Pinoy Daily Talk

Yesterday, March 28, 2009, the Philippines and 83 other countries join hands in the observance of the Earth Hour Day. Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007, when 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour.

Since then, many other cities around the world adopted the event in 2008. Earth Hour has been a global event organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and is held on the last Saturday of March annually, asking households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and other electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change.

This year, Earth Hour has been transformed into the world’s first global election, between Earth and global warming. For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote – Switching off the lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming. WWF are urging the world to VOTE EARTH and reach the target of 1 billion votes, which will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009.

In the Philippines, Makati City was designated by the World Wide Fund (WWF) as the official “Earth Hour Flagship City” with Makati City Mayor Jejomar Binay as the Earth Hour 2009 Ambassador. As the Flagship City, Makati endorse the movement and did a citywide participation to symbolize the solidarity of the Philippines with the rest of the world.

The event started with a short program at 7 p.m and at exactly 8:30 p.m., all lights on lampposts in 27 major roads and public buildings in Makati and other cities and municipalities are switched off for one hour.

Myriads of events and activities are also held in different parts of the world in the observation of Earth Hour!

How about you, what did you vote? do you switch your lights off or not?

Fountain

2009 is here…

I would like to greet everyone a Happy and Prosperous New Year!!!

Here are some ideas for you on how Happy New Year was spoken in different languages:

To know more of these different languages…

New Year is one of the most awaited occasion in the Philippines. It is a celebration of huge festivities. People looks forward to this occasion in preparation for the coming year.

Prices of fruits are getting higher as New Year celebration is fast approaching. It is  believed that fruits brings good luck specially the round ones. It is a belief of prosperity and abundance for the coming year. So, Filipino families try to fill their tables with as many fruits as they can to welcome the coming year.

Fireworks are also an important part of the celebration. New Year is not a New Year without fireworks. It is a symbol of happiness and a traditional way of greeting the New Year with joy. Of course, also included in the celebration are the firecracker casualties. Every year, a lot of people suffer from firecracker explosion due to carelessness or firecracker mishandling.

Few hours before New Year, families gather to attend the mass. Then, after the mass, they gather around the table to enjoy the “Media Noche”. Lots of different Filipino delicacies were served at the table as a symbol of abundance. And at the stroke of midnight, fireworks and firecrackers are being lit to drive away evil spirits and to welcome the New Year.

New Year brings to us new hope, another year of fresh expectations — from ourselves, from the family, from the community, from our work and most specially from our government. Nothing in the coming year can change this hope even poverty, rising prices, unemployment, underemployment or even death.

Filipinos are optimists. He is filled with hope — hope that new doors and windows will open for new openings and beginnings.

So, lets all welcome the New Year with and a new and refreshed hope…