This blogger speaks at the Visayas Blogging Summit in 2010. Photo by/from callezaragoza.com.

(Post updated. Changes in brackets. Thanks.) I have long wanted to do something: To help form a national bloggers association in the Philippines. The premises are simple: We are a growing community, with more younger Filipinos trying to start their own blogs. We have worked together in many instances. We have organized events. Some of us have made blogging a career or a profession. We have been sought in interviews. Some have been considered experts in their own fields of interests. Blogs have become media too. Government and business have gone blogging and gone digital. Just imagine what we could do together if we have an organization that would take all these forward.

A number of Filipino netizens went ballistic today after reading news about the National Bureau of Investigation’s proposal to have all laptops and other internet devices registered as part of government’s efforts to purportedly curb cybercrime.

The laptop registry plan, first reported by GMA News and which follows a similar proposal covering mobile phone SIM cards, has attracted the choicest expletives from Twitter users as we could see in these curated tweets:

Former President-turned-Congresswoman Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ruled the country for nine years and made corruption its byword and hallmark, according to most Filipinos.

Suhol, lagay, padulas, pampadulas, tongpats, SOP, kotong, regalo, Christmas gift, pamasko, birthday gift, delihensya, pangyosi, love offering, pang-almusal (for breakfast), pang-tanghalian (for lunch), pang-merienda (for snacks), pang-hapunan (for dinner), para sa birthday ni hepe (for the chief’s birthday), Ninoy (short for P500 which features the face of former Sen. Ninoy Aquino), pakimkim, kickback, porsyento (percent), and more.

Liwayway M. Cruz was once awarded as "most outstanding high school science teacher" in Manila.

Today, World Teachers Day, allow me to devote this space to something written by someone from among the hundreds of thousands of Filipino teachers.

This someone was my first and certainly my best teacher. She’s my mother who’s now teaching at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. She shares her views on being a teacher in this essay she posted today on her Facebook page.

Ka Satur Ocampo, the respected leftist statesman running for the Senate this year, doesn’t look and act like he’s 70 years old, which he already is. His endurance is obvious in his active leadership and participation in street protests. He’s young at heart, remaining true to the hopefulness of the ranks of young Filipinos to which he once proudly belonged.

Thank you dear readers and friends for your support last 2009. I look forward to be with you too this 2010. I look up to you for inspiration (see picture, hehe).

I also started writing for AsianCorrespondent.com last 2009 on a blog I titled Bullet Points, hoping to give the international audience my take on what’s happening in our country and the world. I was able to write 59 articles there and I am proud of each one of them.

I hope to write more in 2010 and for this, I’d love to hear your suggestions on topics and issues you wish to see here and on AsianCorrespondent.com.

Happy new year! Manigong bagong taon!

Christmas is just two days away and 2010 is not far behind. I hope this list is not too late!

Here’s my wishlist — the key word here being “wish”. I wish to have some or all of them as we work through the final days of 2009 and take things as cool and composed as possible in 2010. They’re all things and gadgets, most of them rather expensive. And so I make these wishes today — and hope that they find their way to me soon.

Shows how we really feel about Gloria (Grabbed from a Plurk)
Shows how we really feel about Gloria (Grabbed from a Plurk)

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who partied with Prospero Pichay on Wednesday night amid devastation caused by typhoon Ondoy, proudly spoke about disaster preparedness in her last state of the nation address:

International authorities have taken notice that we are safer from environmental degradation and man-made disasters.

As a country in the path of typhoons and in the Pacific Rim of Fire, we must be prepared

Teodoro with Ambassador Gaa and two US defense officials. Photo grabbed from Philippine Embassy website.
Teodoro with Ambassador Gaa and two US defense officials. Photo grabbed from Philippine Embassy website.

President Arroyo’s defense secretary Gilbert Teodoro is on a largely quiet mission in the United States, with the 2010 presidential contender scheduled to speak on “the US-Philippine alliance” in a forum organized by conservative think-tank Heritage Foundation.

The Philippine embassy has given clues on what he seeks to accomplish while in the US: