Isko The Shepherd

The Philippine Presidential Elections is just a couple of weeks away. If you are planning to vote this coming May 10, I hope that you do not waste your ballot. I hope that you will exercise your right to vote, march to your voting centers and vote WISELY. If you still haven't decided on your President and other officials, here's something that I received from my email that I thought might help you vote wisely:

Isko was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in Masbate when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced toward him out of a cloud of dust.

The driver, a man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and Ferragamo tie, leaned out the window and asked Isko, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?

Isko looks at the man, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?"

The man parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resoluti on photo.

The man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer, turns to Isko and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says Isko.

He watches the man select one of the animals and looks on with amusement as the man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then Isko says to the man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?"

The man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

"You're a Philippine Senator," says Isko.

"Wow! That's correct, but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required." says Isko. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions worth of equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about how working people make a living - or about cows, for that matter. This is a herd of sheep...

Now give me back my dog."

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