Unskilled OFW Remittance

from GMA news:

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according to the NSO although the remittance from unskilled workers are only a third of skilled workers the sheer number of unskilled Filipino OFW’s make up for this and makes them the larger group in terms of total remittance amounting to around 17.6 billion peros (roughly 400 million dollars or 259 million euros thanks google).
The sad thing is anecdotally people are not really changing their lives long term. This is probably because the families here or back home rarely have enough schooling or are financially astute enough to handle the remittances that they get.
Add this to the fact that people from my country somewhat believe that work abroad is easier than back home. I remember my friends telling me how people coming back home have neighbors who wait in line to get gifts.
I think some things can be done to improve this, hope I can get something started.

MOA

I think I need to follow local news more closely.
here is a nice intro to the MOA between the MILF Rebels and The Government Representatives.
I think the MOA is unconstitutional and may be there for two reasons.
The current government is trying to railroad a Charter Change, I pray they don’t succeed.
Why Can’t We Have A Better Class Of Politicians?

Riz Khan Interview About Liberian Women Combatants

I especially like the question on what one of the women whose family was killed and was raped by a soldier would do if she faced that very same man. She said that life must go on and that doing anything would not bring her family back. The kicker is that she said she sees the man day and night because that man is involved with an NGO. Wow!

Grit And Vision

Nice advice from AT&T CEO.
from this interview.

Stephenson says his former boss taught him a lot about the importance of standing firm on a vision and taking the long-term view. It’s a mindset and a business approach that continues, he says.

Sounding a lot like his former boss, Stephenson says it takes grit, a steady vision and, at times, a strong stomach to grab opportunity by the throat. That’s true, he says, whether the goal is a new partnership or a big global acquisition.

“If you’re not pushing forward hard, nothing happens,” Stephenson says. “You don’t do that by making little incremental moves. You’ve got to make big moves.” Considering his words, he quickly adds, “You’ve just got to be right more than you’re wrong.”

Fighting Poverty

from here:
Hope is oxygen to someone who is suffocating on despair.

I think that most people in developing nations such as my country this applies. I talk to a lot of people and what hits me is that extreme or even mild but prolonged poverty causes a great change in all but the best people.  Before we can even try to help someone we must first try to convince that person that he can be helped, that he can be “saved”.
There are a lot of foundations who like to help in our country but a key ingredient a lot of these foundations seem to be missing is that people who suffer from poverty are broken in a way. They are not normal or ordinary and a more mindful and involved program is needed. I’ve seen a few organizations that seem to know this. Hope they all do.

rePost: Addiction and Living

I don’t know, he was saying this about how he survived a drug addiction, but I think that this is great advice for life in general.
The article was a great read, please read it if you haven’t yet. Its about a drug addict who was able to overcome his addiction.
read the article here:

I lustily chanted some of those slogans and lived by others. There is nothing romantic about being a crackhead and a drunk — low-bottom addiction is its own burlesque that needs no snarky annotation. Unless a person is willing to be terminally, frantically earnest, all hope is lost.

rePost: Practice And Genius

TakeAways:
We are given brains and the larger the brain or the better formed the brain was the less energy it consumed in solving a problem and the better it was in processing information.
from here a scientific american article on intelligence and the brain:

Perfection from Practice
Whatever the neurological roots of genius, being brilliant only increases the probability of success; it does not ensure accomplishment in any endeavor. Even for academic achievement, IQ is not as important as self-discipline and a willingness to work hard.

rePost: Gratitude

The takeaway is that if you are not going to be mindful of what you are doing 24/7 why don’t you make helping people a default reaction. Remember maybe helping one people directly may mean really helping 2-3 people.
from here:

Consider the following experiment conducted by Monica Bartlett and myself. We brought people into the lab and set up 2 situations: One in which they confronted a problem which would require them to complete an onerous task and one where they didn’t face any problem. In the first case, a confederate, at some cost to herself in terms of time and effort, helped the participant solve the problem, which led to measurable feelings of gratitude. In the second, the confederate was just another person in the session.
After leaving the lab, all participants just happened to encounter someone asking for help on a different onerous task. This person was either the known confederate (labeled benefactor in the figure) or someone who was a complete stranger.
Looking at the first two bars, you can see that grateful participants helped the known confederate much more than neutral participants.
Ok, I know what you’re thinking. This doesn’t prove anything! They may just be following a reciprocity norm. Fair enough. But look at the second set of bars. If it were really reciprocity, then no increased helping should occur when a stranger requests help, as participants don’t owe this stranger anything. Yet, those who were feeling grateful still helped more. Simply put, gratitude functioned to push people to acquiesce to requests for help — even onerous ones from unknown others.

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Importantly, another study showed that if we reminded the participants before they left that they were helped by the confederate, they didn’t help the stranger any more than control participants. By binding the emotional state so saliently to one person, it couldn’t be misattributed as a cue to help another, thereby indicating that the increased helping isn’t just adherence to a “pay-it-forward” norm. Yet participants still were paying-it-forward.

Excited To Be Going To WordCamp Philippines 2008

Well I’ve heard of this awhile back but this has me really excited! Hope to meet interesting people there and to pick up some new knowledge!
I’d like to go to the wordcamp because I love meeting interesting people, interacting with them and generally growing with like minded people is fun for me.
Official Site: WordCamp Philippines 2008 here:
Organizers:Mindanao Bloggers here:
Sponsors of WordCamp Philippines 2008:

UPDATE (2008 08 13 1901H): Updated the list of WordCamp Philippines 2008 sponsors!