Definition of CREDIT LIMIT by Globe Telecom

This is an open letter to Globe Telecom.

To whom it may concern:

I have recently had a conversation with one of your customer service representatives in an online chat concerning my most recent phone bill. In this conversation, I was informed that your company's definition of the term credit limit was, 'the basis on how much plan and subscription you can avail.' (View photo below.)

As an English teacher by profession, I take offense at your grossly erroneous definition of the term. According to the Cambridge Dictionaries online, credit limit is the largest amount of money that the bank allows you to spend using a credit card. (Source: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/credit-limit) Understanding it thus, then there should be nothing beyond this limit. It is not allowed. Breaking it down further, the Oxford Dictionary defines credit as, "the ability of a customer to obtain goods or services before payment, based on the trust that payment will be made in the future." (Source: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/credit) Meanwhile, they define the word limit as, "a point or level beyond which something does not or may not extend or pass." (Source: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/limit?q=limit) Understanding therefore that the word 'credit' is used as a noun modifier of the word 'limit', then 'credit limit' logically means the point or level in the ability of a customer to obtain goods or services before payment beyond which the customer may not extend. In no way do any of the meanings mentioned resemble your own company's definition.

As a subscriber of your postpaid cellular phone service, I take personal offense at your presumption that your customers, by some wild chance, might actually connect the term credit or limit or credit limit with 'the basis on how much plan and subscription you can avail.' I am very offended that you are satisfied that "some" of your subscribers are aware, and that despite this discrepancy you still require ALL your subscribers to pay for something that was not at all clearly stated; something that was understood according to the actual given definition and not according to your company's dictionary. I am very offended because it seems to me that you might actually think your subscribers (including me) might actually be ignorant, or worse, just plain stupid. And, it REALLY offends me that whether or not this is true, you profit from it. You profit greatly from it.

Shame on you, Globe Telecom.

An open letter to all mothers

Motherhood is by nature a choice. It is a choice to go beyond yourself, to share yourself. It is a choice to accept uncertainty. It is a choice of faith. 

Not all women have the makings to be a mother. In spite of this, many of them make THAT choice. And no matter how self-serving some people think this choice is, it is by nature a selfless act. And no matter what the circumstances are or what they may eventually become, no matter how terrible or awful a mother one makes or how beautiful or horrible a life turns out to be, it does not change the fact that motherhood is a great act of self-sacrifice. It does not matter what anybody says about ANY mother and of motherhood. To sacrifice even one moment of your life for someone else, someone who may or may not know you or understand you or love you or thank you for this difficult (and it always is difficult) choice you've made, is one of the greatest acts of true heroism - one that many would never even consider doing.

TO ALL MOTHERS, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, THANK YOU. Happy Mother's Day.

Breaking fast

Breakfast has long been considered an important, if not the most important, part of one's day. Characteristically including eggs, fruits, or some other seemingly brightly colored type of Food, breakfast seems to be prepared for the primary purpose of breaking the lengthy Darkness that was the Night before. A darkness that was not merely the consequence of an earth's rotation, but a consummation of a life, of a time. 

Life lives to consume. It consumes time, and memories, and people, and energies. It consumes change, til change is no more. It consumes life, til Life is no more. Maybe this is why the Day must end and Night must come. So that Life does not consume all. Everything must come to a stop, force Life to start back at zero, so that everything might live if only little by little. 

But this tiniest particle of living comes at a price. A fasting darkness. Where all things are uncertain and everything is hidden. The darkness is a Waiting that is both restful and stressful, as it builds up to what will be an explosion of the coming Day. It will be an explosion with the power to incinerate everything were it not dampened by a heavy cloak of breakfast, of eggs, and fruits, and some other seemingly brightly colored type of Food; cloaked to resemble the blazing fire it was meant to ignite and temper at the same time. And thus it breaks the fast, and feeds the Day.

Dove il mio cuore e

Where the Heart is.

Presently, the heart is at an all important point in Life. What do you do when you're in the middle of middle? 

The eye of the storm is always the most boring place in the maelstrom. And while it might seemingly be so, I see the thick clouds and feel suspicious of the sunshine glaring down at me. Much has happened from point A to Where the heart is. Much has also not happened. Such as it is, this forced calmness grants a discomfort that does not afford one any form of restful confidence. 

Where the Heart is.

It has lived much, and done much, and seen much, and gone far. All and none are worth mentioning. None, except that the Heart is still not Where it hopes to be. It is not Home.

Missing Cardinal Sin

By Archbishop Socrates B. Villegas
August 31, 2011

Do you still care to remember Jaime Cardinal Sin? He passed away only six years ago. How time flies! How fast we forget! He would have been eighty three years old today. I wonder if people still remember. As for me, how can I forget? I will always remember and I still miss him.

Cardinal Sin had something to say about almost everything happening to the Church and Philippine society. He did not have to go to Luneta to be heard. Even if he whispered to the wall, society somehow caught his opinion, media was swift to publish and gossipers were quick to exaggerate.

I lived with him as his secretary for eighteen years. I lived with him longer than I lived with my own parents. He taught me. He guided me. He allowed me to care for him. I knew he cared for me as much as he cared for the millions who belonged to his flock. He knew the meaning of living a dangerous life. He knew the meaning of being ready to die to protect his beloved.

What would Cardinal Sin tell us about what is going on the country now? What would Cardinal Sin do about the situation of the Church and government now? Only Cardinal Sin can answer for Cardinal Sin and only Cardinal Sin can answer like Cardinal Sin.

As I remember him and as I knew him, I offer these conjectures of a nostalgic former secretary.

I close my eyes and imagine him in the car on our way to an engagement. I imagine him say: The real battle about the reproductive health bill is not with the legislature where the debates are ongoing and where the voting will be done. The real person to wrestle with is not the President who has sadly called the bill a priority bill. The real battle is in the minds and hearts of our youth. The youth are being misled by wrong teachings. The youth are like parched dry sponge. In their thirst, they absorb all and retain them regardless of the purity of source. I pity our youth. The Church cannot impose its right and authority in this highly pluralistic society. It must be willing to join the arena of public opinion, use new methods and approaches and even jejemon vocabulary to make the message of God convincing. It is not the duty of churchmen to lobby in government offices. Our duty is to teach Christ and only Christ. Our duty is to form people’s minds and prick consciences and let those formed consciences speak up in the plaza of public opinion. This is lay empowerment. This is youth empowerment. This is the church of the people not the church of bishops.

There is a problem deeper than the anti life and anti family bills in the legislature. The blasphemous art exhibits point to a deeper and more alarming issue. The irreverent calumny thrown at religious leaders are symptoms of deeper problems. It is due to the wrong understanding of freedom and the misplaced primacy that is laid on conscience.

After EDSA 1986, we all discovered a fresh breeze of freedom in the air. Lost liberties were restored and the freedom to express was held in high esteem. Freedom is indeed a noble human right and a sublime aspiration but it not unlimited. Freedom since EDSA 1986 has been abused, terribly abused. Freedom is not absolute. The limit of freedom is love. The exercise of freedom must make us more loving. If the use of freedom violates the freedom of another, it is licentiousness; it fails to love. That freedom is lewd and obscene.

There is no absolute freedom. Freedom has limits. Its limit is truth. When freedom violates or assails truth, it can no longer be called freedom. It is debauchery and brute arrogance.

Freedom must respect the law. Freedom without respect for law is anarchy. Laws do not restrict freedom. Laws help us to live in order. When life is orderly, freedom is also safeguarded.

Our countrymen who declare themselves Catholics because they attend Catholic liturgies but disregard the commandments of God and the precepts of the Church are gravely in error. To be a Catholic, it is not enough to pray the Catholic prayers. To say you are a Catholic, you must also live as a Catholic. It is not enough to act according to conscience. Before listening to that conscience, we must first insure that the conscience is sensitive to the laws of God. Conscience is not the ultimate tribunal. The Truth that God has taught us is the highest tribunal. That Truth is in the bible. That Truth is handed to us in the teachings of the Church.

How I miss Cardinal Sin! He taught me to cherish freedom but he also warned me not to raise it to a value more than it deserves. Freedom is one of the great gifts of God to men but the greatest gift is love. Use your freedom to be more loving because “the greatest is love”. Aim for the greatest. Freedom must recognize unchanging truths. Freedom must not enchain truth. Truth is the mother of freedom and it is the height of ingratitude to enslave your mother, isn’t it?

He taught me: Follow your conscience when it speaks but make sure the ears of that conscience are ever attuned to God. When a deaf conscience speaks, ignore that voice. That is the voice of error. Knowing what is right and what is wrong is not inborn. Conscience must be formed and molded unto Christ. The duty of conscience is to listen to its God so that it may be credible when it speaks.

The legacy of Cardinal Sin is freedom. Let us understand freedom in depth. The love of Cardinal Sin was the youth and children. He taught them well. I will honor him by loving those he loved and living as he lived and believing in what he stood for.

Forgetting

It's been nearly a year.

It isn't funny how I find myself here. Now. After nearly a year. A year!

It makes me sad thinking how much I've lost and how far I've gone and how nothing's been written. Am I no longer a writer?

It's a valid question. I have barely written anything of myself and my ideas, my adventures and mishaps. Whatever I've written is, essentially, nothing. Air. Spit. Sand. Ghost. And, I have had so much to write about and wanted so much to write about them. But when it came down to it, to words and coherence and logic, all energies went flying out the window and I died. Each and every time I died. I was content to be ghost, to be sand and spit and air. I flew this way and that and I had a crazy fun time and I was nothing.

It's fun being nothing. Having been spent and lost and forgotten. Thriving in others. Fungus. Shallow. Flighty. And sad.

I guess, at the end of the day, I still want to come home even if I've forgotten how.

Chapter 11

"Time goes on, and your life is still there, and you have to live it. After a while you remember the good things more often than the bad. Then, gradually, the empty silent parts of you fill up with the sounds of talking and laughter again, and the jagged edges of sadness are softened by memories.

Nothing will be the same, ever...But there's a whole world waiting, still, and there are good things in it.

It was September, and time to leave the little house that had begun to seem like home...

It is hard to give up the being together with someone...

Somewhere, for (Tatay), I thought suddenly, it would be summer still, summer always."

-Lois Lowry, A Summer To Die