his career ended on a bad note.
picture taken from here
the above photo is of one bobby balcena, the first known filipino to play in major league baseball. although he didn't play that much in the majors, he played many years in the minors, specifically in the pacific coast league. he died in 1990.
balcena is the great uncle of current ucla softball player jodie legaspi. this article written in late may gives more detail about both of them.
baseball in the philippines isn't getting much attention right now, but recently softball did. check this out; a team from bacolod city won the jr. softball world series just 2 years ago.
philippine baseball has a glorious past. the game was introduced during the u.s. colonial period in the philippines. it was pretty popular in the 30s when the rizal memorial stadium was built.
picture from titansbaseballclub.org.
there was also a renaissance in the 50s when according to this the ny yankees visited the philippines and put on quite a show.
right now, though, it's pretty bad. basketball is by far the dominant sport in the philippines, and as with all sports over there, funds for training players and building good facilities are far from adequate. when i visited 2 years ago, my cousins loved to talk about the nba w/ me. and during my stay there i heard nothing about the sport of baseball.
my best memory of anything related to philippine baseball is unfortunately a dubious one. i do remember watching the 1992 little league world series on tv w/ my parents when a team from zamboanga city in mindanao crushed the long beach team 14 to 4. some time later though, the philippine team was stripped of their title when it was discovered that the team had players that lived outside of zamboanga city and that were over the age limit. from that point i stopped hearing about the philippines' participation in little league baseball.
despite all this, however, baseball still thrives among some filipinos. although not too well-known, there are several recreational teams/leagues in the metro manila area and elsewhere. several filipinos have made it to the major leagues, most notably benny agbayani (born in hawaii), most known for his stint w/ the new york mets. another filipino player who made it was one bobby chouinard, although looking at his profile here his career ended on a bad note.
picture taken from here
the above photo is of one bobby balcena, the first known filipino to play in major league baseball. although he didn't play that much in the majors, he played many years in the minors, specifically in the pacific coast league. he died in 1990.
balcena is the great uncle of current ucla softball player jodie legaspi. this article written in late may gives more detail about both of them.
baseball in the philippines isn't getting much attention right now, but recently softball did. check this out; a team from bacolod city won the jr. softball world series just 2 years ago.
Friday, July 08, 2005
it's falling apart...again
picture from reuters.
first, some bad news....
if you thought the may 1, 2001 "edsa iii" was the last mass protest you'd see in the philippines, well...the chances of another one happening soon is pretty great. actually, i'm surprised it hasn't happened yet; i keep checking here to see if there's a mass number of people in the flyover, but no, not yet.
anyway, it all started when a tape surfaced about 2-3 weeks ago that contained many wiretapped phone conversations of the philippine president gloria macapagal-arroyo, comelec commissioner virgilio garciliano (the guy responsible for assuring fair elections in the philippines...haha) and several other men. (you can download the 3-hour tape in tagalog here). these tapes allegedly prove that pres. arroyo (gma from this point) cheated her way to victory over her main opponent, fernando poe jr. (who's now deceased) in the 2004 presidential elections. there's talk about how the action of doing the wiretaps were illegal, not that it really matters right now.
this roused those oppostion militant groups to start calling for gma to resign, and gma was mum on the issue for quite a while, merely dismissing the tapes as doctored and fake.
then in a speech at the end of june, she said "i'm sorry." sorry for cheating? no, she was sorry for calling garciliano, explaining that she was anxious to protect her votes and to know the results of the election (which takes at least a month to tally all the votes--there's no computerized vote tallying there yet).
that move basically roused even more people against her and calling for her resignation. the widow of fernando poe jr., susan roces, was, well, rather pissed, and she showed it in dramatic fashion in her press conference calling on gma to resign.
now yesterday she basically told her cabinet to quit. 10 members of her cabinet did so and then held a press conference calling for her to resign. then all the parties and vips started doing the same thing. former pres. cory aquino wants gma to resign. bro. eddie villanueva, head of the jesus is lord movement (who also ran for pres. in 2004 btw), wants gma to resign. you can be sure her ousted predecessor erap estrada wants her out too.
...and now we wait for the thousands of people being paid to show up at the edsa shrine. okay, maybe i'm exaggerating, but it's been done before.
it sucks that this has to happen all over again. we just can't seem to learn from past mistakes.
oh well, i'll update this when more things go down.
oh, there'll be positive things in this blog too....
greetings and salutations.
hello everyone. welcome to the tp culture blog.
in an effort to better emphasize the culture part of the organization, i've decided to start this thing. i'll be talking about pretty much anything that comes to mind regarding filipino / filipino-american culture and current events. i'll post any noteworthy culture announcements / events here too.
if you have anything you want to add to this culture blog, email me your post at tpcultureblog@gmail.com and i'll post it to the blog.
oh and uh if any opinions make their way to this blog, they're those of the individual writer of the post and not of any institution (like usc) or anyone else, ok? alright!
let us begin....
in an effort to better emphasize the culture part of the organization, i've decided to start this thing. i'll be talking about pretty much anything that comes to mind regarding filipino / filipino-american culture and current events. i'll post any noteworthy culture announcements / events here too.
if you have anything you want to add to this culture blog, email me your post at tpcultureblog@gmail.com and i'll post it to the blog.
oh and uh if any opinions make their way to this blog, they're those of the individual writer of the post and not of any institution (like usc) or anyone else, ok? alright!
let us begin....
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