My Blog.

aha! here’s a good cheaper make-up store than body shop!

hurrah, hurrah!

DODO SHOP

a korean cosmetics brand

(one and only) location: Harrison plaza (weird location)

Planning to get a nursing license , I am currently immersed at the university belt reviewing for the December boards. I don’t board or dorm around here anymore like I used to when i was way back my UST days. Everyday’s a gruelling task, having to wake up early…and managing the pressure on my buttocks as I leave the fx to my destination.

Rainy Season is a menace here. That time, I was having my evening review classes.  Everything was curtained in the rain.  My umbrella didn’t seem to beat the rain…and I was drenched to my undies, desperately hailing whatever means of transpo just to get a ride home.

I was all alone.  Everything seemed crazy.  The rain. My umbrella. My feet who could not stand the nice italian shoes. The jeepney driver who would not take me in…or us in…strangers begin to talk to each other as if they’ve known each other…all desprate to take a ride.

I walked in my alma mater.  UST. It has been quite a time.  Some things have changed but not the flood.  I dipped in the flood, alas.  This thing was to be done, or remain stranded at España. Darn it. at 10 pm, what to do…what to do…

I suddenly remembered Anna, who’s a clerk at the UST.  I will never forget the feeling of being saved, or almost saved.  I entered the UST hospitals with those darn shoes clicking, the soles clikcking and laughing, wagging with floodwater.  Damn you, italian shoes. Poor beauty.

I, the refugee.  Anna Tankeh is one of my well treasured friends.  You can trace back in high school. Of all my friends, this person has never failed to extend herself to her friends in need. And she gives without asking anything in return.  She is never pretentious. Forever I will be grateful for her kind deed. The effort she made to even wanting to have me stay at the clerk’s lounge at USTDelivery room area. She lent me her slippers and PJs. She gave me a whole bag of muffins that she should have eaten, and a drink.  God, I was laughing hysterically at my state.  I was actually off limits to the area, and she was thinking of hiding me at the dressing area (which has a bunk bed). But the thought of I being a stranger and crashing into an off limits area…isn’t, well…right.  So against Anna’s advice, I went downstairs, thinking where to go.  Probably hang around the lobby…or at Varsitarian office, which was my org office then…

At the lobby, I saw Lamby.  It was wonderful to see an old friend.  This flood seems to have awkwardly meet my old friends.  If only Deb, Jopay, Anai, and Tin were also here! Lamby had to return to his hospital, and I had to crash Varsi.

What happen next: I crashed Varsi office, helped with their Inkblots kits, chit chat with Yas (younger sibling)’s friends…  I thought I would be staying there but Yas turned out to be my savior.  She talked to the nuns at her dorm to adopt me for the night.

And again I waded the flood to her dorm. 

Heaven: a night at the Holy family guest room.  Clean bed, clean towel. with clean cr! hurrah!  And a roommate whom I befriended, Rain. Like I, she was stranded along U belt.

I slept in borrowed clothes.  It was almost 2 in the morning. Rain shared some stories, and I shared the muffins that Anna gave.  Yasmin popped in for the mufins and the cool guest room!

Hay.

This I got from Reuters.  It’s a good read.

Nearly two years after he was found in hiding, Saddam Hussein goes on trial in Baghdad on Wednesday charged with crimes against humanity for the death of more than 140 Shi’ite Muslim men over two decades ago.

Together with seven others, all members of his once-feared Baath Party, Saddam will face a five-judge panel from Iraq’s Special Tribunal, a court established by U.S. authorities in December 2003 to try the leaders of the overthrown regime. However, while the day in court for the former dictator has been long awaited by Iraqis and others, it may not last long. Government officials and sources close to the tribunal say the case may be quickly adjourned, perhaps on the first day, so the judges, who have received training over the past 18 months in Britain, can study defense motions for a dismissal or delay.

Saddam, 68, may not speak other than to confirm his name when charges are read out; at a pre-trial hearing in July last year he defiantly gave his occupation as "president of Iraq." He has not been seen in public since, other than in video of interviews with magistrates, in which he appeared thoughtful, stroking the greying beard he has sported since his capture.

The charges stem from events that took place on July 8, 1982, when a group of young men linked to the Shi’ite Dawa Party attempted to assassinate Saddam as his armoured motorcade passed through Dujail, a town about 60 km (35 miles) north of Baghdad. In retaliation for the botched attempt on his life, prosecutors will try to show that Saddam ordered his henchmen to hunt down, torture and kill scores of men from the town, not just immediately after that day, but in the years that followed. Women and children were also alleged to have been forcibly removed from Dujail, taken to Abu Ghraib prison and later sent to an internment camp in the desert near the border with Saudi Arabia where many ultimately "disappeared." Helicopters and tanks then demolished parts of the town, while Saddam’s soldiers laid waste to rich farmland and fruit groves, destroying the people’s homes and their livelihoods.

INTENSE SECURITY

Investigators have had nearly two years to collect evidence and interview witnesses in the case, the first of several which Saddam is expected to face in the coming months, including charges of genocide for attacks against Kurds in the 1980s. More than 800 pages of evidence are said to have been gathered ahead of the Dujail trial. Saddam’s chief lawyer, Khalil Dulaimi, says he has not been given nearly enough time to study it all or interview witnesses, limiting his defense.

An Iraqi with little experience of arguing major cases, particularly not those involving allegations of crimes against humanity, Dulaimi has said he intends to challenge the legitimacy of the court in motions to be presented on Wednesday. The defense team backing him from London has said he will present a dossier of 122 points designed to show that the court, whose judges were chosen under U.S. occupation, does not have jurisdiction over Saddam and is illegal. In the run-up to the trial, human rights groups have raised concerns about the independence of the court and its ability to meet international standards for major criminal proceedings.

The trial will get under way amid intense security, unprecedented even for Iraq, with body searches, X-rays, deep background checks on observers, eye-scans and finger-printing. The defendants will sit facing the judges, who will be on a raised dais behind court clerks. A curtain will protect the identity of witnesses, and bullet-proof glass will separate the few journalists and observers from the rest of the court.

The prosecution and defense lawyers — each defendant can have his own representative — will be allowed to question witnesses only via the judges, as Iraqi law dictates. With less than 24 hours to go, it still has not been decided whether it will be carried live on TV or with a delay. If proceedings are quickly adjourned, sources close to the court say it could be several weeks before they resume, probably after parliamentary elections are held in mid-December.