Puerto Princesa City

During the last Palarong Pambansa held at Puerto Princesa City, Palawan, and I was able to experience what it is to be in a City in the Forest.

The people of Puerto Princesa are really intent in keeping their city clean of any unsightly trash. With the ordinances put in place by the city government and the support of the people they are bound to succeed.

To help in keeping the trash in their place, several garbage cans are placed at about ten to twenty meter intervals inside the city proper. Anybody caught throwing trash in places other than inside the trash can is reported. The person is fined for this misbehavior. The worst is, the name of the erring individual is announced on local radio programs over the entire day.

On our first day, Mayor Edward Hagedorn gave a warm reception to the members of the Summer Institute of Linguistics who were there during the lauching of the Holy Bible that they translated to Kagayanen (a vernacular of a local ethnic group known as Kagayanen who live in the isand of Cagayancillo).



And we stayed in a really nice hotel , the Asturias Hotel.



It has dimly lit twin-bed rooms fit for some rest and relaxation after a hard day's work.





Inside is a small interior garden.



And a nifty swimming pool. Unfortunately, it is built for relaxation and not for water exercises.



The lobby is as dimly lit as the rooms but is also comfortable.



Here's a picture of me in front of the hotel. Hehehe :)



The place looks as lovely at night as it does during the day.



Lights in front of the Puerto Princesa Cultural Center.



Another view of the plaza lights.

And to cap the opening ceremonies of the Palaro, we watched young students compete for the title of Mr. and Ms. Palaro.



The young Cebuana lass in green dress won the title of Ms. Palaro.

And here is a little something to do: Find the fighter plane in the picture and find out how many there are. :)



Happy hunting!

Visit Palawan one of these days. :)

Who's poor?

They say that most Filipinos are living in poverty. But I believe that assessment depends of your perspective of poor.

Wikipedia defines poverty as "deprivation of those things that determine the quality of life, including food, clothing, shelter and safe drinking water, but also 'intangibles' such as the opportunity to learn and to enjoy the respect of fellow citizens."

On my way home from a meeting outside of the office, I saw a man watching an afternoon tv show on his free time inside the Quinta Market in Quiapo near the Pasig Ferry terminal. (see separate story in my commuter blog)



His TV set has a 15" screen and he uses a cable television line as an antenna. While he watches free TV broadcasts, his neighbors up ahead have cable TV connection and are watching the Pinoy Box Office channel.

So, if poverty is defined as deprivation of those essentials mentioned above, then I believe this man is not inside the poverty level.

But then again, there is a so called poverty threshold which measures poverty based on income levels.

So who's to say someone is poor?

Call to enrol

Let us get our kids to school!

Call +63.2.636.1663 for details.

Visit the Oplan Balik Eskwela Information and Action Center at DepEd Complex, Meralco Avenue, Pasig City from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. until June 13, 2008.

Or visit the public school or DepEd office nearest you.

Balik eskwela na!

VIDEO COURTESY OF BROWNSUGAR PRODUCTIONS

Potty time: safe and secure passwords

While most people will create passwords that are easy to recall, having a safe and secure password requires a lot from a person.

Character wise
A safe and secure password must use letters (a-z) in both cases (a-z and A-Z) alternately, numbers (0-9) and characters (@,$,%,&, etc) in one password alone. An example is abc@123. This is a 7 character password using alphanumeric (letters and numbers) characters and a special character.

Some may write their passwords as aBc@12E. In this example, a certain letter is capitalized to break the sequential pattern (i.e. a-b-c) and a number (3) is substituted for its alphabetical equivalent (3 = e).

Numbers and letters can be substituted for each other. Here is what I have so far: 1 = i, 3 = e, 4 = h, 0 = o.

Length wise
Long passwords are hard to crack. The longer the harder. I have seen people typing in about 12 characters using the QWERTY side of the keyboard along with the number row on top (with shift pressed) and the number pad at the right side. The password must look something like this "sg85@sgh89t8"

One can memorize all the characters. But at this time, we all have more than one account that requires a password. You have your email account (personal, office, business, and monkey-business), your blog account, your photo archive account (photobucket, flicker), internet bank account, and your online community account (friendster, facebook, yahoo! 360).

Well, you can use the same password in all your accounts. The only problem is if your password in one account is discovered all your other accounts are in danger.

Variety
You can vary you password pattern in different accounts. For accounts that you think may not be that important or that you can rebuild after it is ruined, just have a simple password that you can remember and someone else can guess.

For accounts that record you personal and financial assets, transactions, and communications, have a more complicated password for them.

If your account requires you to change the password regularly, try to come up with 3 different passwords that you can easily remember. You may write it down and keep it locked away. But committing it to memory is the safest way.

Connections
Most hackers or those who are plain troublemakers will want to find a connection between you and the password. If you deeply adore your a person or even just your cat, the hacker will just try using the cat's or person's name or nickname in different variations (alpahnumeric and special character combinations, forward, backwards, reversed segments) to access you account.

One way to avoid this problem but still retain a good chance of remembering the password is by connecting the password with someone or something that you used to know or have but is not in any way connected with you anymore.

An example will be a nickname you gave your toy when you were a child that nobody else outside your family knows about. Or the name or nickname of the person you used to plan in having a relationship then but did not bloom. Or the birthday of a person you have a crush with 10 years ago.

I hope this will help you make your accounts more secure. Happy computing!