Living in the City

Owning a home is one dream many people aspire for. To many, a home is a dream fulfilled, success if you will, a sanctuary of comfort and peace. But is it really? How does a person or his family know if they are ready to own a home? The most essential and basic question to ask is, can you afford it? Do you have the ability and/or the capacity to buy a house or take a mortgage from a financing institution which will help you finance the acquisition. Because this is what it is really about. And what do the financing institutions look for when evaluating an applicant seeking for a housing loan. Common sense tells me, these are some of them: Is the applicant qualified to take a loan? Does his personal financial condition reflect a positive credit history after verification? Is income steady and consistent, can accommodate payment or amortization for the amount applied for. Does he have the integrity to pay back the loan year after year. After verificatio

I think Marikina , the place I am very proud to live in has started another inovative and environment friendly waste management strategy. I think this is what they call the household hazardous waste program, somewhere else. This strategy entails collecting used animal and vegetable oils from community dwellers with the end goal of generating bio-diesel from the collected waste. In other words, recycling. In our subdivision, they have began doing this just this afternoon. I said 'I think' at the beginning of this post because I am not actually sure :-) I hope it's not one of those "trying to have another business" group planning another business venture. I am praying it is 'Munisipyo'-initiated. I remember seeing a news report about an unscrupulous group passing off waste cooking oil as newly refined. WTF is the matter with these people's conscience? But I digress. Normally, vegetable or animal oils will have to be “stabilized for disposal. Land

I saw this movie about car drifting and I just got myself wondering how much energy this sport could consume. Truth is I am not really a car enthusiast much less car race afficionada but sports or hobbies like this can take a toll on global energy consumption not to mention the pollutants it could generate. Not environment friendly at all:-( Here's what I found on You Tube about Car Drifting

My cousin, his wife and two young kids are now based in the U.S. They are both medical health workers there. They came back for a much-needed visit to my sick uncle. Last weekend my Mom, and I, together with the rest of the family set out to see them. Our visit proved happy, boisterous and well, everyone was talking like crazy. Indeed, it was another ‘celebration’. When the noise died down, we were back to getting each other up to speed, great to note that they got a new house around the area where they work, “nothing fancy,” but affordable and comfortable. He got to talking about the fact that he is also in the market for a car. It was deferred because they had to make this trip. He seemed concerned, that his “children needed a good car”, so they can, from time to time, enjoy precious moments of country visit to friends they have made out there. He and the wife mentioned about taking out a car loan . But he wasn’t sure what to get and what type of financing he will use fo

I promised my young children that I would buy our first car in 1993. Whether it was brand new or used I didn't care. After looking around for sometime, we finally got one in May 1994. She was an old Toyota, seen better days. She was baptized with some name I now, can not recall. Quite serviceable, but needed a little paint and re-upholstery job. The children, ecstatic, suggested to color her red for luck. She looked haggard when we first saw her, with all her white color chipping off. So it came to pass. Pretty in that dark red color, she came home one day, looking like she was ready to give us a lot of rides. My children had a lot of fun riding her. They went to school with her, practically everywhere, and we rode like it was the prettiest car around. It was in this Toyota that I took to taking on driving seriously. Over here, our motor vehicle office is quite lax. I got my license before I can drive perfectly:-( Point is I just got the license but never got to practice

I planted this avocado plant almost a year ago perhaps. In fact there were three of them. This one is the non-composted and about 6 inches tall. Today it has grown to 1 1/2 feet. And then there's these two others, but composted. They are of the same age but notice that these two are about 6 inches taller than the non-composted. Today, we have a total of 4 fruit bearing trees in our backyard. 1. Composted Avocados which are about 2 1/2 feet tall 2. Non-composted avocado which is about 1 1/2 feet tall 3. Papaya is about 3 feet tall 4. Jackfruit is about, oh she(he)'s tall almost 15 feet. This was our first fruit bearing tree, which we planted shortly after we moved here more than 5 years ago. 5. Then there's the atis which bore about 6 fruits but last year. But only 2 were good. The rest? The birds ate th

Philippine - born Jose Antonio Vargas, aged, 27 won the Pulitzer Prize for Washington Post's news breaking reportage of the April 2007 Virginia Tech Massacre. Jose Antonio Vargas has been a journalist working for the Washington Post for the last 10 years. The story is about Cho Seung Hui, a South Korean student at Virginia Tech, who killed 32 people before committing suicide. It surprised me to know that Jose Antonio Vargas dug his information from, yup, you may have guessed it right. He used that now popular social networking website, Facebook. I understand that he’s one fellow who uses the internet quite extensively to do his job better. And look where it got him? Winning under the Breaking News Reporting Category, Jose Antonio Vargas was part of the Washington Post Staff who did a “multi-faceted coverage of the deadly shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, telling the developing story in print and online”. The Pulitzer Prize was initiated by Joseph Pulitzer when