The hit franchise known for trotting around the globe, from France and Italy to India and Morocco, is adding a new location to its roster: the Philippines. Universal Pictures’ “The Bourne Legacy,” the fourth movie based on the Robert Ludlum novels, started filming in Manila, the country’s capital, two weeks ago.

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From an article on Forbes by contributor Beth Greenfield, the Philippines ranked number 8 in the HSBC’s Expat Explorer Survey, released last month. “This country is friendly on wallets, too: 47% report an increase in access to luxuries, including domestic staff, swimming pools, and owning properties,” the survey revealed.

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President Noynoy Aquino lambasted the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Renato Corona in a nationally televised public forum at the First National Criminal Justice Summit hosted by the Department of Justice at the Manila Hotel.

Full article at http://palaisip.blogspot.com

PINOYs and the rest of the world remembers today that fateful morning of September 11, when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon, 10yrs ago.

see more [http://www.pilipinas.it]

Facebook just started rolling ‘Smart Lists’ to select users, which intelligently group certain set of friends into lists (mimicking Google+’s Circle) and there have been recent reports of spamvertised ‘Facebook notifications’ leading to malware, thought these infos would come handy especially since Philippines now ranks 8th in the world with the most number of Facebook users.

see more [http://wwww.pilipinas.it]

in time for the 10th year commemoration of the 9/11 attack of the World Trade Center, here’s a very nice write-up of an person who lived to tell his story and how as both an IT professional and as a family man recovered from the great ordeal.

see more [http://www.pilipinas.it]

this could give the romantic PINOYs an idea how to use technology when proposing to their chosen ones, see how Google software engineer Ari Gilder used Google Maps to direct his girlfriend around New York en route to her prize, a wedding proposal.

see more [http://www.pilipinas.it]

Timing is everything for this Filipino street kid who sells flute in the streets of Clark, in the province of Pampanga, Philippines. On the side, he sings to his customers and allows them to video him while singing! He’s got pure, raw natural talent. In this video below, he is covering a number of hit songs including that of Justin Bieber, Bruno Mars, and Ne-Yo.

The clip has been viewed over 100,000 times in the first 24 hours it was posted on August 3rd and is spreading virally on blogs, email and social media. Only three days later today, it has already garnered over 700,000 views and counting!

CONTINUE READING HERE….

Documentary about a London Bus Driver who goes to Manila in the Philippines to experience what it is like to live and work as a Jeepney driver in Manila.

This is an hour show, but quite interesting about the lives of some of our fellow Filipinos.

Around the 45:20 mark, you’ll see a part about “Pagpag” or scraps of food collected from garbage. People collect them, was them and cook them again and sold in their Carinderia.

Watch at http://palaisip.blogspot.com

Did you know that we Filipinos can produce a 3D movie? Not just “a 3D movie” but a full-length 3D movie! The RPG Metanoia 3D Movie Animation is the Philippines’ first full-length 3D movie (live-action or animation). It has been in development for the past years and finally we will be able to watch this great movie this coming December 25, 2010 on the opening day of the Metro Manila Film Festival nationwide!

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The Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation Inc. (AIDFI) based in Barangay Mansilingan, Bacolod City, is the lone Philippine finalist to the 2010 BBC and Newsweek World Challenge. There are 12 countries vying for the financial grants that will help in their various causes.

World Challenge is a global competition aimed at finding projects or small businesses from around the world that have shown enterprise and innovation at a grassroots level. World Challenge is brought to you by BBC World News and Newsweek, in association with Shell and is about championing and rewarding projects and businesses which really make a difference.

PLEASE CONTINUE READING HERE…. (Voting ends November 12, 2010; please cast your online vote!)

This is the San Miguel Beer commercial that introduced Ina Raymundo to the world. And to a lot of young boys, their manhood.

Watch at http://palaisip.blogspot.com

Now you can! With the official release of the new Philippines National Keyboard Layout, Filipino all-over the world can now type the characters that before we have to copy-and-paste elsewhere (or memorize ASCII codes).

For example, if I want to type “ñ”, I just click (RAlt)/AltGr+n and I get ñ. Typing Batangueño is now way much faster and easy. Or if you are creating financial reports and your currency is in Philippine Peso, forget about typing PHP/Php, just press (RAlt)/AltGr+p and you get the ₱eso sign.

Font availability is not a problem at all. Months ago I tested the ₱eso sign availability by simply asking it on µblogs and social networks – Linux, Windows, and Mac users can see it! And Ññ of course has been in the ASCII range (0-255) for a looooong time already.

Here’s more, start typing in Baybayin (or Alibata as was wrongly labeled by our Education system) direct from your keyboard! No need to use online typepads or copy pasting, or escaping via HTML codes, just type as you would when typing in Latin.

My name in Baybayin: ᜑᜓᜏᜈ᜔ ᜐᜒᜐᜒ ᜃᜓᜈᜒᜆ (Huwan Sese Kuneta; JC John Sese Cuneta)
Baybayin in Baybayin: ᜊᜌ᜔ᜊᜌᜒᜈ᜔
Mabuhay in Baybayin: ᜋᜊᜓᜑᜌ᜔

But as you can see, you will need a font to display the Baybayin characters. Soon however, newer versions of different operating systems will have a Baybayin font included, we are working on it. For now, as a temporary solution, you can download one of the 30-50 Baybayin fonts available online! Yes, we have that much fonts, Filipinos are creating new fonts left and right.

Can someone read it? Oh yes. Offline and online. If you are in Megapolitan Manila, probably you haven’t seen or met one yet, but outside of Mega Manila, there are lots. Online, you probably encountered us talking in Baybayin via Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, Identi.ca/Status.net, Multiply, even on our blogs and comments, but you don’t have a font.

Fair enough. We included a Baybayin font created by Nordenx, in our downloadable zip files. Simply install it and voila, you will start seeing the beautiful Baybayin writing script of our great Nation.

Ok, enough talk, head on over to these links to install the Philippines National Keyboard Layout (with Baybayin).

The Official Philippines National Keyboard Layout Page
The Philippines National Keyboard Layout for Linux Is Now Out!
Philippines National Keyboard Layout for Windows is Out!

License: GNU/GPLv3

Looking at these pictures, I can’t help but see the huge difference in them. Mainly, the amount of power lines that Meralco has put up all over the place with no regard for aesthetics.

Read more at http://palaisip.blogspot.com

To better understand the differences between ‘Ng’ and ‘Nang’, we need to know first its history, how it came to be, what was the original meaning of these two words. That was what I’ve been digging for the past year or two, and now I have published what I unearthed.

Read The History of Mr. Nang and Ms. Ng…

NEW YORK CITY – President Benigno S. Aquino III shuns expensive lunch and instead settles for the cheaper authentic New York hotdog at the corner of Americas Avenue and 45th Street in New York, USA on Thursday (Manila time) Sept. 23, 2010. P-Noy recalled that his family used to eat pizza and chao mien when their family stayed in Boston while his late father former Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr. was in exile.

Media responds:

MANILA (AFP) – President Benigno Aquino’s spokesman on Friday defended the Philippine leader’s culinary tastes after newspapers showed him eating hotdogs in New York, where he attended a UN summit.

The 50-year-old bachelor came in for heavy criticism on social networking websites for his street-side food trips.

“Two views here — not presidential or down-to-earth. He loves to eat hotdogs. When in the US you would like to try the hotdogs,” his spokesman Edwin Lacierda told reporters.

READ THE STORY HERE…

MANILA, Philippines – The U.S. government said Sunday it made an “honest mistake” when it displayed an inverted Philippine flag — which wrongfully signified that the Southeast Asian nation was in a state of war — in a meeting hosted by President Barack Obama.

Two Cents…

It is ludicrous to say that this carelessness is a reflection of Obama or the US but you’d think in a convergence of political leaders among nations, with the US as host- someone would put in some attention to detail considering there are only ten, TEN flags to think about!! The ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

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Sino nga ba ako?

http://palaisip.blogspot.com

This week two noteworthy events involving the Philippines made headlines: the botched rescue of Chinese tourists taken hostage by a disgruntled former policeman, and a botched response to a question by Miss Philippines in the finals for the Miss Universe contest. You might ask, what do these two things have in common? Separately, not much, but taken together, they represent both the peril and promise of the Philippines today.

Read more at http://palaisip.blogspot.com

I am deeply saddened by what happened on Monday with the hostage crisis. It was a tragic event that did not have to happen. It could have been easily prevented had the people in charged been more careful and did their homework.

The Philippines now has a black eye caused by the incident and the international community has pretty much condemned the country for its tragic mistake. It’s not just one, but several tragic mistakes.

The first one being President Noynoy Aquino being incommunicado during all of this. Hong Kong Administrator Donald Tsang tried to contact President Noynoy Aquino but was unable to reach him. Hong Kong residents and officials are mad because of Manila’s failure to update them of the situation as it was happening.

Read more at http://palaisip.blogspot.com