Tag Response: Eight Random Facts About Me

I've been tagged by Sparks. Here are the rules for “8 facts”:

• In the 8 facts about [name], you share 8 things that your readers don’t know about you. At the end, you tag 8 other bloggers to keep the fun going. Each blogger must post these rules first.
• Each blogger starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• At the end of the post, a blogger needs to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Here is mine (in chronological order):

Fact #1: I've had trouble sleeping early (and waking up early) since i was a kid. (Early in my career, i almost got fired because of this.)
Fact #2: I do not follow sporting events.
Fact #3: I hate shopping (except for books or music cd's). It drains me of my life force.
Fact #4: I took up Accounting in College, but i've worked in Information Technology all throughout my working life. I did so in part because i wanted to be were the action is and not just be a scorekeeper. Only later did i realize that scorekeeping is the game and in the business world at least, IT professionals exist mainly to serve Accountants.
Fact #5: I once accidentally deleted the payroll file of the Philippine National Police (PNP).
Fact #6: I read only non-fiction books. I estimate that it will take me at least twenty years to go through my collection (more than 800 so far).
Fact #7: I don't mind eating with other people, but on normal days, i prefer eating alone.
Fact #8: I sleep with the lights and tv on, even if the tv is outside my room.

I'm tagging the following eight bloggers:

Jaxius
Torn and Frayed
Village Idiot Savant
Tingog
Manila Bay Watch
Arbet
Schumey
Peryodistang Pinay

Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs (personal nominees)

Via Manolo Quezon, Janette Toral's Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs in 2007. My three (3) nominees are:

1. Tingog
2. Smoke
3. Jaxius

As far as i know, all the above have started blogging after August 2006 and have in one way or the other influenced my thinking through their blog entries and comments.

Steve Gilliard Jr. 1964-2007

I'm saddened to find out that Steve Gilliard, one of the bloggers whose site i used to visit frequently has passed away. Prior to his hospital confinement, his blogsite was one of those i frequently visited especially for his military and historical analysis related to the US invasion of Iraq (his old blogspot entries can still be accessed here). He was also a proud liberal (in the American context) and one of his legacies is this piece (via Main St. USA):


I Am A Fighting Liberal by Steve Gilliard Jr

You know, I've studied history, I've read about America and you know something, if it weren't for liberals, we'd be living in a dark, evil country, far worse than anything Bush could conjure up. A world where children were told to piss on the side of the road because they weren't fit to pee in a white outhouse, where women had to get back alley abortions and where rape was a joke, unless the alleged criminal was black, whereupon he was hung from a tree and castrated.

What has conservatism given America? A stable social order? A peaceful homelife? Respect for law and order? No. Hell, no. It hasn't given us anything we didn't have and it wants to take away our freedoms.

The Founding Fathers, as flawed as they were, slaveowners and pornographers, smugglers and terrorists, understood one thing, a man's path to God needed no help from the state. Is the religion of these conservatives so fragile that they need the state to prop it up, to tell us how to pray and think? Is that what they stand for? Is that their America?

Conservatism plays on fear and thrives on lies and dishonesty. I grew up with honest, decent conservatives and those people have been replaced by the party of greed. It is one thing to want less government interference and smaller, fiscally responsible government. It is another thing entirely to be a corporate whore, selling out to the highest bidder because the CEO fattens your campaign chest. They are building an America which cannot be sustained. One based on the benefit of the few at the cost of the many. The indifferent boss who hires too few people and works them to death or until they break down sick. Cheap labor capitalism has replaced common sense. "Globalism" which is really guise for exploitation, replaced fair trade, which is nothing like fair for the trapped semi-slaves of the maquliadoras. In the Texas border towns, hundreds of these women have been used as sex slaves and then apparently killed,the FBI powerless to do anything as the criminals sit in Mexico untouched by law.

For the better part of a decade, the conservatives made liberal a dirty word. Well, it isn't. It represents the best and most noble nature of what America stands for: equitable government services, old age pensions, health care, education, fair trials and humane imprisonment. It is the heart and soul of what made American different and better than other countries. Not only an escape from oppression, but the opportunity to thrive in land free of tradition and the repression that can bring. We offered a democracy which didn't enshrine the rich and made them feel they had an obligation to their workers.

Bush and the people around him disdain that. They think, by accident of birth and circumstance, they were meant to rule the world and those who did not agree would suffer.

Liberal does not and has not meant weak until the conservatives said it did. Was Martin Luther King weak? Bobby Kennedy? Gene McCarthy? It was the liberals who remade this country and ended legal segregation and legal sexism. Not the conservatives, who wanted to hold on to the old ways.

It's time to regain the sprit of FDR and Truman and the people around them. People who believed in the public good over private gain. It is time to stop apologizing for being a liberal and be proud to fight for your beliefs. No more shying away or being defined by other people. Liberals believe in a strong defense and punishment for crime. But not preemption and pointless jail sentences. We believe no American should be turned away from a hospital because they are too poor or lack a proper legal defense. We believe that people should make enough from one job to live on, to spend time on raising their family. We believe that individuals and not the state should dictate who gets married and why. The best way to defend marriage is to expand, not restrict it.

It was the liberals who opposed the Nazis while the conservatives were plotting to get their brown shirts or fund Hitler. It was the liberals who warned about Spain and fought there, who joined the RAF to fight the Germans, who brought democracy to Germany and Japan. Let us not forget it was the conservatives who opposed defending America until the Germans sank our ships. They would have done nothing as Britain came under Nazi control. It was they who supported Joe McCarthy and his baseless, drink fueled claims.

Without liberals, there would be no modern America, just a Nazi sattlelite state. Liberals weak on defense? Liberals created America's defense. The conservatives only need vets at election time.

It is time to stop looking for an accomodation with the right. They want none for us. They want to win, at any price. So, you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?

To Jen and Steve's family, my condolences. - Chuck

Brussels, 2007

Took a break from posting last week because of work and my travel to Europe. Last Saturday, i met up with fellow blogger Hillblogger and her husband. After a delicious and filling dinner featuring her husband's roasted lamb and potatoes, we went around the city and saw the Grand Place, which i consider one of the most spectacular looking town squares in Europe and is on the list of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites.

The picture above shows the reclining statue of Everard 't Serclaes, an honored citizen of Brussels from the late Middle Ages. (Rubbing the statue is supposed to bring good luck which accounts for my hand on the statue.)

A few meters from the main square is the world famous Manneken Pis and i was surprised to find that the statue is smaller than it looks from the standard photos.

Among the Brussels (and Belgium)-related facts i learned from Anna and her husband are:

• Belgium is the most heavily wooded among the Western European states, with 40 percent of the area covered by trees.
  
• Thirty percent of Brussel's population is made up of expats working for (and with) the European Union.
  
• Belgium as a State came into existence in the early 19th century as a neutral buffer state between the French and the Germans. History shows that, unlike in the case of the Swiss, this arrangement has not worked in their favor.
  
• Throughout its existence, much of Brussels has been periodically flattened by war (the latest being World War II) which accounts for the relatively young age of its structures as compared with the rest of Europe.
  
• A lot of the older structures have nevertheless been torn down to make way for the EU offices in a manner that would make our Manila mayors happy.
  
• Near the center of Brussels, you can find a statue of Spanish literary characters Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, which may not be all that suprising considering that the area was once under the Spanish Crown. Anna also believes that these characters reflect the disposition of the Belgian people.
  
• The Members of the European Parliament keep their papers in boxes ready for shipping to and from Strasbourg in France, which is the other place where they hold sessions. This less than optimal arrangement is a concession to EU politics.
  

I'm glad to have had the chance to finally meet Anna in person after two years of exchanges in the Blogosphere.