Daylight Saving Time (DST) ends

Tomorrow we revert back to standard time at 2:00 am thus we gain one hour of extra time/sleep! Since 1966, most of the United States has observed DST from 2:00 a.m. on the first Sunday of April to 2:00 a.m. on the last Sunday of October.

Starting in 2007, most of the U.S. will begin DST at 2:00 a.m. on the second Sunday in March and revert to standard time on the first Sunday in November. That gives us almost 4 weeks extra for DST. So it's from almost 7 months of DST to almost 8 months of DST starting 2007. Standard time will just happen for like a little more than 4 months every year. Kind of an irony in terms of terminology but that is really in repect to the rest of the world.

The change in duration starting in 2007 was due to the Energy Policy Act of 2005 which President George W. Bush signed in August 8, 2005. The Secretary of Energy will report the impact of this change to Congress. Congress retains the right to resume the 2005 Daylight Saving Time schedule once the Department of Energy study is complete.

For the U.S. and its territories, Daylight Saving Time is NOT observed in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Arizona. The Navajo Nation participates in the Daylight Saving Time policy, even in Arizona, due to its large size and location in three states.

As a guide to how we adjust the time, just remember these words, when it's spring, "spring forward"; when it's fall, "fall back".


A safety reminder:
Many fire departments encourage people to change the battery in the smoke detector when they change their clocks because Daylight Saving Time provides a convenient reminder. "A working smoke detector more than doubles a person's chances of surviving a home fire," says William McNabb of the Troy Fire Department in Michigan. More than 90 percent of homes in the United States have smoke detectors, but one-third are estimated to have dead or missing batteries.

How to make debtors pay-Filipino Style

This is a photo from yesterday's Philippine Daily Inquirer online. Apparently, this man, a sari-sari store owner got fed-up with his customers' unpaid debts to him that he posted all these signs in front of his sari-sari store. Now, it's human nature that you don't want your transgressions being broadcast like this so as of press time for this article, about half of what he was owed were paid. Now that's resourcefulness in action. By the looks of it, he would probably still keep the same customers and perhaps they will be more timely with their payments unless there's another store in their vicinity where they can have more lenient terms, but I'm just speculating. One thing though will never change in this type of microeconomics, 'pakilista lang po'.

It's all about the Dash

A friend sent me this link sometime ago. Although it's a touchy subject, there's no question about the truth and reality of this one. Click here to connect to the link, don't forget to turn on your speakers.

How does the Philippines compare to the US in terms of population?

Yesterday in the news, the US finally hit the 300 million mark in terms of its population. Now whether that includes a certain estimate for undocumented aliens where it is said to be around 10-12 million, I’m not sure. I’m trying to gauge the relevance of this figure and have been playing around with some numbers and data to compare it with the Philippines and this is what I gathered.

US population (Oct. 2006) - 300 million
Land Area - 5,984, 685 square miles or 15,500,263 square kilometers
Population Density - 19.35 persons/sq. kilometer

Philippines’ population - 89,468,677 (July 06 est. from Wikepedia)
Land Area - 298,170 square kilometers
Population Density - 301.85 persons/sq. kilometer

301.85/19.35= 15.6 x (Phil. Population Density is almost 16 x more than the US)

Now comparing the most populous state in the US which is California to Metro Manila which is obviously the most populous place in the Philippines, this is what I gathered.

California population (2005) - 36, 132,147
Land Area - 155,959 square miles or 403,932 square kilometers
Population Density - 89.45 persons/sq. kilometer

Now for Metro Manila and this is just unbelievable.

Metro Manila Population – 11,289,368
Land Area – 636 square kilometers
Population density – 17,751 persons/ sq. kilometer
(Note: Manila alone has a density of 41,014 persons/sq. kilometer)

I don’t know if I’m comparing apples and oranges here (probably) so let me compare Metro Manila to the most populous city in the US.

New York City Population (2005 est.) = 8,213,839
Land Area – 303.3 square miles or 785.5 square kilometers
Population density – 10,456.8 persons/ sq. kilometer

Lastly, I just want to compare the ratio of one person to land area in terms of square meters.

Philippines – 3,312.9 sq. meters/person
Metro Manila – 56.3 sq. meters/person (that is 24.6 feet by 24.6 feet space per person)
Note: Manila alone -24.4 sq.meters/person (that’s roughly 16.2 feet by 16.2 feet!!!)

United States – 51,679.6 sq. meters/person
California – 11,179 sq. meters/person
New York City – 95.6 sq. meters/person


These are just numbers but they mean a lot and affect almost anything that pertains to anything (am I making sense?). I don’t intend to imply whatever but I did just want to check the numbers. I hope I did my math correctly but I double checked my calculations. Now, if it means anything, the Philippines is the 12th most populous country. Manila is not in the top 20 most populous cities in the world but we are the 19th most populous urban agglomeration. Looks like just a play of words here. Now, if that will only translate to winning medals in the Olympics as a matter of statistics, but that’s another “political” matter.

Have you seen this script before?

This is a translation of 'Ariel Magno' in 'Baybayin', also known as 'Alibata', a pre-hispanic script that Filipinos where using before the Spaniards came to our soil. Filipinos where still using it up to the first century of colonization until it just slowly disappeared. I'm sure it had very much to do with the foreign influence but this also showed that Filipinos were already literate even before colonization.

Honestly, I'm not even sure if I've learned about this script in high school or college. Perhaps it was mentioned in passing without any visual aids and I may have been doing something else whether I was inside the classroom or not. As I grow older and now living outside the Philippines, I just developed a natural inclination to know more about my home country, especially its past, things that I have taken for granted when I was much younger.



Jose Rizal once wrote:

This language of ours is like any other,
it once had an alphabet and its own letters
that vanished as though a tempest had set upon
a boat on a lake in a time now long gone.




"To My Fellow Children”, 1869
English translation by P. Morrow


Read more about Baybayin and Pre-hispanic Philippines. You'd find them very interesting. Here are some of the links:

Baybayin: The ancient script of the Philippines

How to write the ancient script of the Philippines

Ancient Philippines

Catalog of Filipino Names

Laguna Copperplate Inscription

In the 'Ancient Philippines' link, you'd find out that there are still a few groups of people/tribes in Palawan and Mindoro who are still familiar with the script and can still write it.


If you want to translate your name or any other word to Baybayin, click

Translate to Baybayin.


You just need to keep some pointers in mind like you have to spell the word(s) the same as you will pronounce it in Filipino (i.e. Di-yo-se-pin for Josephine) since some letters that we are using now doesn't have an equivalent letter in Baybayin. All other pointers can be read on the link provided.

Hope this little bit of history lesson has made you appreciate more my/our home country.