I almost marked the email below a spam. Coming from a tobacco media and sent to my work email address is not something common to see in my inbox. Regular emails that flood my office account usually come from research collaborators and professors whose email addresses end with dot edu. Had it not been for the subject line that had the words “Invitation to participate…”, I would have not opened nor read the contents.

Do you live in one of America’s happiest cities? The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index released the results from the interviews with more than 353,000 Americans during 2009, and the happiest city in the U.S. is Boulder, Colorado!

Yeah, not a single city from South Dakota!

Scores were based from these six indexes:

What was CNN National correspondent, Susan Candiotti, thinking today while reporting live at the protest in NY by 9/11 families who are against terrorist trials?

I was watching CNN around 11 A.M. central time, Saturday, when the news segment about the protest came. Susan Candiotti was with the protesters, covering the event on the field. When Candiotti went live on TV, it was the U.S. National Anthem that was played on the background with protesters around her standing still. What the news reporter, Candiotti, did next was totally beyond incomprehensible. She tapped one of the protesters (later named Geraldine Davie) on the shoulder and then began saying she was sorry for disrupting her in the middle of the anthem. WTF!

While the anthem was played, and while everyone surrounding her was showing the level of respect the National Anthem deserves, Susan Candiotti acted disrespectfully by starting the interview right then. The anthem that’s supposed to represent the United States of America was disrespected by a veteran reporter!

A Filipino was declared the 2009 CNN Hero of the Year! His name is Efren Peñaflorida. I watched the short video clip with Peñaflorida tonight as CNN reported the winner during the ceremony at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood Saturday night. Congrats!

Efren Peñaflorida won the 2009 CNN Hero of the Year award through online voting (and I voted for this guy last week). According to CNN, Peñaflorida received 2.75 million online votes, the highest among the 10 finalists. He was honored for his “Kariton Klassroom”, which brings education to poor Filipino children.

I was browsing TV channels tonight and happened to land on the KESD public channel with the Worldfocus broadcast. Worldfocus featured a short clip of the US-Philippines relationship, which they described as a love-hate relationship.

Watch the video below. This is so short a clip that I don’t think it is enough to describe how we Filipinos share friendship with the Americans.

There is no stopping for H1N1 (aka swine flu) fury spreading across the university campus. Few days ago, I have heard that one person from our GISCE department has been infected by the H1N1 virus. He went to the Health Center for check-up and was confirmed positive of the deadly flu strain. It is more likely that in the coming days more cases will be spotted.

Many people from the center are also getting sick. It may just be a regular flu and not H1N1, but it is just scary to hear people sneezing and coughing all the time because you really don’t know what the sickness is.

Literally, Brookings, South Dakota has a zero crime rate. When you watch the early evening newscast, you hardly hear anything about Brookings. If there is something to broadcast, it will most likely be about road mishaps, or the state of the cold winter weather, or the state of the economy. None of such nature like men in motorcycles firing guns to a politician’s house, or men robbing a bank located just across the police station, or a truck driver intentionally running over a person twice — you know, the type of crimes that some countries consider ok-fine, or ordinary. If you want to see something tragic in Brookings, you would get frustrated.

I think the most catastrophic crime that can be committed in this small city is bike stealing. Funny, but I am quite certain it is. In as much as I would want to believe that there should be a single major crime somewhere, there is just none. Because Brookings knows nothing but peace (should not be translated as boring).

According to a “peeping tom” lady, the man she saw naked inside his home while brewing coffee is pure indecent exposure. So the lady reported what she saw to the police and the Northern Virginia man, Eric Williamson, is now charged! WTF!

Eric Williamson, 29, said he did know he could be seen. “Yes, I wasn’t wearing any clothes but I was alone, in my own home and just got out of bed. It was dark and I had no idea anyone was outside looking in at me.”

According to the woman, Williamson wanted to be seen naked. What? Why did the woman look at the window in the first place? She said she saw Williamson walking back and forth from one window to another. So what? It is his home and the woman does not have the right to peep through or follow which window he goes next.