There are things I will always remember, like how as a child scared of ghosts in my room, my mom would lie in my bed with me until I fell asleep. Or, the first time I scored a game winner, or the first time I met my wife. Such good things are easy to remember; then, there are some things I wish not to remember, but cannot forget.

I wonder then if there was a “collective memory” for a country — at least for the city of Manila — would we never forget Ondoy? We’re good, unfortunately, at the business of “forgiving and forgetting” (Bongbong is now a Senator, after all), and it seems we may never learn:

1. Pag-asa still ill-equipped and ill-trained.

2. There’s a lot of talk, but I don’t know of any local government initiative that reaches out to address the preparedness of each household should a typhoon strike. Do we see any public service announcements? Are there people going door-to-door in your neighborhood explaining where to go if there is a flash flood warning?

3. More importantly, do we even have a flash flood warning system in place — especially on the two major TV and radio networks? Can the telecoms send out free SMS warnings when one is in danger in a particular area?

4. Where are the campaigns to lower our garbage output? They need to be painful, especially to commercial establishments that create too much packaging, and those households that carelessly dispose of them. They are partly to blame for the disaster.

5. People living next to the water of Laguna Lake are still, well, living there.

6. A lot of infrastructure damage, including schools, still await repair.

7. The families (squatters and informal settlers) who lived above the floodways and near the riverside have peacefully returned… to their previous addresses.

There are few small but positive signs. Note that they are all still in the future tense:

1. DOST says they are ready (of course, they are ready).

He said weather and flood forecasting will improve, especially in Metro Manila, when the Doppler radar at the Subic Freeport becomes operational. The new radar will complement the data that would be obtained by those in Baguio City and Baler, Aurora.

2. There is a House Bill (00127) that will tax plastic bags. This should be passed now.

3. A Quezon City councilor has proposed a better drainage plan for his city, while some families are being relocated.

4. In Laguna, they have earmarked some more money for disaster preparedness.

5. Joey Salceda is doing his thing down in Albay.

6. Some Pasig River dredging aka crafty CSR.

I think we shouldn’t wait for our government to act — they are partly to blame for the mess in the first place. I often am at fault for not backing up my talk, but I really think that if there’s something we can do, we should start local. Some ideas: Bring canvas bags to the grocery store (have a set for every car, if you have more than one car). Join your purok or baranggay meetings and voice out your concern for local preparedness and disaster protocols — thousands of people came to the aid of their neighbors last time, why not now?

I always believed Ondoy was our 9/11. It came without warning, caught our city unaware, took many lives, and made many heroes. Can we learn from it? Have we called enough of our government to protect us from similar disasters should they happen again — anywhere in the country? Can we make ourselves better from that experience? Or, do we simply forget?

P.S. I will never forget the generosity of all those who shared their time, money and even their lives in those grim moments last year. It helped ease the pain for many.

“One of the methods would be to ensure that that the ballot cast for a certain candidate is invalidated.” he said. “A technician could use a ballpen with leaking ink; a drop of the ink in the ballot is enough for the machine to invalidate it, and the technician could always say it was accidental,” he explained.

“The large quantities would be for the politician to pay both the Board of Election Inspector which is the teacher and the technician who will insert all the pre-shaded ballots, which is very hard to do because of the presence of political party watchers,” he said.

More here.

Arsenal supporters Garreth Ellidge and Jimmy Capstick, who both hail from Burnley, had planned to ride to the match to raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital, which is the London club’s chosen charity this season.

When their friends and Burnley fans Dominic Marquis and Peter Baker heard of their idea, they threw down the gauntlet to make a race of it, and both pairs of fans set off at 8am yesterday morning from Burnley’s Turf Moor ground to head for the capital via Manchester, Stoke, Tamworth and Milton Keynes to hopefully arrive in time for tomorrow’s 3pm kick-off.

More.

Here.

Documents from Napocor identified the sites as Mapalan Point in Morong, Bataan; San Juan, Batangas; Talusan Point in Sipalay, Negros Occidental; Tagbarungis in Inagauan and Concepcion in Tanabag, both in Palawan; and Cansilan Point in Bayawan, Negros Oriental.

It’s more than a month away from now but TV host Kris Aquino is already all agog in planning her son Baby James’ birthday party. Baby James was born April 19 and Kris is out to fulfill his dreams of a Michael Jackson party.

“Tinanong ko siya kung ano ang gusto niyang party, kung Time Zone or Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson party daw. So, meron mga tatlong dance groups na napanood sa ‘Pilipinas Got Talent’ na sasayaw na lang para sa kanya, para super happy na siya,” Kris shared in a taped interview in Showbiz News Ngayon February 26.

More.

One man, one bike, 6,000 miles.

Why was I doing this? For reasons best summed up by Robert Louis Stevenson, who was as great a globetrotter as he was a writer. “I travel,” he wrote, “to feel the needs and hitches of our life more clearly, to come down off the feather-bed of civilisation.”

More.

A jury didn’t believe him, and a judge sentenced him to eight years in prison. But now, new revelations of safety problems with Toyotas have Lee pressing to get his case reopened and his freedom restored. Relatives of the victims – who condemned Lee at his sentencing three years ago – now believe he is innocent and are planning to sue Toyota. The prosecutor who sent Lee to prison said he thinks the case merits another look.

Here.

Are you ready? Are you ready? Fight!

1. Since Obama’s win, the word “change” has gotten really abused. Bishop Bacani:

“Maybe we also need an economic collapse before we say to this President and her administration: ‘Enough of your old ways! We want change!’ Let us not wait for that to happen anymore. And if we cannot force a change yet, let us prepare for it now by nurturing selflessness and hope in our hearts today. If our leaders will not change, let us change, so that when we have an opportunity to change them, there will be real change, and not only a change of people”

Change – 7 Real Change – 0

2. Save the Philippines:

According to the MasterCard Worldwide Index of Consumer Purchasing Priorities, an outcome of a survey of more than 6,000 consumers in 14 markets in the Asia Pacific, nine out of 10 Filipinos consider scrimping on discretionary spending

3. Obinay. Oh, god.

4. The Reproductive Health Bill gets fresh endorsements. CBCP still thinks that their in the business of solving our problems, albeit through a humble admission of failure. And, in Kenya (this is a must read). Did you hear the Pastoral Letter?

5. Worried about Prop 8? JDV wants a Rainbow Coalition. Now, who isn’t politically correct?

6. International Bazaar = International Madness

7. Love those creative acronyms we come up with? Try AMORE!

8. March Against Porn! (This headline will really kick the Adsense into overdrive!)

9. Most interesting news to come out of Manila: Antiquity smugglers caught, and, dang, they had some kinda loot.

10. And, another: U.S. spy plane was shot down in Mindanao. It’s ours now!! MWAHAHAHA!! – MILF. Screw the Constitution!! MWAHAHAHA!! – GMA

Here you go:

1. So, yes, Dingdong and Karylle breakup. Good stuff. An underwear model calls it quits after repeatedly seeing his girlfriend being kissed on stage. Or, is it because the underwear model is tapping the beer girl/mermaid in the other set? Honestly, I’d have issues if my name was Dingdong — enough to make me go… you know, ding-dong.

2. Scroll to the bottom of that story: Anne Curtis and Sam Milby bid their goodbyes as well. I don’t know about Sam, but Anne’s stupid costume in “Dyosa” would have done me in. Why did they attach her wings to her arms? She’s like a handless Big Bird, albeit with better abs.

3. This is unconstitutional, right? Are sex toys illegal? If you hear “Sex Toy Raid”, won’t you think Manila poice have better things to do?

4. Suggesting that you might do something, like maybe in a few years, is news if you’re Claudine Barretto. I’m not saying that what they’re doing isn’t magnanimous, but it shouldn’t be used to get column inches. Unless you’re Brangelina, and you’re donating all the money to charity after.

5. And, I’ve suspected this for a while: Korean fugitives live among us. I mean, there’s so many of them, some of them are bound to be baddies.

6. Our local Survivor Castaways are apparently doing well in the ratings. I’ve seen maybe two minutes of it and I found it seemed staged; and frankly, it’s not repulsive enough. Soon, American has-been reality show Fear Factor will make its debut, and it better be repulsive.

7. The recent (deadly bank robbery) at the UP Diliman campus has stunned many. And now there are calls for police presence — currently not allowed — at the campus.

8. Video chat now, via gmail.

9. Here are 10 movies that make you want to smoke. Honestly, you don’t need ten. Casablanca is enough to make you wanna bust it like Bogart.

10. The physiology of a bully’s brain: they get high off other people’s suffering.

The finding was unexpected, noted Benjamin Lahey, a psychologist at the University of Chicago and co-author of the study, which appears in the new issue of the journal Biological Psychology. Jean Decety, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago, is lead author of the study.

The researchers had expected that the bullies would show no response when they witnessed pain in somebody else—that they experience a sort of emotional coldness that allows them to steal milk money with no remorse, for example