that miso soup is a brain food!

/yummy

Sato-chan: Did you know that miso soup is good for your brain?
Kring: Maji de? (Really?) Why?
Sato-chan: Because it makes your brain work more, when you eat it. It's scientifically proven.
Kring: Talaga? I should eat more of this if it makes people intelligent.

I've done a few scanning and found that it also lessens risk of breast cancer. Click.

 

Miso soup (味噌汁 miso shiru^?) is a traditional Japanese soup consisting of a stock called "dashi" into which is mixed softened miso paste. Although the suspension of miso paste into dashi is the only characteristic that actually defines miso soup, many other ingredients are added depending on regional and seasonal recipes, and personal preference. from my brainy best friend, Wikipedia.

If I could, I'd like to have miso soup once in every day as appetizer and results would be interesting. ^___^ 

to dream the pseudo-unreachable dreams.

Pseudo. I like that word. It is half percent true, half percent not true. I've gotten into depression lately, maybe worse than I had before since I thought of stowing away. Only one person knows that by the way. That day, I was planning not to show-up and continue my plan of lurking the streets for a week, just to get myself out of the frustrations and the depression. In the end, I showed up. Somehow, the superego has worked its way of hoping that the person I'd meet with will scold me back to sanity. 

I took this advice from Bob Ong - to make lists... if you feel bored or sad.
As a start, why don't I dream today? :)

Before I die, I want to....

1. ride a hot-air balloon
2. travel around the world in 365 days
3. earn a PhD in Sociology
4. and have a degree of Psychology
5. then be a professor at the University of the Philippines
6. where my students would love the way I teach because I will not be the professor I hate
7. and I'd live in a house filled with books
8. fall in love... with my loving husband (whoever he is.. but he's got to be intelligent, kind and funny)
9. who would teach me how to cook because I don't
10. and we'd love each other till death do us part
11. and enjoy our marriage just as how it's done in the movies or in novels
12. have grown at least 2 children
13. one is into social science while another is into natural science
14. and both excel in music and arts besides academics
15. enjoy motherhood by spending a couple of years "hands-on" while still working on something for humanity
16. be able to play all songs of The Beatles in the guitar 
17. study photography
18. and at long last have a decent artists'/professional photographer's camera
19. take pictures of the moon and stars
20. space-travel. (lol)
21. time-travel. (double lol)
22. study in Japan or any other country
23. see Venice or Athens or the Louvre
24. go to Davao - and meet Capulette. :))
25. kiss Daniel Radclife or Jude Law
26. oh about my house - I'd like to have a music room in it
27. and live with a pure black or pure white cat, I would name "Midnight" (again)
28. read 1000 books.
29. have a copy of all Urbandub's albums
30. meet de la Rocha, Zack but I wouldn't talk to him
31. attend UP Fair - one whole week
32. attend a concert in another country
33. sing/play in a band
34. work in an NGO for half my life
35. set my foot on the UN office
36. get accepted in CARE or World Vision or any other International Organization
37. be of help to ACCE financially
38. understand the laws of physics
39. get back to the natural sciences
40. for my laptop to stay with me forever ~ Neomon
41. write a book
42. read all of Haruki Murakami's work
43. as well as Paolo Coelho's
44. and Nicholas Sparks'
45. as well as all poems of Pablo Neruda
46. understand Marx, Lenin and Mao more
47. see a red sunrise
48. be healthy
49. have the wisdom of Morrie
50. reach at least half of what I wrote in this list.

some strategies in teaching.

It's the ride home that I enjoy especially when it's around 6 in the evening. At the right side, the vast plains meet the mixture of orange and light blue skyline in the horizon. I was reading the "Catcher in the Rye" and was laughing about Holden thinking about all his dates as intelligent.. but disproved it again when the date dives into action, the intelligence of his date withers. Well, anyway, this post isn't about him. It's about what I thought as a strategy if one wants to become a good professor.

This afternoon, I discussed the basic facts about the Philippines (island groups, national symbols, cultural traits, etc.) with the new intern, Mina. I could see her reactions with the new things she learn as well as the doubts she had about the information. It would - as some would strike you to the bones such as Filipinos having a split-level spirituality and having the president as the perfect example... with her being a devoted Catholic while all the while being the reason behind political killings of human rights activists, journalist and leftist students. It's contrary to the teachings of Catholicism or of Christianity which includes love, peace, harmony and justice. 

 

 

eating dinner with Mina, :)
 

And so what happened... I have to explain to her again and again by using different ways, various examples, range of synonymous words and at other times, I use parallelism. It helps. I thought if one wants to be a professor, one must know how to share the idea in so many ways as possible so as to make the range of students in the classroom understand it! That's another point ~ a professor should always concern him or her self if the students are keeping up with what he or she is talking about. What I mean is that the professor, in humility, consider the level of experience and understanding of his or her students and try to explain theories, ideas and concepts in the listeners' level.

Another tactic is to use the "words" which the student is familiar with. This afternoon, I did not say culture, I say "bunka" (the Japanese term for it.) I tried to use the Japanese words I know in exchange of the English ones. Not only does she appreciate that you know how to speak her language, you've also gained her interest. It is the relevance of what one is teaching to the one being taught that curiosity is given impetus. Relate to the student what you're talking about as much as possible. Freire thought about this first. :)

It was also effective to ask her about what she thinks about the cultural traits or to compare it with Japan. Moreover, it's so simple to do - just be curious or act like you're curios to know even if you already know or you partly know - Socratic method, proven effective. It is also part of my personal advocacy, as I learned from Freire, to not put students nor teachers into boxes and limit their roles. Isn't learning more interesting if we are all students as well as we are all teachers? In that case, it's more of sharing knowledge rather than "filling the receptacle" or the teacher depositing knowledge like money in a bank a.k.a. the student.

Last. It all boils down to the professor or teacher's passion to teach - not to impress but to impart. One's knowledge must not be seen as a private property but a social product. You know what you know because someone else knows it and shared it to you or you realized it because you were observing someone else.... which means you don't know something just because you thought about it individually but some force lead you into thinking about this knowledge - the first law of physics.

What I want to say is... a professor must have the genuine purpose of teaching just because he or she loves to share what he or she knows. If one feels this way, he or she acts responsibly and genuinely concerned with the learning of his or her students (who is also his or her teacher). :4

the empowerment agenda through youth organizing

by doing a write-up on the youth program of ACCE. :) Well, here goes..

ACCE believes that “The youth is the hope of the future and today.” ACCE sees young people as new pearls of hope for building new communities because they are the next leaders of these communities. In order to prepare the youth for their role in the future, ACCE promotes the empowerment of youth through youth organizing.

Empowerment of youth means facilitating the capability of youth to stand on their own. It includes developing the potentials of youth to become future leaders of their community as well as future educators of the generation next to them with regards to the situation of poverty and strategies to change it. In ACCE, the task is done through ‘collective empowerment’ of the youth organizations. Thus, youth are envisioned to depend on their selves by working with their fellow youth members in improving their life situations.

Presently, ACCE have partner youth organizations in Apelo named ASFA (Association of Students and Friends of APRIVEROD), in Perez named KAMALAYAN (Kabataang May Mabuting Layunin Para sa Bayan or ‘Youth who have a good objective for the nation’) and in Smoky Mountain 2, SSDN-Youth (Youth of Samahan sa Sitio Damayan ng Nananambakan or Scavengers’ association in community with concern for one another). The ages of youth members of these organizations range from 13 – 22.

Youth organizing is composed of (1) education and capability-building, (2) organization-building and (3) resource mobilization.

Education of the youth includes making them see the reality of poverty (which they also experience) and broadening their horizons in strategies of combating poverty. This is done through study sessions, workshops and seminars as well as summer camp with ACCE-Japan supporting teams where the youth learn about poverty, the role of youth in the community and international solidarity. On the other hand, capability-building means helping the youth enrich their skills, talents and potentials through cultural trainings. The cultural trainings include play-writing, song-writing, poem-writing, indigenous dances, acting, singing and visual arts. Student volunteers and advocates are invited as teachers in the cultural trainings to share what they know and what they could do, so that the youth members could also develop the same knowledge and skills.

Organization-building pertains to strengthening the bond between the members of the youth organizations and making the most out of the coming together of the youth. Youth organizations build the vision, mission and goals of their organizations and continue programs for the development of the organization through the facilitation of ACCE.

Resource mobilization includes tapping resources such as volunteers as teachers in the cultural trainings as well as generating funds by encouraging supporters of the youth organizing program. The advocacy program of ACCE has a great deal of importance with regards to resource mobilization. The study tours and organizing events such as “Tribute to Youth” as venue for youth to show the products of their cultural trainings is a way to gain support from other people. In another perspective, it is also a way to educate other people about the poverty situation in Smoky Mountain 2, Perez and Apelo as well as the richness of Filipino indigenous culture since the cultural presentations of the youth organizations inculcate these.

*ACCE's framework for youth organizing towards empowerment. 

what my heart will do today - it will think.

 Will beat 54,738 times, pump 803 gallons of blood, and push that blood nearly 6,849 miles throughout my body!

---> Got this from The Oatmeal, who redirected me to The Fitness Pal.

It's quite amusing that the heart symbolizes love. <3 

Sexual. For one, the human heart isn't even shaped like these, as it resembles more of the cow's. "The seed of the silphium plant, used in ancient times as a herbal contraceptive, has been suggested as the source of the heart symbol." [Wiki] The heart shape is also considered to depict female features such as the buttocks, mons pubis and the vulva which vaguely gives us the connection of love and sex. As for that matter, it remains a controversy and upon reading, I kind of feel awkward to draw another heart to show my love. 

Rationalizing emotions. As for the color 'red', it only resembles blood - the lifeline and as what we all know, metaphorically describes 'passion'. Aristotle considered the heart as the seat of thought, reason or emotion. In great contradiction with what Galen, the Roman physician, believed. Galen identified the heart as the seat of emotions and the brain as the seat of reason. He was the first one to isolate emotions from reason, pointing out the big difference between the brain and the heart - the logic and the illogical. [Yet in Psychology, the brain has also its doings in emotions - the chemicals, the neurons (I could not explain it further) but as I remember it has.]

 

 

 

I <3 YOU.

Therefore, the heart should not solely be blamed nor thanked for 'love'. "I love you" means there are reasons which my brain have why I do, yet my emotions makes me blind so I could not explain why. "I love you" means your emotions are making you stupid since no one could explain emotions, nor stop it from making you feel. 

Divinity. The Stoics, who by the way were the first ones to consider emotions as a source of errors in judgments or as I may call them 'the first positivists', taught the heart as the seat of the soul. Though they were scientists, they were not atheists, which intrigues me. In our time, it could be said that there is rationality in what they speak of. They didn't have the knowledge of the human anatomy, maybe that's why the Stoics left the explanation to the 'soul', the divine abstractness (because they couldn't explain the phenomena yet). Since then, the heart has been considered a mythical, divine figure up until now where the Catholics still use the Sacred Heart of Jesus or the Immaculate Heart of Mary. But in our time, we could already explain it! As I picked up from my fifth grade science class, the heart pumps our blood, the blood is the lifeline. It's the central organ of the body with the function of keeping us alive. It's our switch. With the decease of the heart, so does our life ends. When that happens it should not be colored red, it should be purple!

to feel two emotions at the same time

When I reconstructed this blog, I thought that what I would put will only be ideas and thoughts yet I forgot that humanity has another part of being human  - the emotions.

Is it even possible to feel two different emotions at the same time? To be happy and to be sad. I feel happy that I am enjoying the present yet i am sad whenever I look back at the past and somehow think that it would come back, that present never came. It would be all right again and that I would feel the same happiness I feel today that I felt in the past but still the past but then it's the present. The circumstances that lead for the past that happen is so sweet and sudden, same as what I feel now but the complication is that I don't know if it would even be permitted to have a future.  Complicated? Yes, it is and it keeps bothering me every minute of my day.

My friends say that the past is my least problem and been advised to move on by a couple of friends who had always been with me on the downside of my life. They know me even better than I know myself. It is the uncertainty, the distance and the sudden change. It's the cloud of black emptiness that surrounds my room when I'm alone. In the company of friends, it is hidden yet it suddenly bursts out when rubbed lightly, as I've seen it.

Confusion. Complicated. Confusion. Complicated. Yet Happy Yet Sad Yet Happy.

It has always been hurt. It never had happy endings, never was meant to be? Or maybe never was given effort to be meant to be? This is not a curse as I wouldn't believe it is but it's a sad phenomena that it always doesn't work out. I've always seen it in the early stages - the budding of attraction, the emotional explosion at the memory as well as the time together and the always interesting getting-to-know. It changes in a matter of 2-3 months, maybe because I also changed. At the early stage, I would be the scrutinizing critical hard-headed 'yin' but as time pass, I become softer.. almost equal to a fool and a martyr. Pessimism has never been a factor since whom he is in the now is what I visualize in the future.

It's the dream, the pang of guilt with sweet memories and the nostalgia every parting time. It's your gentleness, your wit, your perfectness. It's the physical, emotional and psychologcal satisfaction at the moment, I didn't want to end. I never want for the next day to come. It feels so right even when we think it's wrong. I'm at a loss of words and rationalizations when I'm with you. All I want to do is make you happy but then I know I make you feel sad. Is it even possible for us to be this way?

that confusion is the best path to clarity.

We can never have this side if we never have the other. There is no east when there is no west, no love when there's no hate and so there is no clarity with no confusion. It's the natural way of the attraction of opposites, a contradiction's need for the other in order to continually exist. The antithesis, we always need it.

I'm confused with love, with work and religion and I feel down-trodden that I have to seek answers to these 3 questions in my mind all in the same time. I think these three are all essentials in what we call 'life' or maybe in what I call 'my life' because it's those three that worked in the larger sphere of my consciousness that's why I continued to live. But then, a brick of un-lateral continuity (borrowed from Geology) hit the three and in a sense, my senses are failing.

Love.. is bullshit (as Urbandub sings) when you keep being rubbed by it. (The romantic love I mean) But then, I could always be at fault for my decisions yet I never want to regret. Maybe pride enters into the subject or maybe there is really what Jesse says my 'rationalizations'. "To be label one as feeler or a thinker is out of the question for we are all thinkers and feelers our selves", he said. Lagot siya kay Jung. xd Love makes me sad but then it also makes me happy. "Love is made of smiles and tears", as a key-chain from a friend once said. A thousand miles away, you are. I should be doing poetry right now. And in all these clarity, I'm still confused so I am letting it all go. To keep the bitterness is not my nature for I've always been into sweets.

Work. The pressures are coming - my family and my friends. The responsibility of being the first-born is dragging me into the perspective that 'I should be able to make more money, support the family' though I've always been contented with my work. I was happy. Before, money didn't matter for as long as I find dignity, pleasure and contentment with my work. It was a dream come true - to finally be with people doing every pinch of detail in order to make this world a better place. Yet, I have to make the decision and I already did and some were already set into motion - the only task that's left is letting go. I would, I would.

Religion. I lost my faith in religion (another Urbandub song, xd). As I dove deeper in reality and concreteness of poverty, the more I see how somehow the church has its' hands on preserving it. Into making one believe about the divinity, that there is one savior in all our sufferings, i see the blindness of the faith of the poor people and of the hopeful yet equally hopeless condition of them. "Religion is the opium of the masses", it's true. I even once cried in feeling the emptiness when I tried to rip all the faith off. I walked as an atheist for a few weeks, even debated and questioned my seminarian friends. But one stood still and listened to my confusion and Harold made me remember that I am living in a different kind of faith and of religion - Liberation Theology, the Redemptorists. As long as it's with the Redemptorists, I'm okay. There are always these questions yet these questions could be channeled in Philosophy and Theology so as to bring it back into Science. Anyway, it was philosophy that started the inquiry. :) 

So, not all of these are clear. I think it made even more confusion when I started to reflect as I was writing this blog. But I'm in the right path. Or so I think. Good morning bones! (another Urbandub song) :)