Monday, August 31, 2009

Standard Chartered Online Banking Registration

I passed by Standard Chartered Bank in Ortigas last week to know more about their online banking service. While I don't have a bank account with SCB, I do have a credit card with them. And they allow creation of an online account using just your credit card (although, of course, the available features are very limited).

Unlike the other online banking enrollment systems I've encountered, SCB is the only that that relies on SMS as a form of confirmation. During the enrollment, you will be prompted for your mobile phone and it will send some registration code there. Upon receipt of the SMS containing the code, you can proceed with the activation.

Now, I would normally say that's an ingenious way of confirming one's identity. The only problem is the SMS delivery system seem to be very unreliable (or perhaps their SMS gateway is heavily clogged). But from the time I made the request until the time I actually received the SMS, it took more than an hour -- so much so that the time alloted for me to enter the code to continue with my activation has already expired.

I had to manually call their call center for assistance. It was a bit of a pain. And it seems that this mobile confirmation system is also implemented with the regular banking functions like authorizing funds transfer. Again, I laud them for this extra confirmation process, but if its that unreliable, it will just end up being more of a bane than a boon.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Taking the Kids to Manila Ocean Park

With Cols still in GenSan and Caitlin sleeping over at her grandparents' house over the weekend, it was just me and Ethan at home. So I brought him to Sunday School at our Marikina church this morning. Then we had lunch at Valle. After lunch, I brought the kids to Manila Ocean Park.

If one has been to Hong Kong's Ocean Park, this place definitely pales in comparison by a mile. Manila Ocean Park is more of an aquarium. There are no sea animal shows or thrill rides. And perhaps most striking when you get there, is it seems to be more of a strip mall with semblances of "tiangges". The center atrium where everything converges had several people sitting in white plastic monoblock chairs. At first, I thought they were waiting to watch some shows on the makeshift stages. But as it turned out, they were all waiting for their turn to buy tickets!

From Manila Ocean Park

There were only four (4) ticket counters. To give Manila Ocean Park management some credit, at least they don't let people stand on long queues for their turn. Instead, they have a ticketing system similar to some banks where you get a number then wait for your turn. That way, you can spend the time going through the shops (or sitting on the monoblock chairs). When I got our number, there were still more than 100 customers in front of us. So we went around to see the shops. Most are restaurants so there wasn't much to buy. We ended up killing time at Mrs. Fields where I ordered a chocolate shake and the kids ate their snacks.

When our number was finally flashed on the LED screen (this was about 40 mins later from the time I got our queue ticket), I rushed to the counter. The tickets were Php400 for me and yaya, and Php300 each for Ethan and Caitlin. We rushed to the Mermaid show which was scheduled to start at 5pm. Since we were already late, we were seated at the very back. I was expecting some ampitheater, but no -- it was just some dark room with, again, white monoblock chairs.

The mermaid show started about 10 mins after we got it. It was just about 5 women in mermaid costume doing some underwater routine. I was hoping that they would at least do some sort of synchronized swimming routine, but no such luck. It was really basic underwater swimming. Pretty lame. Ethan wasn't too much into it, but Caitlin at least sort of enjoyed the short show (while at the same time kept on commenting why these mermaids have to wear goggles).

When the show was about to end, the PA system announced that people can have their pictures taken with the mermaids behind the aquarium glass. But other than that, there was another mermaid at the back in a make shift photo booth just behind us. Since we were seated right there at the back, I quickly pulled the kids and we were the first in line to take picture with our mermaid. Ethan freaked out when he saw the mermaid so I ended up just taking Caitlin's photo with her.

From Manila Ocean Park

After the mermaid show, we went in to the main aquarium area. It was actually not bad. There was a good collection of fishes. The props also looked pretty good. The main draw of course was the tunnel where you can see the stringrays swim above you.

From Manila Ocean Park


We left Ocean Park close to 6pm already, and passed by for Dad at Dasma. Then we had an unscheduled dinner at Valle since it was getting quite late and I still had to go through some Accounting papers with Dad.

To Enrol or To Enroll -- That is the Question!

I went to buy milk for the kids at Pioneer Center (since we had lunch at my folks' place). On my way out of the exit gate, a tarpaulin announcement caught my attention. It was from a pre-school (I think) inviting parents to bring their kids there. Normally, I would dismiss those kinds of advertisements, but the footer of this one somehow caught my eye. It was a basic call-to-action for parents to "enrol" their kids.

My knee-jerk reaction was -- that's a wrong spelling! It should be enroll. How can a school, no less, make a mistake in its own advertisement? Its just not acceptable for a place where children learn to spell to not know how to spell itself. But was it wrong? Is it really enrol or enroll?

Well, it sort of bothered me quite a bit, so much so that when I got home, I had to check the dictionary. And what do you know -- both enrol and enroll are correct! Turns out that the word can be spelled with either one or two el's. And it follows that enrolment and enrollment are also acceptable.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Wham Burger at Katipunan

Strong rain poured after lunch. It was accompanied by lightning and thunder. As a result, power went down. Sigh... I miss life at Rockwell where there was always a standby generator that kicks in in matter of seconds. Anyway, our contractor was working on our swinging hidden closet door but could not continue their work because they needed electricity to power their drills. So they had to go home without finishing the task. Since the rain has let down already at this stage, I took Ethan with me to swim at Rockwell (Cols is in GenSan and Caitlin went with my folks to Hamilo Coast).

By the time we finished swimming, power has not yet returned. So I brought Ethan to have dinner at Valle. I was planning to join the folks and Caitlin for dinner, but they got stuck in Sta. Rosa due to traffic and did not expect to get back to Manila until maybe 9pm. So we left Valle ahead and I decided to just buy take-out food along the way.

When I was in CDO earlier this month, my friend there, Robin, was telling me that he knew the people behind Wham Burgers. I've seen the outlet along Katipunan for some time but have never really eaten there. Coming from Pasig and going to Katipunan, you will see it on the left side (not too far from the White Plains intersection). Because MMDA blocked all the U-Turn slots along that section of Katipunan, you have to drive all the way to the Katipunan/Aurora Blvd flyover and take the U-Turn slot under. Its a bit of a distance so I'm sure a lot of people would just decide to eat elsewhere. But I was curious enough to give it a try so I took the long U-turn.

The Katipunan store is their first branch. Its quite old and probably could use some renovation. The comic posters are faded already by sunlight. While I was looking at the menu board, I noticed that the cashier lady was busy chatting on the phone. It was obviously a personal call (probably her boyfriend) and she did not seem in a hurry to hang up the phone considering I was already standing in front of the counter. I didn't really mind the delay that much since I needed some time to choose from the menu. But still, it was kind of annoying that she was doing that.

By the time I was ready to order, she came back to her cash register. I asked for a burger and onion rings. She gave me a number and I went to my seat with Ethan and Yaya to wait to be called. In the meantime, she went right back to the phone and, presumably, called the same person again to continue her conversation. After a couple of minutes, a new customer came in and had to wait a bit again for the cashier to finish her call before she attended to him. I think the owners should install a CCTV camera and DVR to monitor their staff.

Going back to my burger -- it was actually pretty good. Much better, in my opinion, than HotShots or Brothers Burger, both also in the flame-grilled/gourmet burger category. I find HotShots' burgers a bit hard. Wham's was juicier and had a decent-sized patty. For the onion rings, however, I have to give the honors to Brothers.

In terms of service, Brothers is also more professional and at par with what you would expect with fastfood chains. Granted that perhaps this cashier is just an exception and that maybe other Wham outlets have good service, maybe I should not be too hasty in my judgment. Overall, I think I would visit it again should I have a craving for burgers. Or perhaps I'll try Bite Club next time.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Ethan's Filipino Program and the Annual General Meeting

Today was the culmination day of Ethan's Filipino week at Links, a pre-school we enrolled him to just outside our Tumana gate. He's been only going there for a couple of weeks and has since been able to adjust to being left alone minus the separation anxiety. It was a short program so I joined and left for the office afterwards.

From Ethan's Program


In the later afternoon, I went to Rockwell to attend our annual condominium association general assembly held at Luna Gardens. It is always "entertaining" to attend these sessions and listen to the gripes of our neighbors which range anywhere from legitimate issues, like security or maintenance, to those really petty ones. And always, there are the same "characters" who provide the entertainment like clockwork.

The meeting ended around 6:30pm and t was raining hard. Cols warned me ahead of traffic as our driver has been stuck on C5 and Katipunan for more than an hour after having dropped off Caitlin at Valle where she's sleeping over. I think it was a compendum of several factors (Friday + payday + rain + people going home to the province for the long weekend with Monday a holiday) that led to the "perfect storm" traffic. I got home past 8pm already.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Mifare Cards Now Supported by NetSecure

Although I've always believed in the philosophy behind Object Oriented Programming (OOP), I have to admit that in most cases, I still program in traditional, structured, procedural style. This even though languages like C# or Java treats everything as classes, even the main program itself.

The most OOP-heavy program I've ever written is our *ahem* best-selling NetSecure biometric time and attendance system. Since NetSecure aims to support as many devices as possible for identification and verification purposes, early on, I designed it to use OOP heavily. All devices I support (fingerprint scanners, RFID readers, magstripe readers, pinpads, etc.) are derived and implemented from two other layers of abstract classes. At the bottom is a generic InputDevice abstract class. Then a generic ProximityReader abstract class is derived from it. Then finally, an RFID-specific implementation like the GigaTMS' GP20/30 RFID reader is implemented.

Recently, a big client requested for support of Philips Mifare cards. I've been twiddling with the ACR120 Mifare reader for some time. I've written small programs to test its capabilities, but have never actually written a full-blown program to make use of it. I was estimating it could take me a couple of weeks to write all the code to integrate it to NetSecure.

When I finally got down to coding and followed my object models, I realized that the ACR120 reader is just like a GPxx RFID reader. So I created an ACR120MifareReader class that is derived from ProximityReader; implemented the abstract interfaces to allow the main program to connect/disconnect to it and retrieve inputs; and voila -- I was done in about an hour! Turns out that very little changes were needed on the main NetSecure code itself as most access to devices go through the class abstraction interfaces.

Switching to DVI

I've been using an AOC 19" wide LCD for more than 2 years now, I think. All this time, I've just connected it to my PC via the usual analog VGA ports and cable. But as of late, the display has been bothering me as there appears "smudges" on screen particular to the right of areas where there are dark/black pixels. Its like when you write on a piece of paper with a black pen, then while the ink is still wet, you brush your hand on the surface towards the right causing the ink to spread.

This reminded me of my recent experience of moving from analog component video to HDMI on my home tv system. Orly commented that the HDMI system will certainly look better since its digital. So I scrounged around for the DVI cable that came with my LCD monitor and plugged it to the DVI port of my video card, as opposed to, the analog. Since DVI is very similar to HDMI, I reasoned that maybe this should improve my viewing experience.

And what do you know -- the black ghost trail smudges disappeared with the DVI cable. According to Wikipedia, DVI sends color information for a pixel using data. This is unlike analog technology where it is common to have a neighboring pixel affect the color of its adjacent pixels.


Wednesday, August 26, 2009

A Triathlon Tragedy

Camarines Sur (CamSur) has been gaining a lot of attention as of late as the "next-big-thing" in local tourism. Data shows that the rate of increase of tourists to CamSur has already outpaced Boracay. One of the latest addition to the outdoor sports activity at CamSur is the recently concluded Ironman Triathlon, a grueling event that includes swimming, biking and running.

Now, I'm no triathlon enthusiast nor do I harbor any illusion of joining such a physically-taxing competition. But a recent shocking news has brought the event closer to home. During the team relay event, one of the participants died. It was during dinner time and we were watching news when I heard about this and it instantly caught my attention. The man who died was Miguel Vasquez, owner of Permanent Plans, and husband of our Peak landlady, Judith.

It seems that Miguel joined the swimming team relay and never surfaced from the waters, causing his teammate to worry and launch a search operation. He was found later at the bottom of the shallow lake (not sure how you exactly comb a lake to find a body on the floor). That must include a lot of divers.

The news episode featured interviews of Permanent Plans planholders who were saying that they are now afraid that they might not get reimbursed. You see, the pre-need industry recently collapsed leaving a lot of planholders holding worthless paper insurance. This ranges from college education plans to other pension plans (but not including life insurance). Permanent Plans was not spared as it was an industry-wide problem.


Saturday, August 22, 2009

Our New Car Finally Arrives

After months of waiting in line for our Mitsubishi Montero, our unit was finally released today. We originally PO-ed for the Garnet Green back in June. But because the Montero is selling like hotcakes, Citimotors has been prioritizing those who were willing to pay cash or availing of in-house financing, while leaving those who go through external bank financing (like us) as last priority. So we kept getting bumped back and there was nothing we could do.

We even agreed to settle with the more popular and common dark grey already since the experimental Green was very limited. But what do you know -- our account manager sent me a text message a couple of days ago saying our first priority color was available! Of course, all this did not happen out of the goodness of their hearts. Far from it, in fact. We had to ask favor from friends of friends until we got connected to the son of one of the owners of the dealership. Only then did we get moved up the queue.


Over all, I'm pretty unhappy with the politics needed to just get a car from Citimotors. This is the first time in our family that we've bought a Mitsubishi, and based on this experience, I think I'll stick with Toyota or Honda in the future, thank you. Or if I do get another Mitsubishi, it will probably be with a bigger dealership like Diamond Motors.

The Montero's car stereo has bluetooth and iPod support. But since I hardly listen to music in the car (I prefer the quiet solitude while driving), its not that big a deal for me as it is for Cols. The back-most area also has its own aircon vents so its not hot unlike the Honda CRV. And the seats can collapse down completely giving a big trunk space.

I was more interested with its supposed fuel efficiency. The agent told me its mileage was around 12 km per liter. Sounded too good to be true. Based on actual experience, its more like 7 km per liter under normal city driving conditions. Not too bad if you consider the fact that its physically bigger than our CRV, and the CRV already runs at only around 6 km per liter in city conditions. The good thing about it is it runs on diesel, so that makes it cheaper on a per kilometer basis.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Philippine Airline Passenger Traffic Continue To Rise

The first half of 2009 showed an increase of 31% in passenger traffic. This brings a total of 7.59 million passengers vs. 5.82 million for the same period last year. According to CAB, Cebu Pacific carried 3.61M passengers vs. 2.57M a year ago for the first 6 months of the year. This validates their claim that they are now the biggest domestic airline with PAL reporting only 3.21M this year vs. 2.25M for the same period.

Zest Air (the airline formerly known as "Asian Spirit") has continued to grow despite its several airline accidents -- ex. overshooting the runway. It flew 433,000 passengers vs. only 250,000 for the same period last year. Another low-cost carrier PAL Express (the airline formerly known as "Air Philippines") had a surprising dip to 254,000 from 623,000 last year. SEAIR also suffered a significant decline from 138,000 last year to 83,000 this year. So the main conclusion that can be drawn here is Cebu Pacific has really been eating up the market of these smaller budget airlines.

CEB is targeting 9M passengers for the whole year. That means they still have to make up for 5.4M the second half of 2009. That's a pretty tall order. Majority of CEB bookings are now done online -- possibly as much as 70%. This despite high fraud in the airline industry. They must be working just on sheer numbers to cancel out those fraud payments.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Philippine Bank Codes

If you are a PayPal merchant (or planning to be one) and are trying to figure out how to take your money out of their system, you have basically two choices: have it transferred to your local bank account, or to have it credited to your credit card. Most people would prefer the former.

To do a bank transfer, go to your PayPal merchant profile page and set up a bank account to receive payments into. You might be puzzled when you see it prompting for your 9-digit bank code. This guy made an impressive list of Philippine bank codes and I'm quoting it here for convenience:

ALLIED BANKING CORP--- 010320013
ASIA UNITED BANK --- 011020011
BANGKO SENTRAL NG PILIPINAS --- 010030015
BANCO DE ORO (& EPCIB) --- 010530667
BANK OF COMMERCE --- 010440016
BANK OF THE PHIL ISLANDS --- 010040018
CHINA BANKING CORP --- 010100013
CHINA TRUST COMML BANK --- 010690015
CITIBANK N.A. --- 010070017
DEVT BANK OF THE PHILS --- 010590018
EAST WEST BANK --- 010620014
EXPORT & INDUSTRY BANK --- 010860010
LAND BANK OF THE PHILS --- 010350025
MAYBANK OF THE PHILS --- 010220016
METROBANK --- 010269996
PHIL BANK OF COMMUNICATION ---010110016
PHIL TRUST COMPANY --- 010090039
PHIL NATIONAL BANK --- 010080010
PRUDENTIAL BANK --- 010150018
PHIL VETERANS BANK --- 010330016
SECURITY BANK & TRUST CO --- 010140015
STANDARD CHARTERED BANK --- 010050011
UNITED COCONUT PLANTERS BANK --- 010299995
UNION BANK OF THE PHILS --- 010419995
UNITED OVERSEAS BANK --- 010270189

I'm adding the following which I gathered from Citibank Online:

Rizal Commercial and Banking Corp (RCBC) --- 010280014
Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corp (HSBC) --- 010060014
Deutsche Bank --- 010650013

I'm not really sure what the leading zero is for. But taking Deutsche Bank for example, '1065' is actually the bank code while '0013' is the branch code. For some reason, it doesn't seem important what is the exact branch code of your account as they seem to be using only one 'branch code' for funds transfer purposes bank-wide. So as long as you enter the correct bank account number along with the codes above, it will get routed correctly.

Dragonpay is a PayPal Channel Partner in the Philippines and we can integrate PayPal payments into our consolidated payment screen.

Friday, August 7, 2009

Good Riddance to Dynasty Court Hotel

I couldn't sleep last night until past 2am in my hotel room (415) in Dynasty Court Hotel & Restaurant CDO! The blasted Pulse disco across the street (and just outside my window) was playing loud music until around 2am. Their bass was resonating really loudly and was causing my window pane to rattle.

To make matters worse, the losers who hang out outside the club was also adding their own noise. At past 1am, some jerk with a big bike revved up his engine and it may have well sounded as loud as an airplane's jet engine. Note to self: don't stay in Dynasty Court Hotel again in the future.

Breakfast "buffet" was served at the Chinese restaurant. There was not a hint of Chinese food though. Just your basic breakfast of rice, bacon, egg, bread. I ate just a little since it was part of the package anyway. Robin came by to pick me up past 8am and dropped me off at the airport. Time flew quickly on board as I just watched Dr. Who Season 4 on my old IBM ThinkPad.

Great to be back in Manila and in my comfortable bed!

Thursday, August 6, 2009

One Night in CDO

I took the 8:20am flight from MNL to CDO this morning. I left the house a little past 7:30am and there was heavy traffic along Katipunan. I did not really panic because I felt I had sufficient time to get to NAIA 3 for my CEB flight. But as Cols started to text me asking where I was and whether I can reach the terminal in time, fear started to settle in.

It was close to 7:20am and I was still along the service road going into Nichols. I was travelling on Go Lite fare since I have no check-in baggage. Got to the terminal and rushed to the check-in counter where they were already making the final call for CDO. Phew! Made it in the nick of time. NAIA 3 is quite large. And with only CEB and PAL Express operating off it, I'm not surprised why this place is bleeding. The electricity and air conditioning cannot possibly be covered by these two airlines alone. They should really just shut down NAIA 1 and move all the international carriers here.

My gate was at the very end of the right wing. By the time I got there, it was already boarding time. So I went straight to the plane. I actually got good aisle seats even though I was late. I guess single passengers have more options for seating. The 1.5 hour fly was hardly felt as I worked on my slides for the presentation at the CDO City Hall this afternoon. The plane arrived about 10 mins earlier than scheduled.

Compoint's Robin Cui picked me up from the airport and dropped me off at my hotel -- Dynasty Court, to freshen up. I have to admit that I wasn't particularly looking forward to my hotel. I originally planned on staying at Mallberry Suites as it looked newer, but it was fully booked. When I checked out reviews of Dynasty Court, well, it wasn't really flattering. Bad experiences of tourist range from money being stolen from the hotel safe to cockroach infestation. Robin assured me that they recently renovated.

There seems to be no known hotel chain operating in CDO. I guess there is really no big clamor for foreigners to come here. The hotels are all old and small. According to Robin, the lot that Dynasty occupies used to be a Chinese school. They demolished it and put up Dynasty Court. The ground floor which houses the lobby also houses their Chinese restaurant. My room was listed at PHP2,500. But the front desk offered me their promo price of PHP1,800. Can't complain since I wasn't even aware of it and was ready to pay the full fare.

My bell boy brought me to my room (415). The elevator and the hallways has that "old" smell. The hallways had baskets containing charcoal -- to kill odor no doubt (but it doesn't seem to be doing its job very effectively). My room was not too bad. Its window was overlooking the street where there was not much of a view other than the rooftop of Pulse disco.

There's a small TV (not that I ever got to use it). No refrigerator. The bathroom looks clean with its white tiles although the edges are mostly broken or the graut has chipped off already. Even the bottom of the bathroom door looks like it has seen much better days a long time ago. The airconditioner is "window-type"; probably about 1.0 or 1.5 HP judging by its size. The beds weren't so bad. The pillows did not have any funny smell either, so that's good at least.

One nice little surprise I discovered -- they actually have free WiFi!!! When I opened my notebook and searched for a signal, it saw "global dynasty". But wait, it is asking for a security key. So I quickly called the front desk for the key. They told me to look at my physical door key because they taped the code there. Apparently, each room has its own WiFi key. Even with just two signal bars, it was "decent". I noticed that there was only one hotel WAP appearing. Does that mean they are serving the entire hotel off a single access point? Hmmm.... how could that be? Or do the upper floors have no signal?

I walked across the street and had lunch at "Butcher Barbecue". Its always nice to eat at the province and revel at their low prices vis-a-vis the same fare at Manila. Robin picked me up past 2 and we headed for the presentation at the city hall. It was very informal with about a dozen attendees representating different departments. I gave an overview of NetSecure Biometrics. Hopefully, something will come out of this.

After the presentation, we drove to Limketkai Mall to check out Robin's Brazilian grill restaurant that is opening this Saturday. The place still look very unfinished but the crew is working double time to get it done. We bumped into Mozcom CDO/Sotelco's George Nolasco so we invited him to join us for dinner later at an Italian restaurant just across my hotel (supposedly one of the best Italian place in CDO).

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

President Cory Funeral

Today was declared by President Arroyo (GMA) as a holiday so that the nation can witness and participate in former President Cory Aquino's funeral. The outpouring of grief and gratitude to Tita Cory was very touching. Political observers noted that Tita Cory may well have been the most loved Philippine president of all time. This is a far cry from GMA, who will probably go down in history as the most despised (maybe even more than Marcos).

Although she did go straight to the wake at Manila Cathedral after cutting her US trip short, people doubt her sincerity and are not the least bit impressed with her token of sympathy. Even the Aquino immediate family were not really looking forward to her visit. This is after Malacanang pulled out the security detail assigned to Tita Cory after the latter started joining opposition calls for GMA to step down. I did not know this before but it turns out that the Constitution guarantees security protection for former presidents even after their term ends.

While GMA's visit was reviled by most, many were more impressed with the visit of the Marcos children, Bong Bong and Imee. It sparked hope that this is the beginning of the healing process between the two families that started with the conflict between their parents.

From Cory Aquino Funeral Along Ayala Ave.

PayPal Hangups and Rumors on Apple Entering the Payment Business

E-Commerce payment giant, PayPal, went down yesterday causing several e-merchants who accept PayPal payments to howl in uproar. The outage affected credit card processing for several online merchants.

PayPal provides payment processing for 75 of the 500 largest online retailers in North America, and 205 of those Top 500 retailers accept the PayPal electronic payment method, according to the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide. PayPal says it processed an average of $2,000 in online payments every second in the second quarter; 55% of payment volume comes from its Merchant Services unit that processes credit cards and other payment types on behalf of e-retailers.

The downtime comes on the heel of another giant payment processor, Authorize.net, woes just last month. In the case of Authorize.net, the problem was caused by a fire in its data center. Several online merchants were also inconvenienced with the outage. This highlights the importance for maintaining multiple payment gateways no matter how reliable they present themselves to be.

On a stranger twist, Apple is rumored to be contemplating entering the game of online payment processing. Their strategy seems to be similar to Amazon's -- that is, to leverage their store accounts payment into a general payment platform for others. But I kind of doubt that kind of payment system will gain any popularity outside of their own iTunes store in the same way that Amazon's payment is not really used by anyone outside of Amazon.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Tita Cory Passes Away

When I woke up this morning and went down for breakfast, Cols was watching the news. Turns out that ex-president Corazon Aquino has passed away early morning today after her long bout with cancer. Its a sad day for the nation as Tita Cory is a well-loved and respected leader. She has been a beacon for moral leadership from the time she took over Marcos until she stepped down after her term and resumed civilian life.

I don't recall the last time an ex-president died. The only ex-president that I can recall who died during my lifetime was Ferdinand Marcos, although I heard from the news report that Diosdado Macapagal, GMA's dad, passed away much later. I did not notice that strangely. Now if it were GMA who passed away (or even First Gentleman, Mike Arroyo), somehow, I can't imagine the nation being sad. In fact, there might even be celebrations in certain quarters.

In any case, GMA is currently in the US busy basking on US President Barrack Obama's glow. As usual, there are the usual tailgaters like Sen. Lito Lapid and the much criticized Rey Langit interview incident.