Brown Soul

“I dropped the ball,” Emily Monforto confessed to a reporter. Yes she did.The 3-year-old Laurel Springs, N.J. girl became famous overnight for throwing a foul ball back on to the field at Tuesday night's Phillies-Nationals game—a ball her father had just caught and given to her. Video of the hilarious toss spread across the internet and cable news networks on Wednesday.

Every parent enjoys when their kids do those priceless little things that will one day make great stories. The funny sayings and antics that become priceless memories are part of what makes parenting so fun! Well, one dad has a great story to tell his daughter someday - and any future boyfriends might want to take note!

At the Phillies game last night against the Washington Nationals, a foul ball from Jayson Werth flew up in"As the ball was coming up I was just thinking, 'Don’t drop it Steve -- or I'll have all of Citizens Bank Park booing me,'" said Monforto. Clearly overjoyed when he made the catch and proudly handed the trophy to his daughter Emily while fans watched and television cameras rolled. When the oblivious little girl threw the ball back onto the field, his initial shock soon gave way to a heartwarming paternal gesture that has gone viral.

Monforto couldn't believe what he had just seen but recovered quite well and pulled his daughter in for a hug while laughing. His wife had a good chuckle, too!

Monforto attended the Phillies-Nationals game with Emily, his wife Kathleen and their 15-month-old Cecelia. It was Emily’s sixth Phillies game.

Monforto had this to say about Emily's actions: "See, when she first threw it over, you know, I kind of laughed and was like, 'Oh my gosh, there it goes.' But then the look on her face was that she may have done something wrong,
"I think she was startled by the reaction of the fans around us -- there was a collective gasp," said Monforto, 32. "She was also startled by the look on my face. I just wanted to let her know it was OK -- that she didn’t do anything wrong.” he told 'Good Day Philadelphia.' That's a pretty cool move on Monforto's part, not many fans may have been able to keep their calm after that!

"We play catch all of the time," Monforto added. "I think she was thinking, 'Oh great I’m going to have a catch with dad -- Dad gave me a ball, let’s throw it!'"

She is just doing what she always sees them do, throw the ball back on the field... Whenever they (children) try to do that, the parent is never able to catch them before they end up doing it. Anyone who ever spent more than 30 seconds with a kid that age know that's just typical behavior.

Her dad had the perfect reaction!
This dad's paternal instinct toward his child is demonstrative of his love for her above a silly little ball of less significance. That’s better then just getting a ball. The look on the dad's face was classic, it was so great he didn't get upset, but hugged his daughter instead.

Dad's reaction: priceless. What a great dad to give her that huge bear hug!! What a great family and memory to share!

Jose Rizal once wrote to The Young Women of Malolos: “The people cannot expect honor nor prosperity so long as they will educate their children in a wrong way…awaken and prepare the will of our children towards all that is honorable, judged by proper standards, to all that is sincere and firm of purpose, clear judgment, clear procedure, honesty in act and deed, love for the fellowman and respect for God…Open your children’s eyes so that they may jealously guard their honor, love their fellowmen and their native land, and do their duty.”

Monforto was compensated for the quirky, crowd-pleasing moment. “One of the Phillies representatives the next inning came up with a brand-new ball,” he says, though “I don't think it was the ball that she threw down.” Emily’s clutch performance has inspired kudos from fans upset by the Phillies' poor performance in late innings.

This has two happy endings: Monforto was brought a replacement ball as a souvenir and the Phillies won the game. Continue...

Congratulations MTM Taekwondo over-all champion National Poomsae Competition 2009! Continue...

The Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamamalakaya) and the Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan-PNE) last month wanted lawmakers to investigate the lease of 400,000 hectares of land in Northern Luzon to Pacific Bio-Fields Corp. of Japan, a company based in the United Kingdom, for the production of coco-biodiesel for 50 years.

“While the government is begging for some 400 nursing and caregiving jobs in Japan, it is prostituting the patrimonial and sovereign rights of all Filipinos by offering the country’s 400,000 hectares of lands to Japanese transnational giants,” Pamalakaya national chairman Fernando Hicap lamented.
“This is very, very ridiculous, preposterous and totally insulting to the collective sentiment and national interest of the Filipino public,” he added.

Environment Secretary Lito Atienza on Saturday confirmed the existence of the agremeent, saying the government will lease over 400,000 hectares of land in Northern Luzon to Pacific Bio-Fields Corp. of Japan at “very, very affordable prices.”

One of the lingering effects of the food price crisis of 2007–08 on the world food system is the proliferating acquisition of farmland in developing countries by other countries seeking to ensure their food supplies. Increased pressures on natural resources, water scarcity, export restrictions imposed by major producers when food prices were high, and growing distrust in the functioning of regional and global markets have pushed countries short in land and water to find alternative means of producing food.

Rising Land Acquisition in Developing Countries

Food-importing countries with land and water constraints but rich in capital, such as the Gulf States, are at the forefront of new investments in farmland abroad. In addition, countries with large populations and food security concerns such as China, South Korea, and India are seeking opportunities to produce food overseas. These investments are targeted toward developing countries where production costs are much lower and where land and water are more abundant. Other factors that influence investments include geographic proximity and climatic conditions for preferred staple crops. In addition to acquiring land for food, many countries are seeking land for the production of biofuel crops.

Large-Scale Land Acquisitions

Global trends including high prices for oil and commodities, the biofuel boom and now the sweeping downturn are spurring import-reliant countries to take action to protect their sources of food.
China and South Korea, which are both short on arable land, and Middle Eastern nations flush with petrodollars, are driving the trend to sign up rights to swathes of territory in Asia and Africa.

In the Philippines, a series of high-profile deals has clashed with long-running demands for agrarian reform, including land redistribution.The Department of Agrarian Reform said in 2007 it was looking at large tracts of land for agribusiness development under a memorandum of understanding signed with China. The memo calls for the development of land to grow hybrid corn, rice and sorghum.

Because of protests, the Department of Agriculture suspended plans to allow China to use 1.24 million hectares of Philippine agricultural land.
“It will aggravate the problem of landlessness, the insufficiency of land for Filipino peasants,” Anakpawis party-list Rep. Rafael Mariano said of the land deals.

Qatar lease of RP land

However, the Philippine government is undeterred and during President Macapagal-Arroyo’s visit to Qatar in December, officials opened talks over the lease of at least 100,000 hectares of agricultural land to the emirate.

“Today’s food and financial crises have, in tandem, triggered a new global land grab,” the Spain-based agricultural rights group Grain said in a recent report.
The group said that some deals were targeted at boosting food security by producing crops that would be sent back home for consumption, while others were to establish money-making plantations like palm oil and rubber.
“As a result of both trends, fertile agricultural land is being swiftly privatized and consolidated by foreign companies in some of the world’s poorest and hungriest countries,” it said.

Daewoo deal in Madagascar

In one of the biggest deals, South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics said in November it would invest about $6 billion to develop 1.3 million hectares of land in Madagascar—almost half the size of Belgium.
Daewoo plans to produce 4 million tons of corn and 500,000 tons of palm oil a year, most of which will be shipped out of impoverished Madagascar—where the World Food Program (WFP) still provides food relief.
Walden Bello of the Bangkok-based advocacy group Focus on the Global South said the looming global recession was not likely to halt the trend which he fears will worsen the lot of landless peasants.
Bello said that many of the deals were struck in dysfunctional and corruption-ridden nations.
“What we’re talking about is private parties using state contracts to enrich themselves,” he said. “It’s an intersection of corrupt governments and land-hungry nations.”

Kuwait loan for Cambodia
In Cambodia, where the WFP also supplies aid, oil-rich Kuwait in August granted a $546-million loan in return for crop production. Undersecretary of State Suos Yara said Cambodia was also in talks with Qatar, South Korea, the Philippines and Indonesia over agricultural investments, including land concessions. But opposition lawmaker Son Chhay said he was suspicious about why a wealthy nation like Kuwait needed to lease land to grow rice rather than just import the grain.
“Cambodian farmers need the land,” he said, urging the government to limit the area under lease and ensure Cambodia was not plundered by foreign nations.

Serious danger

These land acquisitions have the potential to inject much needed investment into agriculture and rural areas in poor developing countries, but they also raise concerns about the impacts on poor local people, who risk losing access to and control over land on which they depend. Resource-hungry nations are snapping up huge tracts of agricultural land in poor Asian nations, in what activists say is a “land grab” that will worsen poverty and malnutrition.

It is crucial to ensure that these land deals, and the environment within which they take place, are designed in ways that will reduce the threats and facilitate the opportunities for all parties involved.
“Even though some of the land-lease agreements make provisions for investments in rural development, these deals may not be made on equal terms between the investors and local communities.

The bargaining power in negotiating these agreements is on the side of the foreign firm, especially when its aspirations are supported by the host state or local elites. Smallholders who are being displaced from their land cannot effectively negotiate terms favorable to them when dealing with such powerful national and international actors, nor can they enforce agreements if the foreign investor fails to provide promised jobs or local facilities. Thus, unequal power relations in the land acquisition deals can put the livelihoods of the poor at risk. This inequality in bargaining power is exacerbated when the smallholders whose land is being acquired for foreign investment projects have no formal title to the land, but have been using it under customary tenure arrangements. Since the state often formally owns the land, the poor run the risk of being pushed off the plot in favor of the investor, without consultation or compensation. Land is an inherently political issue across the globe, with land reform and land rights issues often leading to violent conflict. The addition of another actor competing for this scarce and contested resource can add to socio-political instability in developing countries.” According to INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Bello said he expected these sorts of deals to increase, forcing peasants from rural areas and into cities where together with the global downturn they will add to the ranks of the unemployed.
“It’s particularly explosive in those countries where you have a high degree of landlessness, like the Philippines where 7 out of every 10 rural people do not have access to land,” he said.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has sounded alarm over the loss of land in a country where in rural areas, every second child is malnourished and access to land for foraging of natural resources is critical.

source:

International Food Policy Research Institute
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Business Mirror

Continue...

I am a bit late in POSTING this but I've been busy the past few weeks. But anyway, CONGRATULATIONS to our More Than Medals, the Filipino martial arts team that represented our country in numerous international Wushu competitions have competed in the 17th Annual UC Berkeley Chinese Martial Arts Tournament (CMAT 17) last April 11, 2009 and bagged 10 golds and 2 silver medals.
This is The Filipino Channel’s (TFC) coverage of MTM’s achievement shown in Balitang America. Continue...

F. Sionil Jose gives a better and correct perspective of that Chip Tsao incident in his column in Philippine Star :

“Here we go again, some inconsequential columnist in Hong Kong takes a cheap shot at our unhappy country, calls us “a nation of servants” and immediately an uproar, and magma feelings of hurt are unleashed. Editorials, columnists, politicians are outraged — they demand apology as if one would really salve the bone-deep insult. It was the same sometime back when an English publisher defined “Filipina” as a housemaid. Such insults hurt profoundly but the pain fades quickly and soon after all that enraged outburst, we settle down to the same complacency, we continue sending more of our women abroad to be raped by Arabs, demeaned by Malaysians and Chinese, heckled by the Brits. What has our sense of outrage brought us?

Go to Hong Kong, to Singapore. Visit the Star Ferry environs in Hong Kong or Lucky Plaza, and Singapore’s Orchard St. And there, on Sundays you will see them, hundreds of Filipino domestics, yak-yaking, socializing on the sidewalk, having a pleasant respite from their work.

To the visitors, tourists and the natives, they are a piteous sight, illustrating so clearly and so well how this country has sank. As a Filipino, having witnessed such, I am utterly shamed. I do not blame our poor women for their sorry condition, for I know only too well their plight is the only way by which they can help their families at home and survive.

It is such a boring cliché now, but back to the not-so-distant past: Filipinas was the second richest country in the region, next only to Japan; our universities attracted students from all over Asia, and we had the best professionals, the most modern stores and hospitals.

And what was Hong Kong then? There were slums crawling up those hills on Victoria island, and slums all over Kowloon. Singapore as an English naval base was like old Binondo, with its small squalid shops and equally small houses.

But look at Singapore and Hong Kong now, then look at our country and people.

Sure, you can find in Makati magnificent mansions, the biggest luxury cars, the tony restaurants, skyscrapers. But elsewhere the ugly sprawl of slums, the very poor who now eat only once a day. We must ask ourselves that question, why we became “the hewers of wood and drawers of water” of the world. What happened to us, a very talented and heroic people with a revolutionary tradition?

Once we have answered this question, then we should no longer wonder why there is a continuing diaspora of our brightest people, of our women. It is then the time for us to be truly enraged — not at that Hong Kong columnist — but at the creators of this dismal miasma we call Filipinas. Do not kill the messenger who comes to us to tell the horrid truth about us. Ingest his message, then turn all that outrage, that vehemence, to the Filipinos who turned this beautiful country into the garbage dump of the region: the oligarchs, the Spanish mestizos, the Chinese Filipinos and the treasonous Indios who sent their money abroad instead of investing it here in industries to create jobs for our people. Then it is time for us to rail and condemn the crooked politicians who are the allies of these wretched rich who permitted the relentless hemorrhage of this nation’s capital.

Revolutionary tradition? Ask those rebels why, after 40 years, these leeches are still feasting on our blood!"
F. Sionil Jose is undeniably one of the few sages left in our country. He saw the Philippines in its glory days (1960s) and back. He saw how our neighboring nations rose up one by one until we got left behind.

Even without Tsao’s article, foreigners have low regard on us Filipinos, whether you are an OFW or staying in the Philippines. With millions of Filipinos working abroad as servants, what other image can the world have of Filipinos? Hasn’t the Philippine government succeeded in creating the world-wide perception that we are indeed a nation of servants?

Tsao has just become a mirror of what is really going on about the Filipinos and the Filipino image in the world…That is an undeniable fact…

We need to accept the fact that we are the number one exporter of domestic helpers especially to the US, Middle East and Hong Kong? Some of our teachers and other professionals resigned from their jobs here to apply as domestic helpers in other countries. We cannot blame foreigners if they call our country a “nation of servants” because their servants are mostly Filipinos.

Many migrant groups, including the Center for Migrant Advocacy (CMA), Kanlungan Center Foundation, and Migrante International, have bashed Tsao for spouting this "racial slur." According to GMANews.TV Nevertheless, the groups admit that the Philippines has indeed become a country of overseas domestics.

Both CMA and Kanlungan questioned why Filipinos are so keen on denying the fact that we do have large a number of Filipinos doing domestic work abroad.

“We react because we have too many domestic workers abroad? But we do," CMA executive director Ellene Sana told GMANews.TV in an e-mail.

Institutionalization of migration

The phenomenon of migration in the Philippines can be traced back to the 1970s when there was a surge in the number of Filipinos leaving for abroad.

Dante Ang, chairman of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas, said this was because then Labor Secretary Blas Ople thought of deploying Filipino workers to the Middle East to take advantage of the oil-boom and at the same time, temporarily solve the growing unemployment rate in the country.

However, more than 30 years after migration was pegged to be a temporary stop-gap measure against unemployment, the deployment of Filipino workers still hasn’t slowed down.

In an article titled “Understanding International Labor Migration in the East," published in the May-June 2007 Newsletter of the Philippine Institute for Development, Maruja Asis, director for Research and Publications of the Scalabrini Migration Center, identified the factors why Filipino migration has continued for almost four decades.

One of the reasons for this, she said, is the “institutionalization of migration."

The Philippine government has always been very upfront with its desire to deploy more Filipinos overseas.

“Working abroad has become an accepted fate to most Filipinos," she said.

In fact, she said it is now unusual for a Filipino to not to aspire for a job abroad despite being faced with proof that overseas is not really a haven for the unemployed.

The POEA said that a total of 165,737 Filipinos left for work abroad in January 2009 as compared to 132,285 in January 2008 – indicating an increase of 25.3 percent.

It also said that the 2009 deployment target is one million – 16.6 percent of which has already been achieved. It added that about 5,346 Filipinos are being sent to work abroad daily.

But why that has happened to our nation despite the fact that “Filipinas was the second richest country in the region, next only to Japan; our universities attracted students from all over Asia, and we had the best professionals, the most modern stores and hospitals” and our country, our Land is blessed with the bounty of nature or rich in natural resources?
 WHY…?

F. Sionil Jose was right in saying;

"We have A REAL AND INSIDIOUS ENEMY that we must vanquish, and this enemy is worse than the intransigence of any foreign power. WE ARE OUR OWN ENEMY. And we must have the courage, the will, to change ourselves."

-Why Are Filipinos So Poor

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

-Eleanor Roosevelt

"There are no tyrants where there are no slaves"

-Jose Rizal

source:
GMANews.TV
The Daily Tribune
Philippine Star
Continue...

The Chinese journalist, Chip Tsao, is coming under sharp criticism from Filipinos in the blogosphere and from two female lawmakers and a labor policy center have joined calls in demanding a public apology over a recent article “The War At Home” that made a racial slur against Filipinos in relation to the dispute over the Spratly islands.

Here’s the article:

“The Russians sank a Hong Kong freighter last month, killing the seven Chinese seamen on board. We can live with that—Lenin and Stalin were once the ideological mentors of all Chinese people. The Japanese planted a flag on Diàoyú Island. That’s no big problem—we Hong Kong Chinese love Japanese cartoons, Hello Kitty, and shopping in Shinjuku, let alone our round-the-clock obsession with karaoke.

But hold on—even the Filipinos? Manila has just claimed sovereignty over the scattered rocks in the South China Sea called the Spratly Islands, complete with a blatant threat from its congress to send gunboats to the South China Sea to defend the islands from China if necessary. This is beyond reproach. The reason: there are more than 130,000 Filipina maids working as $3,580-a-month cheap labor in Hong Kong. As a nation of servants, you don’t flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter.

As a patriotic Chinese man, the news has made my blood boil. I summoned Louisa, my domestic assistant who holds a degree in international politics from the University of Manila, hung a map on the wall, and gave her a harsh lecture. I sternly warned her that if she wants her wages increased next year, she had better tell every one of her compatriots in Statue Square on Sunday that the entirety of the Spratly Islands belongs to China.
Grimly, I told her that if war breaks out between the Philippines and China, I would have to end her employment and send her straight home, because I would not risk the crime of treason for sponsoring an enemy of the state by paying her to wash my toilet and clean my windows 16 hours a day. With that money, she would pay taxes to her government, and they would fund a navy to invade our motherland and deeply hurt my feelings.

Oh yes. The government of the Philippines would certainly be wrong if they think we Chinese are prepared to swallow their insult and sit back and lose a Falkland Islands War in the Far East. They may have Barack Obama and the hawkish American military behind them, but we have a hostage in each of our homes in the Mid-Levels or higher. Some of my friends told me they have already declared a state of emergency at home. Their maids have been made to shout “China, Madam/Sir” loudly whenever they hear the word “Spratly.” They say the indoctrination is working as wonderfully as when we used to shout, “Long live Chairman Mao!” at the sight of a portrait of our Great Leader during the Cultural Revolution. I’m not sure if that’s going a bit too far, at least for the time being.”

Sen. Pia Cayetano said Filipinos "deserve no less than a formal public apology"
“HK Magazine and Tsao must apologize for insulting Filipinos, and they should pledge not to commit this mistake again," she said.

"Our being a poor nation does not diminish the validity of our historical and legal claim to the Spratlys. In the proper forum, this dispute will eventually be threshed out and resolved. Ignorance, hatred and racial bias are the last things we need in approaching this long-standing controversy," she added.

Cayetano also said that the Philippine claim to the Spratlys "is as valid as the other claims being pushed by other nations. It does not mean that we're disregarding the claims of others. We respect their claim inasmuch as they should acknowledge ours." 

She was quoted as saying.

"We should be proud that millions of OFWs are able to serve the world, whether as managers, laborers, caregivers or medical professionals. There's nothing to be ashamed of as long as we're earning an honest living without having to step on the dignity of others," she added.

Former labor undersecretary Susan Ople meanwhile also denounced Tsao, “His published declaration that he gave her Filipino maid a harsh lecture and warned her to tell every one of her compatriots that Spartly Islands belong to China or she'd lose her wages, is already a sign of an unstable, irresponsible and racist employer who resorts to verbal abuse even for perceived bilateral and historic infractions." said Ople.

Disgusting, derogatory, vile

Akbayan Rep. Ana Theresia “Risa” Hontiveros-Baraquel also protested over Tsao's article, saying the magazine should apologize immediately.
"This disgusting, derogatory, and vile remark can only come from dim-witted and mediocre writing. The magazine should apologize straightaway. The article reflects the kind of attitude that promotes abuses against Filipina workers," Hontiveros said.

She said Tsao's story should not have been published, owing to its defamatory nature characterized by racial discrimination against Filipinos in general, and domestic helpers in particular.

A world without a Filipino

"Filipina domestic workers should hold a one-day strike to tell the likes of Chip Tsao who's the real master of the HK economy. If all Filipino workers in HK would strike, the HK economy would grind to a halt without us having to invade the territory," she said.

I am reminded of an article“Imagine A World Without A Filipino” by Abdullah Al-Maghlooth (www.arabnews.com)

“So if Filipinos decided one day to stop working or go on strike for any reason, who would transport oil, food and heavy equipment across the world? We can only imagine the disaster that would happen.

When speaking about the Philippines, we should not forget Filipino nurses. They are some 23 percent of the world’s total number of nurses. The Philippines is home to over 190 accredited nursing colleges and institutes, from which some 9,000 nurses graduate each year. Many of them work abroad in countries such as the US, the UK, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Singapore.

The Philippines, which you can barely see on the map, is a very effective country thanks to its people. It has the ability to influence the entire world economy.

We should pay respect to Filipino workers, not only by employing them but also by learning from their valuable experiences.
We have to remember that we are very much dependent on the Filipinos around us. We could die a slow death if they chose to leave us.”

Nation of servants

Sad but true, the perception of a Filipino today is a striking contrast during the time of Rizal when Filipinos in Europe were referred to as “the glory of the universities”.

F.Sionil Jose’s article“Why We Are Poor” looks back in the 50s and 60s when the Philippines was still the most envied country in Southeast Asia. Today, we are just simply a nation of servants.

The only way to answer people, who insist that we are a nation of servants is not by shooting off our mouths. The only answer is to BEAT THEM by studying and working TEN TIMES HARDER than the rest—to beat them not just once or twice, but to do so consistently for the next 20,30, 40, 50 years.

Remember Condoleezza Rice, the first black woman to become the United States Secretary of State. She was born in Alabama and suffered discrimination on account of her color. But she was taught from a young age by her father, that she had to be “twice as good”and prove that she was deserving of advancement. Condoleezza Rice explains, “I was going to be SO WELL PREPARED, and I was going to do all of these things that were revered in white society SO WELL, that I would be armored somehow from racism. I would be able to confront white society ON ITS OWN TERMS.”


Unless we Filipinos are prepared to love our country, and sacrifice ourselves by doing the extra-mile, we really deserve to be called “A nation of servants”

Source:
www.washingtonpost.com
www.hk-magazine.com
www.arabnews.com
Brown Raise
ABS-CBN News


Update: March 31, 2009
HK Online Magazine has publicly apologized and deleted the article but Chip Tsao himself remained unapologetic. The blogosphere already caught the fire and they can no longer change the different reactions of thousands of people around the world. Continue...

It’s a sad but good reflection on the wrong priorities and focus of millions of Filipinos going abroad. While we look for TRINKETS and TOYS (or goods for pasalubong and beautify our image), the Indians, Chinese, Japanese, and the Koreans would go to the West and gather TOOLS to equip themselves by getting the best education in the great learning institutes so they could invent a new mobile phone, design a new car, or create their own business at home.

The Institute for International Education released their 2007 report on the ranking of the different countries with foreign origin in the college schools/universities in the West:

Rank Place of Origin
1 India 83,833

2 China 67,723

3 Korea 62,392

4 Japan 35,282

5 Taiwan 29,094

6 Canada

7 Mexico

8 Turkey

9 Thailand 8,886

10 Germany

11 United Kingdom

12 Saudi Arabia 7,886

13 Nepal 7,754

14 Hong Kong 7,722

15 Indonesia 7,338

16 Brazil

17 Colombia

18 France

19 Kenya

20 Vietnam 6,036

21 Malaysia

22 Nigeria

23 Pakistan

24 Russia

25 Venezuela

Notice that the leading countries are from Asia with almost 50% from the list being Asian countries.
Where is the Philippines on this list?

Nepal is a very small country and yet would make sure they have at least 7,000 citizens in the best schools in the West. And so would Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, and even African countries such as Kenya and Nigeria.

On the other hand, we probably have millions living, or coming in and out of the West but how many dreams of having a doctorate in Harvard? Or a Masters degree in MIT? We do have dreams yet our AMERICAN DREAM is somehow disorientated and has no large impact.

Sad but true, the perception of a Filipino today is a striking contrast during the time of Rizal when Filipinos in Europe were referred to as “the glory of the universities” Continue...