Anxiety ended….

It is with pride and honor that we defended our thesis today. It is a thesis of two proud CS students. It is an accomplishment many times harder than my experience in assembly language programming. A fulfillment of what I’ve learned in College…actually much more.

It is 4 hours after we received the verdict from our panelists – “PASSED WITH REVISION”. I am currently expressing my joy and gratefulness for our rewarded effort. Yes, there are revisions…but only minor ones, just some polishing in our final document and user manual. At least from this on, we will be able to breathe normally. Given that we would already graduate as long as we finish our thesis paper and requirements in our other subjects.

Thank you Lord for allowing these things to happen, for giving us the chance to work on BlueVoice system, for the strength and inspiration to pursue this project, for the skills and talents you’ve given me, for the health to be able to continue working and for the people who became part of our thesis.

To my family: I’m so sorry that I’ve been delaying my responsibilities. But despite that, I know you’ve strived trying to understand the hardships that I was undergoing. Well… I hope you are proud of what your daughter had achieved. I offer my success to you!

To my partner, Marlon: Without you this project would never exist. It all started with your wildest idea…close to insanity. And I am likewise insane that I got attracted with it. But good thing it happened! We made it! It is not impossible after all! Thank you for working hard with me. We owe our success to ourselves!

To JC: You helped us conceptualize the idea of achieving the goals of our thesis. For the remarkable PowerPoint design, for the icon of the BlueVoice application, for the initial research document and for the encouragement.

To Miss Ebony Domingo: Despite your busy schedule, you have tried to make yourself available for consultation, contribute valuable ideas to come up with this application, provided us with some useful reading materials, and given us constructive criticisms and encouragement.

To our adviser, Engineer Eugene Kanindot: For attending our need for a workplace to work together, for the emotional support, for reading our document, and most especially for making me feel confident of myself.

To our co-adviser, Engineer Ryann Elumba: You were the first one I’ve consulted of this idea for a possible thesis project and that day pushed me to decide to work on this. For patiently proofreading our document and for the Bluetooth dongle that made it efficient to test our application.

To our panelists, Sir Gallardo, Sir Greg and Sir Al: For giving us the chance to work on this project and for driving us to do our best. The system would really be nicer if we were not limited with the hardware. Just wait, I’ll be engineer someday!…hopefully

To my CSIT friends: For thy encouragement, it motivated me to go beyond what I thought was my limitation. For criticizing our work, that helps us make clear of how our system was progressing. And for simply being there everyday that makes life beautiful during my days of discouragement.  

Sometimes, we need to gamble with what we believe in. Life is uncertain, it is a constant gambling game. It takes courage to pursue our dreams. Courage however is not the absence of fear, but fear with the commitment for fighting what you believe in. The road towards achieving our dreams is rough, it is not easy to reach its end. But with perseverance and positive view on life, almost anything is possible.

Thank You to All!

Good Parenting

Parenting is a dynamic and interactive process.

There are attitudes or approaches that parents need to reexamine to make parenting effective. One of the common misconceptions that parents undertake is that, they think their children are like soft clay, to be molded into the shapes that they choose them to be. The child is not the property of the parents or a moveable asset owned by them. Parenting involves being affectionate and available to the children, ensuring their health, safety and education, nourishing and cherishing them as they grow into adulthood. This is what Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet” section on children is all about.

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

It is good to allow a child to have autonomy of his own. Parent’s responsibility is to just ensure that there is no excess, no imbalance in their child’s practice of autonomy. Firmness and fairness in dealing with a child go a long way in conveying a sense of a stable world to the child.

Another problem is that parents look parenting as a task, a very serious business. The tendency of parents trying to fit the child into his pre-fixed pattern grows extremely high. On the other hand, if parenting becomes enjoyable, it is good for both the parents and the children. A parent can and should offer guidance and direction, without trying to make the child to be like him.

The parent must value the child as a person, not merely as a reflection of one’s upbringing or an extension of oneself. As people, we tend to be accepting of our friends and a little intolerant of those related to us. If a parent can think of the child as a friend, who has chosen to enter his family circle, the changed perspective will transform the idea of parents controlling their child. It is true that the responsibility of parenting cannot be wished away or written off. The child is young, inexperienced, vulnerable and in need of protection and nurturance. The parental temptation to have absolute control over everything the child does or thinks should be stoutly resisted.

To make all these possible, the secret ingredient is love.

There is Something that God cannot do…

This article was sent to me via email and i just want to share this with you…

Many religious groups believe that God can do everything and anything because He is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. But, do you know that there is something, which God cannot do?

It is true that all the things that we see around us are all creations of God. We cannot deny the fact that even the smallest viruses, bacteria, and microbes . . . even the animals, both big and small . . . even the plants and the trees . . . including human beings … are all creations of God. Even the vast galaxies, which are made up of billions of stars … and the planets, whose sizes are almost hundred times bigger than the sun, were all made by God.

Do you know that about a billion galaxies had been found in the universe? Included here is the Milky Way galaxy, wherein our solar system is a part of. It is in the solar system that the Sun and the nine planets are found. The earth, which is one of these planets, is considered by astronomers as the “Wonder of the Universe.”

If we are going to think about it, we will realize how marvelous and how vast is the space that God created. Scientists call it as an “ever expanding universe” because each time that they look at it, through the aid of powerful telescopes, it appeared to be wider and more expanse than before. Especially, when the Hubble Space telescope had been released in the orbit in 1990. It was able to capture farther galaxies, which were never seen in the past.

But, the most wonderful creation of God is MAN. Our being had been designed a lot different and much better that any other creation of God. Like our eyes, for instance, do you know that our eyes are considered as the best telescope? For this reason, inventors of modern telescopes had used our eyes as models, or patterns. However, they have not completely succeeded in coming up with a telescope that is exactly similar with our eyes.

Another amazing feature of man is his brains. Do you know that our brain weighs only about 2% of our body’s total weight? Bur despite that, our brain has the capacity to store billions of knowledge and information? Much, much more than the biggest computers made by man can do. Every second, millions of messages enter our brain via the different senses. And the brain readily reacts to these stimuli through its 100 billion nerve cells called neurons.

These were all made by a very powerful God. Yet, there is one particular thing than man does very frequently, which cannot be done by God. This is contradictory to the popular belief of many religious groups that, there is nothing impossible with God. There is one thing, which is impossible for God to do. This is written in Hebrew 6:18—

“That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie . . .”

It clearly states that, it was impossible for God to lie. Telling a lie is something, which is impossible for God to do. This is also stated in Titus 1:2—

“In hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie, promised before the world began.”

It is impossible for God to lie; He cannot lie. Let us not believe those who say that nothing is impossible with God.