Party Lists for May 2010 Elections

This is a current issue about the coming elections in the Philippines in May of 2010.  I have heard of the Party Lists and I never thought much about them until I was approached by a close friend whose brother-in-law is running under a party list.  There were other friends that previously ran for a Congressional seat under a party list and only solicited help by word-of-mouth as they were well funded.  In this one, I did a search on the internet about party lists because this was in particular for an indigenous party list.  One that came on top of the search is the Katribu Party List based in the same province I am in.
In the first part of their article "Progressive indigenous party list submits list of nominees, exposes dubious rivals" was an introduction of their nominees.  Immediately below were their suspicions on other indigenous party lists.  Very prominent were suspicions on those running that hold current positions in the government.  They were quick to mention that this is another ploy of the Gloria Arroyo Administration.
One party list they suspect is the "Agapay Indigenous Peoples Rights Alliance (A-IPRA)", where the lead nominee is Eugenio "Kenny" Insigne.  Kenny, who is known to me, rose from the ranks with different administrations.  He is a commissioner of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP).  In getting to that position his intention is clear - to help indigenous people.  There are many positions in the National government, and if I were in his place being a lawyer, I would not chose that.
With the outgoing administration, chances are he might not hold that position for long after another takes over.  The only way he sees to continue helping indigenous people is to get elected under the same "field" he is in.  It is with much regret that hard-hitting indigenous party list is doing this to him, when he actually also has his roots in our city and province!  The nominees of that party list obviously have personal interests in running for a seat if they know that Kenny's roots is also in our city.  If they did not know, they should have researched a little and probably invited him to be among the nominees in their list.  In his current government, the position addresses the concern is on a nationwide scope.  The other party list can only truly represent their locality.  Doesn't that look selfish for a party list?

Globe Broadband

A couple of articles earlier, I posted about the sudden poor service of PLDT DSL and I was about to change over to a another ISP, Globe Broadband.  My wife encountered them because they were doing a house-to-house campaign to get broadband internet subscribers.  The Globe representatives were boasting of internet speed of up to 1.0 MBPS.  They offered a choice of land line or wireless internet connection.  After testing our neighbors speed of Globe land line internet, it showed a download speed of over 1.0 MBPS but upload was a mere 0.38 MBPS.  At that that time, it was a lot faster connecting to the internet and accessing websites compared to our ISP!  I decided to change over at that point.


On the first week of March, I requested the agents of Globe broadband to install the line before 10th so that it would coincide with the last bill from my ISP.  The agents assured me the line will be installed definitely much earlier.  By the 8th there was still no word from the agents.  They only showed up lunch time on the 9th and I was already pressed for time.  To my surprise, they were going to install wireless instead of land line internet connection.  To cut the story short, I said that I wanted to test the wireless first.  The agents did not show up instead the installers arrived on the 11th.  I informed that I wanted to test the wireless first.  We did and what a let down it was!  Upload hardly hit 0.33 MBPS and download was no better than 0.28 MBPS!

If it was just plain internet connection maybe it would have been fine.  The problem is, my sons and I do lot online and that slow internet speed will not work for us.

Pacquiao gives away $135,000.00 in contest

A little over 3 weeks ago before Manny "Pacman" Pacquiao's bout with Clottey, he sponsored a 3-week contest in the USA for participants who would be able to reduce or shed weight significantly.  He offered to give anyone $20,000.00 who would be able to do this.  It was dubbed as Pacman’s "Biggest Loser" challenge.

The rule here is for participants to lose 15 percent of their body weight within the 3-week period. Participated in by 87 personnel and friends close to Pacquiao, 38 of them were able to meet the test and took home $3,000 each, bringing Pacquiao’s total prize close to $135,000 equivalent to P6,300,000.00, Philippine currency.

 

American Tim Sladeck, came out to be the best man in the weight loss challenge, won the top prize of $20,000 for losing the most in weight during the three-week contest .  He lost a total of 49 pounds, from 214 pounds to 165 pounds.  This is equivalent to shedding 22.5% of his body weight.

With this, there would be many again who would criticize him of giving away so much money for a contest that  benefited other than his countrymen.  Anyway, the newsbrief did not mention how many of the participants were his country men and how many of the 38 recipients of $3,000 were Filipinos.

PLDT DSL Service

The Philippines premier telecoms company PLDT seems to be negligent on what is said when you call their 172 DSL repair service, ". . . for the high quality of service we provide you . . .". It will be unfair if I would say that this went on since we subscribed. Since we subscribed to their DSL internet connection in January or February of 2007 until December 2009, I would say their service was excellent. No real issues to complain about. I think I only called 172 twice or thrice during that span of time and the issues were resolved immediately. That was then.

But from January 2010 to present their service to us was terrible. When you call 172, you could hardly understand their representatives' opening spiel. (I worked with 2 call centers, that's why I know). You can't even get their names clearly because they seem to be in a hurry to end the call! In the past 2 days, I have called them about 3 times (I think), because PLDT DSL problems were persistent. Twice they did a call back to ask if everything is alright. Yes, it was alright but after 8 to 12 hours, there goes the problem again! On the last call I made, I was already soooo pissed off that I told them, I would be changing over to another internet service provider (ISP). Maybe it was a supervisor who called me back immediately right after and asked about my problems. I told her to go over the history of my calls so she would know because I am already quite decided to change ISP. Not long after her call, the Tech department in our area called and wanted to troubleshoot my PLDT DSL connection. I asked, why only now?(obviously they want to retain my account). He said that it was only now that they got a ticket from the 172 service! I told him that in every call I made to 172 a ticket was submitted to them for resolution and that was since January 2010! He said what they received was the one they got now!

Anyway, it just shows the 172 service and technical departments do not coordinate and maybe one of them, or both, are lying! There is something going on and it could be due to Smart Communications having a hard time getting DSL subscribers because that company is also part of PLDT now! It is difficult to corner a market that would have two competing services. It is well known that the Smart Broadband is slow compared to PLDT DSL. While I am writing this I am about to leave to change over to another ISP. I tested a neighbor's ISP connection of that company and it shows the Upload was significantly slower compared to its Download. What is important though is it can connect to web site servers. I do work online at home and it is important that I can connect to web sites where I can make researches.

Manny Pacquiao vs Joshua Clottey

The Manny Pacquiao vs Joshua Clottey fight is upcoming. This should be a difficult fight to pre-judge because Clottey in his fight against Cotto seemed to be a better fighter. The Pacman also stated that he thinks Clottey should have won that fight.
Having watched the Cotto-Clottey match I also think that Clottey won the fight. Cotto had a real difficult time and that could have told, then, he would have the same difficulty in the match with with Pacquiao which he eventually lost.

Now for the March 14, 2010 bout between Pacquiao and Clottey, it seems it will be a close fight. Both fighters show to have the stamina. The question is: Who will be throwing the harder and damaging punches? Both of them hit hard, but basing on their fights against Cotto, Pacquiao did more damage and obviously dominated the fight. Clottey was not able to show dominance over Cotto. He was not able to do as much damage that Pacquiao did.

The fight will be a toss up, slightly in favor of Pacquiao. Clottey will have to do a lot better than he did against Cotto or else he could be a goner.