FaMily BasH

Last August 9, 2008, the Hernandez family gathered at my Aunt Cristina's house for the despedida party of our cousin, Abegail. After a few years living in Detroit, she finally came back home to Davao to see us all. Sadly, after 3 weeks here in Davao, she already have to go to her dad in Manila where she will pursue her studies.

Back to the party details, well, it wasn't the only reason for the party, we were also celebrating (super advance) her debut. Since by that time she won't be here in Davao to celebrate it with us,we decided to just celebrate in it advance, and also we were also having a surprise birthday bash to our beloved Santa Claus like uncle, Tito Danny who will be having his birthday the day after the party.

When, I arrived at my aunt's house, a cousin of mine, Kyle told all of us not to greet Uncle Danny "happy birthday" when he arrives because he wants to make it look like we forgot our uncle's birthday. But actually, we already have a customized "Malboro cigarette pack" cake hidden in Kyle's room. The cake was courtesy of one my cousins, Richard (mind you the cake cost a lot).
Kyle also drew a banner who really looks like my uncle and coincidentally my uncle wore a green shirt that day of which was also the color of the shirt of what Kyle drew (funny, right.??!!).

Abegail was dressed in a red gown, mind you, she looked stunning that night. That's why we were having a lot of pictures taken with her that night. Then, we started singing happy birthday, while some of us were already looking and drooling at the huge crabs and prawns at the table. hahaha.!!

Eating time is always like chaos or pandemonium in our family party and this party isn't an exception. It was really fun watching our younger cousins pushing each other to get to the cake or watching the older folks shoving each other to get to the lechon. It was all very comical.

After, eating dinner. We took pictures and sang loudly in the videoke machine. It was really fun since almost all of us sang and rain poured really hard that time and we were telling each other off for sining so badly that's why the rain poured harder. haha.!!

After a few moments, Abby went inside her room and called our Uncle Danny. She was so depressed she said but actually she was just acting. While our Uncle was inside Abby's room, we were already taking his birthday cake, the poster, and the balloons into the sala. All of my cousins and I signed the birthday card. My cousin went out into the sala with Uncle Danny.Our Uncle laughed loudy when he saw all of us singing him a happy birthday. One of my younger cousins,Arlo read out the essay that he wrote about how thankful all of us are, for having an Uncle like him. When he finished reading the essay, Uncle Danny got an icing for his birthday cake and splatted it at my cousin's face. And then, all chaos began. All of us started throwing the icing of the cake at each others faces. My hair was dyed red because of the red icing thrown to my hair.

This is what we looked like, after the commotion..

Over-all, it was fun, fun, fun.!!

aTLanTiS

A friend of mine just asked me why I named my blog as ATLANTIS, and my answer is, "I like the place.!!"

I have always been attracted to the idea of an advance, rather magical and mysterious city that sank in the depths of ocean. A lot civilization. I was always fascinated to hear stories like that when I was a child. I wonder whether it was only a myth or it was a reality. Questions like, "is it possible to happen?" or "where is Atlantis now.?" or "why did it sink down.?", keep popping into my head whenever I hear the word "Atlantis".

Its a place I want to go to, to discover its mysteries, explore its depths, learn from it and its a place I believe to exists. I named my blog after it because when people view or read my entries I want them to discover new things, be fascinated or just be entertained.

SONA on ICT status of the country

On President Arroyo's last state of the nation address, she discussed the country's growth and development due to the efforts of her government and the people. She addressed several concerns of the country and the improvements of the economy due to VAT. Most of her speech consisted of agrarian reforms and the crisis that the country is now experiencing. Yet some part of her speech, she mentioned developments in the country's ICT.

Due to the advancement of technology and the changing times the country's technology level is now developing.The president exclaimed that there is a continued growth with the cyberservices in the country. Thus, offers a lot of available work for its people. She said that with the continued growth of such sector, the government is now making it as an offset with the costly commodities like oil and rice, which is a major problem in the country.

She said that," Our P 350 million training partnership with the private sector should qualify 60,000 for call centers, medical transcription, animation and software development, which have a projected demand of one million workers generating $13 billion by 2010.". People, who like me are studying computer related courses, are glad to have known that such venues for our expertise are now growing in the country. It will not only give work to the country's human resource but it can also alleviate the level of ICT development and technology advancement of the country, to a certain point that it could be up to par with other IT/technology based countries like Korea. Also with the existence of such services the Filipinos become aware and knowledgeable in this sector and thus, they become globally competitive in information technology areas.

A slightly related ICT issue which concerns with the communication of several networks namely, text was also mentioned in the SONA. The president said that with her discussion with the country's leading telecom corporations, they agreed to make the price of each text message to be Php.50 centavos only. Don't really know if this will help the country though. Its beneficial but its bit entirely useful for the country's progress.