A much needed take on the Miley Cyrus VMA performance debacle

I decided to go online to take a break from checking my mountain of school papers (It's CDO's Fiesta.  Holiday?  What holiday?) and I came upon the beautiful, much needed dad take on the Miley Cyrus VMA performance debacle.  

You must be living under a cave if you haven't heard of the Miley Cyrus' twerkfest by now.  I haven't seen it, but I've seen the reactions from friends and the gazillions of FB memes on the subject (man, do those guys work fast).  The common denominator for all of these was shock, outrage, and disgust (well, frankly, it was relief for me because I was beginning to worry that nothing shocks this generation anymore).  

Then, in the middle of all the venom-spewing (and I was tempted to join the bandwagon) I came upon this article, from the Dad Matters blog of Focus on the Family (fantastic dad blog, by the way) with this as the main point:  Miley Cyrus is someone's daughter.  What if she were mine?

Win free tickets to ParenTEEN with Mr. Francis Kong and Dr. Peter Tanchi

There’s this joke that starting and running a business is WAY easier that parenting a teenager.  Well, my eldest child is at the tail end of her first year as a teen, and I think the joke has more than a little bit of truth to it.  Only 9 months into raising a teen and I already grew some white hair.  I have 6 more years to go for this one, plus two more future teens?  Oh boy.

Well, if you keep track of my blog, you’ll know that two of the best speakers on parenting in the Philippines, Mr. Francis Kong and Dr. Peter Tanchi, will come to Cagayan de Oro on September 7, 2013 to speak on an event called ParenTEEN (click here for my article).  They’re fantastic speakers on this topic not only because of their tremendous speaking ability; they’re fantastic because they’re Exhibit A.  It’s a rare treat to see just one of them, but both of them?  Back to back?  WOW!

Here’s an even better deal: I will give three couples a chance to win two tickets each to ParenTEEN.  Yes, you can be in the running to see the two best parenting speakers in the Philippines for free, all you’ll have to do is to do some writing of your own.

Parents of teenagers should attend ParenTEEN

In the school I work in, the high school students do journaling, where they write down their honest, candid thoughts for the day.  I remember one student’s journal entry went something like this:

“I can’t help but feel a bit envious whenever I see Mr. Carlo (that’s me) cuddling and playfully interacting with Happy (that’s the nickname of my son, James, age 8).  My dad never did that with me.”

There was another time several years ago, where I volunteered to do this very embarrassing group dancing thing with my daughter.  Even though I wanted to crawl under a rock, we had a blast together.  The next day, another boy went up to me and said that his dad would never do anything like that with him or any of his siblings.

Both instances were both flattering and sad at the same time.  Here are these two young people, teenagers, quickly growing into men yet never really feeling love from their father, a love they desperately need.  It’s one of the reasons why I blog, as I feel that we, Filipino fathers (and that includes me) have some ample room for improvement in the fathering department.

Join me at the Xavier Sports and Country Club MUST Fun Run!

I have never really understood the fun in running.  Don’t get me wrong, I love to exercise and I do so as often as I can; but long distance running was never my thing.  You’d probably surmise then that the Fun Run trend that so many people are into these days has me shaking my head.  Pay an entrance fee to run?  Um, no thanks.  It would take a very, very good reason to get me to sign up for a fun run.

Well, that very good reason has arrived…and I would encourage you to enter this fun run as well.  Say hello to the Xavier Sports and Country Club MUST Fun Run, an event on August 25, 2013 that raises funds for the construction of the upcoming Red Cross building.  Yup, that’ll do it, as I have a soft spot for anything that has to do with the Red Cross (well, big charitable causes in general).  Count me in then, folks!

MUST is short for Maayong kaUgmaon Sa Tanan, as the race is also a way for Cagayanons to take to the streets to thank God for this city and to implore everyone to help make CDO soar.  We’ve been through some tough times as of late, and so we need to take to the streets as a show of solidarity.

MUST also stands for the starting point of the race, Mindanao University of Science and Technology.  Participants will converge there at 4am and would run to the crossing of the Bulua terminal and back (well, it depends on the race you’re participating in, actually, as there are three of them: 3k, 5k, and 10k).