Arao, D. A. (2007, March 28-April 3). `Rebolusyon’ ni Mr. Shooli. Pinoy Weekly, 6 (12), p. 5. This may be retrieved from http://www.pinoyweekly.org/pw6-12/op_ed/ed-6_12_3.htm.

My wife and I watched Ang MONAY ni Mr. Shooli (Misteyks Opda Neysion Adres Yata) produced by Onabru Films last March 23 at Gateway in Cubao.

We were not as impressed as Inquirer columnist Conrad de Quiros who wrote, “M.O.N.A.Y. is funny, M.O.N.A.Y. is serious. M.O.N.A.Y. is comic, M.O.N.A.Y. is tragic. M.O.N.A.Y. is coarse, M.O.N.A.Y. is urbane.”

It did not take long for me to write my column article for Pinoy Weekly as I only recalled the feeling when the television program Mongolian Barbeque was still on RPN 9 in the 1990s and the anticipation (and, to an extent, disappointment) when the said film was shown recently. In writing my column, I saw the need to analyze the kind of “revolution” the fictional Mr. Shooli believes in and relate it to what is happening in the country.

Hope you will read the article. Thanks!

Yes, I was quoted by the Philippine Daily Inquirer last March 27 (Wednesday) regarding my views on the kind of students we have at the UP Department of Journalism. The article titled “Journalists in the making” was published on page C2 of the paper’s March 27 edition but the online version may be retrieved here.

All of the 11 interviewed UP Journalism students in the article are former students.  In fact , the author, Bianca Consunji, happened to be my student in not one but three courses.

Is this the reason she chose to interview me? I doubt it. I think it just so happened that I was the only one present at the department on a lazy Monday (March 25) afternoon at the time when she was there.

Please read the article and tell me what you think. Thanks!

I helped organize the forum on the state of academic and political freedom at the auditorium of the UP College of Mass Communication last March 29 (Thursday) where I also served as master of ceremonies.

The speakers were Francisco Nemenzo (former UP President), Carolina Malay (former chair of the UP Department of Journalism), Isa Artajo (Kabataan Party), Oscar Empeño (elder brother of a missing UP student), Erlinda Cadapan (mother of another missing UP student) and Ramon Guillermo (CONTEND-UP). Singer Jess Santiago and members of CONTEND-UP gave cultural presentations.

You may go to Arkibong Bayan to read the press statement and other relevant materials, as well as check the pictures. The webmaster who is a good friend also emailed some of my pictures, three of which I would like to post here.

That’s me with Prof. Judy Taguiwalo

That’s me moderating the forum.

That’s me signing on the Book of Freedom.

The good thing about starting fresh is that I have the opportunity to re-assess how I’ve posted on my old blog Solar Power. I’d like to share with you now what I plan to do for Rising Sun which you are free to use in creating or developing your own blog:

1. Assuming that you are interested to know the story behind the articles I write, I will comment on the process behind the data gathering, data validation and actual writing of my articles.
2. I will not anymore post the full text of published articles that are available online but will only provide the necessary hyperlink. What’s the point, after all, of posting an article which can be retrieved anyway from other official sources?
3. For obvious reasons, the full text of my articles published only by print publications and unpublished papers will be posted although I will also include the context in which these were written.
4. I will not be ashamed to talk about my personal experiences, including some tendencies to self-deprecate, self-flagellate and self-criticize.
5. I can talk about some aspects of my personal life outside teaching and journalism. After all, I posted our wedding pictures on my personal website!
6. I will regularly post my media appearances, speaking engagements, achievements and other activities, keeping in mind that these are not shameless plugs.

If you have other suggestions, please do not hesitate to give your comments. Thank you for reading!

My web host Dreamcode encountered what a staff described last week as “hardware issues” in the server where I upload my Web files. These “issues” resulted in server downtime and, much worse, the deletion of my database files.

As you know, blogs manage content through database-generating programs like PHP. Given that I failed to have a local backup of my posts from August 2005 to March 2007 - and there are over 100 of them! - the latter are now obliterated from cyberspace.

In other words, my erstwhile blog Solar Power is no longer in existence. (If you’ve typed “solarpower.dannyarao.com” on your browser’s address bar, this would explain why you’ve been redirected to this new subdomain.)

If it’s any consolation, all of my HTML, JPG, PDF and other non-database files are still intact. This means that Danny Arao online and (more importantly?) Danny & Joy: The Wedding Special were not affected by my web host’s server problems. I am also fortunate to have saved the widgets and plugins I installed on Solar Power which I obviously re-installed here. Some of them, of course, had to be re-generated to reflect the new subdomain name.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming my web host which still charges the one of the lowest rates for domain name registration and web hosting, and whose technical support remains efficient. In fact, I even admire the staff’s curt, apologetic and firm replies regarding the status of my erstwhile blog.

Much as I hate to admit it, it’s my fault that I failed to back up my PHP-generated files. Let this be a lesson learned to all you bloggers out there (as well as webmasters who maintain database files): Back up EVERYTHING!

By the way, please contact me as soon as possible if your website is not yet on my blogroll. Just like my posts, I did not have list of websites I included in Solar Power. As of today, I only have those that link to my former blog as reflected in Google “link” search.

Having said that, welcome to my new blog aptly called Rising Sun. Consider this not a fresh start but a forced one.