We were first to warn about Pacquiao not qualified for Olympic Games

“My life needs editing.”

—Mort Sahl 

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

SIX months after we wrote the story, “Stop the joke, Pacquiao not qualified for Olympic Games,” news websites in the Philippines and around the world started to buzz with the following news:

“Pacquiao denied Olympics entry by the IOC” (Boxing Scene); Boxer “Manny Pacquiao, 45, can’t compete at Paris Olympics” (ESPN); “Boxing legend Manny Pacquiao denied exemption to participate in 2024 Summer Olympics” (Fox News); “Manny Pacquiao, 45, denied exemption to compete at Paris Olympics by IOC”(Yahoo News).

“Manny “Pacquiao denied exemption to compete at 2024 Summer Olympics at 45 years old by the IOC” (CBS Sports); “Manny Pacquiao’s Olympic Dream Denied: IOC Upholds Age Restriction” (Boxing News 24); “Manny Pacquiao TOO OLD to compete at Paris Olympics… IOC refuses to change age limit to allow 45-year-old legend to return to the ring” (Daily Male Online).

We were actually the first to warn in an article in September 2023 that “Pacquiao can’t short cut his way to the Olympic Games.”

Olympic Games athletes—including boxers—cannot be 41 years old or older during the year 2024; and must be a minimum of 18 years old by date of birth by the first day of competition, or on July 26, 2024, the start of the Paris Games, which will end on August 11, 2024,” I wrote in my article for the Above The Belt and shared in my blogs on September 4, 2023.

“Pacquiao, born on December 17, 1978, will be 45 years old during the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.”

 

-o0o-

 

My article further stated, thus:

Even if Pacquiao is 18 or 25 years old when he told Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) president Abraham Tolentino he wanted to be in the RP Team, the slot in the 71kg (welterweight) category can’t be handed to him on a silver platter.

This is not professional boxing where astute promoters and other demigods in Las Vegas can make anyone an instant challenger to battle for the world championship like what they did to Pacquiao and many other marquee names in prizefighting.

Frankly, Pacquiao became an eight-time world boxing champion not because he was superman or bionic man.

It’s because he was an instant challenger to reigning world champions in eight different divisions. Thank you, Bob Arum.

If professional boxing has godfathers, amateur boxing—the Olympic Games—has strict rules and qualifications.

Pacquiao can’t shortcut his way to the Olympic Games.

 

-o0o-

 

My article added: Even if the rules will allow a 45-year-old beakbuster to participate in the Olympic Games, younger and faster amateur boxers nowadays—even in the Philippines—will eat him alive.

In order to qualify for the Paris Games, the boxers must be able to roll past other competitors in the three qualification tournaments: continental, first, and second world qualifying stages.

They must pass through the proverbial eye of the needle. No palakasan system. No Bob Arum or Don King.

The continental tournament for Asian Olympic boxing aspirants is the Asian Games in Hangzhou, China from September 23 to October 8, 2023.

With lack of preparations (granting he is 18 or 25 years old today), I don’t think Pacquiao is a shoo-in to take part in the continental tournament.

The first world qualification tournament is slated in Busto, Arzizio, Italy from February 29 to March 12, 2024. The second and last world qualification tournament is scheduled in Bangkok, Thailand from May 23 to June 3, 2024.

Again, even if Pacquiao is only 18 or 25 years old, he can’t be ready for the aforementioned world qualification tournaments since he has been inactive in the ring except in the exhibition bout against Korean patsy DK Yoo in December 2022.

Pacquiao is also set to tangle with Thai boxing legend Buakaw Banchamek in another exhibition match on July 21, 2024.

Before wounding up third in the May 2022 Philippine presidential election, Pacquiao lost his farewell fight against Yordenis Ugas in August 2021.

Thus, all these funny talks about boxing’s most celebrated grandpa donning the Philippine flag in boxing in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games are nothing but jokes. It’s time to pull the plug on this hilarious story.

I hope the issue has been settled with finality to avoid confusion and distortion of facts. 

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)

We’re victims of Iloilo City fire four times

“Never start a fire, especially if there is no water nearby.”

―Matshona Dhliwayo

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

THE grim death of 26-year-old call center agent Lyn Rose Sobretodo of Pototan, Iloilo and 21-year-old engineering student Renz Aguilar of Concepcion, Iloilo in a fire that gutted several boarding houses in Brgy. San Nicolas. La Paz, Iloilo City on February 18 has startled me.

The fire in that residential area killed two adult persons even if it happened late in the afternoon. It’s hard to imagine the number of casualties if it occurred in the middle of the night.

I get nervous each time there is news about fire in Iloilo City, the place where I was born and raised, now that I live in a faraway place.

Call it phobia borne out of traumatic experiences that refuse to escape my memory since childhood.

Mirriam-Webster defines phobia as “an exaggerated and often disabling fear usually inexplicable to the subject and having sometimes a logical but usually an illogical or symbolic object, class of objects, or situation compare compulsion, obsession.”

Harvard Health Publishing calls phobia as “a persistent, excessive, unrealistic fear of an object, person, animal, activity or situation. It is a type of anxiety disorder. A person with a phobia either tries to avoid the thing that triggers the fear or endures it with great anxiety and distress.”

Our house—or houses (we used to have two)—in Iloilo City were burnt not only once and twice, but four times.

To be a fire victim once is nauseating; twice is catastrophic; third time is horrendous; four times is total shock and darkness.

 

-o0o-

 

Unlike in the 1976 fire where only our bahay kubo (our house was built using local materials such as wood, bamboo and nipa grass) went up in flames together with other houses in the neighborhood also made of light materials, our two houses were among those gutted in 1991 in the second biggest fire in Iloilo City’s history that burnt a total of seven barangays—Rizal Pala Pala Zone I; Rizal Pala Pala Zone II; Rizal Estanzuela, Babay Tanza, Rizal Esperanza, Bonifacio Tanza, Timawa Tanza.

This seaside belt area in the City Proper had been transformed into heaps of ruins and grisly images of charred pieces of steels, bricks, scorched woods and cement floors.

All our memories—from photo albums, birth certificates, medals, trophies, my very precious first place finish certificate in a walkathon race, cloths and other personal belongings, jewelry, a typewriter, shoes, books and sports magazines, frames, etcetera—turned into ashes.

It’s difficult to “start all over again” in the adult years when all the memories and physical remnants of your childhood life were totally gone forever.

Fires don’t pick areas where to unleash a mayhem. They don’t select which item to torch and which to spare. Everything will go up in flames. Everything will turn into ashes. 

 

-o0o-

 

Two years later, a fire broke out anew in the back of our neighborhood but burnt only partially our kitchen and the walls in the two rooms.

Constantly badgered by firetruck sirens indicating there’s a fire call and alarm every now and then, we’d stopped unpacking our stuff from the sacks and other ready-to-carry containers.

We’d always anticipated evacuation, the habit we’d grown accustomed to because of the incessant threat of fire anytime of the day, thus visitors would sometimes mistake our living area for a rice and copra bodega if not evacuation center.

The fourth fire that happened in 2015 was the most painful because it happened several months only after I immigrated to the United States.

We lost not only most of our memories and very important stuff (including the entire 2000-2004 files of our publication, Iloilo Today, the New Millennium Publication) but all the letters, cards, plaques, albums, school yearbooks, certificates, frames, all my childhood items, and many more. 

We’ve been robbed and burglarized before; we’ve been peppered and pounded by super typhoons, but none of the agony and sufferings we experienced from these gloomy experiences could match the sadness and tribulations that gobbled up our hearts in the 2015 fire.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed) 

 

‘Brutal’ Digong and ‘killer’ Vladimir

“Our country's national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob.”

—Ida B. Wells

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

THE difference between former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Russian President Vladimir Putin is the Filipino leader never murdered his political critics despite his repugnant notoriety.

They are of course both brutal and heartless in many ways and instances. 

But Duterte, 78, only “made life miserable” for his political enemies, especially the women, but did not kill them (those who got slaughtered were poor drug users and suspected small-time drug traffickers, which became the basis for the cases filed against the former president before the International Criminal Court). 

Duterte only either had his political critics dismissed from government service, jailed, or mocked and maligned with the help of his much-vaunted social media propaganda machine, which had also helped wreck former Vice President Leni Robredo’s presidential train. 

Putin, 71, on the other hand, is well known for having eliminated feisty dissidents in bizarre manner if not under mysterious circumstances.

If popular opposition figures in Russia aren’t poisoned to death, they are killed in plane crashes, fell from the tall buildings, collapsed while under incarceration, and hit by wayward vehicles.

If Alexei Navalny, 47, a charismatic Russian reformist and Putin’s No. 1 political rival, were Filipino, he would still be alive today and may have retired or reinvented his political image. 

 

-o0o-

 

I have always considered Navalny to be the Russian version of former Senator Antonio Trillanes VI. 

Nobody thought intrepid Trillanes VI would live until his semi retirement from politics today after engaging the dreaded Dutertes (the entire family for that matter) in nerve-tingling word wars and intense swapping of dangerous accusations—that could have ended in catastrophic fist and even fire fight—for so many years when the Dutertes were-and is still-in power.

Yet, Trillanes is still standing 10 feet tall and kicking—and will in fact reportedly run for mayor in Caloocan City in the next election.

On the other hand, Navalny’s fate was sealed when he decided to return to Russia in January 2021 and was immediately detained on accusations of violating parole conditions while he was hospitalized in Germany which were imposed as a result of his 2014 conviction.

Journalist Neil MacFarquhar, who covered Navalny’s colorful political career for many years, claimed that there was one question that Russians repeatedly asked Navalny, who died in a remote Arctic penal colony on February 16, and the late brave opposition icon confessed that he found it a little annoying.

 

-o0o-

 

Why, after surviving a fatal poisoning attempt widely blamed on the Kremlin, had he returned to Russia from his extended convalescence abroad to face certain imprisonment and possible death? 

Even his prison guards, turning off their recording devices, asked him why he had come back, he said.

“I don’t want to give up either my country or my beliefs,” Mr. Navalny wrote in a Jan. 17 Facebook post to mark the third anniversary of his return and arrest in 2021. “I cannot betray either the first or the second. If your beliefs are worth something, you must be willing to stand up for them. And if necessary, make some sacrifices.”

MacFarquhar said that was the direct answer, but for many Russians, both those who knew him and those who did not, the issue was more complex. 

Some of them considered it almost a classical Greek tragedy: The hero, knowing that he is doomed, returns home anyway because, well, if he didn’t, he would not be the hero.

“Mr. Navalny’s motto was that there was no reason to fear the authoritarian government of President Vladimir V. Putin. He wanted to put that into practice, Russian commentators said, and as an activist who thrived on agitation, he feared sinking into irrelevancy in exile. The decision won him new respect and followers as he continued to lambast the Kremlin from his prison cell, but it also cost him his life,” stressed MacFarquhar, former New York Times’ Moscow Bureau writer.

 

-o0o-

 

SIX TIPS for a Healthy Heart. February is Heart Month. The NYC Health + Hospitals has announced “it’s the right time to remind you to take care of your heart.”

With the proper care, we can control our blood pressure to live a longer healthier life. Here are some tips to help you maintain a healthy heart:

—Know and Control Your Blood Pressure. 1 in 4 New Yorkers have high blood pressure and many do not know it. Check your blood pressure at your doctor’s office or your local pharmacy. You can also check it yourself using a home monitor or visit one of the many kiosks across NYC. Learn how to check blood pressure at home and ask the Expert: Controlling the Silent Killer

—Eat more fruits and veggies. Plant-based foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds can lower cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar. Learn about our Lifestyle Medicine Program.

—Keep Moving. Walking 30 minutes every day is a safe and effective way to get your heart healthy. If you cannot exercise 30 minutes a day, don’t worry. Some movement is better than no movement so do what you can.

—Manage Stress. Everyone experiences stress from time to time. Eating healthy and getting regular sleep helps. Talking to someone may also help. Reach out to a friend or family member. Or use our virtual ExpressCare telehealth service to Talk to a Doctor Now.

—If You Smoke, Make a Plan to Quit. Smoking, as well as excessive drinking, can lead to an irregular heartbeat and high-blood pressure. Get help to quit smoking.

—Get Regular Check-ups. Getting regular check-ups and knowing important numbers, such as your Body Mass Index (BMI), blood pressure and cholesterol levels are important. Make sure you review these numbers with your doctor and talk about your risk factors for heart disease.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)

Ilonggo solons miss cha-cha fireworks

“The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.”

—Dante Alighieri

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

REPRESENTATIVES who fought thongs and hammer versus the senators in the proposed Charter change (cha-cha) through the soon-to-be-doomed People’s Initiative for Modernization and Reform Action (Pirma) were relatively unknown prior to the skirmish, yet they were able to hold the combative and more popular senators at bay.

And made a good account of themselves, or so it seemed.

Senior Deputy Speaker Aurelio Gonzales II, Deputy Speaker Jayjay Suarez (Quezon) House Majority Leader Manuel Jose Dalipe, Rep. Stella Quimbo (Marikina), Rep. Joey Salceda (Albay), Rep. Rufus Rodriguez (Cagayan de Oro City), to name a few.

Even if cha-cha will be vanquished, the proponents in the Lower House who stood toe-to-toe versus the likes of fire-spewing Senate President Miguel Zubiri, Deputy Minority Leader Rosa Hontiveros, Senators Maria Imelda Josefa Remedios “Imee” Romualdez Marcos, Francis Escudero, JV Ejercito, Joel Villanueva, among others, have proven that they can hold their ground against their overexposed and over-glamorized counterparts in the Upper Chamber.

How about the Iloilo solons? Where were they during the bloodbath?

We learned that most of them, owing to their solid adherence to President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. who is pushing for cha-cha anchored on changes in the economic provisions, are also echoing the President’s stand. 

 

-o0o-

 

Their silence has been deafening—and sickening.

While some of the neophyte pro-chacha solons from the other regions made headlines these past weeks owing to their ironclad defense of cha-cha, our congressmen and women in Western Visayas couldn’t even make a sneeze about the burning issue. Playing safe?

Because of their silence and nonchalance, they missed the chance to prove their mettle before a national audience. 

Are they ashamed of being Marcos Jr.’s newly minted acolytes? Or they are just spineless and afraid of the wrath of their constituents who are mostly allergic to any constitutional change or amendment?

Indi puede nga maghipos lang sila nga daw mga apa ukon daw gin tayaan armalite. They should let the Ilonggos know about their stand.

Sunu kay Dante, ang pinaka mainit ukon pinaka madulum nga lugar sa impyierno gina reserba sa mga wala panindugan during the time of moral—and political—crisis.

Granting nga nahuya sila, at least they should make a statement. Or issue a press release. Pabor bala kamo sa chacha ukon indi? Indi na dapat mag huya huya or mahadlok pa. Mag prangka na. 

Sa prangkahanay nga estorya wala deception; wala into-anay; wala plastikanay ukon pag pakuno-kuno. After all the Ilonggos deserve the kind of public officials, or representatives, that they elect.

 

-o0o-

 

REWARD VS TOC. The United States Department of State announced February 15 reward offers of up to $10 million for information leading to the identification or location of anyone who holds a key leadership position in the Transnational Organized Crime (TOC) group behind the ALPHV/Blackcat Ransomware variant and up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction of anyone participating in or conspiring or attempting to participate in a ransomware attack using the ALPHV/Blackcat variant.

Over 1,000 victim entities globally have been compromised by ALPHV/Blackcat actors.  

In December 2023, the Federal Bureau of Investigation disrupted ALPHV/Blackcat’s operations, through distributing a decryption tool developed by the FBI that assisted dozens of victims with restoring affected computer systems and saving victims from ransom demands totaling approximately $99 million. 

The reward offer complements the Department of Justice and the FBI’s recent announcement of cooperation with law enforcement agency groups from the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Spain, and Denmark, to launch a disruption campaign against the notorious ransomware gang ALPHV/Blackcat.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)

Teenagers inside Iloilo motels

“No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.”

—Plato

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

WE laud the move of the Iloilo City Government’s Task Force on Moral Values and Formation (TFMVF) in trying to prevent teenagers or minors from entering the motels and other prohibited places for youngsters, especially during the recent Valentine’s Day.

TFMVF chief Nestor Canong and his team may have all the best intentions, but even after collaborating with taxi companies, they still couldn’t prevent some teenagers from staying away from motels that are now mostly drive-ins, where it is easy for customers to enter without being scrutinized by authorities.

It is now becoming increasingly difficult for any authority to distinguish an adult from a teenager based only on their physical appearances without proper identification.

Age, like romantic love, nowadays can be faked.

TFMVF had earlier reminded taxi drivers of the existing ordinance prohibiting minors from entering accommodation establishments.

But taxi drivers don’t have the capacity to determine their passengers’ real age unless they will be required or mandated by law to ask for their birth certificates or identification cards (IDs) before agreeing to bring them inside the motels.

Nowadays there are teenagers who look like 20 to 24 years old. Cab drivers just don’t have enough time to check or argue with young passengers who might present bogus IDs and other documents to pretend they are of legal age.

 

-o0o-

 

Not all couples intending to spend Valentine’s Day inside the motels—or even during normal days—are teenagers or minors. 

There are adults who accompany teenage partners or sex workers; or adults with teenage or even minor “sweethearts”—males or females.

All over the country, it’s hard to stop eager and enterprising teenagers or minors from landing inside the motels. 

There are many ways to skin a cat, so to speak. They can use a disguise or ask cab drivers to bring them only outside the motels and once they have alighted, they can walk casually in going inside the drive-in gates.

Canong wanted to remind the metropolis’ cab companies of the existing Regulation Ordinance ‎No. 2025-447, which aims to protect youngsters from sexual exploitation and other abuses.

Even if under the ordinance, lodging houses, pension houses, inns, hotels, motels, apartelles and other similar establishments are barred from accepting those below 18 years old, many customers below 18 were still able to enter the above-stated establishments.

Preventing teenagers from entering the motels is like preventing a corrupt government official from asking kickbacks from DPWH contractors.

It’s something that can be done but hard to implement. It’s impossible to happen, in other words.

 

-o0o-

 

DO WE HAVE DOUBLE STANDARDS? We certainly do, say editors of Men's Health. The questions: "Do you feel men are naturally monogamous?" and "Do you feel women are naturally monogamous?" The variance in the responses is staggering. YES (26 percent men, 55.5 percent women) NO (65.3 percent men, 33.8 percent women) NO ANSWER (8.7 percent men, 10.7 percent women)

AVOID CHEMICALS IN OUR CANS. Canned food alert: Consumer Reports found bisphenol A-a chemical linked to reproductive problems, diabetes, and heart disease--in all 19 brandname canned foods it tested, including those labeled BPA free. Because levels vary so widely, even among cans of the same product, there's no way to predict how much we're getting.

REENERGIZE WITH EXERCISE EARLY EVENING. Even though we're tired, forcing ourselves to do aerobic exercise will energize us for a couple of hours and make it easier to fall asleep at night. Our body temperature naturally falls at night, shortly before bedtime, so the natural dip in temperature that happens about 2 hours after a workout can help us get to bed at a decent hour and wake up refreshed the next morning.

SEX REVS UP IMMUNE SYSTEM. Researchers from Wilkes University showed that college students who engaged in sex once or twice a week had 30 percent higher levels of infection-fighting antibodies than did their abstinent classmates.

RECORD VIEWERSHIP. One hundred twenty-three million and four hundred people watched Super Bowl LVIII, setting a new viewership record as the most-watched TV broadcast in a generation. It was the biggest audience since the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)

Revelations of man’s destiny

"Though the mills of the God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small; though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all." 

—Friedrich Von Logan, Retribution

 

Alex P. Vidal

 

IN one of his speaking engagements that I attended at the St. Elizabeth Theater in Vancouver, British Columbia 12 years ago, Dr. Deepak Chopra, author of the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, stressed that karma is used philosophically to indicate conditions in the present stemming from thoughts and actions in the past.

Much has been written about karma, a universal law considered as immutable, or a law of cause and effect referred to by Oriental faithful and both Luke and Matthew in the Bible.

Karma's Sanskrit meaning encompasses both action and reaction -- or consequences. Its Hindu meaning encompasses work, or the labor of the soul seeking to attain union with God.

In the book, Edgar Cayce's Story of Karma, author Mary Ann Woodward arranged and selected the "sleeping prophet's" revelation of man's destiny. 

During his lifetime, Cayce, the world-renowned prophet and psychic, gave a series of clairvoyant trance reading devoted to metaphysics and revolving around the central theme of reincarnation. The shock waves from his revelations still reverberate in scientific and religious circles.

Although Cayce was a practicing Christian, his trance readings frequently embraced concepts of Oriental religions, according to Woodward. From these discourses comes Edgar Cayce's Story of Karma--his explanation of the powerful life forces generated by personal actions which can bless or plague us through many lifetimes.

 

-o0o-

 

Woodward wrote that Cayce told many seekers, in their physical readings, that their physical defect or disease was a karmic condition. These readings emphasized the fact that our physical condition is directly dependent upon our mental and spiritual ideals, with their concomitant emotions, from one life to another. 

"We do take it with us," wrote Woodward. "Moreover, our daily stresses and strains, our emotional upsets, affect us physically."

Many were reportedly told they would not be well, nor would their physical condition improve, until both their mental and spiritual attitudes changed. 

"They would have to give up such negative things as fears, hates, and resentments and become more in attunement with Creative Forces," she added.

To be sure the attitudes oft influence the physical conditions of the body. No one can hate his neighbor and not have stomach or liver trouble. One cannot be jealous and allow anger of same and not have upset digestion or heart disorder. (4021-1)

This dependency was explained thus: For their have arisen the acute conditions not only from physical reactions but mental conditions that have been as resentments, which have been built into mental forces of the body. These are indicated in the reacting with the physical effects upon organ centers...now finding reflexes in various portions of the body. (1523-9)

This body is meeting its own self. For it is meeting its own shortcomings, when judged from some moral standards. The body, then, must first in its mental and spiritual attitude make amends, not merely promises to others but to self and the sources of health and of life itself. 

 

-o0o-

 

These should be the beginnings and the body not merely being dependent upon the applications which must be, or may be, made by others; for there are within self the conditions here taken which now bring undesirable results in the ability of the body to function in the manner either physically or mentally as is most desirable. But there would be first a change in mental and spiritual attitude...(5283-1)

"Of course, physical applications help healing and do alleviate the condition, but true healing comes from the mental and spiritual self," added Woodward.

And there must be taken into consideration all phases of this entity's experience in the present if the conditions would be wholly understood. For mind is the builder, and if there will be kept a balance--the physical mind and the spiritual mind should cooperate, coordinate. 

There are those forces which the entity, then (not merely the body but the entity--body, mind, soul, is meeting in itself, called--by itself oft--karmic reactions. 

But karma--Well, these are the conditions as we find them in the body: The body, the mind, the soul are one within the physical forces; for the body is indeed the temple of the living God. 

In each entity there is that portion which is a part of the Universal Force and is that which lives on. All must coordinate and cooperate. (1593-1)

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)

Secrets of the universe

 

"Reality is not a concept; reality is my daily life." 

—J. Krishnamurti

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

THERE is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.

"This is the message of all my gifts. If you haven't figured out this secret, happiness will always elude you," Eykis, a citizen from Uranus, told a peaceful and life-loving Earthling in an exchange encounter.

"Remember," Eykis added, "you all have such an advantage here on Earth. Your reality permits you to live in total harmony with your world...Why not take these gifts, apply them, and just attempt to experience a new reality?"

Dr. Wayne Dyer, the number one bestselling author of such reality-based, life-changing books as Your Erroneous Zones, Pulling Your Own Strings, and the Sky's the Limit, tells us in a parable format, about an Earthling's journey into space to find a new world, only to find a mirror image of his own. 

He fell in love with a woman from that other world. His inner voice, his deepest impulse, told him to bring her back to Earth. When she came, she brought gifts. He thrilled with inner excitement. Her precious gifts could mean no-limit happiness for all.

"Throughout history storytelling has been a significant avenue of communication," Dyer wrote in the book that dwells about the story of self-discovery. "From Aesop's Fables and biblical parables to Jonathan Livingstone Seagull and many additional ancient and modern sources, we can learn readily by stepping aside to the position of objective observer.

"There the sting of criticism is not so painful. The action and resulting consequences happened to the fox or bird or prodigal son. Yet with very little effort we see how the truth and universal essence belong to us all. We are moved to new perceptions, emotions, and behavior through these 'fictional' examples."

 

-o0o-

 

Dyer said science and technology have brought us forward into a grand new world with greater possibilities than ever. "But in many ways our attitudes and feelings have not evolved equally," he stressed. "We are less equipped to deal with the opportunities presented today because we drag along some unhelpful beliefs and misperceptions of the realities of our world."

He asked: "What would be the reactions of an intelligent visitor from another planet to our complex systems here on Earth? How would we view that visitor's culture? Can we compare favorably? Are we ready to accept an objective view?"

Meanwhile, the Earthling asked Eykis: "You mentioned something about secrets in our earlier discussions, Eykis. Do you want these secrets to remain clouded over, or are you willing to share them here on film with us?"

"I'd be happy to share my observations with you," retorted Eykis. "But first I would like to say that the only reason I refer to what follows as 'secrets' is that they appear to have eluded so many of you here on Earth. Originally, I call them secrets because I thought no one knew them. I've since discovered that all these so-called secrets are available to everyone on Earth, and have been as long as you've had recorded history. I will still refer to them as secrets, however, because their actual use continues to remain obscure."

 

-o0o-

 

The secrets of the universe, according to Eykis, are:

1. We must learn to cultivate our own garden.

2. The kingdom of heaven is within.

3. Everything in the universe is exactly as it should be.

4. It's never too late to have a have a happy childhood.

5. Where I go, there I am!

6. Keep it simple.

7. These are the good old days.

8. You are perfect.

 

-o0o-

 

WORKOUT FOR THE HEART. Cardiologists rank sexual intercourse as a mild-to-moderate-intensity exercise that enhances heart health as well as brisk walking does. As with any workout, the more vigorous we are, the more our heart benefits.

THE HOUR THAT MELTS FAT FASTER. Working out an extra 60 minutes a week could help us burn 3 times fatter, finds a recent study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. New exercisers who did a half hour of cardio twice weekly lost 4 pounds of fat over 8 weeks, while those who did 4 sessions a week lost a whopping 13 pounds.

ADOLESCENTS AT RISK. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have shown that the risk of getting meningococcal meningitis increases in adolescents. Because of this, the CDC recommends that adolescents 11-18 years of age be vaccinated against this disease.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)