The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate pattern persists until now over the equatorial Pacific Ocean. This warming of sea surface temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean is expected to last into the mid-year. The impact of this phenomenon is not only limited to the Philippines but is worldwide.

Reports nearly a month ago announced the news that the number of hungry people has reached more than a billion people in the world. In the Philippines, recent surveys reflected the effect of the economic downturn on the unemployed, with nearly 17 percent going hungry in the first quarter of this year. Our people have been chronically undernourished and this situation has reached crisis levels (officially) in last year’s rice shortage.

In the Science and Technology STS) class during my undergrad in UP, we read about John Desmond Bernal. It immediately made me wonder if he was related to the acclaimed director of the same surname. It turned out that he was more related to my profession as he was a physicist in the 1930s.

It seems that worrying about your next job isn't just limited to private sector employees anymore. Once Executive Order 366 (E.O. 366) or the Rationalization Plan of the government is implemented around 420,000 government employees, or 30 percent of the workforce in the bureaucracy, will be laid off. The executive order was issued in October 2004 to effect the reorganization and rationalization of the functions of government institutions.
 

Here's to share with you a poem recited in last December's AGHAM Christmas Party by a renowned poet of his time.  He is a dear friend of AGHAM and Agham Youth, the Filipino farmers and all oppressed people.  An agriculturist, who has chosen to work closely with the farmers and serve them, the author of the recently published book - TUGMAANG MATATABIL*-- Axel Pinpin.

* available at Popular Bookstore in Timog Avenue
http://www.arkibongbayan.org/2008-12Dec07-2booklaunchings/booklaunchings.htm

HERBAL MEDS CLASS LAST DEC.20 WAS POSTPONED.
2009 1st Class in PSS:

Two years ago to this day, we went the National Kidney and Transplant Institute to visit Dr. Aloysius U. Baes who was confined at the hospital due to an illness. Little that we know that a few days later, Ochie would quietly pass away at the age of 58 on December 21, 2006. As a poet once said, it is not the manner of death that makes someone a hero, it is the meaning drawn from the struggles against the foe-- a hero serving the people to his very last breath.