My Greatest Hero

One of the things that will get into the mind of some us when the “hero” gets along the discussion is the person who we consider a great personality who died fighting for a significant social concern which all of us had great benefit from, such people who cried for independence and worked for changes in the society where they belonged.

I once believed that those people who died fighting for an indispensable matter were the ones who we should emulate not in a way that we have to die like them but rather to reckon the things which we as a race are considerably affected, and as much as possible to work for it in order to elicit products which would uplift our standard way of living. But as I go through different circumstances in life in which I have exposed myself to different characters from different corners of the world, I have realized that it is not really dying and working that we should associate with the word hero but rather it is more appropriate if we relate “affecting” to it - affecting in the most basic yet the very foundation of a human being. I am referring to the moral, emotional and even in the intellectual outlook of a man which a corpse can affect not that much compared to how a living person affect them significantly. In other words, the people around us, the people who dwell with us in this worldly planet are the ones who have more impact to us as human than those people who we just read from the pages of the past on the ground that the people who we come in contact with are actually the people who affect us and perhaps the people who we can consider as our heroes. And if I am to give the word hero and pin it up to a person who, I think, has affected me so much, I will give it to my father.

My father is my greatest hero because he has done a lot of things to me. And if I had to fill these pages of the good things he has caused on me, it would take such great effort; hence, I have come up with these reasons of why I consider Dominador E Tan Sr, my father, as my greatest hero.
First, my father loves me more than I have expected. I always feel that he loves me and I do not have any doubt about it. I was contented with the amount of love that he showed to me and I saw no disparity on that until this day came when suddenly all his feelings summoned and poured over me that I almost got drowned and at one point made me think that I was numb enough not to feel that he loved me more than I was thinking. It was when it was only days that we counted before I would travel approximately 400 kilometers away from them and spend my college days in a place that sounded not that pleasing to his ears. He kept on saying that it would be tough for me but as I could see, it looked that it was a lot tougher in his part. His emotions were that extreme that he continuously asked me if my decision was already fixed. He even reprimanded me that after all it would be his decision that would prevail and he would never send me here as per his decision. But it did not go out like that because at the end of the day, it was my choice that came out. Although I could see that he had that hard time to fathom that I would be leaving him and create my own path, he eventually showed me his support and he asserted that he would always be right next to me in case I stumble along this choice that I had made. In the edge of that squabble, I saw directly in his eyes the love, so extreme that I did not expect would pour out like that.

Secondly, my father makes me happy through his existence. Every time I see him or every time I hear his voice, I am always glad. His very existence is like a drug that I almost depend on it especially when I feel emptiness in me. He fills up that space and pours it with his smile until it gets to the brim and overflows. I am always happy whenever I know that he is just near to me even though we are distance apart. As long as I know that his existence never fades, I can always meet the day with a beam on my face. Basically, his existence is such a heroic act of him.
Finally, my father is my greatest hero because he saves me from troubles. He keeps me off from the danger zone. There were these instances when he saved me from embarrassment. It was when he took me from the scene in abrupt pace when he had felt that I was being degraded by what his co-workers had said to me. One night as we were on our way home, he fought against a drunken man who tried to hurt me through the knife he had in hand. My father saved me even from the burdens in school. He took my project and made it for me when he had seen that I still needed to go over my notes for my exam the day after that. And one time, he took over my job when he had found that I had difficulty in my project in drawing. I said no but he insisted that he could do the job. I had no choice then because the works were piled up and I had to meet the deadline so I gave it to him. In the end, I got such undesirable score on that project; however, I never frowned yet I was proud because my father made it for me and he had done it as best as he could.

Dominador E. Tan Sr. is indeed my greatest hero. He may not have fought in the battlefields and cried for changes through reforms, still he has done the greatest things one can already be contented to live with - the love, the happiness and the security that are all off questions. And I bet, you would also see a hero in your father only when you feel how they edify you from your feeble existence in this temporary land.

What I do when I feel confused

I always have this fear of what would happen to me in the near future, that is, what my career would be and how my life would look like after I graduate. I have consulted my parents regarding this and they have said that it is normal to feel confused throughout my existence. In fact, they have often felt the same way too. They further added that I cannot escape from being daunted or frightened in life for it is part of being a human. However, I can lessen its effects in my system by releasing it out from the body through meditation. For this reason, I have formulated these steps in order for me to keep myself on-the-stream despite the confusions that keep on pinning me down. First and foremost, I turn my faith to the Almighty Father whose hands are always there whenever I need them. I call His glorious name to keep my belief in Him. I believe that it is only His name that I will be able to see the best results of the decisions that I make in life. Secondly, I do not to think of bad things that keep me worried and confused instead I shift my points of view to those positive things. They say accumulating good things in mind will eventually come up into a desirable result. This may also root out to developing confidence that will keep my drive whenever I feel daunted. After I have gained my confidence, I begin to act with regards to what is right. I try not to do things that would only benefit me because I believe that it can never make me happy instead it can only add burden to me. And lastly, I tend not to keep these steps only for myself. I share this very helpful formula to others especially those who feel daunted in life. Through that, I am able to extend to them the help that my parents gave me then. These simple steps have been helping me a lot especially now that I am very far from my family. I would not be able to survive here if I were not able to keep these steps in my mind. Indeed, these steps have really changed my outlook in life significantly.

How does a cellular phone function?

Note: The datum regarding the physics of cellular- phones communication was taken from http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/2003/4/03.04.07.x.html#e


A cellular phone or just cell phone is a device that is one of the most wonderful products of the technological breakthrough nowadays. We find cell phones very useful especially in communication. Without it, we would not be able to reach people who are distances away. But how exactly does a cell phone minimize the distances among us?

The major component of the cell phone system is the cell. The cell phone system divides an area of service into a set of cells on what might look like a hexagonal grid. A phone tower or base station in the center of the cell covers an area of 2 or 3 square miles around the tower. Cell phones transmit to towers, which then connects you to the normal land based telephone system to route the call. In other words, a handoff has to happen when you move from one cell to another. A typical large city has hundreds of towers and each carrier in each city runs what is called a central office, known as the mobile telephone switching office (MTSO). For example, as you drive from one city to another every couple of miles, the system hands off to another cell. You don't realize that is happening because it is not noticeable. Let us look at what happens when someone calls you.

First, when you power up the phone, it listens for special frequencies (control channel) that the phone and tower use to talk to one another. If there are no control channels, the phone displays a message ñno service, because it knows it is out of range. Second, the phone transmits a registration request, so that the MTSO keeps track of your phone location in the data base. It is important for the MTSO to know which cell you are in when it wants to ring your phone. Third, the MTSO gets the call, and it tries to find you by looking into the database to see which cell you are in. Fourth, the MTSO chooses a frequency pair that your phone will use in that cell to take the call. Fifth, the MTSO communicates with your phone over the control channel to tell it what frequencies to use and when your phone and the tower switch on those frequencies, you are connected and talking. And sixth, as you move toward the edge of the cell, the cell tower notes a diminishing signal. The diminishing signal indicates that it is time for the control channel to hands off you to the next cell.

This might appear very complicated to comprehend how this wonderful device connects people from different corners of the world. However, we are not really that very much interested on the complete process. As long as we know that cell phones exist and they are really very efficient then that it is.

My recent summer experience

My recent summer experience was filled with tiring yet life-changing activities. From my sad farewell to my High-school friends in March to my first job experience in April up to my dramatic days of separation from my family last May, all of these things comprised my vacation which made it indeed a very busy yet memorable summer vacation for me.

My two-month break started with tears as I bade goodbye to the people who I shared my high school years with. I did not expect that I would face a day which put good things to an end. I thought I would never easily get over it as I always am whenever someone leaves or says goodbye, but God was so good then that He never let me just cry all day long while I was reminiscing all those good memories that my classmates and I had.

A new life should embark as others would always say, and fortunately I was able to make it after that sad moment. I was able to hurdle over that great “trauma” and I was able to start my summer just the way it should be. My vacation officially started when I worked as one of the Special Program for the Employment of Students (SPES) grantees. For 10 days, I had rendered my service to the Bureau of Internal Revenue. There, I worked in the collection office. My job was easy at the beginning but it got worse everyday. I was assigned to segregate different papers which I did not mind to know. I was also tasked to stamp piles of ITR forms. I considered it as the hardest part of the job because I had to deal with those papers very carefully plus I had to extend my patience considering those heavy and uncooperative stamps drove me crazy every time. Even though I had to work with those circumstances daily still I was happy about it. Through that work, I experienced my first job interview, I had my first work experience, and most importantly, I earned my first worked salary. However, it was just quite pathetic because my job there had to end under time because I had to be in Iligan City to attend the Summer Orientation and Enrichment Program (SOEP) for DOST Scholars.

MAY 4 was the day of my departure, and as I counted down to that day, I had become very busy. There were a lot of things to fix, such packing up my shirts, securing scholarship forms and keeping the contacts in my phone. Even though I would just be away from my family for a couple of days only, I had never forgotten to say good bye to them, and of course, it was inevitable to shed some tears as we said our farewells to each other. The days during those times ran so fast that May 4 came as fast as a blink of an eye and along with that day was an indication of another milestone that was yet for me to discover.

It was dawn of May 4 that I left from home. When I departed I was really very excited because apart from the feeling that I was about to begin my college life, it was also a stepping stone of my independence. In fact, it was first time to travel alone, that was, no parents, no other relatives but my cellular phone for communication. And indeed, it was cool. However, it was just quite frightening especially when I became farther and farther from my family because it was in my thought that I might still have the communication but it never meant that it would last for the whole trip. I was afraid that I might lose the communication between my mother and me; hence, I was very careful in keeping my phone always on the coverage.

It was already 6 in the evening when I first set my step on this marvelous city of waterfalls. When the streetlights and busy roads had welcomed me from the terminal, I saw how this city looks exactly similar with Tagum City (my hometown); I said to myself that it would not be difficult for me to adapt to this new environment especially that I somehow got used to this city-type surrounding.

I stayed with my other classmate who is also a scholar in an apartment in Ceanuri. There were just two of us there. With an experience of house chores back home, we came up to a fair routine of who would prepare our food, who would clean the house and etc. Through that I somehow felt that I was never away from home.

My first few days here were full of happiness. I roamed around the city, I went to different Iligan’s wonderful spots, and I met new faces who become my friends now. However, I unexpectedly noticed that the happiness I felt constantly diminished as I raised myself against those solitary days that ran leisurely. Suddenly, clouds of tears covered the atmosphere of happiness and smeared my days with nothing but loneliness. Since then, I realized that my happy days were over. I began to deal with those sleepless nights as I was remembering my good old days back home. I began to feel the solitude of being far, and I began to feel how hard it was to be away from the family. During those days, I just hoped nothing but to be back again in the arms of the people who truly give me unconditional love, that was, I wanted to be back home again.

Although I was far from my family for less than a month, it seemed I was away from them for years that when I came back to them, I hugged them tightly and kissed them heartfully. I had just found myself crying on their shoulders and saying words that I had never said before to them. Well, it was simply the manifestation of my eagerness to be home again. In the end of dramatic reunion, I had just realized that it was never cool to be independent and above all, it was never easy to start a life away from the family.

Indeed my recent summer vacation was very tiring and very dramatic which only made it very memorable and life-changing experience for me. It was really a total different one!

Manner Talks

Note: The data were gathered during the first semester, academic year 2009-2010.

Manners and baking everyone’s favorite dessert – cake are alike in some ways. We know how the taste of cakes varies with respect to the proportion of the amount of ingredients we put together. Too much sugar would make the mixture too sweet while too much egg would make it too fluffy. Molders also affect the mixture not perhaps in the taste of the cake but rather on how the cake would appear. Molders give shape of the cake which set its appearance desirable or otherwise. Now, just like cakes, manners are also molded. These are shaped in order to appear as amiable as it could possibly be. In contrast, manners are not molded by those steel frames we use in cakes. Molding what generally talk about who we really are is not easy.

Manners are molded by different factors. In fact, these factors affect the way we see one another because these factors mold the manners which speak to our own characters. For manners are not immune to changes as we continue to move forward and undergo the process of evolution, my classmate last semester, Ms. Christy May Montecalvo, and I approached some people inside the Mindanao State University- Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT) campus and asked them of the condition of manners in today’s IITians, whether they see these good or bad. Furthermore, we tried to bring these comments to our own understandings, evaluated it and related it to which factors these most likely be an effect of.

The first factor that manners are molded by is the parental concerns that are supposed to be observed especially in home. An article writer of Helium.com, in the person of Gabriella Samms, has pointed out that the main cause of nicety that we observe among the youth nowadays is the lack of parental concern imposed to them. She has written there that manners fly out the window when parents stop teaching manners to their children. This should probably the reason of why the janitors, when were asked, had said in abrupt pace that students in IIT do not observe cleanliness at all. Students would have probably not well guided in their houses where they were supposed to be trained of simple thing as cleaning. Parents, when their children were still in home, had not instilled to the minds of their sons or daughters the ways on how to promote and preserve proper hygiene or probably the parents themselves knew nothing about it that is why they failed to expose their children on this basic community obligation.
It is indeed a fact that what we see on the elders is what we also expect to see on younger generations. Parents who never learned the proper tools for going out into society would not pass the proper ones onto their children. This is how we can best explain how history repeats itself.

However, manners are not just affected by how the parents raise their children. There are children who are raised with guiding manners but, somehow along the way, they have been losing the manners that are taught to them. Thus, A. Kyles, an author of the same site, has said in her article that manners are affected not only by parental concern but also by the society where people live. She has further divided the societal factors into two - first are the television shows and secondly, the school where the children are molded significantly.

Television today is not like it was ten or fifteen years ago. Shows on T.V. are somehow more liberated than the shows before. Perhaps, giving much freedom on self-expression nowadays brings this out. Since T.V. is one of the tools through which we learn and entertain ourselves, it significantly affects us and much more of our manners. T.V. can be a source of good things but mind you, this can also be a concrete source of bad ones.

Through our thorough understanding, we came up to associate the comments of the students and the teachers about the IITians’ manners to T.V. as the primary molding factor. Students of the same institution, when were asked, had said that IITians are ill mannered. Moreover, they said that students take their opportunity here in IIT for granted through their acts that simply put what their parents have paid for their schooling into waste such as too much playing of computer games and engaging oneself into vices. In like manner, teachers had seen students as that. In addition, they said that students are becoming rude. They said that students do no longer know how to say polite words anymore.

TV should be the cause of it, shouldn’t it? TV publicizes almost everything; it brings our minds into consciousness and in one way or another, it provokes as to do things. Inaccurate publicity and advertising of technological breakthroughs especially in computers urges oneself to try one and abuse it badly. Ever wonder why cigarette commercials do no longer exist nowadays? It is because addiction to it is now common in the society, even the youth use it. For this reason, some people prefer to bring television to its good old days and the reason is apparently for the youth’s own sake.

School is another factor in teaching manners. School as an institution plays a very significant role in the society because this is where the minds as well as the characters of the children are molded. For this reason, no one can deny how powerful school is that it can build a country or destroy one through, of course, the education that it imparts to the people.

It is clear that molders on which manners are shaped by differ from situation to situation. That is why, we cannot control what people could say about the manners that we possess because we are not the ones who pick the frame through which we mold our own character. Unlike baking cakes, we do not have the total control of the whole process. All we know, especially as beginners, is to let ourselves be exposed on the factor and wait what effect it could possibly do to us. But once we could already see how life could possibly go through if we possess this trait or that, then perhaps, we could already be the baker of our own manners and we can even bake the best character in the world.

Importance of exercising for fitness nowadays

Less than a century ago, life was very different. Work was mostly done by human labor. Cars have not yet been invented, nor was there electricity to run labor-saving devices such as washing machines, dishwashers, can openers and sewing machines. Today, most people sit all day at work, drive everywhere rather than walk, and spend a lot of time in front of the television set.

Human inventions are wonderful for saving time and avoiding dreary tasks. However, the human body becomes inevitably exposed to stress and diseases as the advent of this technology rages the society. For this reason exercising for fitness is more important today than ever before.

Exercising nowadays is of great importance on the ground that it is the easiest way to unwind from the stressful activities that people carry out everyday. It keeps the mind conditioned after a long tedious tasks especially in school and in the office. Along with the advent of the technological advances in the society is the complexity of life that people need to live through the day, that is, they need to deal with much more difficult works together with their other obligations in the community and in the family. As a result, their bodies are always exposed to changes. Their bodies have no choice but to expend much effort just to carry out their more radical daily works. Moreover, their body systems need to adapt to the surroundings which continuously alter. These changes that they are inevitably subjected to root out to too much stress which are very harmful to the body. That is why; people are recommended to do their part in maintaining fitness by performing daily exercises in order to release the tension and much more to reduce the harmful effects of stress in their body.

Secondly, exercising is more important nowadays than ever before because human body needs stronger protection from the diseases that are brought about by the effects of inactivity. Unlike before that exercising was a daily routine even though people did not mean to do it, exercising now becomes just a matter of choice which one can pick to execute or not. And even though there is no such statistics that would back up this claim, it is a fact that great number of people would rather set their back on a sofa rather than do stretching or even walking for a couple of minutes. As a result, myriad in human population is affected by different serious illnesses. Such diseases that are associated with nothing but their being oblivious of doing their daily exercises. This is why people are recommended to do their simple daily responsibility always, that is, they are to do exercising to keep their body fit. After all, it would still be their body that will benefit or will suffer from the things that they decide to do for them.

Similarities and Differences among parabola, ellipse and hyperbola

All the students who would be able to read this article and, coincidently, who are taking Math 51 in MSU-IIT, this is something that you must keep in mind.

One lesson in your course is the conic section. This three-part lesson is too bulky because it is comprised of lessons in parabola, ellipse and hyperbola which all present some varying concepts and properties. You might get confused of what the conic section you are dealing with especially if you have poorly familiarized the properties of these three. For this reason, I have summed up some of the similarities and differences of parabola, ellipse and hyperbola for you to familiarize.

The first difference is with regards to the eccentricity of the conic section. If the eccentricity is equal to one, the graph of the conic section looks like a parabola. However, if the eccentricity is lesser than one and greater than one then you are dealing with ellipse and hyperbola respectively. Second is on the location of the vertex (or vertices) and the focus (or foci) of the conic section on the graph. There is only a focus and a vertex of the graph of the parabola. On the other hand, the graphs of the ellipse and hyperbola would show that there are two vertices and foci, and that they are collinear with the center on a particular axis. The difference between the graph of the ellipse and hyperbola is mainly on the position of their foci and vertices. The foci of an ellipse come next to the center of the conic section at a certain distance. However, the foci of the hyperbola come after the vertices of hyperbola; the vertices of the hyperbola come next to the center at a certain distance. Lastly, the difference between these conic sections can be noticed on the general form of the equation of the conic section. The degree of the polynomial of the parabola, ellipse and the hyperbola is 2. However, only a variable in the equation of the parabola is raised to this certain degree (This is true only to the equations of parabola which graph is on a translated or untranslated axes.) unlike in the equations of both ellipse and hyperbola which variable, say x and y, are both raised to 2. These are just few of the similarities and differences of parabola, ellipse and hyperbola which can help you in dealing with these conic sections. It might help you a lot but remember that in dealing with these conic sections, you actually need not get familiarized with the above properties as long as you understand thoroughly the concepts that vary the conic sections among each other.

My difficulties in learning the English language

I’ve always wanted to know how to write and speak accurately in English for I see that it is cool to be good at the language. That is why, I do the things that my teachers advise me to observe at all times should I want to be proficient at the subject. However, despite how I try to do the “rituals” and persevere as they always say, I still continue to stumble in both writing and speaking the language.

In writing, I have hard time in constructing my paragraphs. I have difficulties on what I should fill in my composition. It is not because I know nothing about what I am supposed to write but perhaps it is something on the coherence of the paragraphs that I mind most of the time. I often end up with a composition which paragraphs do really not stick to each other; that is, the flow of my paragraphs and even my sentences is not that smooth for my readers to easily grasp what I am trying to say. There is also a problem on the unity of my compositions. Most of my writings do not talk about one main idea. My sentences ramify to different directions. It seems that whenever I try to write, my pen appears to have a mind of its own that it writes everything even though it has nothing to do with my topic. Lastly, the worst thing that I am very much worried about when it comes to writing is with regards on the syntax. It is quite pathetic to know that at this age, I still have no mastery on grammar. Consequently, I often end up with sentences that are very ungrammatical, not to mention the spelling of the words and even the punctuation marks that I often miss out.

Similarly, speaking English is as difficult as putting the language on the paper. Just like in writing, I also have hard time in speaking or communicating through the language. Sometimes, I find it inefficient to communicate through it. I can construct a message in my mind and I can somehow speak it out through English but the problem is that my listeners can hardly understand what I am trying to say. Perhaps it is because I am not that good in pronouncing the words or maybe there is really an awry with how I construct my sentences and that my listeners find it very confusing to interpret. Whatever the reason is, I am certain that I really need to improve or maybe develop an ability in communicating with English as a medium.

Indeed there are really a lot of problems that I need to hurdle over before I can say that I am already a good language user. These obstacles are really tough ones that when I look at it, I somehow feel daunted. But whenever I see the doors of opportunities that will be opened to me if I have this capability in exploiting the language, I somehow regain the faith of not stumbling in this battle and I even feel the urge of expending more effort in order to do a lot greater. After all, there is no certainty of what this life will be leading to. Who knows, one day, you might see me writing articles on newspapers or even speaking before a crowd.

Five heads are better than one

I used to work alone; that is, I tend to keep myself away from other people whenever I am busy working for some things. Well, I actually don’t like sharing job to other people for I see that I am more efficient if I work it myself. It was not until Friday that I have known how good and how more efficient it is to work as a group. It was not until that day that I have known the beauty of sharing ideas and giving feedbacks to one another. Thanks to my group mates who helped me realize that. They were the ones who helped me completely change my perception about a group, and proved to me that a team is indeed a collective effort and that every member of it does his/her part.

To tell everyone honestly, that sentence outline that we made last Friday was actually one of the works that I had become contented and very sure of. It often happen that I become happy about the outcomes of activities which I usually work all alone. Thanks to Karyl, Mark, Grace and Hana for helping me carry out that task. If it weren’t for our collective effort, we wouldn’t be able to come up with, I should say, an outstanding sentence outline out of our topic, and most importantly, if it weren’t for these guys, up to now, I would still never realize that five heads do really work better than one.;)

Oh! Oh! Here they are again

Exams are fast approaching and that means another problems are yet to come.

It has always been my attitude to relate major exams especially in math with a nightmare that I cannot avoid easily. It's not because I fail to prepare myself for them but because I fail to manage that nervous feeling that I inevitably feel during the exams. As a result, I often get distracted and that I end up failing in answering even the simple problems. Subsequent to that are scores which no one can ever admire about.

Whew! I just hope, I can escape away from them and pass the course without taking them. Hehe.

Thanks a lot!

Since elementary, I’ve really had difficulties in managing facts about a certain reference (i.e. author, publisher, etc.) so as to make it adhere to the rules in referencing published and unpublished reading materials. It was not until Wednesday, February 3, that it became a lot clearer to me. Thanks to our activity that did not just teach me the rules in referencing but also gave me the chance to mingle with the persons who, I thought, I would just know by face throughout this semester.

Unusual!

I do not know how I should regard the week ago, whether it was good or bad one for me, but I know that it was memorable. Well, apart from the fact that it was a lot different from my typical weeks, the days last week had caused me peculiar feelings that I had never felt before. The trauma last Tuesday and the euphoria in Friday night were the major feelings that brought me to describe the week in this way.

My classes last week were the unusual. Well, my class in History used to start with a casual-type of reporting, however, my Tuesday class last week turned into a dramatic session for us. It was morning of that day when our teacher entered our class and sadly said to us that the assistant dean of the College of Arts and Social Sciences and her great mentor as well passed away the night before that day. We had really felt that she was trying not to cry as she was thinking of the right words in order to vividly report the bad news, but in the end, we had just seen that tears fell from her eyes as she was saying it to us. From that moment, we felt how affected she was that she was not able to hide her emotions. It was also that time that I first saw a teacher crying in front of us, and I was greatly moved by that. I understood that it is never easy to lose someone in life and I further understood that it was something that I must feel sorry for. But what I never easily fathomed was that why I was affected so much that I was not able to focus on the discussions in my other class that day.


Just as I thought that sadness would be effaced as I would embark another day in life, unfortunately, that pity feeling had decided not to leave me all throughout the week. As a result, I got frustrated in my other classes. In Math, I was so distracted in the quiz and that I did not readily know how to evaluate the simple problem in limits. Similarly, I was also side-tracked by the three activities that preceded my English class last Friday, and that I did not know how I was supposed to expend more effort to keep me up that hour when my activity in P.E., the quiz in biology and the new lesson in Chemistry had already consumed the energy that I left for my English class. And the horror of it all was that I wasn’t able to appreciate the new lessons that I have learned, the assignments that will train me more and the life that I had live through those days.

Nevertheless, there were still happenings in the school that I enjoyed, specifically the activities in the celebration of the 33rd foundation of the College of Engineering. The week was the week of the dragons, and that fact had somehow helped me free myself from the stress in studies. There were a lot of activities that I enjoyed, such as the foot parade last Monday, the Sikat Solar Car Exhibit that did not just impressed me but also had me salute the Filipino students behind that invention and above all was the cultural night where the search for Ginoong Inhinyero was showcased. Along with that were the competitions in singing, dancing and the competition they called “wannabe” that entertained me so much. In the edge of that Friday night was indeed a great relief and somehow a partial fulfillment of my first- year stay here in IIT.


Indeed, the week was full of sad, tiring yet somehow memorable activities for me. Of course, the fun times were also there and the challenges that I hurdled over could not just be easily deleted from the list. For these, I should say that this is one of my memorable weeks this second semester.

GM Foods in the kitchen: Is this some kind of a joke?

Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) products are submissive to ethical discussions; hence, they should not be implored to people for consumption.

GMO’s are variants of its particular species which genetic make-ups have been altered that caused these products to be yielded as big and as consumable as they could possibly be. They are brought about by the genetic engineering methods that revolutionize agriculture by increasing yields and resistance of these products from pests, improving their nutritional value and producing them in desirable traits. Among the genetically modified organisms that have been widely produced nowadays are the species of corns and even animals such as cows. These products have been proven to be a lot better from the ones that are of genetic endowment which only yield a fraction of the GMO yields. This only proves that the genetic engineering, that brought these products, does afford great opportunities for progress in food production and even in medicine worldwide.

But so what if GMO’s are promising in terms of nutrition and income? Would it make such great impact to the minds of the consumers when in fact many ethical issues have been arising along the discussions in introducing these products to people?

While the promise of GMO’s is very much in evidence, these same GMO’s have been the cause of outright war between researchers and ethics-concerned people. Myriad in the human population, including influential activists and members of the scientific community, have expressed concerns that genetic engineers are “playing God” by tampering with genetic material and that those GMO’s are their patent stuffs. This is only a manifestation of how advanced and how bad the technology is nowadays that it has encroached even to the natural principle that is supposed to be a patent of every unique organism.

Now my point here is solely on my disagreement to GMO products as human food on the ground that they show modifications on what God has given to every living thing on Earth. They are simply violations to the natural law that has been governing by Him. There are things in life that exist in nature, that is, they exist as that because it is fate that tells them so. Now playing with traits that are already imprinted in the genetic material of an organism is just an absurdity and that it is not something that humans should be practicing even though breakthroughs in science have already made an avenue for them to explore and possibly alter the prime carrier of the characteristics of an organism.

A label that only says “GM FOODS” simply acts as a brand- like POISON label, it shouts a warning to the public of lurking danger. For this reason, gene-modified crop would surely go a long way toward hastening public acceptance of gene technology in the kitchen or perhaps I insinuate that it would be a lot better if the GMO products will be kept only for the consumption of those people who don’t care of the moral infringement it poses on every living organism.

As Usual

Nothing significant happened to my weekdays the week ago. In fact, they were just like those typical days that I had dealt with. It started with my Military Science class in Sunday and it went to my Monday, Tuesday then to my busy Wednesday and then to my boring Thursday. It ended, however, with a different Friday when it became a “free” Friday for me because of the suspension of classes. It was so different from my typical Fridays when I usually have to attend three consecutive classes in the morning and two more in the afternoon, not to mention the tedious tasks that I have to be patient about plus the growling stomach that I inevitably encounter in my mid-morning and mid-afternoon classes. My daily routines were also the usual things. I woke up six in the morning, took a bath and packed up my things needed for school. And at night, I did my homework, did a little advanced reading and finally went to bed at about 9 in the evening. These happened all throughout the week, that is, no disparity at all. And I expect that this will happen again this week. This must be the reason why I sometimes feel bored of this strict schedule that I impose to myself, and that I feel nothing so significant in my days even there is really something to note of. Nevertheless, I do not think too much of it because, just as how I got used to my daily schedule last semester, I believe that soon enough I ‘ll get used to this new one. As of now, mind set is what I need to see that there are things in my days that are significant such as the fact that I’m still surviving in this new place and most importantly the life that He has been giving me.

This must be enough for now. Time is running and I still have to go with my schedule. I hope you have enjoyed the read.

Tagum City National High School(TCNHS): The school of beauty and brains

Beauty and Brains - these are only two of the hundreds and thousands of things that best describe the school where I spent my four fruitful high school years.

No one can deny that the place where my school is situated is very conducive for students to learn and compete at very best. The site alone only shows how strategic it is for classes, conferences and even for field trips. In fact, last year, 4 schools in Davao City visited our school for their educational tour. It was these schools’ choice to pick TCNHS among others because they found that the school provided the tools which would let the students know biodiversity outside the four walls of the classroom. Our school is also a “hotspot” for hosting big academic events such as Division as well as Regional Quiz Bees. This year, TCNHS will hold the National Press Conference for secondary students – an event in which students from different regions in the country will gather and express their journalistic skills in writing. This is something that our school must be really proud of especially that it will mark a history in the province as being the first school to host such big contest.

For years, Tagum City National High School has been renowned as one of the best schools in the country, not only because of its being a conducive place for learning but also for its being known in yielding successful graduates for almost 30 years already. There are myriad in successful engineers, businessmen and even politicians in the country who have owed TCNHS a lot. They would not have reached what they have now and they would not even have the character that made them land a job if they were not taught of this school of the best learning it could give to its students. It is indeed something that these professionals must always take note of that TCNHS deserves praises from them for having inculcated the quality education to their minds.

But TCNHS does not just teach the students and send them off in a much wider world as good students, it also sends the students to different competitions and make them excel in that. This is possible because the school’s magnificent three-storey building founded on a rigid ground serves as a home for students where their minds are geared with proper learning characters and disciplines. As a result, the students excel in different fields of competition. From academic to cultural, up to sports, TCNHS have produced significant number of students who have excelled in these fields. Not to mention the school’s record as one of the top secondary schools nationwide that have been getting remarkable ratings in National Secondary Assessment Test (NSAT) yearly, which only proves that the students and the school in general have really something to show off.

Indeed Tagum City National High School is incomparable. No one can ever find other schools like this. Wherever you go, Tagum City National High School remains to be the only one in the country that is known for being an institution of great achievements, and that no matter how other schools try to emulate it, still no one can copy its unique beauty and brains tnat have been glowing since ages now.