SELF-EXSPRESSION is one form of capacity that must be inculcated into the individual, if one adheres to the maxim of complete education—or as our Ateneo moderators had always pointed out, a well-rounded education. Ironically, such is never a field of knowledge that is formally offered in any educational institution, as if it were a subject matter or a group of knowledge like Mathematics or Science. The closest we could get to it is perhaps through communication subjects like English and Filipino, thru extemporaneous speaking and debate.

Maybe I could be wrong but true to my heart, I do insist that the educated individual, as he or she becomes after years of knowledge and skills inculcation in classrooms, should come as a person confident in his speeches, in expression and in his outward demeanors, that in this manner, fulfillment in life-long endeavors becomes more reachable or obtainable. Like for example, in a case between two young executives working in the same institution, the one who is more comfortable and skilled in his or her communications (in undertakings like field reports, task accountings, concepts and proposals) would more often than not be more upward in mobility than the one who struggles with his or her wordings. In this light, I should adhere to the precept that self-expression is one mighty field that every student should obtained and be well-honed at.

In connection with this, it should be laudable that the phone company that many of us patronizes is suddenly not merely interested in profiting tons and tons of money from its customers as now it offers this very innovative and certainly beneficial program where interested schools and colleges could avail of free webhosting and be online with no cost at all. Considering how costly and labor-intensive this kind of undertaking partakes, this is a great boon for our educational system and certainly students benefited from this could get enhanced methods in improving their communication skills as well as be able to finally ride this amazing wave called the Internet superhighway.

Maybe, students can formally be introduced to net concepts like blogging and networking, since I do believe that these undertaking could be utilized as a very effective tool in molding the individual to become fully capacitated in this ultra-modern age, and be truly competitive as a skilled individual in the global arena.

Read Philippine Daily Inquirer’s “Smart offers free hosting, online library for school program”.

This must be what a burning issue means. Even while Pope Benedict XVI had apologized more than once in the past couple of days, the anger brought about by a speech he delivered in a German university continues to rage and reports from every international papers headlines how his apology had failed to tame down anger.

I have immediately scoured the net for the exact words that the pope had spoken, those that had this hugely inflammatory effect, and after reading it, it is clear to me that all this confusion is just a result of great misunderstanding, or that classic case of taking one’s words out of context. It appeared that the controversial lines, which many Muslims around the world believed to have been something against Islam, were actually found in a quoted conversation between two emperors—the Byzantine emperor Manuel II and an unnamed Persian ruler. In other words, it was clearly not the very own words of the Pope that had caused great outrage in the Muslim world but merely the content of an ancient texts that he had read before and had been reminded of, and then presented it in that now infamous speech he gave in Regenzburg, Germany—utilizing them in his intention to elucidate more clearly the subject of “holy war” (jihad in Islam and The Crusade in Christianity) through the ages, and even up to now.

I thought Pope Benedict’s speech was fair and balanced in tackling the issue of religion vis-à-vis the manner of one’s conversion and dedication to it, whether it’d be a belief of faith through an informed voluntary decision, or merely thru the force of circumstance. He had even expounded Greek mythologies to explain this, and had used passages from both the Bible and the Qu’ran to firmly enlighten the issue.

The Pope had already made a categorical and unqualified apology concerning some texts in a university speech—I hope that was enough to appease the minds of many Muslims across the globe. In these times of great confusion—of nuclear armaments, of extremisms in faith—peace amongst all men is one thing that we should pursue right now.

I’VE LEARNED SOMETHING THESE DAYS; or rather I have suddenly waked up to a realization that somehow becomes an elevating idea for me, of hope and redemption, of salvation and deliverance.

Actually, it would somehow appears like learning from that old adage “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone” or “You can’t always have what you wanted”. But actually it’s far from that— it’s something beside the point.

Lately, I had a snglguy predicament, that is spending hours and hours at home without cable television, meaning I am now without the glossy news of CNN and subtle in information that can be sourced from BBC and National Geographic, the amazing realities inside Discovery Channel, the boys of summer of Major League Baseball coming in live from America, the guffaws that can be had from the crazy antics of Seinfeld’s crazy bunch of cast, and so much more; much more than the ongoing National Football League season, the upcoming Ryder Cup tournament, the sometimes sharp reporting in Channel Asia and the special presentations shown on HBO and Cinemax.

One day about a week ago, our cable connection was cut-off and I was a little taken out of sort. Not that I never saw it coming but it is just that I never thought my wife was serious enough about it when she kept on muttering to me in a fairly exasperated tone that we have to cut house expenses at this time (the kids tuition fees are becoming such a weighty expense for us) and our cable subscription had to go. I never believed that somehow cause we had been “cabled” for almost a decade and life without 40 channels on TV is just unimaginable. But she did that, going to the cable TV office without me knowing it and requested that our subscription be ended.

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Just when I thought that the international music scene was deader than a log, an old man and his red guitar came galloping like a mighty comet. And maybe, he had just saved music from enduring a slow but mortal death.

At the late age of 65, Bob Dylan is back on track once more and his latest album titled “Modern Times” came out No. 1 in the U.S. album charts in its first week of release as well as in other countries like Australia and Canada. In a music scene where gyrating girls barely out of their teens dominates airplay over the radio and one-hit wonder rock bands lording over album sales, a resurrection of an old legend like Bob Dylan may be simply a ridiculous proposition, a gassy idea. But what had happened was sort of a minor miracle. They still loved the old guy over there in America, the guy with a cowboy hat who had crooned his way to the heart of music lovers throughout the whole world with wonderful melodies and sharp lyrics, with songs that had always marked the era it became popular, and on every milestone on many lives—including mine. When I was young, I had learned to play the guitar by singing “Blowing In The Wind” over and over again. There was I with my cousins so many years ago, over bottles of soda and saucers of roasted peanuts trying to refined the way we sang “the answer my friend, is blowing in the wind” to the perfect accompaniment of our strumming and despite that my cousins were always better guitar players than myself, I had been the most that got stuck with the song that was so melodious and whose wordings seemed to have yearned for something that must have been a very deep thought; perhaps of something that is out of time. At that time, I had no clear idea who Bob Dylan was but I knew the song was something that I had learned to love by heart during my childhood days, like a long lost friend.

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It seems to me like the wait has already gone for far too long and now, it might be finally over. Or so I thought.

The initiative to amend the constitution—or revise it altogether—has received a major push now that the House committee on constitutional amendments has already approved a list of amendments that may be tackled upon by a constitutional assembly—if ever there’d be one. Of course, the ruling party is all but confident that it can railroad the plan to convene a constitutional assembly since the requirement of the law may be tenable at this point, they (the ruling party) having the right numbers at this point in time.

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I HAD DISCOVERED this first-rate section from a famous news agency’s website some months ago and ever since that time, I have been coming to it every now and then, at times on successive days. Reuter’s Oddly Enough News section always gives me that transcendent leisure of reading news that are funny or extraordinary and often being both funny and extraordinary. It’s like discovering Ripley’s Believe It Or Not for the first time all over again with Jack Palance hushing that proverbial end-program quip, “Believe it…or not…”

I had long wanted to blog about so many topics from Oddly Enough before but I resisted for so long because at times the topics there were too funny for comfort and therefore lacking that amount of seriousness that I am always looking for in a blog post. Not that I consider myself as a very serious blogger, far from that. But you know, I feel that I can’t be so very funny lest I’d be bookmarked as a jokester blog, which I am not and shouldn’t be. Oddly Enough items could really be so funny and since these are based on true occurrences, they can be so extravagantly hilarious.

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