I don't think I need to further discuss what happened in the Philippines a few days ago. If you don't know, there was a hostage taking last Monday with a former policeman taking tourists from Hong Kong as hostages in a bus. They were on their way back to their homeland but an unfortunate thing happened. I first read about the news on Yahoo's front page during the morning while I was at the office. I thought it was over at the time it was posted so I didn't make a big deal out of it. Later that day, I got home early and slept. I woke up and the news were showing the hostage crisis. I didn't expect it to turn out that way. A lot of people were killed and our policemen were not doing a great job at the whole situation. When I turned on the tv, the hostage taker was already killed but they were still taking the hostages out of the bus, some were alive while some did not make it alive. This is such a big blow to our country. Just when everybody thought the new administration would mean the start of a new beginning, it just went down furthermore. Now, people in Hong Kong are going wild and they even blacklisted the country and imposed a travel ban. This is bad for tourism. Everybody will now be afraid to go in our country and stereotyping and violence might be seen in the future. Let's pray that we get through this in the future.

The following day, it was another big day as Miss Universe 2010 was held in Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Fortunately, to the delight of Filipinos, our candidate, Ms. Venus Raj, reached all the way to the top 5 and also the only Asian in the top 15. I thought we had a good chance until she committed a major, major blunder in the question & answer portion. But we should be happy that she still gave us something to be proud of.

This week is going fast:) Last Monday, I was given the 5AM to 1PM slot to work, a shift I was afraid of because I didn't know how to go to the office at that time, fortunately, there were public transportation and got to the office safe even though I was a bit late. I sooner found out that we are getting two days off and I got my first one yesterday. I wished it was on another day but I'll just be happy I got one, especially since I've developed a fever and as I'm typing this, my head is killing me with a headache.:(