The Greener Way to Spend.

Shopping for the holiday season can be so stressful, but what bothers me is how it stresses the environment even further. So before you buy that up to date iphone or those flashy high-end shoes, let’s take a look at the environmental impact of how you should pay for the items you intend to buy. Let’s dissect the ins and outs of paying through cash or through credit cards known as ‘plastics’.

Let’s take a look at the widely accepted cash or ‘paper bills’. It takes cosmic quantity of energy to print, transport, count and sort the bills we have in our wallet. The bills that are created consume a lot of fossil fuel, which is detrimental to our environment. On the other hand, credit and debit cards, which we love to swipe in ‘zon machines’, are made using six different kinds of plastic. They’re laminated and embossed to make them slick enough to slide through card readers. Currently there are plenty of credit/debit cards in the market and each will take years and years to fully biodegrade after each card has expired. On the other side of the fence, our paper bills are made of cotton and linen, when harvested emits less carbon than cutting trees. The impact doesn’t stop there. Once you swipe the card, of course you’re expected to pay, the bank will send a statement. The papers used for the statements come from trees thus increasing the demand for paper products pushing for indiscriminate cutting of trees. The process itself is already energy-intensive and would require a lot of fossil fuels being burnt. Not to mention the machines and servers that track the credit/debit cards are consuming electricity, which is generated by carbon-rich coal.

The convenience brought about by credit/debit cards is immense and eclipses the glory of having cash. Credit/debit cards make our transactions smoother and as a cardholder great reward is awaiting just by using your plastic, a frill-filled spending. Once you use your credit card, you will get your money’s worth by an extra mile through rewards and points. Using cash on the other hand makes your transaction a no-frill activity and limits you from getting those returns.

As a shopper, it’s a matter of choice - a choice between protecting the environment and spending wisely. So if you really want to swipe that card of yours, then be responsible in making up for the lost energy by planting a tree for example. By swiping our credit cards, let’s be extra conscientious in helping our environment. After all, saving our environment requires neither cash nor credit card. All it requires is our awareness by thinking green.

Beauty Pageants & the likes

The Queens in their respective titles.

The Semi-finalists in different Major Pageants:

Top 15 in Miss Universe 2008

Venezuela - Dayana Mendoza
Kosovo - Zana Krasniqi
Mexico - Elisa Najera
Vietnam - Lam Thuy Nguyen
South Africa - Tansey Coetzee
Australia - Laura Dundovic
Japan - Hiroko Mima
Dominican Republic - Marianne Cruz Gonzalez
Italy - Claudia Ferraris
Colombia - Taliana Vargas
Russia - Vera Krasova
Hungary - Jazmin Dammak
Czech Republic - Eliska Buckova
USA - Crystle Stewart
Spain - Claudia Moro


Top 16 Miss Earth 2008

Brazil - Tatiane Alves
Colombia - Mariana Rodríguez
Czech Republic - Hana Svobodová
Korea - Seo Seol-hee
Mexico - Abigail Elizalde
Nigeria - Uko Ezinne
Philippines - Karla Paula Henry
Poland - Karolina Filipkowska
Romania - Ruxandra Popa
Russia - Anna Mezentseva
Spain - Adriana Reverón
Switzerland - Nasanin Nuri
Tanzania - Miriam Odemba
Thailand - Piyaporn Deejing
USA - Jana Murrell
Venezuela - Daniela Torrealba

Top 15 in Miss World 2008

Russia - Ksenia Sukhinova
Mexico - Anagabriela Espinoza
Barbados - Natalie Griffith
Iceland - Alexandra Ivarsdottir
Trinidad & Tobago - Gabrielle Walcott
Venezuela - Hannelys Quintero
Ukraine - Irina Zhuravskaya
Croatia - Josipa Kusic
Brazil - Tamara Almeida
Angola - Brigith dos Santos
Kazakhstan - Alfina Nassyrova
Puerto Rico - Ivonne Orsini
Spain - Patricia Rodríguez
South Africa - Tansey Coetzee
India - Parvathy Omanakuttan

My Christmas Story

The Christmas of 2008 has been like a speeding bullet - I didn't even notice it's Christmas. I have been swallowed by my workload - audits, meetings and all the admin stuff that I need to deliver. They say Christmas is for children, so are fairy tales, that's why sleeping during the Christmas Eve gave me a sense of guiltless indulgence.

If things were lighter maybe I celebrated Christmas on a different mood, a blissful one. The splendor of the Yuletide Season didn't lift my spirit as I came to realize that these are all temporary. The bedlam of workload and saga of confrontations will be there as I'm in a temporary hiatus.

When it's 12AM, I skipped the traditional 'Noche Buena' because I gave in to my yearning - and that's Sleeping! I have forgone the most cherished and spectacular night of the year with my family to indulge in my slumber.

I have no regrets at all. It's a perfect gift that I could give to myself - a MUCH NEEDED REST!

This New Year however, I'll celebrate it differently. Enthused with hope, I will surely make it a New Year Celebration like no other. I will no longer be a SLEEPING BEAUTY, but a Snow White celebrating life in it's ethereal form. I'm hopping that all the ills and tribulations that I had will fizzle out just like the old year - 2008 that was!

Newsweek Marathon

The long holiday has brought some new intuitive grasp of reality - that the world is evolving faster than I thought. Reading through the pages of the Newsweek magazine, I've been amazed as to how the present economic fiasco has transformed the once vibrant nations to lackadaisical borderless society. There's the inflation explosion, from an age of high growth and low prices the global village is headed towards the opposite. These are all in the television, but I prefer reading them through the old-fashioned magazine.

Then there's the Obamamania that has swept the whole world in a massive scale. I'm no political pundit, but Pres-elect Obama made history in espousing 'Change' in the political arena of the great land of America. Capturing the two (2) battleground states of Florida and Ohio he clinched the Presidency in a lopsided fashion.

Then comes another article about India losing it's economic luster. Thanks to the father of boom who failed to deliver, I'm speaking of the Prime Minister Singh. His party, under his stewardship, failed to capitalize on an unprecedented growth creating a vacuum that soon scuffled the country's economic balance.

Another article, somewhat pertaining to our shores, is all about Poverty. Among all the articles that I've read, this is by far the most troublesome. Our country has fallen from the trap of poverty once again as two efforts to redraw the poverty line in Asia has been suggested. One from Asian Development Bank (ADB) and one from World Bank. ADB suggests that the threshold should be raised to $1.35/day income and the latter proposed a much lower $1.25. If you fall below the threshold, either way, you're POOR. Out of the more than 90 Million Filipinos, almost 16% are living below poverty line, translating to about 14,000,000 poor Filipinos. A staggering figure and a reflection of how grim the new year would be. I had a mouthful reading these things and truly the events unfolding are newsworthy.

Come 2009, the world will once again take a journey. A journey that will take us either to a greater mileage or to a backward state. Uncertainties are there but who knows a glimmer of hope is also at reach.

Happy New Year!