The news about Heath Ledger’s death spread like fire over Perth yesterday as radio, TV and internet broadcast news about his untimely death. His family formally confirmed Heath’s death and described his death as accidental. While police downplayed foul play, mystery still hounds the cause of Heath’s death as initial autopsy were inconclusive and it might take about 10 days more to identify the cause of death of the rising star.
Got this from Shari.
January 19, 2-5PM
Kape Tasyo (Freedom Bar)
Anonas, Quezon City
I wanted to start 2007 right, so I blogged about it and envisioned where I wanted to go. Let’s just take a quick look at some excerpt of that blog and what happened.
The Metro Manila Film Fest was held last December. It is the time of the year when most of Metro Manila residents get saturated with Filipino films and time for most film producers to make “better than usual” films (well, film makers are expected to make quality films every time but the Manila Film Fest is quite different).
Australia welcomed the New Year ahead of other countries. The iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge became a spectacular site as fireworks marked the start of the New Year in Australia. Meanwhile here in Perth, about 10,000 are estimated to have attended the NYE (New Year’s Eve) Disco in Northbrige.
Australia recently announced that its population has breached the 20 million mark reaching about 21 million in a recent official census. Western Australia was the fastest growing state in terms (both in population and economy).
News.com reported that “immigration accounted for 56 per cent of Australia’s growth, while 272,900 births minus 134,800 deaths made up 44 per cent of the increase.” This is a welcome news here in Australia as there were fears before that the country might suffer Japan’s predicament of having an aging population. The Australian government has placed incentives for couples who decide to have a child giving a “baby bonus” of about Aus$4000 for a baby (dead or alive) and an additional weekly support (if alive).
On a personal note, I can personally say that the booming economy here in Western Australia is definitely felt at the household level. Almost everybody (even as young as 12) has a chance to land a job whether part-time, casual or full-time. Now, this is an economy working.
Back home, the Philippines has breached the 90 million mark. A July 2007 estimate was placed at 91,077,287. I can personally say also that my family back home are not feeling the fruits of the economic growth that the country is apparently achieving.
Well, I might be stating the obvious but yes it’s been a very busy past few days/weeks but the good news is that my blogging hiatus came rewarded. 🙂 A poster presentation that I gave at Uni was awarded the first recipient of the Geoff Griffiths Prize and my recent introductory seminar went well (thanks to my colleagues at the trailer trash who came to listen. :)). So, many things happened in the past few weeks, Australia has a new prime minister (now I’m hearing some mates claiming to be proud to be Australians again!), Beckham-mania hit Australia while Trillanes “snapped” and holed himself with his mates in a Philippine five-star hotel, the Spice Girls were re-united and the US becomes the only developed country not to ratify Kyoto.
Thanks to Sasha, by the way, for the invitation to the Blogger Meet and Greet in Manila last 30 November. Well, for another obvious reason, I couldn’t honor the invitation but I would have loved to attend (maybe next year, given the chance). 🙂
The UN recently reported that there is a dire need to act on the world’s global warming. Their message, simply put, is we can do something with climate change (without having to dive into the inconvenient truth) if, and only if, everyone takes the cudgels for the environment and invest towards a more sustainable management of the environment and global warming.
The Carbon Monitoring for Action website, which hosts a wealth of information on global warming placed Australians as the worst producer of CO2. The CNN.com reports that Australia “produce(s) 11 tons of CO2 for each of its people from their power plants — the highest anywhere — compared to 9 tons per person in the United States and 2 tons per person in China.” However, the US tops the worst CO2 producing country in the world with China nearly overtaking it.
A former colleague in the UN once told me that developed countries, including Australia, are holding back on the Kyoto Protocol as they have forwarded a number of reasons from job loss to economic slow down. There is double talk from the side of developed countries as they want developing countries to achieve “developed” status, however, would not want to compromise on climate change issues.
Let me explain my point, economic development is almost reciprocal to CO2 emission, i.e., if one country has to develop, it has to increase production of goods, which developed countries would not want to compromise. If there are countries that have the ability to address climate change, it is developed countries. Developing countries are basically telling developed countries, you’ve had your chance to develop, why not give us a chance and it was “them” who have (mainly) caused global warming (industrial period to present).
Global warming is one of the big issues here in Australia. There is a big chance that Australia’s position might change if Kevin Rudd wins the election (although recent blunder by the party’s supposed environment minister is quite worrying, I’m still hoping that it will definitely ratify the Kyoto Protocol). As to the rest of the world, it seems that it’s just like taking drugs, one knows the dire consequence but are still willing to take “the plunge” and suffer any consequence, even if it means taking its own life. God help us all.
There are a lot of news here Down Under, however, I’m off to a conference in Melbourne. The hotel internet cost is outrageously high, so I’m writing this in one of the internet cafes here in St. Kilda. Melbourne is a nice cool (literally, it’s about 19 degrees now) city.
It’s a pity, I wasn’t able to catch up with Alma (wasn’t able to inform her anyway). Well, it’s been a busy five days for me here. Off to Perth this Friday evening.
Now, here’s the twin tower for your indulgence. 🙂 Just shaved my hair last Saturday to save money for my three years stay here.
So, what’s with the acronym?
It doesn’t stand for customer service representative or corporate social responsibility but it stands for a visual impairment, central serous chorioretinopathy also called central serous retinopathy. This is usually temporary albeit for a few months. According to contributors of Wikipedia, it affects males 20 to 50. The disorder is further described as
Blogbastic! 