BREAKING NEWS: UNIVERSITY OF ILOILO IS NOW UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT

It all started from a mere rumor.
 
And it turns out that the rumor is true: The Lopezes no longer own the University of Iloilo.
 
No, it's not Lucio Tan this time.
 
Instead, it's the Philippine Investment Management (PHINMA), Inc--a Makati-based company whose core businesses include construction, financial management, real estate, and oil exploration and processing--that now owns UI.
 
PHINMA--which also owns Araullo University in Nueva Ecija and Cagayan De Oro College in Misamis Oriental--is being headed by Makati Business Club's incumbent chairman and former finance secretary during the time of president Fidel V Ramos, Ramon R Del Rosario Jr.
 
Besides being the top honcho of PHINMA, he also serves on the boards of directors of Ayala Land, Inc; Holcim Philippines, Inc; Trans-Asia Oil and Energy Development Corporation; Asian Institute of Management; De La Salle Philippines; and a host of other big companies and institutions with rich-sounding names.
 
With Mr Del Rosario's impressive track record, the students of UI hope that they'll be in better hands with PHINMA, which has reportedly made unprecedented improvements in the two said schools it now owns.
 
Hopefully, this change in management should also mean better facilities, better instruction, better policies, better graduates, even better board exams ratings, and a better stature altogether for UI.
 
After all, PHINMA's corporate tag line (according to its website) is "Life Can Be Better."
 
Sources say negotiations regarding UI's buyout may have begun as early as 2005. The agreed amount of sale is unknown...yet. Rumors have it though that UI's old owners raked in nearly a billion.
 
In 2003, PHINMA set to build a network of three to five universities and colleges all over the country with a combined student population of 50,000 to 75,000.

Among its investment options were Araullo University in Cabanatuan City, the University of Pangasinan, Computronics College in Dagupan City, the University of Iloilo, and West Negros College in Bacolod City.
 
In April 2004, PHINMA acquired Araullo University, and Cagayan De Oro College in June 2005.
 
UI will be officially taken over by its new owners between March and June 2009.
 
Meanwhile, as of this writing, all UI employees--from members of the board of trustees down to the janitors--are preparing their service records, personal files and things, updated curriculum vitae for most, and retirement applications for some. 


Photo Source: Philippine Business Magazine Website

THANKS AND GOODBYE, GRANDMASTER HELIO GRACIE

The martial arts community is a separate universe on its own, and Helio Gracie--the creator of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu--could be one of its biggest and oldest stars.
 
But even real, literal stars will one day run out of fuel and die. And in the case of the man who gave us one of the world's greatest fighting styles, this martial arts star is now gone.

Gracie passed away at the age of 95, on 29 January 2009 at his ranch in Itaipava, a mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He was buried in the afternoon of the same day.
 
Sources say he died of pneumonia.
 
A sixth-degree black belt in Judo and a tenth-degree red belt in BJJ, Helio Gracie revolutionized martial arts along with his older brother Carlos (who died in 1994 at the age of 92) by introducing ground-fighting techniques based from Judo and Japanese Jujitsu, which he learned from Japanese Judo expert Mitsuyo Maeda. These "new" techniques emphasized leverage and position as a way to compensate for size differences among opponents. 

During his lifetime, Gracie was involved in two legendary fights. The first was against legendary Japanese Judo champion Masahiko Kimura--who outweighed him by some 40 pounds--in 1951 when Carlos threw in the towel after Kimura broke Gracie’s arm with a reverse ude-garami technique, a shoulder lock in Judo which is known today among BJJ practitioners as the "Kimura lock," as a tribute to the Japanese fighter's victory over the BJJ founder. His second major fight, which happened four years later, was against his former student Valdemar Santana, who was also a practitioner of Capoeira, Judo, and Boxing. After nearly four hours of combat, Gracie succumbed to exhaustion against his much younger opponent.
 
Gracie had seven sons (Rickson, Royler, Rolker, Royce, Relson, Robin, and Rorion) and two daughters (Rerika and Ricci).

Rorion was one of the founders of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, while Royce was proclaimed hall of famer in the UFC by winning three times between 1993 and 1994.
 
The fighting style that Gracie created came to international prominence in the martial arts community in the 1990s, through son Royce's impressive and decisive victories over larger and stronger opponents from other martial arts styles, such as Karate, Judo, Greco-Roman Wrestling, Tae Kwon Do, Kung Fu, and Boxing, among others.

BJJ has since become a staple art for many MMA fighters today and is largely credited for bringing widespread attention to the importance of ground fighting.  
With this legacy and string of accomplishments that will surely outlive him, it can be said that Helio--whose name, I surmise, was chosen by his parents in reference to the sun, the star of our solar system--indeed shone during his lifetime. And brightly he did.
 
Thanks and goodbye, Grand Master.

It was a fruitful, well-spent life.

FIFTY-CENTAVO CUT ON TEXT MESSAGES: WE'VE BEEN CONNED AGAIN

Let me just digress again by saying that Mrs Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is a lying shithead.
 
In her State of the Nation Address two days ago, she said: "Texting is a way of life. I asked the telecoms to cut the cost of messages between networks. They responded. It is now down to 50 centavos."

The people believed her and rejoiced--I did, too--only to realize after that what our president told us wasn't true. 

We all thought that the price cut was for good and for real (she made it sound that way), and wasn't just some three-month promo of the telecommunications companies.

We all thought that despite the "undernourishing effects" of 12% E-VAT on our favorite instant pancit canton, pandesal, and Jollibee products, we somehow had a reason to be thankful to our economist-president and to her administration.

Unfortunately for us, a text message still costs P1.00, unless we'd register with our respective network providers to avail of the promo--a very important information that Mrs Arroyo deliberately omitted from her report. 

As with her many previous boo-boos, she again just made an ass of herself and her administration with that bogus declaration, which (I think) could have stemmed from the fact that she had a very short list of more realistic, more honest accomplishments to brag about, which was why she pathetically included the supposed price cut on text messages that never happened. 

Mrs Arroyo has once again proven to us that "lying is a way of (her) life" and she indeed is one shameless liar, who couldn't quit issuing false promises and declarations just to make her administration appear pro-poor and graft-free and results-oriented.
 
Well, Mrs Arroyo, I hope you'd get to read this while you're eating polvoron: I won't mind if your next SONA would just be a five-minuter as long as every thing in it is true. I don't want another 57 minutes (the length of your recent SONA) of embellished "facts," more than half of which the people don't and can't see or feel in their everyday lives.

You might as well just shove that thick report up your tiny ass.