Ang traffic sa metro manila! Gawan nyo naman ng solusyon!
Congress:
All entries tagged philippines.
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Sep 2017
Jun 2017
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Random thoughts while walking at night: The structure of government can be a bit analogous to the structure of a software development project. The Constitution is like the requirements for a project. It’s kind of high-level and (I believe) shouldn’t be too detailed. Supposedly the requirements are written by the client. For a country like the Philippines the client is “we the sovereign Filipino people”. Slight tangent: I used to know this guy who was one of those rabid “we need to amend the constitution” types and he asked me to review a “mathematical model to track the budget as a function of tax collection and monetary policy” that he wanted to include in a proposed new constitution.
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"Grabe naman kasi ang ginagawa nyo sa pasahero" (This is too much for the passengers), she said. She was a short, old lady trying to get to the front of the bus so that she could disembark. But like most city buses in Metro Manila during rush hour, the bus was filledto the brim with people, many of them standing tightlypacked in the aisle, holding on to handrails on the bus ceiling or the nearby seats.
May 2017
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Posted on r/Philippines: Are there any blatantly false memes/pictures going around anti-Duterte groups, similar to the recent Etta Rosales meme that claims she sympathizes with the Maute group?
Reference: https://memebuster.net/former-chr-chair-said-dutertes-use-airplanes/
I’m curious whether this sort of thing is prevalent only in pro-Duterte groups, targetting admin critics. Or meron din sa kabilang side?
Other examples: rumors na nakipagmeet daw si Bam Aquino sa Maute in Marawi, fake Jim Paredes statement calling Mindanaoans ‘taga-bundok’, etc.
Edit: to be clear, I’m looking for fake memes/quotes/rumors that make the admin look bad
Apr 2017
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Cheer up OP, the speaker of the house says we should have faith:
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/888992/alvarez-calls-on-filipinos-to-renew-their-faith
=l
Mar 2017
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Reply to 'UP students of /r/philippines, what do you think of the recent GE reform?' on /r/Philippines:
I have friends who are faculty on both sides of this issue, but the Engg side seems underrepresented online so I’ll present some of their points here:
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First, re: K-12/SHS. The idea is that some of the GE stuff would be covered by the additional two years of senior high school
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Re: K-12 again, another concern is that with students entering college two years later than before, having a 5 year course would be an unnecessary burden on students (who should already have a more rounded education given the +2 years from senior HS), thus they’ve been looking at cutting 5 year courses to 4 years
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there seems to be some assertion that the changes are being railroaded, but one of my friends involved with the process (although she was not unable to attend the actual vote on the issue) tells me that they’ve been studying the options available for ~2 years now (starting from when K-12 was announced.)
I understand the concern from the humanities side, of course, and the perception that lightening the load will make UP more of a “diploma mill” (whatever that may imply). Personally, I am not convinced the engineering courses need to be cut to four years. I would prefer they remain appropriately difficult. I do however support the argument that with the +2 years from SHS, we should consider reducing the GE load since this may create redundancy (meaning unnecessary expense) for the students. By how much that load needs to be reduced? ¯\\(ツ)/¯
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Posted on r/Philippines: Japan multiple entry visa on old/expired passport
Hi baka lang may makasagot dito. I got a multiple entry visa to Japan nung 2015 valid until 2018. But I had my passport renewed last year (2016), so the visa on my old passport. I’m travelling to Japan again in April. I’m told that i just need to bring both passports when i travel, but i couldnt find any official confirmation of this. May nakatry na ba nyan dito?
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Ask her why she is so emotional about it.
The Jim Paredes thing was really stupid (although IDK if it’s true that he’s not a Filipino citizen). He shouldn’t have fed the trolls
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If you want to shut up the critics of the drug war, all you have to do is:
- Cite the statistics (and where they’re sourced from) justifying claims of an epidemic
- Tell us what mechanisms you are putting in place to prevent abuse of increased police activity
- Tell us what procedures are in place to verify that any kills during police operations are justified
- Tell us what mechanisms are available for those falsely placed on drug watchlists or those falsely accused of drug crimes to clear themselves
- Give us regular updates on the status of investigations into the spate of homicides particularly those that seem drug-related
- Tell us what mechanisms are being put in place to prevent further murders
- Take down more of the supply side, i.e. large scale drug busts, top level drug lords, etc
Are these suggestions helpful enough?
Instead what we get is:
- random anecdotes (“sabi ng mga lgu madami na daw ulit!")
- blanket statements with nothing to back them up (“4M na ang addict! We are observing human rights! We are just doing our jobs”), minsan may kasamang iyak
- condescending dismissal of any criticism from outside the country (“the filipino people support us”, “you dont know how it is here”)
- the president backing a team of cops accused of executing a high profile prisoner
- the foreign secretary saying critics are just helping criminals (if you’re killing them illegally, you’re criminals too!)
- death penalty rammed down our throats (AFAIK wala pa rin nacite na justifications or studies showing this would be helpful sa prevention, feel free to correct me if wrong)
We are even told that drugs are becoming resurgent because tokhang was suspended, e hindi pala effective yung solution nyo so bakit nyo pinagpipilitan? Is the expectation that we should have tokhang forever?
Anlakas magcall for unity tapos critics are either given meaningless patronizing statements or outright dismissed or even bullied. If you want unity, maybe take other people’s concerns into account and not just your own.
Last drug war rant since Lent na. After Easter na ulit (or hopefully di na kelangan at that time?)
Feb 2017
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As of today, our country (The #Blessed Republic of the Philippines) is already at war with: Drugs Illegal gambling Communist rebels Some other things we might consider declaring war on (in no particular order): Poverty Ignorance Misinformation (sorry, “Alternative facts”) Abusive government officials Traffic Rights abuses Pollution High power rates Political dynasties Poor quality of local cinema offerings Politicians putting their names everywhere Internet trolls and bullies Lack of critical thinking Redundancy Overtime without overtime pay Government officials blatantly lying or pulling statistics out of thin air Slow and expensive internet The MRT breaking down Cruelty to animals Poor quality of local anti-piracy ads Jejespeak SMS spam Typhoons Taxis that don’t give exact change War Irony Spoilers Pineapples on pizza Poor grammar and/or spelling Hashtags Hypocrisy Multi-level marketing Working at “Edi sa puso mo” Redundancy Low effort blog posts that start out serious but end up trying a bit too hard to be funny People who don’t understand sarcasm People who stand in malls and shove fliers in your face Commenting on posts without reading the actual article Lists that end abruptly at weird numbers so you’re not sure if there’s more or what
Dec 2016
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Repost from PhelimKine:
Journalists tracking human toll of #Philippines Prez #Duterte “drug war” tell me police now removing victims’ corpses before media show up
Nov 2016
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Posted on r/Philippines: Many times it’s a struggle between (a) trying to reach out to and understand people who hold different views; and (b) holding back because you don’t feel like you can have a productive conversation with such people, especially online. How can we breach the divide?
Edit: By “breach the divide”, I don’t really mean persuading others that you are correct, more like trying to find common ground and to learn from each other. At the very least we should be able to agree on certain things like the need to verify information and not simply believe everything we read on the internet or to be respectful to others that hold different opinions, but it seems many people aren’t even open to that. It’s just frustrating sometimes.
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"Both the Americans protesting the outcome of a fair election and the Filipinos objecting to the well-considered ruling of our own Supreme Court are undermining institutions. They are temperamental brats refusing to concede to the outcome of regular processes" - Andanar via reddit
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This reminds me of back when the footbridge near the corner of Commonwealth and Tandang Sora was still under construction. At that time pedestrians could already climb up one side even though it was not yet done, so at one point I saw it and was like “cool, may footbridge na pala”, went up and got to the halfway point only to find that it didn’t reach all the way to the end /glare
Oct 2016
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Survey results: satisfaction with the drug war (spoilers: we're not that bloodthirsty after all! Yay?) via reddit
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Posted on r/Philippines: From the local version of “A Few Good Men”
D: “You want answers?”
“I think I’m entitled to them”
D: “You want answers?”
“I want the truth!”
D: “You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has drugs, and those drugs have to be defeated by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for the collateral damage and you curse the police. You have that luxury, you have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That the collateral deaths, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and impenetrable to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like slaughter, obosen, killings. We use them as a backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very safety that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and kill some druggies. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.”
“Did you order the extrajudicial killings?”
D: “I did the job I –”
“DID YOU ORDER THE EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGS?”
D: “YOU’RE GODDAMN RIGHT I DID”
(Sana may mag act out, with corresponding accent lol)
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Reply to a comment by gradenko_2000 on 'From the local version of "A Few Good Men"' on /r/Philippines:
I don’t really have many “fanatics” who follow me. Maybe someone should make an image version of the monologue part, with the president in the image (implying he said it) and post it to one of the pro-Duterte groups. You know, the ones that believe he’s been named the best president in the solar system lol
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(A bit of Philippine politics in this post, if that sort of thing bothers you) Recently as the whole world watched one of our political leaders display his expected lack of diplomatic finesse on the global stage, I couldn’t help but think about how in my younger days there’s a good chance I might have approved of his frank, straight-talking, shoot-from-the-hip brand of diplomacy. I have a bit of a reputation myself for preferring to speak frankly and directly instead of dancing around the issues, although these days I understand the wisdom of adapting to the situation as needed
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Sep 2016
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Current events #sketchdaily
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It’s no secret that many are unhappy with the way the congressional investigations into the so-called “drug war” and related killings here in the Philippines. If I were in charge of these investigations, these are the some of the questions I’d want answered: (Disclaimers: I’m not a lawyer or any kind of expert. Understandably, the resource persons may be reluctant to answer some of these in open session, in which case an executive session could be done.
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You know how a lot of Pinoys are so proud of Pacquiao whenever he wins a match - I don’t get that. I don’t relate to him just because we happened to be born on adjacent chunks of land. I had no hand in his upbringing or victories. He and I are around roughly the same age, but I doubt we had very similar experiences in life
It’s probably different in a country like the US where they have some notion of what it means to “be an American”. Here in the Philippines, I don’t think there is any such notion. I don’t know what it means to “be a Filipino”. We aren’t really that united in terms of culture and we don’t have a strong national identity that all of us can rally around.
Maybe in the end our own diversity can be good for us too, as it means we aren’t constrained or tied to a single point of view but are able to work with a veritable melting pot of different cultures and dialects and what-not. Maybe this is what it means to be a Filipino. Maybe this is what it means to be human
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Posted on r/Philippines: Some comics I drew today (warning: Politics)
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Presidential spokesperson #sketchdaily #philippines (one more because i had fun)
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Senator Boxer #sketchdaily #philippines
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6'2”
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People always assume I play basketball
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Have to always be aware of headroom (to avoid accidentally hitting my head)
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Bus and plane rides can be uncomfortable due to both lack of leg room and seat backs being too low to comfortably rest head/neck on
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UV express and jeepneys can be a bit difficult too, depending on where you manage to sit, people are really bad at estimating that you need more space to pass
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Difficult to hide in crowds
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People always feel like I’m looking down on them (lol)
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I can reach things in high places easily
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Pro-admin troll groups are promoting targetted hatred of people whose opinions they dislike. Please help report this page via reddit
Aug 2016
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The API is pretty inconsistent and poorly designed. There’s a lot of articles out there, here’s one: https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/ It’s not very elegant, and features seem to be added willy-nilly. Compare to languages like Python and Ruby, where new additions are reviewed with a focus on being “Pythonic” or “Ruby like” so that the entire language has a certain consistency
PHP is also the most common introductory web development language (since most Apache installations support it by default), so there is a lot of poorly written beginner code in the wild, leading to more hate against the language
That being said, if that’s what you know, there’s no problem with that, as long as you use it well. But it’s also good to expose yourself to other languages so you can see if there are others that you will prefer
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If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you’ll know I have a tendency to be pretty vocal about any problems I have with our country’s erstwhile leadership. But for the most part I’ve restricted it to those channels and have tried to avoid posting about current events in the country on this blog (outside of my personal choices for the election), but I feel that now more than ever those of us who can speak out have a responsibility to do so whenever we can, for several reasons
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Repost from AgnesCallamard:
My statement as UN expert on extra-judicial executions in the #Philippines in the context of anti-drug campaign http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20388&LangID=E
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No, not that kind of history, don’t worry. Twenty-five years ago this month, the first website went up on the world wide web. That was 1991. It took a few years for the Philippines to catch on, the first internet connection in the country was only set up in 1994. My personal experience with the internet came a bit later, during our freshman year in University, sometime in the schoolyear 1995-1996.
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I think it’s better to build trust in the PNP if the organisation itself is able to promote transparency within its own ranks, but I guess it could be anybody
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Posted on r/Philippines: Crowdsourcing constructive criticism: what constructive suggestions do you have for the current administration to allay concerns especially on violence and extrajudicial/vigilante killings?
For example, some suggestions I would make:
- for the president to come out with a strongly worded message enjoining law enforcement to observe proper procedures, rules of engagement and due process
- provide regular summary reports, probably weekly of the progress of the “drug war”: how many buy bust operations, how many drug dealers captured alive, how many died in encounters, how many died while in custody, and so on
- provide and publicize a channel/process for family members of people alleged killed unjustly in police operations to air their grievances and file cases. Provide protection and legal counsel (via the PAO?) as needed
- related to above, appoint someone to be in charge of investigating extrajudicial killings. that person should provide regular weekly update reports on the cases being investigated and act as a spokesman for the PNP (I assume he would be from the PNP) on this matter and liaise with the senate and the CHR for any investigations
- provide regular reports on the status of the vigilante/cardboard killing cases
etc.
Edit, some additional:
- automatically perform autopsy on any alleged criminals killed in a police encounter. Check for powder burns, prints on the weapon, and so on, and regularly release these autopsy reports to promote transparency
- conduct re-training for police on how to handle suspects in custody to avoid “nang-agaw ng baril” even though naka handcuffs. Punish policemen na naagawan pa rin ng baril kahit nakaposas na
Jul 2016
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Spanish is actually the easiest Duolingo language to pick up for Filipinos, because a lot of the words are similar to either Filipino usage or English usage.
The main issues are (1) word gender (a concept that exists in neither English nor Filipino), (2) subject-verb agreement (unlike English where the choice is simply between singular and plural, Spanish adds the complication of different verb forms depending on first, second or third person, with variations depending on gender and singular/plural), and (3) object pronouns, that shit is hard. These are the main issues you have to focus on in order to have relatively decent grammar.
I’m at 50% Spanish fluency, I started like early 2015. I think I actually got to 60+% fluency but I stopped for a few months so it dropped. When I started I would keep each category at full strength - whenever one of them dropped I would go back and strengthen it again, but that led to slow progress. This time I’m going through all the categories first (I’m down to the last 10 or so categories), then will go back and reinforce them later. Not sure if this will be more effective, but I figure I would go wide first then strengthen those places where I turn out to be weak
As with all sorts of learning, the key is really to practice, practice, practice. Devote time and energy to it. It would help if you had a Spanish-speaking friend you could talk to regularly
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Posted on r/Philippines: Any Color Me Badd fans here? Need some help
I’m looking for anyone who has a physical CD copy of their album “Time and Chance”, specifically the Philippine release. This version has an extra track at the end titled “I Remember”, which does not appear in most releases in other countries. I am not sure which countries’ releases had this track, but for sure it is in the Ph version. I would like to get a digital copy of this track. It is not on iTunes, Spotify, torrents, etc, so the best chance is if someone could rip it from the actual CD. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
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This happened to me back in the late 90s. I think I passed even less than 23 units :p Yes, you will be in probation for one sem. I don’t remember if I wrote a letter of appeal, but it shouldn’t be too hard if you need to, just promise to focus more on your studies and to do better (and you really should! Engg won’t give you another chance)
I suggest you talk to your adviser before following any advice from this thread.
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Are you averse to digital copies? For legal ones, I get them from Amazon (for Kindle). For not legal ones, well there’s a lot of places
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150k isn’t a lot, it can vanish in an instant if you’re not careful. Put your money in a savings account first, you’ll need it as a buffer for emergency expenses. You only have a year of college left, prioritize finishing that, then look for a decent job.
Try to track your expenses, don’t spend too much on unnecessary things until you have stable income. If you have time, take on some part-time work while finishing your studies.
Jun 2016
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Reply to 'Transport group sues Abaya for allowing Uber, Grabcar to operate | Inquirer News' on /r/Philippines:
This is like the most wrong thing to sue Abaya for
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Posted on r/Philippines: Considering changing our internet to Sky Broadband 16mbs. Anyone have any feedback on speed, reliability, customer service, etc?
Edit: Feedback on how good it is for online gaming would also be appreciated
May 2016
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We shouldn’t have to keep telling people that Ferdinand Marcos was a terrible president and that the Martial Law he imposed was terrible for the country. Imagine if a significant percentage of German citizens kept insisting that Hitler was a great man and the more sensible Germans had to keep trying to educate them on why that wasn’t true and why World War II was a terrible idea and that they wanted to elect Hitler’s descendant to a position of national prominence.
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You can report her tweets, this can be considered flat-out harassment
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I think the entire country needs a hug. Thanks :p