Conozco Pablo

It is March again and most schools are having their own commencement and graduation ceremonies this week in the Philippines. The highlight of these ceremonies is to appreciate the efforts of the students, their parents, guardians and teachers. However, given this is a popular Philippine event, this can be a source of controversy and competition, as the school announces the best performing students for the year, and gives out several awards for those students, who showed excellence in various fields. Personally, I looked forward to every recognition day I had before. I remember I was so focused on getting an award and placing on top, while learning as well. This served as my goal and inspiration each year, such that I even displayed my awards at home, and eventually made a system to store them. From time to time, I checked every award I had. In this way, I conditioned my mind to achieve higher and higher. From ordinary awards, multi-city competitions, scholarship awards, special citati...

The current development on education (K-12) in the Philippines provides me an inspiration to pursue an ambitious project in the next 2 decades of my life. I certainly have plans on my mind, but I do not know where to start and how to realize it entirely. So, I am publishing this post, because I wanted to know if there are people, who could help me and share my vision. Here is my concept of the school of the future in the Philippines. It is composed of three tiers: senior high school, undergraduate and post-graduate studies. Firstly, I would truly want to prepare students for college and universities during their senior high school years. I would want to offer three different courses: (1) science and mathematics, (2) business and entrepreneurship, and (3) humanities and social sciences. This courses will be offered simultaneously and will meet the basic requirements of Department of Education. However, I would want to offer students additional subjects, such as in Business Management...

Today, March 20, 2015 marks the occurrence of three important astronomical phenomena. These are total solar eclipse in the Northern Atlantic Ocean, a supermoon and the spring equinox. This day is indeed a rare day in the history of earth. However, in this post a discussion of facts and myths about this total solar eclipse is presented.                               Facts: 1. Total Solar eclipse happens when the moon passes between the sun and the earth, completely covering the sun and completely casting a shadow on a particular region on earth. 2. Solar eclipses happen very often in a year, most of them are unnoticed. However, this solar eclipse will be seen throughout Europe. Total sun coverage will be seen in the Artic Norwegian island Svalbard and the Faroe Island. In Oslo and neighboring cities, everyone will see the sun will be covered...

In the last few days, I met one patient, who tried to commit suicide by drinking poison with red wine and slashing her wrist. She was conscious during the time I took care of her, but refuses to eat because for her, in that way she will die faster. Everytime I met her, she always says her willingness to die in spite of all my encouragement and constant communication. My experience taking care of her was quite strange for me such that it leads me to ask myself when does prolonging life considered a mistake. Dysthanasia is the opposite of euthanasia. The first type is act of unnecessary prolonging one's life by initiating unreasonable, non-beneficial health interventions. On the other hand, euthanasia is the act of facilitating death. Although these concepts are non-synonymous, they are still closely related as these concepts tackle the dilemma surrounding an inevitable event in human life, that is death. So when can we say prolonging one's life may constitute a moral deviation...

Many of us believe on the most popular superstition about Friday the 13th. People associate it with bad luck or a bad omen such that special precautions must be made especially on this date. Here are some information about the superstition: 1. In the Philippines, people are advised by elders to be very careful such that all sorts of injuries resulting to bleeding must be avoided. Special precaution are even made when sunset, as they say ghosts and other extranatural creatures are roaming around areas, waiting to take lives of people. This makes people afraid when the 13th day of the month fall in a Friday. 2. The popular explanation why most believe that Friday the 13th is considered unlucky because of the tradition of celebrating Good Friday when Jesus Christ died on the cross after being betrayed by his 13th apostle, Judas. Although Judas really was not considered the 13th apostle such that there is ranking among Jesus Christ followers but people has accepted this information for ...

One of the most controversial social issue in the present time is racism. Many claims to have experienced this but many seems avoid being reprimanded or punished because of this. Perhaps the main reason for this is that there exist an ambiguity of the concept itself. There seems to be a gray area and difficulty on distinguishing racism. This is the main objective of this article. Generally, there are four questions that needs to be answered before considering a certain provocation either through words or actions racistic. Here are the following questions: Was there pre-judged opinion on a person's culture or race before full knowledge or evaluation? Was there under-appreciation as a result of prejudgment? Was there an intent to create unnecessary difficulty on a person either implied or expressed as a consequence of pre-judgment? Was there deprivation of social participation or human rights as a product of intent to create difficulty? Should answers to these four ...

Many have asked me before why did I choose to be a nurse. It seems a valid question. Given that most knew me as someone, who is mathematically-inclined rather than in science; the question is valid. Interestingly, after I got my nursing license, I engaged myself in teaching and administrative positions and now starting to build another phase in career in real estate. So, this gives one an assumption that nursing is not my dream profession. Contrary to popular belief, it is my dream job still but how do I consider nursing as my dream job, when in fact I am trying to engage in other stuff. Here are my criteria in considering a job as the most desired for one: 1. Less effort, less stress Naturally, one's life is not just about what we do in work. There are other aspects we need to attend to. Should one exert almost every energy in work, one gets easily exhausted. This is the reason I diversify in work to lessen stress. There are times I work hard but there are times I take things e...

Have you ever wondered how would life be different if everything we hear and experience is only good news? That may sound impossible. It is impossible but what if we take this hypothetical scenario within the Filipino society. What could we learn perhaps from it? How would a typical Filipino react if everything seems to be in order? Here I list some of my guess and assumptions should this situation happen. 1. A Filipino would think there would be no tomorrow. We simply are not used to experiencing good. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, we seldom experience it. Secondly, we think that is impossible. So should things become perfect, we would tend to abuse and misuse whatever positive we are experiencing. We would not think whether there is tomorrow. Why should we? We even do not think and genuinely hope things might be the same the next day. 2. A Filipino would doubt if things are true. A general Filipino rule is that if there exists something good, doubt it. Doubt it and do...

Almost everyone wants to travel. Wherever or whatever the purpose may it be, the most important is to break free from the daily routine we have. Due to individual differences and intentions, there exists a number of various types of travelers. In several websites, one could find several ways to categorize these travelers, however, there is a problem in trying to see the uniqueness of each type. Some types as stated in other sources are actual sub-categories of the another. Due to this, I came up of my classification, based on responses to common question pertaining to one's travel personality. Below you can follow through the questions and their expected responses. After that you can share to me what type of traveler are you. From the diagram above, here are the 14 types of travelers: 1.      Budget Traveler - a traveler who does not care about where he or she goes as long as it is within his or her budget 2.      Planer – a traveler...

Here is my video of my short trip to Copenhagen, Denmark. For more blogposts, click below. Copenhagen