MANILA: As things stand with Microsoft and the critics, Steve Ballmer would be pulling his hair if he had any on top.

I'm not a critic, but it doesn't mean I have to keep my mouth shut. To be sure, I'm a Microsoft Windows & Office user, since at least 25 years ago, when I was 47 years old. And I'm up-to-date with the versions, even now that I'm 72 going on 73. I'm an inveterate worker and player with words and ideas, with blogs (right now one of my many blogs has 1500+ essays of at least 1,000 words each, The Creattitudes Encyclopedia, blogspot.com) and books (right now I have 6 published abroad), and I don't write - I type, with the PC keyboard, so you can see how important Windows and Office are to me, writer, editor and desktop publisher (the person, not the program). Even now as I write this.

I was using Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010, with a legitimate code, I must emphasize, that I installed the day I bought, on Immaculate Conception Day months ago, my Lenovo laptop, the occasion recorded in my essay of the same date (09 December 2011, Frank A Hilario, blogspot.com). It was, it is an IdeaPad S100 running on 4 cylinders (Intel dual core) and onto a 500 GB hard disk.

Some 19 months later, I downloaded and installed Wednesday, 10 July 2013, an evaluation copy of Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013. There was no problem with the downloading. The Microsoft download site said, "The good news is that once you start the download, you can walk away while it finishes. If your download gets interrupted, it will restart where it left off." I found Microsoft was telling the truth.

In my Lenovo, with the evaluation product key 6NXRY-JM963-8YFDC-FRT92-BTBG4 emailed to me for activation, I installed Office 2013 at 1111 hours, and used it at once. And yes, I was, I'm running Windows 8 and I love it.

I was very happy that my handmaiden Word 2013 was fast, very fast, and it had a clean, neat look. Was it beautiful? I couldn't tell you because it was hard to see! (It's all gray, and each of the icons is like the grin of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland.)

I was working on an essay to post to my blog (Frank A Hilario, blogspot.com); I was splitting the window like I always do, and clicking the Word (my) Stylesheet or adding to it as I have always done in the last 25 years.

Now, I had work to do. But, in Word 2013, I couldn't find the shortcut for Numbering, there was no right click Numbering. It's okay, I forgive Microsoft, it's not The End of the Word.

Now I was ready to create the image to illustrate my latest essay before I uploaded it to my blog. I did what I always do: screen capture, then crop and save using Office Picture Manager. And then try as I might, I couldn't open the jpeg I just saved because there was no such thing as 2013Office Picture Manager - none. What was I going to do?! I used Picture Manager for many purposes, including cropping, downsizing and upsizing images. Okay, I would make-do with Microsoft Paint.

Then the next morning, I found something that broke the camel's back and my Microsoft's heart. To avoid the curvy line that meant Wrong Spelling, I was trying to save to Autocorrect the last 3 characters of the title of the book I was producing for the University of the Philippines Los Baños Alumni (my invention of a title)

UPLB ALUMNI BLOGBOOK
Adventures & Advocac!es

and I could not. What, why, how?! I reviewed the menu and all those details but I couldn't find Autocorrect. I pressed Help (F1) and it told me what I already know about clicking on File, Options, Proofing etc; there was no shortcut.

That got my goat. I uninstalled Office 2013, goodbye to all that! Exactly at 1111 hours 11 July 2013. Word 2013 had lasted with me exactly 24 hours, including sleep.

But I still have the installer exe and I was going to give Office 2013 another try another day. And then, a week later, I read today that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is the biggest problem of Microsoft and must go, former Microsoft OEM group head Joaquin Kempin says (Preston Gralla, 22 January 2013, computerworld.com). "One major problem, he says, is that Ballmer systematically gets rid of any Microsoft executive who he thinks may be a rival for his position as CEO." So, my problems with Office 2013 are minor.

And that's how I found out who I was going to blame for Microsoft Office going from good to seed. Mark Rogowsky says (29 June 2013, forbes.com):

In the span of less than two years, Microsoft has launched Windows Phone to indifference, the Surface tablet to near invisibility, Windows 8 to confusion and the Xbox One to nothing short of fury. While it’s too soon to give up on any of the four - and indeed a safe bet that at least some success will come around Windows and Xbox - it’s time for Microsoft to come to grips with a salient reality: It has become flat out terrible at marketing. Not just the consumer-facing part of marketing like advertising and pricing (although the video below is a pretty awful collection of meaningless feature and half-truths), but the decision-making that leads to product choices about what gets built in the first place, about what the company prioritizes.

Mark forgets to mention Office 2013, the latest. So it was Steve Ballmer who took away my Autocorrect, my Stylesheet, my Numbering, my Picture Manager, and I don't know what else. Will someone lead Steve to pasture, please? He has sat too long on his chair paying attention only to himself he has been left behind by the times. The moving finger types and, having typed, moves on. Steve Ballmer probably doesn't type, he just drums his fingers.

Still and all, we may have more years of Steve Ballmer and an emasculated Microsoft Office 2013, not to mention an emasculated Microsoft. He has just restructured Microsoft to reinforce his control over the company (Don Clark, 11 July 2013, finance.yahoo.com).

Why did Microsoft reengineer itself? "Here's the issue with Microsoft," Colin Gillis of BGC Partners says (cnbc.com). "You only make broad, sweeping changes if something is significantly wrong." Well then, I say, what is significantly wrong with Microsoft is Steve Ballmer.

Chris Neiger says "Microsoft is out of touch" (15 July 2013, fool.com). No, Chris, it is Steve Ballmer who isout of touch.

With "One Microsoft," Steve Ballmer is trying to imitate Apple; meanwhile, Los Angeles schools have made a $30 million deal for the Apple iPad that is rated the best (21 July 2013, macdailynews). Can Steve Ballmer be taught the lesson of the iPad? Never mind.

Steve Ballmer's kind of management is this:

You role model it from the top, you talk about it a lot, you pinch yourself and remind yourself when you're not doing better, you measure it in the employee poll.

That's Steve Ballmer telling the truth. He's worried about his popularity with Microsoft employees. That's good for Steve Ballmer, not Frank Hilario. Having exhausted myself working with Office 2013, now I should go to bed while Steve Ballmer should go to pasture.

Dan Farber says, "Microsoft is promising major innovations in the coming months. During a keynote presentation at the company's Worldwide Partner Conference on Wednesday, COO Kevin Turner told the 15,000 attendees that Microsoft is all about pumping out innovations" (12 July 2013, news.cnet.com). Innovations like Office 2013 I can live without. With One Microsoft, Steve Ballmer is trying to remake Microsoft one more time. The problem I see is that Steve Ballmer is trying to remake Microsoft in his own image, and he is bald!

MANILA: Kate's baby, it's a boy! Noynoy's SONA, boy, it's a list!

Nobody outside the family has seen William & Kate's baby boy, the latest British royal prince, but I have seen the latest Philippine SONA in its full splendor in the text, naked. You can read it all here (ph.news.yahoo.com).

It's a hit list, once. It's a hit list because it was applauded at least 50 times, but who's counting?

It's a hit list, twice. If you ask Noynoy, yes. He thinks he hit the target at least 101 times. I mean, in the last year, he had at least 101 targets and he hit them all at least once. And I'm not referring to target shooting.

It's a hit laundry list, thrice. It's "an item-by-item enumeration" (American Heritage Dictionary). "A lengthy, especially random list of items" (Random House Kemerman Webster's College Dictionary). Not bad for a laundry list of presidential achievements; nevertheless, it's a laundry list. It can only get longer!

It's all of 11,538 words, excluding the paragraph of greetings. Given Noynoy's casual delivery, causing excitement was unexpected.

I said 101 targets. Let me start enumerating them, chronologically as they appear in the text, translating not literally but liberally from the original Tagalog:

(1) You gave me 9 out of 10 Top Senators - This is the first thing he mentions. This is his private measure of his public approval. He's telling us Pinoy voters are intelligent.

(2) We lighted 8,581 sitios. It took them 1,095 days to do it.

(3) We provided housing to 28,398 informal settlers. He doesn't tell us how many more are homeless squatters. And no, calling them "informal settlers" doesn't solve the problem.

(4) We collected taxes right and perseveringly. "Tama at masugid na pagkolekta ng buwis." Were the taxes collected right?

(5) Niño Aguirre is a hero. He is a hero in Noynoy's eyes because he exercised his right even if he was unable to walk; he climbed up to the 4th floor just to vote. Did he vote intelligently?

(6) We have inclusive growth as strategy. "Malawakang kaunlaran ... Ang maiiwan na lamang ay ang ayaw sumama, dahil hindi sinamantala ang pagkakataon." He will be left behind who doesn't want to take advantage of the opportunity. Noynoy is the Chair of the NEDA Governing Board, the source of the Philippine Development Plan for 2011-2016, where you find the concept of "inclusive growth." He is telling us his inclusive is exclusive of those who disagree with his policies.

(7) We graduated 503,521 TESDA scholars. 6 out of 10 got employed. He doesn't tell us about total employment versus total unemployment.

(8) Conditional Cash Transfer benefited 700,000 households. Did these families rise from poverty?

(9) We solved the lack of books and classrooms. Did instruction improve?

(10) We instituted the K-12 program. Did we improve high school instruction?

(11) We are importing less and less rice. And we are starting to export hybrid rice, Noynoy says. Have the poor farmers risen from poverty? Noynoy says agriculture as a sector grew 3.3% in the first quarter of 2013. What did that mean to the farmers?

(12) Intercropping for coconut farmers. Noynoy says coco farmers can earn 172,000 pesos if they intercrop with coffee, 102,000 pesos if with banana, or 89,000 pesos if with cacao. That's what the coco technicians will say.

(13) We provided cold storage for Bataraza in Palawan. Now then, the fishers can get more from the same harvest. He doesn't say of course the middlemen will get many, many times more.

(14) Overfishing. The government is guarding strictly against overfishing. Do we have enough guardians of fisheries?

(15) Hacienda Luisita. The government will be distributing land titles to the Luisita farmers in September. Is land ownership the solution to poverty of farmers?

(16) We are fixing our land records system. By next year, we should have full coverage based on correct data and information, Noynoy says. I'll believe it when I can clear the 7 hectares we have in Isabela from tenants who claim to be the legal owners, and they have titles issued by the DAR! I have been trying to clear the records for the last 3 years.

(17) 81% of Filipinos are now covered by PhilHealth. Benefits are also increasing, Noynoy says. Including those who risk their health by smoking?

(18) Infrastructure for health. We spent for 2012 some PhP 33 billion to construct, improve or rehabilitate hospitals, rural health units, and barangay health stations, Noynoy says. Oh? Our community hospital in my hometown Asingan, Pangasinan needs medical help - it's short of doctors, short of facilities.

(19) Safety from disasters. In 2012, we finished the multi-hazard mapping of 28 most vulnerable sites in the country, Noynoy says.

I'll stop here where I'm on safety.

I got that list of 19 out of the first 2,455 words of Noynoy's SONA. So you see, it's all enumeration. A long laundry list of what has been achieved so far, especially last year.

I am stopping my enumeration because I don't see the light at the end of the long tunnel. The SONA violated all the 4 Cs of Good Communication: It was not Coherent, not Comprehensive, not Clear, and not Concise.

Where's the Vision? Where are we heading? Where are we coming from? Where's the corporate plan? In those 11,538 words, I can't find a single phrase that indicates where he wants us to go, what's the Grand Dream.

We are running fast, so we must be getting somewhere, Noynoy seems to want us to believe. What if, like the Red Queen says in Alice in Wonderland, we have to run twice faster than that just to stay in place!?

What are we running away from?

He used "ambag" (contribute) 27 times in his entire speech, in comparison to "aral" (education, 15 times), "bahay" (house, 14 times), and "pondo" (funds, 14 times). He's more interested in collective action. Good. "Ano ang inambag ko sa solusyon?" What did I contribute to the solution? He wants us to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Very good. Collective Solution. Excellent!

Now, what about Collective Growth? NEDA's Inclusive Growth, which Noynoy subscribes to, is not collective enough; I began saying something like that almost a year ago (see my "Inclusive NEDA," 13 September 2012, The Creattitudes Encyclopedia, blogspot.com). NEDA does not include the poor as actors in development, only as families-in-waiting beneficiaries. It does not eliminate the middleman, who becomes richer at the expense of the poor farm producer.

What is True Collective Growth is ICRISAT's Inclusive Market-Oriented Development (IMOD), of which I have at least 50,000 words in 50 essays written over the last 3 years in my dedicated blog (see my latest essay, "Inclusive Coco Billions. To ACPC 60, UPLB-ICRISAT 30 & R Davide 10 B," 17 July 2013, iCRiSAT Watch, blogspot.com). By the way, the Director General of ICRISAT, which is based in India and is a sister agency of IRRI, is a Filipino, William Dar, a former Secretary of Agriculture of the Philippines. The poor farmers must be connected to the market directly; they have to be actors in the whole value chain. For NEDA, it should be Collective Growth, not Inclusive Growth.

Everyone's talking about the coco levy fund that runs into PhP 150 billion (Wikipedia). And everyone has a suggestion on what to do with all that money. With collective growth at the back of my mind, I have only one suggestion: Come up with a corporate plan first. And don't forget to begin with a Vision. And don't write a vision that is 70 words long - 7 words max in a memorable phrase would be just right. Like? "5 years, 5 million wives, all entrepreneurs." Why entrepreneurship? Because it multiplies jobs. Why women? Because the female is the better species than the male when it comes to managing money.

That goes for the whole Philippines. Noynoy Aquino is my President, but I want a visionary, President or not, male or female. Now! If you don't have The Vision, you only have Division. Careful with all that Math! You may have Multiplication and Addition, but without the Strategy of the Collective, which is IMOD, you have only Subtraction from the Multitude.

MANILA: I had nothing better to do today, 03 July 2013, so I read a friend's new paper. I came across a familiar name, BarbaraGonzalez, Tweetums of old, columnist of the Philippine Star, who writes on her column about her long Jungian experience since she discovered Carl Jung when she was still the head of an advertising agency. She speaks of the launching of the 2nd Jung Festival on the 4th of July by the Friends of Jung. She doesn't say where, but of course I know: It's mostly in the mind.

4th of July! That's what I consider The True Independence Day of the Philippines. When the Friends of Jung launched that Festival, did they celebrate the independence of spirit that Jung has given them, or at least shown them? Pray, what have they been liberated from? We know of course that Jung liberated us from the Freudian fixation on sex. Did you listen to Freud talk about directing his first sexual impulses to his mother? I would not.

Barbara writes about Ramon Abola and Bernie Nepomuceno talking about "Loss & Rebirth," which is "about death and the rebirth that happens after somebody is finally and truly laid to rest." As a Roman Catholic, I believe in the resurrection of the dead, in everlasting life, so that's not news to me.

Barbara says Bernie has discovered her talent of communicating with the people who are dying, or comatose, or otherwise unable to communicate by their own power. My question applies to myself too: "Why don't we do our best to communicate with people while they are very much alive - including those we hate?"

The Friends of Jung has also launched "Exploring the Self," which is "a wonderful seminar on getting to know yourself better," with which Barbara fell in love at first sight, so much so that she decided to attend for the second time. Love is lovelier the second time around. After that, "The Magical Art of the Soul." Then, "Music & Dance." Barbara says, "This will make you connect with your inner self, your soul." Then Barbara herself will talk about "Breaking the Rules."

The self that this Catholic wants to know better is the creative self. The magical art of the soul that this Catholic wants to master is that of Corinthians 13 and Romans 12. Surrendering my cares to God connects me to my inner self, my soul. And I find breaking the rules too logical and therefore restrictive; I prefer making paradigm shifts, which is always creative. To borrow from Henry Walpole, serendipity happens when you make a paradigm shift, where you find what you're looking for because you're not looking for it.

"My creativity has returned," Barbara says. She has been making and selling things to raise funds for the Carl Jung Circle Center. Barbara loves Jung for saying and believing that "people keep growing until they die." And what is that all about? Barbara says, "It's about becoming a person more interesting to yourself." She says she has since taken up watercolor and has had 3 exhibits. She is into making "very attractive earrings." With those earrings, she and friends have been raising funds for the Jung Center. She is again teaching writing. "I have begun giving talks again," she says.

And me? I'm more interested in becoming more interesting to more people whether they're interesting or not!

She has discovered that she is a creative Aphrodite. "That's development," she says. She has also discovered that she is Hestia, the invisible goddess and a total homebody. She says:

Now I am still a homebody but with style. If I don't feel like making m bed, I do not. If I don't feel like shedding my pajamas, I stay in them. Am I miserable living alone? No, I love it. I have many friends but I also have my own space that I manage the way I feel like. That is Jung's greatest gift to me.

I understand. Carl Jung is an earthly god to Barbara Gonzalez who is an earthly goddess in her own eyes.

Everybody knows that Barbara has been through Hell, even if she does not believe in it. I do. I'm a Roman Catholic that Barbara is not. I've been there myself, or, more accurately, I've been in Purgatory. She has had a breakdown, and I almost did. You should be glad you didn't!

Carl Jung wasn't there when Barbara was in Hell, otherwise why did he not rescue her from the damnation? Jesus Christ wasn't there when I was in Purgatory; I know because I asked God to rescue me on my birthday, and he didn't - He didn't even say, "Sorry." What I heard was deafening silence. So I drifted out of my Catholic faith. I said, "There is no God." When Barbara was in Hell, there was no Carl Jung.

So how did Barbara Gonzalez get out of Hell? Through Barbara Gonzalez. So how did Frank Hilario get out of Purgatory? Through Frank Hilario. First of all, you will have to rescue yourself. It's a girl's will. It's a boy's will.

Then you need a doctor. Our doctors were different. Let me just put it this way: Barbara's other doctor was Carl Jung; my other doctor was Jesus Christ - both were not physically present, but the strong belief in their presence was there. I'm sure people held Barbara's hand. Strangers held my hand and I returned to the Catholic faith and there found more hands to hold me. Faith and friends will rescue you, not simply faith in yourself.

If I had believed in Carl Jung instead of Jesus Christ, would I have been happier to be rescued from the jaws of living Hell? I believe not.

I mean, at almost 73, it's lovely for me to know from Carl Jung that we keep growing until we die, I must qualify, if we think right. Still, Betty Friedan in her last book The Fountain Of Age has taught me much more than that; she says we keep growing more until we die, if we live right.

Beyond that, my Roman Catholic faith tells me it's lovelier than growing to be giving of yourself. It's lovelier believing in others after believing in yourself again.

We might call Barbara "Wonder Woman," for having stood up after stumbling, for flying again after falling. American teenage swimmer Missy Franklin is being called by her main rival, Australian Cate Campbell, Wonder Woman, after having won her 4th gold in the world championships in Barcelona (ANN, 03 August 2013, same newspaper issue, print ed). Missy says:

We don't even think about such stuff. My motivation speeches consist of just saying, "Go out there and have fun!" so that's what we do. Being up there and singing your anthem completely out of key at the top of your lungs is when you know the hard work has paid off!

What I don't see in Wonder Woman Barbara Gonzalez is going out there and having fun, like singing the national anthem completely out of key at the top of her lungs. She must try it sometime!

The problem with philosophers, psychologists and psychiatrists is that they don't have fun. Go out there and have fun, that's what I do. So, don't wonder that I'm so creative I have a collection of a total of more than 1,500 essays that are at least 1,000 words each (visit The Creattitudes Encyclopedia, blogspot.com).

In conclusion, Barbara says, "Jung has developed my instincts." In parallel, I say, "Jesus has developed my insights." One is inward, the other is outward. One is rewarding, the other is forwarding.

My faith tells me it's lovelier than to be an earthly god to be a creative soul and help others keep growing and giving until we die. It's lovelier to help others become more positive than negative, more creative than critical, more constructive than destructive, and to be giving more than getting.

It's not the wind's will. It's a girl's will, it's a boy's will. I am free to love God as I love others as I love myself. That is Jesus' greatest gift to me.

BAGUIO CITY: How do you train agrarian reform farmers to be entrepreneurs? You reform them!

We are not looking for any paradigm shift but, you know, if you are creative, you will see your paradigm shifts when you are not paying attention to it. As the inventor of serendipity Henry Walpole puts it, serendipity is finding something you were not looking for.

It's Thursday, 01 August 2013. We are in Baguio City at the Conference Hall (4th Floor) of the Brentwood Apartelle at Brentwood Village off Teachers Camp. We are in a workshop with representative farmers of Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries' Organizations (ARBOs), which include coops and associations. They are from ARBOs of several towns in the provinces of Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, La Union and Pangasinan in Region 1. There are about 100 warm bodies participating. Image shows Ms Maridelle Dizon, CEO of UMIC International, introducing her company's consultancy firm; UMIC is providing the agri-technology training and agri-extension services to the ARBO farmers in a 1-year project.

This is part of the project of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) that it calls the Agrarian Reform Community Connectivity and Economic Support Services (ARCCESS). Today we are with Maridelle and VP for Operations Carmela Gan. I am part of the UMIC group of consultants; I am with Team Captain Butchoy Espino, Buddy Mabesa, Danny Evangelista, and Tony Frio, all alumni of the University of the Philippines Los Baños. We are here for the next 2 days, and I am the official OFW: Overall Facilitator of the Workshop.

During the opening ceremony, many things are said, but one statement stands out for me. Talking about sugarcane farmers, Seacrest CEO Violeta Gonzaga says her consultancy company has empowered the farmers of Negros, as shown by increases in their incomes. Seacrest will be monitoring & evaluating us. I want to ask her personally what she means exactly by empowerment, but I have no chance. Having worked with science information in and out of the Los Baños Science Community in the last 38 years, I know that the concept of empowerment has remained in theory and out of practice.

In fact, we are here in Baguio to make sure that model farmers of the ARBOs of Region 1 are empowered - so that they can help other farmers empower themselves. While the word "empowerment" is not the talk of the town and is not mentioned even once in the Terms of Reference (TOR) for UMIC as institutional services provider for the ARCCESS Project, from my reading of the project documents, I believe the concept is the essence of ARCCESS and as the OFW, somehow I must facilitate the discussion towards that end.

For background, let me note that the ARCCESS project is nationwide in scope. As I see them from the TOR, here are the 5 basic assumptions behind the services that we consultants of UMIC are providing for ARCCESS:

(1) Agrarian farmers must become entrepreneurs.
(2) Entrepreneurship must be based in an organized group, an ARBO in a village.
(3) Farmers to train must be selected from mature ARBOs.
(4) Training must be conducted to produce farmer models of entrepreneurship.
(5) To become entrepreneurs, farmers must be trained to be decision-makers first.

The TOR says ARCCESS came about as a response to the historical challenge posed by agrarian farmers selling or pawning the lands awarded to them. To me, that indicates the farmers' poverty of thinking about choices. So, we should not be surprised about the absence of sustainability of a rewarding life for the farmers. We have to help them help themselves.

Agrarian reform is not enough; there must be agrarian farmer reform.

(1) Agrarian farmers must become entrepreneurs.

The TOR says, "One of the keys to development rests in turning ARBOs into entrepreneurs." In fact, the very title of the TOR suggests this: "Market-Oriented Agri-Technology and Agri-Extension Services." As a farmer, you are the producer; you have to think in terms of the consumers of your produce.

Based on hindsight and insight, land distribution is not the end but rather the beginning of agrarian reform. The agrarian farmers must learn not only the new and improved practices in agriculture but also become managers of their own businesses, either crop-based, animal-based, or integrated. They must learn to plan, budget, organize and control their resources in order to tap the markets successfully. That's why I refer to it as Farmers-Entrepreneurs Training.

(2) Entrepreneurship must be based in an organized group, the ARBO in the village.

The TOR says, "The ARCCESS delivery is channeled through organizationally mature ARBOs that will serve as hub or center of support services not only of the ARBO but other ARBOs in the community. The Project notes that it is more effective and efficient if the point of entry of the agri-enterprise is through organized groups and not individuals. Moreover, the designation of mature ARBOs as hubs increases the chances of the program's success."

I believe that it takes a village to teach a village. Agrarian enterprises must emanate and be supported by the agrarian cooperative or association in that particular village. In this way, extension, business development services, and common service facilities (CSF) can be strategic and sustainable arising from economies of scale as well as from networking.

(3) Farmers to train must be selected from mature ARBOs.

The logic for this flows from Premise (2), that entrepreneurship must be based in an ARBO, not anywhere else. It follows that if the selected ARBO is already mature, that is, better performing than the others, there is a greater probability that the ARBO can and will support its member-farmer in becoming a businessman in both theory and practice.

The TOR says, "The ARCCESS shall build on the capacity of the ARBOs to manage the production, postharvest and processing needs of their individual members so that they are able to consolidate their farm produce, and in the process be able to reach economies of scale." To rephrase the Chinese saying, "Many hands make work light.[1]"

(4) Training must be conducted to produce farmer models of entrepreneurship.

We cannot train everybody at the same time. In the language of the diffusion of innovations, according to Everett Rogers, there are the innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards (Wikipedia). Entrepreneurs are risk-takers and, therefore, in the language of technology diffusion, they are the first actors in each little drama of development. We are interested in the vanguards when it comes to adopting, or adapting, innovations; farmers look up to and copy from the most successful of their kind, so advanced farmers must be trained to become models that other farmers can emulate.

(5) To become entrepreneurs, farmersmust be trained to be decision-makersfirst.

The TOR lists "Provision of decision-support tools" as #1 of 5 key criteria to be developed and introduced in the ARCCESS Project, so that ARBOs and members "could decide on issues like markets and sources of supplies." The TOR warns that "Services providers must not, under any circumstance, force or influence ARBOs to decide on agri-technology, source of supplies, and markets."

So, this is the DAR's own paradigm shift. In this sense, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) has reached the creative level of thinking that the Department of Agriculture (DA) has not:

The farmers must become entrepreneurs. To do that, they must learn to decide for themselves.

I must congratulate whoever conceived of the ARCCESS Project - it's great!

All that considered, as the OFW, I am working the whole night of Day 1 - I can't sleep - thinking of what to report on Day 2. The most important part of my report is to be the list of training needs already assigned to and contained within the Six Core Training Modules (CTMs) conceptualized by UMIC for the project:

1. The Farm, Its Enterprises & Decision-Making
2. Farm Resources Assessment & Appraisal
3. Analyzing Farm Enterprises, Profitability & Performance
4. Planning for the Market, Marketing Channels & Chains
5. Enterprise Budgeting, Planning & Management
6. Farm Investment & Risk Management

We are in Baguio at the workshop to validate the results of the Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) earlier conducted by another group for the ARCCESS Project. Before this, we the UMIC Team of Consultants had been discussing the training needs of the ARBOs as generated by the RRA, and we felt that we had to fine-tune the RRA list before we ourselves visited the farmers in the field and come up with a final list.

So, as the OFW, as designed by UMIC, I ask the workshoppers to (a) come up with a list of their needs and prioritize them, and (b) come up with a list of their training needs and prioritize them as well. There are 4 clusters in the workshop, and the 4 spokesmen discuss their own lists in front of everyone.

In Cluster 3's list of Needs, priority #16 stands out: "Hauling truck for rice & corn marketing business entrepreneur." Joking, I say, "You have a long list of needs, and since you listed the hauling truck as last priority, we will give you the hauling truck as last priority!" They laugh. Actually, we know farmers need it, but even if we wanted to, a grant of a hauling truck is out of the question for ARCCESS - this is a training project, period.

Cluster 2 (facilitated by Tony Frio) deserves Special Mention because they come up with their list of priority needs that matches exactly their list of training needs. I give them a grade of Excellent; I say so in public.

In the evening of Day 1, we the consultants look at the workshop lists of training needs and decide to which box (Core Training Module) each of those appropriate needs belonged to. The Team knows because we had previously discussed the RRA lists of training needs in at least 3 meetings. That done, the guys go to sleep. I cannot. As the OFW, I have a report to make the next day.

If you knew me, you wouldn't have been surprised to find me going over and over again my report that eventually came up to less than 300 words, including that table of CTMs and the new list of corresponding trainings to be conducted based on the training needs now fine-tuned. One reason I can't sleep is that I know, based on the Terms of Reference of the UMIC contract with the DAR for the ARCCESS Project, that this is crucial:

Provision of decision-support tools. The primary role of service providers is to provide capacity development to ARBOs and members so they could decide on issues like markets and sources of supplies.

That is to say, as the service provider, UMIC has to introduce into each training course or package the concept that the agrarian farmer must learn to think for himself, to decide for himself, not simply obey orders, not simply implement instructions. The training must teach him how to generate his options, choices, alternatives, and then how to decide, based on economic and other factors he must consider, which way to go. The farmer can never be an entrepreneur if he cannot generate of 2 or more windows of opportunity in any occasion, consult with others, and then go ahead and take the risk and make the business decision.

Finally, it dawns on me, very early morning of 02 August (Friday) that each of the 6 CTMs in fact indicates in its very title the basic premise that the agrarian farmer must learn to think through and decide for himself - note the underlined words:

1. The Farm, Its Enterprises & Decision-Making
2. Farm Resources Assessment & Appraisal
3. Analyzing Farm Enterprises, Profitability & Performance
4. Planning for the Market, Marketing Channels & Chains
5. Enterprise Budgeting, Planning & Management
6. Farm Investment & Risk Management

Nice work if you can get it!

The words of Ms Gonzaga on farmer empowerment still fresh in my mind, I tell the Baguio workshoppers, in a screen projection using huge letters (Arial Narrow, 39 pt), itals, about the essence of the Core Training Modules of UMIC, in 20 words:

Note all 6 modules indicate that
what is built-in or common is
decision-making by farmers -
this is true farmer empowerment.

ARCCESS: "The farmers must be trained to be decision-makers."
UMIC: "Our training modules are each designed to do exactly that, to empower them."

For those paradigm shifts, I say:

Congratulations, ARCCESS!
Congratulations, UMIC!

As for me, it has been a sleepless night, nonetheless a good night.

[1] The original Chinese saying is this: "Many hands make light work." That's not so clear, is it? My version is clearer, more direct: "Many hands make work light." Easy work!

Here's an exchange of short emails that started Friday, 16 August 2013 and I'm going to end right now, Wednesday, 21 August 2013 at 1600 hr. It's between me and SINO, Someone I NO, I mean I disagree with, as you will see.

SINO: The statement is accurate: "Truth exists even without a human mind to perceive it."

It cannot be a lie to anyone who can understand the sentence.

FRANK: it is the human mind that is saying "the truth" that needs no human mind to comprehend it - so that statement is self-contradictory and is in fact more than a lie - it's a deception.

SINO: You can always twist the truth according to a twisted argument.

FRANK: we cannot claim to know the ultimate, unbiased truth because we cannot get out of this life to look at "truth" in the eye. i can only say, for instance, that the truth i believe in is this ...

SINO: You are correct! But now you acknowledge that there is a truth that we cannot get out of this life to look at in the eye. So the premise that truth is out there even if the human mind cannot perceive it, stands.

FRANK: no it does not - it is the "truth" that we can believe in, not that our belief in it makes it "truth" - truth is always relative, because we cannot be the arbiters of truth. believing in the "truth" does not make it so. arguing convincingly does not make you right; at best, it only makes you a winner in a debate.

SINO: Pride does not succumb to defeat. This one "truth" is universal, winning or losing a debate is not the point. ""Truth is nothing but the opposite of a "lie". This world is full of "lies" so "truth" is hidden and the human cannot believe it's existence. But "truth" is always present even if the human brain does not believe.

FRANK: the human brain is not reliable because it is itself the one saying that it is reliable and knows the truth!

SINO: So back to the original question: What is your truth? Is your truth taught to you by your religion?, etc. Whatever is your "truth" as you believe it, therefore is not reliable because it's your brain that believes it.

FRANK: and so with your brain. so, the truth is relative to one's brain, yours and mine - that' s the best we can do about it. you cannot insist that what your brain perceives (your belief) as the truth is the truth, and what my brain perceives (my belief) as the truth is not. i do not insist on my "truth" - i only believe it.

SINO: What Is Your Truth

If one posits the existence of a god or gods able to communicate their presence to human minds, then as an inevitable result of the existence of that god or gods, it would be expected that all humans, or at least the priests who claim communications with the god(s), would have a unanimity of opinion as to how many gods there are.

Likewise, if one posits the existence of a god or gods able to communicate their existence to human minds, then as an inevitable result of the existence of that god or gods, able to communicate to human minds, all theologies would be in accord, and there would be no need for missionaries, let alone inquisitions and holy crusades. The religion of Abraham would have stayed unified, rather than split up into Christianity, Judaism, Sunni, and Shi'ite over what amounts to a bunch of soap opera arguments.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ATHEISM/inquisition.php

But there is a diversity of opinions as to how many gods there are. And there are missionaries, crusades, the inquisition, and the burning of a million heretics.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ATHEISM/inquisition.php

The world is not as it would be if there was a god or gods that could communicate their existence to the minds of humankind. None of the conditions which must inevitably follow the existence of a god or gods able to communicate their existence to the minds of humankind can be found anywhere on Earth.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ATHEISM/inquisition.php

Quod Erat Demonstrandum, no such gods exist.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ATHEISM/inquisition.php

FRANK: (I did not answer because I didn't notice. But I don't have to bother now, because it's all the same argument. Read on if you please.)

SINO: No, you got it wrong! I am not saying that what I believe is the real truth. I said, truth exists even if there's no human mind to believe it. Even if I wasn't born, truth exists as it is. That's how this all started. I am not insisting that what I believe is the truth, nor do I say that what you believe in is the truth. Back to: what is your truth?

FRANK: no, you got it wrong. that "truth exists even if there's no human mind to believe it" is the product of the human mind - and the human mind cannot be the arbiter of truth, otherwise the statement contradicts itself.

SINO: What if the human mind did not exist at all? Is there no truth to anything at all?

FRANK: (No answer; I wasn't paying attention)

SINO: Your God said, " I Am the way, TRUTH, and the life . . . ." John 14:16. Now you despise your bible, the foundation of your religious beliefs. If the human mind cannot believe it, then there is no God at all.

FRANK: i do not despise - what i have been telling you is that i believe what i believe, and you cannot dispute a belief, you cannot argue against a belief, because it is a belief and cannot be proven to be truth. the truth as you think of it has nothing to do with belief of the truth.

SINO: A belief is a belief, yes but it's too far away from the "truth" that exists even if you don't have a belief.

FRANK: no matter what you say, you cannot argue against my belief, because it's a belief, not logical. you cannot use reason against belief, and vice versa.

SINO: Belief is not our contention. Truth, whatever it is, exists, I don't give a damn about beliefs.

FRANK: if you're talking about the ultimate truth, belief is always the contention. the human mind can only say there is, or there must be an ultimate truth, but to prove it, the mind cannot because it cannot get out of itself, out of its own bias, out of its own limitations. that's why i must believe in an intelligence higher than my own.

SINO: you are saying it right (correctly), now. The ultimate truth exists even if there is no human mind to believe it. Period.

FRANK: no. no matter if you say i'm wrong, there is no ultimate truth that the human (mind) can comprehend - otherwise, it's not the ultimate truth.

SINO: You stir things up. The sentence is so simple. "Truth exist even if there is no human mind to believe it" That's final. End of discussion.

FRANK: you have to study logical fallacies.

SINO: Logical fallacies? Thanks, but no thanks. I might end up reasoning like you. You are terrific. [By "terrific," SINO means "terrible." Note my response.]

FRANK: the thing is, let's not think we know all the answers - we don't even know all the questions!

SINO: You are saying these because you think therefore you are.[1] There is an inner you that asks the questions but you are content with having the physical body, and that's all. Of course you know all the questions if you tap the inner self. The answers are all there if you explore beyond your physical reality. The truth is explorable but the mind does not believe it until you can fathom the other realms. If your arguments about "truth" as just the product of the human mind ... and it is all a lie or a double lie because it exists as the creation of the mind, truth therefore cannot exist without the human mind. That is your presentation. It is not for me, and we can endlessly stupidly disagree.

FRANK: you can disagree without being disagreeable.

SINO: That is your logic that you impose on everyone you disagree with. It's all yours.

FRANK: the point is not to win or lose but to learn.

[I'm going to end it right here.]

[1]That is not correct. I actually paraphrased Rene Descartes; note the spelling. This has reference to my "signature" in my emails: "I thank, therefore I am."

MANILA, 03 September 2013: After not giving up on her dream of 35 long years, Diana Nyad is a charm; after successfully completing a marathon swim from Cuba to Florida in 3 days non-stop, 31 August to 02 September 2013, Diana Nyad is a champ. She is also a ridiculous champ - she's 64 years old! I'll call her a charmp.

What did Mark Twain say again about age? "Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."

How did Diana do it? "Perseverance works" is the judgment of Ed Pilkington (02 September 2013, theguardian.com). That's oversimplifying the whole thing. It was more than a swimmer's journey of 110 miles in 54 hours. It was a journey of a thousand miles, and it began with the first step - 35 years ago.

It began with a dream; she now calls it the Xtreme Dream.

1978, 1st attempt. When Diana was 28 years old, she jumped off into the waters of Havana in Cuba and swam towards Key West in Florida. She didn't make it. She swam within a shark cage but she was blown off course and she gave up after 76 miles and 42 hours swimming in the ocean. Swimming to nowhere.

I watched the video documentary with Dr Sanjay Gupta for CNN and I saw that Diana was devastated by her 1978 failure (cnnpresents.blogs.com). She said, "I never had summoned so much raw power. I never wanted anything so badly. And I never tried so hard." Her dream died. It broke her heart.

2010, 2nd attempt, 32 years after the 1st. So why did she pick up where she left off after all those heartbreak 32 years? Serendipity. One day she happened to glance at herself at the car's mirror, huh? She thought she just could do it again, could feel powerful again. "I said to myself, I've got it. I have it in my spirit. I have it in my body. This summer I'm swimming from Cuba to Florida." She failed again anyway; the weather did not cooperate. Diana was already 61 years old. Why did she think she could do it when she was that old when she didn't make it when she was that young?

2011, 3rd attempt. She injured her shoulder and suffered an asthma attack (Lizette Alvarez, 02 September 2013, nytimes.com). The doctors treated her and then she began to vomit. Pain in the shoulder. She was also stung twice by box jellyfish; she said the stings gave her the feeling her body was submerged in hot, burning oil. They pulled her out of the water. End of quest. Again. Failed Attempt #3. This was the year she said in a YouTube video her father told her she was "destined to swim," her family name being derived the Greek word naias for water nymph or female swimmer (Michael Haskins, 03 September 2013, yahoo.com). Diana was 62 years old.

2012, 4th attempt. Another failure. Diana was 63 years old.

2013. 5th attempt. No protective shark cage. Diana is 64 years old.

"I admit there's an ego rush," Nyad said before this 5th and final attempt began (ANN, 02 September 2013, foxnews.com). "If I, three days from now, four days from now, am still somehow bringing the arms up and I see the shore ... I am going to have a feeling that no one yet on this planet has ever had."

On 02 September, Monday, Diana Nyad stepped ashore at 1320 hours to the arms of welcomers at Smathers Beach of Key West in Florida, after swimming for 52 hours, 54 minutes 18.6 seconds. Her face was burnt and puffy from so many hours of sun, seawater and swimming. Her team tweeted:

Our #FearlessNyad has at long last achieved her #XtremeDream and reached #TheOtherShore. An historic moment that proves #DreamsDoComeTrue.

Diana Nyad has also made history by having made the most number of attempts at swimming from Cuba to Florida nonstop: 5.

Diana Reese wrote (02 September 2013, washingtonpost.com):

Age and gender don't matter. Nyad proved that today. By swimming some 110 miles from Cuba to Florida without the use of a shark cage, the 64-year-old has done something no other man, or woman, has managed to do.

Number of tries matter; you should never give up until the last try. Diana Nyad said on Smathers Beach when she walked to her triumph:

I have three messages. One is, we should never, ever give up. Two is, you never are too old to chase your dreams. Three is, it looks like a solitary sport, but it takes a team.

That's 3 lessons for everyone, but I think most especially for those of us who are already Senior Citizens.

Me? My failures at my first engagement with love and my first enrolment in college gave me quite a number of years of anxiety, but I never gave up on me. Yes, I'm "The Boy Who Broke His Own Heart" (The Creattitudes Encyclopedia, 11 May 2011, blogspot.com). And yes, I'm "Frank Hilario, The Editor Who Would Be Fired" (03 June 2013, Frank A Hilario, blogspot.com).

My dream was to be a first-rate Editor of a nationally circulated magazine, but it never happened. Starting in the late 1980s, in the next 20 years I did not have a regular job, that is to say, I worked freelance. Then in early 2006, I learned to blog, and I knew I had found a new love. In early 2007, William Dar found me and that was the beginning of my writing consultancy with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), of which he is the Director General. ICRISAT has since published my books yearly. Early this year, it published my 7th: ICRISAT & PARTNERS: Political Will Applied With Science (146 pages, all photographs in full color). You can't separate Science and State. Each book is a collection of my essays that appear in the dedicated blog iCRiSAT Watch (blogspot.com).

"It looks like a solitary sport," Diana Nyad says, "but it takes a team." She had 5 support boats that also provided her with food, water and medicine. Those boats had a crew of 35 people, including doctors and a navigator. She stopped about every 40 minutes to take food, such as scrambled eggs and pasta.

She had to train long hours, long days, to become physically fit to pursue her dream. What about mentally fit? That's where she needed her friends for support. She needed her team even before they set out from Cuba to Florida year after year after year.

I challenge the Senior Citizens everywhere in the world to dream like Diana Nyad - and then to work to make that dream come true. They will then feel more alive and, hopefully, inspire others. If they don't dream, they're wasting their remaining years. If they don't do something to make that dream come true, they're wasting that dream. As in Diana's case, others can swim like her but, she herself asked, "Who's got the mind?" It's the mind. It's in the mind. You can do it!

In my case, if you didn't notice, my dream didn't come true. What I did was, I changed that dream, and it has made all the difference to me, starting when I was already 66 years old. if you can't solve a problem, change the problem. If you can't make a dream come true, change the dream!

MANILA: This one is all about 911 and giving credit to whom credit is due. Including ourselves. "My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people," Indira Gandhi said, "those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition there." Me, I'll do the work and take the credit, thank you very much!

For the American World Trade Center's Twin Towers tragedy on 11 September 2001, we credit that to Al Qaeda. It was a double insult to the intelligence of the United States: 911 is the number you call for help in an emergency; today, it is the number to make you recall an emergency that had no equal in horror in the history of the United States. The Twin Towers died that year. American pride too.

For shaping the future of the University of the Philippines Los Baños starting in 1972, we give credit to Emil Q Javier, its first Chancellor. Javier was born on 11 September 1940.

"The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In the Philippines, for the last 40 years, the credit goes to?

Nobody knows, Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos!

Marcos was born on 11 September 1917 in Sarrat, Ilocos Norte.

What do Marcos, Javier and the Twin Towers have in common? Science. For the good. For the bitter.

1. For Marcos, it was to initiate both the theory & practice of science.
2. For Javier, it was to manage both.
3. For the Twin Towers, it was to succumb not to the theory but to the practice of science.

Let us get rid of the bitter first.

I'd rather write about those 2 births than about those 2,996 reported deaths on the attacks of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the passengers of the 4th plane. The Al Qaeda attacks of 911 were the application of the art & science of violence. You know, if you have done this science unto one of the least of my brethren, you have done it unto me!

Ferdinand Marcos is not known to be and that's why I'm telling you he is the Father of Modern Philippine Science. I'm sure Emil Javier will attest to that, remembering that Marcos in:

1. 1960 allowed the setting up of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) at the campus of the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture in Los Baños, Laguna. In the 1970s, at the urging of Marcos, IRRI released the "Miracle Rice" that is now credited as having saved millions from starvation in Asia.

2. 1969 signed RA 5526 that created the Forest Products Research & Industries Development Commission (Forpridecom), 21 June. Forpridecom is the one that created the craze for coco lumber.

3. 1972 signed PD 48 that created the Philippine Council for Agriculture Research (PCAR, now PCAARRD), 10 November. PCAR is the one that created the craze of science councils in the Philippines.

4. 1972 signed PD 58 creating the University of the Philippines Los Baños with the UP System, 20 November. UP Los Baños is the one that created the craze from among the richer ones to send their children to Los Baños enjoying stipends intended for the poor.

5. 1975 signed PD 705 that created the Forest Research Institute (FORI), 19 May. FORI is the one that created the craze for Los Baños-written science stories.

6. 1976 signed PD 1003 creating the National Academy of Sciences (now National Academy of Science & Technology), 06 October. The NAST is dedicated to giving honor to distinguished Philippine men of science.

7. 1977 signed the presidential decree creating the Philippine Tobacco Research & Training Center (PTRTC), 10 November. PTRTC is the one that saved the tobacco industry in the Ilocos Region.

8. 1978 signed PD 1279 creating the Mariano Marcos State University, 06 January. MMSU is the one that is dedicated to preserving the excellence of Ilocano culture.

9. 1979 signed LOI 1005 after the UP Board of Regents established Biotech (National Institute of Molecular Biology & Biotechnology) 20 December, instructing the National Treasury to release PhP 10 million for the Institute. So, biotechnology is at least and formally 23 years old in the Philippines.

10. 1985 signed Executive Order 1061 creating the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice), 05 November. PhilRice is the one that became internationally respected and proved that the Filipino manager is world-class despite the fact that he (SRO) did not formally study at any management institute in the Philippines or abroad.

I know I'm the only writer applauding Ferdinand E Marcos, I being a full-blooded Ilocano at that, but this FBI is not embarrassed at all. In fact, I like it. I have always been a nonconforming nonconformist, so this is not the first time.

It's more than personal. As I listed above, among other institutions, Marcos created FORI. He didn't know of course, but he created for me the opportunities to harness my talents for a cause greater than myself.

On 16 April 1975, I became Chief of the Information Section of FORI, whose mandate was on forest production, complementing Forpridecom's mandate on forest products. The simplest way of explaining "forest production" is the growing of trees in the forest and then cutting them down when they mature, when they reach a certain minimum diameter at breast height. Later, I became the Chief Information Officer.

Remember the technologies in mass media in the 1970s and 1980s? I call them the Age of Dinosaurs, thinking of those gigantic manual typewriters. Later, I had an IBM Selectric III, but still a typewriter. The dinosaur backwardness did not stop me from founding, editing, writing, photographing and publishing 3 major publications of FORI:

Canopy, the monthly newsletter.
Sylvatrop, the quarterly technical journal.
Habitat, the quarterly color magazine.

With them, I made FORI not only nationally known but more so internationally.

Since I was an activist just before Martial Law, I was also afraid that I would be picked up anytime. But that didn't stop me from doing my best. It all goes to show that even if you don't like somebody's management, you can still do your science and shine.

SANTA BARBARA, PANGASINAN: Not my wont, but I'm wearing a red t-shirt. I didn't plan this, but it's Friday, 15 November 2013, and today just happens to be a red-letter day. As you will find out.

I just woke up; it's 4 in the morning. I'm beginning to write this in one of the dorms of the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) in their Region 1 Santa Barbara offices. I'm going to finish this probably in San Fernando, La Union tomorrow where we're going to train farmers under the ARCCESS project of the Philippine Department of Agrarian Reforms. ... Well, I'm finishing this Sunday, 17 November, 3 days later, at the Danggay House in Asingan, Pangasinan, my hometown. It's been a long day, and it's a long story.

We are a team of 3, now in Rissing, Bangar, La Union: Butchoy Espino (man in the image facing my camera), Team Leader; Dormie del Carmen, Crop Specialist; and I, Training Specialist. We are all graduates of the College of Agriculture of the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), the State University of Agriculture in the country.

ARCCESS is the Agrarian Reform Community Connectivity and Economic Support Services project of the DAR. We are 3 of the team consultants of UMIC International, based in Makati, and the ARCCESS farmers we are mentoring in La Union and Pangasinan provinces are old-new farmers who have become landonwers under a national agrarian reform program of the government. The creation of the DAR many years ago had given importance to the landless tenants equal to those of the landed farmers under the DA. Today we are going to find out that farmers are farmers, period. And that is paramount to us, because we have to know whom we are trying to teach – we have to learn from them first. If you cannot learn, you cannot teach.

As far as we are concerned, the ARCCESS Project started early last month, October, and this is our first coaching trip. We are making history now. We are sleeping at the ATI courtesy of the Department of Agriculture (DA); the DAR doesn't have what the DA has, which is a national training Institute with dorms and seminar rooms all over the country. What the DAR has is us, via consultancy, trainors of trainors. And what did I see when we visited the ATI dorm last Thursday, to sleep the night over? There was another training of trainors going on – the reservation signs at the doors said so.

This training trip is the first of UMIC's part of the ARCCESS project, the 2 topics being "Nutrient Management" and "Farm Business Planning." We are in a training program to teach the DAR farmers, as contrasted to the DA farmers, to handhold them on their first steps towards becoming successful and sustainable entrepreneurs. In the context of their communities.

Butchoy has been the explainer for the first 3 training sessions: the very 1st at the Atlas Mabuna Multi-Purpose Coop in Malasiqui and the 2nd at the Aramal-Tocok coop in San Fabian, both in Pangasinan. That was Friday. The 3rd was at the Rissing coop at Rissing in Bangar, La Union, a good 3 hours away from ATI Santa Barbara where we were staying; the 4th was at the Halog West coop at Tubao, La Union; Bangar is about 60 km away from Tubao.

Note that we are teaching farmer members of cooperatives, not simply farmers who comprise a group because they are attending the same training. I emphasize the membership of DAR farmers in coops, even as there is a special chapter in the new & improved Philippine Cooperative Code, RA 9520, Chapter XI titled "Agrarian Reform Cooperatives."

And I'm the next speaker, lecturer, explainer and mentor, and that will be next week, 22-23 November, with the same farmer participants of the ARBOs of Pangasinan and La Union. So we are going back to ATI in Santa Barbara and sleep there for another 2 nights. For the 2nd time, we are making history in that we are dealing with farmers who are members of a multi-purpose cooperative. I'm an active member of a multi-purpose cooperative in my hometown, so I should know a little about farmers and coops. The farmers must seek to be good farmers, and they must learn to be good coop members.

We have a list of 10 training modules with which to teach the DAR farmers, with schedules up to March 2014. In fact, we are going to teach them only one thing: For a good life, it's your decision. Farmer's Choice. For the 3rd time, we are making history in that this is the first time that farmers are being taught to become decision makers themselves, to become proactive, not simply reactive. The farmers must seek good agri advice, and then they must learn to act on their own.

Farmer's Choice is my invention of a name for the ARCCESS training we UMIC consultants are conducting for the DAR farmers of Pangasinan and La Union. The new term complements the more popular Farmer's Practice. In this case, Choice is a deliberate act, while Practice is an automatic response. We want the DAR farmers, or any farmer for that matter, to be deliberate in their actions, not simply creatures of habit.

And yes, we are training the trainors, the ones who are going to train the rest of their fellow farmers in their area. That requires that we from the University of the Philippines go down from our ivory towers and speak the language of the people.

Farmer's Choice. As we prepare our training modules to train those trainors, we have to remember only those 2 words. Of our training, our TOR states, "The target results should be new/improved businesses by the end of the learning process." We cannot promise about the businesses; we can only promise to produce new/improved farmers who can think for themselves, study the matter at hand, decide and take the risk on the action to take, making their own decisions for their own good.

We have to make the DAR farmers conscious of the fact that they are always making decisions – by itself, not making a decision is a decision, and it's a bad one. Of course, there are instances where there is no other choice, such as you have to prepare a business plan if you want to succeed in business – even if the plan is written only in your head.

Ultimately, what we're trying to do is mentor the DAR farmers on these 3 things simultaneously, that is:

(a) how to increase their harvest, at the same time

(b) how to decrease their costs, as well as

(c) how to increase their income from marketing.

Actually, that's 3 sources of increased income that is sustainable – that's also 3 sources of training success. How can we fail?!

SAN FERNANDO CITY: 23 November 2013. I'm typing this in this dark mezzanine floor of this family room in Sea & Sky Hotel in the City of San Fernando in La Union, with only the screen of my Lenovo laptop illuminating itself. I sit yoga-like. On my crossed legs, I'm typing using an external keyboard, whose keys I don't see at all. It's 0250 hours, Saturday, and we are in La Union as consultants of UMIC International for the DAR project called ARCCESS, short for Agrarian Reform Community Connectivity and Economic Support Services.

We means Butchoy Espino, Dormie del Carmen and I; we are a team; it just happens that I am the facilitator of the training on Integrated Pest Management (IPM), and I finished yesterday 2 training sessions, the first at the offices of the Atlas Mabuna MPC in Lasip, and the second at the offices of the Progressive MPC in Oraan East in San Fabian, both in Pangasinan.

How can I type when it's dark and I can't see the keys on my external keyboard? It's easy – my fingers have memorized the home keys so much so that I can type without looking, not to mention that the computer keyboard has raised dots on the f and j keys and I just have to feel them to get my home keys right. And how do I save my file? I use the mouse to click on the icon Save; I also use it to move back and forth the cursor when I lose my bearings or when I make a mistake with the keys Enter (to end a train of thought) and Backspace (to delete). Typing in the dark dramatizes the fact that I learned to type more than 50 years ago when my cousin Manang Lucing, mother of my favorite nephew Santi, taught me how to type with her husband Manong Mulong's Remington typewriter. And why did I have the grand idea of learning how to type? It must have been after I learned, in 4th year high school, that my hidden talent was creative writing.

In the ARCCESS consultancy, where we are supposed to teach the DAR farmers how to decide for themselves, we are not teaching them technologies, or how to do this or that. Butchoy is finishing today his 4th training session on Nutrient Management, for the Santa Cecilia class. When we teach the DAR farmers about fertilizers, soils, soil tests, essential plant nutrients, we are not simply lecturing on the science of those but we are providing them alternatives to action.

I'm typing this first draft anyway; I always revise, so no problem - and, of course, I will revise not in the dark but in the light. Light or dark, it's just important to catch your thoughts before they fly away forever.

Yes, back to my topic IPM. I begin the session with a Christmas card, which I created myself using Word 2013 and printing on my HP DeskJet 2060 Advantage on color paper. It's all balloons, and I tell my audience I'm giving them an advanced Christmas gift of balloons. I ask them to count – 10 balloons – and then to note the middle (11th) balloon and what it contains, which are the words Farmer's Choice.

Farmer's Choice is something I coined early this month to distinguish the essence of our farmer training from other farmer trainings conducted here or abroad yesterday and years past. I have always been a wide reader, and especially now with the advent of the Internet, whose universe of information and intuition is ever increasing, so I know that there has never been a Farmer's Choice training of any kind in the world. We teach the farmers the technologies, yes, but we emphasize and keep on telling them that there are alternatives to those technologies, and that it is up for them to decide which option to adopt.

This is radically different from the Theory of Technology Diffusion of Everett Rogers where you are 100% sold on your technology and you want it 100% bought by your target client, in this case, the farmers. You don't have a choice and neither does the farmer. You are convinced that science has shown that this technology is better than the others, so you do a hard sell. Science & technology taken as one is always a hard sell in the Philippines. This time, no. For the first time in the history of technology diffusion anywhere, we are not selling the technology - we are selling the choice, Farmer's Choice. We tell the farmers this is how this technology works, and this other one, and it's up to you to adopt which one. In contrast to Roger Everett's, I would like to call it Frank Hilario's Theory of Technology Infusion. You can't have Farmer's Choice without Technology Infusion.

Why are we doing this? It's our response to the terms of reference of our consultancy with the DAR. It's our practical translation of what we are supposed to do with the farmers. Just to give credit to whom credit is true, let me be clear that Farmer's Choice is a concept that came from us, not from the DAR.

So, yesterday, I enjoyed those 2 training sessions with 2 different groups of farmers, many of those who attended being female. Would you like to attend my class?

After my Christmas card episode, I proceed to the first tarpaulin with all those circles I invented. This time, it's the title tarp, and it says, among other things, IPM. I point out that there are so many balloons surrounding IPM (it's similar to the image they find in my Christmas card), and I say isn't it that all those balloons make learning IPM hard? 10 balloons. So, I say, I will make IPM easier by just teaching them 3 words today. I ask them to guess what those 3 words are, nobody can: Integrated Pest Management. That's called teaching by iteration. I should know my teaching methods. I'm a creative writer and a certified teacher with a Professional Civil Service eligibility.

It's 0345 and I have just typed all those words you see above (originally 963 words), now with very little correction, except to infuse "the Theory of Technology Infusion." It all goes to show that Creative Writing is as good if you can type in the dark.

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO: I'm beginning to write this in this city in La Union in Northern Philippines. 24 November 2013: I was the facilitator the other day and yesterday, Saturday, for the 2nd installment of a farmers' training under the auspices of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) contracted for by UMIC International, of which we are consultants, under the project titled Agrarian Reform Community Connectivity and Economic Support Services (ARCCESS). ARCCESS is unique and brilliant, if you ask me; my congratulations to the DAR. ARCCESS demands the best in you as consultant; it demands the best for the DAR farmers; it demands the best from the farmers too. The Department of Agriculture (DA) should learn from it too, if the DA knows what's good for the farmers.

For the farmer beneficiaries of the agrarian reform law, via ARCCESS, the DAR wants primarily, as according to our Terms of Reference, the "provision of decision-support tools" with the assumption that "the primary role of (consultants) is to provide capacity development to (agrarian coops) and members so they could decide on issues like markets and sources of supplies." Mind that: The consultant cannot be the adviser; at best, he can only be the provider of options, teaching the farmers how to come up with alternatives, and then how to decide which one to take.

There is the imperative, nay imperial note in the TOR contracted by UMIC that "(Consultants) must not, under any circumstance, force or influence ARBOs to decide on agri-technology, source of supplies, and markets." ARBOs are agrarian reform beneficiaries organizations, which are cooperatives. In response, in 2 words, our role as consultants, as I have already thought of and written about, is to teach Farmer's Choice (see also my earlier "Farmer's Choice. A Day in the Life of a Trainer of Trainors," 20 November 2013, Frank A Hilario, blogspot.com).

My team has Butchoy Espino as Team Leader; Dormie del Carmen as Crop Specialist; and I as Training Specialist. My role fits me to a T – I have a BS Agriculture degree from the College of Agriculture of the State University, and I am a certified teacher. The subject assigned to me is IPM, short for Integrated Pest Management – now, how do you teach IPM to farmers who have probably never reached high school, or even grade school? You can teach them about theory, but in the end you have to be practical. You have to be grounded on reality.

My first class is made up of farmers from Malasiqui and vicinities in Pangasinan. The training is held at the headquarters of Atlas Mabuna Multi-Purpose Cooperative in Lasip, Malasiqui. My second class is held at the new headquarters of the Progressive MPC at Oraan East, San Fabian, also in Pangasinan. My third class is at Santa Cecilia in Aringay, La Union; it is held under the mango tree – I'm not joking.

So now let me continue my story that I have begun (see "Hilario's Theory of Technology Infusion. Dark thoughts early morning," 25 November 2013, Frank A Hilario, blogspot.com), where at tarp #1 I stop after I say something about IPM being complicated.

I flip tarp #1 over and out comes tarp #2 showing many images that either indicate being integrated – or not quite. It's an original presentation, not copied anywhere. The title of the tarp has a question mark below the text, one punctuation mark to dramatize the need to learn more. I tell my class that I want to be sure that everyone really understands the concept of integrated, because if they don't have a good idea what that word means, how can they ever tell if they're doing IPM or not? I'm not asking you to define it, I tell them, because it's complicated; I just want to be sure you to have a good idea of it.

(In my third class, at Santa Cecilia, to hold the 11 tarps bound together at the top with platinum bars, first we string Japanese straw between 2 trees. After 3 strands have been wound between the trees, I have an idea: I wind a 4th strand around the first 3 strands from one end to another. Why do I do that? Because suddenly, I have the idea that 3 strands don't make a rope, but a 4th strand that binds them together make a rope – the 4th strand makes all of them integrated. That's what I tell my class of farmers. Wide eyes and nods tell me they get the idea!

So I proceed.

Tarp #3, "Basics of IPM, Ayds Adalla"– Economic Threshold, Applied Ecology, and Economic & Social Acceptance. I point out to my farmer class, in Tagalog and Ilocano, the language of whose tribe I belong to, that social acceptance is emphasized by this expert; that is to say, for instance, is the planting of Bt corn acceptable to the people in the area? It's up to you people to decide.

It so happens that I can relate this one to an illustrative and enlightening story of which I am directly involved. I am the only one who can tell this decision support story, and it's illustrative of life after the academe and learning science. It happened almost 50 years ago. I tell them this personal story, and I know it's true because I am the teacher here, at the College of Agriculture of the University of the Philippines (UP). Ayds Adalla was my student in Horticulture (Lab), and she was bright, so I gave her a grade of 1 (a grade of Perfect at UP). One of her classmates was Vic Ladlad, and he was also bright, and I also gave him a grade of 1. They were in the same class, so they heard from me and saw exactly the same things. Then, two roads diverged in the yellow woods, even as I myself had to take another one less travelled by. I became a creative writer for science. Ayds Adalla became Dean of the College of Agriculture; she almost became Chancellor of UP Los Baños. Vic Ladlad became a Commander of the New People's Army, the military arm of the Communist Party of the Philippines. One chose the side of peace, the other chose the side of war. I chose the side of words. So, I tell my class of farmers, my hands cutting the air, "What happens to your life is your choice!"

Farmer's Choice.

The next 4 tarps teach a common lesson: There are as many basics of IPM as there are experts; not one expert agrees with another. It's your choice as learner. I show them and explain a little:

Tarp #4, "Basics of IPM, ICRISAT"– Monitoring, Indigenous Methods, Pest-Tolerant Varieties, and Biological Control. Source is the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, which is based in India. Indigenous methods: I tell them about the Indians releasing chickens to pick on the worms in a field of pigeon pea (Tagalog kadios, Ilocano kardis).

Tarp #5, "Basics of IPM, BC"– Good Growing Practices, Resistant Stocks, Predatory Insects, and Chemicals. Source is the Ministry of Agriculture of British Colombia in Canada. I tell them this is the only one that says the use of chemicals is basic to IPM. What is "basic" again? Fundamental, essential – you have to do it; you can't do without it. (If you want to check, click this: agf.gov.be.ca.) I tell my class of farmers that IPM has been designed to avoid chemicals, but here is one source that prescribes it as a necessity. I do not ask for a discussion. Now they're getting the idea that there are experts and there are experts.

Tarp #6, "Basics of IPM, U of Maryland"– Building Knowledge Base, Monitoring, Making Decisions, Intervening, and Keeping Records. Source is the University of Maryland, USA. I tell my class of farmers that "building knowledge base" as basic to IPM is a unique claim among the experts. I tell them: Masapul nga nayonanyo ti ammoyo. Kailangan dagdagan ang alam ninyo. You have to add to your knowledge. That's exactly what we're doing right now.

Tarp #7, "Basics of IPM, U of California"– Preventing Pest Problems, Identifying Pests, Monitoring, Economic Threshold, and Integrating Methods. Source is the University of California in the USA. I point to my class of farmers the balloon that says "Integrating Methods." I tell them that this includes all the other methods, so it cannot be one of the basics. You have experts and you have experts.

Tarp #8, "5 Views of IPM" simply represents those previous 5 tarps, to emphasize the non-agreement on the basics of IPM. Isn't IPM complicated? This is to introduce the class to the activity. I tell them:

Group yourselves into 5 or 6, then write on the Manila paper with the marker we are going to provide you, what you have been doing that you think is related to IPM.

I do not tell them to rush, that they have only so many minutes to do it. I do not give them instructions on what is proper to write. I let the conversations flow and the writing continue. After about half an hour, I ask volunteers from each group to make a report to the whole class, ad lib. The idea is for us consultants to have a good idea of the farmers' knowledge and practice of IPM without us telling them what they should be doing – in the first place, telling them what to do is not what we are supposed to be doing.

(In my 3rd class, which is at Santa Cecilia in Aringay, La Union, I share with my class a group output in my 2nd class. at Oraan East in Malasiqui, Pangasinan, the one that shows boxes that have arrows pointing to the middle box titled "IPM Practices." Same pattern as my Christmas Card. I point out to my class the need to integrate everything.)

Tarp #9, "6 Functions of Management, Henri Fayol"– The functions are: Planning, Organizing, Commanding, Controlling, Coordinating, and Forecasting. What has Henri Fayol to do with integrated pest management?! I tell my class: "Integrated, Pest, Management"– the commas indicating my pauses. Now, we have to be sure we know the concept of management. Henri Fayol, a Frenchman, is the father of modern management. Now, I tell my class, I must tell you that the first step is Planning – you can't proceed without a plan. You have to organize what you want to do. There must be only 1 Commander in Chief; look what's happening in Tacloban, Leyte – there are too many commanders in chief. Chaos. How do you control? By money, says one of the farmers. I agree. And you have to coordinate with others. And you have to be able to forecast not the rains but your market(s), which means you have to choose your crop(s).

Tarp #10, "IPM Check"– The tarp lists several methods, each with a check mark under 7 groups of methods: Cultural, Mechanical, Physical, Biological, Chemical, Genetic, and Regulatory. I tell them IPM Check is another of my inventions, following "PalayCheck" of the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice). Actually, my IPM Check does not copy from PhilRice's PalayCheck – only the name is similar. (If you want to know more, you have to attend my class.)

Tarp #11, "ICM"– 7 balloons: Good Seeds, Good Soil, Good Irrigation, Good Timing, Good Fertilizers, Good Crops, and Good Cultivation. Good Soil. I tell them about the story of Enso, my cousin, who learned from me about how to make your soil rich in organic matter, which I learned from American gentleman farmer Edward Faulkner almost 50 years ago, from a book I read at the library of the old UP College of Agriculture in Los Baños, Laguna. Enso's neighboring farmers copied all that he did, except trash farming, which he didn't tell them, so over the years Enso had much higher yields than the copycat farmers who did not know his "secret" for a good soil. (The technical term is trash farming.)

So far, for this ARCCESS training of the DAR farmers, I have invented these 5 tools for training farmers:

Farmer's Choice. This is a perspective that I repeatedly tell my class of farmers: Everything you do towards the life you want is your own decision. You are not to be mere absorbers of knowledge. You have to increase your knowledge. You have to do your own research. Do not just believe what the experts tell you.

Christmas card. Actually, the half-sheet Xmas card is a color printout of the entire training program, 10 balloons, with the balloon in the middle saying "Farmer's Choice." This is repeating without repeating.

IPM Check. This is to emphasize that there are many things to do when it comes to IPM.

Teaching "Integrated" and "Management" inside IPM. Before this, I'm sure there have been no books or experts explaining these 2 concepts separately first, then integrating them. I'm the first. I, writer, belong to the Ilocano tribe; I have always been an original aboriginal.

ICM. I ask my class of farmers, "Apay ket ti focusyo ket peste?""Bakit ang focus ninyo ay sa peste?""Why do you focus on the pest?" I don't answer my own question; I do not ask for answers – it is a rhetorical question, and everyone in my class of farmers knows it. I say that for IPM, I have an alternative for them but, I say, I'm not saying it's better; it's their own decision which one to use as model. What's the C in ICM? Crop. ICM is Integrated Crop Management. You focus on the crop, not on the pest. If you do ICM, I say, you will have a healthy crop.

I leave it at that.

MANILA: Let's talk genius.

It's not my wont, but this genius is reading the print issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer of today, Wednesday, 4 December 2013, page A11, and it says, "Scientists discover wonder rice – IRRI." It tells of the discovery of what is now called a spike gene, which increases rice yields ranging from 16 to 36%. That's what I call IRRI's genius.

Never mind that it was written by ANN (Author Not Named), which means it's essentially a press release. It doesn't take genius to realize that this is good news for this international Institute, the sister of my favorite ICRISAT, which has been catching the 7 o'clock news, because IRRI has been catching fire in its own hunger games!

IRRI hasn't received good news for too long because of the controversy surrounding its own genetically modified organism (GMO) called Golden Rice, which it has been propagating as a public good for humans who have a hidden hunger for Vitamin A.

IRRI's stature in international agriculture science is firm, but it has so far not recovered from its daymares brought by the GMO bogeyman. And why is that? Thinking of IRRI's awny reputation in the mass media, I suspect it is because IRRI has not learned to grow, nurture and nourish its own communications to a much healthier state and that, in fact, it too is human and has a hidden hunger for Vitamin A – Art of Reasoning. Even as it has been catching fire, IRRI has been fighting fire with fire.

Based on my personal experience of almost 38 years in creative science writing, starting 1975, in and out of the Los Baños Science Community, I believe IRRI must understand more the logic of the attack on one hand and the defense of GMOs on the other. Another way of putting that is to reinvent the adage: Keep your enemies close, but keep your friends closer.

At least, IRRI has started to do something about it. I am listed in LinkedIn looking for an online job, and that's how I received an email yesterday that the International Rice Research Institute is looking for a Manager (for) Communications for its Golden Rice, Iron Rice, and Zinc Rice (linkedin.com).

I laughed loud, sorry; when I read the whole ad and the candidate called for, funny they didn't match! A case of mistaken ID?! Because after describing the job and enumerating "Major Accountabilities / Responsibilities" in all of 431 words, all demanding much creativity and commitment, IRRI was requiring that the applicant have a "Master's degree in communication, journalism, political science or related discipline"– IRRI didn't know that creativity and graduate courses don't mix?! Maybe one in a million, yes. IRRI was dreaming the Impossible Genius.

I know for a fact that even in and from my own alma mater UP Los Baños that offers DevCom and Com Arts, an unbelievable number of MS and even PhD degree holders don't have much experience in communicating science to the people without assistance from their friendly neighborhood editors. A higher degree is a guarantee of higher knowledge, but not higher creativity.

More to the point, I'm intrigued with one of the roles IRRI wants its Communications Manager to play: "Set standards for frequency, images, terminology, and tone so that all communications about Healthier Rice are consistent." That is to say, IRRI is looking for an excellent manager and an expert photographer and a first-rate scientist and a world-class journalist – all in one person. IRRI is looking for a genius!

That is to say, IRRI is looking for a be-degreed genius in communications. Sorry, geniuses like that aren't born every minute. I would say IRRI can't even find a pedigreed genius in communications, one born to be a writer. When it all comes down to brass tacks, Communications is Creative Thinking leading to Creative Writing, which is the thing that IRRI sorely needs but does not yet recognize. Writers are born, yes, but there is an intelligent technical writer and there is an intelligent popular writer, and how will you find out if someone is both?

Specifically, IRRI is looking for someone "to serve as head of IRRI’s Healthier Rice Program Communications activities." My advice to IRRI? For healthier communications, go back to the Writing Board and rewrite what you want as Manager for Communications, to make sure of the one you desire, that he knows about the health issues surrounding Golden Rice, that he knows how to argue; that is to say, with GMOs in mind, the Communications Manager Candidate must know by heart all those Logical Fallacies. I'm a wide reader; I know that the pros of Golden Rice have yet to master their logic, as do of course the antis. The best defense is offense. IRRI must be on the offensive in this case, not simply defensive. If you have to play with fire, throw it, not catch it.

And yes, since IRRI wants a Manager, the Candidate must know, even if those in communications don't, about the 6 functions of management, as according to the Father of Modern Management, French original thinker Henri Fayol:

Planning– IRRI's Communications Manager must come up with a Vision and a Mission for his communications campaign(s). The Goal is easy to set: To sell all those rices. Because it must be a campaign, and I would say it needs a plan for at least 5 years. And yes, what it wants to achieve must be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound.

Leading– IRRI's Communications Manager must be creative and, along with that, must have initiative. He must be a Team Captain and not simply a team player.

Organizing– IRRI's Communications Manager must know how to organize a communications campaign. He must know Everett Rogers' Theory of Technology Diffusion at heart; more than that, he must know how to meet resistance to the diffusion using the force of logic, not the force of law, using social media, not simply print media. He must be not only computer literate but computer savvy.

Controlling– IRRI's Communications Manager must know how to handle his funds, or ask for them and from whom when he has none. IRRI could learn from the Ilocanos how to be thrifty, not stingy.

Coordinating– IRRI's Communications Manager must know how to relate to other people and other programs and projects in other departments inside and outside his Institute.

Forecasting– IRRI's Communications Manager must be keenly aware of and be able to forecast or sense the climate changes of droughts and floods when it comes to communicating IRRI news and views in the media, especially Internet-mediated mass media.

IRRI's Communications Manager must be a genius!

Unfortunately, they don't teach communications management in school and, even if they did, if it's all theory and no practice, they can't produce the genius IRRI is looking for.

IRRI must understand that only practice can produce a genius in communications. If IRRI were to find the genius it's looking for, it must stop catching fire, stop looking inside classrooms – and start looking inside itself.

MANILA: Let's talk about grains of truth.

As a result of my essay "Managing Rice Communications, IRRI catching fire" (05 December 2013, Frank A Hilario, blogspot.com), with some people from IRRI country that lies next to the campus of UP Los Baños, over dinner someplace else, I had a long conversation on the past, present and future of IRRI in the eyes and ears of the public, what I know of the public, especially in the Philippines, where IRRI is based, and especially of the activists, with whom there is no love lost.

I brought my first book and the latest (6th, 2013) published by ICRISAT in full color; I'm the happy prince with my happy essays on ICRISAT and other topics that somehow I relate to ICRISAT anyway. I'm all smiles with ICRISAT's strategy it calls Inclusive Market-Oriented Development, which guarantees that the poor rise from poverty; that's theory, and it has already been proven in practice in Africa and India. The not-so-secret secret lies not so much in the public-science-private partnerships but in the marketing that eliminates the middleman, where the values added somehow all go back to the farmer in that chain that starts with the seeds at the store and ends with the grains at the consumer's table wherever it is. My style, I said, is that of the National Geographic. Someone said, it was more like Rolling Stone, and I said, yes, a friend of mine said that too. Truth to tell, I had not been reading Rolling Stone, and now I should. In so many words, I asked why couldn't IRRI publish its own happy prince?

Many, many years after Miracle Rice, IRRI jumped to the bandwagon of bioengineering– leapfrogging plant breeding – to produce Golden Rice, which when grown produces Vitamin A. IRRI believed this was good for the millions of children and pregnant women with whom Vitamin A deficiency was a serious health problem (irri.org). Today, Golden Rice is a health problem – for IRRI.

In that meeting, nobody asked me in these words, but the question in the air to this minute is this: "Is IRRI losing the Battle of Communications in the matter of Golden Rice?" And my answer is, "Yes, because IRRI is fighting only the battle that comes to it." I said the problem as I saw it was that IRRI wasn't on the offensive, wasn't aware of what's happening, saw it only as an occasional battle or two, so it was not surprising that it was being ambushed on the wayside with anti-GMO activism. I said you are not taking the offensive, so you get ambushed. And then you fight fire with fire. I now say that's how you make your enemy a happy prince. You are fighting only the battle that comes to you. You don't believe that the best defense is offense.

I reminded them of the last sentence in that essay of mine, for IRRI to start looking inside itself. "For instance, what do you know about GMOs? (Pause.) Don't answer. What do you not know about GMOs? That's the more important question. You don't know." You have to study your material thoroughly. You can't communicate what you don't know.

Specifically, I said my advice came in 3 forms of Vitamin A, 3 healthy jabs to the JAW. They needed to study the Art of Jurisprudence, Art of Argumentation, and Art of War.

Jurisprudence, because I said there is that Philippine court ruling about Bt eggplant and, or course, that has bearing on Golden Rice and should not be ignored. The activists will not ignore that.

Argumentation, because I said I could see that the anti-GMOs were guilty of logical fallacies – and so were the pro-GMOs, including and most of all IRRI. Someone asked me, what logical fallacy? I said, I'm a teacher, and the best teacher does not simply tell; he will make you think. I also said I have written a book on logical fallacies along the lines of the plagiarism tag against Senator Tito Sotto, and I could give them a free e-copy if they wanted to. In any case, I did volunteer that there is logical fallacy in saying that Golden Rice is not safe. And logical fallacy in saying that Golden Rice is safe. You figure that out.

War, because I said they're not fighting simply a battle or two; they should know that they should be waging a war. I don't know much about it, but I said you should study Sun Tzu'sThe Art Of War.

Someone asked me how stood IRRI in terms of its publics, and I said IRRI is nobody now, hardly ever spoken of. The Filipinos used to speak of IRRI with high regards; today, IRRI's reputation is at best forgotten, at worst negative, because of Golden Rice.

I did not tell them exactly in these words, but the blame is heavy on the side of IRRI communications. You can't do something about what you can't tell.

Among other embarrassments, IRRI, as does my favorite ICRISAT, writes more in technical language than in popular, thus limiting its own readership. However, ICRISAT does IRRI one better because it has its regular and popular-language in-house ICRISAT Happenings newsletter that it distributes to outsiders anyway, and as far as I know ICRISAT actively encourages journalists to write as they would, not as if they were scientists talking to other scientists. To help your reader understand is the beginning of wisdom. If you don't speak their language, why do you expect people to respect you?

Here is pertinent technical writing in a magazine for non-technical people (Rice Today, October-December 2013, page 20):

By 2035, the world will require more than 100 million tons of additional rice when the population surpasses 8.5 billion. To meet this global demand, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) through the International C4 Rice Consortium, is developing C4 rice, a new kind of rice equipped with a more powerful "engine" for transforming carbon dioxide (CO2) and solar energy into food.

"By 2035, the world will require ..."– my God, that's 22 years from now! To great a leap forward. IRRI is planning for 22 years from now. If this is how IRRI thinks, it's relating to the rice producer but not now, just because IRRI is afraid that there will be a population boom 693,792,000 seconds from today. As a farmer, why make me wait that long? (As for me, I will be 95 by that time!) I said "2035" doesn't sound as great as "2020"– truth to tell, "2020" sounds better and looks smart, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound in a way that even a 73-year-old can identify with, while "2035" looks like a fantasy film. "2035" is A Great Leap Forward that only IRRI can relate to.

IRRI ... is developing C4 rice, a new kind of rice equipped with a more powerful "engine" for transforming carbon dioxide (CO2) and solar energy into food.

In communications, that's an embarrassment for the lack of a metaphor that sounds as powerful and relatable to as the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13, NRSV):

Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up.

And I haven't discussed C4 at all, carbon dioxide, and photosynthesis. I don't have to now. I just want to say science must employ the arts not only for its own sake but more so for the sake of the people that science is supposed to serve. If the people can't understand you, why are you surprised that they are against you?

Someone mentioned extension and I said, don't call it that, that's ancient; rather, refer to it as in the language of social media, or call it technology diffusion. On my part, I said I just invented the concept of technology infusion¸ where you provide options for innovation, not tell farmers which to choose but how to choose.

I was also telling them about the science of the software as aid to communications. Software is designed to help workers of words and ideas and images, but you have to do your homework. I have done mine. Today I keep working the wonders of word processing that are gifts to creative writers. I said I could show you in a lecture demo some lessons in Creative Writing, for a cup of coffee, 3-in-1, make it Nescafé Brown & Creamy please, your place, not mine.

I said I just read a technical journal published in the Philippines where, on the inside back, I saw "Guidelines for Contributors"– and I saw a typo. Nobody's perfect, but if you issue instructions for authors on a single published page and you can't perfect even your spelling, that's unforgivable and unforgettable. IRRI publications are similarly unforgettable! Whatever happened to the Grammar & Spelling Checker of Microsoft Word? This is software great for writing and editing – and, I have found, even for desktop publishing. I'm using now Word 2013; you don't have to be that advanced, but if you want to master your communications, you have to master your software too, not only your subject matter, not only your writing, not only your editing. After which, I can smile with great satisfaction when you make your Great Leap of Faith in your Great Leap Forward.

MANILA: Let's talk garbage.

I was talking to someone the other day over dinner with some brown rice, and the subject of organic farming came up, and she said, matter-of-factly, that the yield of rice grown with organic fertilizer was low, and I laughed a little and said she was talking like she was employed by a chemical fertilizer company – I knew she wasn't. Joke. I just said, "There are organic fertilizers and there are organic fertilizers." She got the point. "In any case," I said, "if you want to shift from inorganic fertilizers to organic completely, you can't do it in the 1st year. Maybe in the 3rd, or 5th year. Because natural is slow, artificial is fast; you know, organic is slow release, inorganic is instant gratification.Year by year, more organic, less inorganic. I say now, use The John the Baptist Method:

He must increase and I must decrease.

I did not explain to her, but now I will, about organic agriculture, or organic farming, or even that you can make your own organic fertilizer, or that you can practice what I remember my authentic American organic hero Edward H Faulkner referred to as trash farming, which I can briefly explain in 4 words: Garbage In, Cabbage Out. Like, if you incorporate your crop refuse with the very top of your field soil using a rotavator, that's trash farming. Your trash becomes part of a rich, organic mass.

I should know. I'm a BSA graduate and I've been reading tirelessly about any of what I shall refer to here as organic method of agriculture (OMA) since the mid-1960s when my probing hands and curious mind came across Faulkner on an open shelf at the book-filled library of the University of the Philippines' College of Agriculture (UPCA) on top of a hill. UPCA is UP Los Baños now; the library moved up a little, is now bigger, now with desktop computers and Internet connection. I wonder if anyone has come across Edward Faulkner in his Web searches? I remember the titles of his 2 books, in the order that I discovered them and read voraciously: Soil Development and Plowman's Folly. In fact, I was the first UPCA alumnus to talk and write about the OMA when I was teaching at UPCA. The UPCA professors were laughing behind my back. I didn't think it was funny.

No hard feelings. Today, almost half a century later, I'm on record as the first college instructor in the Philippines – probably in the world – to design his syllabus on Horticulture entirely in the paradigm of the OMA, at the Xavier University College of Agriculture (XUCA) in Cagayan De Oro City where I taught in 1968 – if you need testimony, ask the one and only Nicanor "Nicky" Perlas of the Right Livelihood fame; he was one of my A students. At UPCA, the OMA was alien and it disturbed the academic grounds; at XUCA, the OMA was alien but it disturbed only my sleep – when I had to prepare the lessons for the next day. Rev Fr William Masterson was the Dean. Yes, Xavier U is Church, Roman Catholic, run by the Jesuits; UP Los Baños is State University, run by the academics. Especially now with the emergence of Pope Francis, a Jesuit, I say, wisdom separates the Church from the State. Who can blame me when I declare that my personal experience with the OMA shows the Church is more intelligent than the State when it comes to agriculture?

Those who have ears, listen!

No, Dr Henry I Miller of Stanford U isn't listening. If you were talking of organic foods, I imagine he would mutter under his breath, organic fools.

OMA, OMG.

So, I'd like to talk about logical fallacies. Dr Miller is a ForbesMagazine contributor, and his tagline says, "I debunk hypocritical, dishonest junk science" (forbes.com). According to my favorite American Heritage Dictionary, to "debunk" is to "expose or ridicule the falseness, sham, or exaggerated claims of" someone or something. I beg his pardon, but I think Dr Miller's is an exaggerated claim. Starting with the thoughts that out there must be hypocritical, or dishonest, and/or junk science, is as unscientific a frame of mind as can be. Or, more to the point, "hypocritical, dishonest, junk science" is twice a logical fallacy if I ever saw one. You are Name-Calling even before you have started. You are assuming intellectual superiority over all the others whose statements are diametrically opposite yours: "Listen to me instead, I know better than they do!" The 2nd fallacy is also called Ivory Tower.

Dr Miller is a fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and was the founding director of the Office of Biotechnology at the US Food and Drug Administration. On 11 November 2013, he wrote "The Myth of Organic Agriculture" (project-syndicate.org). He began by saying, "A 2012 meta-analysis of data from 240 studies concluded that organic fruits and vegetables were, on average, no more nutritious than their cheaper conventional counterparts."

Now, meta-analysis is "the process or technique of synthesizing research results by using various statistical methods to retrieve, select, and combine results from previous separate but related studies" (American Heritage Dictionary). A very powerful – and therefore potentially dangerous – method of research. That meta was conducted by a medical team led by Dr Dena Bravata and Dr Crystal Smith-Spangler, both of Stanford U; a paper based on the findings was published in the 04 September 2013 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine (Michelle Brandt, 02 September 2012, Stanford School of Medicine, stanford.edu). Ms Brandt says, "After analyzing the data, the researchers found little significant difference in health benefits between organic and conventional foods."

Now, in those 2 sentences that I quote from Dr Miller's essay and Ms Brandt's report, do you see the logical fallacy? Probably not.

Let me help you. You should know that what the team of Dr Bravata meant by "nutrition" and "health benefits" are not what you think. What they measured were the contents such as vitamin, mineral, protein and omega-3 fatty acid of the fruits and vegetables that they investigated, not their effects on people who consumed them. Logical fallacy: Begging the Question. Content is not nutrition; contents are not health benefits.

In fact, "There were no long-term studies of health outcomes of people consuming organic versus conventionally produced food," Ms Brandt reported. "No significant difference in health benefits between organic and conventional foods" indeed!

In the absence of those long-term studies, I ask what health benefits do those pesticide residues and fertilizer elements in those conventionally grown foods bring to humans? What benefits to the environment can come from those pesticide residues and chemical fertilizers contaminating the soil and groundwater?

No, no one can intelligently conclude, not even a doctor from Stanford School of Medicine, as Dr Miller does, that "The simple truth is that buying non-organic is far more cost-effective, more humane, and more environmentally responsible."

Dr Miller says, "Many who are seduced by the romance of organic farming ignore its human consequences." Following him, I say, "Many who are seduced by the romance of inorganic farming ignore its human consequences."

What's Dr Miller's Forbes Magazine tagline again? "I debunk hypocritical, dishonest junk science." That makes two of us, doesn't it?

Revised a little 15 December 2013 at 1412 hours Manila time

MANILA: Especially those in Facebook, I wish all the Seniors the best years of the rest of their lives. If they pay attention to the years of the rest of their lives.

In fact, age doesn't matter because gray matter doesn't age, unless you do. It's all in the mind. If you visit Facebook, you will see young and old faces; I especially see the old faces who are quick to post photos and messages. I often wonder if they have found happiness. Me, I have found contentment amidst wonderment.

The image you see here is the upper half-cover of an old copy of the book I bought on 22 May 2006, at a book sale (I inserted my photo). The unreadable entries on top right say, "7/03 Half-Price Books" which means it was already offered at that US bookstore for sale 3 years before I bought it. "Clearance $2.00"– I don't remember how much I paid for it, but it has been worth a fortune to me ever since.

In 1993, Betty Friedan published her book in which she said, instead of the Spanish Juan Ponce De Leon finding for himself The Fountain of Youth, she had found for the world The Fountain of Age, the exact title of her book, and I discovered her 13 years later, when I was already a Senior, in 2006. She discovered how to live a new and wonderful life when she became a Senior herself. At about the time of her discovery, I was in the midst of my years of quiet discontent and taking the ordinary as the rule rather than the exception. I wasn't aware that by itself, your life was not commonplace unless you accepted it to be so.

Years earlier, Betty Friedan was the author of the book The Feminine Mystique, which changed the world's perception of women for generations to come, except mine. It happens to the best. Because of her, now I have changed my perception of age; I have discovered what I shall call here The Age Mystique, which tells me, shows me, makes me feel, even as I am 73, that I am extra special, that I can do special things. So can you, but you have to discover them yourself.

Seniors, let's talk computers. So, we're all Seniors, but can you install Windows 8 in your PC? Can you use Adobe Photoshop to create special effects with your shots? Do you know how to crop an image, or capture one onscreen? Do you know how to select text on a webpage, copy and paste as text? I can do much more and better.

I can write faster creatively with Word 2013 than anyone of you can type 2,013 words mechanically with your biblical method: Seek and ye shall find. Among other tools, Word 2013 doesn't only help me write; it helps me think critically and creatively with its Outlining feature.

I'm assuming you're using Word 2013, the best. You're probably using Word 2007, which is good, but which is in a different universe of substance and style, and speed. Word 2010 is better, but it takes an adventuresome spirit to move on.

Me, I write to share. I do write to earn, but it takes only 10% of my time; the other 90% I spend writing for others free, to free them from their personal imprisonments. Like right now.

I'm a writer 100%; I taught myself writing, editing, photography and desktop publishing 100%. So you will understand that I am always thanking the Lord 100% that I am living in the Age of the Computer and the Internet. Are you?

I offer workshops for free (3 hours) or for a fee (3 days). If you don't want to learn from my workshops either way, at least learn from my life as I tell it in my many blogs. As I'm telling you right now.

I started using the desktop computer exactly on 28 December 1985, Innocents Day, at the office of the Farming Systems & Soil Resources Institute (FSSRI) of the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UP Los Baños) with its campus at College, Laguna. The application was WordStar, Version 1. I started using Microsoft Word in 1987, Version 1, and I never left. Some 26 years later, I'm using Word 2013.

Actually, the Apple II was already in town; I saw the Apple II at the campus of the College of Forestry, in the last years of the 1970s. At first, I hated it, because I thought researchers who were friends and acquaintances were using the machine to make the formula fit their data and not the other way around. About 10 years later, when I was working for the FSSRI, I had to type at the office the manuscript of a whole book with an IBM Selectric III typewriter, with its changeable balls of types and white correction tape, for days – and nights. As a typist, I have always been excellent, but not always perfect. I was already typing unbelievably fast at that time, but I had to type a whole book. I had to proofread what I had typed nine times (yes, 9 times) to make sure it was perfect. So I told myself, "There must be a better way than this!"

That's when I saw an IBM desktop computer lying there next door, with a pretty lady working on it. From Innocents Day 1985 when I asked my boss, FSSRI Director Pids Rosario to ask the lady to teach me word processing and he said yes and, so instructed, she had to say yes, I have been on a software journey of a thousand miles, both as a creative writer and as a critical editor. I have forgotten the name of that lady, but I have not forgotten that I owe her a favor, if given grudgingly.

From my own clone personal computer in 1987 to my 14-inch Lenovo G470 (IBM) laptop today, my journey of a thousand smiles can be described thus:

(1) Armed with only Word 2002 and being self-taught as Editor and desktop publisher, almost single-handedly and within 3 years I turned the Philippine Journal of Crop Science (PJCS) from being late 3 years to up-to-date, 2007, and to being ISI (world class) the next year, 2008. The PJCS is published by the Crop Science Society of the Philippines, which is based at UP Los Baños. Those were the years.

(2) I have published 6 books of my collected science essays, minimum of 24 chapters each, care of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). I have just sent the final manuscript for the 7th collection, to come out early 2014. These are the days.

(3) I have 10 busy blogs right now. At one time I had a maximum of 100. To get a good idea of my tremendous output, visit The Creattitudes Encyclopedia (blogspot.com), where you will find 1,700+ essays of at least 1,000 words each.

So, how productive you are with your PC right now?

Right now, as Old 2013 fades, so my hope for the Seniors to learn more about digitizing their lives beyond buying expensive cellphones and in/expensive tablets. So I'm turning my attention on the Moderns:

To the Virgins, to make much of Time
By Robert Herrick

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
Old Time is still a-flying
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

Here's to the Moderns to make much of Time.

In any case, I wish the Seniors Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

Revised 26 December 2013 at 0700 hours, especially the last paragraph and, consequently, the 2nd part of the title

MANILA: It's almost the end of another year and, funny how the past comes to haunt you. You are looking at my shot that appears on the cover of a science publication that I edited, 2007; this is Jatropha, a devil in disguise; from the same source comes both blessing (biodiesel) and curse (poison).

I wasn't looking for it, but I just saw an ICRISAT ad for "Manager, Scientific Editing and Publishing (All Exams & Jobs, blogspot.com), and of course I was reminded of an IRRI ad for "Manager - Communications" (linkedin.com), because I had earlier written about it (see my "Managing Rice Communications. IRRI catching fire," 05 December 2013, Frank A Hilario, blogspot.com).

ICRISAT and IRRI are siblings within the family of their mother, single-parent Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). They have different progenies, ICRISAT born in 1972 in India, and IRRI born in 1960 in the Philippines. I have been writing earnestly and continually about ICRISAT since 2007 and have the blessing of 6 books published with its 5 mandate crops of chickpea, peanut, pearl millet, pigeon pea, and sweet sorghum. I have yet to have the blessing of writing a single book on IRRI with its single crop of rice.

For either position in either Institute, minimum requirement, MS degree? Good, so you can't say I'm actually applying for either position – I don't have an MS. I did go for such a degree, but only half-heartedly. I didn't want to learn more about writing; I wanted to write more.

Applicants wanted, ICRISAT or IRRI. So, not me, but if truth be told, I once applied for and desperately wanted to get the position of Assistant Editor (Ass Ed) at IRRI, sometime in the late 1970s, when Walter G Rockwood was Chief Editor, if I remember right. And it was quite embarrassing – both for the local boy (me) and the international agency (IRRI). This is what happened: I got AssEd.

Let me explain. I applied for the position and took the aptitude exam, which I had to pass if I were to be considered a promising Ass Ed candidate at all. I tried to do my very best in that exam, because I wanted so badly to get into IRRI, for the money – IRRI paid well, very well – and I knew I was more than equal to the job.

A few days later, the Chief Editor called me to his office and told me, in so many words, "Frank, I think you are the guy we're looking for, but just to be sure, I prepared a little test just for you." He was smiling. If I was smiling too, you would have to forgive me, because I knew I was that good. I'll call it The Rockwood Test. It was a 10-item editing exam, and when I fast-read it and came to #10, which had a booby trap hidden in it, I knew that I knew all the answers – the test was new but the manner was familiar.

At that time, I was already Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the Forest Research Institute (FORI), and already I was Founder and Editor in Chief of FORI's monthly non-technical newsletter Canopy, founder and Editor in Chief of FORI's quarterly technical journal Sylvatrop, and founder and Editor in Chief of FORI's quarterly color magazine Habitat, the layout and stories of which I patterned after the US National Geographic. I was never late in any issue, and these publications made FORI popular in the Philippines and abroad. Remember, those were the Days of the Dinosaurs, those giant manual typewriters, but I was as fast with my typing as I was with my editing.

I finished The Rockwood's Test fast. I wanted to show him I was better than he probably thought I was. And when the Chief Editor looked at what I handed him, he smiled again and said, "Yes, I think you are the guy we're looking for. Don't call us, we'll call you."

You must have heard that before.

Long story short? This is going to be a long story. We didn't hear from IRRI after 60 days. We didn't hear from IRRI after 120 days. We didn't hear from IRRI after 180 days. Finally, we decided to find out what happened. If silence meant Yes, why was IRRI taking so long to announce it? My wife asked a friend, one of the editors of IRRI, to ask around. She found out that there had been a violent objection to the results of my aptitude exam. The opinion that prevailed was that there must have been a leak – my grade in that aptitude exam was too high it was unbelievable! I must have scored 90% or higher.

If they confronted me, I could have easily explained the phenomenon. I have always been a wide reader. High school, I was already reading voraciously the Reader's Digest, TIME Magazine, and bundles and bundles of books, classics and western, from the library of our school, the Rizal Junior College in my hometown of Asingan in Pangasinan in Central Luzon in the Philippines. History? Literature? Social Studies? Math? Science? Economics? You couldn't scare me with any of those subjects. I was in love with all those subjects in high school yet! Not only that. After College, I learned how to guess at word meanings intelligently, because I had been reading reviewers that would tell you, for instance, to look at the prefix – or think of a similar one – to guess the meaning of an unfamiliar word.

What happened was that IRRI decided to hire instead an Editorial Assistant (a girl), as if to tell the world that they had made a typographical mistake in advertising for an Assistant Editor, and that they preferred a female. If I wanted to complain, I couldn't. I didn't. I realized only too late that I had tried too hard to get into IRRI to become an Ass Ed, but instead I got AssEd. No hard feelings!

I think the main reason was that IRRI was afraid of Frank Agapito Hilario, a writer of known talent – and persuasion. Also that my exam results were too good to be true. I was too good to be true.

I was about 40 years young at that time, full of energy of mind if not of body. Years before that, at the Cow College (College of Agriculture of the University of the Philippines), I had been an activist against the US war in Vietnam, and I didn't hide behind a fictitious name. in fact, I wrote an open letter, signed, stenciled and delivered to those attending the 10 October 1967 Loyalty Day celebration; the title of that letter was "What Did You Do In The War, Daddy?" It was my letter to the child within my wife's womb (she would be born the next year, 14 February 1968), telling that child that the Cow College volunteers (all staff and students) of 10 October 1914 were willing to go to war not out of loyalty to the Philippines but out of loyalty to the US of A. The Philippines was not involved in World War I. The open letter was American satire, an open reproach.

That open letter made the whole Cow College mad, enraged to the bones, especially the volunteers of 1914 who vowed to fight World War I in Europe. The war ended before they could be trained and shipped, but the fact was that their volunteerism had already been enshrined in the history of the Cow College and the Tenth of October had for decades been celebrated as Loyalty Day.

Being disloyal to my alma mater, the bulls kicked my ass out of Los Baños in Luzon and I landed in Cagayan De Oro City in Mindanao, on the campus of the Xavier University College of Agriculture (XUCA). From the State University to the Church University – dare I say that the Church was more intelligent than the State in the matter that involved me? The Church was more forgiving, that's for sure. It forgave me of my sin of commission. I have since forgiven myself of the impetuousness of youth and asked God to forgive me for the arrogance of talent.

After Xavier U, I worked as a Documentalist for the National Institute of Science & Technology in Manila (under Jose R Velasco, Director), then as a Copywriter for Pacifica Publicity Bureau in Makati (under Nonoy Gallardo, Creative Director). After Pacifica came FORI, where I became CIO as I said earlier, and from where I was hoping to transfer to IRRI. For the higher pay.

At around the time that IRRI would have none of my services as editor, at FORI my good friend JAC – God bless his soul – told me, "If truth be told, there are only 2 people who made FORI: Pete Bueno and you." He meant we made FORI popular here and abroad. I didn't argue. If truth be told, I was the one who made FORI popular with those 3 FORI publications coming out in both technical language and plain English, but I salute Pete for giving me all the freedom I wanted and fighting for me when the going got rough.

Years later, I could have been the first Filipino who became Chief Editor of IRRI. Anyway, barring any rule against such an occurrence of a local boy making good, I knew I was that good. My mistake was that I tried too hard. I didn't know that doing my best was going to be my worst.

More than 3 decades after I did not become Editor of IRRI, I did become Editor in Chief of the Philippine Journal of Crop Science (PJCS), the triannual technical journal of the Crop Science Society of the Philippines (CSSP) based at the campus of UP Los Baños in Laguna. For my first issue of the PJCS, the publisher was celebrating its 25th anniversary, 2001, the CSSP having been founded in 1976. That issue was somewhat of an anomaly, because I was publishing it in 2003 since the PJCS was effectively late by 3 years.

I was crazy accepting the job for a few thousand pesos per issue, but the challenge was irresistible simply because it looked impossible: Make the PJCS world-class. I was incorrigible; if you told me it was impossible, I'd go ahead and try. It was a crazy one-man job: I was my own Secretary, Proofreader, Managing Editor, Editor in Chief, and Layout Artist. I decided to junk the conventional pre-printing process and went desktop publishing instead. I was my own desktop publisher (the person, not the program). My working mantra was that if I could put it in the computer, I could work on it. If anyone could do it, I was the one.

So I worked out each page of each issue onscreen; I formatted characters, lines, paragraphs and sections; I inserted the running texts and page numbers, images, tables, charts and graphs on the appropriate pages and Moses-like, I parted the waters of the Red Sea of columns of text. And you know what? I was using "only"Microsoft Word as my desktop publisher, first Word 2002 (Word XP), later Word 2003. I have since graduated to writing books and desktop publishing using Word 2007, then Word 2010, and now Word 2013. How could I turn a word processor into a desktop publisher? As Manuel Uy used to say to sweepstakes buyers, "A Quitter Never Wins; A Winner Never Quits."A master never quits learning.

That's how I was able to get the PJCS published 2 times the number of regular issues in a year, 6 instead of 3 issues. And that's how it became up-to-date in 3 years. That was 2006. Since it was now coming out regularly and on time; since it now had an international Board of Editors; all the papers had international application, and the papers were now well-edited, the next year, 2007, it became ISI, or world-class. (The image above is from the August 2007 issue, a blessing in disguise.) That is, it was now included in the elite list of science publications referred to as ISI (for Institute for Scientific Information).It is now referred to as Web of Knowledge, but "ISI" has the bite that "Web of Knowledge" doesn't have. Sometimes the old has more bite than the new.

I had been blogging about ICRISAT since 2007, and in 2011, I already had 5 books of popular science essays published by this Insitute based in India. That year, the UP Los Baños Alumni Association honored me as The Most Outstanding Alumnus for Creative Writing. Sometimes the old recognizes the old, if belatedly. If you needed proof of my versatility as a worker of ideas and images in technical and popular science, this was the official seal.

Today, late 2013, Christmas Day, thinking of IRRI when I applied there as Assistant Editor, late 1970s, when there was no room for me at the inn, I will hide behind the Bible and say that IRRI would not entertain angels unawares. No, it didn't think Jatropha. In publications, IRRI didn't know what was good for IRRI.

MANILA: Today, Monday, 30 December 2013, Rizal Day, I noticed my daughter Ela's copy of F Sionil Jose's novel Sherds (2007, Manila: La Solidaridad, 128 pages). Out of curiosity, I read Chapter 1, those 7 pages, and then the last page. I didn't like the ending.

End of story? No. I looked at the blurb on the back cover and I didn't like it either. It says among other things:

Sherds – the latest work by the Philippines' most widely translated author – is, perhaps, his most thoughtful and incisive comment on the Filipino condition. For all its sophisticated urban setting, it still belongs to the vernacular literary tradition, hewing ever closely to the author's major theme – the Filipino's often hopeless search for social justice and a moral order.

Hopeless search(es) for social justice and a moral order – thereby, F Sionil Jose makes it look like the Philippines is in a State as bad as his Nightmares.

We create our own nightmares. Yes, we all are heroes in our own eyes.

The present is also the past. F Sionil Jose reminds me of the Philippine National Hero Jose Rizal, who in the 1880s and 1890s is also fighting in his country and abroad with his pen against injustice and immorality. Both F Sionil Jose and Jose Rizal are searching for social justice and a moral order, and neither can find either.

I am struck by the literary languages used: Spanish for Jose Rizal and English for F Sionil Jose. Most un-Filipino, right?! Spanish is the language of our colonizers for 350 years; English is the language of our colonizers for 50 years. Aren't these gentlemen both exhibiting colonial mentality in their own time? Why don't they use Tagalog (Filipino) since that's what the masses of Filipinos understand? Hasn't Jose Rizal written that he who does not love his language is worse than a smelly fish?

Let's see. I translated Jose Rizal's "Sa Aking Mga Kabata" (To Kids Of My Own Time) in English and published my version in FiSH, the youth magazine of Shepherd's Publications (vol 3 no 3, 2005, page 14); later, I published the same in my blog ("A Dangerous Peace. Being About Rizal's Racial, Intellectual Sport," 19 June 2007, Frank A Hilario, blogspot.com):

Sa Aking Mga Kabata
Sinulat ni Jose P Rizal

To Kids Of My Own Time
Translated by Frank A Hilario

Kapagka ang baya'y sadyang umiibig
sa kanyang salitang kaloob ng langit,
sanlang kalayaan nasa ring masapit
katulad ng ibong nasa himpapawid.

If the people naturally love
its tongue that is a gift from Heaven,
pawned freedom too it will seek to gain
as the bird that flies the sky above.

Pagka't ang salita'y isang kahatulan
sa bayan, sa nayo't mga kaharian,
at ang isang tao'y katulad, kabagay
ng alin mang likha noong kalayaan.

Since language is an estimation
of kingdom, town and community,
and man is like, a match to any
creature who has been of freedom born.

Ang hindi magmahal sa sariling wika
mahigit sa hayop at malansang isda;
kaya ang marapat pagyamaning kusa
na tulad sa inang tunay na nagpala.

His native tongue who does not treasure
is worse than a beast or smelly fish;
'tis right that on our own we nourish
like a mother who bestows favor.

Ang wikang Tagalog tulad din sa Latin
sa Ingles, Kastila at salitang anghel,
sapagka't ang Poong maalam tumingin
ang siyang naggawad, nagbigay sa atin.

Tagalog language is like Latin,
English, Spanish, and angelic tongue,
because God who has the wisdom
is He who gave, to us did assign.

Ang salita nati'y tulad din sa iba
na may alfabeto at sariling letra,
na kaya nawala'y dinatnan ng sigwa
ang lunday sa lawa noong dakong una.

Our own language, like any other,
had alphabet and letters, its own,
now vanished since by waves overthrown
like bancas in the lake long before.

I did Jose Rizal one better by translating his boring a/a/a/a poem into my more interesting a/b/b/a rhyme.

While translating, I discovered that what Jose Rizal means by "sariling wika" is not the obvious "native tongue" but in fact, the term is a metaphor for "freedom" or "independence." This is a poem, remember? If you insist on the literal meaning, like most Filipinos do, you are not reading the poem but reading your own thoughts into the poem.

The most telling argument against "sariling wika" as the literal "native tongue" and not "freedom" is found in the last stanza, which speaks of the language as having vanished – if this language has vanished, how come Jose Rizal is still using it?!

Are you following me so far? Now this: When it comes to writing his 2 novels that will become famous – and send him to the execution field, eventually – he turns to the Spanish language, which is not his own. If "native tongue" in that poem means "native language," then he has turned anti-nationalist in his own terms. But he has not. Jose Rizal knows exactly for whom he is writing: the intellectuals in Spain and in his own country. He is appealing to their sense of social justice and moral order. Noli and Fili dooms him because he has exaggerated the Philippine condition.

Now then, since F Sionil Jose insists in using the English language as his medium in writing his many short stories, a novella, 12 novels (including this one), and collections of his pieces, non-fiction, if you insist that writing in Tagalog is what Jose Rizal means for loving one's country, then F Sionil Jose is not a nationalist! F Sionil Jose doesn't love his country, only himself.

More about justice and morality. Indeed, in Rizal's time in the Philippines, there is social justice and moral order when it comes to the Spanish colonizers, but not to the colonized Filipinos. Jose Rizal is right to raise his pen to the heavens.

In F Sionil Jose's time, to say that the Filipinos are searching for social justice and moral order is a huge hyperbole, which is not excusable in a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Literature that he is.

MANILA: Will Google give Search a break this New Year? Or will Bing? Or Yahoo!?

Search me!

What's Search? The endlessly searching National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) of the US may have a clue. "A search is the organized pursuit of information" (nasa.gov). That's probably how Google looks at Search. But it's not quite that. In fact, NASA also pursues empty ideas and empty spaces; you don't know until you get there. Based on my pursuit of creative writing of almost 40 years, while it must be pursued, unlike the American pursuit of happiness. a Creative Search must be unorganized, and it must be in the pursuit of anything, including stray thoughts. That's how Google does not look at Search. Let's see.

I uploaded my first 2014 essay on the very first minute of this New Year ("Advertisements for a DG. ICRISAT 41, William Dar 14,"iCRiSAT Watch, blogspot.com); it's 0900 hours still New Year's Day as I do a Search for the very last 6 words of that essay (note the double quotes):

"lead the flock, serve the people"

and the exact same words come back to me from Google (via Opera) and Bing (via Mozilla Firefox); sorry but  I seldom use Google Chrome now:

No results found for "lead the flock, serve the people"

Ha! Google and Bing are both shamelessly short in Search.

Google gave me the same no-results results with my Search for my title, "Advertisements for a DG" while Bing gave me 2 entries for "advertisements for a dog"– all that tells me that both Google and Bing are still asleep, those intellectual lazybones! They have to wake up to the New Year, to creativity.

In the matter of worldwide free access to knowledge on the arts and sciences, data and information, instructions and insights, let me be the first to say on New Year's Day 2014 that I have been dreaming of this:

A Search Engine that treasures the old and tallies the new.

I shall be explaining it here, but neither Google nor Bing measures to those, my double standards!

Now then, perceiving myself as David in this modern warfare, the target of my slingshot is Google because he's Goliath and as boastful.

I first complained about Google Search in "Search, Sex & Google’s Boolean smut" (07 February 2010, The Creattitudes Encyclopedia, blogspot.com). Google then wasn't and even now isn't smart about smut. My Search was for

philippines "sugarcane smut"

and Google gave me, in 0.48 seconds, 2,020,000 webpages, yes, 2 million Search results. A very fruitful Search, right? But then, Google had this note beneath the Search box:

The word "smut" has been filtered from the search because Google SafeSearch is active.

The hell it is! Google Search cannot distinguish a plant disease and doesn't know a double quote when it meets one. No wonder it ignores the fact that when I put 2 double quotes, I want the exact phrase between those quotes to be searched, not any of the single words that make up that phrase.

Google Search's algorithm is called PageRank, and that is where all the problems lie, or arise. Via Yahoo Comments, I have been taking potshots at Google/PageRank mostly since last year, 23 times in 23 different news or feature stories, starting 3 months ago, starting with Jim Edwards'"Google Changed Its Core Algorithm, Affecting 90% Of Search Results – And No One Noticed" (27 September 2013, yahoo.com), to which I give my Yahoo comment –  from hereon, all my comments in italics and separate paragraphs are My Comments as faithfully documented by Yahoo Comments:

No matter, Google Search is not any more intelligent than it ever was – do you know that PageRank is, by its nature, anti-creativity?

With PageRank, if your piece has been cited by others, if your page has been linked by others to their pages, the higher PageRank puts you in its list of results to show the Google searcher. That is to say, Google Search recognizes you only if others have recognized you. If your idea is new or uncommon or has not been noticed by others, you are nothing, you are not listed by PageRank as someone whose idea matters. Search me!

Jim Edwards writes again about Google's new cookie jar (28 September 2013, "How Google's New Web Tracking Plan Could Give It A Monopoly Over Facebook And Apple,"yahoo.com); I don't disagree, but my comment is:

Google is simply trying to gobble everything. The way to out-Google Google is for other searchers to demolish PageRank – which simply counts occurrences (the more the merrier) and thus simply DIScourages creativity – by offering a new searcher of ideas, new or old, and thus simply ENcourages creativity.

Jim Edwards writes again about Google Search ("Google, Apple And Facebook Are At War Over 'Latent' Search – A Business That's About To Be Huge," 06 October 2013, yahoo.com), and my comment is:

"The difference between Graph Search and Google keyword search is that on Facebook, you're searching for something where you don't actually know what the answer is – 'latent' search." Actually, it's all latent search – Google is just making big noise good for big business. And yes, Graph Search is exactly the same as PageRank - they tell you what some people have been thinking, not what some genius have come up with that nobody has ever thought. Mass appeal is what all those rankings are all about. What we need is a search engine that doesn't rank, and that would be indeed intelligent latent search. When Yahoo wakes up to this, watch out!

I want Yahoo! to wake up! How about Microsoft?

"But Google is facing a series of challenges that could upset that dominance. The challenge comes with a new type of search, called 'latent,''abstract,' or 'conversational' search. Whatever you call it, it's all the same.

ANN writes about an "enormous floating barge" on San Francisco Bay with "Google presumed builder of floating data center," (27 October 2013, yahoo.com). My comment is:

Why should anyone be surprised? Google has been building numbers around US for years!

By way of PageRank, that's how.

Jim Edwards writes again, "Google Has Gone 'Dark': The Search Giant Just Ended Its Free Data And People Are Freaking Out" (28 October 2013, yahoo.com), and I write:

The problem is we are allowing Google to rule our Internet lives.

Jim Edwards writes again, "Google Has Reportedly Built Another Mystery Barge – This One Is Floating Off The Coast Of Maine" (30 October 2013, yahoo.com), and I write:

I'm not surprised. Google is innovative in many ways, except in PageRank, where it is adversative – it values repetition versus competition.

Writing repeatedly in favor, Jim Edwards must be an extreme admirer of the genius in business that he sees in Google, as I am an extreme admirer of the genius in knowledge that I don't see in Google.

ANN writes, "Apple buys analytics firm for $2 mn" (03 December 2013, yahoo.com), and I write:

Topsy describes itself as a company "with the only full-scale index of the public social web to instantly analyze any topic, term or hashtag across years of conversations on millions of web sites." I don't know; I hope it's not like Google with its PageRank that gives you only the ones that rank (read the double meaning), the ones that have been cited before and, therefore, new ideas don't have PageRanks! New ideas fall from heaven because of gravity - PageRank is antigravity!

Sarah McBride writes, "Google bus blocked in San Francisco gentrification protest" (yahoo.com), and I write:

Technology companies are not the problem; greedy capitalists are.

Brad Reed writes, "Google Fiber gets results: 300Mbps AT&T service launches in Austin" (11 December 2013, yahoo.com), and I write:

Google has fiber after all in its guts.

But faster results are nothing if there is intellectual substance abuse – Google rejects creativity in favor of connectivity of content when it should favor both.

"Google opens online museum gallery, the Cultural Institute" (ANN, 12 December 2013, yahoo.com), and I write:

I say Google's PageRank belongs in the museum itself, as it is ancient in its thinking, ranking only those who have been accepted by society (as in social climbing) and not giving a hoot to new ideas.

Brad Reed writes, "Why Android is the key to Google’s plan to rule the world" (13 December 2013, yahoo.com), and I write:

Google ruling the world with, among other things, its PageRank search paradigm that belittles Creativity and exalts Conformity? I hope not!

ANN (author not named) writes, "Google+ too techy to be social" (13 December 2013, yahoo.com) and I write:

Google is unfriendly to people unless it's making money on them. It's all business. Google is also unfriendly to new ideas, unless it's his own. Like, Google's PageRank will count you only if others had counted you before (citation); PageRank will ignore you if your idea is new (original), and no one has cited it before. Ask me! Google does not help advance novel or untried ideas or spurs of the moment - who likes killjoys?

I'm the world's most creative writer who is the world's most unsearched, thanks to Google. (For a good idea of what I'm talking about, you may want to visit my The Creattitudes Encyclopedia, blogspot.com, with all of my 1700+ essays of 1,000+ words each; my new essays continue to be collected there. I would have directed you to my long American Chronicle author's page but, alas! that one has become an American dodo. As of 29 May 2013, I could still link to it. See my "Minus One. Frank H's 3 Cs of Communication,"The Creattitudes Encyclopedia, blogspot.com.)

ANN writes, "Mandela tops 213 Google searches" (17 December 2013, yahoo.com), and I write:

Do you notice that what comes out on top of Google searches is old? PageRank is designed for the old, not the new.

No offense meant to Nelson Mandela, but old is old, ancient is ancient.

"Google strikes back at Apple and Microsoft’s anti-Android patent consortium" (25 December 2013, yahoo.com), and I write:

Do you know what happens when The Empire Strikes Back?

(If you don't know or don't remember, Luke Skywalker takes advanced Jedi training with Master Yoda. The plot thickens!)

Neal E Boudette writes, "Google, Apple Forge Auto Ties" (30 December 2013, yahoo.com), and I write:

An Apple a day keeps the Google away.

Tom Warren writes, "(Google's Executive Chair) Eric Schmidt makes 2014 predictions, says mobile has won" (30 December 2013, yahoo.com), and I write:

And I predict that Google will continue to ignore the innovators with its PageRank paradigm.

And Google continues to be a winner and we all losers, those who want a Search Engine to browse for them the Encyclopedia of the World called the Internet. The Search Engine is not supposed to Select for the Searcher; it is supposed only to Search!

I will end this where it all began. Reading ANN's "The Digital Divide Created by Google Glass" (31 December 2013, bloomberg.com), I write:

The real Digital Divide was created by Google when it began. It's called PageRank. It divides those who are creative or new and not yet mentioned (no citation), and those who are old and already mentioned (citation).

Is it that Google thinks it is the Salmon of Knowledge? (For the details, read "The Legend of the Salmon of Knowledge,"babynamesofireland.com). According to the story for children, the Salmon of Knowledge is the wisest.

I have suspected all along that Google is an intellectual snob even as it presents itself as the gray matter to use in searching for knowledge in the World Wide Web. In this New Year, with its old PageRank, Google will continue to ignore divergence and idolize convergence; it will continue to ignore the new and idolize the old; it will continue to cultivate those who have cultivated friends and acquaintances. Keep your friends close and your enemies not any closer.

Google will continue to be Google.

Who of these Search Engines will give genius a break in 2014? List from Wikipedia:

1. Bing, multilingual, bing.com
2. Blekko, English, blekko.com
3. DuckDuckGo, English, duckduckgo.com
4. Exalead, multilingual, exalead.com/search
5. Gigablast, English, gigablast.com
6. Google, multilingual, google.com
7. Volunia, multilingual, volunia.com
8. Yahoo! multilingual, search.yahoo.com
9. Yandex, multilingual, yandex.com

Since Google is unregenerate, our Search for Knowledge needs any of those other 8 or a rank outsider to give Search results that come out super-fast because they are:

(1) Not ranked
(2) Not cited
(3) Not optimized
(4) Not classified
(5) Not sorted
(6) Not marked
(7) Not linked

The better for creativity!

This genius wants a Search Engine with which I can choose whether to do any or all of these Types of Searches:

Literal – such as word for word
Nuanced – synonyms, similarities
Relationship – direct & indirect links
Essence– my Search words are not found but the idea behind them lurks there, a predictive type of Search that Google Search is incapable of right now. Yahoo!

Failing in all that, in my unorganized pursuit of happiness, I'm imagining A Brave New World of Creativity. I suggest a startlingly revolutionary WWW, the World Wide Wave where only the new, untried, novel, crazy ideas can be found.

Of course, you'll never find Google there. Google is not crazy enough!

Of course, you'll find me there.

Note: Today, the whole afternoon, senior citizens Romy, Naz and I were in a reminiscing mood about some victories of yesteryears and in a welcoming mood about some challenges of today. In this piece, Romy remembers someone with fondness and admiration. And I, I remember with gladness that Romy did not write as well yesterday as today. Image taken 18 November 2008 in a basketball court in Calamba City; Romy is the man in white, left; Naz is the man in red, right; I am the photographer -- Frank H

By Roman Romeo G. Nagpala*

In our struggle in life someone, somehow, would had made possible events leading to the path of our own destiny. But of course He the divine creator is the real director in the reeling of our cinematic lives.

The feature article “Uplifting the Lives of Fil-Ams through Empowerment” by Mico Litargo (www.asian journal.com) sparked memory recall button in this 2013 yearend reflections.

Looking back, the one featured in the article – Atty. Jose Y. Lauchengco, Jr. – must had been the man who shifted the directional lever in my life’s railroad track in 1959. The man, indeed, was Lolo Ome’s “First Encounter with the Elite Kind.”

A certified septuagenarian now at 74, this writer (a.k.a. Lolo Ome) more often reflects from the memories of his life-changing encounters.

His first-day summer-class in 1959 at UP Manila Padre Faura flashed back to memory. He was lonesome in the hot summer classroom for the enrolled academic subject “Life and Works of Rizal.” A gentleman well dressed in full barong Tagalog came in silently, exuding unmistakable elite aura.

Lolo Ome accorded him due respect thinking he must be the professor. That gentleman was Jose Yujuico Lauchengco, Jr., a classmate instead.

In our last class-meeting conversation, I confided “Life and Works of Rizal” would be my last.

The dwindling resources in Laguna lake where my family had a trawl fishing boat (suro in the vernacular) affected our wherewithal to support further schooling expenses. I would thereby be a hewer to my plight to “push the waves” in the lake, so to speak. End of conversation.

The stage had been set. The college boy would engage in trawl fishing.

One late Saturday afternoon that summer, he ventured out to the sea with the boat operator. Shortly thereafter before twilight that same day, a red MG sports car roared into the dusty road leading to “Tahanang Nagpala,” Lolo Ome’s ancestral home along the shoreline of the cradle town of Jose Rizal. (Imagine the kids gawking at the little red car, including some elders.)

The unexpected visitor was classmate Jun Lauchengco. Realizing my last confession to him was truthful, he told my family he would see me the following Monday at my boarding place in Manila.

That Monday he would fetch me and introduce me to the service manager of Island Motor Sales Co., then sole distributor of GM cars in the Philippines.

Drawn out from “pushing the waves” my fate would start as an understudy security-receptionist that day; and would rise from the ranks to control tower man in almost three years.

The first term system program study in 1959 at UP Diliman would be my academic waterloo as a working student.

Classes schedule from 7-12 in the morning. Work schedule from 2-10 in the afternoon and evening; the loft at the company’s bodega was my boarding place. I passed only one subject; others were either “Dropped,” “Incomplete,” or “Failed.” No more class enrolment thereafter.

I bid goodbye to the company in 1961 to seek other opportunities.

Destiny had it that Lolo Ome would join the government service. He started as clerk in 1961 in the defunct Philippine Veterans Administration (now Philippine Veterans Affairs Office). He would become its public relations officer until 1975.

Government service had provided him the opportunity to finish a college degree in 1964 – Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from the Lyceum of the Philippines; and two years in bachelor of laws at Ateneo de Manila under veterans’ scholarship program from 1970-1972.

On June 18, 1972, a day before Rizal’s birth anniversary, he graduated with a bachelor of science in marriage degree instead. The diploma-certificate was signed when the bridal cord was tied in the chapel at the Paco park cemetery where Rizal was originally interred.

Increased transport fares in 1975 due to oil price hike in the world market made impractical commuting Calamba-Manila. He transferred to the Los Baños-based Philippine Council for Agriculture and Resources Research and Development in Laguna as information specialist for seven months; then as public relations officer at the Forest Products Research and Industries Development Commission, also in Laguna (1975-1979).

Better education for his growing sons had been foremost in mind. Tight financial strait would be the driving force to sign an overseas contractual work with an American engineering, design and construction management company as a lowly clerk typist.

Among 11 Filipino overseas contract workers hired for the King Khaled International Airport project, we left home-country December 10, 1979; crossed international time zone and landed in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia December 11, 1979. Thence, “Desert Eleven” would be our batch ID.

Sheer sacrifice away from loved-ones would be the pillar of strength for most overseas Filipino workers (OFW) to annually extend respective contracts.

As for Lolo Ome of “Desert Eleven,” dedicated hard work and basic communication skills would be his tools to rise from a lowly clerk-typist and already an office engineer at the outbreak of the 1991 “Desert Storm” imbroglio until contract completion in 1993.

He sacrificed and survived over a decade in project management contractual assignments in the desert kingdom away from home (1979-1993). It was time to rest but never to quit. After contract completion, home sweet home to savor blissful joy with dear family.

Family, lawn tennis sport, biking, and part-time local PR consultancy preoccupied Lolo Ome’s retiring years during the last decade of the past century. Counting his blessings, thanksgiving and praise to the Great Divine become an advocacy. He simply followed the dictum to be happy in life: free your mind from worry; free your heart from hatred; live simply; give more; and expect less.

The highlight of his working vacation was being subcontracts administrator for a US-based telecom network expansion project in the Philippines (1998-1999). Later on the project would be aborted in the advent of newer, more advanced telecom systems.

The dawn of the new millennium ushered in bright opportunities, challenges. The lure of yet another foreign assignment knocked on his door of fate. Already a sexagenarian at that time, he would be sent on a business travel as OFW supervisor representative. This time it would not be to the desert kingdom anymore but to an island country in the South Pacific.

He would become part of the project public relations and information group and participate in developing right approach to ease natural resistance of local labor to the influx of about 3,000 skilled OFWs. The highlight would be the presentation of this Filipino supervisor representative before a congregation of local tribal authorities; decision to accept the Filipino workforce would be finalized.

This sojourn of the sexagenarian would lead to his “First Encounter with the Tribal Kind” at the mountains of New Caledonia in the South Pacific written in a sequel article.

Apropos of Litargo’s feature article. The humble strength of Atty. Lauchengco in uplifting the lives of Fil-Ams through empowerment overcame the barriers of racism and discrimination, among others. Yet he persevered and successfully reached the finish line ..... empowerment.

Truly he is the epitome of the elite kind. His forceful leadership mothballed a powerful minority group. The browns are now empowered, their lives uplifted.

As regards the featured article, “The First Encounter of the Elite Kind” made, indeed, an indelible mark as the life-changing encounter of Lolo Ome.

To “Joe,” the man with a gentle disposition and a jovial smile; with formidable reputation as a criminal defense lawyer; and a fierce advocate of Filipino political empowerment, MABUHAY!

-30-

*Roman Romeo G. Nagpala, 74 years old, is a native of Calamba, Laguna, Philippines. He was in government service for almost 2 decades; and an OFW for over a decade.

SAN PABLO CITY, 01 February 2014, Valentine's Month, and we are all in love. We are at the altar of the San Roque Parish Church located at the Buncayo Park Subdivision in San Roque, San Pablo City, towards Alaminos, Laguna. This is after the church rites, time for a great many pictures to be taken. I don't like firing-squad shots; I like flash drives but not flash bulbs, but I'm not the photographer here. Daphne (dark) & Mark Gonzales (darker) are in the middle, all the fair bridesmaids in the row, best friend Roanna next to Daphne. Skin color is skin deep.All's right with the world.

At my daughter Daphne's wedding, the parents of the bride are late by more than 1 hour; we have been holding up the wedding ceremonies, and this is the 7th Hilario wedding. It's good I didn't invite any friends – the arrangements, the cake, food and everything have all been Daphne's, with help from bridegroom Mark of San Pablo City. 9 of my 12 children are here: Jomar with wife Clarisse and their children (Sean, Lucia & Earl), Teresa with husband Toto Ilowa and their girls (Sam and Mandy), Jay (Paul) with Celeste Banaticla and daughter Yja, Dinggoy (July) with wife Joy Andres, Cynthia, Jinny (Jennifer), Daphne, Neenah, and Ela (Graciela). 3 are not here: Edwin is occupied in a call center in Makati; Tina (Cristina) is with husband Christian Capati and children in Toronto; Dida (Lorena) is with husband Karl Cerni and children in New York City.

The principal sponsors are: Pio C Prado Jr, Erna P Prado, Augusto A Reyes & Judith Y Ang, Ronald B Gonzales & Marieta L Quinita, Ryan M Sarmiento & Darren R Baguiler, and Rolando T Cruz & Wilma T Cruz. The reception is at Maria Paz Royal Gardens in Santa Filomena also in San Pablo City, towards Manila; the first evening together of Mark & Daphne as husband & wife is at Sulyap Bed & Breakfast at Del Remedio also in the City.

We have Larry M Prado as Best Man and Roanna C Matic Matron-of-Honor. John Brian C Cia & Mary Anne Michelle A Lauricio are Candle Sponsors, Jerome C Jacinto & Neenah Bonafe R Hilario Veil Sponsors, Michael Alex A Lauricio & Wella L Absudio Cord Sponsors. Groomsmen are Manuel P Marcaida III, Arlan James D Rodeo, Quinoy E Ybañez, and Erwin R Arcillas. Bridesmaids are Ma Adela J Lacao, Nerissa S Sangre, Jocelyn A Amarante & Cristina B Miralo. Noel Brayan M Gonzales is Ring Bearer. Gian Carlo C Prado is Coin Bearer. Jean Raqu'l M Eusebio is Bible Reader. Samantha H Ilowa, Marianne C Prado, Heart G Gallardo, Amanda H Ilowa, and Chev Jayvyn N Morales are Flower Girls.

At Maria Paz, the food is good, and I am eating most of the time, some of it the concoctions of Daphne, who is into self-taught baking and catering – she baked her own wedding cake too. And the sounds are great; I particularly note that, and you will see why in a little while.

I make sure to ask if there is a Message from Parents portion of the reception program, and I'm assured there is. I have a pleasant surprise, as it turns out. Yes, I am ready with My Little White Book of 16 pages in printout, and what to say from the beginning to the end, not written but in my head. I have had some practice in my head.

When my name is called, I grab the microphone and say, more or less (some of it I'm translating freely from Tagalog):

My message to Mark & Daphne is made up of only 1 word. 1 word. (Then I show them My Little WhiteBook.) But the explanation is 16 pages. (Laughter)

So, we were not late. (Laughter) We were very late! (Laughter) Part of the reason is that our vehicle broke down. (It had brake trouble.) Part of the reason is that we botched our own schedule. And we had to go around the world. What do I mean? Naligaw. (Laughter) We got lost. (Actually, we got lost in time, but I don't tell them that.)

My 1-word message is: Sing!

Now, I shall demonstrate to you what I mean in case you don't understand. (I gesture with My Little White Book, which is a songbook actually, which I desktop published myself in Word 2013 yesterday.)

Those of you who are fond of texting, do you know that your message doesn't go directly to the cellphone of the one you're texting? It goes up to heaven first, then it comes down, then it reaches your target cellphone. Around the world, that's why sometimes it arrives after 3 hours, sometimes the next day. (I forget to say that Mark & Daphne first met through text; theirs was love at first text.)

I look at the front page of My Little White Book, folded short bond paper twice stapled at the middle using my own deep-mouthed long Plus-3UE stapler, 1 page 1 song, a booklet full of songs I have sung before and whose lyrics I copied from the Internet, songs that I know I can shift from one to another just like that (I have had a little practice, singing softly to myself). I had selected from memory and from some 50 others in the World Wide Web; I typed those selected songs myself, all the more to remember the lyrics, setting the text in 16 pt Arial Narrow, printed in black, titles in 18 pt small caps, printed in red, for readability. I say:

By the way, I don't want any accompaniment while I'm singing because the guitarist will just shame himself, making mistakes. (Laughter)

(The truth is, I've had no practice with any musical accompaniment in any of the occasions of my singing. About 50 years ago, as a young boy I sang quite a few songs to serenade young girls visiting our village Sanchez in my hometown of Asingan, Pangasinan when I was home from Cow College, I mean the UP College of Agriculture, and the guitarist just had to follow after me, no practice. Anyway, the object was to charm the girl with the song, not with the guitar.) I say:

I need notes because I'm 74. (I point to my white hair. I forget the lyrics, for lack of practice.)

So now I'm prepared. Am I nervous? Just a little bit. I sing from "Around The World" by Matt Monro:

Around the world I've searched for you
I travelled on when hope was gone
To keep a rendezvous
I knew somewhere, sometime, somehow
You'd look at me and I would see
The smile you're smiling now.

I get it right, full and low. The audience is surprised. I'm not. The audience is not clapping; they must think I am going to finish the song.

I always knew I could sing, and as I listen to myself singing, I'm happy to note that it's a much deeper, clearer voice than I had sung to charm the girls back home, or to entertain the guests in my daughter Teresa's wedding reception at the Alumni Hall of UP Diliman 10 years ago, 2004. If the talent is there and you cultivate it somehow, you can summon it anytime. Just like now. It just takes some guts.

I don't finish going "Around The World" just as I have planned. Right after I sing "The smile you're smiling now," holding my mike on my left, with the right hand I flip to the next page, "Fascination" by Nat King Cole; I sing at once:

It was fascination I know
And it might have ended
Right then, at the start
Just a passing glance
Just a brief romance
And I might have gone
On my way to heartache.

Nice! Right after "heartache," I flip to the next page, "Love Me Tender" by Elvis Presley; I sing at once:

Love me tender, love me sweet
Never let me go
You have made my life complete
And I love you so.

Yes! Right after "so," I flip to the next page and song, "Always" by Frank Sinatra, and sing at once:

Days many not be fair always
That's when I'll be there always
Not for just an hour
Not for just a day
Not for just a year
But always.

Fair enough. Are you getting the hang of it yet? I had planned this a week back, even as far as Pangasinan where I have been on a team teaching consultancy with Butchoy Espino and Dormie del Carmen (who attended the wedding, invited by Daphne, who is her workmate), and which I finalized this morning of the wedding itself, while waiting for the ride to San Pablo City. Remember, my 1-word message: "Sing!"

I don't finish Sinatra; after "always," I flip to the next page of my book, "Our Love Affair" by Nat King Cole, and sing at once:

Our love affair is a wondrous thing
That we'll rejoice in remembering
Our love was born with out first embrace
And a page was torn out of time and space.

Good. Right after "space," I flip to the next page, "Mona Lisa" by Nat King Cole and sing at once:

Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you
You're so like the lady with the mystic smile
Is it only 'cause you're lonely, they have blamed you
For that Mona Lisa strangeness in your smile?

Fine. Are you with me? I can see my audience is listening.

Right after "smile," I flip to the next page, "As Time Goes By" by Louis Armstrong and sing at once:

You must remember this
A kiss is still a kiss
A sight is just a sigh
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by.

Strangers in the night
Exchanging glances
Wond'ring in the night
What were the chances
We'd be sharing love
Before the night was through.

Moon River wider than a mile
I'm crossing you in style someday
You dream maker, you heartbreaker
Wherever you're going I'm going your way.

When you're weary, feeling small
When tears are in your eyes I will dry them all
I'm on your side.

Flip, sing, flip, sing, flip, sing, flip, sing. Fine, fine, fine, fine.

That's 4 parts from 4 songs sung straight, from changing voices from the beginning of a song to the beginning of another song, or from middle to middle, something dangerous, as your voice can break, something that's never been done before. Well, I'm a creative writer, so why not take a risk and be a creative singer? And it's all for fun, after all.

After all my efforts, I think I've just reinvented singing.

"Strangers In The Night" is of course by Frank Sinatra, "Moon River" by Andy Williams, and "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" by Paul Simon. I have 16 songs in My Little White Book.

And no, I'm not done yet.

I introduce the next song by saying, "With this one song, I got a girl. Really."(Cheers) I hear my wife saying something at the back. I point to my back without looking and say, "Not that girl!"(Laughter). Oh, oh. Again I point to the back and say, "She's worth more than a song!" (I hear, "Oh! Bawi!" The word means I have recaptured lost territory.) The song is "My Funny Valentine" by Johnny Mathis:

My funny Valentine
Sweet, comic Valentine
You make me smile with my heart
Your looks are laughable
Unphotographable
Yet you're my favorite work of art.

No other love can warm my heart
Now that I've known the comfort your arms

A long and lasting love
Not many people find it

Love letters straight from your heart
Keep us so near while apart
I'm not alone in the night
When I can have all the love you write.

Good, good, good, good. That's "No Other Love" by Jo Stafford, "A Long & Lasting Love" by Billy Preston, and "Love Letters Straight From Your Heart" by Nat King Cole.

My audience doesn't know but I'm on to my 2nd-to-the-last song, and I sing it whole. It's "He Will Carry You" by Steven Curtis Chapman:

There is no problem too big
God cannot solve it
There is no mountain too tall
God cannot move it.

There is no storm too dark
God cannot calm it
There is no sorrow too deep
He cannot soothe it.

If he carried the weight of the world
Upon his shoulders
I know my brother that He will carry you
If he carried the weight of the world
Upon His shoulders
I know my sister that He will carry you.

I hear my wife complain, "Your message is too long." I don't know about that; I'm enjoying all this. I say, "There's more." And then I flip to the next page; it's "When I Fall In Love" by Nat King Cole, and I sing at once:

When I fall in love, it will be forever.

I make a perfect stop. But my audience doesn't know that. After just that first line from the song – remember, I have it all planned – I let the audience wait for the next note ... of course, there is none. The end. Then I say, "Tapos na." That's all, folks. (Cheers and clapping)

Why did I stop at forever? Because it's the best stop of all!

You never saw a singer like me and heard songs sung like that, have you? No, it's not a medley; it's not your usual mixed song where you combine into one song parts of many songs to make a new song, only one, different songs sung in the same melody. No, mine is unique and original, not a copy from anyone. I sing parts of one after parts of the other as different as the songs are, different melodies. Beginning, beginning, middle, beginning. I'm singing Matt Monro, I'm singing Nat King Cole, I'm singing Elvis Presley, I'm singing Johnny Mathis, I'm singing Steven Curtis Chapman and so on one after the other and pausing only to flip the page, without taking a deep breath. I don't imitate any of those voices; it's my voice; I just sing myself.

The message after all is: Sing! Sing out your troubles, come on get happy!

After my message of a song, Dinggoy says, "I didn't know Tatay can sing. Now I know where Manong Jay and I got our singing talents." Jay used to sing as a member of Lisieux Music Ministry at UP Los Baños; Dinggoy and wife Joy are members of a church band, Alabaster, for Bread of Life Bulacan. My wife reminds me Jomar used to sing for the music ministry of Beloved Children of God Community also at UP Los Baños. Of my singing, Jomar himself says, "Nice song."

Frank's song, Frank's voice, Today, mine is a new way of singing many songs as one song. I shall now call what I have just invented, paraphrasing the British nursery rhyme: Sing a Song of Suspense. You don't know which song the singer is going to sing next; you don't know if the singer will make it and not be out-of-tune. I love it. It is all love songs. Children of all ages love songs.

So now I have shown you that in his daughter's wedding message, a father's word is worth a thousand words – this essay is 2,500 words. All's right with the word! Today, the world learns a new lesson in a wedding with music: A father's word is worth a thousand songs.