Early this year Rannie Cotaco Teodoro made the news (Jersey Journal and NJ Star Ledger Jan 8, 2004) when she wrote an essay about her desire to donate her hair to Locks for Love. The non profit organization provides hairpieces to children who lost their hair as result of medical conditions.
Speaking from her heart, she wrote in part:
I would like to donate my hair to the Locks of Lover Organization because of
thinking about the possible happiness a few inches of my hair could bring to a little
boy or girl would be gratifying. Because of its length, I have received much attention...click for full story>>>
>> Hair and compassion are in grateful supply.htm
Indeed the abundance of hair of the Cotaco's girls attracted lot of people including boys. Just ask Rommel as he probably likes to transplant or Jess for his top.
St
Dominic Academy is probably the best Girls HS in
Academic credential has not hair requirement but what is
under these trusses. The graduates continued to higher education and become
professional. Just last year the valedictory address at the University of Notre
Dame was delivered by a recent graduate of this
all well remembered by the school. Rannie is member of the legendary Forensic team and Glee Club. She writes for the school and functions as the president of the incoming senior class.
Blonde Ambition
The highlights of Gabat family, Rico, Caridad and son Arnold.
for more pictures:
http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/hcenriquez13/album?.tok=phkUiMBBUEv4FyZv&.dir=/Mail+Attachments&.src=ph
Michelle Siongco Oliva is the other blonde.
The other reason Rannie reason wanted her hair cut:
BLONDE AND BLUE EYES
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
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
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
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
Service. We are the quarter-of-a-million seafarers manning most of the
world's commercial ships. We are your software engineers in
construction workers in the Middle East, your doctors and caregivers in
North America, and, your musical artists in
Nationalism isn't bound by time or place. People from other nations migrate
to create new nations, yet still remain essentially who they are. British
society is itself an example of a multi-cultural nation, a melting pot of
races, religions, arts and cultures. We are, indeed, in a borderless world!
Leaving sometimes isn't a matter of choice. It's coming back that is.
The Hobbits of the shire traveled all over Middle-Earth, but they chose to
come home, richer in every sense of the word. We call people like these
balikbayans or the 'returnees' -- those who followed their dream, yet choose
to return and share their mature talents and good fortune.
In a few years, I may take advantage of whatever opportunities come my way.
But I will come home. A borderless world doesn't preclude the idea of a
home. I'm a Filipino, and I'll always be one. It isn't about just geography;
it isn't about boundaries. It's about giving back to the country that shaped
me.
And that's going to be more important to me than seeing snow outside my
windows on a bright Christmas morning.
Mabuhay and Thank you. (an award winning speech
by Patricia Evangelista delivered in
English Speaking world 2004)