Wednesday, April 30, 2008

First OPEC, now it's OREC

Greater Mekong Countries, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and even Myanmar, have decided to form a rice cartel very much like the oil cartel, OPEC.

Geeez, greed baby, yeah greed is the name of the game!

Meanwhile, people will go hungry in some other parts of the world.

here's the news feed from inquirer.net

===============================================

BANGKOK—The countries of Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam have agreed in principle to form a rice price-fixing cartel similar to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) as costs of the staple grain rocket, Thailand’s prime minister said on Wednesday.

Thailand’s Premier Samak Sundaravej said the grouping of Mekong nations would be called the Organization of Rice Exporting Countries (OREC).

“I have talked with Burma and invited them to join the rice exporting countries cartel, which will include Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, to fix the price,” Samak told reporters.

He said Burma’s Prime Minister Gen. Thein Sein, in Thailand for an official visit, had agreed to join, even though the military-ruled nation was not currently a large rice exporter.

“Thailand will help them in terms of technical support to improve their production for export,” Samak said.

Samak said Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia had also agreed to join, and Thai Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama said OREC should begin meeting soon.

Thailand is the world’s largest rice exporter. It shipped an estimated 9.5 million tons of rice overseas last year.

World rice prices have soared this year, a trend blamed on higher energy and fertilizer costs, greater global demand, droughts, the loss of rice farmland to biofuel plantations, and price speculation.

International demand for Thai rice has soared after other top exporters Vietnam and India imposed limits on exports to ensure domestic supply.

Thailand has repeatedly insisted it will not limit exports, but on Tuesday the government announced it was releasing its stockpile of 2.1 million tons into the domestic market to keep prices stable.


Recalling Total Recall

Total Recall is showing at BNN TV now here in Brussels.

When I first saw it in the movies ( I don't even remember the year) everything seemed so high tech. Now, when am watching it over again, everything just looks so vintage.

oh well.

Her Serene Highness Empress China Polar Bear


Multiply pal and a former colleague's cousin, ChinapolarBear, has a fun shoot with herself dressed in her imperial garb. I was in HongKong and came across this very same pose and attire style.

She's in Manila right now on a break from work in China having the time of her life, while the rest of us, are abroad, toiling away . . .

Have fun ChinaPolar Bear!!!

btw, I gained 10 lbs while I was home haha.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Major WTF!!! Bizzare incest story and twists in Austria!

Crazy Dad had the hots for his 11 year old daughter, declares her missing when she was 18, when he locked her up in the cellar and 24 years after, he gets caught, the daughter still in the cellar, with 6 kids he fathered with her. The kids who were left with her in the cellar for all of 18 years at most, never saw daylight.

here's the whole text from AP contributed to CNN.

AMSTETTEN, Austria (CNN)
-- Three children freed from a cellar in which their mother had been imprisoned and raped by her own father for 24 years had never seen daylight, police in Austria have confirmed.

Police spokesman Franz Polzer told CNN that the 73-year-old man, known as Mr. F., admitted holding his daughter, Elisabeth F., 42, hostage in the windowless cell and fathering seven children by her.

"The mother had memories [of the outside world] and got used to the situation," Polzer told a press conference Monday afternoon. "The others knew nothing else."

The main question reverberating from the small Austrian town: how could a man keep his daughter locked in his basement for 24 years, where she gave birth to seven of his children while her mother and three of those children lived upstairs without an inkling of the horrors in the cellar?

Mr. F. explained Elisabeth's disappearance by saying she had run away from home, a story backed up by letters he forced Elisabeth to write, including one that begged her parents not to look for her.

Other letters made it seem the missing daughter had left the three children on the parents' doorstep to rear -- when in fact they had been born in captivity in the family's basement.

Elisabeth F. told police that she and her three children Kerstin, 19; Stefan, 18; and Felix, 5, did not see the light of day during their entire time in captivity underneath the building in Amstetten, a rural town about 150 km (93 miles) west of Vienna.

Elisabeth F. is described as "very disturbed" and having trouble talking to police about her ordeal, reports CNN correspondent Fred Pleitgen. She went missing in 1984, when she was 18 years old, police have said.

More details also emerged at the news conference about the basement dungeon in which the daughter and her children were kept -- and how her father managed to keep them captive for more than two decades.

The authorities have revealed that the prison, constructed in the basement of the 1960s building, ran underneath both the building itself and the garden outside.

The entrance was via a small door, hidden behind cupboards in the basement, controlled by an electronic keyless-entry system. Polzer said that the prison was hard to find, even if someone was looking for it, and had been soundproofed.

"Even though they shouted and called they were not in a position to let anyone hear them," Polzer told the press conference.

Polzer said that the father made clear to his wife and other children that the area was out of bounds and they were not to go into the basement. He bought food and took it to his captives in the evening.


Detectives made the grim discovery about the cellar earlier this month after Kerstin was hospitalized in Amstetten after falling unconscious and taken to a hospital in Amstetten by her grandfather with a SOS note from her mother hidden on her.

A DNA test was later carried out which revealed her grandfather, Mr. F., was also her father, according to ORF, Austria's state-run news agency.

That sparked a police investigation, which revealed that Mr. F. fathered at least six children with his daughter, forcing her and three of the surviving children to live in the cellar of his house, according to ORF's

On Sunday, police searched the hidden rooms where Mr. F. admitted he kept his daughter and their children, including sleeping quarters, a kitchen and a bathroom, which Mr. F. told police he built, Polzer said.

Amstetten police say they were put on Mr. F.'s trail following an anonymous tip off. They apprehended the pair on Saturday near the hospital and once police assured the daughter that she would never have contact with her father again, "she was able to tell the whole story," Schmitzberger said.

Elisabeth F. said her father began sexually abusing her at age 11. On August 8, 1984 -- weeks before she was reported missing -- her father enticed her into the basement, where he drugged her, put her in handcuffs and locked her in a room, she told police.

For the next 24 years, she was constantly raped by her father, resulting in the six surviving children, she said, according to the police statement.

She also told police she gave birth to twins in 1996, but one of the babies died a few days later as a result of neglect, and Mr. F. removed the infant's body and burned it in an oven.


She told police that only her father supplied her and her children with food and clothing, and that she did not think his wife knew anything about their situation

Mr. F. lived upstairs with his wife, Rosemarie F., who police said had no idea about her husband's other family living in the cellar. The couple adopted three of the children that Mr. F. had with his daughter, according to police. He told his wife that his missing daughter had dropped the unwanted children off at the house because she could not take care of them, police said.

When Kerstin fell ill, Mr. F. apparently told his wife and the hospital that his "missing" daughter had dropped off the sick girl on his doorstep.

In an effort to find out about Kerstin's condition, the hospital asked the media to put out a bulletin requesting any information about the girl or her missing mother, attorney general Gerhard Sedlacek told NTV.


Sometime later, Mr. F. brought Elisabeth F. out of the cellar, telling his wife that she had returned home with her two children after a 24-year absence, police said.

He took Elisabeth F. to the hospital to talk with doctors about Kerstin's condition, and at that point, authorities became aware of her situation, Sedlacek said.












Sunday, April 27, 2008

Don Miguel online at the Laundromat

yup, it's 2:16pm Brussels time, 27 April 2008 and the Don is doing noblesse oblige work by being one with the commoners, doing such worldly chores as the laundry.

It's a good thing, i have my trusty macbook, some wafers and 2 snicker bite sized bars, and the vending machine of Douwe Egberts beside me on the table.

Am laundering 2 sets of beddings (the other Mike was here for a month just before I went home and now am left with the dirty linen), some brand new towels, duvet covers and my clothes from before I left and more clothes during my last week in the Philippines.

look mom! am doing the laundry! hehehehehe (the royals are coming to stay with me come May! )

(look at my conscious faces trying to fiddle with Photo Booth and take some shots of misself hahaha don't laugh guys)

and oh yeah, we're at 18 degree weather this fine Sunday! yesterday was great too. (except that it's hellish in the buses, when the sun is up! hahaha

- Don Miguel, il Signorino!




Friday, April 25, 2008

Have you . . .

have you ever been in a place where you know you're fortunate than most, but you still think something is amiss?

have you ever felt that the world is at your fingertips, but the sun ain't shining anyway?

have you ever had summers that got rained on all the time?

why do some good things happen so far away from home?

why can't I fly or disapparate or just beam home whenever I want to?

why do my friends and family and loved ones have to live so far away.

oh well, cie la vie.

Life's got its moments and then some.

maybe i just need to make more dough, enough to buy a plane

maybe I just need to fly around some more, to earn more miles

maybe I just need to hit the spot at the end of the rainbow

maybe so . . .


Thursday, April 24, 2008

Another trip for Don Miguel

Spent the night in Antwerp, accompanying a delegation from back home for the European Seafood Exhibition in Brussels

Travel travel travel is my life la dee da da . . .

nope I ain't a flight attendand, no siree!

(i just want to stay home for now, please!)


Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Back to school

Don Miguel's been absent from French class for well over a month now, since I went on a month-long brea-cum-conventions back home, plus a week in Slovenia for another meeting.

Today's the first day I go back to school, I hope I don't hear any strange sounds and end up looking like an idiot.

Je voudrais parler la langue Francaise rapidement, s'il vous plais.




Saturday, April 19, 2008

What's in your Bathroom Medicine Cabinet?

Here's what's behind mine.




Just in: CNN's Richard Quest Busted for Crystal Meth!

I always thought there was something funny about this very british guy who threw witty crackpots (no pun intended) left and right. The guy behind "Business Traveller" and some other noteworthy CNN segments, this guy's fiasco surprised me nonetheless.

This just goes to show, we all have deep dark secrets. Yes, everyone, you and you included.

Heee heee.

(people, including myself, just need to mind our own business)

And nope, he obviously ain't a part of the Gucci Gang. Coke is upper class after all.

here's the AP news feed:

NEW YORK—A CNN reporter was arrested Friday in Central Park with a small amount of methamphetamine in his pocket, but he avoided jail time by agreeing to undergo drug counseling and therapy.

Richard Quest, 46, was arrested around 3:40 a.m. on a count of possession of a controlled substance—a misdemeanor that usually refers to a personal use amount of a drug. He was also charged with loitering; the park officially closes at 1 a.m.

When police saw and detained Quest, he told them, "I've got some meth in my pocket," according to the complaint filed in court. The complaint said he had a plastic sandwich bag containing methamphetamine in a jacket pocket.

Quest, who is British, is a correspondent for CNN International and is known for his reports on business travel. He hosts "CNN Business Traveler" and "Quest."

At his arraignment in Manhattan's Criminal Court, Judge Anthony Ferrara told Quest that if he attends the counseling and therapy designated by prosecutors for the next six months, his case will dismissed.

The judge allowed Quest to leave court without posting bail. He warned that if Quest failed to comply with the counseling schedule, he could be back in court and on his way to jail.

Quest's lawyer, Alan M. Abramson, said his client "did not realize the park had a curfew. He was returning to his hotel with friends."

CNN had no immediate comment on Quest's arrest.


Meet the Spartans and Die in the Process. . .

This saturday turned out to be a rainy saturday after all, despite the forecast that it's supposed to be sunny today. I decided to finally watch the DVDs i brought from Manila (heaven knows I haven't had the time to catch a movie back home, not even to go to the barber where it's 10x cheaper than here.)

Yuck, call me too european, call me a bloke with a dry sense of humor, call me anti-american, This movie, Meet the Spartans has got to be the stupidest, most unfunny comedy movie I've seen in my entire life.

I dunno, I used to dig american comedy, but this one is really the pits. It's totally not funny really, I wonder how it did in the charts. Whatever happened to the state of american movies.

Yuck, phew, yuck yuck, how can I get rid of this really bad taste in the mouth. yuck!


Gucci Gang - Dancing ala Can Can

online buddy KUPAO , i just found out, is heavily into the DJ Montano-Brian Gorrell saga and made this heeeelareeeeous video. hahahaha


click click click to view said video hahahaha, i still have a tummy ache from laughing.

Recharging with BFFL's

pals since childhood, bffl's indeed.

there's nothing like recharging with these guys . . . gets me ready for another year abroad all the time . . .

i miss these guys


DJ's Mom Blogs

Huwaaaaaaaaaaaat!

that was my very first reaction when I cam across this auroramontano.blogspot.com blog

in what seems to be a very very wierd twist of this saga,

Aurora Montano blogs

Mother bear is mad.


Friday, April 18, 2008

and yet some more Slovenia Photos by the Don

More on Maribor, Slovenia through the eyes of Don Miguel

Don Miguel visits Maribor, Slovenia

barely a day after returning (unwillingly) to Brussels, I had to fly to Ljubljana, Slovenia and take the train to Maribor.

Here's a preview of how Slovenia looks like through the eyes of this Don . . . I'll be posting the photos in the photo albums soon.