Wednesday, May 27, 2009
UEFA Championship League Final 2009 Result
The 2009 UEFA Championship League final between Manchester United and FC Barcelona ended a shortwhile ago with FC Barcelona winning by 2 goels to nil.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
2010 Olympic Torch
It’s Spring 2009 and already the 2010 Winter Olympics are a cause for sensation and controversy. The mini-scandal of the day? The 2010 Olympic Torch or — as some are already referring to it as — the 2010 Olympic Toke. This oh-so-clever entendre of course refers to the observation, now made by many, that the official 2010 Olympic Torch sorta-kinda looks like a joint. And you know what, I sorta-kinda have to agree.
Now, not too surprisingly, Olympic officials are hurrying to deny the allegation. According to them, the torch is supposed to look like the snow and ice marks left behind an Olympic skier or skater. Which, to be fair, I can certainly see. Mark Busse, an Industrial designer familiar with the behind-the-scenes making of the torch remarked, “Sure, it may look a little bit like a joint, but I can tell you that what they were going for was ergonomics, sleekness, modernity.”
Still, not everyone is convinced and new interpretations seem to be coming by the minute. In fact, David Schmader of The Stranger just noted how the torch resembled “a pregnancy test that reveals you’re having Satan’s baby.” Another worthy observation I suppose.
So which is it? A joint? Satan’s baby? Or a sleek and modern ski track? Knowing Vancouver, I think I’m going with all of the above.
Courtesy: Stephen Kral
Now, not too surprisingly, Olympic officials are hurrying to deny the allegation. According to them, the torch is supposed to look like the snow and ice marks left behind an Olympic skier or skater. Which, to be fair, I can certainly see. Mark Busse, an Industrial designer familiar with the behind-the-scenes making of the torch remarked, “Sure, it may look a little bit like a joint, but I can tell you that what they were going for was ergonomics, sleekness, modernity.”
Still, not everyone is convinced and new interpretations seem to be coming by the minute. In fact, David Schmader of The Stranger just noted how the torch resembled “a pregnancy test that reveals you’re having Satan’s baby.” Another worthy observation I suppose.
So which is it? A joint? Satan’s baby? Or a sleek and modern ski track? Knowing Vancouver, I think I’m going with all of the above.
Courtesy: Stephen Kral
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Mama Pelagai Villaflor Soliven Remembered
MY Mama will always be my idol, a woman whom I strive to emulate even as I realize that I could never measure up to her.
Mama—Pelagia Villaflor Soliven—was born on July 11, 1910, in Sto. Domingo, Ilocos. She was the second of three daughters of Agripino Villaflor, then chief of customs, and Gregoria Tesoro Jaramillo, one of the first teachers recruited by the Americans.
In her autobiography A Woman So Valiant, Mama recounts that her first glimpse of my Papa, the young Atty. Benito Tagorda Soliven, was at the family’s favorite Panciteria Antigua, where her father hosted a lunch in “Bitong’s” honor.
Mama recalls that the photographer made her squat at the foot of the honoree. She was 11 years old and Papa was 23!
It was that summer that the two actually met at a banquet mounted by the Sto. Domingo townsfolk to honor their favorite “son”, Benito T. Soliven, for having passed the Bar.
Mama and Papa got married when she was 18 in December 1928 at the Manila Cathedral. The reception was held at The Manila Hotel. Papa had just been elected representative for Ilocos Sur and so the ninongs were no less than then-Speaker Manuel Roxas and Sen. Elpidio Quirino.
In less than 12 years later, the young couple had 10 children. The youngest, Benito Jr., died, however, as an infant from dysentery during the outbreak of war.
Papa died from complications of malaria. He had fought in the battle of Bataan, survived the infamous Death March, and was a prisoner of war in Capas, Tarlac.
I have never forgiven the Japanese for what they did, depriving me of a father whom I never knew, because I was a toddler when Papa left for the war.
It was the worse time for a young widow (age 33 years!) to be left with nine orphaned children.
Mama, who never went to college, knew only to sew dresses, which she had been doing since she was a teenager. Mama built a wooden box house in Herran near the corner of San Marcelino, Paco, where my parents used to live. The original house had been burned to the ground during the Liberation of Manila.
I loved that house, even though the upstairs “bedroom” was a single room where everybody slept on the floor on mats. I slept on a shelf built over the stairwell. During the day we stored our mats, blankets, mosquito nets and pillows on the shelf.
Mama opened a tiny dress shop in front of the house. She sewed ladies’ dresses for P3.50 apiece and soutanas for the Jesuits at P5 apiece (for which she bought Indian cotton in Divisoria).
We were dirt-poor but we had the happiest childhood that anyone would wish! We had nothing, and yet we had everything. We were nine children plus our cousins, the Cardenas family who lived in the compound, with three kids. When the de Villas moved next door, that added three more playmates. We had a birthday winnie roast every month!
We played games that children play—piko, sipa, cops-and-robbers, hide-and-seek, jumping rope, etc.
The Jesuits from Ateneo Padre Faura, a 12-block walk away, would come to sing along as my brother Willie was a whiz at the small upright piano my Mama purchased.
The Jesuits donated a basketball goal and Mama had a hardcourt cemented in the yard. This later became a favorite venue for class parties, as well as games.
All my brothers’ classmates and even the Jesuits themselves came to play basketball because Mama loved to entertain. It seemed like all that we sisters (her four daughters) did was to make sandwiches and Kool-Aid drinks.
Years later, my brothers’ friends from the Student Catholic Action, a multicollege organization, began meeting and holding parties also in our house in Herran. I learned to dance early because the boys would use me as their dance partner to practice for the parties.
And they all loved “Mommy Soliven”. For many years later, as a journalist I would encounter people from all sectors—the newspaper and broadcast industry, politics, the rich and famous—who would remember the “house in Herran” and “Mommy Soliven”. Inevitably they would say, “And you must have been that little girl making sandwiches....”
So many memories came flooding back yesterday on Mother’s Day, such as when the National Federation of Women’s Clubs of the Philippines named Pelagia V. Soliven as “Outstanding Mother of the Year” on December 3, 1962.
Mama deserved the award, for sure, for every year she singlehandedly raised her nine children. Mama had an unshakable faith in God’s Providence. She would declare that if God took our father away, He would surely provide for us. Through those difficult early years, God must have honored her faith and her perseverance.
I recall waking each morning at the sound of Mama working at her foot-pedaled sewing machine, and going to sleep to the same sound. Before she sat at her sewing machine, Mama would have already gone to the market and cooked the day’s meals for us.
Everything she cooked came in soups and with sauces, the better to spread the ulam. But she was an excellent cook. We loved her picadillos, monggo with alugbati, karne norte with potatoes, higado (bopis Ilocano-style), arroz caldo, atbp. I don’t think I ever saw a whole chicken, because it was always chopped into small pieces.
A rimas tree grew in the yard, and so Mama would make kinalti with this breadfruit and panocha, a favorite merienda.
Mama did push and prod us to become achievers in the tradition of Papa, a brilliant and respected politician, eloquent public speaker and lawyer. Silver was good enough for other students but the Soliven kids had to go for gold, which my brothers and sisters did, mostly in essaywriting and elocution contests. I brought home a few for writing and for English grammar.
There is an advantage to being the youngest. I never had to grab for food, since Mama would always set aside my share before everybody else. Neither did I have many house choirs like the rest.
I wasn’t a beautiful child—scrawny and with big eyes like a “plucked chicken,” as I would tell friends. Yet I knew that Mama loved me as only a mother would, and I miss her to this day.
I guess one never outgrows his/her Mama.
Courtesy: Business Mirror
Mama—Pelagia Villaflor Soliven—was born on July 11, 1910, in Sto. Domingo, Ilocos. She was the second of three daughters of Agripino Villaflor, then chief of customs, and Gregoria Tesoro Jaramillo, one of the first teachers recruited by the Americans.
In her autobiography A Woman So Valiant, Mama recounts that her first glimpse of my Papa, the young Atty. Benito Tagorda Soliven, was at the family’s favorite Panciteria Antigua, where her father hosted a lunch in “Bitong’s” honor.
Mama recalls that the photographer made her squat at the foot of the honoree. She was 11 years old and Papa was 23!
It was that summer that the two actually met at a banquet mounted by the Sto. Domingo townsfolk to honor their favorite “son”, Benito T. Soliven, for having passed the Bar.
Mama and Papa got married when she was 18 in December 1928 at the Manila Cathedral. The reception was held at The Manila Hotel. Papa had just been elected representative for Ilocos Sur and so the ninongs were no less than then-Speaker Manuel Roxas and Sen. Elpidio Quirino.
In less than 12 years later, the young couple had 10 children. The youngest, Benito Jr., died, however, as an infant from dysentery during the outbreak of war.
Papa died from complications of malaria. He had fought in the battle of Bataan, survived the infamous Death March, and was a prisoner of war in Capas, Tarlac.
I have never forgiven the Japanese for what they did, depriving me of a father whom I never knew, because I was a toddler when Papa left for the war.
It was the worse time for a young widow (age 33 years!) to be left with nine orphaned children.
Mama, who never went to college, knew only to sew dresses, which she had been doing since she was a teenager. Mama built a wooden box house in Herran near the corner of San Marcelino, Paco, where my parents used to live. The original house had been burned to the ground during the Liberation of Manila.
I loved that house, even though the upstairs “bedroom” was a single room where everybody slept on the floor on mats. I slept on a shelf built over the stairwell. During the day we stored our mats, blankets, mosquito nets and pillows on the shelf.
Mama opened a tiny dress shop in front of the house. She sewed ladies’ dresses for P3.50 apiece and soutanas for the Jesuits at P5 apiece (for which she bought Indian cotton in Divisoria).
We were dirt-poor but we had the happiest childhood that anyone would wish! We had nothing, and yet we had everything. We were nine children plus our cousins, the Cardenas family who lived in the compound, with three kids. When the de Villas moved next door, that added three more playmates. We had a birthday winnie roast every month!
We played games that children play—piko, sipa, cops-and-robbers, hide-and-seek, jumping rope, etc.
The Jesuits from Ateneo Padre Faura, a 12-block walk away, would come to sing along as my brother Willie was a whiz at the small upright piano my Mama purchased.
The Jesuits donated a basketball goal and Mama had a hardcourt cemented in the yard. This later became a favorite venue for class parties, as well as games.
All my brothers’ classmates and even the Jesuits themselves came to play basketball because Mama loved to entertain. It seemed like all that we sisters (her four daughters) did was to make sandwiches and Kool-Aid drinks.
Years later, my brothers’ friends from the Student Catholic Action, a multicollege organization, began meeting and holding parties also in our house in Herran. I learned to dance early because the boys would use me as their dance partner to practice for the parties.
And they all loved “Mommy Soliven”. For many years later, as a journalist I would encounter people from all sectors—the newspaper and broadcast industry, politics, the rich and famous—who would remember the “house in Herran” and “Mommy Soliven”. Inevitably they would say, “And you must have been that little girl making sandwiches....”
So many memories came flooding back yesterday on Mother’s Day, such as when the National Federation of Women’s Clubs of the Philippines named Pelagia V. Soliven as “Outstanding Mother of the Year” on December 3, 1962.
Mama deserved the award, for sure, for every year she singlehandedly raised her nine children. Mama had an unshakable faith in God’s Providence. She would declare that if God took our father away, He would surely provide for us. Through those difficult early years, God must have honored her faith and her perseverance.
I recall waking each morning at the sound of Mama working at her foot-pedaled sewing machine, and going to sleep to the same sound. Before she sat at her sewing machine, Mama would have already gone to the market and cooked the day’s meals for us.
Everything she cooked came in soups and with sauces, the better to spread the ulam. But she was an excellent cook. We loved her picadillos, monggo with alugbati, karne norte with potatoes, higado (bopis Ilocano-style), arroz caldo, atbp. I don’t think I ever saw a whole chicken, because it was always chopped into small pieces.
A rimas tree grew in the yard, and so Mama would make kinalti with this breadfruit and panocha, a favorite merienda.
Mama did push and prod us to become achievers in the tradition of Papa, a brilliant and respected politician, eloquent public speaker and lawyer. Silver was good enough for other students but the Soliven kids had to go for gold, which my brothers and sisters did, mostly in essaywriting and elocution contests. I brought home a few for writing and for English grammar.
There is an advantage to being the youngest. I never had to grab for food, since Mama would always set aside my share before everybody else. Neither did I have many house choirs like the rest.
I wasn’t a beautiful child—scrawny and with big eyes like a “plucked chicken,” as I would tell friends. Yet I knew that Mama loved me as only a mother would, and I miss her to this day.
I guess one never outgrows his/her Mama.
Courtesy: Business Mirror
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