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Friday, November 27, 2015

Homecoming 2015


Nestor and I hope to be in Solano. Nueva Vizcaya on December 26, and 27 for the 2015 Alumni Homecoming celebrations.  We hope to setup the booth of Class of 1959 on Saturday the 26th, in time for the next day's festivities.


(Please click on the above image if it is too big.
Then click on X on the upper right hand to revert to this.)


We will have this banner at our booth: 


(Photo credits: Rolando Barrero, all rights reserved)

_______________________




Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Things to do

Now-a-days, computers occupy a major portion of people's lives, be they pre-school children, students, workers or professionals and even retired people, like me!

What did people do before computer gaming and Surfing the Net sucked up any and all the time that people had!?! Some youngsters now play games for 25 hours a day, you know!

Gaming provides the thrills that we lack in everyday life and many a young person finds it difficult to advance beyond games! It does take courage and discipline to turn down a challenge to play a good PC game! You know that, don't you? But I can turn down a game any time! No sweat!

Actually, I am not into computer games. After my elder son first clobbered me in an Atari game, I lost my taste for games, and that was before my second son learned to handle the joystick and beat me, too!

So, let us surf the Net!

And, hopefully, learn a little of anything and everything that there is to know!

This video clip of some 12 minutes shows a sample of life in China.


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Thursday, December 18, 2014

Seasons Greetings


Merry Christmas
and
Happy New Year
To One and All
!!!


Greeting card courtesy of Violy and Rolly Barrero





Friday, December 5, 2014

IN THE LAND OF PLENTY


A SOBERING AND HEARTBREAKING SURPRISE



Back in the late 60s, I left the Philippines with much apprehension, as I was embarking into the unknown, full of dreams but bereft of worldly knowledge. My parochial thinking limited me to my own Philippine experience and I was not cognizant of the big world that awaited me. Only then did I realize that Manila is not the glittering city as I thought it was!

During that time, the Ford Mustang was the "must have" car in the Philippines, affordable to only the super rich. Imagine my surprise when, in the late August afternoon, Dr. Ernie Villanueva, my cousin, Lydia Mercado Villanueva's husband, picked me up at Philadelphia International Airport in an almost new Mustang! I was salivating at such a prized possession. 

In a few days, I realized that that car I so looked at as the epitome of having arrived, turned out to be a pretty common car. And the longer I lived in the United States the more I found out that cars were quite commonplace. Some homes would have four people living in it, and they would have five or more cars in the household. This reinforced my thinking that indeed, America was the land of plenty.

As an immigrant, working hard and aspiring to do well is a common trait. In my late twenties, I decided to get married to my best friend, Nora Vergara and we have enjoyed more than forty years of wedded bliss. With the arrival of two children, we opted to live our life with her staying home and us surviving on a single income.  This was difficult, but we have no regrets as we would not have raised our children in any other way.

We were very involved in our church. We were Eucharistic Ministers, went to a Marriage Encounter weekend in July, 1980, became a team couple, giving weekends in several states. I served on the Pastoral Council and was a president of our Filipino American Association. We were also the first Filipino couple to receive the Pro Deo et Patria award given by St. Matthias Church in Somerset, NJ. 

One of the measures of income inequality is the Gini coefficient. This, on a scale of 1 to 100, determines how equal income is distributed among the different sectors of a nation's population. A coefficient of 1 means income equality is accomplished and a coefficient of 100 means total inequality. Sadly, in the United States, as in the Philippines, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The Gini coefficient has been increasing and is now at about 60. The middle class is slowly disappearing. 

Our involvement in the St. Vincent de Paul Society has opened up my eyes to a distressing reality. Founded by Frederic Ozanam, the society hopes to help the downtrodden by interviewing those who are in need and helping with material and financial resources. Being from a third world country, I am probably more used to poverty and would be more nonchalant in witnessing it in poorer countries. But never in my life did I expect that in the United States there are people who eke out an existence and barely could make ends meet. Other people tell me that the poverty I see is not as bad as the conditions in Appalachia and some other southern states like Mississippi and Alabama. Thus, the title to my article.

I will now cite some samples of the many incidents the society has helped during our involvement, as follows:

1. A widow in her late fifties, on disability benefits from Social Security was receiving a total of $800 a month. She lived in a house owned by her son, who resided in another house several miles away. The son charged the mother $500 a month rent and required her to pay for her own gas and electric, which amounted to almost $100 a month. The woman survived on $200 a month, had no car, no TV and a cellular phone.

2. An elderly couple, who, during times of prosperity, lived the good life and did not save enough for their retirement. Now retired, and in failing health, their house is being foreclosed by the bank, and they will be forced to go back to living in an apartment. The bad part is their Social Security benefits will be just enough for their living expenses, so they are forced to suffer the indignity of going to the food bank to get free groceries.

3. A single mother, left to fend for herself because the husband abandoned her for another woman. One of the children is autistic, and needs more care than other children, so she is struggling to make ends meet. The cost of child care for the autistic child is high so she gets welfare to augment her resources. She is behind on gas bill and electric bill, and the utility companies are issuing shutoff notices for non-payment.

4. A never married woman in her late 50s who worked for the same company for more than twenty years. She got paid a little more than the minimum wage, was laid off and is struggling to survive. She is too young to collect Social Security and may be too old to be hired somewhere else. With her medical coverage gone, the ability to survive may be in jeopardy and she could conceivably become homeless.

5. A sixty something man who is quite handy, and has worked under the table all his working life. Yes, there are places where this happens, but quite rare.  Now that he is older, he is faced with mounting medical bills. The most frightening aspect is that because he has no earnings record with Social Security, when he reaches retirement age of 66, he will not receive anything from Social Security. And with no 401K or other retirement account, his future is quite dire indeed.

I could go on and on in relating many, many more cases of fiscal irresponsibility and lack of financial resources. It is appalling to me that a son could charge his widowed mom rent that was more than half her income. The many opportunities for work in this country are, unfortunately, not taken advantage of by some people. So, sad to say, even in the most affluent countries in the world, homelessness, poverty and dependence on welfare and food stamps arise. 

That is the reason why, in the United States, I find it incredible that some people could live the way they do.



By Nestor R. Mercado

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

The Pope Will Visit Us On January 15-19


While in elementary school, I remember being told that our Lord, Jesus Christ, said to Peter: Thou art Peter, the Rock, and upon this Rock I will build my Church. The teacher went on and said that this meant that He was establishing His Church and Peter was It's leader, the very first Pope of His Church!

The very first pope that I was aware of was Pope Pius XII but in those days it wasn't easy to travel so the pope was almost always in the Vatican. Pope Paul the VI (1963–1978) was the first Pope that I ever saw. When he came to the Philippines in the 70s, I parked my car with my wife Agnes and our family of three along EDSA where the Papal Entourage would pass, and we were amply rewarded with a few seconds of unobstructed view of the Pope amiably waving from an uncovered car!

It was an ordinary scene  in a very ordinary place that I've passed a few hundred times, but in my mind "that Papal scene" was ethereal, with the Pope suffused in an aura worthy of Hollywood! Believe me, he was!
(Come down to earth, Jun!)

Today we look forward to Pope Francis'  five day visit to the Pilippines come January 15, 2015.

 

And I am tuned in to http://papalvisit.ph/  for news on Pope Francis!
 

Sunday, October 12, 2014

How Old Do You Look Like?


From today's Yahoo News Philippines:

This technology can estimate your age from your face and how long you have to live. All you need to do is upload a decent size photo according to the requirements (face forward, no smiles, well lit and hair pulled back), answer a few simple questions and voila! It will give you an estimate of your age and how long you have left to live.

FaceMyAge.com analyzes your face based on the uploaded picture and takes into account the answers on your lifestyle choices (smoking habits, drug habits, sun exposure, and marital status) to estimate your age and predict your lifespan. The program looks for sagging muscles and fat paddings on your face as well as skin discolorations and wrinkles by your eyes to estimate your current age (hence the ‘no smiles’ requirement).

 

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Thirteen Years After High School


Some 13 years after our graduation from high school, this melody (please click the "play triangle" above left) was "on top of the charts," if only because it was forced on the Filipinos!.


It was the best of times, it was the worst of times - yeah, I know, somebody wrote that before I did! Also:


Brutus:
There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Julius Caesar Act 4, scene 3, 218–224
And Lee Kuan Yew put Singapore on the map!

And the Philippines???