So this is how it feels like to have wings…
… to feel so light you are floating
… to be so happy you feel like flying
Submitted my Demography 221 paper yesterday after more than one month of moaning and groaning – and, oh boy, was it liberating! The best thing about this paper is that it really got me thinking ***seriously*** about my thesis again. The path to my thesis has cleared. I am seeing it in a whole new light, and I’m all fired up to finish it. Wish me luck and God’s blessing! 
p.s. Special thanks goes to to Dr. E. Cabegin for giving me so many chances and for being patience personified through it all.
I was researching goodness-knows-what online when I came across the PDF file entitled
Reflections from a Place that God Forgot
A feeling of such intense desolation and hopelessness crept over me. I could only stare at the title for a few minutes. To be abandoned, to be forgotten, to be in some place that even God – supposedly omniscient God – has forgotten… what could life be like in such a place?
We often find fault with people who are fond of saying “Bahala na ang Diyos” or its contemporary version “Bahala na si Batman.” These people, we often say, have no proactivity. They love to wait for help rather than to actively find ways to solve their problems.
But I’ve noticed, that not all people who are “bahala na” sayers are non-proactive. Some people I know say that only after they have tried everything they absolutely can to solve their problems. When they have done everything they possibly can, then they say, “Bahala na ang Diyos” (o si Batman). Why, if they have already done everything humanly possible, do they still choose to rely on faith and leave everything to God?
Social scientists would tell you that people say “Bahala na ang Diyos” because of the feeling of hope and comfort that relying on a higher power brings. Even if there’s no proof that such a higher power exists, it doesn’t matter. As long as one believes that God does exist, then relying on Him is possible – and relying on Him will bring relief. Karl Marx’s statement, “Religion is the opiate of the people” says it all.
Is it wrong to rely on a higher power? I think it’s academic. As long as you don’t abandon your will and your means, you can say as many “Bahala na” as you can. What is wrong with taking comfort wherever you can?
Of course, others are bound to argue, “But that’s self-deception. Why rely on someone who doesn’t exist? Courage, comfort, relief, hope – such things that you can get from relying on a higher power no one can prove exists – can you really call that true courage, true comfort, true relief, and true hope?”
Well then answer me this. If someone who lost his wife and children in typhoon Ondoy, after praying and saying “Bahala na ang Diyos,” chose to face the next day instead of sticking a knife into his belly – can you call what prayer and faith gave him true courage? If someone who was hungry imagined himself eating a delicious 12-course dinner and felt full afterwards – can you call such relief true relief? Saying that faith - belief in a higher power that you can’t prove exists – can’t really bring courage, comfort, hope, and relief, is like saying that light from a lamp is not true light and you can’t really read using that light.
Does God exist or not? That is truly not the point. People don’t need to know that God exists. They only need to believe that He exists before they can say “Bahala na ang Diyos” then feel courage, comfort, hope, and relief. That’s the essence of faith. Take that away and you are forcing people to feel the desolation and hopelessness that comes from being in a place that even God forgot.
Do you want to know what “fun wedding” truly means? Check out the video below.
Wonderful, eh? It’s fun and leaves you feeling exactly the way you’d want to feel on your wedding day.
For folks that are planning to marry soon, I hope you find your own wedding entrance style – that which will give off the same feeling of joy that this video does. You don’t need to copy this. In fact, you’re not advised to. Part of what made this wedding entrance truly fun is its originality. So find your own “dance,” okay?
Presidentiables can’t get enough of TV airtime, it seems. Let’s read between the lines and see what each of them wants to tell us in their “kampamersyals.”
On an aside, Wowowee seems to be a favorite hang-out of would-be Presidents. Mar Roxas was a guest once; so was Manny Villar. I wonder when Gilbert Teodoro and Loren Legarda will make their appearance.
- MAR ROXAS
I am Mr. Palengke turned Padyak Boy and now Robin Hood. My message is simple. I do not merely understand what you are trying to tell me. I can empathize with you and you can relate with me. I know how to ride a Padyak, after all.
(Listen to the man screaming “Good job, Mar! Good job!” Your approbation is very important to me. I’m glad you know how good a job I’m doing.)
A lot of other people (specifically, other presidentiables) will come to woo you to get your votes. You should not believe them. They may tell you what they supposedly want to do for you, but they don’t and won’t really listen to you. I, on the other hand, do and will always listen. In fact, I go beyond listening. I FEEL YOU…
How can you beat a President who “feels you?”
p.s. By the way, do you know I’m engaged to be married? I cried in Wowowee. You see, I’m a person just like you. I also fall in love, and I cry when I feel happy and touched.
- MANNY VILLAR
I am a philanthropist. I love you and will always help you. Mar may tell you he “feels you,” but I am much better than him because I AM ONE OF YOU.
That’s right. I was poor – poorer than some of you – and I lived in a ramshackle hut in Tondo (oh, yes! that Tondo). This house was so small we were packed in like sardines. Oh, and yeah, the roof leaked when it rained.
I’m not poor now, but that’s because I’m hardworking. Repeat that: I worked hard to get where I am now. Even so, I haven’t forgotten my roots and where I came from. My heart and pocketbook are always open if you need my help. Really. So forget everything bad you’ve heard about me. TRY ME. TRUST ME.
- LOREN LEGARDA
Hi everyone! I know what’s wrong with this country. I also know just what we need to resolve these problems. CHANGE! That’s right! Change or Pagbabago. Spell change. L O R E N L E G A R D A. Brilliant!
- GILBERT TEODORO
I don’t really have much of a personal message to you, yet. Just know that I will help when disaster strikes. By the way, here are some tips on how you can prepare yourself for typhoons and other calamities. Incidentally, they spell my name.
In the esoteric discipline of Demography, you’ll often find highfalutin terms that will knit your eyebrows, make your head spin, or knit your eyebrows and make your head spin at the same time.
Don’t get me wrong. You will probably have intuitive understanding of most demographic terms. Sometimes, though, you should not believe what your intuition tells you. This is the case in the following terms:
- reproductive career
Intuition will tell you that this refers to a career in reproduction. “What kind of career do you want? I’d like a reproductive career.” You can also say, “Surrogate mothers have reproductive careers.”
Your intuition will be wrong. This is just a technical demographic term that refers to the period when a woman is physiologically able to reproduce. To all the women out there, your reproductive career begins with menarche (your first menstruation) and ends with your menopause or sterilisation.
Nope, you don’t need to prepare for it. It comes naturally. 
- vital statistics
36-24-36? Nope! In demography, there are so-called vital events such as births, deaths, marriages, etc. Vital statistics are stats or info about such vital events.
- sex ratio
In demography, sex is discussed as a matter of course. Birth is one of the vital events, after all, and generally it’s not possible without sex. In this case though, we’re not referring to sexual intercourse.
Sex ratio is a demographic measure that shows the ratio of males to females in a given group of people. It answers the question: how many males are there for every 100 females?
- age-dependency ratio
Nope. This does not measure the number of people who are dependent on their age, he he he (sorry to those who are not so literal-minded as to think that “age-dependency ratio” means that)
Technically, this is the measure used to compare the number of people who are generally considered to be economically dependent (people who are under 15 years and over 64 years) to the number of people who are generally considered to be economically active or, to be more precise, productive. In plain speak, that’s the number of children and elderly divided by the number of people in the working-age group.
- gross reproduction rate
Duh? I know, nothing immediate comes to mind. You can only probably tell that it is another demographic measure – one that measures the rate of gross reproduction, whatever that means.
The GRR is the average number of female children (yup, daughters) that will be born alive to you (but only if you’re a woman) in your lifetime if you give birth as “expected” throughout your “reproductive career” (i.e. your childbearing years). The “expected” is based on the age-specific fertility rate of a specific year, say, 1990. Simply speaking, if you were to be predictable in your childbearing behavior, you will be able to predict the average number of daughters that you will have in your lifetime.
- zero population growth
This does not mean that there will be no more births, as that particular someone in the Zero Population Growth story
thought. There will still be births, but the rate of mortality is such that the number of deaths balances out the number of births. Consequently, the number of people remains stable or, in layman’s terms, remains the same. Note that this condition assumes that the population is closed or, in layman’s terms, there’s no in- and out-migration.
Need a drink of water… rate of mortality, stable population, in-migration, out-migration… just managed to use 4 technical terms in one paragraph…
Now that I think about it, I’ll let these terms simmer here for a while. I’ll be back to torture you with more when I find more interesting demographic terms. 
