The headline ruined it all

I refer to the article "Thousands plant trees, but cutting continues" in Philippine Daily Inquirer dated 26th August 2006. I was disturbed by the fact that the otherwise very positive and inspiring story was marred by a sidestory about cutting trees. The sidestory was not even substantiated as barely two sentences were written about it while the rest of the story was about the tree planting effort across the country. By golly, I could not fathom how it made to the headline. Common sense tells us that cutting will never end as furniture industry is a staple in the country. While it is not a secret that illegal logging persists, for all we know the woodcarvers described in the story were legitimate.

The sidestory about the cutting of trees (or was it woodcarving) was very out of place, lacked substance and maliciously added to sensationalize the article which, I believe, could have been more effective without it. The stakeholders in the tree planting endeavor made a commendable feat and should have been given due credit. Unfortunately, their effort was tainted by unnecessary injection of sensationalism.

PDI never learns. Just last week, an issue carried an article about Jim Paredes where he was headlined to have given up hope in the country when he immigrated to Australia. PDI was forced to apologise to Paredes after he slammed the paper for the inaccurate and malicious headline.

Negative stories are not the only ones that sell. I wish PDI treated the tree planting story with positive light, alas, the headline ruined it all.

Singapore Idol is a singing competition

Singapore Idol is down to its last six contestants with the judges bracing for another surprise, erm, disappointment. Why, last week we saw the exit of Mathilda Da Silva, who was one of the decent idol-wannabe while the obviously weakest singers but girl-magnet clowns - Joakim Gomez and Paul Twohill - stood firm. As it is, the lot are lacking talent of international caliber, even the promising Hady Mirza, who consistently stirs the crowd with his clean vocals and edgy performances, does not come out unique and exceptional. The judges are raving over Jonathan Leong's distinct tone, however, his performances so far have been mediocre and at one point over-the-top. He cannot pull off a stirring performance like Hady, and his otherwise unique vocal quality lacks dynamics. As for Nurul Maideen, she is pretty and stylish and can somehow deliver but she is never competitive and does not seem able to come out with a surprise. Finally, Jasmine Tye, yeah, she is just the female version of Joakim Gomez.

The competition is not surprisingly between Hady Mirza and Jonathan Leong, talent-wise. However, Idol is not a mere showcase of talent but a measure of the ability to get the most votes. Singapore wake up! Or should I say listen up? You don't want to be embarrassed by having a clown as Idol, do you? The TV plugs are right, vote wisely and remember that Singapore Idol, after all, is a singing competition.

we live in an intricate web

I went to my high school friend's birthday party on Sunday, and I was surprised to learn that he was friends with two people I had met in college. Today my officemate asked me to add him in Friendster where, it turned out, one of his officemates in previous company was also a friend of mine since high school. Then I went surfing over his friends in Friendster and guess what, I found another officemate who had another high school friend of mine in his list, and I supposed they met in college. What's interesting, I am here in Singapore (and, of course, my officemates and those at the birthday party too), while my two high school friends are now in Japan and America respectively, but most of the inter-connections described above happened back home in the Philippines.

I always enjoy discovering this kind of connections among people. It is amazing to see how tiny threads of life are sewn together by circumstances, notwithstanding how far in the world people have gone to or how far back in time the connection had been made.