Official Earth Day activities in the Philippines were postponed by the government to April 25, Monday, to accord due attention to it as the annual date of April 22 coincided this year with Good Friday, one of the most important religious holidays of the country.

While the move is commendable, I would like to emphasize the need for us parents to go beyond the one-hour Earth Hour or the one-day Earth Day activities and do the right thing every day so that our generation would be able to bequeath to our children a better world than what we inherited from our parents. Such call for action was trumpeted about a year and a half ago in a blog post to highlight the International Day of Climate Action.

logo courtesy of www.teeswater.ca

In the same blog, I listed my top five concrete and practical actions that parents can do to help mitigate climate change.  The following is a quick rundown:

1. Reduce energy consumption.  This is the concrete action that was promoted in the Earth Hour.  It has an immediate positive impact to the wallet on top of contributing to the long-term sustainability of our planet.
2. Eat less meat, more vegetables.  This action had to do with the energy requirements to produce meat as animals are secondary consumers that lose energy as heat, thus inefficient in converting biomass from plants.  We also get the health benefits of eating more vegetables, nuts and fruits, while lowering the risks of certain cancers and lifestyle diseases by reducing meat in our diet.  You might even wanna go for an ecologically sound alternative to eating meat as protein source-- entomophagy.
3. Buy local foods and products.  It's not just getting the freshest food on your table, but also helping the local economy become self-sufficient.  This concrete action minimizes energy expenditure due to transport and packaging.
4. Travel less, travel efficiently.  Working closer to home has the obvious advantages of lowering fuel expenses and pollution.  But more important to parents is the time that can be spent with the family or doing more worthwhile activities rather than commuting to and from office.
5. Educate, communicate.  This concrete action not only plants the seeds to better citizenship in our children and community, but also forces us to spend time talking to them. It's a great topic to discuss during dinner where everyone can contribute his/her own ideas.

To read the full arguments for the above listed concrete actions, click this link to the original article "Concrete actions parents can do to help mitigate climate change".

The benefits of the above recommended concrete actions that anybody, particularly parents, can do is at least two-fold in that the positive impacts are both in the short- and long-term. Moreover, these are actions that can be done every day and not needing any special events, venues, skills, tools, group or expenses to do. In fact, we can do it on our own. But our individual actions have a huge impact if more of us do it every day.

So please share this information to family and friends so they, too, may adopt these practical steps/actions to save our planet. You may do so by clicking on the "like" or "tweet" buttons below, or sharing it via email or reposting it in your Facebook or blog.

We celebrated Earth Hour in three different locations in the past three years. In all cases, we witnessed the indifference of neighbors in our immediate vicinity. I actually started writing this post in the wee hours of the morning after the event, but decided not to proceed to give some more thoughts about the disappointment the kids, Mama Sez and I felt in the recent Earth Hour.



Having known that the Philippines was number one in the past two years in terms of participation in this world event also contributed to the disappointment. Was it for real? Was it just for PR, full of noise but no substance?

When one reads carefully the claims of "resounding success", the figures actually reflect what we've been observing in the past three Earth Hour events. The estimates of at least 15 million Filipinos participating is about 15-17% of the population and that would mean only 1 out of 6 Filipinos. In 2010, we observed that ours was the only unit in a six-door apartment complex that switched the lights off. My estimate would be lower this year in our current location.

I guess we were hoping for wider participation in our own neighborhood and the high expectation turned into disappointment. My brother-in-law told us that night that Alabang households have been participating well in the past years. There might be a wide range of values in terms of percentage or degree of participation with certain communities still not seeing the impact their involvement would have in their own lives now and in the future.

It just means that we have so much to do to improve the present numbers and actually transform communities into aware and involved citizenry ready to contribute beyond the sixty minutes per year for our planet. We must realize that we are all in this together ...and together we can make it happen.

Our family has been supporting Earth Hour for the past two years. This year, it is no different and we're glad that the campaign is moving beyond the one hour a year of communal action for our planet.

With human population hitting the 7 Billion mark by the end of 2011, we should all look into what each one of us can do beyond the Earth Hour tonight (8:30 to 9:30PM when we all refrain from using electricity), and campaign for better daily practices keeping in mind our individual impact on the planet.

We will be writing about some ideas on how we can contribute beyond the one hour tonight. So please keep posted.

For now, spread the word and share this post to your friends so more people can get involved. Together we can make our planet a better and safer place to live in for all of us and our children.

Yes, you read it right, Ching Chong means I love you. No, it's neither Chinese, Japanese nor Filipino. It's a new "Asian phrase" that came to be as an offshoot of the now infamous youtube rant of UCLA student Alexandra Wallace against Asians. As a politically correct, clever and creative response to her ignorance and bigotry, Jimmy Wong made the following video and created what could be the new Asian slang that lumped together all languages in Asia to one that is seen in the eyes of unfortunate human beings like Alexandra.



The nice melody and catchy lyrics, particularly the phrases directly quoted from Alexandra "Ching Chong, ling long, ting tong" gamely translated into English by Jimmy, easily became the LSS since yesterday. Since then, Mama Sez and I, our kids, especially our youngest Nadine, and even the extended family have used "Ching Chong" as a code to say "I love you". Not bad for a term meant to be derogatory became a term for endearment. Now that's positively being positive in a world still full of intolerance and bigotry.

I'd say let's continue to use Ching Chong as a reminder of how a person can be so wrapped-up with oneself and forgets to step into the shoes of others. Each one of us can be as guilty if hatred and jealousy overpower the values of tolerance and empathy. This simple phrase, Ching Chong, can say it all.

Note: read more about super moon, tsunamis and bigotry in this WASPS.

That milestone is seven-eleven, 7 billion people by the end of 2011. National Geographic is doing a special series about this milestone within the year starting with the video below to spark interest on the topic on global population.

Although this almost 3-minute video began by getting one to imagine how big a quantity 7 billion is and followed by fascinating statistics on how fast we got to this number that will eventually reach 9 billion by 2045, the tone became less scary and more reassuring at about 60% through the video when it shifted to a discussion on balance.

Screenshot from the National Geographic video below.

The focus on balance identifies the lopsided usage of earth's resources as a key problem as the required space for 7 billion human beings is obviously not that much. In the end, the video also celebrates diversity and encourages the 7 billion people to think about the implications of these numbers.

An in-depth report on population 7 billion is also featured in the National Geographic website. It tries to answer the question "Can the planet take the strain?" by reviewing the arguments in the age-old population debate. I enjoin you to watch the video below and check out the special series.

While the internet and text messaging are powerful tools to spread news, information and ideas as well as a means to quickly organize and move people to action, irresponsible use of these tools can also leads to confusion, panic and unwarranted anxiety.

The recent tragedy in Japan, brought about by a series of earthquakes, followed by tsunamis, and then the partial nuclear meltdown in Fukushima brought the world together in prayers and cooperation in large part because of the availability of information in the traditional media and the internet.

Map Of Japan showing evacuation zone around Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant (courtesy of CBS News).

However, the internet and cell phone was also used around noon today to spread unverified information about "radiation leaks from Fukushima hitting the Philippines at 4pm, with recommendation to stay indoors and to swab the neck (thyroid) area with betadine". Well meaning people forwarded the message in twitter, facebook, email and SMS to their families and friends so as to help them prepare for the impending danger.

This of course pushed Mama Sez and me into action. We immediately searched the internet for updates and specifically looked for verification from major news network and government sources worldwide, the only ones we thought who'd be responsible enough to know and verify information before posting anything online. It turned out that the cited source, BBC News, has not posted any updates to indicate that radiation would reach the Philippines. We also used University and research organization websites to learn basic information about nuclear radiation leaks, precautions and handling of emergency situations. We eventually settled down about an hour later when we made judgment that the forwarded information was false. Our friend also later retracted the warning with a follow-up message saying that it is NOT true.

I guess the only way to guard against misinformation, deliberate or not, is to stay calm and immediately try to verify before forwarding the message. Being able to use and send information over the internet and/or via cell phone text messaging is POWER to influence and move other people to action, and wielding power requires all of us to be responsible as well.

After a couple of hours of play at the UPLB Freedom Park, College, Laguna, the family headed to Bonito's where the kids had pizza and the adults enjoyed the house specialty, caldereta.  Because of the before dinner bread, chips and slurpee at the park, the kids' attention was not really into food.  They found a hangout in front of the television in the middle of the restaurant.  What's supposed to be a cool place to relax intended for college dudes and dudettes became a play area for the kids.

I was only reminded about earth hour a few minutes into 8:30 when we started to settle down in Ami's apartment.  While preparing for an hour without electricity, I was checking out the neighborhood (at least those that are visible from the apartment) and was quietly hoping that majority of the houses would participate in this simple gesture of sacrificing an hour of comfort.  But boy was I disappointed.  Ours was the only unit in the six-door apartment building that had our lights out for the duration of the event.  When I pointed it out, our eldest said that the others might not know about earth hour or perhaps they did know but didn't care.

The skies were clear and we can see the moon and the stars from the front yard/garage.  A pretty good ambiance to talk to the kids about why we're supporting this event and the impact it might have on climate change.  We played the game "weave a story" after so many months of not doing it.

It's basically starting with "Once upon a time..." and the next person has to continue the story to any direction he or she fancies.  Our kids are getting really good at it.  We were still using the familiar prince or princess theme but the plot gets more complicated and amusing at the same time.  They're also quite creative about the names of the characters.  The story ended with "Atlas" getting banished for asking for money for the big rock he gave as a gift to the king and annoying the princess by not offering her a gift.  The part about the scroll with the secret to staying forever young taken from inside the rock when it was split into two remained undeveloped...perhaps a starting point for a later game.

Our toddler only listened to us while we weave the story.  I am confident that he'll soon join in the fun as he more recently have always wanted to do whatever it is his older siblings does.

I am thankful for the opportunity to spend time with the kids and talk to them about energy conservation, the environment and climate change, as well as play a game we've always enjoyed playing when they were younger.