2013 as predicted

i still remember how i wrote a set of prophecies in january like it was yesterday. alas! time flies real' swift now that christmas is 'round the bend. it's high time to look at how our predictions stack up with the events of the past twelve months.

1. manny pacquiao will win his congressional seat this coming elections; however he will lose in his next boxing match yet again, and thus quit boxing for good.

pacquiao did win another term as representative of saranggani last may, but he also won against rios last november, so this unfortunately does not count. 0-1

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2. ms philippines will finally win a title in any of the 4 titles: ms universe, ms world, ms international, or ms earth. successes in the first two will be sweeter since there has been significant drought in those two pageants.

i sincerely did not expect this to happen, but this year turned out to be one of the country's most impressive reapings in beauty pageants, if not the best harvest there ever was. 1-1

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3. some medical school will get 100% in the licensure exam this year; I dare not say which school.

in retrospect, this was a bit of a cop out: any school with less than 50 students will have a better likelihood of getting a 100%. Impressively, there were actually big medical schools that nailed a perfect 100%. 2-1

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4. tv5 will gain significant audience share that it will almost overtake the #2 spot in megamanila currently held by abscbn.

 

tv5 never had a chance against abscbn, but it did gain ground against gma and overtook the latter in mindanao, gaining significant audience in gensan and cagayan de oro. 2-2

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5. a girl will win american idol season 12 (after a string of guys in the past few seasons).

almost every idol fan hated this season because it was so uninteresting to watch 5 girls shriek out against each other, week after week. this show has gotten old. the award for the best talent show on tv today goes to xfactor and the voice. 3-2

6. Amour (from Austria) will win best foreign language film in the Oscars this year.

this was really a fight between amour, a royal affair, and the intouchables. perhaps the former won because it had the teremity of pushing the plot to a questionable ethos. 4-2

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7. by the end-of-the-year, PSEi will have reached 6000 or more. there is significant resistance at 6500, support at 5500. overall trend is bullish.

the market was remarkably bullish for the first half of the year, compared to the sluggish but solid three previous years. if it were any indication, the index barely hovered the 7000 mark in a span of a month, before quickly descending into massive corrections that never saw the light of day. indeed this bourse was overhyped, and i suspect local buyers were caught in the middle, unable to unload stocks bought at high prices. now it becomes a wait-and-see game, really, as there is no indication that the index will escape this bear territory at 6000 for the next couple of months. 5-2

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8. given the cyclical nature of forex, USDPHP exchange rate will not breach the $1:P40 barrier, but will have strong support at $1:P47.

notice the downhill trend from 2010 to 2012, only to be bucked this year with a 4-peso spread. provided that currency exchange is more volatile than stocks, it's still a shock to see such reversal despite the same country fundamentals as the past 2 years. more likely this was a kneejerk reaction to the fed's decision this year to cut back on the stimulus program. 6-2

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9. nadal will have a strong comeback, my good ol' fed will have a lackluster year, and murray will win wimbledon (after what happened last year).

sometimes i think that tennis players are quite the diva: nadal announced his knee injury last year, and yet he came back this year, winning two grand slams and five world tour masters 1000. murray said he's got back pain, and yet he won the wimbledon versus djokovic. on the other hand, it was djokovic's year to lose, and yes he did. but the biggest letdown was federer. it was as if he might as well have never existed. 7-2

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10. by then there will be more female senators in the 16th Congress than there is now

among the newly-elected are grace poe, nancy binay, and cynthia villar, while miriam santiago, loren legarda, and pia cayetano comprise the three sterling old hags of the senate. hopefully the dose of estrogen brings a more thoughtful perspective to legislation, but more estrogen may also mean more catfights in the senate, but not necessarily among the female species (e.g., santiago v. juan ponce enrile). let's see. 8-2

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11. star trek will hopefully gross higher than man of steel and iron man 3; an animated movie will be in boxofficemojo's annual top 5

star trek only ranked 12th among the top grossers this year: a respectable $400 million haul, but not enough compared to other summer blockbusters like ironman3 and man of steel. among my other favorites this year are catching fire & frozen. oh look, there are actually 2 animated movies in the top 5. so i probably get a half-point, right? well, sadly no. 8-3

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12. there will be at least one storm that will pass through the mindanao landmass again, with maximum winds reaching at least tropical storm status, but hopefully it will be less devastating and the townsfolk will be more prepared by then 

there were four cyclones that hit the mindanao landmass throughout the year, but none was as memorable and heart-breaking as the destruction caused by typhoon yolanda / haiyan in the visayas, dubbed by the us navy weather agency as the strongest typhoon to hit land. no one anticipated such scale of wreckage and sadness, and this on top of the damage done by the magnitude seven earthquake that hit bohol and nearby provinces. it's a terribly sad year for the philippines. 9-3

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13. Ateneo will not win UAAP basketball this year, and fans will mourn 

Ateneo men's basketball team, for the first time in a long while, has ranked outside the top four. as always, UP has a clean sweep, leading the pack with the most number of losses. Congratulations to the Teng brothers of UST and La Salle for claiming the most number of screaming girls this year. 10-3

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14. UP will remain the highest ranking university in the Philippines according to QS and THE, but DLSU and Ateneo will be a few notches up in the Top500 

compared to last year's ranking

Consistently, the premier national university has again fallen short of our expectations. While it can be argued that this is due to so many factors, I believe that this is primarily due to the lack of researches published in internationally renowned journals. I honestly would like to see some genuine effort from university officials into getting local studies published. 10-4

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15. sports dominance in the SEA Games in Myanmar this year will be a toss-up between Thailand and Vietnam; the Philippines will finish lower this time around at a dismal 7th

host country myanmar took second place behind thailand's solid first place finish. sadly, but not unexpectedly, the philippines only took home 29 golds, 34 silvers, and 38 bronzes, the third worst haul and the worst ranking since the country joined the games three decades ago. 11-4

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with a batting average of 73% (11 correct out of 15 guesses), with the rest being nearly correct,  i am definitely more than your average nostradamus from quiapo. now, anyone out there who wants their fortunes to be read?