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- Texas schools board rewrites US history with lessons promoting God and guns, dropping references to slave trade and sidelining Thomas Jefferson who backed church-state separation. *headdeskslam*
In other RL news:
- Work is really interesting right now. We're gearing up for Gabii Sa Kabilin, "a Night of Heritage." There are nine different museums opening their doors at night from 6pm to midnight. Each place will have different aspects of Cebuano/Filipino heritage featured, from performances in costume, dances, food, music, films, and artwork. Most places can be accessed through buses or walking, but some areas will have the traditional tartanilla that you can jump on. It's going to be next Friday, and I'm going insane trying to help out with our museum, with the signs and posters and organizing the dancers and whatnot. Pretty much all week I've been going to meetings and press conferences and whatnot. Hopefully, though, it will all turn out okay in the end. It's coming together, slowly but surely. I have to figure out what I'm wearing though. I don't wanna wear the traditional Spanish dresses because they're so itchy and hot, but it's looking more and more like it's gonna happen.
- Also, elections in the Philippines happened on the 10th. It was the country's first automated election, and my first experience in watching the elections unfold in another country. .
1) First, lemme just say that the entire city was *wallpapered* with posters. I wish I had taken a picture of it, actually, because I'm not kidding. EVERY SINGLE WALL, along the streets, in residential areas, commercial areas, EVERYWHERE, was covered top to bottom like wrapping paper. That and every party seemed to have a truck of some sort driving around the city with a speaker blasting riffs of popular songs for their candidates. For example, now Mayor, formerly Vice Mayor, Rama had Bad Romance playing on "Ra-ra-rama- rama (and then the translation basically goes, "Vote for Rama, if not you're gaga which means crazy in Bisaya). Needless to say, that got old really quick when every day I heard it blasting in the streets at 11am.
2) And then there's the voting itself, which is different from the States. It's all by popular vote, and people run by themselves, not on a ticket. It's sort of strange to me that you can have a President from one party and a VP from another, but it's looking like it might be that way. At this point, the margin is large enough that it's fairly safe to say that Noynoy Aquino is going to the President. However, two weeks later we still don't know who the VP is because they're still collecting the votes and the margin is too close to call. I suppose a couple weeks later is better than knowing a couple months later, but still.
3) So the big thing for this election was that it was automated for the first time. Unfortunately this poses a set of problems. The use of electronic ballots translated into rolling blackouts before and after the election. You see, we don't have enough electricity to run the entire country for three days straight, but they needed it for the machines. So leading up to and after the elections, they had scheduled blackouts to store up on power. I suppose I shouldn't complain because Mindanao had 6-8 hours while ours were only 1-2 hours per day, but with high 90 to low 100 degree weather, it was blisteringly hot to be without power. Thank goodness for generators.
And then of course there's the issue that not all the provincial/rural areas *had* electricity to plug in said machines, so organizing that was somewhat of an issue because no one wanted to pay for it. The Comelec (the department of the government that deals with election stuff) said it was a Department of Education issue, since the voting happens in schools. The Department of Education said that it was a Comelec issue, and Veco, the leading power distribution company, can only supply so many units. So we still had paper ballots in some areas...which of course, leads to corruption.
4) Corruption, though, took on a different course this time round. Normally people get paid to register in multiple counties and to vote for a certain candidate. This time around because it was electronic, they had to change their tactics because of the database. Here when you vote, you don't get a little "I Voted" sticker. They paint your right index fingernail with a special black ink or dye so you can't vote again. So? Certain parties with lots of money paid people NOT to vote for their opponents, and in exchange for money, they would paint your fingernail so you couldn't vote.
5) Also? The national ban on liquor from the Saturday night before to the Tuesday after the election kinda sucked, even though I get why they did it. On the bright side, no massacres or uprisings or revolts have occurred yet, so I guess they're doing something right.
All in all, it was a very enlightening experience. I don't think the most qualified guy won, but I suppose in hindsight, it's good that he ran, if only because he stopped Erap, the guy who got IMPEACHED (though pardoned, but whatever, he was IMPEACHED), from winning this election. I shudder to think what would have happened if Erap had gotten elected again. OY. It still boggles the mind as to how he got second and beat out both Villar and Gibo, but then I remember, oh yeah. Corruption. LE SIGH.
And to close: Choose Your Own Adventure. It was bound to happen sooner or later, I suppose. ;)
In other RL news:
- Work is really interesting right now. We're gearing up for Gabii Sa Kabilin, "a Night of Heritage." There are nine different museums opening their doors at night from 6pm to midnight. Each place will have different aspects of Cebuano/Filipino heritage featured, from performances in costume, dances, food, music, films, and artwork. Most places can be accessed through buses or walking, but some areas will have the traditional tartanilla that you can jump on. It's going to be next Friday, and I'm going insane trying to help out with our museum, with the signs and posters and organizing the dancers and whatnot. Pretty much all week I've been going to meetings and press conferences and whatnot. Hopefully, though, it will all turn out okay in the end. It's coming together, slowly but surely. I have to figure out what I'm wearing though. I don't wanna wear the traditional Spanish dresses because they're so itchy and hot, but it's looking more and more like it's gonna happen.
- Also, elections in the Philippines happened on the 10th. It was the country's first automated election, and my first experience in watching the elections unfold in another country. .
1) First, lemme just say that the entire city was *wallpapered* with posters. I wish I had taken a picture of it, actually, because I'm not kidding. EVERY SINGLE WALL, along the streets, in residential areas, commercial areas, EVERYWHERE, was covered top to bottom like wrapping paper. That and every party seemed to have a truck of some sort driving around the city with a speaker blasting riffs of popular songs for their candidates. For example, now Mayor, formerly Vice Mayor, Rama had Bad Romance playing on "Ra-ra-rama- rama (and then the translation basically goes, "Vote for Rama, if not you're gaga which means crazy in Bisaya). Needless to say, that got old really quick when every day I heard it blasting in the streets at 11am.
2) And then there's the voting itself, which is different from the States. It's all by popular vote, and people run by themselves, not on a ticket. It's sort of strange to me that you can have a President from one party and a VP from another, but it's looking like it might be that way. At this point, the margin is large enough that it's fairly safe to say that Noynoy Aquino is going to the President. However, two weeks later we still don't know who the VP is because they're still collecting the votes and the margin is too close to call. I suppose a couple weeks later is better than knowing a couple months later, but still.
3) So the big thing for this election was that it was automated for the first time. Unfortunately this poses a set of problems. The use of electronic ballots translated into rolling blackouts before and after the election. You see, we don't have enough electricity to run the entire country for three days straight, but they needed it for the machines. So leading up to and after the elections, they had scheduled blackouts to store up on power. I suppose I shouldn't complain because Mindanao had 6-8 hours while ours were only 1-2 hours per day, but with high 90 to low 100 degree weather, it was blisteringly hot to be without power. Thank goodness for generators.
And then of course there's the issue that not all the provincial/rural areas *had* electricity to plug in said machines, so organizing that was somewhat of an issue because no one wanted to pay for it. The Comelec (the department of the government that deals with election stuff) said it was a Department of Education issue, since the voting happens in schools. The Department of Education said that it was a Comelec issue, and Veco, the leading power distribution company, can only supply so many units. So we still had paper ballots in some areas...which of course, leads to corruption.
4) Corruption, though, took on a different course this time round. Normally people get paid to register in multiple counties and to vote for a certain candidate. This time around because it was electronic, they had to change their tactics because of the database. Here when you vote, you don't get a little "I Voted" sticker. They paint your right index fingernail with a special black ink or dye so you can't vote again. So? Certain parties with lots of money paid people NOT to vote for their opponents, and in exchange for money, they would paint your fingernail so you couldn't vote.
5) Also? The national ban on liquor from the Saturday night before to the Tuesday after the election kinda sucked, even though I get why they did it. On the bright side, no massacres or uprisings or revolts have occurred yet, so I guess they're doing something right.
All in all, it was a very enlightening experience. I don't think the most qualified guy won, but I suppose in hindsight, it's good that he ran, if only because he stopped Erap, the guy who got IMPEACHED (though pardoned, but whatever, he was IMPEACHED), from winning this election. I shudder to think what would have happened if Erap had gotten elected again. OY. It still boggles the mind as to how he got second and beat out both Villar and Gibo, but then I remember, oh yeah. Corruption. LE SIGH.
And to close: Choose Your Own Adventure. It was bound to happen sooner or later, I suppose. ;)