AWESOME EXPERIENCE

Last week, the grandfather of my girlfriend had passed away. Her grandfather was really old enough and was known for being a good person in the place. My girlfriend wanted to go home to attend the funeral rites. It's a little bit far and it took 1 hr. to travel. I asked her if I could go with her and she said yes. We're planning about going few months ago. It is on the mountain, so, the place might not surprise me because I was born on the mountain too. But it was almost 12 years that I've been living on the town. I have adapted a different environment during that 12 years and I thought going back to the mountain would surprise me. On the place where I was born, few years ago, if we wanted to go to the town, we needed to walk for at least 1 1/2 hr. But that was few years ago. Today, if I want to go to the mountain, motorcycles would take me on the front of our house. Going back to my girlfriend's case. There are two ways to get there. 1. two rides, which means we need to ride a bus and stop at the neighboring town to the south and look for a motorcycle to bring us uphill, or 2. wait a bus coming from the city which route is directly to the place where we're going. We took the 2nd option... The place I am talking about is Mantalongon - a mountain barangay in the Municipality of Dalaguete which is located southward from Cebu City. It is called "Little Baguio" because of its climate which is closely similar to Baguio City. I was a little bit scared because I heard stories that going to that place is so risky - an accident prone area. This is all about the road carved on the side of cliffs. There's one particular area where the road is very narrow which is good for only one mini-bus.

This was written two weeks ago... I need to publish this even it is not yet done. :D

LET'S TALK ABOUT FAIRNESS

This is not to offend anybody. I just want clarify about fairness or favoritism... etc. What I am writing about is only a response on what I've encountered that I personally get affected - when there is a stimuli, there is always a response. It's all started when our drawing instructor checked our activities. He emphasized about lettering with specific measurement. He always reminds us that "it doesn't matter how neat is the drawing is if the lettering is poor, the whole drawing will be spoiled". And not just that, there's a lot more rules on how to make the activity properly. I really appreciate all those rules, although we had those rules already in our minds but not as strict as that of present. This would be a great help for us that we could at least make our activities with certain guidelines and rules to be followed. We were very careful doing our activities last time. The great thing was, our instructor kept watching us on how we did our activity so that we would be guided. When I already done mine, I didn't consult him first because I knew that it'd be alright. Not to boast, my activity if perfectly done not talking about the lettering. I was having a poor lettering with my activity that time, honestly. So, no questions about the object - the Isometric and Orthographic Drawing. Our drawing instructor didn't check mine and some others because of our poor lettering. Without any complain, I took mine back and I will do it again. The bad thing was there were some activities that objects are questionable. The three views of Orthographic drawing are not properly constructed and our instructor already gave rating to it with 90, while he didn't check mine which the orthographic drawing properly constructed. Well, lettering matters not the objects? I am willing to redo my activity again but how about the one which the drawing was constructed imperfectly? Is this favoritism or what? It's not only this thing. Instructors have specific subjects to handle and should discuss everything related the subjects. But it's totally different on what had happened just recently. Our instructor talked and talked which were not related to the drawing subject until we didn't have much time to redo our activities. This happened many times and I never complained but I think this is the time to talk about fairness.

Again, this is not to offend anybody. I just want to clarify.

DON'T HAVE ANY TROUBLE YET

Last school year, I've find it difficult to learn with Math and Chemistry subjects. Yes, those lessons were taught during my High School but that was four (4) years ago. I got lower grades last school year of those two (2) subjects. During those times I didn't feel any discouragement but still have the courage that somehow I could learn despite of the fact that it's hard. I used to encourage somebody to be optimist and so must I.

This school year, I still have Math and Physics instead of Chemistry. So far so good. I feel very much enjoy with the lessons. Our Physics will deal with computations in the next lessons and I feel very much ready for it. We are studying Philippine Literatures too. At first, I really don't have any idea about it. I thought it's only just writings and just read them. But I felt excited as we discussed about the different approaches on literatures. Literatures are written with great distinctions depending to whom the literatures addressed and the main goal of the author of writing them. Before the different approaches on literatures we studied different figurative speeches. That was interesting because I never learned it from high school, maybe I was absent during that time. I only learned 5 or 6 figurative languages but there's more. That is why I really appreciate teachings, because, even I tell myself that I've learned a lot but learning goes on and the capacity to learn is not limited. There's a lot more on this earth that I must learn.

Just recently, during our major, we're learning how to create a batch file. I never learned such thing when I study computer technician course. It is a great advantage for me because I already a background on how batch file works. So, I don't have any trouble with it but my classmates instead. It's not really hard because we're given step by step instruction but others were not paying too much attention never ask questions while they don't really get clearly the step by step instruction on how to create a batch file. [To readers: Maybe you try to wonder what a batch file is, you can just try to google it. :D]

VISION AND MISSION OF OUR SCHOOL - CTU ARGAO CAMPUS

Source

Vision

The center of excellence and development in research, instruction, production, and extension services for progressive leadership transcending global and technological, business and industry – driven education.

Mission

Provides advanced professional and technical instruction for special purposes, industrial trade, teacher education, agriculture, fishery, forestry, engineering, aeronautics and land-based programs, arts and sciences, health science, information technology and other relevant field of study. It shall undertake research, production and extension services, and provide progressive leadership across the areas of specialization for global empowerment.

BACK TO SCHOOL

Three days left, I'll be going back to school. I'm a little bit excited about different people from different places. I've started to set priorities and I am more motivated to finish school. Mostly, I am four years older than my classmates. No wonder that they will give me little respect for it. But I don't take the advantage of being older than them. Sometimes I used to think that I should act like a man, like an adult but it depends on the environment. At school I'm gonna do some adjustments so that I could go with them but I should put  some boundaries.

Just this school year, our school added three courses. I got interested to shift from my previous course to the new one but it wasn't that easy. I should go on process to do that. So, I'm gonna do my best for my course although I have learned much from my current job and from my previous experiences. But, I'm gonna learn more. 

I am thinking about writing something about what's gonna happen not necessarily in school about  life also. So, let's see. 

VOTE BUYING - WORST THING

I was very convinced that this automated election would be fair - no more cheating, etc. But still some people used their intelligence and money in order to get what they really wanted. They were very wise. I really wonder why other people are willing to sell their rights to others. Everyone has the right to choose and right to vote but all of these rights would only cost Php200.00 or Php300.00, even just Php50.00 would be enough. I knew that it wasn't the first time this had happened. It (has) happened many times before. But until people realize that it is their rights, even a million pesos couldn't buy it. I attend a Sunday service one time. It wasn't the Pastor's intention to talk about politics. Candidates were very busy campaigning at that time and they promised to make changes. The Pastor said that it wasn't possible, unless God made a miracle in the heart of every man. That was really true.

I have read some Facebook statuses that said: "to those who sell their votes, SHAME ON YOU...". I was shocked by that statement but they had a point. I know this came from previous generations and I'm sure that this will be passed to the next generations. :(  

FIRST AUTOMATED ELECTION - SUCCESSFUL

The first automated election in Philippines was over. I am one of the technical support for PCOS Machine and I've witnessed a lot things which were unexpected. I have thought that voting would be quick but I was wrong, considering those senior citizens which really need assistance. There was no big difference for manual counting or automated counting if we only talk about time. However, the BEI's (Board of Election Inspectors) could no longer do the manual counting, PCOS could easily do it. On the designated area where I was assigned, I only have two PCOS and there were 1,800 more or less voters in the area. Each PCOS could hold 1,000 casting ballots, therefore, two PCOS would be enough. But still people should line-up unlike the previous manual election where there were more precincts compared to this automated where there's only two precincts - one PCOS for one precincts. Many are complaining because mostly they waited for more than two or more hours to vote. I have hoped that the machine would be fine so that there would be no delay. As hired by Smartmatic TIM as PCOS technician, we should be at our designated area as early as 5am and should sign an attendance at 6 and the voting should start at 7am. I felt glad that I didn't encountered any trouble on machine until 10pm in the evening when the ballots were not properly drop in the ballot box causing a "Paper Jam" error. On my designated area the voting was closed on one precinct, they're done. The machine itself could print election results. First, the 8 copies of local elections were printed. After printing, the machine asked if we were ready to transmit. We used modem for transmission. So, we're done at 10pm but because we didn't have a modem (supposedly there is) we should wait the other precinct. On my area, transmitting the results was easy, I have a good signal unlike those precincts on the mountain areas. At 11:30pm the voting of the other machine was done too and they're ready for transmitting the results. So, we only have one modem from the other polling area and transmission could be done by connecting the modem to a machine. We did it one at a time. After the transmission, the machine would print 22 copies for national elections. At exactly 2am, we're almost done. As Smartmatic Personnel, we were obliged to bring the PCOS machine the the municipal hall and we did it. We arrived at the Municipal Hall at 3am together with the BEI's. The canvassing center have shown their tally on a big screen, so we stayed there for two hours. We're just excited to see the results. At 5am I went home and go to bed. I was very tired that even one day on bed wasn't enough. Well, all those were experiences and I am proud that I was the part of the first automated election.

I'm not really sure if 100% of voters have voted, some are annoyed by the very long line but at least the majority have voted on my area.