Brain Contour

Grab a copy of The Peg Leg Update volume 1, issue 2 from few locations in Brookings. If you haven’t read the first issue, you should.

The Peg Leg Update second issue has improved a lot compared to the first print. The inside layout gives more good-looking pages, presented in columns. The articles are still very interesting and the varied topics are keeping true to what the LeClair wrote in his first editorial — just anything under the sun.

I am blessed to have the best friends in the world. I find consolation, boosting support and cheer when I am with them. Proof: they helped me the countless times I fell, cheered for me when they saw me about to quit and pushed me to the limit so I would learn how to skate on ice.

This past weekend, I had a conversation with a friend about going to the ice skating center again. She wants to learn how to skate, so I told her the story of the day I finally set foot on an ice-skating rink. Coming from a tropical country where ice is more associated with shakes, ice cream and ice candy (ice water in plastic pouches) rather than snow, ice-skating is the least likely topic of conversation among friends. Thus, my knowledge of the sport is way below amateur level.

Oh my gully! Poor Philippines. My country ranks 105 (out of 182 countries) in the just released 2009 rankings of the UN Human Development Index (HDI). The report shows the Philippines down by 15 spots from 90 in the 2007/2008 rankings.

Norway dethrones Iceland moving up from no. 2 to no. 1.

I am re-posting this piece — one of the longest articles I have written.

Bugasok Falls

“Mi pozo parece agua lluvia (My well water tastes like rain water)”, remarked grandma who had her artesian well on our backyard dug when I was still 6. February 11, 1980, that was. As a child in the 80’s, I had countless sweet memories of the well. Take for instance grandma who arduously took time to tip pail after pail of water over my head as she bathed me every morning. Coming from a sea swim, she would tenderly sprinkle a little water on my feet to give caution of the coldness the well water would probably bring on me. There were moments that I did not stop bathing with friends, until grandma hollered at us that it was suppertime. Joyful memories cut, I sighed…

Are you among the world’s best lovers? OnePoll.com conducted a poll of 15,000 women from 20 countries asking them to rate nations on the ability of their men in bed and to give reasons for their answers. Who are the world’s worst lovers? Results of the poll showed that the German men are the worst, because they are “too smelly.”

The world’s best lovers are the Spanish men.

American men are considered worst too — being too rough in bed! Do you agree with the poll results?

No, I did not originally come up with the title. There is a team from Kansas State University Geography Department that mapped the 7 Deadly Sins across America, by plotting per-capita stats on things like theft (envy) and STDs (lust).

See where South Dakota is on the map. Are South Dakotan sinners? South Dakotans seem to be saintly in terms of envy and wrath. But look at “lust”, oh my, the western part of SD is so devilish.

Check out the 7 maps below. But first, here is the legend.

1. Greed - Average income compared with number of people living below the poverty line.

At exactly 1 AM, September 29, 2009, the Mediacom Cable TV signal in Brookings, South Dakota was cut off. It has been over an hour already since the interruption and the signal hasn’t been restored yet!

My little brother, Jeffrey, who works in Manila, was among the thousands of people affected by the tropical storm “Ondoy” (international codename: Ketsana) that hit the Philippines this weekend. After my sister (in Illinois) and I heard about the worsening situation in Manila due to flooding caused by the torrential rains, we immediately contacted our brother, but to no avail. His phone, and all his friends’ phones, were unreachable. We posted messages on Facebook hoping other friends and relatives could somehow trace our brother’s whereabouts.

Last night, we finally got a note that my brother and some others were trapped in the second floor of a two-story house. Water on the first floor was about chest-high.