FYI

For Your Information has now come to mean For Your Inspiration, Fuel Your Imagination...according to the new FYI cable network.

Mediators have to be updated with the latest trends and learn from them.

Staleswomen

Crazy Jhenny cartoon featured the snob business of some high-end retail shops. Recall "Pretty Woman"? It seems to be a marketing strategy to get slighted, insecure shoppers to prove themselves more than capable of buying those pricey stuff.

Mediators should likewise be wary of such squid tactics to complicate matters.

Cast (Aspersion) Away

Saw the rerun of "Castaway" mainly because he was portrayed by Tom Hanks. He showed man's innate need for socialization, creating Wilson from a ball so named that was retrieved from the plane that crashed. Later, however, he started to fight with Wilson.

Interesting to mediate on that island!

Runaway Groom

In Washington, USA, a bride scorned at the altar did not make "away" her runaway groom. Instead, she moved on to the reception with homeless women and children.

Mediation's ideal disputant!

Notting Hell

TLC's "Who'd Be a Billionaire" featured this book on the woes of the wealthy. Topics ranged from maintaining multiple mansions, pressure on progeny starting from prep school, and secrecy of staff. With great wealth comes great worry.

Mediation is another equalizer among disputants.

Ruin

That is the way to transformation, according to "Eat Pray Love."

Mediation likewise sees conflict as the way to compromise toward a settlement.

Crowd Control

In an experiment, NAT GEO was able to reduce buffet eating by the use of smaller (green) plates and serving spoons in a room predominantly in blue.

If only it is this easy to encourage disputants to settle their conflict!

Hu Da ...

This hot pot restaurant in Beijing truly serves pot as in addictive opium poppies as seasoning, according to an AP news report. Take it from this nation that used to add melamine/ plaster of paris in their infant formula. Now, they are also in annexation of floating reefs to their map.

Mediation takes track record into consideration in balancing opposing claims.

Well-meaning People

They could just be mean, according to Fr. Jerry Orbos. It is like when a lawyer says
"with all due respect," you know he will lose it.

That is why mediation keeps language simple and direct.

All About Steve

This was a funny stalker movie  that ended happily with both parties apart. Reese Witherspoon's stalker character was into crossword puzzle-making. At the end, she realized that "in life, we fill empty spaces with words and people."

Hasn't mediation seen the aftermath?

Light Shedder

There is good in media, too. One foreign correspondent in the Philippines posed as a pedophile to get into the human trafficking circle, which led to the arrest of the criminals.

He is an active tribute to mediation.

Night Crawler

This show was about tv stringers or part-time reporters especially of ratings-grabbing exclusives. Dirty tricks were exposed, such as  tampering with the vehicles of their competitors, eavesdropping on police car radios, and selling their piece to the higher bidder.

They are mediation's nightmare.

Furormore

The sequel to the Forevermore series was more hateful than loving. Two extras complained about the cold treatment they received up in the Mountain Province.

Mediation could be the answer to the following situations that followed:

1.  They did not get any direct, clear, effective feedback from the tv station concerned, prompting the expose on Facebook.

2. One of them felt the need for a lawyer, a short step to litigation.

3. The director in question replied with a defensive, irrelevant, off-tangent retort, "What was he doing there in the first place?"

4. One uninvolved actor chimed in that artists have license to shrill.

5. There was an observation that there is no neutral body to deal with these issues as  persons are connected with one station or another.

If I Stay

Not about spouses in conflict, but a young musician about to die. One striking quote of the movie: "Sometimes you make choices or they make you."

Could be the mediator's message to disputants, too.

Keeping Up With the Mediators

Could be the only one amused by the Kardashians. They are a good psychological study of a family of Armenian descent awashed with fame and fortune. Values other than material appear every now and then, such as the family council that tackled the marital woes of Kourtney and Scott.

There was proper behavior, no shouting and blaming. Then, despite being warned against it by Khloe, Scott starts crying and walks out finally. The divorce followed soon after.

Natumbang Preso

Had to reread a news item on prison returnees given a reduced term, at first thinking they had escaped. Then, it was clarified that these prisoners came back after Yolanda.

Perhaps they have been effectively rehabilitated as far as values are concerned such that when they come out of jail, they hopefully won't need mediation.

Monday Mornings

This is yet another medically-themed show. They focus more on ethics though. One episode dealt with the exact time when organs for donation can be gathered. Indeed, the dead justfies the means.

Mediation sees the 2-3 minute window for organs to be of use, as well as the time to grieve by the family of the deceased.

2nd Avenue

Unlike commercial ads, breaks between features of 2nd Avenue have inspiring messages, mostly addressed to women. One said, "We are braver. We choose to reconcile."

Ideal disputants on the avenue less traveled!

Divorce Selfies

That is how wedding pictures have evolved, Inside Edition reports.

And that is the latest edition that mediation witnesses often.

The 5—Year Engagement

This Jack featured movie had a thought-provoking comparison. Marriage requires commitment, just like insanity.

Mediation surely has seen half-crazed spouses in conflict.

Quote in the Act

"There are 40 lunacies and one common sense."

Does mediation witness this daily!

The Affair Sub-Plot

This series on Rtl CBS Entertainment has so many twists and turns like any affair. One that caught our attention more was the state of the US Education Department's problem of paying its arbiters of teachers' cases.

It was consoling that Mother America still has the same woes as its former colony.
Back to The Affair, our teacher hero/heel used the suspended tenure to finish his novel idea.

P10 billion reasons

After all the APEC hotties snd coldies had left and EDSA was reopened to regular traffic, the general public felt that its P10 B budget was better spent on the poor (commuters?)

Mediation always has two or more sides that have to be reconciled, even before
the time of Judas .

Talking Turns

This Big Bang Theory episode gave an idea. Sheldon and Leonard used the chess timer to take turns on who would talk next.

Could be used during heated mediation sessions when two are talking at the same time.

Equalizer

Loveknots cartoon has two beggars discussing recently listed carcinogenic food. They figure they don't eat those harmful stuff anyway. What would kill them is hunger!

In death, all are equal. It's what their children do among themselves that spells the difference.

Pose-i-don

By some stretch of holiday scenes on board, they showed Poseidon during Christmas! The updated version already had its GPS. There was also an ironic suicide attempt just before the catastrophe. And guess what, he got back in and saved some other persons aside from himself.

Mediation requires the same other-orientation.

Loony

Louie is a sitcom about the life and love of an aging, trying to be macho stand-up comic. One time, he couldn't literally stand up on the sidewalk, having fallen to the ground. Guess who helps him up to a cab? Well, an older lady!

Roles can be reversed in mediation, too, especially in the ever developing family life.

Master Cheat Sr.

On one episode of Master Chef Jr., there was a touching scene toward the end when one boy shared his ingredients with a rival after he was done cooking.

These young people could teach our politicians a thing or two, in addition to sticking to the rules.

Bourse Boors

That's the Inquirer's Biz Buzz term for inside traders at the stock exchange.

Mediation, on the other hand, ensures that confidential matter revealed during sessions remain as such.

Danger and Opportunity

That is how the Chinese view and write "crisis." Perhaps the Philippines is learning this lesson, too. Despite the two nations tangling over their West or South China Sea, the Philippines has joined the Chinese-initiated AIIB regional banking institution.

Mediation seeks commonality, too, like relationships and backgrounds to get over the differences.

Friend of Enemy

History cable network detailed the pact during World War II between Thailand and Japan, which gave the latter access to Malaya. If Thailand was expecting to be left in peace, she got the ire and the bombs of the Allies instead. A friend of the enemy becomes an enemy, too.

That is why the mediator has to be neutral.