VERY INTERESTING CONVERSATION (Pls read til the end :)) ENJOY!!

An Atheist Professor of Philosophy was speaking to ...his Class on the Problem Science has with GOD, the ALMIGHTY. He asked one of his New Christian Students to stand and . . .
...
Professor : You are a Christian, aren't you, son ?

Student : Yes, sir.

Professor: So, you Believe in GOD ?

Student : Absolutely, sir.

Professor: Is GOD Good ?

Student : Sure.

Professor: Is GOD ALL - POWERFUL ?

Student : Yes.

Professor: My Brother died of Cancer even though he Prayed to GOD to Heal him.

Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill.

But GOD didn't. How is this GOD good then? Hmm?

(Student was silent )

Professor: You can't answer, can you ? Let's start again, Young Fella.

Is GOD Good?

Student : Yes.

Professor: Is Satan good ?

Student : No.

Professor: Where does Satan come from ?

Student : From . . . GOD . . .

Professor: That's right. Tell me son, is there evil in this World?

Student : Yes.

Professor: Evil is everywhere, isn't it ? And GOD did make everything. Correct?

Student : Yes.

Professor: So who created evil ?

(Student did not answer)

Professor: Is there Sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness?

All these terrible things exist in the World, don't they?

Student : Yes, sir.

Professor: So, who Created them ?

(Student had no answer)

Professor: Science says you have 5 Senses you use to Identify and Observe the World around you.

Tell me, son . . . Have you ever Seen GOD?

Student : No, sir.

Professor: Tell us if you have ever Heard your GOD?

Student : No , sir.

Professor: Have you ever Felt your GOD, Tasted your GOD, Smelt your GOD?

Have you ever had any Sensory Perception of GOD for that matter?

Student : No, sir. I'm afraid I haven't.

Professor: Yet you still Believe in HIM?

Student : Yes.

Professor : According to Empirical, Testable, Demonstrable Protocol,

Science says your GOD doesn't exist. What do you say to that, son?

Student : Nothing. I only have my Faith.

Professor: Yes,Faith. And that is the Problem Science has.

Student : Professor, is there such a thing as Heat?

Professor: Yes.

Student : And is there such a thing as Cold?

Professor: Yes.

Student : No, sir. There isn't.

(The Lecture Theatre became very quiet with this turn of events )

Student : Sir, you can have Lots of Heat, even More Heat, Superheat, Mega Heat, White Heat,

a Little Heat or No Heat.

But we don't have anything called Cold.

We can hit 458 Degrees below Zero which is No Heat, but we can't go any further after that.

There is no such thing as Cold.

Cold is only a Word we use to describe the Absence of Heat.

We cannot Measure Cold.

Heat is Energy.

Cold is Not the Opposite of Heat, sir, just the Absence of it.

(There was Pin-Drop Silence in the Lecture Theatre )

Student : What about Darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as Darkness?

Professor: Yes. What is Night if there isn't Darkness?

Student : You're wrong again, sir.

Darkness is the Absence of Something

You can have Low Light, Normal Light, Bright Light, Flashing Light . . .

But if you have No Light constantly, you have nothing and its called Darkness, isn't it?

In reality, Darkness isn't.

If it is, were you would be able to make Darkness Darker, wouldn't you?

Professor: So what is the point you are making, Young Man ?

Student : Sir, my point is your Philosophical Premise is flawed.

Professor: Flawed ? Can you explain how?

Student : Sir, you are working on the Premise of Duality.

You argue there is Life and then there is Death, a Good GOD and a Bad GOD.

You are viewing the Concept of GOD as something finite, something we can measure.

Sir, Science can't even explain a Thought.

It uses Electricity and Magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one.

To view Death as the Opposite of Life is to be ignorant of the fact that

Death cannot exist as a Substantive Thing.

Death is Not the Opposite of Life: just the Absence of it.

Now tell me, Professor, do you teach your Students that they evolved from a Monkey?

Professor: If you are referring to the Natural Evolutionary Process, yes, of course, I do.

Student : Have you ever observed Evolution with your own eyes, sir?

(The Professor shook his head with a Smile, beginning to realize where the Argument was going )

Student : Since no one has ever observed the Process of Evolution at work and

Cannot even prove that this Process is an On-Going Endeavor,

Are you not teaching your Opinion, sir?

Are you not a Scientist but a Preacher?

(The Class was in Uproar )

Student : Is there anyone in the Class who has ever seen the Professor's Brain?

(The Class broke out into Laughter )

Student : Is there anyone here who has ever heard the Professor's Brain, Felt it, touched or Smelt it? . . .

No one appears to have done so.

So, according to the Established Rules of Empirical, Stable, Demonstrable Protocol,

Science says that You have No Brain, sir.

With all due respect, sir, how do we then Trust your Lectures, sir?

(The Room was Silent. The Professor stared at the Student, his face unfathomable)

Professor: I guess you'll have to take them on Faith, son.

Student : That is it sir . . . Exactly !

The Link between Man & GOD is FAITH.

That is all that Keeps Things Alive and Moving.
***************************************************************************************************************************************************

Do you know who the student is?
 

That student was Albert Einstein. :)

" try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value "

- Albert Einstein 

The 10 Most Puzzling Ancient Artifacts

The Bible tells us that God created Adam and Eve just a few thousand years ago, by some fundamentalist interpretations. Science informs us that this is mere fiction and that man is a few million years old, and that civilization just tens of thousands of years old. Could it be, however, that conventional science is just as mistaken as the Bible stories? There is a great deal of archeological evidence that the history of life on earth might be far different than what current geological and anthropological texts tell us. Consider these astonishing finds:
The Grooved SpheresOver the last few decades, miners in South Africa have been digging up mysterious metal spheres. Origin unknown, these spheres measure approximately an inch or so in diameter, and some are etched with three parallel grooves running around the equator. Two types of spheres have been found: one is composed of a solid bluish metal with flecks of white; the other is hollowed out and filled with a spongy white substance. The kicker is that the rock in which they where found is Precambrian - and dated to 2.8 billion years old! Who made them and for what purpose is unknown.
The Dropa StonesIn 1938, an archeological expedition led by Dr. Chi Pu Tei into the Baian-Kara-Ula mountains of China made an astonishing discovery in some caves that had apparently been occupied by some ancient culture. Buried in the dust of ages on the cave floor were hundreds of stone disks. Measuring about nine inches in diameter, each had a circle cut into the center and was etched with a spiral groove, making it look for all the world like some ancient phonograph record some 10,000 to 12,000 years old. The spiral groove, it turns out, is actually composed of tiny hieroglyphics that tell the incredible story of spaceships from some distant world that crash-landed in the mountains. The ships were piloted by people who called themselves the Dropa, and the remains of whose descendents, possibly, were found in the cave.

click for enlargement

The Ica StonesBeginning in the 1930s, the father of Dr. Javier Cabrera, Cultural Anthropologist for Ica, Peru, discovered many hundreds of ceremonial burial stones in the tombs of the ancient Incas. Dr. Cabrera, carrying on his father's work, has collected more than 1,100 of these andesite stones, which are estimated to be between 500 and 1,500 years old and have become known collectively as the Ica Stones. The stones bear etchings, many of which are sexually graphic (which was common to the culture), some picture idols and others depict such practices as open-heart surgery and brain transplants. The most astonishing etchings, however, clearly represent dinosaurs - brontosaurs, triceratops (see photo), stegosaurus and pterosaurs. While skeptics consider the Ica Stones a hoax, their authenticity has neither been proved or disproved.

click for  enlargement

The Antikythera MechanismA perplexing artifact was recovered by sponge-divers from a shipwreck in 1900 off the coast of Antikythera, a small island that lies northwest of Crete. The divers brought up from the wreck a great many marble and and bronze statues that had apparently been the ship's cargo. Among the findings was a hunk of corroded bronze that contained some kind of mechanism composed of many gears and wheels. Writing on the case indicated that it was made in 80 B.C., and many experts at first thought it was an astrolabe, an astronomer's tool. An x-ray of the mechanism, however, revealed it to be far more complex, containing a sophisticated system of differential gears. Gearing of this complexity was not known to exist until 1575! It is still unknown who constructed this amazing instrument 2,000 years ago or how the technology was lost.

click for  enlargement

The Baghdad BatteryToday batteries can be found in any grocery, drug, convenience and department store you come across. Well, here's a battery that's 2,000 years old! Known as the Baghdad Battery, this curiosity was found in the ruins of a Parthian village believed to date back to between 248 B.C. and 226 A.D. The device consists of a 5-1/2-inch high clay vessel inside of which was a copper cylinder held in place by asphalt, and inside of that was an oxidized iron rod. Experts who examined it concluded that the device needed only to be filled with an acid or alkaline liquid to produce an electric charge. It is believed that this ancient battery might have been used for electroplating objects with gold. If so, how was this technology lost... and the battery not rediscovered for another 1,800 years?

click for  enlargement

The Coso ArtifactWhile mineral hunting in the mountains of California near Olancha during the winter of 1961, Wallace Lane, Virginia Maxey and Mike Mikesell found a rock, among many others, that they thought was a geode - a good addition for their gem shop. Upon cutting it open, however, Mikesell found an object inside that seemed to be made of white porcelain. In the center was a shaft of shiny metal. Experts estimated that it should have taken about 500,000 years for this fossil-encrusted nodule to form, yet the object inside was obviously of sophisticated human manufacture. Further investigation revealed that the porcelain was surround by a hexagonal casing, and an x-ray revealed a tiny spring at one end. Some who have examined the evidence say it looks very much like a modern-day spark plug. How did it get inside a 500,000-year-old rock?
Ancient Model AircraftThere are artifacts belonging to ancient Egyptian and Central American cultures that look amazingly like modern-day aircraft. The Egyptian artifact, found in a tomb at Saqquara, Egypt in 1898, is a six-inch wooden object that strongly resembles a model airplane, with fuselage, wings and tail. Experts believe the object is so aerodynamic that it is actually able to glide. The small object discovered in Central America (shown at right), and estimated to be 1,000 years old, is made of gold and could easily be mistaken for a model of a delta-wing aircraft - or even the Space Shuttle. It even features what looks like a pilot's seat.

click for  enlargement

Giant Stone Balls of Costa RicaWorkmen hacking and burning their way through the dense jungle of Costa Rica to clear an area for banana plantations in the 1930s stumbled upon some incredible objects: dozens of stone balls, many of which were perfectly spherical. They varied in size from as small as a tennis ball to an astonishing 8 feet in diameter and weighing 16 tons! Although the great stone balls are clearly man-made, it is unknown who made them, for what purpose and, most puzzling, how they achieved such spherical precision.
Impossible FossilsFossils, as we learned in grade school, appear in rocks that were formed many thousands of years ago. Yet there are a number of fossils that just don't make geological or historical sense. A fossil of a human handprint, for example, was found in limestone estimated to be 110 million years old. What appears to be a fossilized human finger found in the Canadian Arctic also dates back 100 to 110 million years ago. And what appears to be the fossil of a human footprint, possibly wearing a sandal, was found near Delta, Utah in a shale deposit estimated to be 300 million to 600 million years old.
Out-of-Place Metal ObjectsHumans were not even around 65 million years ago, never mind people who could work metal. So then how does science explain semi-ovoid metallic tubes dug out of 65-million-year-old Cretaceous chalk in France? In 1885, a block of coal was broken open to find a metal cube obviously worked by intelligent hands. In 1912, employees at an electric plant broke apart a large chunk of coal out of which fell an iron pot! A nail was found embedded in a sandstone block from the Mesozoic Era. And there are many, many more such anomalies.
What are we to make of these finds? There are several possibilities:

• Intelligent humans date back much, much further than we realize.
• Other intelligent beings and civilizations existed on earth far beyond our recorded history.
• Our dating methods are completely inaccurate, and that stone, coal and fossils form much more rapidly than we now estimate.

In any case, these examples - and there are many more - should prompt any curious and open-minded scientist to reexamine and rethink the true history of life on earth.

The World’s Most Mysterious Places: Can We Explain Everything?

Many popular experts suggest possibility that mysterious sites around the world were created with help of advanced knowledge and technology (possibly more advanced than our current one) possessed by lost civilizations. Others do not believe that there ever was very advanced civilization on earth and all of the superb knowledge was handed down to us by ancient astronauts who came down from heaven. Most scientists do not subscribe to any of these ideas and try to explain ancient enigmas on the ground of religion and ritual.



Stonehenge


Who has never heard about Stonehenge? I guess it is one of the most popular mysteries. So, what’s the point about this megalithic wonder? Why does this place cause controversy in the scientific community?

Stonehenge is a megalithic monument on the Salisbury Plain in Southern England, composed mainly of thirty upright stones (sarsens, each over ten feet tall and weighing up to 45 tons), aligned in a circle, with thirty lintels (6 tons each) perched horizontally atop the sarsens in a continuous circle. There is also an inner circle composed of similar stones, also constructed in post-and-lintel fashion. You can say that there are a lot of great monuments all over the world, many of them are more interesting. What is special about Stonehenge? All those questions that have no exact answers. What was its function: an astronomical observatory, a religious site, or something supernatural? Who built it, and how?


Some have suggested that Stonehenge was built by Druids, but we don't really know much about the builders. The archaeology points to a construction date between 5,000 and 3,000 years ago, so it was built even before the first metal tools were used by humankind.

Regardless of who built the stone monument, the design and construction involved thousands of people. To drag huge stones from Marlborough Downs, 30 kilometres to the south of Stonehenge, would have been quite a feat. And how was it possible to erect those stones? It is an amazing feat of engineering, and there are many legends that reflect the inability to explain how the heavy stones could have ever been transported by primitive humans. Stonehenge is even mentioned within Arthurian legend, that names Merlin as the engineer.


One more interesting thing is that Stonehenge is angled such that on the equinoxes and the solstices, the sun rising over the horizon appears to be perfectly placed between gaps in the megaliths. This is doubtless not an accident, and probably contributed to the stories of its mysterious origins.

Nazca Lines


Nazca Lines are the most outstanding group of geoglyphs in the world, they are located in the Nazca Desert, between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana in Peru. Etched in the surface of the desert pampa sand about 300 hundred figures made of straight lines, geometric shapes and pictures of animals and birds - and their patterns are only clearly visible from the air.
There are 3 mysterious aspects to Nazca Plateau:

• First, the straight lines, many kilometers long, crisscross sectors of the pampas in all directions.
• Second, many of the lines form geometric figures: angles, triangles, bunches, spirals, rectangles, wavy lines, etc.
• Third, many lines form animal patterns.

Nazca Lines Map Extract:


It is believed that the geoglyphs were built by a people called the Nasca- but why and how they created these wonders of the world has defied explanation. Since the Nazca lines cannot be recognized as coherent figures except from the air, it is presumed the Nazca people could never have seen their work from this vantage point, there has been much speculation on the builders' abilities and motivations.


Could these geoglyphs be effigies of ancient animal gods or patterns of constellations? Are they roads, star pointers, maybe even a gigantic map? If the people who lived here 2,000 years ago had only a simple technology, how did they manage to construct such precise figures? Did they have a plan? If so, who ordained it? It all seems so otherworldly. To comprehend the Nasca lines, created by the removal of desert rock to reveal the pale pink sand beneath, visitors have proposed every imaginable explanation - from runways for spaceships to tracks for Olympic athletes, from op art to pop art, to astronomical observatories.
Easter Island

Easter Island (Rapa Nui in the indigenous language), is a Chilean-governed island in the south eastern Pacific Ocean. Rapa Nui is a small, hilly, now treeless island of volcanic origin. It's been called the most isolated inhabited territory on Earth, but there is another aspect that sets it apart from any other place on Earth - its hundreds of megalithic human-like statues that face inland from the shore. These enigmatic statues are called moai.

Almost all moais were carved out of distinctive, compressed, easily worked volcanic ash. The largest one weights up to 165 tons, and its height is almost 22 meters. Some upright moai have become buried up to their necks by shifting soils.

This massive production of megalithic works on an island that is absolutely barren, with just grass, immediately captures our imagination. How did it all happen? Who built these statues? And why did they build them?


Some scientists suggest that Easter Island inhabitants, the Rapanui, came from Polynesia. But similarities to Indian stone statues around Lake Titicaca in South America are striking. Is this accidental or not? Scholars are unable to definitively explain the function and use of the moai statues. Some of them suggest that the statues were symbols of authority and power, both religious and political.

One of the biggest riddles about Easter Island is how the statues 'traveled' from the quarry to their platforms or ahus, sometimes as far as 20 or 25 kilometres away? Rapa Nui legend has it that the moai "walked from the quarry". But less than one third of all carved moai actually made it to a final ceremonial ahus site. Was this due to the inherent difficulties in transporting them? Were the ones that remain in the quarry deemed culturally unworthy of transport? Or had the islanders run out of the resources necessary to complete the Herculean task of carving and moving the moai?


Easter Island is more well known as Te-Pito-O-Te-Henua, meaning ‘The Navel of the World’ and as Mata-Ki-Te-Rani, meaning ‘Eyes Looking at Heaven’. These ancient names and a host of mythological details point to the possibility that the remote island may once have been both a geodetic marker and the site of an astronomical observatory of a long forgotten civilization.

Buried WWII Treasures in the Philippines

You may not know it, but there are literally billions in gold, statues and other Asian looted treasures buried in hundreds of secret locations throughout the Philippines right now. No, this is not some wild, imaginative fiction story written by a bored author on a Sunday afternoon. The story The story you are about to read is based on years of research, interviews and fact. Absolutely, no fiction involved.
Because the Japanese General, Yamashita Tomoyuke (a.k.a.-The Tiger of Malaya), was in command of the Philippines when it was invaded by the Americans, these hidden treasures have become known as Yamashita's Gold or the Tiger's Gold. Shortly following the end of World War II, Yamashita was tried for war crimes and hung in the Philippines. He never disclosed any of the secret locations of Asia's buried looted war treasures.
During the earlier part of the war W.W.II looted treasures were being shipped back to Japan for badly needed war finances. However, when American patrolling naval vessels made the shipping of these looted treasures to Japan much too risky to continue with due to almost certain loss, another plan was devised.
Investigative reports show that a great bulk of World War II treasures reached the Philippines from the latter part of 1943 through October, 1944, at that period when Field Marshall Count Terauchi was in charge of the Japanese Imperial Forces in the southeast area of the Pacific. He had ordered Admiral Masaharu (then over-all military commander of the Philippines before General Yamashita) and several other admirals and generals (including Yamashita) that all war booties taken from their respective occupied territories comprising Java, Sumatra, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma, and Northern India be collected and thereafter transferred to the Philippines.
Japan had always considered the Philippine Islands to be a very important strategic location for military bases in Southeast Asia. Unknown to the rest of the world, the Japanese had a major plan for post war sovereignty, and the Philippine Archipelago was included in this elaborate scheme. Once the shipping lanes became too dangerous due to American Naval vessels, almost all of the loot that the Japanese had accumulated thereafter was being channeled to the Philippines and buried. Their ultimate plan was that when the war was over they were going to withdraw forces from all the other Asian countries, but try to maintain there colonial rule over the Philippine Islands.
Under the banner of "Asia for Asians" they prescribed some reforms in the guise of nationalism. In hopes to win over the Philippine people, in 1943, the Japanese went as far as setting up a "Philippine Republic" and installing a puppet government with the Judge Jose Laurel as president. By winning over the hearts of the Philippine people and later even granting them independence, the Japanese hoped that they would then be regarded as "heroes" by them. This would also allow them to put military bases there as a pretext of "protection for the Philippine people". In this way, they could remain in the Philippines for as long as they liked and take their time to re-excavate the stolen W.W.II loot at their leisure. It was a good plan but in the end it didn't work out--the Americans invaded the Philippines in October 1944.
However, before this U.S. invasion, the Japanese were very busy hiding and securing its Asian W.W.II loot. Elaborate tunnels were dug, some down to depths of a few hundred feet, to the final "storage chambers" where the gold was to be kept. Most, if not all of these tunnels, were booby-trapped and rigged with 1,000 and 2,000 pound W.W.II bombs and poisonous gas. This trick would help deter the buried loot from falling into enemy hands. Detailed maps of the sites were drawn up on rectangular rice paper--all written in the 2,000 year-old Japanese script known as "Kungi", which hasn't been used for the past 150 years. Numerous concrete markers, which were to be left as clues, were also buried at strategic locations that would later lead the looters back to the hidden caches. These markers were in the shapes of different animals and had Kungi writing on them.
In most cases, POW labor was used to dig the intricate tunneling systems. In all cases, upon completion of securing the gold in the pits...the POWs were all executed and buried along with the treasures. In some rare cases, Japanese officers even had their own soldiers killed and buried along with the treasure to protect their secret locations.
In all there were 172 "documented" Philippine burial sites (138 land and 34 water sites) left by the Japanese. This is not to even mention the numerous "private" burials of W.W.II loot by greedy officers and renegade soldiers. There was still much treasure remaining to be buried when the U.S. abruptly invaded the islands. Japanese forces took all of this with them up into the mountains in the northern Philippines and other areas during their retreat, where it was all buried at many different locations.
It is estimated that the total worth of this war loot ranged up to three billion 1940's dollars--the equivalent of over $100 billion today. According to various post war estimates, the amount of gold bullion alone was 4,000 to 6,000 tons. Top U.S. and Japanese sources claim that it would take at least one hundred years to unearth all of these hidden treasures.
If you're wondering why the Japanese themselves haven't gone back to the Philippines to try and secretly recover some of this hidden booty, the answer is: They certainly have...but only a very small percentage of what was actually buried! Ex-president Ferdinand Marcos himself managed to recover several sites (with the assistance of some ex-Japanese soldiers) and that is how he became so wealthy.

The Myth on the Gracious Maria Makiling

Makiling is a mountain between Laguna and Quezon and towers all over most major towns of Laguna. According to myths, it is guarded by a local nymph-god named Maria Makiling. Ever met her yet?
A lot of local and foreign poets have been inspired by the myth on Maria Makiling. One of them was the national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal. There are countless myths and tales on her, and one of them is her kind disposition on both good and bad people.
This myth has it that Maria Mikiling, in earlier days, would be often seen roaming the forests of the mountain, or even visiting nearby towns around the foothills disguised as an old lady or teenage girl. She would dole out wealth to town folks who were in need by sending fruit baskets stashed with gold nuggets or pieces of expensive jewelry. The myth avers that she often sent newly weds precious stones as wedding gift. But as modernity became more pronounced in the nearby localities, the myth alleges that she had stopped doing so.
There were countless times when foreign hunters out to trace her tracks actually came face to face with her, says this myth, and had a sampling of her awesome fiery stares which were a mixture of angst, wrath, and gentleness. At times, says this myth, she would just let her vapory figure be felt or glimpsed as she crossed over shrubberies or fields with speed and grace. People would often see her gliding past, long hair waving in a mysterious wind, and her soft violin music filling the air with sweet serenity—another one of her liberality. According to this myth, her music and presence usually repaired themountain forest after a fierce storm had passed by.
Once, the myth says, a hunter was after a wild bore which ran and hid under an old sagging hut deep in the forest. Suddenly a beautiful young lady came out of the hut and declared ownership of every wild creature in themountain forest. The lady was said to be of native brown skin color, tall, long haired, with delicate hands and feet, and a serious but gentle countenance. She was visibly annoyed, and yet she treated the hunter with abundance of food, natural refreshment, and later sent him home with some jewelry.
The Philippine myth on the graciousness and liberality of Maria Makiling also reflects the legendary traits of a cultured and pure Filipina.

SIGNS THAT YOU'RE A FILIPINO

   MANNERISM AND PERSONALITY TRAITS  

         1. You point with your lips

         2. You eat with your hand and have it down as a technique

         3. Your other piece of luggage is a "Balikbayan Box"

         4. You nod your head upwards to greet someone

         5. You put your foot up on your chair and rest your elbows on your knees while you eat

         6. You use a rock to scrub yourself in the shower

         7. You kiss relatives on the cheek when you enter the room

         8. You're standing next to eight big boxes at the airport

         9. You collect items from hotels or restaurants as "souvenirs"

        10. Your house has a distinctive aroma

        11. You smile for no reason

        12. You flirt by having a foolish grin on your face while raising your eyebrows repeatedly

        13. You go to department stores and try bargain with the price

        14. You scratch your head when you don't know the answer

        15. You never eat the last morsel of food on the table

        16. You go bowling

        17. You play pusoy or mahjong

        18. You prefer to sit in the shade instead of basking in the sun

        19. You add an unwarranted 'H' to your name: Jhun, Bhoy, Rhon

        20. You put your hands together in front of you as if to make a path and say "Excuse, Excuse" when you pass in between people or in front of the TV

        21. Your middle name is your mom's maiden name

        22. You like everything that is imported or 'stateside'

        23. Your perfectly comfortable in a squatting position with your elbows resting on your knees

        24. You consistently arrive 30 minutes late for events

        25. You always offer food to your visitors

        26. You put your arm on the other person's shoulder if he or she is a close friend of yours

        27. You draw a rectangle in the air when asking for the bill, which never fails to baffle the restaurant staff

        28. You don't sit on the bowl in public toilets, no matter what part of town or if your thighs ache like hell; and you flush the toilet with your feet

        29. You think 'tuck out' is the opposite of 'tuck in'

        30. You tell everyone you meet where you studied and the intricacies of your family tree-just to show them you come from good stock - it never occurs to you that people may not have        heard of your university or your clan's last name

        31. You show up late for work and your excuse is 'I forgot to on the alarm' or better yet 'traffic eh'

        32. You linger over the Tonite and Balita tabloids available at the Star Ferry, but quickly buy the Asian Wall Street Journal when other Filipinos start browsing

        33. Brushing your teeth after lunch in the office lavatory is an unbreakable habit, even if your colleagues can't bear touching the taps after you've drooled and spat all over them

        34. Namedropping is your favorite sport when you meet up with new acquaintances from back home

        35. Toni Braxton, Basia and Swing Out Sister are your idea of party music, you hardly listen to anything else

        36. You sell Amway and Herbalife as sideline

        37. You fight noisily with Cathay Pacific check-in staff over the size of handcarried luggage-which could be anything from oversized suitcases to major appliances

        38. You underdeclare your income when you pay Phil tax, even if it's peculiar that a consultant is paid little more than a domestic helper's wages

        39. At Immigration, when they call out 'Maria', you and 46 other women stand up

        40. When they play 'Anak' anywhere, your chest swells with pride and say 'that's Filipino'

        41. You think taking a shower and taking a bath are the same thing

        42. You use shopping bags as garbage bags

        43. You use laundry detergent to wash your dishes

        44. You use print rags from an imported fashion magazine as cover of your textbooks and notebooks

        45. You enjoy watching Pinoy action films with the same plot: Hero and villain are mortal enemies. Hero's family's killed by villain. Hero seeks revenge. Hero meets bar girl with sad tale         of past love. She comes from a poor family, that's why she's working in the bar. They fall in love. Villain kidnaps girl, threatens to kill her if hero won't stop harassing him and his                      henchmen. Hero rescues girl, they run away. Chase goes on in a dilapidated car. Hero finally kills villain and police arrive. Hero and girl live happily ever after.

The Philippine National Gold Treasures

I watched a Probe TV special regarding our gold treasures entitled “Gintong Pamana.” I will just recap some of it. It all started when a man working as an operator of a bulldozer suddenly bumped into a metallic item. He didn’t know that the metallic item is gold until he pours some muriatic acid and analyzed it.

So the story began there. On that time many of the old town folks are now longing to have one. They continue to dig in the area just to find some gold and get the same fate as with the first gold discoverer. Ok, now all the lucky ones got gold. It is a treasure but still it is part of our history. These gold relics are crafted hundreds of years ago or even thousands. We have the responsibilities to protect it and not to use it on our own sake but for the sake of our future generations.

Why am I saying this? I’ll give an example; the Chinese government protected their treasures very carefully. They even built a National Museum for all of their national treasures. From scriptures, papers, artworks to fragile items like glass jars. All of these are well protected and not getting any damage. They even have people to maintain its original form. Their government does give out budget for their history. But why our gold relics are not the same as it looks before? Parts were cut out, lost and torn apart. And the hard part is that our government did not even think of ways to preserve these. Good thing that the Ayala together with their partners are the ones who did it, a non government party. They placed these gold relics inside Ayala Museum to give the public the opportunity to see it. My question is this, are there still relics from our history that are not being saved due to the irresponsible acts of other people and our government? Let us just hope that this be the last of it.

For all who did not have the chance to watch the special episode of Probe TV, here are the videos.

• Gintong Pamana part 1 of 8
• Gintong Pamana part 2 of 8
• Gintong Pamana part 3 of 8
• Gintong Pamana part 4 of 8
• Gintong Pamana part 5 of 8
• Gintong Pamana part 6 of 8
• Gintong Pamana part 7 of 8
• Gintong Pamana part 8 of 8

Montezuma's Gold

When the Spanish conquistadors led by Hernan Cortes arrived in Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire, they were greeted as returning gods because they were pale and had beards. If only it was that easy to impress people these days.

This guy would be king.

Despite their impeccable references, the Spanish turned out to not actually be gods at all. They installed themselves in the palace, forced their religion on the natives, led a brutal slaughter of 700 noblemen in the streets of Tenochtitlan and melted down all their golden statues to be transported back to Spain. Then they killed Montezuma, the king of the Aztec Empire, at which point the Aztec people decided they'd had entirely enough of these strange new douchebags, beards be damned.
The Spanish realized pretty quickly they needed to fight their way out of the city, so they could only pause to grab whatever they absolutely needed to survive, which roughly translated to "all the fucking gold we can possibly carry."

"My only regret is that there are so few pockets on our armor."

Gold weighs a shitload, and these soldiers who were already weighed down by armor took as much as 50-pounds of it each as they tried to flee. Did we mention Tenochtitlan was an island in the middle of a swamp? And that all bridges to get out had been removed?
In one night over half of Cortes's men were killed, mostly due to drowning in the swamp under the weight of all the bullshit they were carrying. It is a night known in Spanish as "Noche Triste," which in English means "just leave the fucking gold behind, you dick brained asstards."

"Just leave it!"

"Awesome! So how do I get it?"
These days, trained archeologists do find some of that gold from time to time, but all the real authorities know that the rest of the stolen Aztec treasure wound up in southern Utah. That's where the gold is actually buried, according to Freddy Crystal, a "miner and amateur treasure hunter" who believed that an old map he found proved the Aztec priests removed most of their gold--before Cortes arrived--and took it to Utah for reasons best described as "making the opposite of sense,"

Notice the lack of Utah on this map.

Freddy managed to round up hundreds of volunteers in the 1920s and worked for three years, digging into the side of a mountain in the desert heat. While several artifacts and other relics were recovered, Freddy didn't find one goddamn piece of gold, not even the chocolate kind 70-year-old ladies pass out on Halloween.

Captain Kidd's Treasure

Depending on what version you read, Captain Kidd was either a law abiding privateer or a stabtastically murderous pirate. Either way, he was arrested, tried for murder and piracy, and sentenced to hang.

But not before meeting Abbot and Costello.

In an attempt to delay his execution, Kidd claimed to have a huge stash of buried treasure, some of which was immediately found per his directions (Ted Bundy would later try a similar tactic to avoid execution, only replacing "stash of buried treasure" with "stash of buried women"). This essentially proved he was telling the truth, but the authorities hung him anyway, dipped his body in tar and dangled his corpse above the Thames River. It's still there today!

OK, not really. It was only up there for... two years. Anyway, today, people are still searching for the rest of Kidd's fabled loot.
"Awesome! So how do I get it?"
Well, first it would help to have a treasure map--the booty could be scattered pretty much any damned where. For instance, in 2007, a 300-year-old merchant ship that had apparently been commandeered by the Kidd back in the day was discovered right off the coast of the Dominican Republic. It was hidden under a mere 10-feet of crystal clear water, still loaded down with gold and silver and other valuables.

Pictured: Other valuables.

But you also should learn from the mistakes of previous attempts. For instance, back in the early 1980s, an out of work actor named Richard Knight, claiming to have a map of Kidd's verified by the British Museum, set off with an unemployed photographer named Cork Graham on a daring adventure.

Clearly ancient parchment and not a Chick-Fil-A napkin.

And by that we meant they went to Thailand and rented a speedboat. After bumbling around for a week in what we expect was a hilarious buddy-comedy type way, they accidentally landed in Vietnam. Authorities arrested the men for being in the country illegally and tried to ransom them off for $10,000 each. Unsurprisingly, no one wanted to pony up 10-Gs for a couple of jobless retards, so they wound up spending 44 weeks in Vietnamese jail. We blame the map.

Still, you should totally get your boat and head out there. Vietnamese jails aren't that bad, right? They've surely fixed them up since Rambo.