Bombing in the City

From Philippine Inquirer:

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—Police said an improvised explosive device went off at around 11:30 p.m. at a restaurant in the popular Rosario Arcade just outside Lim Ket Kai Mall here. 

The powerful explosion shattered glass windows and upturned tables and chairs at nearby establishments and damaged motor vehicles parked up to 30 meters away from the arcade. 

Police said the explosion was so loud it was heard by people 4 kilometers away.
Killed outright were Misamis Oriental Provincial Board Member Lagbas, Dr. Erwin Malanay of Manila;  medical representatives Anthony Cañete of Iligan City; Ryan Estose of Megaheights Subdivision in Gusa district here; Emmanuel Palafox of Zamboanga City, and Antonio Paredes, whose address was still being verified. Forty-eight injured people were taken to area hospitals for treatment. 

Senior Supt. Graciano Mijares, city police chief, said most of the victims were doctors and pharmaceutical sales representatives who had just attended a national convention of lung-disease specialists at a nearby hotel.

From Manila Bulletin:

The task force created to investigate the bombing on Sunday said at least 10 witnesses are already cooperating with the ongoing investigation. 

“Almost all the witnesses coincide to the first and second cartographic sketch,” said a member of the composite task force who requested anonymity as he is not allowed to issue any statement to the press. 

In a related development, City-Vice Mayor Caesar Ian E. Acenas is urging all government offices in Cagayan de Oro City to fly the Philippine Flag in their respective offices at half-mast beginning today (July 29). 

He said this will symbolize the deep grief and mourning of ‘Kagay-anons’ over the tragic deaths. A provincial board member of Misamis Oriental was among those killed while 44 others were injured. 

It was a truly tragic event, nobody saw it coming. The sadder part is that the death toll has now risen to eight according to other reports. We immediately heard the news last Friday and our first reaction was "Seriously? No way" It was just hard to imagine. Cagayan de Oro is a peaceful city, that a single disastrous vehicle accident could be the talk of the town for days.

Everything's back to normal right now, but still cautious of course. The case is gaining ground, they just released the following computerized sketches of the suspects today:

Well... The faces could be anyone's. but anyhow, I hope that this will be resolved soon and give justice to the victims.

Ohno's Head Gets Rounder

Kyou no Hi wa Sayonara' is a special drama for NTV's '24-Hour Television 36 Ai wa Chikyuu wo Sukuu' to be shown on August 24th.

Ohno will play Kouta, who is diagnosed with malignant lymphoma. With 3 months to live, he makes a resolve to accept his fate and face death bravely.  Naturally the role asks Ohno to be shaven/bald at some point in the drama to make the side effects of Kouta's illness and treatment be realistic. Ohno was said to be alright with the idea. However his agency kinda intervened and the Kaibutsu-kun makeup artist was called.

So this is the output? if it's true, well it sure looks real to me.

People Bowing to Arashi...WUT?

This week, photos of supposedly Arashi fans bowing to the posters of the boys are circulating around the Japanese social media. It is quite weird and very alarming. Here is Kotaku's aritcle about the situation:

Have you ever heard of Arashi? It's a Japanese boy band that's so popular, that a poster of the group is drawing crowds, cameras, and grovelling. You might not know Arashi, but perhaps you've seen Letters from Iwo Jima? One of the stars, Kazunari Ninomiya, is a member of Arashi. The group has also appeared in Nintendo commercials, most notably for the 3DS launch, so there's that

I Thought it was Just a Hoax

Man it's so real: Cory Monteith's dead. Like for real. In a press conference, the police said they found the Glee star found dead in a hotel room at the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel in Vancouver, Canada. To make everything clear, here's the full statement Police Chief Doug LePard:

Shortly after noon Saturday, the Vancouver Police received a call from the BC Ambulance Service regarding a sudden death in a room on the 21st floor of the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel at 1038 Canada Place in downtown Vancouver. 

Police attended within minutes of the call and paramedics advised the man in the room was clearly deceased. Coroner’s staff did attend the scene. The deceased has been identified as 31-year-old actor Cory Monteith, who achieved great fame on the popular TV series Glee.

Before I give further information, on behalf of the Vancouver Police, I want to pass on our condolences to the family, friends, castmates and millions of fans of Mr. Monteith. As was the case in countless homes, I watched Glee regularly with my daughters, and I know there will be shock and sadness in many households with the news of his tragic death.

Mr. Monteith checked into the hotel in July 6th and was due to check out of the room today. There were others with Mr. Monteith in his room earlier last night, but video and fob key entries show him returning to his room by himself in the early morning hours and we believe he was alone when he died.

When he missed his checkout time, staff went to the room at noon and found his body.

We know there will be considerable interest in this case, and we have detectives assigned to the case who attended with our Forensic Identification Unit to examine the scene, to ensure to the extent possible that there are no unanswered questions. Hotel video has been secured as well as room access records. Our investigators have spoken with hotel staff, who are providing the utmost in cooperation.

An autopsy is scheduled for Monday. The Coroner will be determining the next steps with respect to establishing cause of death, but all indications are that there was no foul play.

I knew he had problems with substance addiction for years, but he's been trying to help himself, and he's still so young. Fans everywhere are heartbroken, this news is just so sad.

8 Filipino Words That do not Translate to English

Found this cool blogpost from 8list.ph:

Found this cool blogpost from 8list.ph:

Filipino is a funny language. To foreign ears, our words can sound a mite too percussive, as the ratatat of the expression “Kakabakaba ka ba?” can show.Other times, our vocabulary can just be outright weird, to the point that expats can only scratch their scalps in bemusement.

READ HERE to know about the 8 Filipino words without English Equivalent! 

Despicable Me is Flawless

I enjoyed every second of it. I hope most movies would be this cool and that there would always be minions around and about. However Pacific Rim is also showing this week and I'm totally broke. That's so unfortunate since I truly hoped to watch this movie in big screen because of its awesomeness, I'm not even going to expect an ultra amazing plot, but to be able to see all those visual effects might have been enough for me. But alas I would only be watching it one DVD. I'm not saying I regret seeing the minions though, like I said, it's flawless and worth it.

But for the time being let me summarize some interesting movie news this month and to busy myself from Not-seeing-Pacific-Rim depression:

5 Common Things in Philippine Soap Operas

Thanks to the tradition of sitting in front of television every night to watch Philippine-made soap operas, Filipino kids today probably know Coco Martin's real name before they find out who PNoy really is. Not that there had not been any improvements in the past few years because there had been a considerable increase in quality which I'm grateful for. For example the police in dramas are not as stupid or as corrupt as how they were shown in dramas or movies a decade ago. Another is that the shows are finally taking hold of the reins when it comes to using amnesia as a twist in the plot.

However there are still elements that persists to be present in the country's dramas. Let me count the ways:

Kill Yourself, Then the Consequences

This took place last month so this commentary and story telling is actually late. Anyway, a guy jumped off the third floor of our local mall, and landed on his head which instant killed him. I was in school that time but news traveled fast nonetheless and it became the afternoon talk in every class.

I wasn't too curious about the whole situation since I was busy on my other priorities that time. Thus it was much to my great surprise to see photos of the dead man on my Facebook news feed by the time I got home. That was truly the worse thing ever. So there's a man who committed a suicide, a person thought it a good idea to bring out his iOS and take pictures because and upload it directly on Facebook since he's now a journalist of some sort and YOLO shit. That idea apparently isn't so original since we got a handful of photos (and it's already a lot in social media) of the corpse from different angles. With no editing, with all the horrific reality in-your-face with no regard to their friends who will see it after logging into their accounts. What a weird way to die, to have your dead body seen in such a disgraceful manner.

So what made that man do one last public stunt? No one truly knows, everyone only had speculations and we don't have any updates. The most commonly theorized stories is that he's a Spurs fan who is heartbroken because they lost to Heat. This one of course a big ass joke, but it sure is amusing to see others relaying this information seriously to others and actually believing it. The second theory was that it was actually a public execution, like he was blackmailed to death and did it publicly to ensure the villains. That was way too scary for my taste.

Because of this small city of ours, events like these are still remembered weeks afterwards, that was why when one of our city's congressmen tried to kill himself and failed, everyone is again gleefully jumping onto the negativity bandwagon, so the botched attempt is treated as a joke. I overheard one old man say why he dislike this congressman: "It is annoying to see a male congressman who is prettier than most of the females under his district." Whoa that was one hell of an opinion.

To sum it up, I realized that people in general, don't respect those who take their own lives. Lesson learned: Bad things happened to everyone and it may be hard but you just have to fight on no matter what.