Over and Done with the Auditions!

Are’nt we all just getting more and more  impatient for the audition process to finally be over so that we could finally watch who officially made it to the top 24? (Not that we really don’t know who did, since bloggers are really good researchers.)

Last week’s episode just showed us how much this competition could become very much a game of chance or luck. One idol aspirant could end up either with a good or a bad partner - and the result could be favorable or could be a disaster that your idol dreams could be down the drain with your tears.

This is probaby why the current season of American Idol did not follow their usual audition process of pairing up or grouping the wannabes on the final stages of their Hollywood week. They wanted to see the idol aspirant rise up on his own.

Perhaps the only logic for “pairing up” is for the judges to have a clearer comparison on who would stand out or rise above the occasion.  But there are singers who are just not really the groupie type.

So far, with some attempt to portray controversies, melodramas and catfights; the entire audition episodes are generally perceived as a let- down or downright boring.

Especially if you’d compare it to how the AI audition process could be the most exciting part of the show. It’s funny,  emotional,  stirring, cute, and most of the times you are just left bewildered by the disillusions. The AI auditions paved way for the extended stardom of rejects like William Hung and now our very own, Renaldo Lapuz .

Pinoy Idol’s audition episode somehow didn’t know what it wanted to present to the viewers. They failed to find interesting and funny rejects. They failed to show who could possibly be the next winner (I remember how I just knew from the start how Fantasia and Carrie could become the Idol based on their first exposure).

As for the judges… Wyngard Tracy is getting more and more annoying with his almost unethical remarks. I guess, he couldn’t get away with it unlike Simon who exudes credibility, command, personality and most importantly, charm. Cowell’s bluntness did not hurt his appeal even for a bit and people believed him, unlike Wyngard who slowly appears to become just a yapping - bigheaded powerplayer. As for the host, enough said.

Fortunately, next week’s show would finally present to us the top 24. Hopefully, Pinoy Idol would pick itself up from a chaotic yet uneventful audition presentations.

China plans more aid drops for areas near quake epicenter

DEYANG, China - China on Thursday ordered 101 more helicopters into the air and planned aid drops into remote areas of Sichuan province as it struggled to cope with this week’s powerful earthquake, which has directly affected 10 million people.

Plans for the Defense Ministry to deploy the helicopters underscored worries that a death toll of almost 15,000 will skyrocket unless help for the needy arrives soon.

Helicopters have already been used to ferry in troops and supplies to the isolated epicenter of Monday’s 7.9 magnitude quake, but rescuers have been forced to dig for survivors with their hands.

Near Shifang, where chemical plants collapsed in the earthquake, soldiers could be seen burying bodies in a mass grave. About 50 troops wearing helmets and facemasks were using a large mechanical shovel to dig a grace. The bodies were wrapped in white sheets. Lime was also put into the grave.

The official Xinhua News Agency said three mountainous towns north of the provincial capital of Chengdu were still cut off. It said 20,000 residents were trapped in the towns of Qingping, Jinhua and Tianchi. The number of casualties was not known.

Xinhua said a team of 500 People’s Liberation Army soldiers carrying medicine and food were attempting to hike into the towns again.

Nearly 26,000 people remained buried in collapsed buildings. The quake also caused landslides that blocked roads to hardest-hit areas.

But even as the rescue effort gathered momentum, the depth of the effort needed to care for tens of thousands of people made homeless has stretched the government’s resources.

North of Chengdu in Deyang, the largest town near the devastated areas of Hanwang and Mianyang, thousands of people have streamed into the city hospital since Monday, mostly with head or bone injuries.

Patients heavily wrapped in bandages and with cuts and bruises were huddled in canvas tents in the hospital’s parking lot.

“Our doctors have worked continuously since Monday and people keep coming in. We have to keep strengthening our measures to keep up,” said Luo Mingxuan, the Communist Party secretary of the hospital.

There were piles of donated clothing for survivors at the hospital and stands for them to make free telephone calls. Handwritten notes with names of the injured were posted on a board in front of the hospital’s emergency section.

Ambulances arrived every few minutes.

Xinhua said the quake directly affected 10 million people in Sichuan — or about the population of Belgium.

The official death toll rose Wednesday to 14,866, and in Sichuan province more than 27,000 people were buried or missing, provincial vice governor Li Chengyun said, according to Xinhua.

An already massive military operation gathered pace with more than 116,000 soldiers and police mobilized.

After two days of rain that prevented relief flights, People’s Liberation Army helicopters flew 90 sorties to the epicenter in Wenchuan county and other areas, carrying 33.3 tons of food, medicine and tents and ferry out 156 injured people, Xinhua reported.

The Chengdu Military Area Command planned to airdrop 50,000 packets of food, 5,000 cotton-padded quilts and clothes into the epicenter areas of Beichuan and Wenchuan counties.

The central government said it had allocated disaster spending of 1.11 billion yuan ($159 million; €103 million).

Public donations have totaled 877 million yuan ($125 million; €81 million) so far in both cash and goods.

NBA star Yao Ming, China’s most famous athlete, was planning to donate 2 million yuan ($285,000, €185,000) to the relief effort, agent Erik Zhang said.

“My thoughts are with everyone back in my home country of China during this very dark and emotional time,” Yao said in a statement from Houston, where he is recovering from a broken left foot with hopes of competing in the Beijing Olympics this August.

Aerial TV footage showed rows of small buildings flattened in Yingxiu in Wenchuan county, where rescuers who hiked in said they found only 2,300 survivors in the town of about 10,000, with another 1,000 badly hurt, Xinhua reported.

It said Thursday that aftershocks in Yingxiu had collapsed some of the remaining buildings and set off landslides. There was no word on further casualties.

Some 2,000 soldiers have also been sent to shore up a dam cracked by quake.

Four-inch (10-centimeter) cracks have scarred the top of the two-year-old Zipingpu Dam, the business news magazine Caijing said on its Web site in a report from the scene.

Although the government has pronounced it safe after an inspection, its waters are being emptied to relieve pressure, Caijing said.

The economic planning agency said nearly 400 dams, most of them small, were damaged by the quake. But the government says there was no damage to the massive Three Gorges dam, the world’s largest, which is about 350 miles (560 kilometers) east of the epicenter. - AP

Red Cross: Cyclone death toll could reach 128,000

(Update) YANGON, Myanmar - The Red Cross estimated that the cyclone death toll in Myanmar could be as high as 128,000 — a much higher figure than the government tally. The UN warned a second wave of deaths will follow unless the military regime lets in more aid quickly.

The grim forecast Wednesday came as heavy rains drenched the devastated Irrawaddy River delta, disrupting aid operations already struggling to reach up to 2.5 million people in urgent need of food, water and shelter.

“Another couple of days exposed to those conditions can only lead to worsening health conditions and compound the stress people are living in,” said Shantha Bloemen, a spokeswoman for UNICEF.

A tropical depression in the Bay of Bengal added new worries, but late in the day forecasters said it was weakening and unlikely to grow into a cyclone.

Myanmar’s government issued a revised casualty toll Wednesday night, saying 38,491 were known dead and 27,838 were missing.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, however, said its estimate put the number of dead between 68,833 and 127,990. The Geneva-based body said the range came from a compilation based on other estimates from 22 different organizations, including the Myanmar Red Cross Society, and on media reports.

Even though the figures seemed precise, spokesman Matthew Cochrane said they were not based on body counts, but were only rough estimates designed to provide Red Cross donors and partner organizations with an idea of the numbers being discussed within the aid community.

UN officials have said there could be more than 100,000 dead.

The Red Cross estimated the number of people needing help after cyclone surged over the low-lying delta on May 3 at between 1.64 million and 2.51 million.

But the junta still refused to accept help from foreign aid experts, who have vast experience in handling humanitarian crises.

It insisted Myanmar can handle the disaster on its own — a stance that appeared to stem not from the isolationist regime’s ability but from its deep suspicion of most foreigners, who have frequently criticized its human rights abuses and crackdowns on democracy activists.

“The government has a responsibility to assist their people in the event of a natural disaster,” said Amanda Pitt of the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs.

“We are here to do what we can and facilitate their efforts and scale up their response. It is clearly inadequate, and we do not want to see a second wave of deaths as a result of that not being scaled up,” she said.

Myanmar’s prime minister, Lt. Gen. Thein Sein, told visiting Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej on Wednesday that the government was in control of the situation and didn’t need foreign experts.

Samak said after returning to Bangkok that the junta gave him a “guarantee” that there was no starvation or disease outbreaks among survivors.

But critics say the government is woefully lacking in helicopters, trucks and boats as well as planning expertise needed to distribute aid to survivors, who have jammed into monasteries and relief centers or are camping outside.

UN agencies and other voluntary groups have been able to reach only 270,000 of the affected people, said Elisabeth Byrs of the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs in Geneva.

She said the World Food Program would need 55,000 tons of rice to feed 750,000 people for three months, but the agency had been able to ship in only 361 tons so far.

The junta did grant approval Wednesday for a Thai medical team to visit the delta, said Dr. Thawat Sutharacha of Thailand’s Public Health Ministry. If the team goes as scheduled Friday, it will be the first foreign aid group to work in the ravaged delta.

Myanmar has limited the few international aid workers in the country to Yangon, the country’s biggest city, and used police to keep foreigners from going to the delta.

The government gave a little ground to demands that it let in more experts. It announced it would allow in 160 relief workers from neighboring countries — India, China, Bangladesh and Thailand. It was not clear whether they would be permitted to go to the delta.

In New York, UN humanitarian chief John Holmes welcomed the junta’s move. But he said it was not enough and demanded that Myanmar open its borders to foreign relief specialists and let outsiders work in the Irrawaddy delta. - AP

American Idol gets down to final 2 contestants

NEW YORK - It’ll be David vs. David.

Syesha Mercado was voted off “American Idol” Wednesday night, paving the way for the expected showdown between David Archuleta and David Cook.

Mercado, a 21-year-old actress from Sarasota, Fla., was the last woman standing on the top-rated Fox contest. The big-voiced belter surpassed a more accomplished singer (Carly Smithson), a fan favorite (Brooke White) and a statuesque country crooner (Kristy Lee Cook).

While other contestants floundered, Mercado challenged herself with ambitious song choices like Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.” She showed more personality — and lots of leg — while swiveling her hips in a glittery gold minidress for a rendition of “Proud Mary.” She cried when Paula Abdul gave her a standing ovation last week.

Abdul held the sugar on Tuesday’s performance show, telling Mercado that she thought her performance of “Hit Me Up” wasn’t “good enough to get into the finals.”

With Mercado out of the way, “Idol” can now fully hype the David vs. David matchup.

There’s Archuleta, the 17-year-old singing prodigy from Murray, Utah, with the overly involved stage dad. And there’s Cook, the 25-year-old former bartender from Blue Springs, Mo., with an emo edge that the angelic Arculeta lacks.

Who will snag the title next Wednesday?

One thing is for sure: His name will be David. - AP

Quezon City is RP’s most populated city

Quezon City, with 2.7 million residents, is the Philippines’ most populated city, final results of the the National Statistics Office’s latest Census of Population showed.

The POPCEN 2007 showed that Quezon City is home to three percent of the country’s total population of 88.57 million.

The cities of Manila and Kalookan, also in the National Capital Region, ranked second and third, respectively. Manila has a population of 1.7 million or 1.9 percent, while Kalookan has a population 1.4 million or 1.6 percent.

The table below shows the Philippines’ ten most populated cities.

Rank	City	Population	% Pop. dist. in 2007	Land/ area (km2)
		(2007 census)
1	Quezon City	2,679,450	3.0	161.2
2	Manila	1,660,714	1.9	38.6
3	Kalookan	1,378,856	1.6	53.3
4	Davao City	1,363,337	1.5	2443.6
5	Cebu City	798,809	0.9	291.2
6	Zamboanga City	774,407	0.9	1483.4
7	Pasig	617,301	0.7	31.0
8	Taguig	613,343	0.7	48.9
9	Valenzuela	568,928	0.6	45.8
10	Cagayan de Oro	553,966	0.6	488.1

Source: National Statistical Coordination Board

Rescuers reach China quake epicenter

Rescuers pull a woman out from rubble at a school Tuesday in Juyuan, China.

Rescuers search for victims in the debris of a hospital in Dujiangyan.

JIANG YOU, China (CNN) — Teams of rescuers battling through rock and mudslides Tuesday arrived at the epicenter of a massive earthquake in central China as aftershocks continued to shake the region where more than 10,000 people are believed to have perished.

A string of nearly 30 seismic jolts hit Sichuan province in the first 24 hours following Monday’s quake and slowing the progress of 1,300-strong rescue teams. All of those quakes were magnitude 4.0 and above.

Military doctors and soldiers arrived around midday and began their search for survivors and the injured in Wenchuan County, China’s Xinhua news agency reported.

Roads blocked by rocks and mudslides had hampered the effort to reach the epicenter in Wenchuan County, forcing military doctors and soldiers to walk to reach the area almost 24 hours after the 7.9 magnitude earthquake shook central China, Xinhua said.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao ordered the military to make it a top priority to open the roads into Wenchuan County by mid-day Tuesday.

The Chinese government said the death toll was sure to rise as authorities began to reach some of the worst-hit areas. Thousands remained trapped under the rubble, including hundreds of children at a half-dozen schools.

“Blocked roads, disrupted communication and continuous rainfall have all created obstacles to our rescue efforts,” Wen said, according to Xinhua. “People’s lives and property safety are the top priorities and many people are still trapped in debris.”

An expert told CNN the quake, which struck at 2:28 p.m. (2:28 a.m. ET) Monday, was the largest the region has seen “for over a generation.”

CNN’s John Vause saw block after block of devastation in the town of Jiang You, about 60 miles (100 km) from the epicenter, arriving there about a day after the quake hit.

“These people who live in the city are now hunkering down under tarpaulins and under tents,” Vause said, as a steady drizzle added to the misery. “Many are afraid to go back indoors because their buildings are no longer safe.”

Nearly all the confirmed deaths were in Sichuan Province. Authorities expected the toll to climb as rescuers reached the epicenter. Local radio quoted disaster relief officials as saying a third of the buildings in Wenchuan had collapsed and another third were seriously damaged.

The province is home 68 giant pandas at a pair of research bases. The State Forestry Administration said all had survived the quake, according to state-run media. The fate of the 130 pandas housed at the Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Center was unknown, Xinhua reported.

Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport reopened Tuesday after authorities inspected its runways for damage following the quake, Xinhua reported. The resumption of air service gives the province additional links for funneling supplies into the badly battered region.

China Eastern Airlines said it is ferrying in hundreds of rescue personnel and tons of cargo from eastern China, according to state-run media.

Joe Guo, a university student in Chengdu, told CNN the scene is chaotic as the military tries to rush aid into the surrounding rural areas.

“The traffic is not good because a lot of the roads were … seriously damaged,” Guo said on Tuesday. “The army people — they were just running there to get the stuff in and the injured people out.”

Some 2,000 tourists were stranded in the northwestern part of the province and a landslide buried a tourist coach in Sichuan’s Maoxian County, killing 37, Xinhua reported.

Forty-eight tourists made their way out of the region on foot and arrived in Dujiangyan on Tuesday, state-run media said. Among the stranded tourists were 15 Britons.

The British tourists were likely in Wolong at the Panda center, according to Xinhua.

The state-run Zhongxin news agency reported that a survivor who escaped Beichuan County in Sichuan Province described the province as having been “razed to the ground.” Rescuers were stranded about 10 kilometers (six miles) from the county, Xinhua reported.

The Red Cross Society of China, coordinating some international aid efforts, encouraged financial donations because of the difficulty of getting supplies to those most in need. Impact Your World

Mercy Corps, a U.S.-based humanitarian group, is channeling aid through a partner agency in China, the group’s director told CNN.

“Everyone is incredibly nervous and shocked about everything that’s happening,” Kate Janis said, adding, “The first step is getting there and next step is (determining) what can we do?”

At least six schools collapsed in the quake or its aftershocks, Xinhua reported. At one school, almost 900 eighth graders and ninth graders were believed to be buried, a villager said.

By Monday night, at least 50 bodies had been pulled from the rubble at Juyuan Middle School in Juyuan Township of Dujiangyan City, Sichuan Province, Xinhua reported.

“Some buried teenagers were struggling to free themselves from the ruins while others were calling for help. Eight excavators were working at the site. Devastated parents watched as five cranes worked at the site and an ambulance waited,” Xinhua reported.

Some 600 people were confirmed dead and another 2,300 people were buried under two collapsed chemical plants in Sichuan’s Shifang city, where 80 tons of ammonia leaked, Xinhua reported. The plants were among a series of buildings that collapsed, including private homes, schools and factories.

Much of the nation’s transportation system was halted. Xinhua reported there were “multiple landslides and collapses along railway lines” near Chengdu.

Sichuan Province sits in the Sichuan basin and is bordered by the Himalayas to the west. The Yangtze River flows through the province and the Three Gorges Dam in nearby Hubei Province controls flooding to the Sichuan — though there were no reports of damage to the world’s largest dam.

The last major earthquake in the region occurred in the northwestern margin of the Sichuan basin when a 7.5-magnitude quake killed more than 9,300 people on August 25, 1933.

While many of the most immediate efforts were focused on Sichuan Province, Xinhua reported that there were dead and injured also in Gansu, Chongqing and Yunnan.

A 40-car freight train, carrying 13 tankers full of gasoline, derailed and caught fire Monday in Gansu province, officials said, according to state-run media, cutting the Baoji-Chengdu railway.

Other stories of destruction poured in from around the country. Xinhua said one person was killed in Santai County, in the city of Mianyang, when a water tower fell.

A provincial government spokesman said officials feared more dead and injured would be found in collapsed houses in Dujiangyan City in Wenchuan County.

Bonnie Thie, the country director for the Peace Corps, told CNN she was on a university campus in Chengdu, in the eastern part of China’s Sichuan province about 60 miles from the epicenter, when the first quake hit.

“You could see the ground shaking,” Thie told CNN.

The shaking “went on for what seemed like a very long time,” she said.

Bruce Presgrave, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said the quake’s effects were heightened because of its strength, proximity to major population centers and shallow depth. Shallow quakes tend to do more damage near the epicenter than do deeper ones, he said.

An earthquake with 7.5 magnitude struck the northern Chinese city of Tangshan in 1976, killing 255,000 people — the greatest death toll from an earthquake in the last four centuries and the second greatest in recorded history, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Tangshan is roughly 995 miles (1,600 km) from Chengdu, the nearest major city to the epicenter of Monday’s quake.

Monday’s quake shook the ground in Beijing, 950 miles (1,528 km) away. Residents of the capital, which hosts this year’s Olympic Games in August, said they felt a rolling sensation that lasted about a minute. It resulted in the evacuation of thousands of people from Beijing buildings.

More than 30 earthquakes — with magnitudes between 4.0 and 6.0 — were recorded in the first 24 hours following the initial quake, the USGS reported.

A spokesman for the Beijing Olympic Committee said no Olympic venues were affected.

The earthquake was also felt in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taiwan, and as far away as Hanoi, Vietnam, and Bangkok, Thailand, according to the Hong Kong-based Mandarin-language channel Phoenix TV.

China quake death toll nears 10,000; more still trapped

(Updated 11:48 a.m.) CHENGDU, China - The death toll from China’s worst earthquake in three decades climbed Tuesday to about 10,000, while rescuers struggled to reach the epicenter of a quake that toppled schools, buildings and factories.

A day after the 7.9-magnitude quake devastated a region of small cities and towns set amid steep hills north of Sichuan’s provincial capital of Chengdu, the government poured more than 16,000 troops into the area with tens of thousands more on the way.

Compounding the rescue effort was rain, which Premier Wen Jiabao said was forecast for the next several days. Wen, who flew to Sichuan to oversee rescue efforts, said a push was on to clear roads and restore electricity as soon as possible.

The official Xinhua News Agency reported nearly 10,000 people died in central China’s Sichuan province alone and 300 others in three other provinces and the mega-city of Chongqing.

Worst hit were four counties including the quake’s epicenter in Wenchuan, 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Chengdu. Landslides blocked roads into the area.

Wen held an early morning emergency meeting in Dujiangyan to the north of Chengdu and ordered troops and police to clear the road further north to Wenchuan, which remained cut off.

“We must try our best to open up roads to the epicenter and rescue people trapped in disaster-hit areas,” he said. Wen said the earthquake “was more serious” than expected.

Television footage showed large boulders and downed trees blocking the road to Wenchuan.

The only contact with Wenchuan so far, Xinhua said, was a satellite phone call from the local Communist Party secretary to appeal for air drops of tents, food and medicine. “We also need medical workers to save the injured people here,” Xinhua quoted Wang Bin as telling other officials who reached him by satellite phone.

Wang said there were 57 reported deaths so far, with more than 300 other people seriously injured.

“This is only a rough number of casualties … It is highly possible the figure will rise as the casualty numbers in the mountainous areas are not available,” Wang was quoted as saying.

He estimated that at least 30,000 of the county’s 105,000 residents slept outside Monday night.

Wang said there has been no information from the townships of Yingxiu, Wolong and Xuankou at the epicenter of the quake. The three have a total population of more than 24,000.

Fifteen missing British tourists were believed in that area at the time of the quake and were “out of reach,” Xinhua reported.

They were likely visiting the Wolong Nature Reserve, home to more than 100 giant pandas, whose fate also was not known, Xinhua said. Xinhua reported that 60 pandas at another breeding center in Chengdu were safe.

Aftershocks were still being felt Tuesday from the earthquake a day earlier that was felt as far away as Thailand and Pakistan and emptied office buildings halfway across China in Beijing.

Television footage and photos posted on the Internet underscored the immense scale of the devastation. In Juyuan town, south of the epicenter, a four-story high school collapsed, burying as many as 900 students and killing at least 60, Xinhua said.

Rescuers were seen Tuesday using doors from the collapsed building to carry more bodies out of the rubble.

Officials at another school in the area said about 300 students were killed when a classroom building collapsed, Xinhua reported.

To the east of Wenchuan, in Beichuan county, 80 percent of the buildings collapsed, with Xinhua reporting 3,000 to 5,000 had been killed.

Two chemical plants in Shifang city just north of Chengdu collapsed, Xinhua said, burying hundreds of people and spilling more than 80 tons of toxic liquid ammonia. About 600 people were killed, although Xinhua did not say whether they died in the quake or from the chemical spill. As many as 2,300 people were still buried under the rubble, including more than 900 students.

In addition to the more than 16,000 soldiers already sent, Xinhua said an additional 34,000 armed forces from the Jinan and Chengdu military commands were headed to disaster-hit areas by plane, train and truck, and in some cases on foot.

Disasters pose a test to China’s communist government, whose mandate rests heavily on maintaining order, delivering economic growth and providing relief in emergencies.

Pressure for a rapid response was particularly intense this year, as the government was already grappling with public discontent over high inflation and a widespread uprising among Tibetans in western China while trying to prepare for the Beijing Olympics this August.

Expressions of sympathy and offers of help poured in from the United States and the European Union, among others.

“I am particularly saddened by the number of students and children affected by this tragedy,” US President George W. Bush said in a statement.

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said no aid requests had been made by China.

International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge sent a note of condolences to Chinese President Hu Jintao. “The Olympic Movement is at your side, especially during these difficult moments,” Rogge wrote, according to an IOC statement.

The quake was China’s deadliest since 1976, when 240,000 people were killed in the city of Tangshan, near Beijing in 1976.

The latest quake hit a fault where South Asia pushes against the Eurasian land mass, smashing the Sichuan plain into mountains leading to the Tibetan highlands — near communities that held sometimes violent protests against Chinese rule in mid-March.

China’s two stock exchanges suspended trading Tuesday in 66 companies based in the region in an effort to minimize potential disruptions from the disaster.

In Tokyo, Toyota Motor Corp. spokesman Toshiaki Hori said production had been suspended at the company’s Chengdu factory. The company will decide when to resume operations after it inspects the plant for any safety problems. - AP

10 World’s Most Expensive Cars in 2007

To most people, having a car is a necessity, while to others, a car is a luxury. Whatever the case will be, do you know the most expensive cars in the world? If not yet then check out the list of 10 world’s most expensive cars below. Not only they are expensive, they are also the world’s most powerful cars. (Source: Forbes Magazine)

1. Bugatti Veyron (Volkswagen AG) $1,700,000
2. Ferrari Enzo $1,000,000
3. Pagani Zonda C12 F $741,000
4. Koenigsegg CCX $600,910
5. Porsche Carrera GT $484,000
6. Mercedes SLR McLaren $455,500
7. Maybach 62 $385,250
8. Rolls-Royce Phantom $320,000
9. Lamborghini Murcielago $279,
10. Aston Martin Vanquish $255,000

Honestly, I want to have my own car but the 10 models listed above are never in my list. Why? It’s because they are too expensive. I can’t afford to buy any of them. So, maybe in my dreams that I can have them. I guess these cars are only for people belonging to the elite group. In my opinion, having any of these cars is not recommended to ordinary people like me, because it will only be a subject of evil deeds.

source: Your Online Guide

Most Visited Places in the World 2007

Here’s the list of Most Visited Places in The World according to Forbes Travel as of the year 2007 based on annual visitors.

10. Disneyland Paris in Marne La Vallee, France - 10.6 million visitors per year.

9. Notre Dame de Paris in Paris, France - 12 million visitors per year

8. Tokyo Disneyland/DisneySea in Tokyo, Japan - 12.9 million visitor per year

7. Fisherman’s Wharf/Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco, USA - 13 million visitors per year

6. Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada and New York USA - 14 million visitors per year

5. Disneyland Park in Anaheim California, USA - 14.7 million visitors per year

4. Trafalgar Square in London, England - 15 million visitors per year

3. Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in Florida California, USA - 16.6 million visitors per year

2. National Mall & Memorial Parks in Washington Monument, Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials - Washington DC,USA with 25 million visitors per year

1. Time Square in New York, USA - 35 million visitor per year

SOURCE: YOUR ONLINE GUIDE

10 Most Envied Filipino Celebrity Couples

Here’s the list of top 10 most envied “pinakaiinggitang” Filipino celebrity couples.

10. Gelli de Belen and Ariel Rivera - Ariel married actress Gelli de Belen at Santuario de San Jose on December 22, 1997; they have two sons: Joaquin Andres (born on January 29, 1999) and Julio Alessandro (born on November 4, 2000). The couple’s quality time together is usually just for dinner dates. Gelli treasures those simple moments when she and Ariel just talk. The family of four is so inseparable, even their sleeping habits are done together.

9. Suzi Entrata and Paulo Abrera - Paolo Abrera and Suzi Entrata first met on the adrenaline-pumping sports show Game Plan, where they were both hosts. Over time, their mutual attraction developed into a deep and lasting relationship. On May 6, 2001, they took life’s biggest plunge with a leap of faith at Colegio San Agustin Chapel in Makati.

8. Helen Gamboa and Tito Sotto - Sotto is married to Helen Gamboa, a beauty titlist an actress, singer, and beauty pageant winner. They have four children, Romina, Diorella, Gian, and Ciara, and two grandsons, Romino and Victorio.

7. Lucy Torres and Richard Gomez - In April 28 1998, Richard Frank Gomez married at Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral in Ormoc City. On April 28, the couples will celebrate their ten years of marriage. They have a daughter named Juliana Marie Beatriz Torres Gomez who was born on September 8, 2000

6. Annabelle Rama and Eddie Gutierrez - Eddie Gutierrez married actress Annabelle Rama, with whom he has six children, including actress Ruffa Gutierrez, child performer-twins Richard Gutierrez and Raymond Gutierrez; Elvis Gutierrez, Rocky Gutierrez and Ritchie Paul Gutierrez, an up-and-coming rap artist.

5. Lani Mercado and Bong Revilla - Jose Ramon Mortel Bautista, more popularly known as Ramon Revilla Jr. or simply Bong Revilla married Lani Mercado (Jesusa Victoria Hernandez Bautista) in 1987 in a civil wedding. They have six children namely: Leonard Bryan, Jose Lorenzo (Ramon “Jolo” Revilla III), Inah Felicia, Ma. Viktoria Gianna, Ma. Franzel Loudette, and Ramon “Ram” Vicente.

4. Lorna Tolentino and Rudy Fernandez - Lorna Tolentino and Rudy Fernandez are looking forward to their silver wedding anniversary this year.

3. Charlene Gonzalez and Aga Muhlach - Aga Muhlach married the beauty queen Charlene Gonzalez. The couples are the parents of twins Andres and Atasha.

2. Vilma Santos and Ralph Recto - Dr. Vilma Santos is married to Senator Ralph Recto, who belongs to a well-known political clan in the Philippines. Together they have a son, Ryan Christian.

1. Sharon Cuneta and Kiko Pangilinan - Sharon Cuneta has been married to Senator Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan and later gave birth to Simone Francesca Emmanuelle (Frankie) in December 2000 and Mariel Daniella Sophia (Miel) in September 2004.

SOURCE:PEP