The Coming Storm

.

You know something really depressing? Despite all the damning evidence and credible witnesses testifying against President Estrada, and despite the obvious clarity of the crimes he committed which led to his impeachment trial, the verdict of guilt still rests with the Philippine Senate. A two-thirds vote (of 22 senators) is required to convict Erap and dismiss him from office. And that’s most likely not going to happen, simply because more than a third of the senators have vested political interests in keeping Erap as President. (Are rumors true that he is funding their political campaigns? I don’t know, but I do know that many re-electionist senators are blatantly supporting him.)

In short, Erap is going to be acquitted on Feb. 12, despite the avalanche of credible testimony proving his guilt on several charges of corruption and bribery.

And if he is acquitted, there are not enough people opposing his administration to form the critical mass needed for a new revolution. The leading local cultic religions, Iglesia ni Cristo and El Shaddai, which constitute a fair percentage of the poor, uneducated Filipino population, have ordered their followers to support Erap 100%, effectively splitting the cultists off from the largely Catholic masses. Even without the religious discrepancy, Filipino public opinion is unstably divided between support for and outrage over Erap’s administration, so that there is no clear majority. This still will not stop Catholic Archbishop Cardinal Sin from trying to start another “People Power” movement, just in time for the 15th anniversary of the 1986 People Power revolution (when a united Philippines ousted thieving dictator Ferdinand Marcos from his throne).

I see a major socio-political disaster coming. Pray to God for the Philippines, people. It’s going to be a rough, potentially bloody ride.

Index 3

.

By the way, I uploaded index3 this morning. My layout vision is coming to life. Now, whenever you load the site, the index redirect page will randomly select one of three index pages and go to that one; but all of them will have the same content, thanks to the magic of server-side includes. (I just hope the SSI isn’t slowing down the load time unnecessarily.) Whaddayathink?

Internet Diet

.

I’m planning to go on an Internet “diet” this year, cutting down on unnecessary and time-consuming online activities and unsubscribing from useless, extraneous, or redundant free services. I just want to reduce my online presence to the bare essentials. (It may please you to know that Blogger and my home page are NOT among the accounts I plan to delete.) I will, however, unregister myself from ICQ, Hotmail, Mailcity, Unimobile, and a slew of other online services. Those of you who ICQ me a lot (which doesn’t happen much, anyway), I’ll be making myself accessible through email instead.

Manila pollution

.

The pollution in Manila is awful, especially when there’s no wind. There’s a perpetual brown haze hanging over the city, so thick you can not only smell it in the air, but feel it, clinging to the skin. When you enter Makati, central business district, the sunlight turns sickly amber, and when I go out in the streets to travel, the itch in my throat and lungs leaves me with a painful cough.

And it’s getting worse.

Netcabins and the NullPointerException error

.

Netcabins has been changing a few things without telling users in advance. Sort of annoying. Well, I’m about to upload something; I hope this works…

…Okay, it still works! Blogger uploads to Netcabins fine, too. But FTP got a little more complicated. And there are going to be some relatively unobtrusive popups for a few days. I will work to integrate this site with the upcoming changes.

Like the new extra blog page? And notice that the September archive is up there on the right? Yup! I found a way to get rid of the Error 104:java.lang.NullPointerException error in my Blogger archives!

Nice Lunar Eclipse!

.

Wow, that eclipse was beautiful. I didn’t wake up early enough for totality around 4am, but I did catch sight of the moon with a large chunk of shadow still on it by the light of early dawn. Real pretty. And on a clear harvest-moon night, too!

Dinuguan

.

Dinuguan is a delicious Filipino stew made from pig’s blood and meat. Yummy with rice. Just spoon some blood onto your rice, and you have a good meal already. You can buy it at almost any canteen or local fastfood if it’s on the menu for the day. Mmmm. Here’s the recipe, if you’re interested. Use more blood if you want the sauce thicker, but be sure to stir, so it doesn’t clot.

Lunar Eclipse 2001

.

Hey, the first lunar eclipse of the millenium is coming up. Totality will be visible from the Philippines at around moonset in the early morning; probably won’t be able to see it through all the smoke and buildings, but if I can get up around 3am, maybe I can catch the start of the show. Here’s a diagram of the eclipse at GMT. Philippine Standard Time is GMT+8.