Because my memory has been less than spectacular, I need this blog to remember ……………….. things I did today. Or plan to do someday. Or want to remember one day.

Anybody wanna donate some hair or chicken feathers?

If anyone here has just the right kind of sensibility to donate any spare hair or chicken feathers they have lying around the house, then please do so. In fact, you can also ask your friends from the corner barbershop or the poultry farm if they have anything to offer! Your donation could “make a difference” in the massive oil spill that struck our shores 2 friggin’ long weeks ago. The madam president of our sad little country is asking for hair and chicken feathers because she said on the news the other night that they are “proven to be effective” in controlling the worst oil spill in our country’s history (the vessel that sunk contains 2.1 million liters of oil!). Drop boxes for donations will be strategically placed everwhere, she added…

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Aside from demanding for the “cooperation and solidarity of all Filipinos” and announcing for a “full investigation” and stating in her usual, nasally-congested calculated voice that she was placing the nation on a “state of calamity,” is this the best our president can do to address this disaster – ask for hair and chicken feathers?

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And while its been 2 very long weeks already since the Petron-chartered MT Solar 1 sank in Guimaras, the vessel still remains down there, passively leaking out more oil than we can ever imagine every hour as thousands of marine life perish, mangrove forests are destroyed and tens of thousands of our coastal folk who depend on the ocean starve to the brink of death as they try to scoop up with their own helpless hands all that thick oil sludge that’ll just keep adding up until something is done to bring up that darn shipwreck underneath. (or if it just isn’t possible to bring it up, then maybe something else can be done …perhaps suck out the remaining oil so as to prevent further damage? I don’t know…all I know is that there is a “best available technology” for this and something can be done if only the government just had the willpower to pool together their extra resources for this instead of waiting for Petron to own up to its responsibilities…)

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And me?…all I can do here is bitch about this tragedy in my whee little blog… I’d volunteer to go to Guimaras if only I could do something actually meaningful but I don’t think so, right? Our homework for class next week is to do an environmental management plan for the situation…  I can only hope that I can actually put to good use my would-be grad degree for the protection of the environment in the future. Cutting my hair off to donate to Guimaras, as one of my friends urged other friends to do out of angst, is something I find pretty outrageous. …. I am just so frustrated and disgusted at the lack of genuine concern, immediate action and urgency that  our government is relaying to this disaster  … we are such a hopeless, hopeless, hopeless country …it’s just so sad! =(

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Click here to see more Greenpeace photos of the devastating Guimaras Oil Spill

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or click here or here  to read up on the 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill where more than 250,000 sea birds and billions of salmons, among others, were affected (I guess one good thing about it is that it happened in a non-third world country and in a  place where no human inhabitats actually lived close by…

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or click here to read a commentary on the probable wrong lessons that Petron might pick up from the Exxon Valdez Spill: “that it can shift the blame elsewhere and eventually wash its hands of any responsibility”…

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feeling the heat…

I was trying to do my online research on climate change and the Kyoto and Montreal Protocols for a paper I’m supposed to submit for class tomorrow evening, when I came across this…

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“Pinky and Perky — two four week old miniature piglets cool off at Pennywell Farm and Wildlife centre near Buckfastleigh, south western England. The piglets were keeping cool with a huge lolly packed with carrots and other vegetables. ‘The recent heatwave has been exhausting for everyone and animals are no exception,’ said Catherine Tozer, assistant manager of the farm. ‘All the animals have been struggling with the heat so we have just tried to do everything we can to make them more comfortable. ‘After the initial shock and a bit of investigation, the ice lollies went down a real treat,’ she said.(AP Photo/Pennywell Farm and Wildlife Centre, Catherine Tozer)"

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These poor little piglets can feel the heat too…they’re lucky enough, though, to have such loving caretakers who give them lolly treats…I want one too! =]

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But anyways, global warming and climate change really is taking place and …and umm… here I am, out of words to describe what I’m supposed to say for my paper… (must go back to my darn “scholarly” paper now….but those piglets were cute weren’t they? They kinda look like baby cows because of their spots =)

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PS: before I turn my full concentration on school-related stuff, I just thought I’d warn my fellow shutterbugs out there to be wary of fake memory cards that have proliferated the market…Read about it here….