Marvin Isidore "Sid" Macatol Weblog

Terrible question. I guess that's what happens to bloggers when somehow something impedes the flow of thought. Let me tell you what impedes my thoughts these days. I wish to write only about things that make a Pinoy proud. But I also want to be honest. The fact that sometimes I feel like these two seem to be opposed to each other bothers me a lot, such that it impedes my thoughts. Look at my mobile right this very moment. It just made an alert and, my my my... the SMS is a joke about our President. Now, should I blog about it? The question alone already immobilizes my brain. Recently typhoon "Frank" passed by. MV Philippine Princess capsized and around 800 people died, a lot of whom are still right there inside the ship's hull floating upside down in the seas of Romblon. Should I write about it? Both stuff don't make me proud. But I do not want to be a whiner. A lot of Filipinos already are and look at where we are now? Will whining improve our lot? At home, we...

It is easy to think that being a so-called " third world country " everything is backward in this country. That is conventional thinking , which is, in fact, far from reality. The way I see it now, the Philippines is blessed because of technology. Let me describe how the world was when I was a freshman in college in 1985 : 1. There were no cell phones. My parents sent me hand-written letters around once or twice a semester. (I enrolled in U.P. Diliman in Quezon City, while my parents were in Cagayan de Oro City, an hour and a half away by plane, airport-to-airport); 2. There were no computers. We submitted reports using the typewriter; 3. There were no beepers , no text messaging , no instant messaging , and things of that sort, which we almost take for granted these days. Nothing in those days were remotely comparable to these things. 4. There was no internet . You actually had to go to the library to research for information, not to a cafe beside the restaurant. I have lis...

I must give credit where credit is due, and without delay. MY SALUTES TO THE NEW BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION CLEARANCE PROCESSING PEOPLE! I have always known that getting an NBI clearance is now one of the least things we have to worry in the Philippines these days. Thanks to technology .I can no longer recall when I got my own NBI clearance, because it’s in the range of eight to ten years ago. The processing per se was less than an hour, despite the terrifyingly long lines that time, then I was asked to return after two weeks to get my clearance. My salutes to NBI for that. I went to the NBI again. But this time, I did not know what to do exactly, because unlike my previous experience, I was just an authorized representative . My brother brought his family to immigrate to another country, and his wife needed the NBI clearance. They sent me a parcel, and I was supposed to go the NBI with it. What made me really appreciate NBI again is that in 44 minutes, I got the NBI clearance of my si...

I'm 39 years old. But have I grown wiser? If you rate me based on my knowledge about Philippine history, the history of my own beloved country, perhaps I have grown a measly three notches higher because of the three things I learned about Philippine history, which, strangely, I never learned in school! I plan to write about these lessons a long time ago, but I procrastinated. But after learning New Knowledge #3, I blew my top and here I am. New Knowledge #1. Our first "President," Emilio Aguinaldo, ordered the killing of Andres Bonifacio. I never knew that til I enrolled in the University of the Philippines and scoured its library. Did I sleep in my history classes, in all ten years I was in the elementary and high school? My God I could not believe it! I was Salutatorian in elementary and 5th Honorable Mention in high school and I didn't know this very important detail in Philippine history? Wow! Andres Bonifacio was an "illiterate" while Aguinaldo was a we...