As an international student, so far away from home, life would, in unexpected situations, usher more gloomy moments than much-needed breathes of comforts. If you had gone through what I mentioned above, here is a piece of advice: when lonesome times pester you, run and spread your arms in the middle of cornfields, raise your head to the heavens and reflect of invisibility; only then you can be free of anything. Only then you would triumph in the cruel encounter of remoteness.

Never declare a ceasefire. Don’t quit. When trapped in the binding curse of a lifeless day, try to square the why, the how and then wage war against the adversary even if sometimes the situation looks so dim and hopeless. In times that I am affected and my faith flickers to some extent, I fight back. Human as I am, I admit, disenchantment could hurl inscrutable terrains direct to my heart. But then again, I fight back and keep my pecker up.

Next, don’t even blink or show a sign of such distinctive gesture. Instead, hold a solid gaze and never permit yourself to lose. Loneliness is the fly you whacked on the table. Loneliness is the lady bug you flattened on your way out of the house. Just picture all those and bask in your cute triumphs. The eye of loneliness, I tell you, can be pierced by a no.2 HB pencil and you’d never ever feel sorry killing it.

When you wake up each morning and you feel like crying, cry. Even great warriors could get wounded in the fight and they also drop their swords and cry for just a while. So dedicate a 5-minute crying session if need be. However, always remember that optimism about life must dwell in your every morning.

Fact is, it is hard to be miles away from home. Yet, life teaches you and me how to love our subdued spaces, how to soothe all the hasty blizzards in our torn hearts, how to appreciate today, the coming days and all the events in between, wherever we may be.

There is never a rose without the prick. Most importantly, life is so beautiful, so don’t ever, ever waste it, please.

Dear all,

I would like to share this worrisome experience with all of you.

Its all started when I received a call from someone claiming that he was from Maxis and he asked me to shutdown my phone for 2 hours for 3g update to take place. As I was rushing for a meeting, I did not question and shutdown my cell phone.

After 45 minutes I felt very suspicious since the caller did not even introduce his name. I quickly turned on my cell phone and I received several calls from my family members and the others were from the number that had called me earlier – 3954380.

I called my parents and I was shocked that they sounded very worried asking me whether I am safe. My parents told me that they had received a call from someone claiming that they had me with them and asking for money to let me free. The call was so real and my parents even heard ‘my voice’ crying out loud asking for help. My parent was at the bank waiting for next call to proceed for money transfer. I told my parents that I am safe and asked them to lodge a police report.

Right after that I received another call from the guy asking me to shutdown my cell phone for another 1 hour which I refused to do and hung up. They keep calling my cell phone until the battery had run down. I myself lodged a police report and I was informed by the officer that there were many such scams reported.. MOST of the cases reported that the victim had already transferred the money! And it is impossible to get back the money.

Be careful as this kind of scam might happened to any of us!!! Those guys are so professional and very convincing during calls. If you are asked to shut down your cell phone for updates by the service provider, ASK AROUND! Your family or friends might receive the same call.

Be Safe and Stay Alert!

Please pass around to your family and friends!

Geraldine B. Alvarez, CPA, FLMI, ACS, AIAA
Vice President & Head
Branch Management Division

The Insular Life Assurance Co., Ltd.
17/F, Insular Life Corporate Centre
Filinvest Corporate City
Alabang, Muntinlupa

No way – says few of the people I know. I personally know a research scientist whose first language is not English, whose sub-par writing skills could easily send peers to frown, if not, jerk. But he manages to impress people with good write-ups and well-written documents. The key is to be smart — let others do the writing or the editing (read: flipping it 75%, recall that you cannot even spell 75% of your words) for you! Hire or pay for an academic ghostwriter for your scientific papers. Or get it for free by befriending the better-schooled American writers. Or could also be any person whose English skills are par excellence, someone who could spell receive with “e after c” and not “i after c”. A ghostwriter could edit and refine your rough draft or even create an article from start to finish based on your basic idea.

What do you get from using an academic ghostwriter’s services? What advantage does it contribute to your academic profile when you allow others to compose your ideas? You get credits from a work you never did. You get recognition from peers for a piece of article done by someone else.

All credits go to the research scientist. My non-native-English-speaking friend did not even cited the ghostwriter in the acknowledgment. No mention or trivial hint of the name. But that is the main charm of the ghostwriter — to remain in the shadows, even if it means to be unknown forever.

I have heard of ghostwriting many years ago, but it was mostly about paid writers for book publishing. It was only recently that I learned about getting a thesis or dissertation written by a ghostwriter (paid or not paid). What is wrong with ghostwriting? In terms of legality, online site offering ghostwriting services looks legal to me. For instance, the Academic Ghostwriting website offers to write your research proposals, research methodologies, literature searches, literature reviews, data analysis, and full editing service. And they do it with high quality standards. Their writers and researchers acknowledge the dissertation for what it is, the “culmination of your studies and a major investment.” Also, they promise a service that gives the highest security and delivers utmost discretion.

What could go wrong? You hire them. The ghost writer earns a living or in few cases, is happy to help you. You get your idea published. Everyone is happy. Is this illegal? Maybe not. But it is unethical. The university requires you as a doctoral student to do the dissertation and paper writing by yourself. To employ someone to write the work for you is pure cheating; an academic fraud. PhDs should be capable writers, no matter what your nationality is, regardless of what language you’re writing your dissertation in. If you are a non-native English speaker, and you write your papers in English, learn how to be capable. Remember that your dissertation should demonstrate not only how well you know your subject matter but how effectively you can communicate your ideas through writing. Writing is a skill a doctoral student must develop in the first two years of the doctoral degree.

I have been blessed to have an advisor who’s more than willing to help me improve my scientific-writing skills. I admit that I am way far from being a wordsmith to getting my ideas sell in the academic market. This deficiency, however, made me look at the value of the PhD degree in a much broader perspective. It is not easy to showcase the research if English is not up to the standard the scientific community requires. The perfect solution to this is to learn the tricks of good writing the quickest time possible. How? Learn from your boss. Whatever comments on grammatical structure you receive from a draft paper you make, take them seriously. Read and read more published articles from well-respected scientists on your field. Study their styles. Get some help books. Then write, rewrite and proofread. No ghostwriter. Employing the services of someone other than those involved in the paper, or yourself as in the case of your dissertation, is an admission of failure.

Professors and advisors must also demand excellence from their research/teaching assistants or PhD students. Passing a comprehensive written exam must not be used as a measure of an inherent specialist skill.

With English as a second language, it may be hard to compete. So you and me must trust ourselves a bit more. A scientific paper with grammatical mistakes, may not sound uplifting. But seeing the fruits of having to try harder each time brings a sense of accomplishment.

Believe me, the best decision you can make in your academic life is not to “own” somebody else’s work. Finn (1993) said “that the problem is that writing forces people to think, and delegating writing means delegating thinking. Ghostwriting means ghost-thinking. A society which is managed by people who don’t take the time to think is leaderless.”

Take time to think. Spare a room for written-English development. Don’t you want to be the real person behind the words?

Journal Online

I never fail to read her articles as they are really in a class by itself, a far cry from the rest of the news reports posted on Journal Online and from those I often read from Philippine Star or the Philippine Daily Inquirer. If you translate verbatim a tabloid article written in Filipino, the exact match is Zaida delos Reyes-Palanca’s English article. Read the samples below.

Uncle axes baby’s head! by Zaida delos Reyes-Palanca (Saturday, 19 June 2010) — The news report is about a baby killed by his uncle.

The ax must have made a crunching sound as it cracked Baby Mentac’s skull. Luckily, help arrived. Had relatives appeared seconds late, the one-year-old victim would have been dead. The infant probably nearly choked from blood that gushed from his open head, blanketed his face, then entered his nostrils and mouth.

Man borrows neighbor’s hot wife by Zaida delos Reyes-Palaca (Sunday, 20 June 2010)

Tiger, 37, walked around with pain in his loins. The neglected husband was hungry for wild, sticky sex. He longed to sniff his very busy wife’s naked body. He also missed pinning her underneath his hardness, rubbing her breasts with his muscled chest as well as tickling her mouth and other body cavities with his moustache. Luckily for him, his neighbor’s spouse was also starving for attention. In bed.

Initial reports showed that Tiger (not his real name) was reportedly being neglected sexually by his 45-year-old wife Elin (real name withheld), a businesswoman in Bgy. Cararayan, Naga City.

Elin was reportedly too busy for Tiger. For quite some time, the husband has failed to have sex with his very preoccupied partner. Probably tired of masturbating to ease his sexual tension, or perhaps too hungry for love, the neglected spouse started searching for bedmate. Tiger’s prayers were answered by his neighbor’s hot wife Devon (not her real name).

Tiger and Devon eloped and hid in Bgy. San Antonio in Tinambac, Camarines Sur. The love-sick couple enjoyed each other’s company and sizzling bodies for days. However, their illicit affair was shortlived. They were spotted together by witnesses and their whereabouts reported to their respective spouses. Police apprehended Tiger and Devon at their love nest. The secret lovers returned to their respective partners who have refused to file charges.

Man cut up like jigsaw puzzle! by Zaida delos Reyes-Palaca (Monday, 28 June 2010)

As if to taunt the cops, a killer scattered in two areas the still soft and blood-soaked foot, hands and ears of his victim yesterday. The freshly sawed off body pieces matched and fitted like a demon’s jigsaw puzzle. Perhaps, elsewhere, the rest of the missing victim is starting to rot and be feasted on by flies and maggots.

The body parts were believed to have belonged to a man as these were big and not ordinarily that of a woman. The cut off flesh were found scattered in Baguio City and Benguet.

In a report, the Police Regional Office (PRO) Cordillera Region said the victim’s foot was found 4 a.m. by a promenader in front of a phone booth at Burnham Park.

A right hand was spotted 5:45 a.m. on General Luna Road at Hilltop, Baguio City.

Love it or hate it? If I have to choose, I say love it. We, readers, need a different style of reporting sometimes. And Zaida delos Reyes-Palanca’s articles are what we need, aren’t they?