week-end!

i feel so sleep deprived. my mind has turned to lugaw (or congee, or rice porridge, it's all the same damned thing) after our proficiency exam, which i flunked (got 38 out of 50, passing is 40). dang, i missed passing the exam by a couple of points.

so, anyway, before i hie off to lala land, let's sum up what happened this week. not that anything exciting happened to my life, unless you count the daily commute to and from work exciting. and no, it is not.

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as i predicted, the supreme court junked the petition to allow a people's initiative to revise the constitution. the vote was slim — 8 for junking against 7 for not junking — the reason being that the signatures gathered to launch the initiative (more than 6 million) were suspicious and the case was remanded to the comelec for verification of signatures.

i've always thought that the initiative would be junked because in the case of defensor santiago vs. COMELEC (serious law students should remember this — i did), promulgated sometime in 1997, the court had declared the provision in the constitution allowing for a people's initiative to amend or revise the constitution as requiring an enabling law for it to be valid. atty. raul lambino and his cohorts should have thought about that when they started the signature campaign.

then again, it is time to change the 1987 constitution so that it can go with the flow of the times. i mean, most of the provisions contained therein are unnecessary and outdated, not suitable for the changing times. i also think that there are institutions that need to be abolished, like the senate (senators cause an extreme waste of public funds by sitting on their asses all day). and there are policies that need to be reviewed and updated if we are to adapt ourselves to the changing times.

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the week ended brightly for the economy when the US$ was worth Php49.78 pesos, the highest valuation for the philippine peso in, what, 9 years. and the stock market has been rallying, thanks to investors who keep the money pouring into the philippines.

i suspect that a big chunk of these investments come from BPOs and contact centers. after all, how many contact centers are there in the philippines? a lot. and that means big money, more job opportunities, and more investments, since a lot of foreign companies will outsource jobs to the philippines.

if only we can do something about the security situation. and the bureaucracy. then things would really get rolling. who knows, we might even reach first world status by the year 2020.

as if.

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oh, yeah, this week (thursday to be exact), i went to UE to claim my certificate of graduation. then i wandered around national bookstore in recto (my haven of refuge during those days when my students would foul up my mood) and picked up 3 books: love in the time of cholera by gabriel garcia marquez (i've wanted to have this book for the longest time but couldn't find it anywhere else); freakonomics by steven levitt (or is it stephen? i don't know); and an anthology of short stories by nobel prize-winning authors.

i'm reading freakonomics now, and for a slim volume, it seems interesting. it's almost like the 21st century equivalent of alvin toffler's series.

also this week, my sister dianne gave me her advanced christmas present — an MP4 player with a 2-megapixel camera and video capabilities. so nice of her. now i don't know what to get her for her birthday (next month) and for christmas.

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now i'm off to lala land. yey. good night to me, and sweet dreams.

Reading: freakonomics by steven levitt
Feeling: sleepy