The Best Cake in Town

For my entire 21 years of existence, I have tasted a lot of cakes. There have been good ones and bad ones, but there has only been one constant - Hizon's mocha cake. More after the jump.

Rumor - bad, Ramen - good

As I lustily imagined myself with a heaping bowl of instant noodle soup (with an egg added in, of course) from the stall beside the uni's main library, that thought inevitably entered my mind. The thought that you always think about before eating instant noodles.

"I can't keep eating instant noodles, I'll die of cancer!"

We all have this drilled into our heads by over-protective mothers who say that the chemicals in the noodles will kill us. After I got home, I realized that I was a 21 year old guy with a high speed internet connection. I have the collective knowledge of the entire human race at my fingertips. I must find out if any of this is actually true. Findings after the jump.

The Philippines and the Chinese Mestizo

Hostilities have recently been going on between the Philippines and Hong Kong over the Mendoza hostage taking. Protests have been made, people have been condemned, websites have been hacked, old issues like Filipinos killed in Tiananmen Square brought back up. And some people have the audacity to bring a racial undertone to the whole thing. Which is mystifying to me since the Chinese mestizo was as much a part of creating the Filipino nation as any Filipino.

Some of the most prominent people in the history of the Philippines had Chinese blood running through their veins.

Sergio Osmena, Jose P. Laurel, Elpidio Quirino, Ramon Magsaysay, Ferdinand Marcos, Corazon Aquino, and your current President Noynoy Aquino are all Presidents with Chinese blood.

Carlos P. Romulo, Roberto Ongpin, Supreme Court Justice Claudio Teehankee, Jaime Cardinal Sin, UP President Vidal A. Tan, Teodoro M. Kalaw; all prominent Filipinos with Chinese blood.

Some of the most prominent pieces of the Philippine revolution were descended from or were Chinese mestizos - Jose Rizal, Marcelo H. Del Pilar, Emilio Aguinaldo, Father Jose Burgos, Father Mariano Gomez, Father Jacinto Zamora, Pedro Paterno, Apolinario Mabini. The La Liga Filipina was founded in the house of one Doroteo Ongjungco.

The Chinese Mestizos had a much larger role in building the Filipino identity and the Filipino nation than most of realize. It was not confined merely to these prominent individuals. It was the education and influence that the middle class Chinese mestizo had that allowed them to plant the seeds of liberal and subversive ideas.

If you want to know more about this, allow me to redirect you to Antonio S. Tan's excellent work, The Chinese Mestizos and the Formation of the Filipino Identity.

Dedication

Thanks to this awesome good post on Techcrunch, I've decided to actually use this blog.

Most of the time I don't have the time to write anything since I'm busy trying to juggle deadlines for six different classes that all decided to have their deadlines at around the same time. But then you ask yourself, what do you really remember writing from your tweets or facebook status messages? You aren't gonna be able to look back on all of those after 60 years.

These blogs, they're not just a place to be able to voice out what you think. They're a record of your life. What makes you you is what's up there inside your head. Your opinions, your thoughts, your ideas. If you put yourself out in your blog, your children and your grandchildren will be able to read it and know you long after you're gone just by being able to read about what you think.

So, I resolve to put something in here at least once a week, as long as I have a topic or idea to talk about.

Ciao, bella

It's all new!

So here I am, the proverbial Vince Carter of blogging, after being invisible for the longest time I'm here looking for a fresh start in a new environment. So here it is.

I've decided to take my talents to South Beach Rebuilding on the Fly.

I will be talking about a huge variety of topics here (I hope), anything from sports to philosophy to video games, sooo I hope you stay along for the ride. Updates will be completely random, as will the topics of said updates.

So hopefully you follow this blog as religiously as a fat kid follows the ice cream truck. Do I need to include a completely inspiring piece of North Korean propaganda to motivate you?



It's a giant red North Korean soldier smashing the White House! If that doesn't inspire you, nothing will.