Business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 5

Business - Essay Example Scholars also mention that Emotional Intelligence (EI) has strong influence on the performance of employees (EP). The basis for such a statement is the assumption that emotional intelligence can enhance individual, team and organizational effectiveness. The aim of this paper is to critically examine the relationship between emotional intelligence and employee performance. In particular, this paper aims at defining why emotional intelligence is important for employee performance and how the two concepts are related. First of all this essay will attempt to provide a reader with a basic understanding of what emotional intelligence and employee performance are. Secondly, the paper will utilize existing scholarship research in order to identify the relationship between emotional intelligence and employee performance. Thirdly, analysis and evaluation of the relation between emotional intelligence and employee performance will be conducted in order to determine whether emotional intelligenc e is important for employee performance or not. Finally, the presented work will provide conclusions outlining the relationship between emotional intelligence and employee performance, as well as limitations of the given research. ... It is an ability to recognize and understand own emotional responses of self and other people accurately (Cherniss and Adler 2000, 13). The statement of Allameh et al. (2011, 349) also supports this definition saying that emotional intelligence is not a simple quality of a personality; instead, it is a combination of capabilities, which includes comprehension, judgment and perceiving of emotions – own emotions and emotions of other people. Mcshane, Olekalns and Travaglione (2010, 130) have identified four dimensions of emotional intelligence. They are self awareness, self management, social awareness and relationship management. This classification goes in line with the findings of Boyatzis, Goleman and Rhee (1999, 3). These researches have determined that â€Å"emotional intelligence includes two dimensions, internal and external. The self awareness, self image, independence feeling, self realization capacity and decisiveness regard as internal elements. The external element s are inter-individual relationship, compassion and feeling of responsibility.† Finally, many scholars and researchers argue that emotional intelligence have positive influence on employee’s job satisfaction, ability to deal with stress, and work attitudes (Mustafa and Amjad 2011, 241; Allameh et al. 2011, 348). 2.2 Employee Performance (EP) Wu (2011, 22) described employee performance as the amount of effort that employees input into their jobs. The definition of Schermerhorn, Hunt and Osborn (2005, 122) is quite similar – it states that employee performance includes two elements: quantity and quality of final results brought by employee’s or team’s effort achievement. Moreover, Befort and Hattrup (2003, 17) present another perspective at the

Management and Leadership Assignment #3 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Management and Leadership Assignment #3 - Essay Example In all three perspectives a vital and complex relationship is there between the organization and the environment. In open system perspective organization, structure is a major product. Where in rational and natural system organizational environment structure has little affect on the organizational make-up. In the rational system, an organization structure has specific goals. That is in this form, the king of organization will have well defined organizational hierarchy. Leadership roles are systematically incorporated and each position is well defined. The power of an individual is determined by the position he or she holds. A well defined hierarchy in an organization leads to accomplish goals effectively. In natural system perspective, they focus on the behavioral aspect of an organization, the stated goals of an organization and its real goal. Organizations are considered as social groups and this helps the structure accomplish its stated goals. Individuals hired by an organization will bring with them their own values, interest and abilities and all this will not be ignored when developing the structure. In this kind of organization, they recognize the importance of intelligence and innovation of each worker. In non-rational aspect the organization is not completely controlled by a formal structure and well defined rules. Among the workers some informal structure will develop. In open system perspective the organizational structure focuses on these environments that ultimately shape, support and permeate the organization. The organization will have variety of structures of varying complexity that are determined by verity and complexity of an organization. An organization is viewed thorough a system of interrelated activities, in that some are precisely connected and some are proximately connected. The environment which operates the

Design Factors Affecting Building Maintenance

Design Factors Affecting Building Maintenance The factors of design which will influence the levels of future maintenance of public buildings and works. 1.  Introduction Maintenance of public buildings is concern for the continuous development and preservation of the major infrastructure systems such as public and private-owned buildings within the county which includes janitorial services, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), plumbing, electrical, landscaping, and lawn care services. Public works, on the other hand, deals with safeguarding of sewer, solid waste, drainage and parks, etc. Both public buildings and works are grouped together and represented by the County Administrator. Their activities are inter-connected and require cross-departmental and pre-maintenance coordination. As the community grows constantly with time, the challenge facing the public buildings and works department at the County Council is to provide and maintain the above adequate infrastructure and facilities regularly. Assuring and completing maintenance to keep pace with concurrency requirements for a variety of works continues to be a huge problem for the County. The County has historically been unable to keep up with the need of society within its premises. Although the public works is still partially funded by the UK Government, the County’s Public Works Trust Fund (PWTF) loans remained at near high record levels. In this report, we will be discussing the design factors influencing the levels of maintenance of public buildings and works. 2.  Different levels of maintenance for public works at different zones The County has tried to maintain a uniform and consistent level of maintenance throughout, for example, the more important and prominent landscaped areas and parks around public and private-owned buildings. Under County Council regulations, it can only use funds collected from neighbourhood property owners and private agencies within a zone for costs associated directly and within that specified zone. In some zone areas, the evaluations allowed by law have not been sufficient to pay for basic maintenance costs, so essentially, some zones have been less funded for maintenance coverage. This is especially true when considering the costs necessary to replace dying plants and trees, replace or repair vandalized equipment or renovate older parks and irrigation systems [1] Decisions for funding in certain zones were based on mailed ballots while others were not in favour of paying for extra maintenance and repair covers. Therefore, in order to keep the maintenance budget balanced, cuts and reductions have been made in the frequency and type of maintenance being performed in each of the under-funded zones. Essentially, the maintenance levels (or standards) are different as a result of the variance in available funds. Property owners and agencies will continue to see a difference in the levels of maintenance being provided throughout the various zones in the County. The Council has developed priorities for services that most affect the community, particularly when budgets are tight. In those zones where funding is not sufficient to pay for all of the maintenance required, the County Council has set the following levels of maintenance: low, medium and high, based on maintenance priorities: (i) safety items considered first and primary, (ii) keeping parks safe, open and available to the public, (ii) responding to vandalism, (iii) keeping turf and plant materials in healthy condition and (iv) removing, but not replacing, dead and dying plant materials and (v) thinning and scaling back landscaping to lower maintenance requirements [2]. The County will also be making some enhancements to a number of median landscaped areas. The aim is to make a one-time improvement, such as the installation of low-maintenance ground covering. These efforts will eventually reduce future maintenance costs and help all zones to remain within their own budgets. 3.  Factors of design for public buildings: A Case-Study Approach Successfully designing, constructing and operating high-performance buildings requires the building owner and all members of the design team to set goals to minimize future levels of maintenance via minimization of energy consumption and environmental impact. The team should establish these goals as early as possible in the design process and maintain them through the building occupation. One method for achieving high-performance building goals is to follow the energy design process. This process begins in the pre-design phase and continues after the building is commissioned and occupied. Understanding which strategies are best suited for the building site and function, setting aggressive energy targets early and relying on advanced computer simulations to evaluate building design options are essential to the overall reliability process. The building envelope is designed first to minimize energy consumption. The mechanical, electrical and control systems are designed after optimizing the envelope design. Detailed specifications must accurately reflect the design intent. After construction, the building is commissioned, the owner and operators are instructed on the optimal operation of the building and building operation documents are provided for future maintenance reference. A case-study on an actual high-performance building demonstrates how to apply the design process to all public buildings of the future This building incorporates energy-efficient and renewable energy design features including day-lighting, passive heating and cooling and improved thermal envelope. All this energy saving considerations is being intentionally put in place to significantly reduce future maintenance needs and increase reliability of building functionalities [5] In a traditional design process, the architectural team determines the building form and articulation of the faà §ade, including orientation, colour, window area and window placement. This architectural design is then handed off to the engineering team, who designs the heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) system, ensures compliance with applicable energy codes, and ensures acceptable levels of environmental comfort for building occupants. From an engineers point of view, energy dependability occurs by improving the design of the HVAC system. It is then the engineers goal to create an efficient system within the context of the building envelope that has been previously designed—the architectural decisions have been finalized and few changes can be made to the envelope design [4] For successful realization of low-energy buildings which are less susceptible to failures, an efficient design team must establish a cost-effective energy goal. Once a commitment to energy minimization has been made, the energy-design process can be used to guide the team towards good decision making and trade-off analysis without sacrificing the building’s programmatic requirements. The building must incorporate disaster resistant (e.g., able to function if no grid-power is available). The design should meet or exceed all the functional and comfort requirements of the building. Low-energy design does not imply that building occupants endure conditions that are considered unacceptable in traditional buildings. The design team develops a thorough understanding of the building site and building functional requirements. A qualitative evaluation of these issues early in the design process often leads to later solutions for minimizing potential building maintenance needs Many design strategies are applicable to most buildings however, each building is unique, and thus, will have unique reliability design solutions [9]. Simulation of a base-case model of the building is done to identify maintenance minimization opportunities via low energy consumption using an hourly building simulation computer tool. This computer model simulates annual loads and peak demands for heating, cooling, lighting, plug loads and for HVAC system fans and pumps to determine the energy-use profile and the likelihood of possible failures of the base-case building. The design team brainstorms possible solutions to dependability problems. At this stage, the emphasis is on solutions relating to building geometry. Simulations are performed on variants of the base-case building relating to the list of possible solutions. Issues that will have a profound influence on the architectural aspects of the building are quantitatively explored prior to the conceptual design phase. The energy impact of each variant is determined by comparison to the original base-case building and to the other variants. Computerized design tools bring all the architectural and engineering pieces together to predict how the building’s components will interact. In other words, day-lighting systems, thermal issues and building control strategies may be addressed by different building disciplines but successful integrated building performance can only be achieved by examining the interrelation between these components. The conceptual design is the most difficult part of the building design process. It is essential that the dependability features be integrated into the architecture of the building. The objective is to use the architectural and envelope features to minimize energy costs for heating, cooling, and lighting. Often, energy features that effect the visual impact of the building can also serve as the main architectural aesthetic features, thereby saving costs. If the addition of an energy feature substantially increases the building cost, it is evaluated with the cost-effectiveness criteria already established [6] After the architectural features impacting energy use have been determined, the computer model simulating the performance of the proposed building is updated to reflect those decisions. A set of simulations is then performed to guide decisions regarding the HVAC system and associated controls. These simulations are primarily to optimize annual dependability of building lighting functions and the occupant comfort. The simulations can also be used to help properly size the equipment. Low-energy buildings defy the industry norms used for equipment sizing. First cost savings in substantially downsized equipment can often be used to pay for improved envelope energy features. At this point, there will be some iteration or trade-off between mechanical system decisions and architectural features; however, it is best to optimize the architectural features first. Although the energy design process may increase the cost to design the building compared to the traditional design process, the incr eased design cost is often offset by reductions in errors and decreased mechanical system cost. Fewer errors occur because careful attention was paid throughout the design process and more effort is placed on checking and review. Also, small mechanical systems require less space in the building (requiring less building to be built), and therefore, lower capital costs. Once the simulation work has been completed, occasional simulations will need to be performed as needed in response to unanticipated circumstances. This might include the need to determine if a substitute component really meets the energy related specifications or review of a construction detail that must be modified because of a problem on the construction site. Scheduled plan reviews and site inspections are crucial to ensure that specified details omitted from the plans do not compromise the energy design. A clear communication path between the constructor, building operator and the design team will help ensure that components are installed properly [10] In many cases, once construction on a particular area is incorrectly completed, it cannot be reinstalled and the building owner is forced to live with the reliability performance consequences. The commissioning process includes testing all subsystems in the building to ensure that they operate as intended. For example, poorly calibrated economizer controls can bring in excess air or poorly calibrated daylight sensors may not turn off the lights, thus causing failure to the equipments. Occasional simulations will be required to help solve problems that emerge during this final phase and to respond to changes in building use that may occur once the building is occupied. The key is that the controls function with the design intent of the building. A good building quickly becomes a bad building with improper control strategies. In addition, it is important to educate the building owner, occupants and the maintenance staff to properly use the building systems as conceived by the design team. The building’s performance can only be optimized if the people running the systems understand how the systems interact. This would save cost of system errors leading to malfunctions and would eventually reduce the need for future building maintenance. 4.  Conclusion Good construction practices provide protection and minimum maintenance required for existing high-tech buildings and other features. Continued good appearance of these buildings depends upon the extent and quality of maintenance. The choice of materials and their use, together with the types of finishes and other protective measures should be conducive to easy maintenance and upkeep. An integrated design approach for private high performance buildings have been discussed from construction to commission. A low energy cost reduction was ideally established early and maintained throughout the design process. An integrated set of solutions for architectural design and energy efficiency was determined, including extensive day-lighting, natural ventilation, evaporative cooling and passive solar radiant heating. It is important to design a building that works with the environment in which it is located to minimize the need for maintenance in the long run. The building architecture was formed based on the programmatic and energy goals for the project. Tall vertical elements are naturally preferred to harmonize the building with the surrounding natural environment. The towers were also used to passively cool the building. An HVAC system was designed to work with the building. A PV system was installed to provide emergency power and supplemental power when utility power is available. The building construction and energy costs was significantly less and more reliable than a conventional one. This shows that sustainable buildings need not cost more with no level maintenance requirements REFERENCES [1] A. H. Molof, C. J. Turkstra (1984). Infrastructure, maintenance and repair of public works. New York Academy of Sciences. [2] A. P. Chrest (2001). Parking Structures: Planning, design, construction, maintenance and repair. Kluwer Academic Publishers. [3] Aia Pr (1993). Confronting the changes: New considerations in the design and management of public-sector facilities. [4] B. Chanter and P. Swallow (2000). Building Maintenance Management. Blackwell Science. [5] D. Hunns (1986). Human Factors in Reliability and the Psychology of Communications. International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management, pp 22-37. [6] E. D. Mills (1980). Building maintenance and preservation: a guide for design and management. Boston, Butterworths. [7] E. Teicholz (2001). Facility Design and Management Handbook. Mc-Graw Hill Companies. [8] M. Ruff (1998). Sewer, gas and electric: The Public Works trilogy. Grove/Atlantic Press [9] R. Lee and P. Wordsworth (2000). Lee’s Building Maintenance Management. Blackwell Publishers. [10] S. B. Birch, Jr, Craftsman Book Co, R. Price and L. Nicholson (2001). Public Works Inspector Manual. Building News.

Copper Essay -- essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Weil 1   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Copper is one of the earliest elements known to man. Because of its distinct red color, Copper is very easily identified. In the ancient times, copper could be found lying in the ground in its unattached state without interaction to other substances. Copper and its compounds have many uses in today’s society. Copper has many chemical properties that make it unique. The Atomic number of copper is 29. An Atomic number is a measure of the amount of protons in the nucleus of an atom. Protons are sub-atomic particles, which have a positive charge. The Atomic mass of copper is 63.546. The Atomic mass is a measure of how many neutrons and protons are in an atom. Neutrons are sub- atomic particles, which have no charge. Thus, using the Atomic mass and Atomic number of Copper, we can determine that it has 29 proton and 35 neutrons. Copper is a transition element and is found in column eleven of the periodic table. That means that it has 11 electrons in it valence shell. A valence shell of an atom is the last shell of electrons. Copper is a metal, which lies in period 4 of the Periodic table.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Other basic properties include having a density of 8.96grams/ centimeters3. Density is a measure of mass per unit of volume in a substance. Copper has a melting point of 1083.3 degrees Celsius. A melting point of a substance is the temperature at which a solid changes to a liquid. Also, the freezing point of Copper is 2567 degrees Celsius. The freezing point of substance is the temperature a liquid changes to a solid.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There are also many physical properties of Copper including conductivity, malleability, ductility, and the resistance against corrosion. Conductivity is the ability to conduct electricity. Silver is the only better conductor of electricity, but it is too expensive. Pure copper is a better conductor of electricity than copper alloys, due to the impurities in the alloys. Copper is also Weil 2 very malleable. Malleability is the ability to be easily shaped. Copper doesn’t break when hammered, stamped, forged, or spun into unusual shapes. Copper can be shaped either in a hot or cold shape. Besides being easily shaped, Copper is dutiable. Ductility is the ability to be drawn into thin wires without breaking. When heated, Copper becomes very ... ...s its red color from the iron. The other substance, hemocryanin is the same as hemoglobin, except it uses copper instead of iron. Thus it has a blue color, instead of red. Examples of animals, which have hemocryanin, are crustaceans.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Copper is very numerous in nature. The metal ranks in the upper quarter of elements abundant in the earths crust. A small part can also be found in seawater. Copper is minded Weil 4 throughout the world; fifty nations mine it today. Some include Albania, Argentina, Peru, Russia, Zambia, and many more. The largest miners of copper are Chile and the United States. Other major producers include Canada, Australia, and Indonesia. Within the United States, the leading states of production include, Arizona, Utah, Montana, and Nevada.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Copper is essential to modern society. Its uses are numerous and essential to many animals. Since the discovery of Copper, it has been an integral part of industry, art, and agriculture. Today’s uses would not be possible if not for the discoveries many, many years ago.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  

Independent Study in Ornithology Essay

The year is wrapping up and so is my ornithology class†¦ And now we have to evaluate a credit flex that as no scale†¦. dun dun dun. This way of grading was actually a really good idea because I can actually explain what all I did over this semester and try to have it make a bit of sense (instead of just having diagrams and babblings of bird-stuff). I’ll try my best to stay away from the dry regurgitations of facts and such, but still get the point across that I feel my project should merit an A. In all seriousness, I did put in a lot of time and effort into this course—even more so than all of my honors classes so far this year. Just the nature of this credit flex shows I really care about what I’m doing. It doesn’t make sense numbers wise for all the effort; even if I received an A+, it still lowers my GPA. I don’t need any extra science credit either. This project was mainly to demonstrate that I will take the initiative to go above and beyond what is required in order to achieve something spectacular. Okay, maybe many do not care one way or another that I pursued a credit flex and would not consider it a particularly spectacular feat, but at least I can look back proudly at all that I have accomplished over the year. The bulk of my ornithology class was actually following lecture notes from a college professor. Dan Tallman posted almost 120 pages of lecture notes broken into sections. I grouped these sections into manageable topics that all seemed related and proceeded to summarize everything that I was learning in 28 parts. This alone was a painstaking process; it was like reading a textbook and pulling out the facts from each page. If I ran across unfamiliar vocabulary or concepts, I looked them up until I understood them (unlike some students†¦ erm†¦ that just skip the stuff they don’t know and move on just to get the assignment done). Next I started familiarizing myself with the different topographies of birds. I started with the general body of a bird, then worked into the specifics of wings, beaks, legs, feet, toes, and even claws. Okay, so that’s cool. But then I actually applied what I learned to a real life example—my cockatiel—and put what I learned to use. I combined the different diagrams and types and compared them to those of my bird. Drawings can only get you so far; determining what exactly I was looking at was a great way to test what I knew! Most ornithology courses require labs along with study material. As a â€Å"lab† I dissected an owl pellet (which as I was looking through my folder, I do not think I included a copy—whoops! That is why it’s attached along with a new table of contents). As a second lab, I learned to identify species of North American birds through a quiz provided by Cornell. It showed a ten second video clip of a bird and you would have to type in its name (no multiple choice!!). Finally, as the cherry on top, I revised a report on ivory-billed woodpeckers I had done as a freshman. The freshman research project was on John Audubon and any topic that related to him; naturally, I chose a bird. I revisited the essay on this woodpecker species and expanded the research on the bird itself (instead of the man). I did not create this course as a GPA booster or to earn a class credit, but because I honestly felt I could learn something from it. This course is a lot like sports—you get out of it only what you put into it. It would have been easy to print off the lecture notes and say I read them all, etc. Instead, I spent a lot of time an effort planning and carrying out this project because it was important to me, and that is why I feel it deserves an A.

Goodbye, Superboy: a Fond Farewell to the Last Romantic Essay

MANILA, August 21, 2003 (STAR) BY THE WAY By Max V. Soliven – Much has been written about Ninoy Aquino, whose name needs no introduction to many of our readers. Commuters pass by his statue daily on Ayala Avenue in Makati’s Golden Mile, and another monument to him in Manila. But monuments and statues, and glowing encomiums do not a hero make. But my thesis is that today, Ninoy is a forgotten hero. There was so much hype in the first halcyon years after the overthrow of the tyrant Ferdinand E. Marcos, and too many silly celebrations, with excessive hoopla, of each succeeding anniversary of the EDSA â€Å"people power† revolution (and then an EDSA II, and, sanamagan, even an EDSA III so-called) that the man whose heroism and sacrifice inspired not merely the first people power barricades, but a national upsurge I prefer to call â€Å"The Spirit of 1986† has been forgotten. These days, in fact, the Filipino spirit has been dampened, our self-confidence crushe d under the weight of each revealed inequity, and tales of resurgent corruption, graft, vaulting ambition — plus the disgraceful debacle of a contrived escape of the Jemaah Islamiyah mad-bomber, Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, from police â€Å"prison.† This is a time for us to remember a man who believed the Filipino was â€Å"worth dying for,† and from him gather the renewed resolve that the Filipino is worth living for, as well. But let us not sound maudlin. Ninoy would have laughed at such sticky sentimentality. When he was sent by the old Manila Times to cover the Korean War (the 50th anniversary of whose conclusion was just commemorated some weeks ago) he was 17, the youngest correspondent of them all. The Time’s editors Dave Boguslav and Joe Bautista had spotted that gung ho quality in Aquino that was to rocket him to fame — and, in the end, impel him remorselessly to his final rendezvous with treachery at the Manila International Airport. Ninoy was a hard-nosed newspaperman, and what set him apart from so many others was precisely his nose for the news. He had an eidetic memory for facts, figures and detail. â€Å"You get the facts,† Dave Boguslav told him when he sent him off to war, â€Å"and I ’ll take care of the grammar.† Ninoy delivered — and a star reporter was born. Ninoy paid his dues as newsman. He took risks where others preferred to be prudent. For him life was a great adventure — and a short and glorious life better than a long and dull one. God granted him his wish. Everyone has already written a torrent of words about how Ninoy had been a Young Man in a Hurry. He became the youngest town mayor — just a shade underage; the youngest deputy governor, then governor, the youngest Senator (he almost topped the polls, coming in slightly behind late his comprobinsyano, Tarlac’s elder Sen. Jose J. Roy). If a free election had been held in 1973 (but martial law intervened and dashed that prospect), Ninoy — whose only rival in his own Liberal Party was the late Senate President Gerry Roxas — would almost certainly have been elected president. Aquino had that golden tongue to which every politician aspires, but with which only a few are gifted. It goes beyond rhetoric or eloquence on the entablado: a strange power to move hearts, provoke laughter, attract loyalty and affection, whip a crowd up to a frenzy and the fervor of a crusade, inspire hope in listeners miserably perched in the brink of despair. Ninoy was so eloquent in English, Tagalog, Kapampangan, and even Ilocano (his native Tarlac, after all, is a province of three dialects) that he was accused of glibness. He was dubbed â€Å"Superboy,† partly in admiration, party in derision. It took martial law and cruel imprisonment to make us realize that the Boy had become a Man. By a quirk of fate, I was assigned to be his cellmate in the maximum security compound of Fort Bonifacio when we were arrested as â€Å"subversives† in September 1972. Out of the 400 prisoners crammed into the Camp Crame gym, after we had been picked up between midnight and dawn, 11 of us were singled out by name and told by a colonel to step forward. Ninoy had nudged me cheerfully in the ribs and exclaimed in a stage whisper, â€Å"Eto na, eto na! Firing squad na tayo.† (This is it, this is it. We’re going to the Firing Squad). Yet, they didn’t shoot us. They trucked us instead to Fort Bonifacio, where they sent a military chaplain to hear our confessions — thus reinforcing our conviction that we were to be executed. Once more, we were disappointed. All throughout, it was Ninoy, who surely realized he was the number one target, Marcos’ favorite bete noir, the dictator’s pet nemesis, tried to cheer us all up. The days of captivity stretched into weeks, the weeks into months. Nobody who has never been in prison can understand what you suffer from is simply being caged — you suffer from the uncertainty of it all, and from boredom. You never know when your military jailors, who have the power of life and death over you, will drag you out and shoot you, at any hour of day or night. Afte r a while, the world outside becomes a memory — you begin to forget that there are streets with people and vehicles in them, and noise, and hustle and bustle, and bright colors and pretty girls. One gray day follows the other and you learn to live from one day to the next. Yet, I wasn’t bored, because I had Ninoy to entertain me. We talked, we read. We swapped ideas, jokes, argued ideologies. We dreamed dreams. We went jogging during the exercise hour and steeled ourselves to run a mile in seven minutes. It was then that I realized that Ninoy Aquino, for all his wit, his air of bright cynicism, and his veneer of tough political pragmatism, was an incurable romantic. He had visions of the Filipino rising up to overthrow any tyranny. He had pinned his hopes on the Filipino’s love of freedom and his will to resist either coercion or seduction. He had faith in the Filipino. At nightfall, the soldiers — many of them Ilocanos — would come to our barracks-prison and Ninoy would regale them with stories of the Korean War. Or the Vietnam War, which we had both covered. We would talk of the Huk campaign, which we also had covered. Ninoy’s spellbinding recollections were so mesmerizing that after a week or so I had warned him: â€Å"Watch out brod. You will soon be accused of conducting teach-ins. Those guards are beginning to like us too much.† Sure enough, after three weeks, we found a notice on our bulletin board. The guards had all been replaced. The notice said: â€Å"Our guests (yep, that’s what they called us at the â€Å"Bonifacio Hilton†) are requested not to talk to the guards who have been ordered not to talk to them.† â€Å"You see, you see,† I chided Ninoy. â€Å"Those poor fellows have been sent to the battlefront in Mindanao, just because they laughed at your jokes!† When this writer and the rest of us were released, Ninoy and the late Pepe Diokno were left behind, but in separate barracks. Ninoy spent seven years and seven months in solitary confinement. On the front page you’ll find a photograph of the two of us arm in arm with each other. This was taken when he was allowed home at last — under heavy guard — for a brief â€Å"Christmas leave† after seven years in jail. We hugged each other at the entrance of his Times Street home in Quezon City: â€Å"Max, Max,† he laughed. â€Å"How right you were. I thought I would be out in six months or a year because the people would demand for my freedom, but you were the one who told me to dig in for the long haul — I remember you said from five years to 10 years. But you know, prison has been good for me. I have had time to think, to read, to formulate my ideology, to find God. What is ambition? It’s nothing. I have put all ambition away — all we must fight for is for our people to be happy, and to be free.† We talked about proposing a formula for a return to free elections to Marcos. He had written Marcos a letter, he said, suggesting national reconciliation. Everybody knows the rest. Aquino, after his two-week furlough, went back to his lonely prison. He suffered a heart attack. Worried about international reaction, particularly the reproof of the American government (although President Ronald Reagan and Nancy were good friends of Macoy and Imelda) they let Ninoy go off to Texas, and exile, for an emergency heart operation. We warned him not to return. I told him, â€Å"They will kill you.† But on Aug. 21, 1983, a Sunday, he came home to die in his own country. In a last interview with Radio Veritas, Aquino had declared: â€Å"Kamatayan lamang ang makapipigil sa akin (Only death could stop me from coming home).† Most politicians bet on a sure thing. Ninoy gambled on the goodness and sense of decency of the Filipino. A pragmatist would have kept himself safely in the United States preserving his life â€Å"until a better day.† But Ninoy was a romantic who believed that promises must be kept, pledges must be redeemed, and death — if awaited him — must be faced in order to show the people that there are things more important than life. When he died, I penned an adieu entitled: â€Å"Goodbye, Superboy! A Fond Farewell to the Last Romantic.† Thus the title of this piece. Yet, I hope Ninoy was not the last romantic — for such romantics are what we desperately need in these painful days of harsh and bitter realities. Someone once said that it is far better to soar with the eagles, braving the hunter’s gun, than to scratch on the ground with the chickens. The hunter’s gun finally found Ninoy Aquino at the airport which now bears his name. His spirit was freed to soar among the stars. I am proud to have known him. To have been touched by him. To remember him now.