showing solidarity

"Dear Mr. President... how do you sleep while the rest of us cry..." - Pink

"Imagine all the people, living life in peace" - John Lennon

A few weeks back, a political event occured here in the Hague, raising awareness on the political killings and other human rights violations going on in the Philippines.

I have my own beliefs, which are admittedly, a little bit left of center but not enough to align myself with any political party. I still have (naive) hopes of change within the system rather than an overhaul of it. But in that same breathe I'm also enraged at how that same system continues to oppress and violate our rights... at how suffering has been so rampant, it has been normalized.

As Filipinos, we've been barraged by stories of forced dissappearances... loved ones gone missing... stolen from us in the dead of the night. We have stories of assasinations, of being forever silenced for uttering our thoughts. We know people who live in fear, for themselves, for their loved ones... and ultimately for their country if they do nothing.

So, I gave my song of solidarity to those who dared to do something in hopes that, feeble as a song may be in the midst of the cryings, it can make a difference.

converting people to mindmappers

(note: apologies to friends who have been bored by the inactivity of this blog... thanks to Michiel & Pepijn for kicking me into activity)



My old job at IPHM taught us about making matrixes, frameworks. At ISS, we call them mindmaps. It's basically a tool of how to put down your thoughts more visually (with arrows and everything), or as our professor says.... "how to use your brain".

Lo and behold, there's such a software program called Mindmanager that lets you make computerized mindmaps. And it's now the ultimate study tool for us and our study groups. (There's another miraculous program called Endnotes that helps us with our referencing for essays and research papers).

Girlie (above photo) and I are both such mindmap fans that we've been giving little lessons to some colleagues. Word spread though, that we can easily be cajoled to give tutorials so we are now giving semi-regular tutorials for future mindmappers as part of the school's IT & Library Committee activities.

Hopefully, we are making more sense out of the world... at least with one mindmap at a time.