Food for the Soul

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Why Microsoft Wants Yahoo! Badly

I know, these isn't remotely connected to my blog's title, but I just had to talk about this latest development from Redmond, Washinton. I feel the world is going through some seismic changes and I just had to contribute my two cents worth. As I have said earlier, the Net and the Worldwide Web is the is THE PLACE to be nowadays and in the future. Nowhere have I seen the power of ethernet, broadband, DSL and dial-up than right here in blogger's world. I have witnessed how one man's voice can reach thousand and even millions at the click of a mouse. More and more people are getting hooked up to the Internet and these more and more people are depending more and more on it to do their daily activities. Shopping, mail, research, finding professional services, sourcing jobs, outsourcing jobs, networking, reading the daily paper which is now online, downloading music, downloading videos, video conferencing, booking hotels, booking flights are but only a few in an endless list of uses that the Net has provided. Businessmen have taken notice and advertisers as well. Nary a big store or establishment will you find that does not have a website. The power of the Internet is one that is not yet fully tapped and woe to the IT company that does not realize this. Which now bring us the answer to the title of this post.

Post-Bill Gates Microsoft still retains the far-off vision of its founder, and is very much aware of what the future brings. It knows that to remain at the top of the game as well as be relevant in the techno world, it needs to adjust and adapt. What it is about Yahoo! that has brought about the $40 billion dollar offer? Simple. It's network and search engine. All who goes on the Internet makes use of the search engine. This is the software gadget that finds whatever you are looking for on the Net based on the key words that you type into the search box. A list of all the websites or URL's that contains these keywords then appear on your screen ranked according to a criteria or software developed by the search engines owners. And how do the search engines do this? They crawl through all accessible websites for texts it might have that contain the key words. This is how it works. Let's say an internet surfer wants to install a new kitchen cabinet. He types in "kitchen cabinet" in the search box and clicks. In nanoseconds, a list appears of websites containing the word "kitchen cabinet". Imagine how much a company would give and do just to appear on the top of the first page of that list. And that is just one side of the story. I have not talked here yet of placements on URL's for ads.

Whew! That is quite a mouthful for a non-techie like me to say.

It is these resources of Yahoo! that has Microsoft salivating and so far Yahoo! is not biting. So you see now why I do persist in making posts that hopefully will gain more readership, apart of course from the high and fulfillment of a piece I could be proud of brings? We have to take a ride on the new wave of the future and that future is in the Net.

Hello There!

I've been very quiet lately. You see I have been to a place where no Internet connection can be had. Yes, there places like that do still exist. Which makes subscribing to SMARTBro or Globe's wireless internet connections quite attractive. You can get connecvtivity wherever there is a SMART or Globe signal, you just have to buy their kit and pre-paid cards. This way, you will always wired to the Net.

Now, I don't know if that's a good thing or not, to be always virtually connected. Sometimes, the Net can be a bothersome distraction most especially during family bonding time. The three days that I was in isolation, Internet-wise, actually made me focus on my daughter and the hubby. We just lounged in the bedroom and watched television the whole day. My two-year and a half old coo-some showed off her new English phrases she learned from the boob-tube, her constant companion apart from her yaya (The tragedy of working moms and single child families, sob,sob,sob). Anyway, this time she had us all to herself and the hubby and I delighted in her attempts at speaking English sans correct grammar, but what do you know, she could actually mouth four to five worded English sentences like, "Mama, are you ok?", "Let us go in the gawas?"(hehehe), "My tummy is hungry." Gosh, and she is not even going to school yet (Pardon the gushing mother, aren't we all always proud?). Good thing, as the hubby was already getting jealous of my laptop (hehe). Complained I was spending more time pounding away its keys than spending time with them. Guilty as charged. I do get carried away sometimes. Having a blog is really time-consuming, how much more having two! Yet, it is something that gives me a different kind of high. Its not just about writing anything that just comes to mind. It is seeing your words in the Net and knowing that others are reading what you have made. Its the "declined" and unsolicited articles senders' sweet revenge on the publishing world. They now have an alternative, and who knows, in the very near future, blogger's might even give them a run for their money.

You see, the Internet is the newest and soon, the biggest international marketplace. More deals are now being closed on the Net. Outsourcing and web-advertising is becoming the latest by-words in the world of business. Why do you think software giant Microsoft from out of the blue made an unsolicited offer of $40billion for Yahoo!? It didn't want to become obsolete in a fast-changing world that would very soon be driven by Internet economics.

But more than web and blogging dynamics, writing on-line on my very own site is simply something I love and its a passion I know I will continue to have. I just have to make sure family still comes first, though.

The Pasaway Landlord

Let me digress dear readers and allow me to violate my own rule of writing down here only everything waray. I'm going to take the advise of a dear doctor/psychiatrist in the States quoted in an article of the February 2008 issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine Philippne edition. She said blog down your thoughts, angst and what-have-you to lessen your worries and anxieties...I can't recall the rest, but the gist was blogging your thoughts on an anonymous site helps a lot emotionally and psychologically. The quoted Dr. "Feel-Good" from the States suggested anonymous so you could be free to write down anything without worrying about libel and such. I still like to think that my true identity is still a mystery to most of evryone out there so I guess this applies.

So here I am writing down my thoughts on my landlord who gave me a a hell of a hard time when I decided to terminate my lease and transfer residences. I won't bore you with the details as to why I did so. Neither will i tell you why I chose not stay, I don't want to discourage any future lessees of hers (ooops!). But let me tell how my landlord took it and what she did next. I fully well know that I am allowed to consume my two months advance and declared my intentions to her. But, guess what she said? No,no,no, she said, I still got to pay another month's rent cause she was retaining my deposit for my electricity bill. As if I was moving to Timbuktu and she could not reach me by the time the bill came. But good-natured that I was, I came up with a win-win solution, I gave her a check equivalent to the latest month bill, postdated to the day we would be leaving. But the die was cast and an amiable lessor-lessee relationship was strained, at least on my part. HOw could she think I would not honor my obligations when in all the years I have lived in her house I was always on time in giving the rent? But that is only part of the story. What takes the cake is when the day to move came. We started taking out our things as early as two days before deadline, and left the house a day prior. We, however, left some super heavy stuff like the refrigerator that we would be picking up later as soon as we found storage space. Ms. Landlord however, was in a real hurry to get us out of the house pronto. On Saturday, when we still had a day left on our lease, she demanded the keys. I requested an extension up to Wednesday or exactly three days as we still was looking for a place to put the rest of our things as it could not fit yet where we had moved into. Well, for reasons known only to her (it couldn't have been for financial needs as she was more than loaded from remittances abroad of her hubby) she kept on texting me day in and day out to return the keys. At my tether's end, I agreed to give it to her, sublty adding in my message what could happen if anything occured in the house and our ref and other appliances we left there would be lost. Wonders of wonders, she fnally got it. She texted that she wanted us to get our things first before we returned the keys, no deadline mentioned. For crying out loud, we or our things have only been overstaying for exactly 48 hours!!! after our lease, fully paid for with no arrearages and the utilities paid for by check, expired. Grrrr. Its people like thes who ruin my day and increase my wrinkles. Oh, how I would love to mention her name or at least the office from where she works (there being no libelous item in this post, I checked it out) but nagingibabaw pa rin ang asal ng mama ko (my mother's moral upbringing still prevails) and much as I'm truly vexed, I have no desire to ruin a person's reputation no matter how much she has ruined my day. Well, what do you think? Should I or shouldn't I?

Color me black, color me brown, color me pink

We all hope for an ideal world, one where prejudice and discrimination are but vestiges of a bygone era and colors are but wonderful creation of nature and not a label for the tint of your skin. But, as Tom Hanks would say in the movie “Philadelphia”, which tackled discrimination against HIV-afflicted gays, “we don’t live in that world”.

Discrimination and prejudice is a reality that has been there since the dawn of civilization only it came by in other names. It was considered normal and acceptable behavior, that is until men realized its deathly and disastrous results. The history of man has borne witness to the bloody consequences of individuals who have imposed their prejudiced views on many. The Holocaust. Genocide in Rwanda. Ethnic cleansing in the Serbian conflict. Apartheid. Bloody suppression of the natives by colonizers. There where the belief of being above other fellow men, has bred this twin scourge. So many have died whose only sin was to have been born of the wrong color or of having professed a different faith.

But not all forms of discrimination can be as extreme as the blights in human history. It may come in the most subtle of manner. There is the timeless great divide between rich and poor, of the intellectual snobbishness of the educated and the belief of superiority of race. It may also come in the dogmatic view of the existence of only two genders and any sexual orientation different from the physical self an aberration. So many of us shudder and make the sign of the cross after hearing such senseless deaths all victims of discrimination, yet haven’t we been guilty of practicing such in our own different ways. We are guilty when we treat our own hired help like lesser beings; we are guilty when we deny enrolment to children of unwed mothers flaunting moral high ground as a reason for acting so; we are guilty when we laugh at the “monkey” English of our fellow Filipinos, false pride of our American accents and diction; we are guilty when we judge a person’s worth based on her appearance without bothering to know them better; we are guilty when we refuse admittance to gays and transsexuals because they allegedly tarnish our establishment’s image; we are guilty when we mock the mentally ill instead of affording them the care and understanding that they sorely need. The list goes on and on and on. Harmless they may seem at first but we should not forget, out of the seeds of hatred and prejudice have sprung demagogues who have called for cleansing of people not of their kind. Where this cleansing is not of the hygienic kind but the Final solution, death and wiping out of an entire race.

Have we learned the lessons of history? Have we become more kind, understanding and tolerant of our differences? The answer to that lies in a close examination of our hearts, for therein lies the answer as well. Shame can only make us bow our heads but it does not bring about a real change. But a true change of heart is what makes us accept, that the world indeed is full of men of different shades. But yet they are no different from you and me and that we are all beautiful creatures of God, that we all deserve the same place under the sun.