The 41st National Marketing Conference 2010, spearheaded by the Philippine Marketing Association, is a great head start of insights on how to accelerate the changes the research and development projects of the academe can made to the nation. Unfortunately, most of the thesis projects of the university remain at the shelves of the library or at the indexes of online catalogs for references because researchers, developers and authors of such projects tend to forget thinking beyond producing of the service or product. The potential of these researches and studies to forge the Philippines as a nation of innovations are highlighted in the conference like the National Marketing Conference of PMA. Marketing brings the Filipino ideas from paper to production.

The topics of the event, which are to be addressed by top caliber executives of known marketing agencies and corporations with best marketing strategies, are all relevant and can hit common intersections of Marketing and Research & Development. I am very excited to be informed of the visions and how their missions have been accomplished. The roster of speakers are very impressive.

I’m looking forward for this congress, which is to be held on June 24 and 25 at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza. The University of the Philippines Diliman College of the Engineering will also benefit from this event since it is holding its own Marketing Congress for Research & Development and I’m ready to share what I would learn from the 41st National Marketing Conference 2010.

This event is proudly sponsored by Search Profile Index.

Bahay ni Kuya will open its door once again for the newest housemates of the third season on Sunday, October 4. Seven months ago before this Double Up came out, I lined up for the audition (super-related post: World Peace series). That time, it’s a choice between shifting career or finishing graduate studies. Direk Dyogi rejected me as a housemate (wahaha) while the Department of Computer Science accepted me as a full time graduate student.

Meanwhile, last week, I was interviewed by Qtube, a Q Channel 11 show that features the hippest online. Not because I’ve developed a web application from our university laboratories but that’s for my Facebuko site, for being a popular tambayan of Pinoys.

Popularity – I’ve dreamed of It inside the Big Brother’s house. I hoped for a fame that could influence a lot of Filipinos to do things for the country. I like to be an advocate heard more than to be an actor applauded.

And Facebuko has given me that chance. Yes, fame – but apart from it, a voice to a crowd. Few of its posts were relevant to social issues such as the upcoming 2010 elections. Someone has just interpreted my Info Ad Nakikita, a satirical ripoff of Hinahanap-hanap Kita to info commercials of presidentiables. We’re hoping that this gets to a larger audience. Also, recently, I’ve pushed the jokes aside and published a list of how to help Ondoy victims. Some readers reposted the list in their blogs or linked back to through their tweets. Facebuko has indeed have a reach and we use this to reach out in a way.

I’m experiencing something not as big as Big Brother but I’m already contended. Sabi nga nila, kung hindi uukol, hindi bubukol. Pero pwede rin pa lang bubuko.

Update here: Why Did I Follow Lola Techie Again?
I used to be a fan of Lola Techie on her Plurk right after the Bayantel ad has aired on ABS-CBN shows. I was pretty sure that time it was purely promotional and the grandmother figure is just a fiction. Yet, I still decided to follow her at least in Plurk to feel how good the portrayer is in building the Lola Techie character.

Her first pokes are enjoyable. The same bitter-lola comic was still there while she’s keep on bashing her used-to-be-favorite grandson, JR. But the next plurks become boring as she keeps on asking what’s on our lunch or dinner (so her new grandsons and granddaughters would replurk back) and her continuous segue on ABS-CBN shows. I really don’t need ‘em because I really do watch ‘em.

More reasons why I unfollowed her -

• I’m getting tired of muting her plurks when her new grandsons and granddaughters are still on the hype. Lola Techie is receiving 50 replies at average.
• She’s taking Facebook quizzes and applications and posting it on plurk! I’m keeping those type of statuses away from my news feed. And there you go! She’s now spamming my Plurk.
• The trend is that she might have her own blogger event! Knowing her followers are mostly Pinoy bloggers.
• And since Lola Techie is an imagination, I hope her creator should have been packaging her into more techie person. The reason I enjoyed Inday, ang Sosyal na Katulong, is that she and her manager are successful in leaving the audience with their nose bleeding. It should have been more Lola Techie if she had plurked that she’s able to secure a wireless router, to remove a virus from a computer, to use the Konami code and some other geeks stuff. Sana nilubos-lubos na nila.

Yet, I wish I can meet the superstar in person. Maybe in Coffee Bean, while she’s wirelessly surfing. But it might not happen. The diva is into wired DSL connection.

P.S.

Lola Techie,

Please add me in your mafia.

Your prodigal grandson,
Don Nazty.

Another news item that has spun off from Manny Pacquiao-Ricky Hatton boxing fight is the recommendation of Department of Health and Malacanan to delay Pacman’s homecoming and for the whole team to self-quarantine due to possible A(H1N1) flu human-to-human transmission.

This was also picked up by some spotlight-stealer congressmen and senators to impose self-quarantine of officials that flew to Las Vegas to catch the Battle of the East and the West live. Self-quarantine will last for at least 5 consecutive days.

*Achoo* Ang O.A. Ok. It is given that they are possibly the next carriers of the flu virus. But then again, like the clean water of La Mesa watershed flowing to Manila downstreams and channels, it becomes contaminated at the end. What I mean is that even when they come clean out of their quarantine boxes, from that place to NAIA, how many people Manny Pacquiao and his team would be allowed to come close to the world’s greatest boxer? There would be a lot of interactions and possible human-to-human transmission. Pacquiao may not have it but the fans may carry the flu virus.

Everyone’s being thermal scanned. Even President Arroyo’s temperature was captured recently. So what makes the other passengers boarding to Manila exempted from self-quarantine and their thermal scan results simply suffice? If Team Manny Pacquiao fails and rings the alarm, then postpone Lito Atienza’s and General Santos’ salubong. Want another OA option? Close NAIA.

While the fight took only less than 7 minutes, others is continuing the second round with more rounds of brawls and actions in the form of noisy (less of a sound) issues and controversies. And I’m guessing the network that will exclusively cover the next fight, presidentiables convincing Manny as running mate, and Manny’s tax are coming as the next rounds.

Pauwiin na si Manny! Spread balato minus the virus.

Martin Nievera’s public apology for his different and untraditional rendition of Lupang Hinirang during the recently concluded and much celebrated Manny Pacquiao – Ricky Hatton boxing fight is not necessary. Or at least, I don’t oblige the Concert King to say sorry to me about his performance.

After ABS-CBN 2 announced that Pacman knocked down Hitman just before the second round ended, I was eager to catch GMA 7 delayed broadcast as I anticipated Martin singing our national anthem believing the premier singer would not screw up. (Of course, WWE superstar Batista escorting Pacquiao also excited me.) Blame the poor streaming of television signals that it appears he’s singing out of sync with the tempo. I was only unease at his latter part of the song where the usual singers belt it to high notes. The next day, it was like that I’m wrong to pre-assume that Martin wouldn’t end up controversial like the past Philippine anthem singers Manny Pacquiao had personally chosen and requested.

We can play Simon Cowell, Ryan Cayabyab and Jose Javier Reyes role in bashing this idol with the singer’s flat notes. However to place legal moves against Martin Nievera is hitting him under the belt. It’s like accusing him that he stood up in front of the whole world and just played (as in laro) the national anthem. He didn’t ask for it. He was humbled that Manny selected him. He actually wanted Filipinos to be proud Pinoys through his song. I didn’t felt like Lupang Hinirang was disgraced. The worse that I wouldn’t take is when someone let’s say a telenovela superstar who only sings novelty songs is chosen to sing Lupang Hinirang.

By the way, I saw at the end credits that the grumpy National Historical Institute approved something in the segment. Is it for the rendition or for the several appearances of Philippine Airlines?

As my final verse, please stop this kind of (c)rap. It was like every Manny’s fight that uncontented spectators jab singers. Don’t let the time happens that no single Pinoy singer is even courageous and courteous enough to sing Lupang Hinirang because no matter how hard and good they try, in th end of the song, it doesn’t even matter. Ano kayang ligaya ng mga nang-aapi? Ang mawalan ng singers ng dahil sa inyo.

Why did Pinoy Big Brother let the televiewers and supporters of Jon continue voting for him? It’s because the show wanted its audience to witness his forced eviction for (tampered) TV ratings and for them to have their 30 percent share of the text votes Jon has receiving since last week. They could have announced it earlier.

Yet, I welcome the rest of Kuya’s explanation.

Here are my other cents on Jon’s forced eviction:

If viewers will notice, all of the remarks for the remaining housemates delivered by the host Toni Gonzaga pertain to Big Brother as the Kataas-taasang Kagalang-galangang Kuya over housemates. Of course, this is his show. Contestants should succumb to him. So, from that moment, you would know that Jon shall be evicted forcefully. We witnessed how justice is practiced by Kuya and Endemol, the owner of the Big Brother, with their set of house rules as they evict Jon. Rules are rules. They are made to avoid chaos. Forced eviction overrules Jon’s Head of the Household immunity (although HOH was only brought up because of Kuya’s Last Alas or last ace on the second attempt for a face-to-face nomination. We then witnessed how powerful Kuya is over the televiewers.

Bottom line is that Jon has violated several major rules which one of them is influencing the vote of other housemates. But again, as if only the first paragraph of this post was considered, then there would be no flaw on this action. Also to end the show with a louder bang, they should have released the percentage of the votes received by the Final Five which I believe favored Jon. Otherwise, PBB could have think of the easy way out of this mess – Jon received the lowest number of votes. But I guess, it’s not.

Next step for KKK or simply Kuya, he should punish also the remaining Celebrity Big Four for being accomplices of the controversial crime especially for the strong contenders on being Big Winner, Ruben and Gaby, for not being honest on their nomination. They, including the couple Will and Riza, should suffer physically and emotionally to bring out the Big Winner traits in them.

Kuya is right in saying that nomination doesn’t mean the nominated is not loved by the person that nominates. The remaining four just shows how scared they are on what the people outside would think about them. Screw Wendy Valdez and Big Winner Bea Saw on their confrontation after the face-to-face nominations. Perhaps this season’s Final Five have badly foresee that.

It was bad for me to see the last part of the program where voluntary and forced leavers Mcoy, Ethel, Baron and latest evictee Jon imprint their feet on the Celebrity Walk of Fame. They could have been my Big Four. I love rebels for a cause because I am rebel too.

And for the last one rebel standing (for her rights), go for gold, Gaby! GGG!

I am deciding if I am going to dispose/recycle/donate hand-me-down elementary and high school textbooks that came from me. These are books on English and Filipino grammar, science and mathematics. Science laws and grammar rules will remain consistent on the Internet as compared to Philippine history which varies depending on the author. Remember the historian Zaide? No. Not the space police. Meanwhile, I think religion books are safe to be given away but if I allow my younger sister to depend on what the Wikipedia says, she might stumble upon on related articles for disbelieving Catholicism.

I need to drop Encarta compact discs too. They were outdated now. The pictures that can be included on the high school research project could be taken from Google web results. Furthermore, there are less entries about the Philippines on those encyclopedia compared to the vast sea of information where you can fish in WWW.

How about college handouts? Let’s say the typewritten UP Diliman’s Natural Science (NatSci) booklets. Will they still be the source?

Yeah, it is general room cleaning now. These things, old science books, encyclopedia and handouts, all remind me of hardcore researching. Nowadays, this generation of students depend a lot from search engines. This is very evident on how my younger sister do her research. I can’t blame her on her methodologies since it is very practical. What she does on top is to beautify her project with scrapbook thingies for extra credit. Actually, I influence her to Google things. To answer her questions, I can’t remember quite in which grade/year to look for the things she need. Believe me, there are topics already covered at earlier year or grade.

I miss the times going to libraries. I remember my first year high school when it still discussing the Philippine geography, history and civics and culture. Oh HEKASI! Nope, that’s grade school! There were no blogs yet about what I research (and no idea on what blog during that time). That’s why I decided to go the capitol’s library and need to sign up to have access on its books. Very old school. It has no online catalog of books so I have scan through sections. All the dust and bugs you’ll get. The class including the teacher knows that our own library can’t help.

I also remember a mathematics extra credit project to research on special properties, science, facts about circles. There’s this classmate who asked her mother to do the research paper for her. We were all impressed on the thickness of her project. So she ended up winning Annual Award’s Ms. Thesis Ang Project. But when I curiously check the content, I see that everything that Google returns like Britney’s Oops I Did It Again video forming a circle and cheat codes with circle character are included. I think my sister is very wise to prune the search results besides the fact that it is costly to print a page so she cuts her research.

I guess Google for students are still advisable for practicality sake during high school. But when it comes to college (or should I say in UP), you really need to have a second library card, fill up reservation forms and the like even though there are several computer shops outside the library. Well, there are computer terminals also inside the library but the most relevant topics are still found on the library. You gotta love the UP CoE and Math libraries.

Also, UP and our department discourage plagiarism. We don’t copy and paste articles. It is very important to cite them if you have. But having pages of endnote citations do not give additional credit. I seldom see a 1.0 paper with several related literatures without having it compared at least or prove or disprove the arguments the source provided.

Well so much for this stuff. I decided to post about Google researching when several students came across with my site searching for Filipino idioms and proverbs. They landed at this page: Mga Kasabihan at Salawikain. They should really be careful.

Gerry asked us to translate tampo in English. We can hardly answer. Then, my fun begins as I search for the English equivalent of tampo as more and more Filipino words are returned by Google that has no equivalent in vernacular. This goes to English words being translated to Filipino or Tagalog.

I read a high school pamphlet on Filipino subject from my sister. I can’t help myself but raise my eyebrows on some translated and Filipino-spelled English words. Informative and narrative are being spelled in Filipino as informatib and naratib. Wah! Sounds very pilit! Bruteforced! When should be the letter f replaced by p? Ang efekto nga naman ng makabagong alfabeto. Heavy ekwipment like elebeytor? Tsk. Tsk. Calculator is kalkyuleytor? Typewriter? Makinilya na lang!

I also read a Varsitarian article Wikang Filipino: Kumusta na?. I discovered that cough was once translated to kaf. Eh pwede namang ubo na lang diva?

Well, there’s always exceptions to the rule as stated in last bullet of the how-to-spell lists.

Meanwhile, there are Filipino words (not jargon or slang) that are have no translated English terms. Or is it just that I haven’t found them yet?

• po
• tampo
• utang na loob
• suki
• kalabit
• gigil
• kami / tayo
• mabuhay
• akbay

With this new fun that I discovered, I learned that sirit is derived from share it. Smokey Mountain is boondocks of bazoora.

This post is serious. If you want the funny side of this, visit English Tagalog Translation post.

According to my Career-of-the-Day tips courtesy of Answers.com, there are many things that I should know when that time comes. Here are the excerpts from that very interesting article. A group of people would really like this. It’s not easy. Deciding whether or not to accept a job offer can be just as stressful and time-consuming as getting to that point in the first place.

1. You need to determine your desired salary range. Research typical salaries for someone with similar experience in your industry. [That's why the never ending coffee talks are happening around. It's still numbers game.]
2. Ask yourself some important questions. How much do you need to pay your basic expenses, such as rent or mortgage, groceries, utilities, and car payment? What kind of salary do you need to live a comfortable life that allows you to enjoy yourself? What is the lowest salary you will consider? How much do you need to be able to save for the future? [This is the pitfall for some. Lifestyle changes as salary does. Sometimes, we keep on complaining while sipping a high-tag priced coffee.]
3. You need to gauge the other person’s intentions without giving away all of your secrets. [In vernacular, pakiramdaman.]
4. If the company cannot meet your salary requirements, it may be able to make it up to you in other ways. [Interesting factor that sometimes you won't think now to stay in the present company.]
5. A company is not going to offer you the highest salary they’d be willing to pay right off the bat, and most companies expect candidates to come back with a counter offer. [Moral of the lesson - have your business attire readily available for nth interview.]

Read the full article on CareerBuilder.com through this link.

Disclaimer: The intention of this entry is to laid out a topic – what I think, what I feel and what I believe beneficial for others. It does not persuade others’ decision, nor does it attack any actions of the people involved. If you cannot understand the essence of blogging, freedom of expression, and emotional needs, back off! Never ever ask me again to bring down my site for your personal happiness. The comment box always and still welcomes your response.

Presenting… My Dozen of Donuts Doughnuts. If there is a buffet of these pastries from top doughnut vendors, Dunkin Donuts (DD), Mister Donut (MD), Country Style (CS), Krispy Kreme (KK), GoNuts Donuts (GD) and Cello’s Doughnuts (CD), this would be my box of 12′s, assorted and not in particular order.

2 DD Choco Butternut. A Dunkin classic and best-seller. It’s not butter. It’s not nut. It’s orange but not orange.
2 CD Oreo. Yumyum crushed oreo. Try it on a chocolate dough. Don’t forget to add toblerone dip.
2 CD Cheese. It’s not an ensaymada treat but this flavor is definitely to those who stay away from chocolates. Love it while hot.
1 MD Swiss Mocha.. Bittersweet chocolate that should not be tagged with mocha since it’s not coffee. Mister Donut and Dunkin Donuts have their own recipes for a number of doughnuts with same flavor. Swiss Mocha is original and the only one.
1 DD Bavarian.. And those sugary powder. Better than MD.
1 KK Hershey’s Cookies ‘n Cream. If it’s from Hershey’s, it must be good.
1 GD Choco Caramel Zigzag. Insanely diabetic-prone delicious.
1 KK Hershey’s Dark Chocolate. Another bittersweet treat.
1 CS Triple Choco Log. Chocolate overload log with frosted chocolate on top and chocolate filling.

Delicious dozen of doughnuts is a dose of dextrose. Still…