FILIPINOS are observing the Holy Week and that means a long holiday for most people, except for us journalists and bloggers, heh 
Here are a couple of interesting blog entries about Holy Week in the Philippines.
Bob Martin of the Mindanao.com Blog has this to say:
Today is what is known as Maundy Thursday. It is part of Holy Week - the week between Palm Sunday and Easter. Holy Week is a huge thing here in the Philippines. I remember when we first moved to the Philippines, a lot of businesses were closed for the entire week. Particularly, almost every business has been closed on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Black Saturday. We were somewhat surprised about this. Feyma had lived in the States long enough that she had forgotten about Holy Week in the Philippines. Basically, the whole country shuts down for most of a week. Funny thing is that Easter Sunday is generally not that big of a deal, malls and other businesses are open for business as normal.
This year is a little bit different. In addition to Thursday and Friday being national holidays, Black Saturday and also the Monday after Easter have been declared holidays too. So, that means that many businesses will be shut down on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday! Honestly, it is amazing to me. In many instances, even grocery stores and Pharmacies and such are closed all of these days! This means that you have to really search in order to buy even food or medicine!
Here’s what Nancy Reyes of Boinkie’s Blog has to say about the Lenten season:
In America, the elite media seems to ignore the idea of suffering and death and this year, in between stories that ridicule Christianity, we see them promoting the idea that if we think positively we can have it all.
But where suffering poverty and death of loved ones is a common experience, there is comfort to know that God himself, when he came to live on earth, came as a poor man who preached against stupid religious rules that harmed ordinary people, had mercy on the weak, and told people that God loved them even when they did terrible thing, and that if they turned to God he would help them to live a good life. Jesus was not a phlosopher (sic) or even a teacher of ethics who could parse down exactly how many pennies you needed for your tithe. Instead, he explained the idea of God and the idea of how we should act through stories that anyone could understand. And it is a comfort to the suffering to know that God suffered, and understands our despair in suffering and loss and death.
April 7th, 2007 at 10:53 am
For people working in the call center industry, it was a little bit different as normal operations continued. You would see throngs of people in queues at fast food chains that opened on these days to cater to the call center market. On the nights of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, I saw a lot of people outside office buildings taking their usual smoke breaks.