Maniolas

Easter is about a fresh start. The sins and omissions of the past are of the past and the time has come for change in the hope of better outcomes. In the temperate countries, Easter happens in Spring and Mother Nature celebrates the fresh start with green leaves sprouting out of barren tree twigs and branches. Colorful flowers once again bring life to what was a desolate winter landscape. We make mistakes in the course of our lives that bring us down and make us lose hope. But the secret in living is doing fresh starts. Even our computers need that sometimes and we call that reboot, restart, refresh. But when it comes to running our country, our leaders are deathly afraid of fresh starts. They insist on the same old programs that have failed for decades. Someone (it could have been Einstein, Benjamin Franklin or a Chinese proverb) once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It describes the approach our government has taken through several administrations with regard to national problems. Totally insane! I realize that with a little more than a year left in P-Noy’s watch, he will have little desire to tinker with failed programs. He did nothing for almost five years because it is easier to blame past administrations for continuing failure. There is such a thing as getting comfortable with failure and we have perfected that art and called it resilience. Business ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch: Read More …

MANILA, Philippines – Malacañang has expressed serious concern anew over China’s reported massive “reclamation activities” in disputed areas in the West Philippines Sea (South China Sea), affirming the Department of Foreign Affairs’ claim that Beijing has been accelerating its expansionist agenda in the region. Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma asserted on Sunday such activities “should not have been taking place since the maritime entitlement claims of countries (including the Philippines and China) have yet to be resolved.” Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam also have claims in the West Philippine Sea. Speaking during the weekly “Pilipinas, Pilipinas” public affairs program over the state-run Radyo ng Bayan, Coloma also pointed out that the same activities have complicated disputes over the archipelago. They also ran contrary to Manila’s call for a peaceful settlement of maritime disputes in the area, he said. Coloma, also head of the Presidential Communications Operations Office, reiterated the government’s repeated call for a legally binding “Code of Conduct” to settle the long-raging disputes peacefully. The Philippines and some other countries in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean are pushing for the approval of the code to replace the non-binding 2002 Declaration of Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. President Aquino had told a recent forum with foreign correspondents that the Chinese-reclaimed land in the disputed waters, if used militarily, could be a “game changer” in the future settlement of disputes. Aquino also said the Philippines has been seeking an internationally recognized settlement of the Read More …

“What would you do if God gave you a second chance?” This is the question Filipina-American author Karen Henson Jones posts in her book, “Heart of Miracles,” chronicling her near-death experience and the struggles she had to face as she journeyed back to life. “Would you change your old life? Would you love the same things you used to love, want the same things you used to want? Would you believe in the same things you never believed in before?” These questions she asks in her book are the same questions we can reflect on this Easter season. After all, for Christians like myself, Christ rising from the dead signals a rebirth, new hope, new life. For Jones, who has a condition called Long QT Syndrome, a type of Sudden Arrhythmia Death Syndrome, her journey back to life began when she suffered a sudden cardiac arrest at the age of 30, while working a high-powered a job in London. In “Heart of Miracles,” she describes her year of long hours losing count of how many e-mails she responded to on a daily basis, balancing spreadsheets in the “hundreds of millions of dollars,” long hours in front of the computer, meetings. While these tasks, she said, earned her a “respectable paycheck” every two weeks, she wondered if there was more to life than that. She was, in a way, forced to take these random musings more seriously when her life started changing, causing her to endure much pain, physically, mentally and Read More …