There is no other way to dance but with abandon

The Church of St. Francis Javier is said to be miraculous and is frequently visited by both tourists as well as locals. It sits on top of a mountain, within the village of Hanginan in Maasin, Southern Leyte - named as such because of the gentle and cool winds that pass the town throughout the day. It is a quiet little town home to people who sell souvenirs, coconut bibingka, and food to tired but successful trekkers.


For non-professional hikers, the trek to the top of the mountain takes around 2 hours and 1 hour to go back down. One starts the hike on rocky and uneven soil, but after 45 minutes, one will be surprised to find a cemented path. The steepness of the climb ranges from around 40 to 60 degrees.





The last stretch was the hardest, as one has to climb steep stairs on to the village of Hanginan. These stairs were made harder by the fact that each was a meter apart, so one had to take big steps for every step.




But the view was spectacular - land formations ala chocolate hills of Bohol on one side and the mountains meeting the ocean on the other - which greatly helped in alleviating our exhaustion.





















Going up, we didn't know that the church was named after St. Francis Javier. Upon reaching the top, Patring, our wikipedia of saints, excitedly proclaimed St. Francis Javier as the bestfriend of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Ateneo's patron saint. We sincerely believed that it wasn't just a coincidence, and fervently prayed and offered candles for our group to pass the bar.

I'm going to Baguio this November 12-14 to help organize an indigenous people's paralegal training. Para sulitin ang aking trip, I'm planning to go straight to Sagada na after.

I'm serious about this trip. If anyone wants to go, contact me before Nov 11  so we can plan it.

Good day!

Guys, guess what! I bought a swimsuit for Sagada!!!

-Leah Labadan, Juris Doctor Ateneo Law, thinking Sagada was a beach

I love you Leah, you make life in Ateneo so colorful and happy.

I found this interesting and hilarious. Thanks Tin.

What am I doing wrong?

Okay, I'm tired of beating around the bush. I'm a beautiful
(spectacularly beautiful) 25 year old girl. I'm articulate and classy. I'm not from New York. I'm looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don't think I'm overreaching at all.

Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board? Any wives? Could you send me some tips? I dated a business man who makes average around 200 - 250. But that's where I seem to hit a roadblock. 250,000 won't get me to central park west. I know a woman in my yoga class who was married to an investment banker and lives in Tribeca, and she's not as pretty as I am, nor is she a great genius. So what is she doing right? How do I get to her level?

Here are my questions specifically:

- Where do you single rich men hang out? Give me specifics- bars,
restaurants, gyms

-What are you looking for in a mate? Be honest guys, you won't hurt my feelings

-Is there an age range I should be targeting (I'm 25)?

- Why are some of the women living lavish lifestyles on the upper east side so plain? I've seen really 'plain jane' boring types who have nothing to offer married to incredibly wealthy guys. I've seen drop dead gorgeous girls in singles bars in the east village. What's the story there?

- Jobs I should look out for? Everyone knows - lawyer, investment
banker, doctor. How much do those guys really make? And where do they hang out? Where do the hedge fund guys hang out?

- How you decide marriage vs. just a girlfriend? I am looking for
MARRIAGE ONLY

Please hold your insults - I'm putting myself out there in an honest
way. Most beautiful women are superficial; at least I'm being up front about it. I wouldn't be searching for these kind of guys if I wasn't able to match them - in looks, culture, sophistication, and keeping a nice home and hearth.           *                

PostingID: 432279810

THE ANSWER
Dear Pers-431649184:
I read your posting with great interest and have thought meaningfully about your dilemma. I offer the following analysis of your predicament.

Firstly, I'm not wasting your time, I qualify as a guy who fits your
bill; that is I make more than $500K per year. That said here's how I see it.

Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is plain and simple a cr@ppy business deal. Here's why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party and I bring my money. Fine, simple. But here's the rub, your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity...in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won't be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset. Not only are you a depreciating asset, your depreciation accelerates! Let me explain, you're 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!

So in Wall Street terms, we would call you a trading position, not a buy and hold...hence the rub...marriage. It doesn't make good business sense to "buy you" (which is what you're asking) so I'd rather lease. In case you think I'm being cruel, I would say the following. If my money were to go away, so would you, so when your beauty fades I need an out. It's as simple as that. So a deal that makes sense is dating, not marriage.

Separately, I was taught early in my career about efficient markets. So, I wonder why a girl as "articulate, classy and spectacularly beautiful" as you has been unable to find your sugar daddy. I find it hard to believe that if you are as gorgeous as you say you are that the $500K hasn't found you, if not only for a tryout.

By the way, you could always find a way to make your own money and then we wouldn't need to have this difficult conversation.

With all that said, I must say you're going about it the right way.
Classic "pump and dump."

I hope this is helpful, and if you want to enter into some sort of
lease, let me know.

I need new boxing gloves, but the ones here are thin and expensive. In Thailand they're cheaper and of better quality. If anyone can help me with my predicament, I would be eternally grateful.

YouTube is of no help. For those who haven't seen the video, check it out from this site:

http://janofalltrades.blogspot.com/2007/09/little-bacteria-that-could.html

thanks jan of all trades, for being quick enough to get a copy before YouTube took it away.

Sadly I've only read a handful from this list. But I proclaim that the time will come that I'll be able to read books of my choice, at my own pace, without recitation afterwards.

List grabbed from G-ann.

100 Greatest Novels List as per Time Magazine

1.The Adventures of Augie March
Saul Bellow

2. All the King's Men
Robert Penn Warren

3. American Pastoral
Philip Roth

 

4. An American Tragedy
Theodore Dreiser

5. Animal Farm
George Orwell

6. Appointment in Samarra
John O'Hara

7. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
Judy Blume

8. The Assistant
Bernard Malamud

9. At Swim-Two-Birds
Flann O'Brien

10. Atonement
Ian McEwan

11. Beloved
Toni Morrison

12. The Berlin Stories
Christopher Isherwood

13. The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler

14. The Blind Assassin
Margaret Atwood

15. Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy

16. Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh

17. The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Thornton Wilder

18. Call It Sleep
Henry Roth

19. Catch-22
Joseph Heller

20. The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger

21. A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess

22. The Confessions of Nat Turner
William Styron

23. The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen

24. The Crying of Lot 49
Thomas Pynchon

25. A Dance to the Music of Time
Anthony Powell

26. The Day of the Locust
Nathanael West

27. Death Comes for the Archbishop
Willa Cather

28. A Death in the Family
James Agee

29. The Death of the Heart
Elizabeth Bowen

30. Deliverance
James Dickey

31. Dog Soldiers
Robert Stone

32. Falconer
John Cheever

33. The French Lieutenant's Woman
John Fowles

34. The Golden Notebook
Doris Lessing

35. Go Tell it on the Mountain
James Baldwin

36. Gone With the Wind
Margaret Mitchell

37. The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck

38. Gravity's Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon

39. The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald

40. A Handful of Dust
Evelyn Waugh

41. The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
Carson McCullers

42. The Heart of the Matter
Graham Greene

43. Herzog
Saul Bellow

44. Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson

45. A House for Mr. Biswas
V.S. Naipaul

46. I, Claudius
Robert Graves

47. Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace

48. Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison

49. Light in August
William Faulkner

50. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis

51. Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov

52. Lord of the Flies
William Golding

53. The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien

54. Loving
Henry Green

55. Lucky Jim
Kingsley Amis

56. The Man Who Loved Children
Christina Stead

57. Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie

58. Money
Martin Amis

59. The Moviegoer
Walker Percy

60. Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf

61. Naked Lunch
William Burroughs

62. Native Son
Richard Wright

63. Neuromancer
William Gibson

64. Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro

65. 1984
George Orwell

66. On the Road
Jack Kerouac

67. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Ken Kesey

68. The Painted Bird
Jerzy Kosinski

69. Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov

70. A Passage to India
E.M. Forster

71. Play It As It Lays
Joan Didion

72. Portnoy's Complaint
Philip Roth

73. Possession
A.S. Byatt

74. The Power and the Glory
Graham Greene

75. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Muriel Spark

76. Rabbit, Run
John Updike

77. Ragtime
E.L. Doctorow

78. The Recognitions
William Gaddis

79. Red Harvest
Dashiell Hammett

80. Revolutionary Road
Richard Yates

81. The Sheltering Sky
Paul Bowles

82. Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut

83. Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson

84. The Sot-Weed Factor
John Barth

85. The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner

86. The Sportswriter
Richard Ford

87. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
John le Carre

88. The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway

89. Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston

90. Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe

91. To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee

92. To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf

93. Tropic of Cancer
Henry Miller

94. Ubik
Philip K. Dick

95. Under the Net
Iris Murdoch

96. Under the Volcano
Malcolm Lowry

97. Watchmen
Alan Moore & Dav

 

98. White Noise
Don DeLillo

99. White Teeth
Zadie Smith

100. Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys

Got this from another girl's blog. She said to share, so I didn't steal it. I found a good number of them true, so I decided to post it.

If a man wants you, nothing can keep him away.

If he doesn't want you, nothing can make him stay.

Stop making excuses for a man and his behaviour.

Allow your intuition (or spirit) to save you from heartache.

Stop trying to change yourself for a relationship that's not meant to be.

Slower is better.

Never live your life for a man before you find what makes you truly happy.

If a relationship ends because the man was not treating you as you deserve then heck no, you can't "be friends".-- A friend wouldn't mistreat a friend.

Don't settle. If you feel like he is stringing you along, then he probably is.

Don't stay because you think "it will get better." You'll be mad at yourself a year later for staying when things are not better.

The only person you can control in a relationship is you.

Avoid men who've got a bunch of children by a bunch of different women. He didn't marry them when he got them pregnant, why would he treat you any differently?

Always have your own set of friends separate from his.

Maintain boundaries in how a guy treats you.

If something bothers you, speak up.

Never let a man know everything. He will use it against you later.

You cannot change a man's behaviour. Change comes from within.

Don't EVER make him feel he is more important than you are... even if he has more education or in a better job.

Do not make him into a quasi-god. He is a man, nothing more nothing less.

Never let a man define who you are.

Never borrow someone else's man. If he cheated with you, he'll cheat on you.

A man will only treat you the way you ALLOW him to treat you.

All men are NOT dogs.

You should not be the one doing all the bending...compromise is two way street.

You need time to heal between relationships...there is nothing cute about baggage... deal with your issues before pursuing a new relationship.

You should never look for someone to COMPLETE you... a relationship consists of two WHOLE individuals... look for someone complimentary...not supplementary.

Dating is fun... even if he doesn't turn out to be Mr. Right.

Make him miss you sometimes... when a man always know where you are, and you're always readily available to him - he takes it for granted.

Never move into his mother's house.

Never co-sign for a man.

Don't fully commit to a man who doesn't give you everything that you need.

Keep him in your radar but get to know others.

My Lakbayan grade is C!

How much of the Philippines have you visited? Find out at Lakbayan!

Created by Eugene Villar.

Your Dominant Intelligence is Musical Intelligence

Every part of your life has a beat, and you're often tapping your fingers or toes. You enjoy sounds of all types, but you also find sound can distract you at the wrong time. You are probably a gifted musician of some sort - even if you haven't realized it. Also a music lover, you tend to appreciate artists of all kinds. You would make a great musician, disc jockey, singer, or composer.

The Movie Of Your Life Is Film Noir

So what if you're a little nihilistic at times? Life with meaning is highly over-rated. Your best movie matches: Sin City, L. A. Confidential, Blade Runner

You Are Elektra

There's really no superhero with more style than you. Because who could beat being sexy assasin ninja?

Your 80s Theme Song Is:

Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles

Your Inner Color is Purple

Your Personality: You're a dreamer and visionary. You believe you were put on this earth to do something great. You in Love: You're very passionate but often too busy for love. You need a partner who sees your vision and adopts it as their own. Your Career: You need a job that helps you make a difference. You have a bright future as a guru, politician, teacher, or musician.

I lost two cellphones in less than a year. After the first time, a friend said, "Charge it to experience." And I did just that.

But after the second incident, I realized that it isn't enough that you charge it to experience. Not making the same mistake entails a conscious decision and presence of mind not to commit the same acts again.

So there. Moral lesson of the year: PRESENCE OF MIND, MEG.

I was sent by my law firm to Palawan to interview indigenous people and ascertain the mining activities being undertaken in Palawan, specifically in Brooke's Point which is known by all people as a malaria-infested area. It's also a place that my family has tried to forget: it was were my Grandfather was killed 30 years ago. My mother strongly discouraged me, but I was unstoppable.

I was prepared for the battle: I slathered myself with Off lotion and dressed in: long sleeves, turtleneck shirt, jogging pants, leg warmers, rubber shoes. I then rode a scooter at 10pm along a pitch dark dirt road and entrusted my life to an Indigenous Person whose good moral conduct (or the lack of it) I could not determine since I only met him that same day. We then hiked that same night to get to the homes of the Palaw'an to get my data. I didn't even get to eat dinner since everything was closed by 6pm at night.

I am falling in love with Palawan and the work I'm doing.I see myself doing this kind of work for the next few years of my life. It's scaring the hell outta me. My fundamental option-arrow is going haywire: corporate work with all its money and comfort? Or environmental law with the government, my family, lifestyle, etc. against me?

Your results:
You are Apocalypse

Apocalypse 78% Dark Phoenix 74% Dr. Doom 68% Magneto 66% Mystique 64% Lex Luthor 63% Mr. Freeze 60% Venom 58% Catwoman 55% Poison Ivy 55% The Joker 53% Juggernaut 48% Riddler 42% Two-Face 32% Kingpin 32% Green Goblin 20%

You believe in survival of the fittest and you believe that you are the fittest.

Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz

Law of Power: Disdain the things you cannot have. Ignoring them is your best revenge

It works.