P-noy now owns responsibility for the hostage taking

After the “blame game” that happened wherein PAG-ASA official was terminated in his job due to wrong information regarding the typhoon Basyang which brought tremendous casualties in the country, next is where you see our president blamed the media for the coverage of the hostage taking which took place at the Quirino Grandstand last August 23, followed by the blaming of the PNP, and now, P-Noy just realized he has to take full responsibility for the hostage taking.
The hostage crisis took more or less 12 hours before the hostage taker was taken down by a sniper. The situation left eight Hong Kong tourists dead, and witnessed live in all parts of the world. During the crisis, even the slightest glimpse of P-Noy’s shadow was never seen and this causes a bad impression in most of the other nations.
President Aquino III has claimed full responsibility over the Philippine National Police’s (PNP) botched hostage rescue operations last week saying he has direct supervision over the police. The President’s admission was contrary to his earlier claim that Rico E. Puno, Interior undersecretary for peace and order, was directly in charge of the hostage rescue operations.
Clarifying Mr. Aquino’s statement, Presidential Communications Operations Secretary Herminio "Sonny" R. Coloma said the president is emphasizing the principle of accountability in taking full responsibility over the event.

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The Manila hostage taking was deemed as a “local crisis” even if the hostages were foreign nationals, Interior undersecretary Rico E. Puno said last Friday (Sept. 3) in front of the fact finding committee who investigates the police rescue operations done at Quirino Grandstand.
The very same day of the hostage crisis, Puno was informed of the incident four hours earlier before he flew to Cagayan de Oro City to attend an “official function”. He just let it happen for he thought that it was only a local crisis, for it was in the city of Manila and the hostage taker was a former Manila police.
As being asked by the president of the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkater sa Pilipinas, Mr. Herman Basbano, Puno said that during the incident, the local crisis committee was in charge of the situation while the national crisis committee which he headed, was on “standby” in case the situation worsened. And their assessment of the situation was that the hostage taker was very cooperative, which made them think that the situation was bearable and can be handle by the police and no need for it to be considered as a national crisis.
Mr. Puno admittedly told Justice secretary Leila de Lima that he is not capable of handling hostage taking crisis, and was only verbally instructed by the president to oversee PNP.

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The woman behind on how Mendoza was brought to Quirino Grandstand appeared, Meliccia Gonzales, 65, a widower, claims to have been Mendoza’s “best friend”, drove him from Tanauan, Batangas to Manila, knowing that he would only turn over his service firearm, an M-16 rifle to the authorities, and that she did not know he would use it to hold people hostage. She said she became suspicious when she saw Mendoza wearing his police uniform, but Mendoza had told her he needed to be in uniform to avoid being pulled over because their car’s license plates were banned on the main roads on Mondays.
Gonzales, accompanied by her lawyer, surfaced at the National Bureau of Investigations’ main office in Manila last Tuesday afternoon to clear her name.

Hardships...

Second year, first trimester. Not that too much for me to handle. But right now I am starting to experience what really a college student should feel especially now that I am taking 5 majors at the same time.
Right now, one of the majors included is THEATER and I can say that it is quite exciting to take because we learn how to act, express emotions and we get to produce our own theater play production. That is our final requirement which is fun and worries some at the same time. My group mates here are mostly third years and it’s kind of hard to adjust with their time schedules because first and foremost, they are graduating and they have lots of things to worry for, not only the theater. They also have their thesis and they spend too much of their daytime for that. So, we had agreed that we need to suffer our time for sleeping to have our rehearsal. We figured this suits us (but not me, because I really love sleeping but I know that I need to sacrifice that). This set up went well, although we all complain of lack of sleep. Another problem that we faced is that the revision of the script which brought conflict to some of our members. We only have one more week before we present it and there they are, coming up with the idea of revising the lines in the script… As my instructor always tell us, “My goodness!” Yes, they had it revised and gave us the problem on how to memorize it and deliver the lines on such a short span of time.
Hmmm… All’s well that ends well. Maybe we will just hang on to that saying. Hoping that after the presentation, we will all have smile on our faces… So help us, God!

The use of technology in education

Education is the greatest inheritance that our parents can give to us. Yes, I believe in this saying. For education, is a treasure that no one can take away from a person. You might say that diplomas can be lost, burn, or steal. But education is not merely things that you can easily grab or take hold, and neither is easily give or take away from you. Education is the stepping stone to man’s success. But as years passed by, great changes are happening around us. Is the education or the way of delivering it to the students in our grandparent’s time still relevant and useful these days?
We now live in the modern days where everywhere you look, what you will see are things that are run or operated by machines that we call technology. People nowadays were helped greatly by it, from their own houses, offices, even in churches and busy streets. And now, schools are opening the doors for technology. The use of technology in the classroom as an aid in teaching the students is a great help to the instructors.
But before it was appreciated by many, there came a time that people doubt it if it will be a great help to students or will it have harmful effects to them because the technology will lessen the interaction between the students and teachers, and it even scares the teachers that they might lose their jobs and technologies will take over their position in educating students. But this allegations were also true with the coming of radio and television, and in the end, they were proven wrong. Technology has become tools for the development of higher order thinking skills, if appropriately use, interactively and with proper guidance.
In a classroom setting, teachers were now advice to use technology and even students are now encouraged to do reports with the use of it. Interactions among them were sufficed to absorb knowledge because compare to traditional methods which is that the teachers were just relaying the message to the students, the students can now interact.
In international flight schools, flight simulators are use to train the students. This is a virtual reality kind of technology wherein students can experience how to fly an airplane as if it is real.
In the U.S., home study is practice by many people. This type of education is really helpful because most of them who take home study education were employees. They want to finish studies and at the same time, work to finance their education and this type is more convenient to them. They just need to use the internet, study whatever time that suits them, and pass the requirement for a certain date also through the net.
Basic technologies that we can observe in the classrooms are television, DVD players, and even CD players. We might not notice it, but they are part of technology that is widely used and of great help in education.
As for my answer to my question, yes, what they teach or how they teach in the old days is still useful today. What we just need to do is somehow, upgrade it and go with the flow. We need to use technology as part of relaying knowledge in school, so that students as early as possible can cope with the fast moving technology. But let us not forget the traditional way of life, because if everything else fails, that is still a stronghold that we can turn to…

MC Chorale

Yes!!! At last! We made our first ever live performance as MC Chorale in the CAS faculty acquaintance party that was held at the UC theater. Right at this moment, I'm not quite sure if the party is over or are they still playing games out there.hehe Because we left a few minutes after we ate dinner. We sang four songs in all. The first one is "SIYA" which was the opening song, followed by "I Will Follow You" which we sang best (I think so) together with the MassCom instructors. Then as dinner is being serve, we sang the last two songs "Tanging Yaman" and "I Can't Smile Without You". All in all, it went fine, not that great but not bad for first timers. :-) Even the dean of CAS noticed us and suggested that it's better if we would have our very own uniform of MC Chorale. Hmmm... We're excited about the very thought of it, and we will do our best on our next adventure, maybe on the MassCom Society acquaintance!

The journey continues...

Might say "kinda great"

Prelim grades were out and it's quite satisfying that I had received good, if not great, grades in my subjects. To boast a little about it, I got 87 in Advertising and Campus Journ, 88 in intro to Masscom, 89 in Theater, and 94 in Feature Writing. Not bad for someone who hasn't yet take up some majors that are pre-requisite of the above majors. But I am very disappointed on my grade in Broadcast Journalism, not only I who is very disappointed about it but the whole class. We said our concern about our grades to our teacher and she promised that we'll gonna talk about it next meeting. Hope the problem will be fix so that everyone will be happy. ^_^
And yes, one more thing... A week more and we'll gonna face midterm. Better to study harder. God bless us all!!!

A Wonderful Day!!! (somehow)

Yes! Another day has come to an end again... Looking back, I had quite a tiring day, yet, a wonderful and satisfying one. It was a little busy because I kinda rushed some requirements for my Comm108 (advertising) and finished it with confidence that I've done it right. Although I had some difficulty especially due to time pressure (unluckily our classes were shortened, meaning, vacant were shortened too and we had less time to finish our requirement), but I made it in time to passed it to my instructor. And it's a good feeling that your instructor will commend you for a job well done. But before that, I made my duty as a dj to go on-board on our very own MC radio. And we have a new protocol that everyone, as in "everyone" including the regular dj's to be observed by the radio station manager and some officers. I received few comments like I had the energy but needs more practice... Yeah, I know that and I'm more than willing to improve myself because I love what I'm doing. Then, another good thing that happened to me was when our instructor told me what my grade in theater. I got 89!!! I know its high (for some) but for me, I know I deserve higher than that. Well, there's still midterms and finals to prove what is my worth... As my principle, "Set a goal and reach for it. If you already achieve it, try harder to surpass it!"

Relief...

At last!!! We're through with our defense on Comm108 Advertising. It's kinda stressful because we need to polish everything, from rehearsing our part, thinking what questions would be ask, preparing for answers and so on and so forth. Luckily, I'm in the mood because I was commended on my 1st subject by my teacher in Comm101 because I wore the dress code for the group presentation(Comm101), but which is really I purposely wear for the defense. And our group was the only group who had the video presentation correct. But, the defense for Comm108 isn't really finish, yet... We still have the continuation of the Question and Answer portion on the meeting after the exam. Just wish us luck, and may God bless us especially on our preliminary exams on July6-7...

Sunday restday(???)

I think it's still early to do things especially today that I don't have classes... But unfortunately, I need to attend NSTP1 1-5pm. :-( Luckily, I just need to painstakingly attend three NSTP meetings because this is the first time they implement the six meeting period of it and by July18, it would be finish. Thank God! Some of my classmates were complaining because in their time, they endured it the whole semester... :-) Hope NSTP 2 will also be a six part session.

Tiring Saturday

Just woke up and had my breakfast... I had a very tiring Saturday. Yesterday I got up very early to fix things in school like the copy platform on advertising, visiting(or should i say searching for) some local print editors and offices but didn't have my luck on finding them. Then I was invited to attend a kid's birthday party (w/c I think more appropriate to do in the afternoon rather than night 'coz it's for kids) in Jollibee and got very full! Imagine, serving you food as if it's a food taste! We'd been served 1pc. chickenjoy w/ rice, spaghetti, burger, french fries, chocolate sundae, peach mango pie and coke! Whew! That was beyond my capacity!!! But all in all, my day went well, but as i said earlier, very tiring...