A Business Graduate's Random Blog on History and Gossip

Right now, I'm having an argument with a certain old man (wearing a toga, presumably graduating from a doctorate degree) on Facebook. One thing I noticed in some of his Facebook posts is the use of CTTO more often than not. Maybe, I can start giving a sample of his arguments since there are many. One of his posts would go like this: All nations have protectionist policies, its their inherent rights. It is the role of the business to use strategies to work within these policies.... ctto... Back then, I remembered I erroneously used Yahoo as a source in my high school term paper. Later on, a college professor placed an X mark on Yahoo and Google as a source . It's because Google nad Yahoo are search engines . Now, we have CTTO which means Credit To The Owner. If we're to really credit the owner, why not post a link or acknowledge the site where it was taken from? For example, the meme above is by 8LIST.PH.  It's very eays to say CTTO to make myself look smart. However, I

There's the term MARITES which can be often said as Masters in the Art of Relaying Information Through Exaggerated Storytelling . Such people give a bad name to any woman named Marites. I wouldn't be surprised if women would stop naming their daughters Marites for that reason. I decided to make this simplistic meme to talk about what I'd call the MARITES Pyramid of Learning. The Pyramid of Learning has been used as a joke in many memes.  One of them has the caption "Trust Me Bro" (read more about that here ) at the tip which is the fallacy of Appeal to Emotion. If Trust Me Bro isn't enough then what happens next is, "If you don't believe them you must be (insert insult)." If there was a lesson I had to be taught many times, "Never get mad at insults. That just proves that the other person is either insecure, in the wrong, or has a very shaky ground that he or she is defensive. Get even and they'll play the victim."  If there's a

It's very easy to confuse democracy with mob rule , right? I remembered an English class proverb by George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm , who also warned, "Beware lest democracies may become tyrannies." It was most likely the theme of Animal Farm when the pigs took over the farm and made it worse than their human owners. Now, how do we define democracy? Most people just say that it's the rule of the majority. However, the Council of Europe website   would give us what democracy really means: The word democracy comes from the Greek words " demos", meaning people, and "kratos" meaning power; so democracy can be thought of as "power of the people" : a way of governing which depends on the will of the people. There are so many different models of democratic government around the world that it is sometimes easier to understand the idea of democracy in terms of what it definitely is not. Democracy, then, is not autocracy or dictatorship,

On the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, a festival known as the Dragon Boat Festival (note it's not Dragon Ball). There are three stories of the festival's origin . The story goes with China's first known famous poet known as Qu Yuan which is the most well-known story. This would be the origin of the food that I would know as machang among Chinese Filipinos as well as Filipinos of other ethnicities. Filipinos of Malaysian or Indonesian descent still call it machang.  The life of Qu Yuan came to a sad end when he ended his life at 62 years old: During his exile, Qu Yuan wrote a great deal of enduring poems showing his love and passion for his country, some of which are still very famous in China. In 278 BC, the Qin State conquered the capital of Chu. On hearing of the defeat, on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month, Qu Yuan in great despair committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River (a branch of Yangtze River) as a gesture of dying along with his motherland. T

This is something that might come out of a Buwan ng Wika (Month of the Language) program in the Philippines. Personally, I want to celebrate August as Buwan Ng Kulturang Pilipino (Month of the Filipino Culture) as indigenous tribes in the Philippines are still Filipino . The props all look very similar to what I used to see in the Buwan ng Wika program in high school more than 20 years ago. This performance is sung which would be similar to the Filipino indigenous language. Maybe, an Ifugao scholar or an Igorot scholar would be able to decode what's said here. The chanting here is rather beautiful even if I can't understand a word. It's even followed by a rap version of the indigenous language. No wonder some tribes are referred to as Taiwanese "rock star" tribes .  I was wondering why Original Pilipino Music (OPM) hasn't really paid attention to indigenous Filipino music? Has it been because of Manila-centric policies or what? Or is it because of protectionis

In the quest to know more about Southeast Asia's indigenous people--Taiwan can become a hit destination. This would look like a group of Filipino indigenous dancers but they're from Taiwan. This long dance number may show how the Taiwanese government may have been treating indigenous tribes better than the Philippines. One article I wrote was about how some Filipino natives now have to travel to Taiwan to learn indigenous weaving .  Just watching this video makes me think of what the  Inquirer  cited about Taiwanese indigenous people: TAIPEI—In communities of the indigenous Amis tribe across Taiwan,  locals say lima for five, pito for seven and mata for eye, just like Filipinos . In southern Taiwan’s Alishan mountain,  the Tsou tribe calls the community’s meeting hut a kuba, strikingly similar in design to the Philippines’ kubo . Whether in language, architecture or way of life, links among indigenous peoples of the Philippines and Taiwan are undeniable, with  both sides tracin

More than 10 years ago while I was a college student, I remembered one of the topics raised was who in the world was the father of the late Sergio Osmeña Sr.? I remembered my Humanities subject while I studied at the University of San Carlos (USC) during my summer classes. I immediately took summer classes after I finished my associate's degree and proceeded to take my bachelor's degree in business administration. We had a field trip at Casa Gorordo in Cebu where one of the curators said, "Just who was his father?" There was a wild guess it was the late Pedro Lee Singson Gotiaoco. The Freeman I heard from someone, back in college, that neither Tomas Osmeña nor the late John Gokongwei Jr. admits to being related to each other. Gokongwei Jr. is a great-grandson of Gotiaoco. A Sunstar article about Juana Osmeña  mentions this one about the past 145 years ago which may verify their mutual claims: SCIENCE has settled almost a century-and-a-half-old mystery -- history and g

I remembered the song "Dayang Dayang" which had a parody cover called "Dayang Daya". Some people wondered if it was from India. Some say it was a Muslim song which makes more sense. It's because the beats almost sound like one from Filipino Muslim dances. Granted, a lot of Filipinos descended from either Malaysian or Indonesian settlers then it would make sense if Dayang Dayang is danced to the Pakiring. The song I just share comes from an Indonesian singer who probably popularized the song.  Many words from the Filipino language match up with Malaysian language or Indonesian language. The Filipino word for help (tulong) is tolong in Indonesian and Malaysian. The Malaysian (or Indonesian) term Dayang is said to mean a noble lady. It would make sense of the song "Dayang Dayang" would've come from Indonesia, Malaysia, or from Mindanao in the Philippines.  This was the most common version heard. I think the video maker wrongly attributed it to Bollywo

The passing away of John Regala hit today. I remembered a film called Animal (2004) in  which the original title was originally Butakal meaning male pig. Regala starred as Jaco Lozano--an obvious caricature of Juan Francisco Gonzales Larrañaga aka Paco. Strangely enough, neither the Larrañagas nor the Osmeñas were heard to have ever filed a case against the late director Toto Natividad. Instead, it was the Chiong family that filed a lawsuit against Natividad. I did write about  whether or not Natividad himself was interviewed by the directors of Give Up Tomorrow . As mentioned, there was over 400 hours worth of footage and over 100 interviews done . Both Marty Syjuco and Michael Collins may have interviewed not only Natividad, the late Tony Calvento but also Regala himself since he played the film's main antagonist . In 2018, we had an incident when Niño Muhlach apologized to Paco for the portrayal in The Calvento Files . Apparently, Niño himself wasn't interviewed but was prob

In the quest to study Filipino culture, it's important to know what culture was brought by the settlers. Most Filipinos are of Malay and I think also of Indonesian descent. The aboriginal dances of Taiwan are similar to the Philippines due to common ancestry . I did some writing about how most of Southeast Asia may be of Malaysian descent . I'm not surprised to see that Taiwanese natives have dances similar to the Filipino tinikling, and use certain words similar to the Filipino native language. I did also write about the similarities between Filipino aborigine songs and Taiwanese songs . This performance of 太魯閣之戀 (Tài lǔ gé zhī liàn) or "Love of Taroko" feels like something from a Buwan Ng Wika (Month of the Language) presentation. There were some Ifugao and Igorot dances. The dance steps here resemble some Ifugao dance I witnessed during my high school days. What disappoints me (now) is realizing that there are some cool-sounding Ifugao songs! If Taiwanese tribal da

I wanted to create a WordPress site for my business and economics blog . I did think that WordPress might be good. However, I decided to finally delete it. Hopefully, I'll find a better blogging platform. For now, I think the big problems I've had with WordPress are as follows: Really hard to customize themes. Sure, there are a lot of cool-looking themes but newer themes don't even have a default search box . I want people to easily find what I have written! The WordPress editor is getting laggy . I really feel that WordPress may be doing a disservice more than a service for those who just want to blog in their free time. It's very difficult to apply labels across multiple posts,  unlike Blogger.  Then, I think this gives me a good reason as spelled out by Spell Out Marketing : 5. No Limitation On the Number of Visitors  Even the expensive hosting plans come with space and bandwidth limitations. Those “unlimited” are never really unlimited . When the number of your dail