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here's something all Filipinos can be proud of . . .
Got this from friendster:
Pinay wins it big in London
By Alfred Yuson
The Philippine Star 05/16/2004
Patricia Evangelista, a 19-year-old, Mass
Communications sophomore of University of the
Philippines (UP)-Diliman, did the country proud
Friday night by besting 59 other student
contestants from 37 countries in the 2004
International Public Speaking competition
conducted by the English Speaking Union (ESU) in
London.
She triumphed over a field of exactly 60 speakers
from all over the English-speaking world,
including the United States, United Kingdom and
Australia, reported Maranan.
The board of judges' decision was unanimous,
according to contest chairman Brian Hanharan of
the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC).
PATRICIA'S SHORT SPEECH WORTH READING....
When I was little, I wanted what many Filipino
children all over the country wanted. I wanted to
be blond, blue-eyed, and white.
I thought -- if I just wished hard enough and was
good enough, I'd wake up on
Christmas morning with snow outside my window and
freckles across my nose!
More than four centuries under western domination
does that to you. I have sixteen cousins. In a
couple of years, there will just be five of us
left in the Philippines, the rest will have gone
abroad in search of "greener pastures." It's not
just an anomaly; it's a trend; the Filipino
diaspora. Today, about eight million Filipinos
are scattered around the world.
There are those who disapprove of Filipinos who
choose to leave. I used to. Maybe this is a
natural reaction of someone who was left behind,
smiling for family pictures that get emptier with
each succeeding year. Desertion, I called it. My
country is a land that has perpetually fought for
the freedom to be itself. Our heroes offered
their lives in the struggle against the Spanish,
the Japanese, the Americans. To pack up and deny
that identity is tantamount to spitting on that
sacrifice.
Or is it? I don't think so, not anymore. True,
there is no denying this phenomenon, aided by the
fact that what was once the other side of the
world is now a twelve-hour plane ride away. But
this is a borderless world, where no individual
can claim to be purely from where he is now. My
mother is of Chinese descent, my father is a
quarter Spanish, and I call myself a pure
Filipino-a hybrid of sorts resulting from a
combination of cultures.
Each square mile anywhere in the world is made up
of people of different ethnicities, with national
identities and individual personalities. Because
of this, each square mile is already a microcosm
of the world. In as much as this blessed spot
that is England is the world, so is my
neighbourhood back home.
Seen this way, the Filipino Diaspora, or any sort
of dispersal of populations, is not as ominous as
so many claim. It must be understood. I come from
a Third World country, one that is still trying
mightily to get back on its feet after many years
of dictatorship. But we shall make it, given more
time. Especially now, when we have thousands of
eager young minds who graduate from college every
year. They have skills. They need jobs. We cannot
absorb them all.
A borderless world presents a bigger opportunity,
yet one that is not so much abandonment but an
extension of identity. Even as we take, we give
back. We are the 40,000 skilled nurses who
support the UK's National Health Service. We are
the quarter-of-a-million seafarers manning most
of the world's commercial ships. We are your
software engineers in Ireland, your construction
workers in the Middle East, your doctors and
caregivers in North America, and, your musical
artists in London's West End.
Nationalism isn't bound
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