Taking on the 52 weeks money challenge

Here's to my first post in 2014!

At present, I am taking on the 52 weeks money challenge! It sounds fairly easy enough when you start it, saving less than a 100 in the first 10 weeks, but it's bound to get more difficult after. On searching for checklists I can use though, I only find guides in doolars. Thus, I'm doing this without any regard for the balance with increments of P 10 rather than P 1. If this proves quite successful a challenge, I might just consider doing this annually, and increasing the increments if I'm able to. Being blind to the end balance means, I'll only find out how much I've actually saved at th end of the 52nd week.

If you feel like starting your own challenge, it's always a good idea to start with a small amount. Set a day during the week when you'll be setting aside your money challenge dues. If you're the type who gets motivated seeing your savings grow, by all means, recycle a clear bottle to serve as your personal bank. If you're going traditional, choosing a coin bank is always a good option. You can also create a checklist for yourself if you're really more into visual motivation, or you can make use of technology and set a 52-week long reminder on your smartphones, tablets or any gadget you use.

There are many wyas to go about it, but at the end of the day, it'll always be exciting to take on new challenges that make you a better person and help teach you about saving and budgeting. Come to think of it, this is actually quite a good exercise to teach kids!

Dealing...

I always tell myself I would blog more, write more, dream more, think more and put whatever I feel like out there... But as always, that doesn't seem to be the case. I always end up finding myself writing when it gets too crowded emotionally or mentally that I somehow need to vent. True, venting out to friends seems to be the thing best to do, but there are just simply times I appreciate the pseudo-anonymity the internet provides.

So how is it possible that I survived far more pain in the years of past without the need to write it all down, and yet, the pain I suffer in silence currently has begged me to put it all out there? I can't help but wonder if the strength I had stocked up on in the trying parts of life had somehow been depleted tremendously that I am left with the need to vent out, in my typically vague manner, of course.

Either way, I feel a bit better, though I know this is far from over. But reality and responsibility beckons, and I must heed their call for I am not a super woman, nor do I consider myself extraordinarily gifted with inhuman abilities to juggle everything without need for some emotional reprieve.

News Thoughts: RH Bill Approved

Here's one piece of news that I feel is quite welcome on the heels of the violence of the Connecticut shooting - the RH Bill has finally been approved! Yehey!

Listening on the news last night on the way home, it is very much fun to note that no women member of the Senate had voted against the bill, whereas, the eight senators who had been outvoted are all men. I'm not sure how many voted in the congress are women, but the odds are of course in the favor of the bill at about 60 - 40 split, the actual number of senate being 13 pro - 8 anti, and the congress around 100+ - 80+ (can't recall the exact).

After all the drama that unfolded since its inception, it has been finally approved after the final reading. But its really funny how some of the people involved in passing the bill is so hanged up on the word satisfying. Guess we really are a country run by people who are still unable to grasp the difference between then and now, but luckily for us, we actually do have forward thinkers in the government that looks at it more from the perspective of the realistic need of the country than the spiritual need.

Throughout this event, I am quite glad to note that there are people who started to notice that the church is indeed pushing the boundary protecting the separation of church and state. At least, I'm not the only one noticing how the church seems to want to influence the legislature and allow our country to remain a backward one.

News Thoughts: Royal Family Blamed for Nurse Suicide

If you haven't been hiding under a rock for the last quarter of the year, news of the Duchess of Cambridge aka Kate Middleton, before her marriage to Prince William of the British throne, being pregnant has been overshadowed by a tragedy.

Such joyous news should have been met with tons of congratulations, loads of royal watchers and baby bump watchers would be clamoring to get a glimpse of the commoner cum royal just to see how far along she is, but instead, a tragedy instigated by a prank call lead to this wondrous occasion to be forever stained.

Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse who committed suicide in her quarters at the King Edward VII Hospital, from what I can gather, was of Indian descent. She was a mother of two and very much married at the time of her demise. She was also the receiver of a prank joke by two Australian DJs of a radio show on 2DayFM, Mel Grieg and Michael Christian, three days prior to her suicide. Found among her belongings were three apparent suicide notes, two of which were readily recovered at the scene of the tragedy and the final one most probably in her luggage as reports indicate vaguely that it was found among her possessions. Also noted, injuries on her wrists were found at the time of her death, their nature has been pretty much left unsaid, and it is my best guess that they could have been signs of cutting injuries. How long they have been there, your guess is as good as mine.

Despite obvious reasons pointing to the suicide as something that had already been attempted at, or at least hinted at, a number of people are placing the blame on the newly-wed Royal couple due simply to their association with the hospital, its staff and of course, being the object of the DJs misfired prank call. The person who has been most notably vocal about the whole thing is Morissey, who seems to think that blaming people simply due to association a very clever and wise move.

It makes you wonder why throw light on the Royal couple when we should be more concerned about the lack of awareness people working and living with Saldanha have. Suicidal tendencies aren't something that happens overnight. It is a long-term psychological problem that should be addressed properly. It is not something people decide to do in the spur of the moment. It is something that increases gradually at a time, as the injuries on her wrists would suggest. Suicidal tendencies exist most especially in people who suffers from some form of depression, but it could also be the result of other things. Since we are of course not aware of what the mother of two had been going through, we cannot therefore simply form assumptions at what could have cause this behavior. The prank call may or may not have been the trigger that led to her final attempt at suicide, albeit a successful one, but unless the contents of the three suicide letters were made public, most especially dates to when it was written, we are pretty much left in the dark of her psychological state at the time.

I am deeply sorry for the royal in the womb, as the reports of its conception has been marred by people wanting to blame his parents simply for their association to a woman who had taken her own life. And to those who still claim the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge cares naught for a fallen health care provider, they best be informed that the couple had issued a joint statement concerning this matter shortly after hearing about this tragedy. You can find their statement here.

Celebrity Thoughts: RobSten Marriage

It's not everyday I comment on celebrity news, but more than the rumors of Robert Patinson and Kristen Stew, or RobSten, tying the knot soon, the thing that irks me the most at times is how people who don't know the two personally comment on their relationship as if they know better.

Anyway, here's a link to the article about this news: http://ph.omg.yahoo.com/news/pattinson-stewart-split-marriage-170000474.html

While there are some well-wishers commenting on the article, there are quite a huge number of negative criticisms about it. From people predicting they'll divorce within the next five years, people chastising Robert for forgiving Kristen on her ill-advised discretion, to encouraging him to dump Kristen and date around.

Honestly, we live in such a duality. The guys go like dump the girl she cheated on you, she doesn't deserve a second chance, and yet, a number of these same guys boast about having met and dated tons of "good" women. So how is being a serial dater different from cheating on your current girlfriend many times over? Or are we really into the idea of casual relationship where people sleep around and nobody blinks an eyelash at this practice? And then, there's also the girls who judge Kristen harshly for her momentary indiscretion. It's not like it was something she planned on, it was a result of something much more deeper.

People who are serious about their relationship don't just jump into the arms of another unless there's something they're not getting from their partner. It doesn't mean they love their partner any less, it just so happens that there are some things that they feel they don't get at certain points of the relationship. I mean who here hasn't felt under-appreciated occasionally? Who here can say that they're content in their relationship all the time? Who can claim that they never had any bad day in their relationship? If you do, well and good, you must have an extremely one-sided dictated relationship with a mindless partner. As humans, we're thinking creatures, thus, we are meant to work at relationships because without nurturing the relationship, it will fall apart. But that doesn't mean we all know how to work at it to avoid the pitfalls that all relationships seem to encounter one way or another. A relationship is made up of two individuals who want to build a life together, they are not two mindless entities who you can put together and expect them to flourish.

Robert and Kristen deserve to work on their relationship in peace. To do what they feel is best for each other. But due to their celebrity status, peace is pretty much elusive, and it doesn't help that there are people who feel that this couple struggling to make theirs work should just give up and throw in the towel. I do whoever wish them the best of luck, and I hope that the opinions of strangers wouldn't deter them from making the decisions of their lives solely for their own benefit and not for the legions of people who are torn between celebrating their union, waiting and expecting them to fail, and those who delight in criticizing others.

Crime Thoughts: Warren Jeffs and the FLDS Church

I don't often blog but that doesn't mean there aren't many things I would like to express my opinion on. I'm just really lazy to put down my thoughts on paper, or in this case, in a digital platform.

A few nights ago, I stayed up to catch the special presentation about Warren Jeffs: Fallen Prophet produced by Bio Channel and shown on Crime and Investigation Channel on its 10 pm time slot on Sunday. If you're into watching real life crime and how the investigators across the world work to solve them, it's definitely a time slot you want to check out.

I first got acquainted with the case through another blog, prairiechicken.blogspot.com, around mid-2009. Back then, I was just following the case of Casey Anthony when I stumbled on her posts regarding the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints or FLDS. It was a post about the raid in the FDLS compound known as the Yearning for Zion Ranch in El Dorado, Texas and since then, I've been hooked on this story.

To give you a brief background, Warren Jeffs was a fugitive being hunted down in Utah, where the FLDS Church was based at the time, due to his alleged (at the time) arrangement of illegal marriages between adult male members of the congregation and underage girls. He had fled to Texas and had his followers contribute big amounts of cash to establish a large compound with a huge white temple under the guise of the compound being their new home. Caught in August 2006, he was tried in the Utah court and was convicted in 2 counts of rape as an accomplice in September 2007 and was sentenced to 10 years to life in November 2007. The ruling was overturned in October 2010, but not before the raid on the Yearning for Zion ranch occurred in 2008.

Instigated by a prank caller unrelated to the sect posting as a 16 year old married to a 50 year old man, the call had become in effect the smoking gun that had led to the discovery of over 400 children, married, unmarried, with and without child. A circus of sorts ensued with this discovery as the State took charge of the children found inside the compound and custody battles in court took place. Among those in custody are 24 underaged girls of the 78 wives of Warren Jeffs, the youngest of the his wives was aged only 11 at the time of her marriage.

After being extradited to Texas to stand trial, Warren Jeffs was sentenced to 20 years and life in 2011 in connection with charges of one count of aggravated sexual assault of a child and one count of sexual assault of a child.

To know more about this guy, you can definitely find this wikipedia article quite helpful.

There were a number of intimate details that are of course not provided on the wikipedia article but can be found online in relation to this case. Photos of Jeffs with his 15 year old and 12 year old brides, as well as other underage brides, have been posted online before and had become part of the evidence that has been used by the prosecution in their case. If you read through the case files, you'll probably notice how the focus of the prosecution was placed on the pedophilia charges to which Jeffs was convicted and currently serving his sentence. However, I can't help but feel that there should have been more charges filed against him. But then again, a number of his fellow church leaders had also been booked and sentenced. It still feels lacking because of how he manipulated everyone just to serve his own greed and apparent sexual appetite for girls of all ages. It's so sad at how isolated he made everyone in the compound be, the psychological effect this must have on the people involved. It's like he trapped them all in a frozen state of time, with no ties to modern society. It would also be great if he would be tried for the abandonment of quite a number of underaged boys known as the Lost Boys.

I feel that the people involve, most especially the children have been deprived justice for this man's own selfishness and I just hope they will wake up from their warped sense of reality and live a life free from the machinations of this man.

Movie Thoughts: Breaking Dawn Part 2

I don't usually post movie reviews, but then again, I don't get to watch a lot of movies to write about to begin with. It's not that I don't like watching movies, I just usually have limited free time to allow for it. Anyways, less about me and more about the movie.

Just a brief background, Breaking Dawn Part 2 is the fifth and the final installment of the Twilight movie franchise. The story follows Bella Swan as she awakens to her new life as a vampire, motherhood and her initiation to keeping their secret a secret and still lead a normal life.

Photo credit: Hollywood Reporter

 

The movie provides quite a lot of eye catching panning, and if you're into landscape scenery, you'll definitely find the movie worthy of eye candy. Story-wise, it pretty much follows the book with a twist that highly suck you in near the end. As much as I would like to share tidbits about the movie, I don't want to spoil it for those who have yet to catch the flick.

One thing to do watch out for is the montage at the end. It definitely is a fitting way to end the series that had captivated millions when it was still nothing more than printed matter, spawned near rabid following when it hit the big screen, and now that it had come to an end, it will very much turn into a legend, one that will most likely be appreciated by the generations to come.