wonderful wanderlust

Please visit http://benedictbernabe.multiply.com and add me as your contact. Thanks!!!

Benedict.

I had a great time touring Vietnam and Cambodia and I will share some insights about the trip soon on my Multiply. Meanwhile, I just want to say that I missed all of you a lot and that I'm happy to be back home in Manila. Ciao!

Hahaha! I know this girl! Finally got what she deserved!

Russian kicked out of Boracay for ‘scandalous acts’

By Margaux Ortiz
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 23:36:00 01/29/2008

MANILA, Philippines -- A 21-year-old Russian woman has been arrested by immigration agents for alleged indecency and disruptive behavior on Boracay island and is set to be deported to her home country.

The island’s resort owners and law enforcers said Anna Lezhnina engaged in a series of scandalous acts during her stay in Boracay, Aklan.

Bureau of Immigration (BI) Commissioner Marcelino Libanan, who ordered the arrest, learned of Lezhnina's case when he visited Boracay last week to launch the bureau's nationwide information campaign on its new visa-issuance-made-simple (VIMS) project.

In a dialogue with resort owners during his visit, the complainants informed Libanan that Lezhnina was causing trouble on the island through her “indecent acts and immoral activities.”

The resort owners said the young Russian woman, who was arrested five times by Boracay policemen for alarm and scandal, was staying on different parts of the island without any apparent means of income to support her stay in the world-renowned tourist spot.

“While we would like to encourage the arrival of more tourists in the country, we do not welcome undesirable foreigners whose presence here are inimical to peace and public morals,” Libanan declared.

The resort owners recounted to Libanan a number of disturbing instances involving the Russian woman. They recalled how Lezhnina slapped a man without provocation; spat and uttered defamatory words in front of police officers; pushed a Korean woman off the dance floor; spat on the faces of club bouncers; acted violently inside a police station cell; and took off her underwear and showed her private parts while flashing a dirty finger sign at the law enforcers.

A bartender also complained that a drunken Lezhnina grabbed the liquor bottle of a customer, spat at the latter's face and scratched his body.

In response to the complaints, Libanan issued a mission order against Lezhnina and dispatched members of the BI law enforcement division to apprehend the Russian.

Lezhnina is now detained at the Bicutan immigration detention center pending deportation proceedings.

Immigration spokesperson Floro Balato Jr. said the BI chief ordered the bureau's law and investigation division to secure the appropriate clearances from other law enforcement agencies that would facilitate the immediate deportation of Lezhnina to Russia.

Balato added that Lezhnina had been overstaying in the country at the time of her arrest. The Russian arrived in the Philippines as a tourist on February 21, 2007 and failed to extend her stay since her visa expired last September.

lakas ng ulan! i woke up LATE. what's new. but not too late that i couldn't get to DFA in time. lo and behold, it's oakwood 2 @ the manila pen.

i didn't get to follow it as i was really in a hurry to get to DFA on time. it was kinda my lucky day because an empty vios taxi drive in front of me, so i don't have to commute all the way to pasay city like i did yesterday.

traffic was really bad along lawton road/nichols and also near the airport. we bypassed edsa-ayala because of obvious reasons.

i got there around 2pm. my god. the queue. you won't imagine it anywhere else. it's worse than lotto on a 200 million peso jackpot night or auditions for pinoy big brother (what's that show? haha!) in this country you either want to be a celebrity or work overseas. and the line is the proof of that.

speaking of celebrity wannabes. i don't wanna judge him, but antonio trillanes is a disappointment; you give him the chance to introduce change under legal, constitutional ways as a senator and he blows it. he abused the trust of the people. and he misrepresented the mandate given to him. he's really arrogant.

if the system is working against you, then the system is wrong - is this his philosophy? it appears so. because he's done it not once, but twice. maybe he's simply attention-deficit. anyway, i can see a long list of offenses that he committed just today and years of battling cases ahead.

imagine the money lost because of this faux pas. establishments closed on a long weekend! and curfews!!! we're talking about tens of millions worth of business!!!

some people lack depth of thought. it's too disappointing. i'm sorry. now i think the situation is everyone vs. trillanes. poor guy. but he deserves it.

i swear, wala na ako sense of day.

thursday ngayon. kasalanan to ng bagyong mina and lando. especially that lando, retrograding back to the philippines.

anyway, i didn't get to wake up early yesterday morning to get my passport. so i decided to go today instead. but i worked until 4 a.m. kahapon... or kanina.... so i slept until noon and left for DFA. i got there a little past 3 p.m. and cut off na. shet. sayang naman ang pamasahe ko pero at least adventure for today.

kelly's in manila with AJ we went to razon's. before that, AJ and I had cheap dinner (free dinner actually) at the office. I happened to have a couple of sandwiches and maraming pizza and pancit malabon sa office kasi month-end birthday blow-out ng company.

uuwi na ako in a few. and tomorrow, DFA ako ulit! for real na to!!!

signal number four na ang insomnia ko. it's 3 am again and i'm still up just like last night. trending ba to?!

in fairness naman (how i hate that phrase!), marami akong na-accomplish today. despite my lack of sleep, i was able to workout pa. petiks ng konti pero i was able to do more variations of my chest and biceps exercises. tapos i was able to do thirty minutes of cardio pa. treadmill and stationary bike. not bad at all.

i got my picture taken for my new passport din. MY NEW PASSPORT!!! maroon na, hindi na (terrorist) green hehe. Funny thing about passport pictures: I don't know if I'm allowed to smile!!! so I didnt. So medyo off yung look ko sa picture. parang bagong gising na bangag. which was exactly what I was kanina.

office, usual stuff. for a monday though, I feel too lazy. that's not normal. normally, i'd be churning one translation after another. siguro kasi, this week, medyo screwed up yung report na ginagawa ko so nawala ako sa focus for the rest of the day.

tomorrow... make that later... pupunta ako ng DFA for the PASSPORT!!!! i'll be one of the first few thousands to have a maroon philippine passport :D. finally inaantok na ako. hafta go.

post-it note to self: post phone pics on multiply.

night!

I felt that it was my responsibility to know what is happening in Darfur and why it is happening.

I browsed through a comprehensive article in Wikipedia which discusses the Darfur conflict. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared the Darfur crisis as a direct effect of global warming; one of the main causes of the crisis was the drought, desertification and overpopulation forcing the nomads of the north to take their livestock further down south to the land occupied by farming communities.

It's alarming how global warming can cause people to kill other people. We should heed this message and do something about it before it's too late.

It's also disappointing how media discriminates even in times of crisis. I remember the hype over the Europeans who lost loved ones in Thailand but we didn't here the human side of the story of the more than 300,000 Indonesians who perished in Aceh. Now, more than 400,000 have been killed by human beings as well in Darfur and the world is not doing enough.

Myanmar and Pakistan are lucky, the world is watching. But it's sad to think that some people would not even hear about Darfur; some might not even want to hear about it, and those who did may even wish they could forget.

Nagulat ako nung narinig ko na namatay si Wahab Akbar sa isang pagsabog sa Batasan. Nagulat ako na may pagsabog sa Batasan.

Nagulat din ako na binaril ang legal officer ng Comelec.

Dumarami ang mga high-profile incidents matapos ang pagpardon kay Erap, ang pagsabog sa Glorietta. Isama pa ang malagim na aksidenteng naganap sa mag-asawang Rene at Dulce Saguisag na bumawi sa buhay ng dating social welfare secretary at nakakadagdag sa pagka-grim ng kasalukuyang sitwasyon.

Lumabas ka ng Pilipinas at sa Myanmar, ang mga makademokrasya ay pinupuksa ng junta. Sa Pakistan, nagdeklara si Musharraf ng state of emergency. Sa Sudan, patuloy na dumarami ang mga biktima ng civil war sa Darfur mahigit 400,000 na ang namatay ayon sa UN na maikukumpara sa 100 beses na mas maraming biktima kung ikukumpara sa 9/11 WTC attacks noong 2001 at katumbas ng dami ng biktima ng tsunami noong 2004.

World Peace, nasaan ka?