Our week

I'm gonna start off with Saturday. I have rehearsals every Saturday and last week, Jojo and Finn went with me. Instead of taking the bus, we took the train. We left after lunch so we had enough time to walk around the area for a bit. We went to the NY Public Library although we didn't go in anymore and we stopped by Circuit City. After that we went to the studio for rehearsals. Jojo and Finn went back to Circuit City coz they got bored just sitting there (^_^) They just came back for me before rehearsals ended at 8pm.

Monday was President's Day which was a holiday for most, including Jojo and Finn has no school this week coz it's their mid-winter recess. So we had lunch at Applebee's and then went to Marshall's to look for a bag for me and a gift for someone.

Tomorrow I have to attend a domestic violence workshop sponsored by CONNECT and in cooperation with FAHSI. The Filipina Women's Network's campaign "Filipinas Against Violence" is also about encouraging all of us to become trained domestic violence advocates and peer counselors to end violence against Filipina women and girls. That workshop is from 1-4pm and then we might still have rehearsals after. Since the venue is in Jamaica, NY, I have to leave before 11am coz it takes a little over 2 hours to get there by train.

Oh and tonight Finn is going to take his belt test and if he passes, he's gonna have a high red belt (^_^) I'll post some pics if not on Sunday, then Monday.

Watch Me Perform

For tickets: http://vfilipina2007nyc-BarbaraB.eventbrite.com

Key Facts

* Every two and a half minutes, somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted. (RAINN)

* Somewhere in America a woman is battered, usually by her intimate partner, every 15 seconds. (UN Study On The Status of Women, Year 2000)
* 40% of women murdered by their partners were Filipinas. (1998 Homicide Survey, San Francisco District Attorney's Office )
* About 44% of rape victims are under age 18, and 80% are under age 30. (RAINN)
* An estimated one million children, mostly girls, enter the sex trade each year (UNICEF)

Every Two and a Half Minutes

Every two and a half minutes, somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted. How'd we come up with that number? Here's the math.

There are 525,600 minutes in a non-leap year (365 days x 24 hours x 60 minutes = 525,600). That makes 31,536,000 seconds per year (525,600 minutes x 60 seconds = 31,536,000).

According to the US Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey — the country's largest and most reliable crime study — there were an average of 200,780 sexual assaults each year in 2004-2005 (the most recent data available).

So: 31,536,000 divided by 200,780 comes out to one sexual assault every 157 seconds, or about one every two and a half minutes.

PLEASE support our benefit productions - V-Day Filipina 2007 - The Vagina Monologues and Usaping Puki (Tagalog version) and HELP end violence against Filipina women and girls!

6 Years

We celebrated our 6th Wedding Anniversary yesterday. But if you count from the time we became bf/gf, it's 14 years (^_^) I can't believe it's been that long! Oh, the background for this layout is a picture of the flowers that he gave me.

I left Finn with my Aunt and picked Jojo up from the station at 4pm (he left work early). I didn't know where we were going coz he said it was gonna be a surprise. First we watched the movie Smokin' Aces then had dinner at Charlie Brown's Steakhouse. We even got lost on the way and since I didn't know where we were going, I couldn't help him. If he told me, we wouldn't have gotten lost coz I knew where it was (^_^) After dinner we went to pick Finn up from my Aunt's and we were home before 9.30pm. Just a short, nice, quiet evening for the two of us.

Happy Anniversary BAJ! Love you (^_^)