Posts Tagged Maasin City
What’s Cookin’?
Posted by Bendz in Ramblings & Rants on March 15, 2010
Took another break from blogging in order to pursue cooking and baking. Had I mentioned this in the 90’s I would easily be branded a sissy since cooking and baking was generally a girls hobby back then but thanks to career opportunities for chefs and cooks abroad, it’s not so gay anymore. I don’t really mind being labeled for anything now that my skin has grown protective scales.
Since the last time I’ve been detailing how certain I am that Maasin City, Southern Leyte will not be hit by the Tsunami which was over-hyped by the media as well as my paranoid neighbors, I’ve been spending more time reading other blogs than writing here in mine. I was into food blogs specially those that caters to the Pinoy palate and was able to make spring rolls, vegetable lumpia, pork siomai, cheese sticks, pastillas de ube, yema tropicana and baked a very moist banana cake which involves freezing the cake after taking it out of the oven. I’m cannot really consider myself a novice on cooking and baking since I’ve been raised in a home with a sweet grandmother who took up home economics in college and has a knack of practicing culinary arts up to the day she passed away. My mom cooks too and bakes when she has time  and I can turn the worst dish into ambrosia. So much for tooting my own horn. I earn cents from these culinary adventures as I let mom sell the extras at our farm.
The blog is still generating steady income which is the reason why I still am in-between-employment right now and refusing to look for a job but it all changed when a former colleague called me up and offered me one. I’d be working for the government again and this time for the tourism office. I don’t really know when the start date is but I’m already excited. The pay is not that much though but it’s not a problem as long as I have Internet access.
I guess I have to end here. Gotta clean up the house. Mom is coming.
Meet Maasin City’s Urban Health Champion
Posted by Bendz in Ramblings & Rants on February 10, 2010
Urbanization is one of the greatest health challenges in the 21st century according to the World Health Organization. Based on their statistics, 6 out of 10 people will be city dwellers and by 2050, it will be 7 out of 10. The speed or urbanization, specially in developing countries such as the Philippines, has outpaced the government’s effort to build support infrastructure that can ascertain the optimum health, safety and security of its citizens. This might not seem like a real threat for us Maasinhons as we see more people leaving for Manila, Cebu and even to other cities abroad but we are getting there more sooner than later and we definitely don’t want to get caught with our pants on the ground when it happens.
With the assistance of the Department of Health and the World Health Organization, the city of Maasin intensified it’s Healthy City Initiative program starting with the strict implementation of public health and sanitation laws and ordinances, anti-drug campaigns, sports activities, as well as public awareness campaigns against unhealthy lifestyles. This would not have been possible without the hands-on leadership and political will of Mayor Maloney Samaco who made sure that this program is well funded and adequate man power is provided for sanitary evaluations as well proper enforcement.
Mayor Samaco has always been in the forefront of the Healthy City Initiative even when he was still the vice-mayor of the city and chairman of the Maasin City Sports Council, which he established to promote healthy lifestyle and instill discipline among the young people of Maasin. It was also during Mayor Samaco’s administration when the law against smoking in public places was strictly implemented throughout the city. To show that he means business, the mayor even went the extra mile and conducted an anti-smoking seminar to city hall employees who are smokers to help them quit the habit.
For his unwavering commitment to make Maasin a truly healthy city, Mayor Maloney Samaco is nominated as Maasin City’s Urban Health Champion in connection with the 1000 Cities, 1000 Lives Campaign of the World Health Organization, a healthy city advocacy campaign in connection with the 2010 World Health day.
If you believe someone else is deserving to be called an Urban Health Champion, all you have to do is create a video clip telling us why, just like above. You have to upload it to youtube then send the link to whd2010@wkc.who.int . Upon internal review at WHO, your entry would be posted to the site.
God and Scare Tactics Do Mix
Posted by Bendz in Ramblings & Rants on January 26, 2010
It’s the election season once again and we’re all in for an amazing ride filled with hypocrisy, blackmail, and the usual antics that turns politicians and their families into circus freaks in an attempt to gain popularity, notoriety and whatever it is that would catapult them to victory. In this part of the country, where local politicians are regarded as celebrities and even royalties, this season means a chance to play Perez Hilton or the guys on TMZ.
In an article posted on the Southern Leyte Times website, Victor Lerias, the father of gubernatorial candidate Dundeet Lerias and husband of mayoral candidate, Rosette Yniguez-Lerias, told the editor in an email that:
“People tell us that we do not have the resources to cope with rich and formidable political adversaries. Is our lack of monetary resource enough to quell our desire to offer better services to our people? Shall we wait until our beloved province becomes another Maguindanao? Shall we wait when these present leaders will have made the destruction of our province irreversible? Shall we wait until the powers of poverty shall have bound our peoples’ hands and feet?”
“We will not be out of resources if we make use of those means which God has placed in our power. The multitude of Southern Leytenos, armed with the cause of righteousness are invincible by any resources that our adversaries will use against us. Besides, we are not alone in this struggle. There is a just God who looks after the future of this beloved province and who will raise up our fellow southern Leytenos to help carry the burden of this struggle and catapult us to victory.”
The first paragraph makes me wanna shake the hands the person who told the Lerias camp to play the Ampatuan card so I can tell it to his face that it’s a crappy idea. The Mercado’s are not warlords and they don’t have hired guns to do their bidding. They may have security escorts with guns on their hands but everyone knows the Lerias camp have these sorts of people too. If Victor’s intention was to remind the people that Oging Mercado is capable of committing violence like what he did to Odong Saludo’s chopper during the 1998 elections, this could ultimately backfire on them for a number of reasons:
1. Rosette coalesced with Oging back in 2004 without any protest as to his tendencies towards violence and even helped the people understand how “To err is human and to forgive is divine”;
2. Odong Saludo, taking a shot at representing Southern Leyte again after his failed bid in 2004, seems to have dropped the case against Oging already. If they will paint the attempted murderer color on Oging again, then that would certainly make him an enabler;
3. People have already forgiven Oging and even re-elected him twice. They’re more interested on who Mian is sleeping with now and not on that old helicopter joke which involves a wig;
The second paragraph is kinda funny and is aimed at the readers’ sympathy. Funny, not because claiming that god is on one’s side sounds desperate but because in every endeavor, all politicians would say god is on their side however evil or vile they really are behind those smiles and candy-coated words. I’m sure Oging knows how to spin the god card in his favor again just like the past elections now that they’ve pulled it out and judging from past elections, he knows how to spin it well.
I am yet to hear a rebuttal from the Mercado side but I hope it does not have to do with god or any deity for that matter. God is losing his credibility thanks to priests and politicians who uses his/her name to get what they want. They’re all free to use satan though and I bet that’s gonna be something revolutionary.
Home is Facebook
Posted by Bendz in Ramblings & Rants on September 30, 2009
It’s been almost a month since I got my own broadband connection at my apartment and until now I’m still in the middle of “unpacking the boxes”—boxed files, that is. My whole digital life is packed in one DVD and 5 CD optical drives containing old docs, photos, MP3, vids, blog templates and an unfinished Tantra Online Overlay for Friendster. Some files are hosted by online free storage spaces like Photobucket and Picasa as well.
I’ve lived without Internet connection for a year and eight months which felt like and eternity for someone who has been wired to cyberspace for three years. Of course I’ve had access to the web through the office and the Internet cafes but nothing can ever compare to having it in the privacy of your own home and without other people yelling “DAGAN!!!” as the try to rescue their DOTA characters from imminent death.
The Internet has now become something personal, something that you should have for your own and not to be a shared experience with other cafe users. I don’t know when it started, perhaps during the time when I don’t have on-demand access. Kinda reminds me of the time mom and takes me with her to a PLDT office and wait on queue as everyone takes turns to call their loved ones abroad. Now, phones are everywhere.
So, what have I missed since the last time I got Internet connection? Well, I lost track of my friends on Tantra Online, an online game that kept me up all night long before, I failed to write regularly on my blog, and I lost a lot of my online friends. But, thanks to the wonders of Facebook, I got a lot of them back. Not all yet but it’s getting there, hopefully.
It’s really amazing how logging in to a website makes you feel at home, with the people who shared a piece of your life story and still be able to continue sharing it with them. For instance, I got reunited with my grade one teacher who now is working in another country; I reconnected with Katrina Santiago and Mena Reyes who are both happily married; and mothers now with foreign last names; and, I now have tabs on my classmates who have chosen the nursing profession who’s going to, already in, planning to go to, and can’t go to the US.
Sadly, I don’t feel “at home” as much as I do when I’m on Facebook when I’m in Maasin cause it seems like all the people I know have gone somewhere else. Can’t blame them, I too left in search for new beginnings and a better job. It’s what you do when their is no other option, specially if you don’t know people. Can’t really blame anyone for life’s harsh realities. You just got to do what must be done even if it means moving away from the people and the place you’ve grown accustomed to and loved.
It’s almost Christmas and, although this will sound incoherent to the topic, I guess I could, as early as now, make a wish. I wish that people who gets to read this and knows me would add me to their Facebook friends list (facebook.com/bendzgerona). I promise to send you anything you want…through Facebook gifts. ^_~


