Clip No.

WHAT ON EARTH AM I HERE FOR?

-Title of the first chapter of Rick Warren’s bestselling The Purpose Driven Life

Purpose—the thing that a person should discover in order to live life to the fullest, make use of

the full potentials, and develop self-esteem in facing the battles of life. We may have the money

and all the wealth in this world, if the person won’t have his purpose why he lives, and what to

do with his wealth, well, life wouldn’t be as successful as the it is.

In the other hand, discovering the life’s purpose, according to Thomas Karlyle, provides a rudder

in life’s ship that it could reach its destination. It makes one fulfill the destiny that God has set

for everybody, as Warren adds.

In my literary criticism work, I ended my thought to Warren’s book:

The book illustrates the inmost reason why we are here on

earth; why do we need to know our purpose of living; and
why do we need to stick on God’s principles in dealing
with the game of life. Personally, I would commend the
author of this book for having such a tremendous work of
literature that encourages millions around the world to
live life with God’s purpose.
Clip 2

Isaiah 40:31New International Version (NIV)

31 but those who hope in the LORD

will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles;

they will run and not grow weary,

they will walk and not be faint.

New International Version (NIV)

Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011

by Biblica, Inc.®Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

A song from Don Moen, a Christian singer, uses this particular verse in the bible in the lyrics of

one of his songs entitled “Like Eagles” released in the 90’s. It was in the year 2009 when I knew

the song, and as I conferred it to the Bible, I have considered it as my life verse.

The importance of having this as my life verse is that, it encourages me to do great things and go

beyond my limits. It keeps me pursue the goals HE had set before me, as stated in the book of

Jeremiah 29:11. The unfathomable strength he has renewed day by day rejuvenates the whole

aspects of my being. Referring to an eagle pushes me to develop confidence and move on to

what is ahead and never grow weary despite the circumstances being faced and never be faint in

the journey.
Clip 3

Google Search

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Google Search, commonly referred to as Google Web Search or just Google, is a web search

engine owned by Google Inc. It is the most-used search engine on the World Wide

Web, handling more than three billion searches each day.

The cyberworld has its most renowned web search engine where everyone have luckily found to

be used for fast searching activities in the world wide web. The information tells that this

internet-based computer search engine handles more than three billion searches each day, which

in fact, provides a great help not just to ordinary people but to professionals of different field,

most especially in the arena of information technology, and in the business world.

My first encounter with the site was in the year 2006. I was looking for some answers of the

questions my teacher was assigning to us. At first, I found it hard to find for the information,

considering that there were varieties of websites given. I was then greatly amazed how it works

on my part as a student. Now that I am in my profession, this is still of great use in the daily

preparation of my lessons. As a teacher, I often use this to gain knowledge on whatever

is the latest classroom trends, most especially in the student-teacher interactions.

Clip 4

Toni's Bb. Pilipinas hosting stint gets mixed views

ABS-CBNnews.com

Posted at 03/16/2015 5:11 PM

MANILA – Filipinos took to social media to express their views about Toni Gonzaga’s different

approach to hosting the Binibining Pilipinas 2015 pageant held Sunday at the Araneta Coliseum.

Gonzaga surprised the crowd and those watching the pageant on ABS-CBN Channel 2 as she

injected humor during the question and answer portion, poking fun at some of the candidates and

even the judges.

Many netizens considered Gonzaga a “breath of fresh air” in Bb. Pilipinas, saying she made the

event “less formal” and “more fun.”

One of them is host and DJ KC Montero, who praised Gonzaga for being a “sarcastic” host.

The article was released a day after the crowning event of the 2015 Binibining Pilipinas. It talked

on the way Toni Gonzaga, hosted the event, making it less formal and yet had more fun. Critics

in the cyber world threw a variety of positive and negative comments on this.
Binibining Pilipinas is a nationwide search for a competitive beauty-and-brain-possessing

woman. However, what made it grandiose is that, the proclaimed winners will be sent and fight

for the international crowns.

It is, and it should be, that the event would have been formal and not to be filled by, somehow,

insulting and self-degrading words used by the host. Toni even sarcastically highlighted a

surname of a candidate and judge which made the people laugh at.
Clip 5

Facebook

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Number of advertisers

In February of 2015, Facebook announced that it has reached two million active advertisers with

most of the gain coming from small businesses. An active advertiser is an advertiser that has

advertised on the Facebook platform in the last 28 days.

In my work as an FM Jockey, aside from being connected through their phones, my listeners

could interact in the topics I have in my program and even extend their greetings and special

messages through facebook. Our advertisers and listeners widely know our radio programs also

through facebook.

Considering that it is of great help in the promotions of a radio station (which also advertises),

how much more help would it be in the different great and small business firms all around the

world. Aside from making the advertising work easier and faster, it turns the advertised product

more accessible to the clients and largely of great help in saving the budget for advertising.
1

I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are your works, and that

my soul knows very well.

Psalms 139:4

This is a verse from the bible that tells how important it is to accept every single thing happened

in our lives. Not just having the wealth of life, the most important thing is to consider all that we

have especially the families and friends who are always there to support us with our endeavor.

It is true that we have all the differences among others, but if someone understands the real

essence of having life and able to continually exist without that much trouble, it is enough to be

thankful for. He is great and is able to work with our wholesome efforts and continuous prayers.
2

SMART : Simply Amazing

I was walking along the highway when I took a look at the store which an old advertising line of

a famous telecommunication company, Smart, was posted on the wall. I could still remember

how their company and other telecommunication companies evolve from simple to great way of

offering services to the people.

Nowadays, in different walks of life, almost every individual has cellphones. They uses these

companies to makes their transactions successful. From simple text messaging and calls to the

most complicated internet browsing, people gets addicted to the various models of phones which

is out in the market. Truly, it’s simply amazing.

3

“I’ve learned what love’s about by loving you, through the years…”

-Excerpt from the lyrics of Through the Years by Kenny Rogers

I was searching in the internet when a line from the song struck me. It opened my mind once

again with the meaning of love. The bible itself describes its meaning differently. In the song, the

years passed by describes how love conquers the circumstances they have faced.

The composer retells the moments they had together with someone he loves, and how the years

discover their love. He used to express the sweetest days he had found with the one he loves who

he never doubted. By that, he learned what love is all about through the years.
4

Whatever you do, work at it with your heart as working for the Lord, not for me, since you know

that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

-Colossians 3:23-24

Many of the charity organizations locally and internationally aim to provide a concrete help to

many of the people around the world who are suffering poverty and is high risk of malnutrition.

Many volunteers are spending their time, effort, and even finances, to help others who are mainly

victims of calamities, emergencies, and other disasters recover fast.

This is how the modern world looks like. It is a great thing that despite the maladies we

encountered, modern heroes rose to help the people who are unfortunately affected. They serve

beyond themselves. They serve even more than what they could have. This is mainly what the

Lord wants us to have—a heart for the welfare of co-creation.

5

"Eureka" (/jʊˈriːkə/) is an interjection used to celebrate a discovery or invention. It is

a transliteration of a word attributed to Archimedes.

I could still remember the moment when I took the PBET, that this word came out through a

question and I have answered it. There were many moments in my life when I used to celebrate

after a discovery. Though it usually happens, but we really experience new things in our

existence when we expose ourselves to many facets life.

As to discovery, new bits of information is also stored in our mind, thus, letting us know the

great things we are to consider in developing ourselves in many aspect of life.

 ENGLISH PROFICIENCY

ENGLISH 201

Submitted to:

Miss Annabelle ‘Kyla’ Naig-Diaz, Ph.D.

Submitted by:

RANDY P. LAMANILAO
MAEd-English

March 2015
 SURIGAO STATE COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY
Surigao City

GRADUATE STUDIES DEPARTMENT

March 22, 2015

Miss Annabelle ‘Kyla’ N. Diaz, Ph. D.

Professor

Madam:

Greetings!

Please excuse me for being absent this morning because I had my headache. I woke up late and
took some hours for relax.

Thank you for your kind consideration. God bless you.

Sincerely yours,

RANDY P. LAMANILAO
Maed-English
Clip 5

Literature and society

HINDSIGHT By F. Sionil Jose (The Philippine Star) | Updated February 9, 2015 - 12:00am

Computer graphics by Igan D’bayan

On the invitation of Shiela de Leon, literature teacher, I was at the University of Bulacan in

Malolos last week speaking to students, some of whom I knew wanted to be writers. My topic

was “Literature and Society” — the same topic discussed fully by the late Salvador Lopez in the

1930s. For this book, he won the Commonwealth Literary Prize, a cool one thousand pesos. It

doesn’t look much now but in 1935 the salary of government clerk was P18 a month. In this

book SP postulated that the writer has a great responsibility to society. This in contrast to the
view held by the poet Jose Garcia Villa, that art is absolute — the artist’s responsibility is to art

alone.

I cited SP’s book primarily to show that the subject is not particularly fresh — the discussion on

the purpose of art, or in this case literature — was made in ancient Greece long before Christ was

born. Those ancients mulled over human issues like immortality, the soul, all of which became

relevant during the recent visit by Pope Francis.

Before my talk, Bulacan State University president Mariano C. de Jesus told me the university,

which was the former Bulacan Trade School, had an enrollment of 40,000 over four campuses.

The students are fortunate to have a president interested in culture.

Ars Longa, Vita Brevis: “Art is long and life is short.” Whether he admits it or not, every writer

hopes that his work will last so that, in essence, he will also last. How may any writer or artist

achieve the excellence that will make his work endure?

This is my personal view. First, I write for my time and people. As a writer then, have I become

history? Pardon the conceit — but do artists really become immortal?

Who can deny the fate which all of us share? Death is the ultimate leveler, equalizer, and the

destination of all living things.

Lifestyle Feature ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch:

How then does one survive death? The human species does it by procreation, the miracle of birth

and life. Immortality or what approximates it is expressed, too, by that old Chinese adage — to
be a man, you must plant a tree, write a book, and sire a son. So then, the definition of

immortality is clear.

And history? What after all is history but time and what transpires in it? There is only one history

— the hard and disputable fact, but there are so many ways of looking at it. A nation’s history is

often written by those who colonize it, by those who win in the war to covet it. It can be written

also from the point of view of the colonized, from the bottom up. And this is the new history,

which is sometimes revisionist.

Literature is language — the tongue is an extension of a man’s deepest feelings, his very soul.

Not every person who speaks, however, is a writer or artist because language is not automatically

literature. Literature is art that uses language as its basic tool and the writer is a skilled user of

language. Writing, like all other art forms, is a craft that is learned in school, through constant

practice. The apprentice craftsman learns how to fashion sentences, paragraphs, the stories,

novels, essays, and poetry even. He learns grammar, punctuation, the precise meaning of words,

and their meaning. He learns how to produce tension, how to be clear if precision is required, and

how to be obtuse if obfuscation is demanded of him. He knows brevity or long-windedness. He

writes to communicate, to arouse love or hate. He also knows his writing will most probably

survive if he is good enough. Indeed, literature is the noblest of the arts.

To achieve art the writer knows he has to be more than a craftsman. He must now be creative,

imaginative, original and profound, all these cannot be taught — these virtues he must search in

himself. He will surely find them if he strives hard enough, if he goes deep down to his very core

and finds it there — God’s gift for him alone, because artists are rare creatures; they are born, not

made.
And so, finally, after much pain and suffering — and joy which approximates epiphany — the

book is written. It is alive by itself and by itself, it commands love, or hate, or even contempt

from those who read it; readers will want to change it, each according to his beliefs. It attains a

life of its own, a world as well and lives as long as it is remembered, what it has to say. Then,

slowly and surely, it becomes history. And this is what I have said — writers never die; they

become footnotes.

Future readers of fiction may not be able to appreciate the smells, the sounds and the tastes as

evoked in a novel in a particular age; they can only imagine these. As presented by a writer

writing for history, they are the very blood and bile of that age so realistically depicted.

It is, therefore, imperative to write for our time and place, and in the process, to be involved with

it in a manner that we soak its essences into our very bones. Whether we hate it or love it, there

is no complacency in our attitude as revealed in what we write. So we want to change our age?

Our time and place? If we do, we will then hoist alternative futures, we will then be writing as

well beyond our time and place. For posterity perhaps? Yes, if we have crafted something

excellent, something enduring which will survive our time and place, if it will pass the severest

of all critics — which is time.

We write from our lives, from the reality where we live, embroider it with imagination and so

you have a novel or at the very least a short story. As normal human beings, our lives are often

mundane, colorless and insipid. Those who are in journalism, however, have a chance to

experience a broader view of humanity. They cover wars, disasters, great human dramas — all of

which may translate into fiction or drama. It is for this reason that individuals planning on a

literary career should have a profession that allows them diverse experiences, and make a living
from it for here again is a problem — literature does not sell and the writers’ income from it is

often meager. Those stories about writers living it up because they write bestsellers are not

fiction — but they are very rare.

History is a writer’s major informant; it is also what he records when he writes about his time.

Journalism, it is said, is history in a hurry. And literature is history that is lived.

This is self-serving, but I hope that you will consider reading my “Rosales Saga,” which consists

of five novels, starting with Po-on and set in the Philippines from 1872 when the Filipino priests

Burgos, Gomez and Zamora were garroted by the Spaniards for their suspected participation in

the Cavite Mutiny of that year. Four other novels follow — Tree, My Brother My Executioner,

The Pretenders and the final novel, Mass, which takes place during the period when Marcos

declared martial law, in 1972.

You will see here how I use history as the basic material for the saga. It is also personal in the

sense that parts of the saga are autobiographical, and you will recognize those autobiographical

nuances if you know about my life — that I was born in a small town, Rosales. The novels are

also about childhood recollections, my forefathers who migrated from the Ilocos to Pangasinan,

looking for land.

I was asked to describe the creative process, how a novel is conceived from life, history and, of

course, from sheer imagination. For this purpose I will talk about Tree, Sherds and Vibora.

Tree covers the period from the 1920s onwards to the years after World War II. The rich landlord

Don Jacinto, who helps the main character, Istak, in the first novel called Po-on, is the retired

farmer and grandfather of the narrator in Tree — a boy who is alienated from his father. The
narrator belongs to a landed family. The story is dominated by a tree — the balete — in the town

plaza close to the house of the landlord. The point of view is that of a pampered boy. I purposely

made him the mirror of the events that transpired in the novel.

The actual inspiration of the novel is The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck. The stories in this

novel are narratives of passengers on a bus that stalls in this small town. I improved on it in the

sense that the characters in Tree are related to one another by geography because all of them

come from this small town itself. I wrote the chapters as short stories so that in themselves they

are complete, but I saw to it that they are interconnected. The narrative tension centers around

the boy, his relations with the other characters and how such relationships impact on his

emotional well-being.

Sherds does not belong to any series — it is short enough to be read in one sitting and is

basically about art, its rationale, its logic. The drama in the novel is in the relationship between

an artist and his student, a talented girl from a very poor background. The tension in the

relationship is resolved when the teacher realizes who he truly is.

This novel is not based on any personal experience — it is completely imaginary other than the

fact that, in 1967, I set up an art gallery in Malate called Solidaridad. Its purpose was to give our

contemporary art a Filipino and an Asian face. I did this knowing only too well that our art as

ordained by our history — and is very derivative of the west. Sherds demands suspension of

belief, for it is also an allegory.

To create from pure imagination the artist potter in this novel, PG Golangco, I researched on

ceramics in Asia, the ancient world of Greece and Rome and South America. I visited ceramics
exhibitions in Seoul, Tokyo, New York, and potters and their kilns in Kyoto, and here in the

Philippines. This research is normal for a writer who wants his characters to be believable.

In life as in literature, a person’s character determines his fate. It is important therefore for a

writer to create characters that are not only credible but are interesting for which reason they are

remembered. To create such characters, the writer must know them inside out, their qualities,

faults, language, their sensitivities. A doctor is not just a doctor in a story; the author must also

know if he is a specialist on any particular phase of medicine. He must act, talk and think like a

doctor. If the character is blind, the author must know what caused the blindness, if there is a

cure for it, and what the blind person’s capabilities are, his keen sense of hearing, his tactile

sensitivity. Without such knowledge, the character will not be alive.

The third novel, Vibora, is based on the life of Artemio Ricarte, the revolutionary general and

one of the founders of the Katipunan. He is remembered basically in our history for his refusal to

pledge allegiance to the Americans after the failure of the Philippine Revolution in 1902. He

spent more than 30 years in exile in Japan and returned to the Philippines only in 1942 at the

behest of the Japanese Imperial army. One of the most crucial issues raised by this novel is

collaboration with the Japanese, which as a political issue was closed when President Quirino

granted amnesty to the collaborators after World War II. As a moral issue, however, it continues

to fester to this very day.

Collaboration. This is what our elites did with all our colonizers — the Spaniards, the

Americans, the Japanese, and with Marcos; the sorry condition of our country today is its

colonization by our own elites.

Let me remind you that this town, Malolos, is a very important landmark in our history; it is here

where the first Republic in Asia was founded in 1898. Here, we saw how the rich Filipinos —

the ilustrados — betrayed the Revolution for their own self-interest. While the rich ilustrados

were in Malolos in the daytime supposedly doing their chores, at night they were in Manila

negotiating with the Americans for the setting up of a federal government that would include the

Philippines. Learn from history so you will understand our poverty today. They maligned

Apolinario Mabini because his moral influence stopped them from plundering the country. They

resorted to the old tactic of destroying the critic, not his criticism. They attributed his paralysis to

syphilis, which was untrue. Eventually, Mabini had to quit the government but not the fight

against the Americans.

In using historical material for fiction, the writer must be very sure that he does not falsify

history. He can embroider, make interpretations, but the fact must be absolutely true. In the

Ricarte novel, his role in the Revolution is not falsified nor his long exile in Japan. There is no

falsifying the fact that he fled with the Japanese at the end of the war to the Cordillera. That can

be interpreted in many ways, one that he was afraid of guerrillas, and that he found security with

the Japanese who he served willingly to the very end.

One final observation. Writers in poor countries like ours are really provided with great heroic

themes which emanate from the tragic contradictions in society. The struggle against oppression,

poverty, tyranny — these do not concern writers in prosperous societies. Their concerns are the

trivia of suburbia, sex, and violence — they say nothing to us. Note this: great literature is

pervaded by a profound melancholy, of pain and suffering, as examined and depicted by writers

struggling in loneliness in a hostile and finite world.

I am now 90 years old. It may occur to you to ask what, in this, my twilight years, I still want to

do.

Yes, I am working on a new novel — I have been at it for the last two years but I have not been

able to really sit down in one place to finish it. It could be my very last.

What are my thoughts now? I have tried to transcend the ego which pleases me personally and to

instead consider what would please others, too — my family and beyond; the little people in the

village from where I came; how I can express their aspirations, how I can be of use to them.

There wasn’t much that I could do — I have no power, no wealth — all that I can give them are

words that are my flesh and blood, words shaped as stories which, I hope, will be read as

literature, and ennobled as art.

Yes, I have already the exact words for my epitaph:

“He told stories and believed in them.”

Read more: http://www.philstar.com/arts-and-culture/2015/02/09/1421168/literature-and-

society#ixzz3Uh5zApMy

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