Mermaid in the Philippines

Philippines is an archipelago, with 7,107 islands, covering 115,831 square miles. Obviously, the country is surrounded by water - the South China Sea or the West Philippine Sea, the Pacific Ocean, the Philippine Sea and the Sulu Sea. Actually, by looking the map of the country, you'll notice that the widest area covering the nation is water, not the land itself. Well, it is also obvious that the people here believe in sirena (siren; mermaid) and siyokoy (merman). That's why, there are urban legends connected with the sea.

Stories

[Taken from Internet:]

It was believed by the folk that when a mermaid is captured (and held captive), it results in a big flood. After "Ondoy," it is said that more people went to the Manila Aquarium than usual to check whether a mermaid was, indeed, in one of the display tanks. Two friends who regularly go to Dumaguete, and one who lives there, also relate that when the seaside city went underwater from heavy rains four years ago, fishermen up and down the coast marched angrily to the Silliman Marine Science lab armed with oars. They were soon joined by farmers carrying pitchforks, whose farms had been inundated. They demanded the release of the mermaid that the marine biologists had purportedly been keeping in a tank (for study?). Poor director Alcala of the marine science department had to rush to the scene in his pajamas to open the tank area! Only then would the folk believe that there was no mermaid imprisoned there. In Dagupan, Pangasinan, a mermaid statue with a fountain used to be in front of the old City Hall until it was torn down during a remodeling. "Mermaids were part of our childhood and our history," says Norma Liongoren. "The rivers criss-crossing Dagupan were said to be her tears. The sirena was the bogey we were frightened with to make us obey." One of the Hundred Islands of Alaminos was the location of the first "Jezebel" movie (which has had many incarnations). A mermaid statue still exists there. Legends about mermaids are prevalent all over the Philippines. As in Angono, sightings are still reported-of a mermaid with long hair, perched on a rock, luring sailors and swimmers with her singing, then drowning them. (The dugong, says John I. Teodoro, with its hairy body, looks very much like a fat mermaid.) A science (?) education (?) building under construction had a glass dome, it was rumored, to become the tank for a sirena. This was a news in yahoo.com by Gilda Cordero-Fernando in Manila/Philippine Daily Inquirer | Asia News Network – Sun, Dec 18, 2011 Here she summarized the urban legends about the mermaids captured here in the country.

Merman / Mermaid Carcass Found on Beach Emailed photos purportedly show the carcass of a merman (or mermaid) washed up on a beach variously said to be located in Venda, South Africa; Cebu, The Philippines; Malaysia; and Fort Desoto Beach, Florida. Description: Viral images Circulating since: July 2006 Status: Fake Example: Email contributed by Anil R., Aug. 24, 2006: Fwd: FW: believe it or not Good morning all.............. THIS IS FOUND IN THE PHILIPPINES SHORE OF SORSOGON. AND THIS IS FOR REAL, WE DO HAVE THIS KIND OF CREATURES IN THE PHILIPPINES. BELIEVE OR NOT ITS UP TO YOU!!!!! This creature was found along the shores of Sorsogon.

Mermaids were very controversial. No one knows the truth if they definitely live or they were just a product of imagination and folklore. Many say they're real but some says they don't. The AAH (Aquatic Ape hypothesis) is one explaining the origin of these creatures. That, some time in the past, some of our ancestors adopted the wet area than the dry ones. It also explains the possibility that some of our body parts were connected with them. Example, our hairless body, unlike the other terrestrial mammals, we're not covered with fur, just like the other mammals who evolved from aquatic ancestors, and even with dolphins and whales. There were many explanations, though I can't enumerate and explain them clearly.

Actually, their was this rumor from overseas, about the Discovery Channel's documentary concerning mermaids which was entitled Mermaid: The Body Found. It was a part of Animal Planet's Monster Week. Although, this is not connected to the legend I had posted above, still it deals with mermaid. This is for the sake of the other people who haven't heard or read the truth yet. [Click Here[1][2]]

Source:
http://ph.news.yahoo.com/philippine-urban-legends-093005285.html
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_merman_carcass.htm

The Diplomat Hotel

Ghosts are made up of pure energy, similar to electricity and radio waves. That's the simple hint of the science's explanation to what ghosts are made of. Well, some of the science descriptions of mysterious things (living or non-living) are almost credible - not 100%.

By the way, we're not talking about the anatomy of ghosts, we're about to tackle the mysteries composed by the Diplomat Hotel. Whether this is real or not, I still enlist it here.

Stories

[Taken from Internet:]

Ghost Hunters International: Diplomat Hotel The Diplomat Hotel sits on a hill overlooking Baguio City in the Philippines, and if GHI's (very credible) tour guide is to be believed, many of the townsfolk below fear it and believe the place to be haunted. Originally a monestary, the clergy there were executed by the Japanese during WWII and the building was used as a Sanatorium. After the war it was converted to a hotel, which was so popular that it now sits in a ruined state of disrepair, seeming to wait for the jungle to reach up and crumble it back down to dust. I kid, but the place is quite overgrown and apparently not in current use by anyone, which is a shame for such a grand building. The reports of activity include "black figures" and a "white lady" — and by "white" I don't think they meant "caucasian", although I suppose that's possible. After the reports of a "white figure" at Clark Hospital (the investigation which aired immediately prior to this in the same episode), other similar reports scattered through TAPS' history and of course the similarity between the description of "black figures" and the ubiquitous "shadow men" which are commonly reported at "haunted" locations I am curious about the consistency. It almost seems childish in its simplicity, and maybe it's really just some sort of trick-of-the-mind making people see these figures either clothed-in or comprised entirely of white or black, but one thing seems certain: these reports form a common link between entirely disparate reports of haunting. This would seem to minimize the possibility of "misidentification" and lend more credence to the idea that these people really are all seeing the same thing. That of course doesn't tell us whether the things they're seeing exist externally in front of them or if they're somehow hallicinations generated by the human mind, but either way I find it fairly fascinating. Again, Robb is playing with his new headphones, which "normalize" the sounds and reduce high-volume noises while boosting low ones. At one point early in the night he believes he hears a man's voice, but no one else hears it and no source presents itself. Barry noted that there were some very tall cellphone (or possibly radio?) towers nearby that loomed over the property and he hypothesized that the EM fields generated by those towers might cause people on the grounds to experience hallucinations, generating the sightings. Brandy & Angela had heard about an underground tunnel system and they believed they found an entrance but it just seemed to be some sort of standalone concrete room beneath the ground — perhaps a small bunker of some kind. They went down, but were quickly frightened away by spiders; I'll forgive the girls of GHI this one time because they still acted more professionally around a spider than Steve Gonsalves has in the past and less skittish than just about every female investigator we've ever seen put on a TAPS investigation. Barry & Dustin rigged a camera onto a pole and lower it down into another such underground room, but weren't able to see much. Barry thought he heard a voice though; and this time he was right. Robb & Dustin climbed down into the chamber and were looking around when Robb found the source of the man's voice: a man. Apparently someone had taken up residence in the underground room; and so it was that the Ghost of the Diplomat Hotel turned out to be a homeless dude. Now, obviously a homeless guy isn't responsible for figures in white (or probably the dark figures either) but his presence there was enough to make GHI stop looking for ghosts and declare the place "not haunted". Overall I'd say it was the correct reaction, but I do wish they'd spent more time exploring these reports of white and shadowy figures. On the bright side, I'm sure we'll see many more such reports in upcoming investigations and hopefully we'll get a bit closer to understanding what people are seeing the next time.

Source:
http://www.skepticalviewer.com/2009/02/12/ghi-diplomat-hotel/

Trade Fixtures Exception (a ditty by moi)

Dirt in McDonald's Foods

Urban Legends are not only based on false stories with full of exaggeration, but some of them came from real ones, though added with almost incredible information. Legends like this can be true, in the other hand, it was not absolutely real. However, it was normal for fast-food restaurants to cook incorrectly or accidentally serve a reject dish.

I remember the rumored stories about the Bulate Burger (Earthworm Burger). It was absolutely unreal. What I mean to say is, every restaurants may experience similar faults. How hard they try to avoid flaws, they may still done the same.

Stories

[Taken from Internet:]

CASE: RAT POOP IN McCHICKEN PLACE: McDONALDS GLORIETTA Date: Fri Sep 29, 2000 1:47am Subject: BEWARE OF McDONALD'S - GLORIETTA BRANCH! Friends, I send you this message to warn you of the danger of eating in fastfood restaurants especially in McDonald's Glorietta Branch. My wife was food poisoned last Sunday, September 10, 2000 after eating a piece of McDo chicken with feces ("TAE") of rodents on it. It was a good thing that my 6-year old daughter was not poisoned after taking one little bite of the McDo chicken. On the said date, my wife, my daughter and an in-law visited the McDonald's outlet of Glorietta and ordered McDo chicken among other things. After taking a few bites of the McDo chicken, my wife noticed a foul and disgusting taste. She spat out the morsel of McDo chicken from her mouth and checked the food and noticed black objects, which she thought was "tae ng ipis" but we later discovered as "tae ng daga". Since she already has ingested a few bits of the chicken, she felt dizzy and started to vomit. A service crew approached my wife only after repeated calls and only after my wife's sister-in-law raised her voice. The McDo chicken was quickly whisked away from their table and thereafter, a certain Ms. Edna Resurreccion, who introduced herself as the Assistant Branch Manager, came and unbelievably offered to replace the food my wife ordered without even asking about her condition. Worse, the service crew formed a "human barricade" by surrounding their table, perhaps to prevent other customers from hearing my wife's complaint. Since my wife's vomiting seemed to be uncontrollable, she rushed to Makati Medical Center (MMC) through her own initiative. No one from the McDonald's store bothered to accompany my wife to the hospital. Ms. Resurreccion was kind enough to follow only after I informed her that my wife is in MMC. Worst, my wife made the payments for all the medical tests, medicines and check-up through her health card. A few days after the incident, Mr. Christopher "Chic-Chic" Perez, McDonald' s Operations Consultant asked to meet my wife. Though Mr. Perez is a cousin of my wife, he did not make a dent on my wife's disgust and disappointment with the way McDonald's handled the incident. However, a positive aspect we got during the meeting with Mr. Perez was the admission of a leak in McDonald's ? Glorietta Branch's food storage area that may have been the source of the intrusion of elements. Mr. Perez has repeatedly assured my wife that they are doing something to close up the leak. How unfortunate though that my wife has been diagnosed to have contracted TYPHOID FEVER and is now suspected to have LEPTOSPIROSIS (a sickness that may lead to death if left untreated). Results of the current medical tests will be known in a few days. It is my hope that she won't come out positive of leptospirosis. My wife has not reported for work for the past 14 days due to high fever, severe headache, weakness, intermittent chills and diarrhea. We have demanded a written apology from the Management of McDonald's Restaurant but we have not received any up to this time. It pains me and my wife to realize what had happened. We have a hard time explaining the incident to my daughter, who is, by the way, "used" to be a Ronald McDonald fan. PLEASE DO NOT LET THIS THING HAPPEN TO YOU AND YOUR LOVED ONES. SEND THIS TO YOUR FRIENDS SO THEY MAY THINK TWICE BEFORE ENTERING A McDONALD'S RESTAURANT.

CASE: MOLDS IN A HAMBURGER BUN PLACE: McDONALDS INTRAMUROS I am Bill Householder, an American living in the Philippines for more than a year now, married to a Filipina wife, the former Doddie Pacion. Last July 19,2000, my wife and I ate lunch at McDonald's-Intramuros near Colegio de San Letran. Doddie was five and half months pregnant at that time and was very hungry. She noticed a funny taste in her Big Mac burger and by the time she found out why it was so, it was too late. Imagine my wife's horror and dismay when she found out the remaining one-fourth of her Big Mac burger had black and blue-green molds on the underside of the hamburger bun. We complained to the management of the store and they refunded only her meal. They only were only going to go that far had I not insisted of getting the store manager's name in case my wife got sick. She did. Later that night, Doddie was throwing up severely and had to go to her OB doctor the next day. It was severe food poisoning due to black & blue molds. She was hospitalized for 3 days, the food poisoning triggered preterm labor and she nearly lost the baby and could have lost her life as well. My wife had to stop working because of the 2 months bed rest ordered by her OB-Gyne. McDonald's paid for the hospital bill and related medical expenses of my wife. For compensation of her loss of income, pain, suffering and the chance of having a baby with gastrointestinal disorders, McDonald's refuses to compensate what is due to my wife and baby. They even refused to admit fault, in their letters and conversations to us, with regards to the moldy bun causing her food poisoning. I can't believe McDonald's corporate doctors even went as far as to flatly deny my wife having preterm labor ignoring the medical certificate issued by her doctor and the hospital. Doddie is still taking Duvadilan to control her preterm labor. What my wife went through was atrocious. The emotional turmoil alone was so grievous I find it hard to write of it even now. The heartache of almost losing our FIRST baby drove the both of us to tears many times. Not even mentioning the severe physical pain she has had to endure due to the preterm labor. Their Mktg. & PR Manager, Mr. Jojo Samson, offered only about P20,000.00 as compensation to my wife and the baby. His reason for such a measly amount? "It comes from our PR & Mktg. budget which does not amount to much", he said. Mr. Samson even casually mentioned that if we go to court, he can easily "bury" our story from the Philippine media. We filed a criminal case against McDonald's with the Manila Trial Court and legal proceedings begin this October 12, 2000. We didn't want to go to this but we are forced to these measures. We expected more honesty and honor from a company who claim to uphold quality, service and customer satisfaction as stated in their People Promise principles. We recently received a lot of emails regarding the McDonald's Glorietta incident and found out there was another case involving that same store in that mall where a guy has DIED of food poisoning last November 1999. We are outrage by this lack of sympathy, callousness and disregard of human life by McDonald's. Please pray for my wife, our baby, the wife of Mr. Jonathan Herbolario and the soul of the poor guy who left a wife and two young daughters. Pray that justice is served to all of us. Sincerely, Bill Householder

Source:
http://timothy2170.multiply.com/journal/item/93

Getting to know me, getting to know all about me....

I generally tend to talk a lot about law school, and now that I'm done, about bar prep. I rarely talk about myself in a strictly personal sense, because I like to pretend that I'm operating under the shield of anonymity. What the hell, though? This is my blog and if you don't like this particular entry, you can content yourself with the law-related blog that's sure to follow.

There are relatively few things I can't live without. Here are a few of the things that make my "have to have" list.

1) Sleep--obviously, we'll all die if we don't sleep. However, if I do not sleep, I have the added benefit of being a raging bitch. I need at least 8 hours per night, and I tend to get in bed early rather than sleep in.

2) Citizen jeans (specifically, the Dita style)--this past Christmas, my awesometastic boyfriend invested in a pair of ridiculously overpriced jeans for my wardrobe. He somehow hit the amazing-jeans lottery, because these ARE.IT. I'm really short (5'2) so the inseam (31") works awesomely with a pair of heels, and the rise in front and back are high enough to cover asscrack without looking like mom jeans. The Oxford wash is as buttery as velvet. They feel like money. And I've bought 3 pairs since (off ebay, of course). Which brings me to my next obsession:

3) Ebay. I love ebay. I love deals (but hate couponing), so this is my site of choice. I'm constantly trolling, and wish I had MOAR MONIES so I could buy ALL THE THINGS. Normally I'm content to buy tiny things off of ebay, or things I would be purchasing anyway (so I might as well get a good deal on it, right?).

4) My support pillow. You know those hideously ugly pillows that offer you back support and have the arms? Ugly as sin? I couldn't bring myself to buy one for the longest time (both due to ugly factor and the fact that I didn't want to shell out $15, since I'm a huge cheapskate). Now, I'll never go without my ugly-as-shit pillow.

5) Intuition razor--like the support pillow, I hate shelling out the money for the cartridges. But they're worth it. And anything that ensures my legs aren't hairy and scaly is worth a few extra dollars (but seriously guys, why the hell are razors so effing expensive?!?!?!?!).

6) Candle warmers--these are cheap. And amazing. I can always have melted, amazing-smelling candles in my house. And I don't have to worry about burning down my house or setting my eyebrows on fire. (The latter has happened before, only it was a grill and IT'S A LONG STORY, SO GET OFF MY BACK.)

7) My Dinair airbrush makeup--spent lots of money on it. Worth it. Enables me to quickly apply my makeup, covers everything I need to cover, allows me to blend two or three colors to get the perfect match for my skintone, and doesn't break me out. Also, the makeup ends up lasting a lot longer than most foundations I've used.

There you have it...seven things that I consider to be personally awesome. You're welcome.

Barbri Amp: What it says v. what it means

Yes, Barbri is still struggling to get its shit together with regards to Barbri AMP, much to the chagrin of the people who paid shittons of money for its proven track record of "experience" and "success." Whatev.

Robert the Evil Doll

My recent post about the evil doll, Annabelle got me thinking about dolls. It seems I am not the only one who is afraid of dolls and it also seems like there is a good reason. The association between dolls or poppets and witchcraft and evil goes back as long as there have been dolls. During the Salem witch trials, mere possession of one of these diabolical items was enough to earn you the title of witch. Dolls, throughout history, have been used in magic as symbolic ties to real people or supernatural entities. It is not surprising that books are filled with stories of cursed and evil dolls.

The most famous and diabolical of the cursed dolls is a doll named Robert. Robert was a gift to a young boy named Gene Otto. The doll was made of straw and was given to him by a maid. If the legend is true, the maid was angry at the Gene's family for dismissing her and the doll was actually a voodoo doll designed specifically to hurt Gene and is family. After the doll was given to Gene, the family began to notice that Gene had an unnatural attachment to the doll. Gene took it everywhere with him and spent many hours in his room alone conversing with the doll. Witnesses say that when they listened in on Gene they heard two voices speaking when Gene was alone in the room with his doll.

Time past and Robert's malevolence grew. Witnesses began to report seeing the doll moving from window to window. The Otto's claimed that they saw the doll move and heard him giggle. Often things in the house would turn up broken and when the Otto's confronted Gene about the incidences he would say, "Robert did it." Gene began having nightmares. One night the parents ran into his room and found Gene screaming. All of the furniture was overturned and Robert was standing over Gene. The doll collapsed when the Ottos walked in.

Time didn't seem to tarnish Gene's attachment to the doll and even as an adult he kept the doll with him. Gene remained in his family home with his doll after his parents died. Gene got married and Robert became a source of difficulties in the marriage and it ended. Finally, Gene tried to lock the doll in the attic, which is where Robert was found after Gene's death. Today, Robert lives in a Key West museum where he is reported to have continued his wicked works.