On Monday, January 11th, in London, the church of the City of London Corporation observed Plow Monday. It’s a holiday that started from the middle ages wherein a farmer will leave his plow at the church to be blessed. But this time around, the service was “upgraded” just as the tools have been upgraded.
Rev. Canon David Pratt blessed the tools of the trade of the modern people. Their gadgets. Laptops. Cell phones and iPods.
“May our tongues be gentle, our e-mails be simple and our websites be accessible,” — Rev Canon David Parrott
This may be news to the world, we Filipinos have practiced this for a long time. While cars are required to be blessed by almost everyone I meet, I do have friends from all over the country who make sure their gadgets are financially insured, and spiritually blessed. The first time I saw a friend doing this, I had to ask why. His answer? “So my gadget won’t fail when I need it the most.” Hmmm… A year later I asked how his laptop was faring… He had swapped it for a newer model saying the old model got infected with a virus that wiped out his data. He couldn’t trust it anymore.
Do you have your gadgets blessed? Sound off in the comments below.
sources: Times online, Daily Mail UK, Slashdot
Tags: business, cars, church, communication, computers, culture, customs, events, gadgets, geeks, iphone, laptop, machines, mobile, news, phone, religion, service, technology, traditions, virus
Hmpf… This should come as no surprise. In fact, I don’t think the Inquirer needed to make an issue out of this as it’s a known fact of Philippine life. Filipinos automatically defer (read bow down) to people who have money. Money is equivalent to status and influence. Though true enough in any society, Filipinos take it a step further than most. Writing about this fact only serves to highlight the fact to the world even more.
The real question here should be will the judge handling the case allow him/herself to be influenced by the Ampatuan’s money? I would like to think it won’t be the case. That justice will be blind and prevail.
Let’s hope and pray that it does. As for the title of this post… so what? Who really cares?
Tags: customs, life, media, news, people, social, traditions
Good news from Mindanao for a change. Why is it that I always hear about these things first from foreign news agencies than from the local ones? I first read about this on BBC before I read it from the Inquirer. For once, I’d like to see a local news agency putting news like these on the web. For once.
Tags: complaints, government, history, law, martial, martiallaw, news, notes, reactions, thinking
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