Friday, November 04, 2005

History Lesson

Have a history teacher explain this----- if they can.

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.

Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head.

Now it gets really weird.

Lincoln 's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's Secretary was named Lincoln.

Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.

Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.

Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are composed of fifteen letters.

Now hang on to your seat.

Lincoln was shot at the theater named 'Ford.'
Kennedy was shot in a car called ' Lincoln' made by 'Ford.'

Lincoln w as shot in a theater and his assassin ran and hid in a warehouse.
Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and his assassin ran and hid in a theater.

Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

And here's the kicker...

A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was with Marilyn Monroe.

Creepy huh? Send this to as many people as you can, cause: Hey, this is one history lesson people don't mind reading

From a British journalist stationed in the Philippines

British to Pilipino's - FYI


The following is from a British journalist stationed in the Philippines.
His observations are so hilarious!!!! This was written in 1999.


Matter of Taste

By Matthew Sutherland



I have now been in this country for over six years, and consider myself
in most respects well assimilated. However, there is one key step on the
road to full assimilation, which I have yet to take, and that's to eat
BALUT.


The day any of you sees me eating balut, please call immigration and ask
them to issue me a Filipino passport. Because at that point there will
be no turning back. BALUT, for those still blissfully ignorant
non-Pinoys out there, is a fertilized duck egg. It is commonly sold with
salt in a piece of newspaper, much like English fish and chips, by
street vendors usually after dark, presumably so you can't see how
gross it is. It's meant to be an aphrodisiac, although I can't imagine
anything more likely to dispel sexual desire than crunching on a
partially formed baby duck swimming in noxious fluid.The embryo in the
egg comes in varying stages of development, but basically it is not
considered macho to eat one without fully discernable feathers, beak,
and claws. Some say these crunchy bits are the best. Others prefer just
to drink the so-called 'soup', the vile, pungent liquid that surrounds
the aforementioned feathery fetus...excuse me; I have to go and throw up
now. I'll be back in a minute.


Food dominates the life of the Filipino. People here just love to eat.
They eat at least eight times a day. These eight official meals are
called, in order: breakfast, snacks, lunch, merienda, merienda ceyna,
dinner, bedtime snacks and
no-one-saw-me-take-that-cookie-from-the-fridge-so-it-doesn't-count.


The short gaps in between these mealtimes are spent eating Sky Flakes
from the open packet that sits on every desktop. You're never far from
food in the Philippines. If you doubt this, next time you're driving
home from work, try this game. See how long you can drive without seeing
food and I don't mean a distant restaurant, or a picture of food. I mean
a man on the sidewalk frying fish balls, or a man walking through the
traffic selling nuts or candy. I bet it's less than one minute.



Here are some other things I've noticed about food in the Philippines.


Firstly, a meal is not a meal without rice - even breakfast. In the UK,
I could go a whole year without eating rice. Second, it's impossible to
drink without eating. A bottle of San Miguel just isn't the same without
gambas or beef tapa. Third, no one ventures more than two paces from
their house without baon (food in small container) and a container of
something cold to drink. You might as well ask a Filipino to leave home
without his pants on. And lastly, where I come from, you eat with a
knife and fork. Here, you eat with a spoon and fork. You try eating rice
swimming in fish sauce with a knife. One really nice thing about
Filipino food culture is that people always ask you to SHARE their food.
In my office, if you catch anyone attacking their baon, they will always
go, "Sir! KAIN TAYO!" ("Let's eat!"). This confused me, until I realized
that they didn't actually expect me to sit down and start munching on
their boneless bangus. In fact, the polite response is something like,
"No thanks, I just ate." But the principle is sound - if you have food
on your plate, you are expected to share it, however hungry you are,
with those who may be even hungrier. I think that's great. In fact, this
is frequently even taken one step further. Many Filipinos use "Have you
eaten yet?" ("KUMAIN KA NA?") as a general greeting, irrespective of
time of day or location.


Some foreigners think Filipino food is fairly dull compared to other
Asian cuisines. Actually lots of it is very good: Spicy dishes like
Bicol Express (strange, a dish named after a train); anything cooked
with coconut milk; anything KINILAW; and anything ADOBO. And it's hard
to beat the sheer wanton, cholesterolic frenzy of a good old-fashioned
LECHON de leche (roast pig) feast. Dig a pit, light a fire, add 50
pounds of animal fat on a stick, and cook until crisp. Mmm, mmm... you
can actually feel your arteries constricting with each successive
mouthful. I also share one key Pinoy trait ---a sweet tooth. I am thus
the only foreigner I know who does not complain about sweet bread, sweet
burgers, sweet spaghetti, sweet banana ketchup, and so on. I am a man
who likes to put jam on his pizza. Try it! It's the weird food you want
to avoid. In addition to duck fetus in the half-shell, items to avoid in
the Philippines include pig's blood soup (DINUGUAN); bull's testicle
soup, the strangely-named "SOUP NUMBER FIVE" (I dread to think what
numbers one through four are); and the ubiquitous, stinky shrimp paste,
BAGOONG, and it's equally stinky sister, PATIS.


Filipinos are so addicted to these latter items that they will even risk
arrest or deportation trying to smuggle them into countries like
Australia and the USA, which wisely ban the importation of items you can
smell from more than 100 paces. Then there's the small matter of the
purple ice cream. I have never been able to get my brain around eating
purple food; the ubiquitous UBE leaves me cold.


And lastly on the subject of weird food, beware: that KALDERETANG
KAMBING (goat) could well be KALDERETANG ASO (dog)... The Filipino, of
course, has a well-developed sense of food. Here's a typical Pinoy food
joke: "I'm on a seafood diet. "What's a seafood diet?" "When I see food,
I eat it!"


Filipinos also eat strange bits of animals --- the feet, the head, the
guts, etc., usually barbecued on a stick. These have been given witty
names, like "ADIDAS" (chicken's feet); "KURBATA" (either just chicken's
neck, or "neck and thigh" as in "neck-tie"); "WALKMAN" (pigs ears);
"PAL" (chicken wings); "HELMET" (chicken head); "IUD" (chicken
intestines), and BETAMAX" (video-cassette-like blocks of animal
blood).Yum, yum. Bon appetit. "A good name is rather to be chosen than
great riches"-- (Proverbs 22:1)


WHEN I arrived in the Philippines from the UK six years ago, one of the
first cultural differences to strike me was names. The subject has
provided a continuing source of amazement and amusement ever since. The
first unusual thing, from an English perspective, is that everyone here
has a nickname. In the staid and boring United Kingdom, we have
nicknames in kindergarten, but when we move into adulthood we tend, I am
glad to say, to lose them.


The second thing that struck me is that Philippine names for both girls
and boys tend to be what we in the UK would regard as overbearingly
cutesy for anyone over about five. Fifty-five-year-olds colleague put
it. Where I come from, a boy with a nickname like Boy Blue or Honey Boy
would be beaten to death at school by pre-adolescent bullies, and never
make it to adulthood. So, probably, would girls with names like Babes,
Lovely, Precious, Peachy or Apples. Yuk, ech ech.



Here, however, no one bats an eyelid. Then I noticed how many people
have what I have come to call "door-bell names". These are nicknames
that sound like -well, doorbells. There are millions of them. Bing,
Bong, Ding, and Dong are some of the more common. They can be, and
frequently are, used in even more door-bell-like combinations such as
Bing-Bong, Ding-Dong, Ting-Ting, and so on. Even our newly appointed
chief of police has a doorbell name Ping. None of these doorbell names
exist where I come from, and hence sound unusually amusing to my
untutored foreign ear.



Someone once told me that one of the Bings, when asked why he was called
Bing, replied, "because my brother is called Bong". Faultless logic.
Dong, of course, is a particularly funny one for me, as where I come
from "dong" is a slang word for well; perhaps "talong" is the best
Tagalog equivalent.


Repeating names was another novelty to me, having never before
encountered people with names like Len-Len, Let-Let, Mai-Mai, or
Ning-Ning. The secretary I inherited on my arrival had an unusual one:
Leck-Leck. Such names are then frequently further refined by using the
"squared" symbol, as in Len2 or Mai2. This had me very confused for a
while.


Then there is the trend for parents to stick to a theme when naming
their children. This can be as simple as making them all begin with the
same letter, as in Jun, Jimmy, Janice, and Joy. More imaginative parents
shoot for more sophisticated forms of assonance or rhyme, as in Biboy,
Boboy, Buboy, Baboy (notice the names get worse the more kids there
are-best to be born early or you could end up being a Baboy). Even
better, parents can create whole families of, say, desserts (Apple Pie,
Cherry Pie, Honey Pie) or flowers (Rose, Daffodil, Tulip). The main
advantage of such combinations is that they look great painted across
your trunk if you're a cab driver. That's another thing I'd never seen
before coming to Manila -- taxis with the driver's kids' names on the
trunk.


Another whole eye-opening field for the foreign visitor is the
phenomenon of the "composite" name. This includes names like Jejomar
(for Jesus, Joseph and Mary), and the remarkable Luzviminda (for Luzon,
Visayas and Mindanao, believe it or not). That's a bit like me being
called something like "Engscowani" (for England, Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland). Between you and me, I'm glad I'm not. And how could I
forget to mention the fabulous concept of the randomly inserted letter
'h'. Quite what this device is supposed to achieve, I have not yet
figured out, but I think it is designed to give a touch of class to an
otherwise only averagely weird name. It results in creations like Jhun,
Lhenn, Ghemma, and Jhimmy. Or how about Jhun-Jhun (Jhun2)?


How boring to come from a country like the UK full of people with names
like John Smith. How wonderful to come from a country where imagination
and exoticism rule the world of names. Even the towns here have weird
names; my favorite is the unbelievably named town of Sexmoan (ironically
close to Olongapo and Angeles). Where else in the world could that
really be true? Where else in the world could the head of the Church
really be called Cardinal Sin? Where else but the Philippines! Note:
Philippines has a senator named Joker, and it is his legal name.

Miss International Precious Lara Quigaman - THE WINNING ANSWER

Now it can be told....


Miss International - THE WINNING ANSWER

"MABUHAY - representing the democratic and freedom loving people of the pearl of the orient, I am Precious Lara Quigaman, from the beautiful country of THE PHILIPPINES"

(She was asked a very challenging question.)

Q: "What do you say to the people of the world who have typecasted Filipinos as nannies?"

A: "I take no offense on being typecasted as a nanny. But I do take offense that the educated people of the world have somehow denigrated the true sense and meaning of what a nanny is.

Let me tell you what she is. She is someone who gives more than she takes. She is someone you trust to look after the very people most precious to you - your child, the elderly, yourself. She is the one who has made a living out of caring and loving other people. So to those who have typecasted us as nannies, thank you.
It is a testament to the loving and caring culture of the Filipino people. And for that, I am forever proud and grateful of my roots and culture."

(She received a deafening applause from the audience.)


Now ask yourself: Have you heard anything as patriotic or heartwarming from any of our useless Politicians ?

CARCINOGENIC FOOD / PRODUCTS

CARCINOGENIC FOOD / PRODUCTS: (True or False?)



SATAY LOVERS (BARBECUE)

If you all eat Satay, don't ever forget to eat the cucumber, because eating Satay together with carbon after barbequing can cause cancer.

But we have a cure for that... Cucumber should be eaten after we eat the Satay because Satay has carcinogen (a cancer causing element) but cucumber is anti-carcinogenic. So don't forget to eat the cucumber the next time you have Satay's.

PRAWNS (SUGPO) & VIT C

DO NOT eat shrimp / prawn if you have just taken VITAMIN C pills!!

This will cause you to DIE in ARSENIC (As) toxication within HOURS!!

PORK AWARENESS

Try this and see whether the pork you bought has worms. There goes with your "Bak Kut Teh" for those who love it. Most men love to eat this so watch out before it's too late. If you pour Coke (yes, the soda) on a slab of pork, wait a little while, you will SEE WORMS crawl out of it. A message from the Health Corporation of Singapore about the bad effects of pork consumption. Pig's bodies contain MANY TOXINS, WORM and LATENT DISEASES.

Although some of these infestations are harboured in other animals, modern veterinarians say that pigs are far MORE PREDISPOSED to these illnesses than other animals. This could be because PIGS like to SCAVENGE and will eat ANY kind of food, INCLUDING dead insects, worms, rotting carcasses, excreta including their own, garbage, and other pigs. INFLUENZA (flu) is one of the MOST famous illnesses which pigs share with humans. This illness is harboured in the LUNGS of pigs during the summer months and tends to affect pigs and human in the cooler months.

Sausage contains bits of pigs' lungs, so those who EAT pork sausage tend to SUFFER MORE during EPIDEMICS of INFLUENZA. Pig meat contains EXCESSIVE quantities of HISTAMINE and IMIDAZOLE compounds, which can lead to ITCHING and INFLAMMATION; GROWTH HORMONE which PROMOTES INFLAMMATION and growth; sulphur containing mesenchymal mucus which leads to SWELLING and deposits of MUCUS in tendons and cartilage, resulting in ATHRITIS, RHEUMATISM, etc.

Sulphur helps cause FIRM human tendons and ligaments to be replaced by the pig's soft mesenchymal tissues, and degeneration of human cartilage.

Eating pork can also lead to GALLSTONES and OBESITY, probably due to its HIGH CHOLESTEROL and SATURATED FAT content. The pig is the MAIN CARRIER of the TAENIE SOLIUM WORM, which is found in its flesh. These tapeworms are found in human intestines with greater frequency in nations where pigs are eaten. This type of tapeworm can pass through the intestines and affect many other organs, and is incurable once it reaches beyond a certain stage. One in six people in the US and Canada has RICHINOSIS from eating trichina worms, which are found in pork.

Many people have NO SYMPTOMS to warm them of this, and when they do, they resemble symptoms of many other illnesses. These worms are NOT noticed during meat inspections.



SHAMPOO

Cancer-causing substance in shampoos. Go home and check your shampoo. Change before it's too late... Check the ingredients listed on your shampoo bottle, and see they have a substance by the name of Sodium Laureth Sulfate, or simply SLS. This substance is found in most shampoos; manufacturers use it because it produces a lot of foam and it is cheap. BUT the fact is, SLS is used to scrub garage floors, and it is very strong!!! It is also proven that it can cause cancer in the long run, and this is no joke. Shampoos that contains SLS: Vo5, Palmolive, Paul Mitchell, L'Oreal, the new Hemp Shampoo from Body Shop etc. contain this substance.

The first ingredient listed (which means it is the single most prevalent ingredient) in Clairol's Herbal Essences is Sodium Laureth Sulfate. Therefore, I called one company, and I told them their product contains a substance that will cause people to have cancer. They said, Yeah we knew about it but there is nothing we can do about it because we need that substance to produce foam. By the way Colgate toothpaste also contains the same substance to produce the "bubbles". They said they are going to send me some information.

Research has shown that in the 1980s, the chance of getting cancer is 1 out of 8000 and now, in the 1990s, the chances of getting cancer is 1 out of 3, which is very serious. Therefore, I hope that you will take this seriously and pass this on to all the people you know, and hopefully, we can stop "giving" ourselves cancer-causing agents.



INSTANT NOODLES

Dear instant noodle lovers,

Make sure you break for at least 3 days after one session of instant noodles before you eat your next packet! Please read the info shared to me by a doctor. My family stopped eating instant noodles more than 5 years ago after hearing about the wax coating the noodles - the wax is not just in the Styrofoam containers but it coats the noodles. This is why the instant noodles do not stick to each other when cooking.

If one were to examine the ordinary Chinese yellow noodles in the market, one will notice that, in their uncooked state the noodles are oily. This layer of oil prevents the noodles from sticking together.

Wanton noodles in their uncooked state have been dusted with flour to prevent them sticking together. When the hawker cooks the noodles, notice he cooks them in hot water and then rinses them in cold water before cooking them in hot water again. This process is repeated several times before the noodles are ready to be served. The cooking and rinsing process prevents noodles from sticking together.

The hawker then "lowers the noodles in oil and sauce to prevent the noodles from sticking if they are to be served dry. Cooking instructions for spaghetti require oil or butter to be added in the water when boiling the spaghetti to prevent the pasta from sticking together. Otherwise, one gets a big clump of spaghetti!

There was an SBC (now TCS) actor some years ago, who at a busy time of his career had no time to cook, resorted to eating instant noodles everyday. He got cancer later on. His doctor told him about the wax in instant noodles. The doctor told him that our body will need up to 2 days to clear the wax. There was also an SIA steward who after moving out from his mother's house into his own house, did not cook but ate instant noodles almost every meal. He had cancer, and has since died from it.

Nowadays the instant noodles are referred as "cancer noodles".

Please, pass these information.