Australia welcomes New Year first

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.

Christmas in Australia’s hot

While most of the world have to deal with snow and frost, Australia is bracing for hot weather in the coming days especially on Christmas when Perth is expected to be the hottest capital city in Australia at 38^oC, news.com.au reported.

While Western Australia Bureau of Meteorology said that this forecast “will be hotter than the previous five years,” it also confirmed that this month is WA’s coldest on record due to cold and wet conditions brought by easterly winds. Daytime could be warm but a cold snap could sometimes be felt during night time or early morning.

Some areas of WA have experienced an average of 45 degrees Celsius but the rest of December for WA is expected to be normal, i.e., warm as usual.

Australia’s population now over 20M

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.

Busy, Busy, Busy… :)

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). 🙂

Name Meme. :)

Here’s another fun tag game courtesy of Chuck (apologies for this loooong delayed response). 🙂

This should be an easy one (though it took me some time to answer this!). 🙂

• Your Rock Star Name: (first pet and current car)

  JINGKY NUBIRA

• YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie)

  Choco oreo
  

• YOUR “FLY Guy/Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name)

  D Car
  

• Your detective name: (favorite color, favorite animal)

  Blue bird
  

• YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)

  Dela Cruz Manila
  

• YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first)

  Car Do
  

• SUPERHERO NAME (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink)

  The Green Coke
  

• NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers)

  Domingo Bernardo
  

• STRIPPER NAME: (the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy)
  

  Calvin Mentos
  

• WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names)
  

  Pimentel Nuevo

• TV Weather Anchor Name: (Your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with same letter)

  Dionglay Davao
  

• Spy name/bond girl: (your favorite season/holiday, flowers)

  Winter Lotus
  

• Cartoon name: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now ! “ie” or “y”)

  Mango Island Spicy

• Hippy name: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree)

  Rice Hotdog Ipil
  

• Your rockstar entourage name: (“The” + your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”

  The TV Watching Sun Tour
  

• Your porn name: (First pet +name of street you grew up on)

  Jingky Ambray

   

This was definitely fun. 🙂 (nadala yata si Chuck sa tagal ko sumagot. 🙂 )

Now off to giving back the fun. 🙂 Shari, Ivy, Elaine, Karlo, Czille and Ayie!

Media trends in Australia, Philippines and Thailand

Just a quick observation of the general media trends in the three countries that I’ve been based in. I can say that as to balanced programming, by and large, Australia might be on the right track but this is just a quick assessment. 🙂 So, here’s what to expect with media outlets in each country.

Philippines
I might not be an authority on this now but as far as I can remember news tend to be “crowded” with entertainment news. First thing in the morning, there might be morning shows on TV, this will be followed by talk shows with topics ranging from personal development to showbiz. A noon time show will follow then followed by either a soap opera TV or showbiz talk show. A children’s show might follow, then news then movies or another three to four hours of soap program again. Before coming to Thailand, I remember news programs being relegated from prime time to almost late night (or the cheap time slots, which is close to midnight).

Print media, as most of my Filipino readers know, tend to be mainly politics if not crime focused (well, that’s news in the country anyway). By and large, most of the print media tend to be entertainment focused as with tabloids.

Thailand
News and current affairs in Thailand tend to be “sporty.”After a morning show, which is basically much like a radio talk show on TV, programs that follow will be news and entertainment. There are some noon time shows, which are almost like the Bubble Gang show in the Philippines, then these will be followed by sports news again (mostly football/soccer). Then usually news are on by 6pm. They also have soap operas here but mostly are fantasy in topic, although it differs from season to season (themes might be country to family drama). One thing I like in Thai media are the good funny commercials they have, pretty good! 🙂

Australia
Just like Thailand, most of the programming on Australian TV are sports news (football/rugby or cricket). There is a morning show, which is followed by children’s show, then talk shows from the US and then an Australian soap opera then children’s show. Programs on prime time include US TV series (CSI, NCIS, Californication, Heroes, Australian Idol among others) and Australian talk shows.

The World at Risk

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.

Melbourne

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.

Quick to the terror, slow to the accident

Philippine National Police Chief Avelino Razon recently confirmed that their American and Australian counterparts ruled out bomb blast in the Glorietta 2 blast this October.

I didn’t blog about the event but I do feel for all those who were directly and indirectly affected by this accident. However, the careless comments from various Philippine authorities led to a number of confusion, which led the media to a roller coaster ride–one time the headline said that it was confirmed that it was a terrorist attack, another time it was possibly an accident and so on. This happened after the bribery of several local government executives and before the eventual pardon and release of Erap. So, was this incident intentional and that there was a big deal of motive for the government to sponsor it?

Only in the Philippines

Barely two months since Joseph Estrada was convicted of plunder, elements of the government moved swiftly to work out an easy way out for the disgraced leader. There were still some pride from Erap and his lawyers but apparently the overwhelming evidence or their belief that Philippine justice is just inefficient–changed their mind and they opted to forward a plea for pardon.