Defend Life: Walk For Life 2011

The Knights of Columbus Luzon jurisdiction held its annual Pro-Life activity dubbed as Walk for Life on Saturday, March 26, 2011 with the theme “We value Life.” Five thousand members of the Knights of Columbus from Metro Manila and nearby provinces with their families and friends united in order to reiterate their stance against the Reproductive Health Bill and to promote life.

The Order of the Knights of Columbus is a staunch defender of life and the “Walk for Life,” is one of the actions taken to promote life in a national scale. In Manila the Walk for Life started with the Eucharistic celebration at 6:00 am held at San Agustin Church in Intramuros, Manila. The participants led by Luzon Deputy and Supreme Director, Alonso Tan marched from Gen. Luna St. in Intramuros, Manila to Rajah Sulayman Park in Malate, Manila.

Subsequently, a program was held where resource persons talked about the contentious issues of the Reproductive Health Bill and related topics on family and life.

@ Rajah Sulayman Park with brother Knights :)

Gen Luna St. @ Intramuros

Brothers!

Update 03.28.11

Lent truly is the busiest time of the liturgical year for me. Though school has just ended, I've been round and about various church activities in preparation for the Holy Week (and so much more) that I'm finding it hard to update. So just to give you an overview on my upcoming posts, here's a list of what I've been up to lately:

• Tenor Mode: My brother and I have been helping out another men's choir in our parish so we've been singing our hearts out now for three consecutive morning celebrations of the Mass during Sundays. We also sang last Saturday with our brother Knights in the Eucharistic celebration held at San Agustin Church in Intramuros, Manila that marked the start of this year's Walk for Life, the Order's Pro-Life activity to unite and reiterate their stance against the Reproductive Health Bill.
• Thesis Mode?: I will be posting my reflection of this year's 3rd National Engineering Science Research Conference held at Bulwagang Balagtas (NALRC Bldg). at PUP, we were required to attend last Thursday as part of our final requirement in Research Methods. I felt my brain got a little bigger from digesting all those interesting presentations on the various field of research.
• Internship Mode: Yeah, I've been racking my brains out in finding the perfect architectural slash construction firm that will assist me in my completion of this summer's another 200 hours of diversified experience in construction. The supposed official starting period of my on-the-job training is next week so wish me luck in my ethereal hunt. I just paved the restaurant and bar-studded streets of Timog Avenue in my quest for contacts. I am so crossing my fingers with these ones.
• Tenor Mode 2: Ahaha. I've been working on a series of recordings driven by my OCD inclinations to compile and document particular voicings of church songs I've learned as a trying-hard tenor. This I'm quite excited to share with y'all :)
• Apostle Mode: Guess what my brother and I have signed up for this coming Holy Week? Oof, if you could only imagine... *laughs*
• Pagninilay Mode: With all the racket that's been going on, I feel all the more compelled with my solitary sessions of introspection. *sigh* there really are some things that are bound to catch up no matter how fast we run and how deep we hide.

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Idleness is a luxury of childhood.

Crush Profile: Model in Print

I was reading my favorite Saturday newspaper section when I came across an article about Cirq Regal, the final showcase of the University of Santo Tomas (UST) College of Fine Arts and Design (CFAD) held Feb. 9 at the NBC Tent at Fort Bonifacio. (Read full article here)

I've heard about this night of fashion from friends and seen pictures of the collection posted over their Facebook pages, yet what struck me the most in this article was this runway shot of a familiar face at the bottom of the page. A model looking like a doll in a structured dress with a big accent pink button, marigold scarf and pink headband.

Then all at once, I realized who she was. Oh, I could never forget her face. She's the girl I've been blabbering all over my elementary journal - my seat mate in 6th grade whom I've had this HUGE crush on since Day 1. I remember I was quite 'obsessed' on her back then, even keeping poems she mindlessly scribbles on scratch papers or the bits of trash - junk food and candy wrappers - she would readily discard. Ooohhh, quite a memory.

Well, I don't know what happened next, but out of excitement I somehow leaped from our sofa right up to the second floor of our apartment, feeling giddy while telling everyone that this lady in print was once my seat mate and good friend back in elementary. Ching!

I just hope I won't get in trouble for posting her picture here without any permission nor censorship for anonymity. All in the name of mushiness, I feel like in elementary again wallowing in puppy love. Ack.

Introspection

ArchInspire #021: Spot the Difference

Though I'm a crammer (a character which I shamelessly admit but proudly struggles with), it is very fulfilling to be able to see any improvement in my preferred field of design given the nick of time I'm given to work on a particular project. Of course, I would not be able to accomplish anything without the help of the available tools - computer softwares and programs - that makes life so easy (an understatement!) 

This time while I was tinkering with the SketchUp plug-ins I copied from a friend, I discovered the excitement on instant 3D rendering brought by Podium. I felt giddy for once again in my life. The results are a graphically genuine eye candy :)

Exhibit A: Puso de Bola Project with Ate Jay

ExhibitB: Sweet Sage Cafe Project with Theofratus' gang :)

ArchInspire #020: *sigh*

Why do I keep hitting myself with a hammer? 

Because it feels SOOO good when I stop.

Nag-gm ako kanina kung sinong free. Kagagaling ku lang sa skul after magpasa ng final requirement sa Design 8. It was the medical tourism cluster development I've been raving about in my last posts. Mataas yung grade namin sa huling submission. Pero andame talagang anik-anik na dapat tapusin kapag mageend na ang sem kaya ayun. Gusto ko uminom. Kaso walang kainuman. Ahaha. I realized na wala pala akong ibang kaibigan kundi yung mga kasama ku rin sa skul. Ampf. Ewan. Magninilay na lang ako habang kumakain ng pansit at dinuguan.

Eto nga pala yung animation sa SketchUp Pro 7 na aking walang habas na kinram kanina. Nangapa lang ako kaya ganyan ang hitsura kaya pasensya na. Yung mga still pictures naman eh ni-render lang sa plug-in na Podium which I will briefly discuss in another post. Gusto kong i-post ang lahat ng bunga ng aming mga eyebugs kaso nahihiya naman ako na baka ma-okray. O sya sya. I wll leave you na lang with just these. Enjoy watching mga kapitbahay. Pasensya na hinde ako nakapag-bloghop lately :)

Music Credit: 'Chase' by Kajiura Yuki; Xenosaga II Scene Soundtrack CD1

Mass Hysteria

Image borrowed here

A rush of students flooded the LRT station. Some looked worried. Others looked simply apathetic. Patiently we waited for our turn in that long stuffy ticket line.

Everyone's talking about the latest buzz in town - after Friday's magnitude 8.9 earthquake in Japan, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is still in an 'alarming' state following a blast at its number 3 reactor, probably a hydrogen explosion. Text messages were all over the place warning to stay indoors lest you want to be exposed to some nasty radiation that got leaked and carried away by the wind from the north.

2pm.  Skeptic after overhearing from a weather report that there was no need to worry, I completely dismissed the forwarded messages as a hoax. But my jokes regarding the radiation's effect on my oh-so-bumpy complexion - fruits of labor from my sleepless nights - turned into complete horror as we watched our chairperson going over classrooms announcing the suspension of classes made by the university administration. Cold chills ran down my spine. Anxious remarks were apparent. Apocalyptic images I've seen from CNN started flashing inside my head. Is this friggin' serious? I can't believe all these are happening. It was all so scary. The campus was evacuated. A rush of students flooded the LRT station. A tense aura enveloped the atmosphere.

5pm. I received another text message from a friend that all the shiznits were simply a product of the circulating hoax text messages. Shiznit. Perhaps it was the worried look from our chairperson's face that scared me the most. Shiznit. I realized I have a final exam tomorrow and we're still three-quarters done working on a final requirement.

False alarm. Student life goes on. Another whopping shiznit.

Life is like a Cup of Coffee

Image borrowed here

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups – porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive – telling them to help themselves to the coffee.

When all had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: “If you noticed, all the nice-looking expensive cups have been taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases, it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups... And then you began eyeing each other’s cups.

Now consider this: life is the coffee; the jobs, money, and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of life we live.

Some time by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee. Savor the coffee, not the cups! The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything.”

+ Fr. Ogie Magbanua, SSP; Sambuhay Yr. 24 No. 50; 15th March 2011

Hooked!

I am so hooked at yet another feisty series. Image borrowed here 

The early bird catches the worm. A stitch in time saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can’t pretend we haven’t been told. We’ve all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, (and) heard the damn poets urging us to seize the day. Still sometimes, we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today’s possibilities under tomorrow’s rug until we can’t anymore, until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin meant. That knowing is better than wandering, that waking is better than sleeping. And that even the biggest failure, even the worst, most intractable mistake, beats the hell out of never trying. Grey’s Anatomy, episode 6

ArchInspire #021.A: Midori MediTour Cluster Development

{MIDORI}: A Proposed Medical Tourism Cluster Development for our subject course in Architectural Design 8 is the last design problem our group worked on before our feat in thesis writing began. The exterior aesthetic itself has a lot of flaws - mainly consistency and coherence. Some of the members (including me) clearly failed to reach the standards we have set on the process of the design, while others conjured up something that looked a bit too avante-garde.

*sighs* We nevertheless managed to submit our board presentations on time though clearly there is much left to be improved. Next to SAGWAN Housing Project, it was our group's second take on an all non-manual presentation, something that must stir us up for the more critical times ahead.

 

 

 

ArchInspire #019: Upon the Rock

"Alam nyo bang sa pagtatayo ng mga high-rise na condominiums, kung gaano kataas ang building eh dapat ganun din kalalim ang hukay ng foundation nito?"

Bear with me. This is more like a Christian post rather than the usual architectural subject matter. That was the catchy introduction of Fr. Reynolds, a new guest priest in our parish that stole my full attention at the start of his sermon in the mass. Pang-architect at engineers - panay ang ngisi namin ng kapatid ko. Nirelate nya yung metaphor na yun sa message ng gospel for this Sunday. Napaka-powerful. Tagus-tagusan. Astegh. 

"Not every one who says to me, `Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, `Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, `I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers.'

"Every one then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And every one who hears these words of mine and does NOT do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it."

 Matthew 7: 21-27

He ended his sermon with another striking metaphor. Picture every Sunday Mass as a lecture class from the Lord. And each time we left the church with the gospel's message in our hearts, we are challenged with an assignment to accomplish for the daily grind of the week ahead. Performing these with full sincerity, we can say to the Lord that truly we have been a good Christian - not just by listening and believing, but as well as putting this faith in practice.

Gossip Boy

I'm done with the second season of Gossip Girl. LOL. Wasn't really expecting I'd get hooked :) Am off to the next season! Ahaha. XOXO. Archiboy.

Creative Juice #024

As opposed to the festivities clichéd during college weeks, I believe the days with no classes have ultimately contributed to the uncreative morbidity and melancholic drama that struck me last week. Thankfully, with a bit of pagninilay done, all those shindigs are over so my eyes are now on the prize again - that is to get on with our feasibility requirement in Regional Planning and our final major plate of a medical tourism development in Design.

I truly missed all the scheming, sketching, planning, thinking, analyzing, conceptualizing and brain-farting part of me. So that's what am going to relearn right about just now until the end of this month. Am super thankful to all who sympathized with me in my last post so now I brought a rather happy treat to you all from Thailand! LOL. Just kidding. 

These are from last week's visit in a History of Architecture booth featuring the architecture of Thailand made from scrap materials (loved the terracotta egg cartons!) by junior students as part of their requirement in History. Brings back memories from our last year's Japan Architecture booth :) weee!

N and B spotted on a faux-romantic camwhoring trip in Southeast Asia. LOLJK!