A Thing Of Beauty Is A Joy Forever!

Sadly, this is also: 

A Tale Of Two Crashes

Since August last year, I have been devoting my creative journalism 100% heart in support of Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie’s “The New Thinking for Agriculture” with its accompanying “Eight Paradigms” to bring about “Masaganang Ani, Mataas na Kita” (Bounteous Harvest, Bountiful Income, my translation) to PH farmers. And why wouldn’t I? I have known Manong Willie since January 2007, when I began officially as international consulting writer for the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, when Manong Willie was on his 8^thyear as Director General. He stayed on as ICRISAT DG for 15 years, from 2000 to 2014, and ICRISAT published 7 of my books even as I was based in Manila. Those 7 books are mute witnesses as to how he brought ICRISAT from last to first among the 15 international centers of the CGIAR group.

I have been into creative journalism in the last 44 years, armed with the typewriter, where today, I am tooled with the personal computer, with a dual monitor – above image taken 2017 with my Lumix FZ100 digital camera. It’s a beautiful shot, isn’t it?

If I may say so, it is the artificial intelligence, AI, inside the modern personal computer, PC, with the software Microsoft Windowsand Word, that has helped me tremendously in my writing. Of course I have to master Windows and Word.

You can imagine how bad I felt when last week my Windows crashed, fatal to all my files.

Now, let me compare it with the Ukrainian passenger plane crash in Iran that occurred a few days later:

(1) My Windows crash was a system failure; the Ukrainian plane crash was man-made, the plane being shot down by Iranian missiles.

(2) My Windows crash destroyed all my files; the Ukrainian plane crash killed all 176 people aboard, everyone.

(3) None of those human lives can be resuscitated: every single one of my files is intact – I have been faithfully copying files, documents and photographs, into my external Seagate 500-GB hard disk.

I brought my Lenovo to the computer shop and now it’s working again – with a Home edition Windows 10 (not Professional) and Word 2016(not Word 2019). Both software are working, but they cannot match the speed and sophistication of the versions lost on that crash. (And why did I settle for the lower-level editions? NFA, if you know what I mean.)

Nonetheless, my creative journalism continues. I continue to enjoy my visually sexy PC setup.

The above main image of my desktop setup with my 14-inch Lenovo ThinkPad laptop and my 20-inch ViewSonic external monitor is notnew – the laptop is more than 6 years old and the external monitor 4 years old.

I have been writing – and enjoying – my journalism on & for the new PH agriculture. I see beauty amidst the ugliness. I see the promise of a beautiful tomorrow amidst the travails of the present. With the leadership of the best Secretary of Agriculture PH has ever had!@517