Happy 4 Years!

Happy 4th Anniversary to my wife and 6th Anniversary to my girlfriend... Thanks for our 3 wonderful kids, 2 handsome princes and 1 beautiful princess... I love you so much!

My Lovely Little Girl

Ultrasound 2nd Set

They're getting big pretty fast! Now less than 3 months away, can't wait to see them for the first time...

My Soon-to-be-bigger Family

The best birthday, Christmas, and any day present for me!

Reflections

There's nothing more painful to a parent than losing the love of his life: his child.

One Less Better Person

“I am committed to ensuring that the president of a country like ours must not live in a style which is totally different from that of the masses of the people who put him in power.” - Nelson Mandela (1918 - 2013)

I don't know him much as a person, only through news clippings and articles from when he was freed from prison and later became president of South Africa. But I hold him in high regards, that his simpleness and honesty made him a lot more of a better person than most people of his stature.

His statement quoted above made me think of how politicians and government officials here in the Philippines act, live, and think of themselves. Being in a position in the government makes these people think that they are better than the average people; they are a class apart. It is all about power and influence. They wave at the people like they're celebrities, smiling with a satisfied, smug look in their faces. Public service is a sham. Their faces front infrastructure projects and development programs like they are the ones funding these activities, and not from the tax payers' sweat and blood.

They live in mansions and high end subdivisions, and ride luxury cars, while their constituents cramp themselves in their shanties and chase jeeps and buses, sometimes having to walk miles on end. Politics is good business, apparently, which also sometimes become the family business. Father, mother, daughter, son, cousin, husband, wife, everyone has to have a slice of the pie.

I am not for socialism; heck, one must reap the fruit of his labor. But extravagance of those who were put in power to serve the multitude is plain wrong. Running the country, the government is a big thing, yes, but it does not warrant you getting special treatment to anything. It is you who actually have to serve as an example to everyone how to be humble, kind, firm, and just.

The position you hold is not your birth right but a privilege given to you by the people you wooed during your campaigns, to whom you promised to serve and take care of once you are elected. I pray to God you keep your word.

With Mandela's passing, we're one less better person.

“A great man is always willing to be little.”  ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Severino Palermo of Guinobatan, Albay

I just had another lucky strike today: finding my maternal grandfather, Severino Orogo Palermo.

 

He was born November 1, 1926 to Francisco Palermo, 35 and Dorotea Orogo, 31, in Mauraro, Guinobatan, Albay.

Dorotea Orogo, 31

Francisco Palermo, 35