The Love Spell weekly run of ABS-CBN channel 2 is doing great in the ratings.  Thanks to the attractive pair of Kim and Gerald, the two most popular teens from the Pinoy Big Brother Teen Edition fame.

Theirs may not be a perfect match (not yet) but they seem to get along well together in their current TV starrer.  Given more time and exposure, they will be the next love team to watch.

Kim has all the materials for stardom but they’re still hibernating.  Gerald has the making of a matinee idol but he still has more to do to make the promise of his potentials.

If their Love Spell teledrama is to be used as a gauged, it is a good start for the two to make their presence felt in the showbiz world.

“The Hill of Samuel” by Alfred Yuson is a Palanca award winner (third place) in 1968 and is the top winner in the 1968 Free Press Literary Awards of the Philippines Free Press.

Synopsis:  Dignos, son of Samuel the Mistico, came back to where his father used to wield his influence–a sexual rite of great occultic proportions.  He looked for the hill where his father did his orders and he got to the place through the helpless acquiescence of an aunt.  He met his cousin Orlando and his betrothed, the virginal Lumen whose features Dignos instantly desired.  He went to prepare the place of the ritual and in no time he drove his mystical power to work laying aside the protestations of the males in the community and attracted with a magnetic devilish power all the women including Lumen who was to be the main dish for his lustful appetite.  Orlando, coming from a distant place from which he did a mystical form of healing, tried to catch up with the ongoing sexual ritual of his cousin for fear of losing Lumen but he was powerless to the already frenzied horde of hypnotized women.  The hill of Samuel had come alive again.

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The popular boxing radio host Pedro Fernandez hits the nail on the head when he described Manny Pacquiao as the first post-Internet fighter.  What he means is that Pacquiao brings the glory of boxing to the peaks of Internet websites.  Well, that is just another reason to back up the claim that Manny Pacquiao is the most popular boxer in the world today — “Internetly” speaking.

But Pacman is not just enlivening the boxing websites but also the sport of boxing itself.  While many experts dismiss him to be no. 1 pound-for-pound against Floyd Mayweather, there is not a doubt that the science of boxing is in its liveliest mood not when Pretty Boy Floyd fights but when Pacman rumbles. 

Boxing promotions will have fat pockets if they have a hell of a Pacman matchup.  Advertisers have nothing to lose if Pacman is their product endorser.  Entertainment companies will rack up the profits if they can have exclusive rights to Pacman’s fights.  Politicians with not much to promise can become strong contenders when they rub elbows with the Pacman. 

In the Philippines, crime rates drop , political enemies suddenly become friends, families not normally together become one, church attendance drops or church schedules are adjusted whenever the Pacman fights.  And if there ever is one who will get in the Pacman’s way, let that one prepare himself to be devoured by the human embodiment of the pacman computer game.

Back to the Internet.  Tell me, who should be Internet’s number 1 boxer?

The revelries may have subsided right now especially in my mother school, the University of Pangasinan where this year’s topnotcher in the Nursing Board Exam graduated, Gringo de Guzman San Diego.

Well, aside from him, four other topnotchers are graduates of universities based in Dagupan. They are:

1. Russel Salvador Abalos ( top 8 ) - Lyceum Northwestern University
2. Benedict Nevado Mayo ( top 8 ) - Lyceum Northwestern University
3. Felipe Petras Sotelo Jr. ( top 8 ) - University of Pangasinan
4. Melody Aoanan Aquino ( top 9 ) - Lyceum Northwestern University

That makes five of the top 10 are from my beloved province, Pangasinan.

Kudos to all of you who passed this year’s nursing board exam. To those who were not successful, remember that failure is never final.

There’s this interesting feature in a television show about the presence of some unidentified flying objects (UFOs) called by thier catchers as “rods”.

In the feature, a group of extreme players went on a sky diving adventure in a vertical cave. In the video, there appeared some objects in the appearance of rods flying across the vicinity of the cave at a spectacular speed of up to 130 mph. Similar video captures from many amateur video footages were shown to support the idea of the UFO sighting.

The foremost believer of the “rod” phenom is Jose Escamilla who was the first man to make the “rod” sighting public. In his most daring act ever in his life, he came out of the open to show the whole world what he considered to be the single most significant discovery of life forms that we know so little about. His first encounter with the “rod” was a March 19, 1994 footage of an object flying at an incredible speed. since then, Mr. Escamilla has devoted his life to this phenomenon, building an army of catchers and believers and even devoting an Internet site to the subject.

Here are some RODS slides from roswellrods.com.

Are these RODS for real?

You are looking at the picture of golf’s teen sensation, Michelle Wei of Hawaii, a 13-year-old girl whose features defy the limits of her age.

She recently made golfing waves in the 2003 U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links golf tournament by capturing the champion’s trophy and becoming the youngest winner of the event at age 11. She also recorded her name as the youngest golfer ever to play in a Professional Golf Association (PGA) event when she teed off at the Sony Open on January 15, 2004. Her participation in the event also marked the only fourth time in the long history of the PGA to have a female joining a male-dominated professional group.

Her ballooning popularity has actually landed her on the front cover of Fortune magazine and has even got the lucidity of some people to the limit when she is thought of to be the anti-christ because of her phenomenal golfing prowess.

Is she the heir-apparent to the throne now occupied by Tiger Woods?

In boxing, talk is a commodity.  It may be just as expensive as the boxing purse itself as it is the link that ties fighting parties together.  Talk is also a medium used by handlers to hype up the upcoming bouts of their wards and it is also no surprise when the punchers don’t use just their fists but also their words before, during, and after a fight.

Since professional boxing is highly defined by time tables, it is expected that the camps involved in a particular match will be rounded up by mediamen and get to put the camps in some sort of “word war” before the actual “war” happens.  This is especially true when a bout is one for the title or when the protagonists involved are the cream of the crop and when their upcoming skirmish is gigantically promising in terms of monetary returns for all the parties concerned.  Professional boxing, in fact, is presently under the mercy of moneyed promoters and media outlets.

It is, therefore, no surprise to hear of Freddie Roach to utter unwelcome words about Erik Morales, if ever he indeed said those words, to sell the highly expected third encounter between Manny Pacquiao and Morales.  Morales’ response does its own share of emboldening the fonts of his second rematch with the Pacman.

To sum it up, word war always precedes wards war.

Another potential reality TV hit is the Pinoy Dream Academy of ABS-CBN.  One of the requirements to be eligible in the Academy is fluency in basic Filipino language.

I don’t know exactly what is meant by basic Filipino language.  If it means being able to say Salamat po or Mabuhay! then that’s really basic.  But it is, of course, a requirement for communications purposes. 

From what I understand, the Filipino language requirement asks the participants to be at least able to understand Filipino and can speak Filipino in an understandable way. 

I’m just curious, however, if that requirement disallows participants to use other languages like English. 

Any comments?

Make no mistake about it.  A battle in boxing does not actually start in round 1.  It starts when the boxers close all doors, windows and other openings for purposes of training.  The training defines the outcome of a fight.

For Erik “El Terrible” Morales, the battle begins when he goes up in the mountains of Los Angeles to start his weight reduction program, a program so crucial that if done improperly will result to a sorry loss in the end.  That was his undoing in his second encounter with the Pacman and he’s not a fool to repeat a previous mistake.

It is, then, his foremost concern at the moment to bring his weight to the level suited for what could be the singular bout that Erik Morales could not forget.  He will come to the fight venue a different man than he was last January 21, 2006.  He is coming off a two-fight losing streak, an uncommon scenario for the kind of fighter that he is.  He knows that the sunset of his sterling career is near and he doesn’t like any cloud of failure block the bright rays of his boxing sun. For Erik Morales, the third battle with Pacquiao has already begun.

In the case of Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao, the battle with Erik Morales actually began when he fought Oscar Larios.  It is no secret that he fought Larios as a tune-up fight for the third and probably his last skirmish against “El Terrible”.

His six-week training going to the duel with Larios was enough for Chololo’s caliber but to say that the same kind of training is enough against Morales is to commit a grave training mistake.  Morales is several notch better than Larios and Pacquiao knows that and with such an awareness, he will not train for only six weeks.  His preparation was not excellent in his first fight against Morales and he paid dearly for that lack of excellence.  His training in the second fight was superb and he finished Morales off in an equally superb fashion.  Pacquiao knows the kind of training he has to do for the Morales fight and when he starts the training, that’s the beginning of the battle.

The following is part of the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, a Philippine Biodiversity Report of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau, the Conservation International, Biodiversity Conservation Program-University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies, and the Foundation for the Philippine Environment.  Editors-in-chief are Perry Ong, Leticia Afuang and Ruth Grace Rosell-Ambal and Technical Editors are Prescillano Samora and Carly Vynne.

The Philippines is the second largest archipelago next to Indonesia.  It is composed of 7,107 islands and islets covering a total land area of 300,000 sq.km.  It has an exceptionally long coastline of approximately 18,000 km.

The larger islands have rugged mountainous interiors, most ranges running north to south with numerous peaks emerging above hills and valleys which in turn rise from the narrow coastal plains, broader interior plains, and major valleys.  A majority of the islands have extensive offshore coral reefs.  The combination of its complex geological origins, fragmented layout, varying exposures to shifting winds and typhoons and the peculiar distribution of rainfall, has given rise to the existence of a complex mix of ecosystems and habitat types, home to a diversity of lifeforms.  It is estimated that about half of the country’s wildlife and plant diversity are endemic to the archipelago and found nowhere else in the world.

Almost every major island in the country possesses unique species with high percentages of local endemicity, resulting in distinct biogeographical regions and subregions.  Based on the distribution of the marine taxa and the terrestrial floral and faunal assemblages, six distinct marine regions were identified, while 16 terrestrial biogeographical regions and 30 subregions were delineated.  In terms of cultural diversity, the country is home to an estimated 127 ethnic groups and subgroups.

The Philippines’ remaining biodiversity and the ecosystems that support it are under tremendous threats.  Extractive industries such as logging and mining have destroyed most of the forests.  High human population density and growth rate further put enormous pressure on the land.  In turn, rainforests have been converted to agriculture and plantations to augment the lack of land to support a growing population.  In addition, cyanide and dynamite fishing, along with rapid development in coastal areas, destroyed coral reefs and mangroves.  Conservative land and resource-use trend projections indicate that profound degradation of the country’s biogeographic regions will occur in approximately 10-15 years.  Because of the dire conditions of Philippine biodiversity, Eugene Linden (an environmental journalist) and John Terborgh (a plant ecologist) have written-off the country as being damaged beyond repair.  However, we disagree with their prognosis and believe that there is a small window of opportunity, through urgent conservation actions, to stem the tide and destruction before a point of no return is reached.

The Philippine Government’s initiatives to protect and conserve biodiversity are embodied in its Philippine Agenda 21.  It also developed its National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) in 1997.  However, the Action Plan did not include geographical information on the areas that needed the most urgent attention and conservation measures.

In response, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau (DENR-PAWB), together with Conservation International Philippines and the Biodiversity Conservation Program of the University of the Philippines-Center for Integrative and Development Studies (BCP-UP CIDS) convened the Philippine Biodiversity Conservation Priority-Setting Program (PBCPP).

The PBCPP put together the results of 18 months of data gathering and consultation process, involving more than 300 individuals representing over 100 institutions.  Participants from national government agencies, non-government organizations, people’s organizations, the academe, private sector and donor community joined local and international scientists during the whole exercise.

The PBCPP is a major breakthrough in the country’s conservation efforts. For the first time, experts from the three major ecosystems (terrestrial, inland waters and marine) and the stakeholders within them were able to plan together and discuss priorities and strategies for biodiversity conservation.  The process of identification and definition of the national priority areas, as well as the strategic actions for conserving Philippine Biodiversity were participatory, making the decisions and choices a national consensus.

Furthermore, the PBCPP validated two very important facts:

1. because of its complex geological history and archipelagic nature, the Philippines is indeed a megadiversity country with several centers and sub-centers of endemism and biological diversity in the terrestrial, inland waters and marine realms; and
2. the Philppines is the hottest of the global biodiversity hotspots because of the enormous threats to its biodiversity.  The urgency to conserve and protect the Philippines’ biodiversity cannot be overemphasized.

In the end, when species lists and maps of priority areas are drawn and conservation priorities are established and finalized, the responsibility of making these priorities a reality lies with the Filipino people.  The PBCPP is a critical first step towards meeting the challenge and averting the biodiversity crisis from a point of no return.