a new senior citizen

 By this time tomorrow, I will officially be a senior citizen, 60 yrs old, my what an accomplishment. There was a time in my life that I thought I might not reach this age or thought of it as such a hard accomplishment.

There are things in my life that I never dreamt of doing but I was able to, I thought I would not amount to anything but I did, having been able to achieve, by God's grace a very high position of Chief Information Officer and to think that I am a mechanical engineer by education. 

I have travelled to the US (MD, FL, NY, NJ, VA, DC, CA,
TN, MI) even lived there, been to Australia (QLD, WA, NT, NSW, VIC); a place I truly love, strolled the streets of Singapore and Hong Kong and feasted on the cuisine of Malaysia. 

I have flown on private planes, worked inside a gold mine, seen how gold is smelted, drove on the right side of the road, been an Uber driver and have flown
commercially on first class.

I am happy with what I have achieved, content with what I have. I have a great family, wonderful friends and acquaintances all over the world, I can't complain. 

The greatest achievement I have at this point in time is that I am a servant of God, I am so glad I found Jesus and have been with Him for the last 12 yrs. I owe everything to God, Jesus has changed me, transformed my life and made me a new person. I am not perfect but I have changed and continuously improved.

I have found that the material things in this world will not make me happy, it used to make me angry and envious and worked hard just to have the latest gadgets. 

But I am grateful, thankful for everyone I have met along the way, those who have helped me change by seeing what I have become and seeing what I do not want to become. Thank you, Lord for the life lessons, for the people you sent my way to teach me and to make me realise the change I need to do in my life. 

Allow me to continue to serve you and to serve others as a way of thanking you for my life. Thank you, Jesus.

my country in the midst of a pandemic

What is happening to the world today is quite sad, people all over are getting sick and losing their battle to this pandemic. But in the midst of all these several things have been proven true, among them that there is good and evil, there are leaders and those who do nothing, there are those who help and those that complain, there are heroes and that there is social injustice.

GOOD and EVIL

There are a lot who help and encourage other people to help, they form groups to mobiles the sending of relief good or in gathering donations. Then there are those who take advantage of the panic and fear and scam people of their money like pretending to be from banks and asking bank information, there are those who steal the relief goods and some even hurt medical frontliners.

LEADERS

You see the leaders on the streets, getting hands-on with relief operations, thinking outside the box on how to help their constituents, employees and congregation. They don't do a lot of speeches or social media posts to glorify themselves but instead use it to rally the people to help and be transparent with what they are doing; publishing the goods to be provided to the people so that no one gets accused of shortchanging the relief goods or that others benefited from them. Leaders who assure the people of their commitment, of how human they are and how strong-willed they are to provide a solution to the current situation. Whilst the managers, sit back and delegate and just shout orders and some do not even do anything. Politically, a Senator works for the country, a Congressman for his district, a governor for his province, a Mayor for his city, but there are those who just kept quiet and let the President handle all things or gave everything to the task force assigned. In this time of crisis, it is all hands on deck, look at the leaders of the business, donating hundreds of millions of Pesos for relief operations, to feed the frontliners, to feed the displaced workers, to provide for hospital needs, while the other "leaders" are not even visible.

SOCIAL INJUSTICE

The rich, the middle class and the poor-  who do you think is better off? 

The rich will not have any financial worry in case they get sick or if they will run out of provisions, they can afford. 

The poor will not have problems because there are protocols in place by the government to provide for them whether there is a crisis or not. Each city has its own feeding programme, livelihood programmes, free medical treatment at health centres and even hospitalisation. Currently, they are on the top of the list of relief goods distribution by the local government, especially at the barangay level.

The middle class - technically the poor middle class, they work, they need to work some in foreign countries leaving their families behind so that their children can go to good schools so that they can save for retirement, so they can provide for their families. They pay mortgages, utility bills, groceries, car lease, some do daily commute and if they don't work they will not earn a salary to pay for all these. And let us not forget the taxes that the middle class pays for, taxes that go to the government so that government can provide for the poor and for the road repairs so that the rich can drive their luxury cars on. I am not being cynical, this is the truth. So who helps the middle class, they do not get free health care, some are subsidised by HMO card provided by the companies they work for, but if the middle class are self-employed they don't have HMO cards.

So who is more affected by the current pandemic, I just gave my point of view as a working middle class myself.

BUT, in all of these you can still hear and see people complain and ridicule the government, some say such bad things as if they can do better. My thinking is, with the current government officials we have and if people are complaining, imagine what the other candidates would do or have done if they were the ones who won the last elections.

People forget why these leaders were are the ones who are incumbent right now, personally, it is God's will. God has His reasons, we may not understand it but He has a plan on why they are there. That is why we should respect our current leaders because they are all God's chosen ones. So disrespecting these leaders is disrespecting God's choice.

In the story of David, he was persecuted by King Saul because Saul envied him, Saul tried to kill David twice by throwing a spear at him. During Davids escape in the forest and mountains he tice had the chance to kill Saul and stop him from pursuing and persecuting him but he did not, and this was his answer to his men;

1 Samuel 24:6-7 New Living Translation (NLT) ⁶ He said to his men, “The Lord forbid that I should do this to my lord the king. I shouldn’t attack the Lord’s anointed one, for the Lord himself has chosen him.” ⁷ So David restrained his men and did not let them kill Saul.
After Saul had left the cave and gone on his way,

In the midst of this current crisis, let us stop grumbling and support our government's efforts by staying at home, be with our families and pray for all the frontliners and victims. It is the least we can do, let us not jump on that political bandwagon but instead do ur part to help, if you cannot donate your time, money or services, we can all donate and share our prayers.

I chose to write this down as I am so frustrated with the things on social media, one of the reasons why I deleted my original Facebook account because of all the fake news, politics and showbiz news. Now I have made my social media account as a platform to share God's Word to all my friends and t those who can see my account, in one way or the other even if you do not comment on my posts, you have seen and read the Word of GOD.

God bless everyone, stay safe and let us be good to one another. 

 

G'day its been a long while, my last post was 4 yrs ago

The year is about to end, we look back at the things we have done and wonder how it affected our relationship with Jesus.
- did we forgive
- were we patient
- did we help others
- were we truthful
- did we learn the Word of God
- did we even try to read the Word of God
- were we honest in our work and business
- did we treat others fairly
- did we act entitled
- did we look down on others
- did we gave priority towards making money than our family
- did we pray
- did we continue to build a relationship with God
- did we envy others
- were we judgemental
- did we submit to authority
- did we let our pride stand in our decisions
- did we pray for our decisions
- did we grab the blessings from God
- were we intentional in teaching our children
- did we cause others to stumble because of our actions

We have a lot of questions, a lot of ifs, buts, could've or should've, but what is important is did you realise what you did? Did you learn from your mistakes or did you just allow your mistakes to remain as mistakes?

Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:17 New Living Translation (NLT)
17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!

This year focus on God set a goal to meet God every day in prayer, focus on what God wants you to do for Him. Make God the priority and see how He will bless you. Do not submit to the material things of this world, do not try to keep up with others, prioritise God and Family. Social media can make us envious and bitter if we try to compare ourselves with others.

Everyone has their own life, their careers, we cannot be the same as them. God's plans for you and me are different for He has a specific purpose for each one of us. So this coming New Year, focus on God and prayer, not on tradition. Did wearing polka dots or having 12 fruits or lots of round items in your house when the New Year comes do you any good? Did it change your life or your financial status? This are things our parents and their parents did long ago, where they started no one knows, some believe them up to now but did you ever realise where the true blessing comes from? Who manages our lives based on His plan and will? We do not even know what tomorrow will bring but He does.

my poor country

I haven't written in a long while and I am doing so again in light of what is happening to this country of mine.

I am proud to be a Filipino, even if I worked in other countries before and eve tried to migrate, my heart will always be Filipino; I jokingly say that there is too much adobo and bagoong (shirmp paste) in my blood for me to become otherwise.

I have longed for reform, being a product of the Marcos administration and having seen what happened during the martial law days and comparing it to what I see now and the past administrations (Aquino, Ramos, Estrada, Arroyo) and what the current Aquino government is providing, I can say that the country has declined ever since the Marcos left the country. I am not pro-Marcos or anti-government, I am stating from the experience of a citizen who has lived in this country 51 out of my 53 years so far ( I lived in the US and worked overseas a lot).

Why is this topic coming up, well in the next 6 months the Philippines will again be in an election year and I feel sad for my country. I actually am scared for my children and their families as to what this once great country of ours will become when the new administration is in place. Just look at the candidates we have right now, I do not see anyone qualified to run for office, someone who can really turn it around and make us great again. No one who has the ability to become a great statesman or stateswoman who can represent us globally. Someone with a plan as they say to move this country into the future.

Looking at the current candidates I personally have o one to choose out of them specially those being popularly mentioned. We will again be given the choice of two evils as this once great country of ours is again caught between a rock and a hard place.

I was suggesting before to my friends to have a church leader as a president so that they can be honest but again even if the leader is honest but the people advicing him/her are corrupt then it will also become difficult. Another suggestion was to have the country run like a business corporation and have one of our great businessmen run the country, but coming from a corporation, the politics there are even more cut-throat than government. So where will we go, we can't trust anybody anymore, as I see it, the change should come from each and every one of us. We have lost the love of country we have grown to become individualistic and try to survive on our own. It is as if it is every man for himself and no one thinks of his fellowman anymore.

This is what the country needs, we should start loving our country again, we should once again be proud to be a Filipino and not just when we gain international fame like Pacquiao or beauty queens or those Fil-Am, Fil-Asian talents in those reality shows. Be proud of your country of your heritage, make sacrifices for your country not jut for yourself.

I know we can be great again, we have that spirit in us, it just died or became dormant because we didn't have the right leader, not in a very long time.

I pray for my country, i pray for the future of my children and the generations to come.

So you won......now what?

So you won....what now?

So what can you say about the just concluded Local elections in the Philippines? 

There are a lot of surprises, a lot of issues, people were disenfranchised, some  were not able to get to the voting precincts on time. others had to wait for hours just to cast their votes while others were fortunate enough to do it in record breaking time.

But what is the real issue in the just concluded elections was it the process or was it the winners or none winners so to speak.  There is nothing normal in Philippine elections, although there are a few who are gracious enough to  accept defeat, most of the losing candidates in yesterdays elections claim that they were cheated. While the winners all claim they won it fair and square and that it was the voice of the people that has spoken.

So how do we know that the people really did vote for the "winning" candidates? Well, this would be an easier task to prove than finding out the reason why they voted for who they voted. I am not one to judge, I just look at the practical side of things and the logic behind it. Take for example the following;

1. why would people vote for a known mutineer,

a traitor to the constitution since the person went up in arms against the government, the president, the people, his comrade in arms and the constitution they swore to protect.  You know what is funnier, there are two of them in the senatorial race and they are both in the top 15. Now tell me the logic in that, who will support them or why will people support them? But they did, is it the fault of the candidate if they get elected, of course not, first of all they were allowed to run, in fact they are both incumbent senators. I cannot for the life of me explain how this happened.

2. Why vote for the relative of the former and current President? Is that his only claim to fame? Is that the definitive reason to vote for him? what is his capability, did the people question that? What has he done, what is his experience in making laws or his knowledge of the law for that matter? Is it reason enough to say that he has relatives who have served the country before so what will he do if he wins?

Will he run to his uncle who is the current President for advice? I know that the government needs new blood in the administration but get someone who is experienced not just young.

3. Why vote for a housewife who's claim of political experience is being an OJT to her parents for the last 20 yrs, why not a full-time job, why just on-the job-training? So she was a trainee for 20 yrs?

Wasn't she capable of being promoted full time or was she just listed as an employee, what kind of work did she do for the last 20 yrs that she couldn't do it full time? why is she afraid to discuss her political platform, her plans, why get a court order that prevents other candidates from asking her to go on a public debate? A lot of questions, a whole lot of questions.

4. and what about the daughter of a former movie actor and actress, what kind of experience does she have to bring into the senate. Did the people vote for her because she is qualified or did the people vote for her in memory of her father? Was it a compensation vote or a vote of confidence.

Now the big question is, "What are they going to do in the senate once they are proclaimed winners?"

There is actually a reason for all of these, we may not like what is happening but we do not have control over it. Do we need to worry, i don't think so but we will feel the consequences of these latest elections in the coming months. Normally the economy goes down after each election since investors are always getting the feel of the "new kids" on the block. Just like having new neighbours or officemates, you tend to thread lightly as you do not know who they are or what they are capable of. I always look at things from the perspective of what God wants to happen, it is either the Lord is teaching us something or the Lord is teaching them something. But rest assured we will always be delivered to a better situation as long as we know that we should rely on God andnot our own power.

Just like in the bible during the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, they were delivered out of Egypt but the people complained and grumbled and always wanted to have their way so God  taught them a lesson and it took 40 yrs before they realised that they have to depend on God for everything. I just hope it doesn't take another 40 yrs before our countrymen realise that they should follow God and choose the right leaders.

There are no coincidences, everything is planned according to God's will and everyone can be used to make it happen. At this point all we can do is obey the rule of the land and pray for wisdom and rely on God's love for us. So do not blame the players, blame the game, what we should prepare for is the upcoming national elections in 2016. We should prevent  dynasties from forming if they haven't already.

God Bless this country!

Elections in the Philippines 2013...here we go again.

It is that time of the year again in this country of mine wherein we vote for local and national officials. It is not much as the election exercise that gets to me but the actual process, rituals and what have you that changes the atmosphere of the entire country.

Roads get built, streets become lighted, a sprouting of basketball courts and water wells and in some areas, school buildings get painted and a lot of celebrities get extra work endorsing candidates.

But the most concerning part of this whole process, well for me, are the candidates themselves. Time and again we have candidates who get approved by the Commission on Elections who have questionable character, capabilities and experience. The sad part is, these candidates are the ones leading in the surveys.

Is it enough that you are a relative of an incumbent politician for you to submit your certificate of candidacy and decide to run for an elected post, and a Senator at that. Is it enough that you are a celebrity  idolized by many to hold a public office, is it enough that you are the wife, husband, brother, sister or whatever relative of an incumbent for you to run for a national or regional post? There are so many questions about the ability, capability, competence and sanity of these candidates, like where will they get the money for such a nationwide campaign? Or what is their platform of government? How will a movie star work in the Senate or Congress?

Another point that has to be checked and believe me there has been a lot of attempts to change this, is the dynasty system. Why is there not a limitation or prohibition that limits if not totally eliminates multiple relatives in government. Take for example the family of the current Vice President, he has children running for mayor, a seat in congress and a seat in the senate in this year’s election. So why can’t this be stopped, his family is not the only one with multiple relatives running in this elections.

But for the worst part, the saddest actually, is in the part of the voters who will actually vote for these candidates. There are those who choose their candidates solely or in part due to their popularity, their beauty, their wealth or the amount of donations they have given during their sorties to their towns.

The victims are those candidates who are capable to lead but lost due to these kind of voters and the country itself. I just pray that the voters are guided by God to make the right decisions and that they think of the future of their children and their families when they make that all important decision. Also, may those candidates who will will put GOD ahead of their desires, the people and the country second and not think of recuperating their expenses during their campaign.

Let us all pray for our country.

Luck, Superstition, Fate and Faith in the New Year

As the year comes to a close people prepare to welcome the coming new year with new hopes, enthusiasm and tradition. There are those who take this opportunity to have their family reunions or see some long lost friends or make new ones.

In my case, we make it a point that our old college group gets to spend the night and the wee hours of the morning in celebration of dining, drink and merry making after all we have been doing this tradition for the past 33 yrs. Things have changed in those years, I sued to host it every year but after the 30th, we all agreed that we will take turns hosting the event and just make sure that every 5 years i will host it. The appearances may have changed, the topics may be different as it was more current events rather than history. It used to be reminiscing the college days but now it is about our kids, who are graduating, what businesses are we into and what type of sickness and medication we are on after all we are mostly in the 48 - 50+ age range. Nevertheless it was still lots of fun.

But what is it that we really do when we welcome the new year? Most of us go into traditions or rituals that supposedly prepares the new year for better promises. We use fire crackers to drive away the evil spirits of the old year and welcome the new year with a bang. But as we continue this tradition, check yourself as you brag about the amount you spent on them with your friends while lighting them and then regret spending that huge amount the day after when your hang-over is gone. That tradition is not even local, but was given to us by Chinese settlers in the old days. You start your year with regret and hopefully not in the hospital for injuries you might have sustained while playing with these pyrotechnics while intoxicated.

Another tradition is the gathering of 12 different round fruits which is supposed to symbolize money for each month of the year, we put them as the centrepiece of our dinner table and do not touch them until they are all dried up and become rotten. We dare not eat them as it is not part of tradition. Then when you are starting to throw them out a week after, you complain of the fruit flies and the money you spent buying them and not even able to eat them. Again you start of the year with bitterness having wasted money.

So what other traditions do we do to ward of bad luck and welcome the year with hopes of good luck:

1. There is the opening of all lights, all doors, windows, cabinets and drawers which signifies a "welcome" to the luck of the new year. Look at this rationally, you open all your doors and windows a midst the pyrotechnics and fire crackers so you just allowed all that gun powder smoke and dirt into your home and drawers. 

2. The scattering of coins on the steps of your stairs, window sills, door ways and the floor - you just made your house very unsafe as people can slip on those coins and break something.

3. The wearing of polka dot clothes - now why would you spend on something that you will not wear on a regular basis since you would look like a clown in those polka dot clothes.

4. Putting of coins and new paper bills in your pockets - it is suppose to give you luck so that you will have money in your pockets always. Now how can you do that it you do not have a job or are a plain housewife who has no income. Practical reason dictates that money is not earned on luck.


And so many other traditions and rituals that people do just so that they canhave an edge or that so called luck for the new year.

So why is it that even educated people do this? Some say there is no harm in following tradition, well i say there is since it harmed your pockets and budget. So if you cannot do any of these stuff, logic dictates that you will have a very unlucky and miserable year. 

Isn't it just sad that we based our fate not on faith but on luck. So what happened to prayer and believing in the Lord's promise that He will provide for all of our needs. So what happened to our faith in the Lord, are we saying that the power of luck and superstition is more powerful than what the Lord Almighty can do for us.

Think about it, how can 12 round fruits, pyrotechnics  coins on my window sill,  bills in my pocket and a polka dot shirt predict my future for the coming year? I would rather put my trust on the Lord and see how He surprises me with the numerous blessing He has planned for me.

I am thankful for the past 4 years that the Lord has provided for me and my family. I have lifted up in prayer everything that I need and I mean everything to the Lord. We eat 3 square meals a day, I have a job, my children all are in exclusive college schools, I have a car, a roof over my head and enough to buy the little luxuries in life. I never did any of these traditions and superstitions and I am good. Happy New Year!

To GOD be all the GLORY.