By Alex P. Vidal
“To me, the Internet is a big scam.”— Ry Cooder
ILONGGOS are really oozing with talent. In almost all areas in life, there’s an Ilonggo making waves and excelling.
In recent memory, media didn’t run out of interesting tidbits and stories extolling and celebrating the exploits of Ilonggos anywhere in real time.
Ilonggos have Miss Universe materials; licensure examination top notchers (overwhelming); moot court champions; world-class fashion designers, Hollywood film extras; TikTok celebrities; prominent vloggers and social media influencers.
Ilonggo have outstanding Small and Mid-size Enterprise (SME) entrepreneurs; exceptional chefs and restaurateurs; colorful pilots and sailors; highly regarded medical practitioners; brilliant diplomats; intrepid and investigative journalists; teenage showbiz heartthrobs; flamboyant short film directors; insightful graphic artists; talented broadcasters (many of them products of the West Visayas State University); and hackers of government websites and Facebook accounts.
The Ilonggo hackers are one of a kind. I think they are some of the “best” not only in the country but in Asia.
They aren’t pushovers. They are capable of creating a software bug or virus that can turn the cyber world upside down.
Why am I saying this? Because I know at least the three of them. They know me, in return, of course.
They all have unique personalities and characters. Because of their eccentric deportment they have a now-you-love-them and now-you-hate-them relationships with friends and colleagues who regard them as “freakish.”
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They have one thing in common: their liaisons with at least two (or more) women, all wife materials and professionals, were all short-lived.
I’ll stop here before the two of them would wring my neck after reading this article for being nosy.
With their talent and inventiveness, they can be a force to reckon with in the World Wide Web, the supreme information system that dominates the global internet network and technology.
If these Ilonggo hackers are working in the Silicon Valley, the Pentagon, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Wall Street, the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ), World Stock Exchange, and other gigantic financial and technological corporations, they can dramatically change the world.
This isn’t an exaggeration. I don’t waste a space writing nonsense or dabbling in baloney.
These Ilonggo hackers aren’t patsies or small fries but are as ferocious as the author of the badly coded computer virus, “I love you” that caused billions of damages and vulnerabilities all over the world more than 20 years ago.
They are witty and love to crack jokes and poke fun at sissies and wimps; they always jeopardized their relationships with employers.
Anyone who wishes to take their bizarre overt mannerism seriously should batten down the hatches.
In fact, Iloilo City Mayor Geronimo “Jerry” Trenas was right when he sought the help of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to hunt down the hacker or hackers of the Iloilo City Government Facebook Page. I didn’t say one of them could be involved.
The NBI has been tasked only to catch an ordinary fish but might end up catching a barracuda.
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We are trying to check and confirm whether the winner of the $2.4 billion Powerball jackpot in California, the biggest lottery prize in the world, in November 2022 was really from Capiz, Philippines.
Edwin Castro, reportedly a Filipino living in Sacramento, was revealed by California lottery officials as the lucky player who won the largest lottery prize in US history in the Nov. 7, 2022 drawing.
Before Castro’s name was released in public three months after the draw, I informed my New York buddy, Vic Calimoso, 60, a native of Dumalag, Capiz back in December 2022 that the winner was reportedly from the Philippines “and I heard from my sources in California that he is from Capiz.”
“Pamelya ina ni Gov. Oto Castro sa Capiz,” Vic texted me on February 17.
Castro, who alone matched all six numbers plus the Powerball, purchased the ticket at Joe’s Service Center, a gas station in Los Angeles County.
There had been 40 consecutive Powerball drawings without a winner since Aug. 3, causing the jackpot to swell to over 2 billion.
The odds of matching all five numbers and the Powerball number is just 1 in 292.2 million, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association, which conducts the game.
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)
