Flowers of May

I had a chance to watch the Flores de Mayo parade in Cubao yesterday.  The Araneta Center had one every Sunday of May, I heard.  Each one had a different set of sagalas and yesterday it was all about beauty queens.  Naturally, they had to be included.  The head of Binibining Pilipinas Charities was after all married to an Araneta.  Anyway, that's a whole other story.

I had to note the dresses or gowns if you may.  These girls were support to represent something about the character of the virgin Mary.  Instead, they wore something that showed off their assets.  Nothing wrong with that really but then again, the essence of the festival is lost on them and on the audience.  Too bad for us because keeping these traditions alive would augur well for our country.  I'm sure the tourism heads would agree.

That girl Venus Raj was there.  She was assigned the role of Queen of All Nations, fitting for our Miss Universe representative really.  I wish she really could fit the role but from what she showed so far, I don't believe I'm willing to support her.  maybe somebody will tell me I don't know what really happened.  From media, I hear more from her than from the other side and what she said told me that she chose to ignore warnings before the pageant.

Carlyn Aguilar was Reyna Elena.  She is very pretty I think but her face is strong, perfect for mataray roles on tv.

The Reyna Emperatriz role went to Gloria Diaz, the country's first Miss Universe winner.  She still has the body for the part of beauty queen although her face shows signs of age.  She deserves the role.  And she looked lovely in her violet gown (or was that royal blue)

The Heat is ON

Someone once told me that Good Friday is always the hottest day of the year.  He said it was a natural phenomenon and proves that God is in charge.

Not this year.  TODAY was the hottest day SO FAR.  I was working on the computer and it was as if I was crying buckets.  Perspiration was running down my face so fast, the face towel beside me could be wrung and water would come out.

Oh well, we'll live through this I guess but we really should be careful to keep cool.  I brought out a scarf that a cousin sent me and my sister was surprised I was going to wear one in this weather.  It was a scarf that was supposed to keep you cool during hot weather.  I dumped it into a bath of cold water for a few minutes then put it on.

What do you know?  It worked.  Necessity is really the mother of inventon.

And the Winners Are

Kudos to COMELEC for successfully pulling off the automated elections.  Yeah, there was a high percentage of failure but you have to realize that this was the test run so . . .

Early in the campaign period, my nephew suggested awards for the campaign ads.  Here are my suggestions for the winners.  The list concentrates on TV ads for national candidates as I did not see much of the local candidates save for Makati and Manila.  I invented most of the titles here but if you've seen the ads you can probably identify.  The letters in parenthesis are the parties that sent out the ads.

Best Campaign Jingle:  "Dagat ng Basura" (NP)
Need I say more?  Even the street urchins know this by heart.  It caught on pretty fast in a viral way.  There was even a Japanese version.

Best Ad in Drama "Babae" (NP)
A melodramatic take on woman power here.......  The script is good too.

Best Ad in Musical: "Dagat ng Basura" (NP)
This series is quite memorable.  It was actually the ad that prompted my nephew's idea.

Best Ad in Documentary: "Ang Alamatng Ama ng Bayan" (PMP)
This series showed Erap in a very good light, even having rival Noynoy's mom in the picture.

Best Ad in Comedy:  The Bitoy campaign (NP)
As usual, Bitoy came up with great comic characters.

Best Ad in Action: "Superhero" (Lakas-Kampi-CMD)
This was Secretary Bello's ad for his senatorial bid.  In case you did not see it, he wore purple leotards and tights (no, I am not sure it was really him in the costume, I only saw this once) with a big letter B on the chest.  His weapon was a gavel.  It made me think of Parokya's song, Mang Jose.  It was a good thing he did not use that song though.

Best Actor: Noynoy Aquino (LP)
Did you notice how intense he was when he said "Hindi ako mangungurakot"?

Best Actress:  Miriam Santiago (NP)
Here too is a searing performance.  Well, she's always intense when she gives a speech anyway.

Best Child Performer:  Baby James Yap (LP)
Who was he really cheering for anyway? (joke)

Most Influential:  the Chiz series
Check the last SWS survey.

Any suggestions, anyone?

The Watcher and The Fence

This fence sitter is coming down from her post because some time in your life you have to get into the action.  There are others out there who may be complaining about how things are turning out but are unwilling to get involved.  The only way for change to happen is for us to get moving and make it happen.

Actually, that is far from the point of this post.  It seems to me that we are being complacent about the automated elections.  We see that it produced a count and we trust that it will do the same on election day.  Now, there was a glitch found.  Something I find strange because shouldn't the COMELEC and Smartmatic have been working hand in hand from the start.  Were not the programmers told about the design of the ballot?

So there was a problem in the testing.  The solution?  Change the program with the corrected version.  We will just sit tight and watch as the provider replaces the memory disk in each machine.  We are giving them one weekend to run the tests.  If there is another glitch, we will probably postpone the elections or revert to manual counting which will be a nightmare for the teachers really.

So they will replace the memory disk  Has anybody audited the program they are putting in there?  Yes, I see a reason to look at the conspiracy theory.  In whose favor?  I have my guess but that's just what it is so let's not speculate here.  I am only forwarding a concern from a practicing systems person.

Who is doing quality control for the software in the PCOS machines?