Interesting People

if someone would ask me the question, "if you were given the chance to meet someone you look up to, who would it be and what would you ask him/her?", i realized i couldn't possibly give an answer because everyone at the top of my list are either deceased or fictional. apparently i have a flair for liking someone who's long dead or exists only in the imagination, probably because they can no longer change their ideas, ideals, and decisions, hence, they cannot hurt nor disappoint me any longer. however, i've thought about it and realized it would be healthy, though slightly more challenging, to be able to look up to people who are actually still alive and learn to deal with the fact that people do make mistakes. besides, i suppose it would be better to have a ready answer to that miss universe-ish question just in case i make it to national tv or something.

Kyle Jennermann
□ the #becomingfilipino guy
□ suya much. he's amazing, he's not not just travelling through the country but experiencing and learning the filipino culture along the way. he's a foreigner but he's seen more of the countryside than i have and he's my age T_T i haven't even been to quiapo, tsk.
□ he's a nifty backpacker and my kind of an ideal travel buddy, the kind of traveller who is not choosy with what to eat and where to sleep, finds pleasure in the little things, goes local, is spontaneous, and fun.

Pope Francis I
□ (can i hug you?)
□ thank you for having a highly sensible stand on issues. thank you for being a bit revolutionary but please don't forget to listen to the advice of the conservatives. i (think i) know how leading the church can be such a daunting task and that the weight of such responsibility could create a rift between servitude and leadership. yet you've managed to keep a good balance between the two and i admire you for that. thank you for reaching out - to world leaders, to parishioners, to people following a different religion, the well-to-do, the poor, the casual salary-man, even to transient tourists. thank you for providing an example of non-discrimination. thank you for valuing simplicity. i haven't prayed so much for a priest as much as i have for you - for guidance for your decisions as well as for your life. please keep on being awesome.
□ (kidding aside) you being a bit liberal and all, can i possibly have a garden wedding? :D
□ the church has always been a church for the poor even from its infancy and i understand the rationale, the implication, and the significance of such stance. but the recent years, the recent centuries even, has brought about an increase of the so-called middle class. so, with all humility and with no intention for discrimination - this is really a question i've been mulling over for years, how exactly should the church interact with the middle class, or even the upper class? why is it assumed that people who are not economically poor are stronger in their catholic faith? because it seems to me that the growing number in secularism and protestantism comes from this demographic. is that even an issue at all? i mean, personally i believe that as long as we share to those who has less, respect other people and respect the earth among other things, then religion is not an issue. after all, i believe kindness is an inherent human trait and is not acquired from having a religion. on a side note, i do sometimes feel that it's religion that is wrong with this world. (side note II: and was the unfortunate cause why ken's best friend wasn't his best man during the wedding. my mom is a million times more conservative than our parish priest lels) it definitely gets a lot more complicated when religion is so intertwined with history and national identity. but then again religion is indispensable in the context of ethics or morality.
□ so, the pope's going to the philippines while i'm here in europe. tsk. somebody please ask him his views about pre-marital pregnancy and the separation of religion and state.

Jiro Ono
□ (feed meeee)

Rodrigo Duterte
□ i disagree to killing "criminals" outright. though it would be quite hard to prove orders came from you first hand, you clearly tolerate it. i propose a, let's say, more humane way of handling transgressors by a few penal reforms and improvements in prison handling. by improvement i do not mean providing more comfort, rather, (tbd)
because everybody deserves a second chance.
□ if you run for president, win, and propose a shift to federal government, i have your back.but,  among other things, i think it's best to make sure it's clearly written somewhere that accepting foreign aid, particularly economic and military, is strictly subject to approval by the national government.
□ how do you plan to alleviate poverty?
□ what exactly are your current economic strategies?
□ i did hear something about davao letting in foreign investors. i'm no expert and i've obviously not been updating myself much with current local or international issues (sorry) but i really do have something against foreign investors. i mean, is it really difficult to generate filipino-owned businesses? do foreigners really have to co-own businesses and establishments? wouldn't it be nice if we start with a local product and then create policies to protect and develop our own brand? pero i am not an economist haha and i don't understand half the things going on in policy-making, in fact what i'm saying probably doesn't make any sense to the educated in this field. still, it would be good and interesting to learn and understand, yes?
□ wait. i'm going to have to read this again but all i can say for now is, he has a point, but i also have comments. i do not agree with some of the things mentioned but if he's going to be a presidential candidate then, okay, he's not perfect, but i should also understand the risks.
□ question: what good will privatizing institutions bring? what employee benefits will be sacrificed in favor of productivity? 

Jose Arcadio Buendia
□ i know i'll never meet you but assuming i was there at the beginning and with an omnipotent view of things, then i'd probably be torn between asking you to please leave behind your dreams of establishing macondo and not saying anything and let "history" take its course because (if you only knew) your story is both extremely tragic and interesting.

Allister Levi Sanchez
□ i'm almost sorry for myself for forgetting to put prof. allister on this list. he was an instructor in iit and was one of tj's undergraduate thesis advisers. unfortunately, when it came my time to do actual research-related stuff in my third year, he was already off in france doing something else. so, i never really got to meeting him professionally. but i hear good things about him all the time, from his intellectual prowess, to his ability to teach, to his amazing research skills. he graduated summa cum laude, obtained his phd in japan, and worked on a lot of data analysis for cern. he's one of the most influential physicists in my life (though he's enjoying a software developer's life now) and i still look forward to meeting him one day and actually be able to converse with someone as talented as him.

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