Many criticize Noynoy saying he hasn’t done anything. They say that he is only banking on his parent’s popularity.

I couldn’t believe someone who spent 11 years in governance could not have any accomplishments. I wanted to do my own research.

The write-up below appears to be one of the most objective and most complete. Not even Wikipedia has this much information. The source, though, is something that needs to be verified. The information below comes from Carlos Celdran’s blog and is credited to Mai Mislang. It looks legitimate enough, however something like this would have more weight if it came from a more authoritative source.

Speaking of authoritative sources, Inquirer ran an article back in 2009 on Noynoy’s inner circle. Among the names listed were:

• Florencio “Butch” Abad, a vice president of the Liberal Party (LP)
• Cesar Purisima, a former finance secretary
• Juan Santos, a former trade secretary
• Former Social Welfare Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman
• Former peace adviser Teresita Deles

As the saying goes, “a man is known by the company he keeps”.

Personally, I think his best accomplishment would be his clean records, which is something that all the other candidates do not have.

I believe these are there are two most important factors to consider when choosing Noynoy:

1. His clean records
2. His winnability

In a country with very dirty politics, one must use his own intelligence to listen the majority and adjust accordingly. Caveat.

SENATOR BENIGNO “NOYNOY” S. AQUINO III ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN PUBLIC SERVICE

Senator Noynoy Aquino is vigilant in his pursuit of truth, justice and freedom, the fundamental principles that make democracy work in this country that his parents had likewise fought hard to restore. His commitment to preserve, strengthen and continue their legacy is evident in his accomplishments.

I. Positions held
Chairman, Committee on Local Government
Co-chair, Committee on Justice and Human Rights

II. Committee Membership
• Accounts
• Economic Affairs
• Education, Arts and Culture
• Environment and Natural Resources
• Government Corporations and Public Enterprises
• Justice and Human Rights
• National Defense and Security
• Peace, Reunification and Reconciliation
• Public Works
• Trade and Commerce
• Urban Planning, Housing and Development
• Ways and Means
• Youth, Women and Family Relations

III. Senate Bills
Senate Bill No. 1370 – an act granting an annual productivity incentive to all workers in the private sector, establishing mechanisms for its implementation, and for other purposes

Senate Bill No. 1719 – an act limiting the re-appointment of presidential nominees by-passed by the Commission on Appointments (CA)

Senate Bill No. 1710 – an act banning the re-appointment of a regular member of the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) who has already served the full term

Senate Bill No. 2035 – an act requiring the regular maintenance and preservation of all public infrastructures, establishing mechanisms for its implementation and for other purposes

Senate Bill No. 2036 – an act increasing the penalties for non-compliance of the prescribed increases and adjustments in the wage rates of workers, amending for the purpose Republic Act No. 6727

Senate Bill 2159 – an act adopting the doctrine of superior responsibility to all actions involving military personnel, members of the Philippine National Police and other civilians involved in law enforcement

Senate Bill 2160 – an act amending Section 4 of RA 9184, otherwise known as the Government Procurement Reform Act to further restrict exemptions to the requirement of public bidding

Senate Bill 2978 – an act amending the DILG Act to further clarify the relationship between local chief executives and their respective local police chiefs

Senate Bill 3121 – the Budget Impoundment Control Act, which seeks to strengthen legislative oversight over executive spending

IV. Senate Resolutions
Senate Resolution No. 190 – investigating the exercise and implementation of the powers of local chief executives under Republic Act 7160 otherwise known as the “Local Government Code of 1991” in relation to Republic Act 6975 known as the “Philippine National Police (PNP) Law”
and Republic Act 8551 known as “The PNP Reform and Reorganization Act of 1998”

Senate Resolution No. 205 – investigating the bomb explosion at the House of Representatives, condemning in the strongest possible terms the recent bombing at the House of Representatives, extending sympathies to the victims and calling on authorities to conduct a swift and thorough investigation into this incident

Senate Resolution No. 229 – directing the appropriate Senate committees to conduct an inquiry, in aid of legislation, on the circumstances leading to the arrest and ‘processing’ of journalists and media personalities after the Manila Peninsula standoff on 29 November 2007

V. Fiscalizer
The responsibilities of a senator go beyond the drafting of legislation or the creation of policies. As a true representative of the people, Senator Aquino has consistently voiced his concerns on several issues, drawing attention to the anomalies in our current administration.

2009 General Appropriations Act (GAA)
By vigorously examining the General Appropriations Act for 2009 submitted by the Executive, Senator Aquino was able to propose key amendments to the 2009 GAA that seek to tighten congressional oversight on the executive’s use of public funds.

Champion of Human Rights and People’s Participation
At the heart of all legislative and policy-making initiatives is the development and welfare of the people. Senator Aquino has sought the proper relocation of informal settlers and the delineation of authority of parties involved in demolitions such as the MMDA. The bill amending the UDHA is currently underway.

Through his privilege speeches, Senator Aquino has drawn attention to the plight of desaparecidos and victims of extra-judicial killings. He introduced substantial amendments to the Cooperative Code to make it more responsive to the needs of the marginalized sector for which the code was enacted. They are meant to strengthen the cooperative movement by providing for transparent measures for members and officers of cooperatives.

He is also part of the bicameral debates on the Anti-Torture Act.

Accountability to the People
Senator Aquino actively participated in the hearings that investigated a number of reported scandals involving the alleged misuse of public funds, such as the ZTE-NBN deal, the Euro Generals and the Fertilizer Fund scam. These hearings brought to light the need for increased transparency and accountability in the disbursal of taxpayers’ money.

Integrity of the Senate
The series of scandals that stain the reputation of our government has also challenged the Senate of the Philippines as an institution. The recent attempts to amend the Constitution, for instance, have compelled our Senators, including Senator Aquino, to firmly assert their defiant stand on this issue.

Energy Sector
Senator Aquino has been vigilant in the hearings regarding the sale of TRANSCO and PNOC-EDC. Much of his time and energy was spent on the EPIRA and TRANSCO amendments, questioning the sale of revenue-generating assets prior to the privatization of key government corporations. Senator Aquino sought clarification as to whether the sales of these assets were part of a long-term energy development plan or not to ensure that the long-term impact of losing these assets have been considered prior to their sales.

National Integrity
Senator Aquino voted “NO” to the controversial JPEPA because he believed that the Filipino people deserved a better negotiated and mutually beneficial treaty.

VI. Institution builder
Last but not least, Senator Aquino has dedicated his life in public service to strengthening our democratic institutions. Principal among these is his commitment to a genuine party system in the Philippines, as reflected in his membership in and strong commitment to the Liberal Party.

• Executive Vice President, December 18, 2007 to present
• Vice Chairman, March 17, 2006 to December 17, 2007
• Secretary General, 2004 to March 16, 2006
• Vice-Pres. for Luzon, 2002-2004
• Secretary General, 1999-2002
• Chairman of the Board, Central Luzon Congressional Caucus

VII. Accomplishments as three-term member of the House of
Representatives:

A. Positions held

Deputy Speaker, 13th Congress

B. Committee Membership

13th Congress
• Banks & Financial Intermediaries
• Energy
• Export Promotion
• Public Order & Safety

12th Congress
• Civil, Political & Human Rights
• Good Government
• Inter-Parliamentary Relations & Diplomacy
• Public Order & Security

11th Congress
• Agriculture
• Appropriations
• Banks & Financial Intermediaries
• Civil, Political & Human Rights (Vice-Chairman)
• Natural Resources
• Peoples’ Participation
• Public Order & Security
• Suffrage and Electoral Reforms
• Trade & Industry
• Transportation & Communications

C. Priority Bills
• House Bill No. 4251 – granting annual productivity incentives to all workers in the private sector

• House Bill No. 4397 – strengthening the regulatory power of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to effectively enforce consumer laws

• House Bill No. 4252 – increasing the penalties for non-compliance of the prescribed increases and adjustments in the wage rates of workers

• House Bill No. 3616 – extending the reglementary period for the educational qualification for PNP members

• House Bill No. 1842 – providing for the codification of criminal laws

D. Resolutions
• House Resolution No. 65 – inquiry in aid of legislation into the policies and processes of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) in granting rate increases to electric utilities

• House Resolution No. 788 – creating a select Congressional
Oversight Committee on intelligence funds to check and study the use of intelligence funds by government agencies to ensure that funds allocated therefore are utilized for the purpose they are intended

E. Other legislation
a. Introduced an amendment in the General Appropriations Act requiring public bidding in the purchase of petroleum, oil and lubricant products for the Department of National Defense

Related posts:

1. Former Philippine President Corazon “Cory” Cojuangco Aquino passes away after a year of battling colon cancer
2. Why NEDA secretary Romulo Neri did not tell all
3. Was Willie Revillame being rude to Cory Aquino?

Today the world meets the new Logica as it launches the re-branding campaign, centered around the strapline ‘be brilliant together’. Along with it comes a visual refresh of the Logica website and the launching of the new Logica TV website. Beyond the fresh visual identity, it involves a new philosophy on work and life in Logica.

To better illustrate, allow me to repost my response to Super Champion Phine’s blog, which turned into a bit of an essay. As part of the new branding directive, we were asked to answer the question “What does ‘be brilliant together’ mean to you?”. Please do post your comments. I would love to hear from you!

What does ‘be brilliant together’ mean to you?

Being brilliant together for me is all about communication and tapping into the potential of the collective mind in order to achieve results.

It means extending beyond your team to other teams, to other departments, to colleagues in other countries. It means extending beyond the company and involving our stakeholders, our customers, our vendors and service providers, and even our competitors.

Technology will make this possible. The advent of the mobile phone and the Internet has brought people closer together. Communicating has never been easier or more accessible.

One touch of a button and you’re in a video conference with someone halfway around the world. Post your thoughts online and someone is bound to read it — maybe even respond. You can do this at any place and at any time.

At the end of the day, you get results. The wonderful thing about this is neither the quantity nor quality is important. What matters is the experience – the “togetherness”.

And then, we start over again.

Now that is something we should all look forward to.

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2. Happy Halloween!
3. Only In The Philippines

There was a one hour interview on CNBC with Warren Buffet, the second richest man who has donated $31 billion to charity. Here are some very interesting aspects of his life:

1. He bought his first share at age 11 and he now regrets that he
   started too late!
2. He bought a small farm at age 14 with savings from delivering
   newspapers.
3. He still lives in the same small 3 bedroom house in mid-town Omaha,
   that he bought after he got married 50 years ago. He says that he has
   everything he needs in that house. His house does not have a wall or a
   fence.
4. He drives his own car everywhere and does not have a driver or
   security people around him.
5. He never travels by private jet, although he owns the world’s largest
   private jet company.
6. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns 63 companies. He writes only
   one letter each year to the CEOs of these companies, giving them goals
   for the year. He never holds meetings or calls them on a regular basis.
7. He has given his CEO’s only two rules. Rule number 1: do not lose
   any of your share holder’s money. Rule number 2: Do not forget rule
   number 1.
8. He does not socialize with the high society crowd. His past time
   after he gets home is to make himself some popcorn and watch
   television.
9. Bill Gates, the world’s richest man met him for the first time only
   5 years ago. Bill Gates did not think he had anything in common with
   Warren Buffet. So he had scheduled his meeting only for half hour. But
   when Gates met him, the meeting lasted for ten hours and Bill Gates
   became a devotee of Warren Buffet.
10. Warren Buffet does not carry a cell phone, nor has a computer on his
    desk.
11. His advice to young people: Stay away from credit cards and invest
    in yourself.

Article source

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2. Benefitting from heritage estates

Proclamation No. 1841 signed by President Gloria M. Arroyo declares the following regular holidays, special (non-working) days, and special holiday for the year 2010:

Regular Holidays:

Special (Non-Working) Days:

Special Holiday (for all schools):

In addition to the above, a national holiday will be declared for the observance of Eid’l Fitr, the exact date of which will be provided for by the Office on Muslim Affairs.

Full text of Proclamation No. 1841:

Philippine Holidays 2010

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2. Increase productivity by working less
3. Pinoy Big Briber – Political Satire On The Philippine Government

Dear Friends,

Now that the campaign for president and vice-president is in full swing, Gordon and Bayani need you to join them in transforming our country. Together we will build a new future, without corruption and dishonesty, a future of opportunity, jobs and development. With your help success is guaranteed.

The first step is to eradicate corruption, the cancer that is eating away at the fiber of our society. Gordon and Bayani have a three-point plan which will clean the Philippines of corruption in three years.

1. Elected ombudsman
   Politicians are able to go on stealing from the people because they appoint the ombudsman. Ombudsmen are only accountable to their corrupt politician friends, not to the people whose interest they should defend. Give people the power to protect their tax money. Give people the choice on who to prosecute for corruption. Let the people elect the ombudsman.
2. Tougher penalties and stricter enforcement
   To end corruption we must create stronger disincentives against both giver and receiver. Our laws must be obeyed. President Gordon and vice president Fernando will ensure the rule of law is supreme. To create additional disincentives Gordon and Bayani will support minimum jail term for all acts of corruption, from small to big. In 3 years the Philippines will be as clean as Singapore.
3. No pardon for anyone convicted of corruption
   Pardoning anyone or showing any leniency towards those convicted of corruption is what keeps the culture of corruption alive in the Philippines. In Olongapo Gordon was not afraid to arrest anyone, even policemen, suspected of corruption. In the Senate he was not afraid to ask for government officials to be arrested. He will put the corrupt in jail, whoever they are, and make sure they serve their terms.

The tide is changing. Honesty and integrity will defeat corruption and deceit. Together we will build a prosperous Philippines, with well-paying jobs, new opportunities and more rapid progress. Dick Gordon and Bayani Fernando are the only ones with the record to back up their words. They did it in Olongapo, Subic Bay, Marikina and Metro Manila. Now they will do it for the entire Philippines.

Join the wave of change. You too can make change happen! Please spread the word about Gordon and Bayani, volunteer your time or donate to help us bring real, proven change to the Philippines.

Pagbabago. Sigurado.
GordonBayani.com

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On a previous blog post I wrote down how I got Gran Turismo to work on my Sony PSP running 5.00 M33-6 custom firmware.

Now that Tekken 6 is out the updated security layer and encryption has invalidated this method and made it even more difficult for M33 users to run these new games.

I will spare you the boring technical details, but suffice to say it was only a while until it was broken, and people were getting it to run on 5.50 GEN-D firmware. Eventually those who were generous enough shared information how it was done. Some even took the effort to create a patch that will simply the process for the less technically adept folk.

The one that worked for me was a patch created by The__Android. Full instructions on how to use the patch can be found on this forum post.

In a nutshell, here is how I did it (I copied the original instructions and made a few edits):

1. Make a backup of the Tekken 6 ISO (I used the UMD version)
2. Download the Tekken 6 Windows Patcher
3. Extract the contents of the Patch archive and place the 3 files (patch.exe, patch, and eboot-patched.bin) into same folder as the Tekken 6 ISO.
4. Go to the properties of your ISO file and untick the read-only box if it is ticked, then click Apply > Ok.
5. Rename your ISO to “Tekken6″ if you have ‘file extensions’ turned off (this is the default on windows).
   If you have turned ‘hide file extensions for known filetypes’ off you need to rename your ISO to “Tekken6.iso”.
6. Double click patch.exe and press any key to start applying the patch.
7. You should see a lot of dots on the screen when it is patching.
   (If you don’t see the dots either your ISO is read-only or is not named right.)
8. Press any key to close the patcher when its done.
9. Copy the patched “Tekken6.iso” file to your memory stick.
10. Change the settings in the XMB (press the “select” button while in XMB)
    UMD Mode: Sony NP9660
    CPU Clock XMB: Default
    CPU Clock Game: Default
11. Run the game

If all goes well you should now be running Tekken 6 on your 5.00 M33 or higher custom firmware!

Here is a video showing the results on my unit:

Good luck and happy gaming!

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1. Running Gran Turismo Portable on PSP 5.00 M33-6 custom firmware without using a ripkit
2. How to fix “The game could not be started” error on modified Sony PSP
3. Fix Soul Calibur IV: Broken Destiny “The game could not be started” error on PSP 5.00 M33

I have 24 Google Wave invites which I am giving away for free!

If you are interested, simply make a request by posting a comment below.

Make sure you supply your correct e-mail address in the comment form.

Invitation is on a first-come, first-serve basis.

If you don’t know what Google Wave is, the video below pretty much sums it all up. You can also check out the About Google Wave Page.

Happy Waving!

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Every time I ride the MRT or the LRT here in Manila, I take some time to read and appreciate the “Berso sa Metro” series of posters. Sponsored by the Instituto Cervantes of Manila, the posters feature Spanish poems displayed alongside its Filipino translation. To compliment the mood of the poem, the backdrop features works of art or collages of beautiful scenery.

I love these posters for their artistic and poetic value. Aside from promoting the Spanish language, it also helps promote reading which is always a good thing, especially at the MRT where there are a lot of passengers, reading is definitely a good way to kill time while commuting.

Here is one poem that I especially like. I just copied the tagalog translation on my cellphone. I Googled for the original Spanish version and found a copy here. I hope you like it!

Si el hombre pudiera decir

Tú justificas mi existencia:
Si no te conozco, no he vivido;
Si muero sin conocerte, no muero, porque no he vivido

Binigyan mo ng halaga ang aking pag-iral;
Kung di kita nakilala, di sana ako nabuhay;
Kung ako’y mamamatay nang di kita nakilala,
Hindi ako mamamatay, dahil hindi ako nabuhay.

- Luis Cerruda (Sevilla, 1902 – México, 1963)

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To make Gran Turismo Portable run on 5.00 firmware, you will need to decrypt the game’s EBOOT.BIN, patch it, and recreate the ISO or CSO file. This may sound tricky, but it is actually quite simple and easy to do.

First, you will need a copy of the original Gran Turismo Portable ISO (download it here).

Next, you will need the following tools:

• Yoshihiro’s Games Decrypter v3 (download it here)
• UMDGen v4.00 (download it here)

The following steps can be tricky, so read very well and understand to avoid confusion.

Run UMDGen and open the Gran Turismo Portable ISO. You should see something like what I have in the screenshot below.

Inside UMDGen’s Explorer tab, navigate to the GRANTURISMO / PSP_GAME / SYSDIR directory.

Inside this directory there is a file called EBOOT.BIN – right-click on it and choose Extract Selected…

Extract the file and copy it to the root of your PSP memory stick.

Install Yoshihiro’s Games Decrypter by copying the GameZDecryptZ to the ms0:/PSP/GAME/ folder on your PSP memory stick.

Inside your PSP, run GAME DECRYPTER Yoshihiro V3 and choose to press O to decrypt and patch your EBOOT.BIN for 5.xx.

If successful, you should now have a new, patched EBOOT.BIN inside ms0:/DECRYPTOR/ of your PSP memory stick.

Go back to UMDGen and delete EBOOT.BIN by right-clicking on it and selecting Delete.

Import the patched EBOOT.BIN by right-clicking on a blank area and and going to Add -> Existing File(s)…

Save the modified ISO as new, uncompressed ISO or as a compressed CSO or DAX file.

Finally, copy the modified ISO/CSO/DAX into your PSP, start the game, and enjoy!

As proof, I have made this tiny video showing Gran Turismo Portable on my PSP running 5.00 M33-6.

Good luck!

UPDATE (10-Oct-09): For those of you who are still having problems, I have uploaded my patched EBOOT.BIN here.

UPDATE (13-Oct-09): I have uploaded a mirror of the patched EBOOT.BIN onto MediaFire.

Download that file and extract, then follow steps the remaining steps to create a patched ISO.

Related posts:

1. Running Tekken 6 on PSP 5.00 M33-6 or higher custom firmware
2. Fix Soul Calibur IV: Broken Destiny “The game could not be started” error on PSP 5.00 M33
3. How to fix “The game could not be started” error on modified Sony PSP

Found this in a forwarded e-mail. Mr. Sutherland if you are reading this, please drop me a line. If a foreigner writes something good about the Philippines and does it with such a flair, I say he gets free coffee from me!

Matter of Taste

by Matthew Sutherland

I have now been in this country for over six years, and consider myself in most respects well assimilated. However, there is one key step on the road to full assimilation, which I have yet to take, and that’s to eat BALUT. The day any of you sees me eating balut, please call immigration and ask them to issue me a Filipino passport.

Because at that point there will be no turning back. BALUT, for those still blissfully ignorant non-Pinoys out there, is a fertilized duck egg. It is commonly sold with salt in a piece of newspaper, much like English fish and chips, by street vendors usually after dark, presumably so you can’t see how gross it is.

It’s meant to be an aphrodisiac, although I can’t imagine anything more likely to dispel sexual desire than crunching on a partially formed baby duck swimming in noxious fluid. The embryo in the egg comes in varying stages of development, but basically it is not considered macho to eat one without fully discernable feathers, beak, and claws. Some say these crunchy bits are the best. Others prefer just to drink the so-called ’soup’, the vile, pungent liquid that surrounds the aforementioned feathery fetus…excuse me; I have to go and throw up now. I’ll be back in a minute.

Food dominates the life of the Filipino. People here just love to eat.

They eat at least eight times a day. These eight official meals are called, in order: breakfast, snacks, lunch, merienda, pica-pica, pulutan, dinner, and no-one-saw-me-take-that-cookie-from-the-fridge-so-it-doesn’t-count.

The short gaps in between these mealtimes are spent eating Sky Flakes from the open packet that sits on every desktop. You’re never far from food in the Philippines. If you doubt this, next time you’re driving home from work, try this game. See how long you can drive without seeing food and I don’t mean a distant restaurant, or a picture of food. I mean a man on the sidewalk frying fish balls, or a man walking through the traffic selling nuts or candy. I bet it’s less than one minute.

Here are some other things I’ve noticed about food in the Philippines.

Firstly, a meal is not a meal without rice – even breakfast. In the UK, I could go a whole year without eating rice. Second, it’s impossible to drink without eating. A bottle of San Miguel just isn’t the same without gambas or beef tapa. Third, no one ventures more than two paces from their house without baon and a container of something cold to drink. You might as well ask a Filipino to leave home without his pants on.

And lastly, where I come from, you eat with a knife and fork. Here, you eat with a spoon and fork. You try eating rice swimming in fish sauce with a knife.

One really nice thing about Filipino food culture is that people always ask you to SHARE their food. In my office, if you catch anyone attacking their baon, they will always go, “Sir! KAIN TAYO!” (”Let’s eat!”). This confused me, until I realized that they didn’t actually expect me to sit down and start munching on their boneless bangus. In fact, the polite response is something like, “No thanks, I just ate.”

But the principle is sound – if you have food on your plate, you are expected to share it, however hungry you are, with those who may be even hungrier. I think that’s great. In fact, this is frequently even taken one step further. Many Filipinos use “Have you eaten yet?” (”KUMAIN KA NA?”) as a general greeting, irrespective of time of day or location.

Some foreigners think Filipino food is fairly dull compared to other Asian cuisines. Actually lots of it is very good: Spicy dishes like Bicol Express (strange, a dish named after a train); anything cooked with coconut milk; anything KINILAW; and anything ADOBO. And it’s hard to beat the sheer wanton, cholesterolic frenzy of a good old-fashioned LECHON de leche feast. Dig a pit, light a fire, add 50 pounds of animal fat on a stick, and cook until crisp. Mmm, mmm… you can actually feel your arteries constricting with each successive mouthful.

I also share one key Pinoy trait — a sweet tooth. I am thus the only foreigner I know who does not complain about sweet bread, sweet burgers, sweet spaghetti, sweet banana ketchup, and so on. I am a man who likes to put jam on his pizza. Try it!

It’s the weird food you want to avoid. In addition to duck fetus in the half-shell, items to avoid in the Philippines include pig’s blood soup (DINUGUAN); bull’s testicle soup, the strangely-named “SOUP NUMBER FIVE” (I dread to think what numbers one through four are); and the ubiquitous, stinky shrimp paste, BAGOONG, and it’s equally stinky sister, PATIS. Filipinos are so addicted to these latter items that they will even risk arrest or deportation trying to smuggle them into countries like Australia and the USA , which wisely ban the importation of items you can smell from more than 100 paces.

Then there’s the small matter of the blue ice cream. I have never been able to get my brain around eating blue food; the ubiquitous UBE leaves me cold.

And lastly on the subject of weird food, beware: that CALDERETANG KAMBING (goat) could well be KALDERETANG ASO (dog)…

The Filipino, of course, has a well-developed sense of food. Here’s a typical Pinoy food joke: “I’m on a seafood diet. “What’s a seafood diet?” “When I see food, I eat it!”

Filipinos also eat strange bits of animals — the feet, the head, the guts, etc., usually barbecued on a stick. These have been given witty names, like “ADIDAS” (chicken’s feet); “KURBATA” (either just chicken’s neck, or “neck and thigh” as in “neck-tie”); “WALKMAN” (pigs ears); “PAL” (chicken wings); HELMET” (chicken head); “IUD” (chicken intestines), and BETAMAX” (video-cassette-like blocks of animal blood). Yum, yum. Bon appetit.

“A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches” — (Proverbs 22:1)

WHEN I arrived in the Philippines from the UK six years ago, one of the first cultural differences to strike me was names. The subject has provided a continuing source of amazement and amusement ever since.

The first unusual thing, from an English perspective, is that everyone here has a nickname. In the staid and boring United Kingdom, we have nicknames in kindergarten, but when we move into adulthood we tend, I am glad to say, to lose them.

The second thing that struck me is that Philippine names for both girls and boys tend to be what we in the UK would regard as overbearingly cutesy for anyone over about five. Fifty-five-year-olds colleague put it. Where I come from, a boy with a nickname like Boy Blue or Honey Boy would be beaten to death at school by pre-adolescent bullies, and never make it to adulthood. So, probably, would girls with names like Babes, Lovely, Precious, Peachy or Apples.

Yuk, ech ech. Here, however, no one bats an eyelid. Then I noticed how many people have what I have come to call “door-bell names”. These are nicknames that sound like -well, doorbells.

There are millions of them. Bing, Bong, Ding, and Dong are some of the more common. They can be, and frequently are, used in even more door-bell-like combinations such as Bing-Bong, Ding-Dong, Ting-Ting, and so on. Even one of their senator has a doorbell named Ping. None of these doorbell names exist where I come from, and hence sound unusually amusing to my untutored foreign ear.

Someone once told me that one of the Bings, when asked why he was called Bing, replied, “because my brother is called Bong”. Faultless logic. Dong, of course, is a particularly funny one for me, as where I come from “dong” is a slang word for well; perhaps “talong” is the best Tagalog equivalent.

Repeating names was another novelty to me, having never before encountered people with names like Len-Len, Let-Let, Mai-Mai, or Ning-Ning. The secretary I inherited on my arrival had an unusual one: Leck-Leck. Such names are then frequently further refined by using the “squared” symbol, as in Len2 or Mai2. This had me very confused for a while.

Then there is the trend for parents to stick to a theme when naming their children. This can be as simple as making them all begin with the same letter, as in Jun, Jimmy, Janice, and Joy.

More imaginative parents shoot for more sophisticated forms of assonance or rhyme, as in Biboy, Boboy, Buboy, Baboy (notice the names get worse the more kids there are – best to be born early or you could end up being a Baboy).

Even better, parents can create whole families of, say, desserts (Apple Pie, Cherry Pie, Honey Pie) or flowers (Rose, Daffodil, Tulip). The main advantage of such combinations is that they look great painted across your trunk if you’re a cab driver. That’s another thing I’d never seen before coming to Manila-taxis with the driver’s kids’ names on the trunk.

Another whole eye-opening field for the foreign visitor is the phenomenon of the “composite” name. This includes names like Jejomar (for Jesus, Joseph and Mary), and the remarkable Luzviminda (for Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, believe it or not). That’s a bit like me being called something like “Engscowani” (for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland ).

Between you and me, I’m glad I’m not.

And how could I forget to mention the fabulous concept of the randomly inserted letter ‘h’. Quite what this device is supposed to achieve, I have not yet figured out, but I think it is designed to give a touch of class to an otherwise only averagely weird name. It results in creations like Jhun, Lhenn, Ghemma, and Jhimmy.. Or how about Jhun-Jhun (Jhun2)?

How boring to come from a country like the UK full of people with names like John Smith. How wonderful to come from a country where imagination and exoticism rule the world of names.

Even the towns here have weird names; my favorite is the unbelievably named town of Sexmoan (ironically close to Olongapo and Angeles). Where else in the world could that really be true?

Where else in the world could the head of the Church really be called Cardinal Sin? Where else but the Philippines!

Note: Philippines has a senator named Joker, and it is his legal name.

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