Well if I ever need to apply for a UK Visa, it’s a short ride away as I live in Taguig. I wonder if getting the visa would be as easy as getting to the embassy? Anyway, British Ambassador Peter Beckingham and Taguig Mayor Freddie Tinga held the groundbreaking ceremony in Taguig and the embassy’s target completion date is 2008.

ABS-CBN News – UK Embassy to move to Taguig

The entire MRT system “paused” for about 15 minutes late afternoon today due to some sort of electrical problem. Talk about reliability! I’m not even sure if this happens quite often.

Anyway, I think I’ve only been stuck on the MRT once, it was some sort of train problem (the trian ahead had a short or something) but both lines had to stop. The coach we were in stopped near the platform a bit off to the Cubao station and the entire first car had to exit using those two doors. Didn’t stay to see what happened to the second and third car.

ABS-CBN News – MRT operations temporarily halted

It’s today folks! Bloomfields is finally launching their first album and their playing live at Eastwood for Magic 89.9’s Launchpad! Hurry up cause parking will be tight. Copies of their self titled album will also be sold during the free concert.

More Info:
Official Bloomfields site

The Philippine Fashion Week 2007 opens tonight at the Rockwell Tent. Show starts at 7:30PM and if you miss it, there will be tons of shows from today until Friday next week from local to foreign designers, big label brands and young hot designers! I’m not sure if you need tickets but just head on over to Rockwell to check.

Got the image from Joel Bautista at blogspot.

The sad tale of NAIA Terminal continues this week as the Japanese contractor that build the terminal refuses to own up to the structural and design defects of the big white elephant in Nichols. According to the article, “MIAA’s consultants, TCGI Engineers Inc. and Ove Arup & Partners HK Ltd, earlier said there were structural and design defects that put airport users at risk.”

Oh well, and the government wanted it open before March? I hope this terminal doesn’t go the way of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant.

Manila Times – NAIA 3 builder won’t admit defects

When we speak of Public Education in the Philippines, one would think it starts at Elementary. Apparently, there’s also Public Education in the Preschool level and the good news is that over 2,500 kids are graduating from these public preschools this year!

I stumbled across this good news from Manila Bulletin:

“National Capital Region (NCR) DepEd director Teresita Usman-Domalanta said the children belong to 100 preschool classes which were organized last January and proportionately distributed to the school divisions of Manila, Quezon City, Las Piñas City, Marikina City, Pasig City-San Juan, Muntinlupa City, Valenzuela City, Malabon City-Navotas, Mandaluyong City, Makati City, Taguig-Pateros, Parañaque City, Caloocan City, and Pasay City.”

Manila Bulletin – 2,500 Metro children finish preschool, kinder education

Engg College in UPD is offering more than 200 graduate scholarships worth over P120 million for the incoming school year according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer. The scholarship covers courses from MS in Energy Engineering, Water Resources, Materials Science and Engineering and Electrical and Electronics Engineerin; Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering and Electrical and Electronics Engineering. Privileges include Full tuition and other school fees, stipend, book allowance, transportation allowance and more.

According to the article, everytime we produce 1 MS graduate, Vietnam produces 6, Thailand produces 25, and Singapore produces 200. What a sad state for graduate studies, here’s to hoping to that this jump starts that target.

Associate Dean Norberto Que said the scholarships were an attempt to reach the UNESCO benchmark of 340 research scientists and engineers per million population, as the country only has 48

More Information:
PDI – UP Engineering offers 200 graduate scholarships
UP College of Engineering – UP-PCIERD Scholarship

Intereting news from the Philippine Star. It seemed like more students from poorer schools aced the National Career Assessment Examination (NCAE) administered by the Department of Education (DepEd) last January 17. Quoting from the article: About 22,267 students belonging to families living below the poverty line “are among the highest performers.”

Does this mean that our education system is improving?

ABSCBN News – Poor students top DepEd test

MetBlogs City number 54 is live! Let’s all welcome Kuala Lumpur!

I love this city although it can get humid most times. I’ve only been there once but I think I can drop in a couple of times more to let the city sink in. Anyway, can anyone guess where I took this picture of the Petronas Twin Towers?

The DPWH is finally set to dismantle the humongous billboards along NLEX and SLEX. According to the report from DPWH, there’s a total of 17,845 inspected billboards nationwide, 11,162 unsafe and illegal billboards were already dismantled, 6,683 of which were located in Metro Manila.

The DPWH has a big task ahead of them as there are 130 billboards along NLEX, all of which according to DPWH have not complied with the safety laws. There’s barely three months left to typhoon season so perhaps now would be a good time to get started on these.

Sources:
DPWH News
NLEX billboards illegal, to go down next week-DPWH