How Pretty is Your Coffee Cup?

This is an interesting story. Got this through an
e-mail from a friend (Thanks Rizza!)
Lesson:
Your coffee cup should never be more important
than your coffee.

===

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university lecturer. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the lecturer went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups: porcelain, plastic, glass, some plain-looking and some expensive and exquisite, telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the lecturer said: "If you noticed, all the nice-looking, expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not! the cup, but you consciously went for the better cups and are eyeing each other's cups."

Now, if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life, but the quality of life doesn't change. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it."

So please, don't let the cups drive you...enjoy the coffee.

My Entry : The Iconography of the Modern Filipina

This is my entry to the contest by WikiPilipinas in partnership with Filipinaimages.com

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

The Iconography of the Modern Filipina

From WikiPilipinas, Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", or painting, and comes from the Greek εικον (image) and γραφειν (to write). (also Wikipedia)

Taking off from this definition, I must now endeavor to identify, describe and interpret the many images that the Filipina has assumed, voluntarily or involuntarily. My views are entirely mine; and myself being not one to qualify as a social scientist, anthropologist nor as a psychologist, readers must be warned to take them (my views) as just that: mine. (Then while you are at it, do take them with a grain of salt, it becomes more palatable that way

Using iconography is, in itself, insufficient to accurately define the Modern Filipina. I think so because images are just that - reflections of the original or attempts to contain a whole complex set of ideas, beliefs and definitions into something finite. Something that you can put a finger on, and say to yourself, "I think I understand/know/feel what the artist/writer wants to say/portray". And as reflections go, they can be distorted: by the beholder's limiting factors (prejudices, subconscious notions, culture, etc.); by the medium used to convey these images; and, I think more importantly in this case, by the persons conveying the images and their motives with which these images are formed and transmitted.

Read the whole article from my Scrapbooking Mommy site

Also, other notable entries from my fellow Filipinas

from Nice

from Delish Mec

from Vera

from Virginia

from Edelweiza

WikiPilipinas Filipina Stories, A Contest

I am supporting this endeavor in raising the image of Filipinas all over the world, specially in the net. If I can write an article, that would be better. But meantime, I will just help spread the word :)

From Noemi's blog,

"Dine, Gus Vibal, founder of WikiPilipinas, his staff and I met up last week to discuss ways to support their first online Encyclopedia of Philippine Women that they started in WikiPilipinas.org. I believe Gus is truly sincere in his WikiPilipinas’ vision to be “the largest Philippine knowledge database”. I mean, Gus pratically invested a lot on WikiPilipinas. (A few sponsors helped though). Dine, Lorna, myself and most of you will agree that we all want to raise the profile of the Filipinas, and be part of a larger movement in uplifting the status of Philippine women. I believe that WikiPilipinas is sincere in their mission as we all are.

Here is our collaborative project which I hope you will be a part of:

In line with the principle of honoring the diverse, beautiful, and powerful image of a Filipina, WikiPilipinas will launch a special portal Encyclopedia of Philippine Women inside the site which will compile and detail the achievements and triumphs of Filipinas everywhere. Its sister site Filipiniana.net will also have a Philippine Women Microsite containing documents discussing Filipino women, as well as selected texts from the oeuvres of Filipina writers. Through a combined effort for advocacy, WikiPilipinas partnered with Filipina Images to help promote a more empowering image of the Filipina. By having an online platform to showcase Filipina intelligence and talent, surely the goal will be closer."

Know more about this