Boxing the Box: Philippine Pride!

Filipino boxing champion Manny Pacquiao, center, waves to his fans as he walks with Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, left, and Manila Mayor Joselito Atienza, right, and other officials following his courtesy call at Malacanang Palace in Manila Friday Jan. 27, 2006. Pacquiao, who defeated Mexican Erik Morales in their super featherweight boxing rematch in Las Vegas, Nevada Jan. 21, arrived Friday in Manila to a hero's welcome.

so what´s next?

SINULOG FESTIVAL 2006

The biggest festival on the island of Cebu, the oldest city in the country, is the Sinulog Festival. The festivities provide a break in the everyday quiet in the place also known as the Queen City of the South.

Costumes of feather, silk, and bright colors are worn by revelers who also don masks and carry horns during a Grand Parade. The Sinulog Sunday (third in January--the 15th this year) sees townsfolk converging at noon and getting ready for a procession wherein devotees chorus "Pit Señor" ("Long live the Christ Child") to incessant drum beats.

Sinulog is a dance ritual in honor of the miraculous image of the Santo Niño. The dance moves two steps forward and one step backward to the sound of the drums. This movement is like that of a current (sulog), resembling the water eddies of Cebu's old Pahina River.

For the duration of the festival, elderly women dance with sinuous movements, as if forming a human wave. They can be seen doing this dance in the early morning at Magellan's Cross and the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño. But the swinging hips are not only done by grannies, but also grandfathers, sons, daughters, and children during the procession.

The Sinulog dance is significant for, as historians say, it is the link between the country's pagan past and its Christian present.According to historical accounts, Sinulog was already being danced by the natives in honor of anitos, way before Portuguese navigators came to Cebu and claimed the country in the name of Spain's king. When Magellan introduced Christianity, he gave the Santo Niño to Rajah Humabon's wife, Hara Amihan, who would later become Queen Juana.

Through the years, the dance grew from a small pagan ritual to being central to Cebu's biggest and most popular festival. In 1980, it was institutionalized with the first ever Sinulog parade wherein a group of students were gathered and made to dress up. The Sinulog organization eventually came into being, and the first task of the organizing committee was to conceptualize the festival and make it the big spectacle it is now, and for which Cebu becomes a top tourist destination every January.

More updates: next time

Rizal, The Philippine National Hero!

Dec.30.2005 Madrid, Spain
near the Avenida de Filipinas

To start a new blog of the pearl of the orient i decided to put up Jose Protacio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda.

Ive taken up Rizal subject in college, read his two novels, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.

so here are some tidbits. more soon.

In the early morning of December 30, 1896, 35 year old Jose' Rizal, an indio with strong oriental features but the bearing of a western intellectual, wearing a black suit and hat, stood erect and calm in an open field by Manila Bay. Ministering to him were two Jesuit priests. Wanting to be master of his own execution, he refused to kneel and be blindfolded. He asked to face the firing squad but was forced by the officer in charge to turn his back. A military doctor took his pulse. It was, strangely, normal. At 7:03 the bark of bullets rent the air. Rizal fell, and so, virtually, did Spanish colonial rule.

Born on the island of Luzon on June 19, 1861, Rizal studied under the Jesuits and then at the Dominican University of Santo Tomas, also in Manila. In 1882 he left the Philippines ostensibly for further medical studies abroad, but principally in pursuit of some vague political objective.Something of a genius, Rizal was an unlikely political activist. He had been trained as an opthalmic surgeon by leading specialists in Paris, Heidelberg, and Berlin. At heart, however, he was an artist and a poet, and by concious choice a scholar, historian, researcher, and prolific writer. He wrote in Spanish, Tagalog, German, French, Englisg, and Italian and spoke a few other modern languages. In addition, he knew Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The references in his writings to Cervantes, Schiller, Shakespeare, and Dante are evidence of his broad humanistic interests and worldwide perspectives. Through Ferdinand Blumentritt, an Austrian scholar and personal friend, Rizal came in contact with leading European intellectuals and was admitted into two learned societies in Berlin.

other infos: Jose Rizal, Liberator of the Philippines

A literary jaunt through Manabo,Madrid and Mexico, writings by Robert Basilio Jr.
Rizal´s Madrid, Rizal.ph