Tag Archives: Maasin City

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Post About Maasinhon Committing Suicide at Agas-Agas Bridge Mocked

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The news about a Maasinhon who jumped off the Philippines’ tallest bridge, the Agas-Agas Bridge in Sogod, Southern Leyte , caused a stir on facebook yesterday as friends and family tried to check the the veracity of Lowela Agero’s death.

No one dared to post it on their facebook wall so all forms of communication regarding the subject were done through private messages and instant chat until SLT posted it in their wall as breaking news.

Lowela’s facebook account which is open to the public was immediately filled with posts from her friends who can’t believe she would end her life in her own hands.

According to her facebook friends, who happen to be a mutual friends of this blogger, she asked a few friends to join her for a quick joyride to Agas-Agas bridge without them knowing about her real intentions.

Her friends tried to persuade her not to jump but she pushed them away and took the last step.

Lowela was 20 years old.

A story posted on Yahoo’s Fit to Post website about her death being the the first ever suicide at the Philippines’ tallest bridged caused a stir of bantering comments from site visitors too.

The post entitled First Casualty in PH’s Tallest Bridge by Ruevivar “Wowie” Reyes of the Southern Leyte Times said that:

Many Southern Leytenos who attended Aguero’s wake said that such a waste of life could have been prevented if proper safety precautions were built on the bridge.

…

Many sectors now in Southern Leyte have expressed their concerns after the death of Aguero on the bridge’s inadequate safety measures for the public and also the bridge’s lack of security from any terrorist attack.

These are the comments:

KASALANAN YAN SA TAONG GUSTONG MAGPAKAMATAY. KAHIT ILANG RAILINGS PA ANG I INSTALL KONG GUSTOHIN MONG MAGPATIWAKAL JOGOGS OR TIGOKS KA TALAGA. DONT BLAME THE CONTRACTOR. BLAME THOSE WHO ARE OUT OF THEIR SANITY. KAWAWA ANG BRIDGE NAPAGBINTANGAN DAHIL SA KAGAGUHAN NG IILAN. KAILAN BA KAYO MAGISING SA KATUTUHANAN? SO ANONG BALAK NYO NGAYON? BAKIT HINDI NALANG I DEMOLISH ANG BRIDGE AT BALIK KAYO SA DATING LAND-SLIDE PRONE ROAD DADAAN? SEGURO IYON ANG BAGAY SA INYO? TOTAL SANAY NA KAYO NYAN DIBA? ~ Nexl Bienes

…next time we construct a bridge we hire engineers PLUS a team of psychologists
only in the PH
now DPWH = department of public works and highways
later DPWH = department of psychological works and highways
nyahahahahahah ~pedropenduko

it’s true. my family hails from Sogod and I visited the bridge just last year. the bridge railings are tall enough to keep people safe and bold warnings are visible even for someone with blurred vision to read. if a person has an ultimate plan to jump off that bridge and end his/her life, she will really find a way to do it regardless if you will surround the bridge with security guards or with 2 story high railings.

the concern should have been focused on the cause of such suicide, not the Agas agas ~Gigi

kalurkey naman tong article na to! hoy nagpatiwakal yon kaya bakit nyo sisisihin yong walang kamuwang-muwang na tulay. dapat inalam muna nila bakit nagpatiwakal yon, hindi yong ura-urada manisi sa tulay…kawawang tulay~kate

 

 

I too am from Southern Leyte but I do disagree on people who suggest that we build more railings. If one wishes to kill himself, he’ll really kill himself. I guess the author interviewed people who haven’t been to the bridge at all or perhaps those who would like to put a blame on something or someone when something bad happens.

Yep, lots of something on this post. And yep, I realized that I’m blogging about a post. This is not a news source folks, this is a blog. heheh

 

Credits:

Photo by Jae Galos via Flickr

Yahoo FTP Newsroom

To Politicians:

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This one goes out to aspiring officials of the land. This post is already late since most of you have concrete game plans on how to win this elections.

Let me start with your campaign pitch. Never ever use the word change to refer to yourselves. It’s unoriginal and a lot of voters know you’re faking it. One man cannot change a culture of corruption nor could he change the system of government. It takes a party or a majority vote to do that. You can only make a difference. A small one but it’s as good as any politician gets.

Don’t bank on your parents’ and relatives’ reputation. It took them years to build it and unlike diabetes or hypertension, it can’t be passed on by blood. Doing this insults the intellect of your voters (granting they have one). Make a name for yourself!

Spend more than one thousand pesos for your poster’s layout. Hire a professional photographer and make sure it’s not the one who took Lito Lapid’s photo. Ask a good layout artist to make it look patriotic. Stick to Green, White, Blue, Yellow, Red and Black. Don’t use orange, pink, or lavender unless you’re gay or you don’t want to win. Don’t overdo yellow, by the way, it’s currently attributed to a candidate who survived autism. Your background should just be a solid color. Don’t use clouds, patterns, maps and the likes.

Don’t use old photos to feign youth. Don’t ask your photographer to retouch it to look 10 years younger. You’re not kidding anyone. People know you’re old once you start visiting their barangays and no one likes politicians who lie about their age.

Don’t spend too much time packaging yourself to young voters. The voters demographics may tell you they have the greatest number but only a small fraction of them actually votes.

Money is a plus. Giving money to people is a double plus but it does not give you the assurance that you will win. Take Odong Saludo for example. He had the money but he did not get the vote.

Lastly, don’t put too much effort in rigging the elections. It’s automated and it can never be hacked.

P.S. Smile! Don’t just show your teeth. Smile!

Anger is Not Just a Strong Word

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I’m not an angry person though I spit out angry words a lot. The last time I thought I was angry was when I was still at work and I felt betrayed with our team’s schedule but it turns out it was not really what I thought cause I was still able to act with reason. All reactions were calculated and necessary precautions were carefully laid out.

A few hours ago, at around 1, Manila Time, a neighbor’s niece got drunk again and went through her regular stunts. She opened up the house, which I earlier locked per orders from her aunt as she does not tolerate how she turns it into a motel and occasional drug den, she started shouting on the top of her lungs like she’s back in the middle of the jungles of Cansirong, and worse, she kept banging the wooden wall which separates her shanty from our boarding house.

I should just have left her alone since I go through a similar stunt when I get drunk sans the banging on walls. I sing Insy Winsy Spider or cry over the one who got away until the sandman takes me to lala land. I tried telling them to let others sleep but still she went on and on and even told me to fuck off. At that point, my anger took the best of me so I took a bottle of Tanduay and smashed it just outside the back door but she kept on doing her thing and then banged harder, I could not really take it anymore so I opened the window, and said “Hoy Saba kay naay natog”. I said that using my macho tone, by the way. I can’t really remember what she said but I took it as personal attacks and she even said, no one can stop her because she’s at her house. I took it as a challenge so I hurried to get the assistance of barangay tanods.

Two of them came, and as we checked the house, they were already silent until the drunken 19-year old lady came out and started screaming again. We politely asked her to go back to sleep but she just had to throw a feat. She reminds me of myself that way and I was really amused with her in a way. But then she started pointing fingers at me and accusing me of oppressing her because we are better off and that I am more noisy than her cause I use the Internet and my friends come over. I just had to rebut and do it with sarcasm even though I knew it’s unwise to pick a fight with a drunk woman. She then turned her attention on the boarders and went inside the house and refused to get out and I got furious! She pointed a finger at me one more time and it landed on my upper lip and I thought it would bleed since her fingers were sharp so I punched her on the arm. I don’t really know if it was hard but I hope she’s alright. She started picking bottles after that so the Tanods decided to call up the police.

The police came and took her in cause they too can’t control her. She was really wasted but she said she isn’t as 6 bottles of Tanduay can’t get a woman drunk. She must have started drinking at age 10 for her to have that alcohol tolerance level. It all ended at around 3 AM but I still can’t sleep. My BP was 140/110 when I checked and I just had a hard time sleeping. I was also blaming myself for all that happend. Had I risen above her challenge and took a walk, it would not have blown out of proportions. I’m used to drunk neighbors. Riza’s dad used to do it a lot when we were just a door apart and I just let it pass in the hopes that they would also be as tolerant when I get drunk and noisy but this is different, I had to be a good care taker for the boarding house and I take responsibilities seriously.

I still regret getting violent even if it was retaliatory. I loath the fact that I have violent tendencies when I am angry but I also feel better in knowing that I can still feel remorse for doing things out of anger.

What’s Cookin’?

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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

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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

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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

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Its been almost a month since I got my own broadband connection at my apartment and until now Im still in the middle of unpacking the boxesboxed 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.

Ive 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 Ive 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 dont know when it started, perhaps during the time when I dont 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 its getting there, hopefully.

Its 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 whos going to, already in, planning to go to, and cant go to the US.

Sadly, I dont feel at home as much as I do when Im on Facebook when Im in Maasin cause it seems like all the people I know have gone somewhere else. Cant blame them, I too left in search for new beginnings and a better job. Its what you do when their is no other option, specially if you dont know people. Cant really blame anyone for lifes harsh realities. You just got to do what must be done even if it means moving away from the people and the place youve grown accustomed to and loved.

Its 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 wantthrough Facebook gifts. ^_~