Last Tuesday, my brother came to my house to “deliver” the pasalubong my other brother brought back from his recent holiday in the Philippines.

As you can see, they’re mostly junk food.  My Aunt and my brother’s girlfriend (who was asking  me for advice about Online Universities in the Philippines for her sister) sent us a bagful of junk foods, much to our delight. Three of us divided the loot amongst ourselves, and these were my share :)

I love the mini-bukayo (candied coconut), yema, barquiron (barquillos with polvoron) and instant pancit canton noodles the most. And, oh, the pack of otap, too. Otap is an oval-shaped kind of puff pastry with a “crumpled” sugary, surface and is favourite of mine since I was younger.

Anyways, so I was giving advice on online courses, especially on the online degree programs in communication in my old university. I was told that the gf’s sister was  interested in development communication but the father was very adamant that she enrol in a business course. Too bad, she could not sway her father into letting her take a course that she really wants. I told her she could apply for scholarships, I know there are lots out there. Yes, it’s not like this site, Free Application for Federal Student Aid http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/ in the US, but close enough. Rather than rely on her father’s wishes and enrol in a course that doesn’t interest her, local scholarships, albeit small, could be very useful for her.

In the end, I advised her to talk to her father and discuss why she would love to be in a communications program course rather than a business course. It is, after all, her interest and she’s the one who’s going to study, not the father. Back in my time, I didn’t have any problem like this when I was about to enter university. My parents let me choose the course I wanted to be in and the university that I wanted to go to. In this day and age, there are age-old traditions that still persist in the Philippines that are difficult to break.  I do hope that the gf’s sister and her father will be able to sit down and resolve this dilemma.