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ABOUT PARENTS' WISH
Last updated: August 2, 2009
 

Last August 2005, a friend of mine sent me an email with a PowerPoint attachment entitled "Tribute to Dad".  The slideshow author was listed in the PowerPoint file as Ricardo Venegas Ortega. My subsequent research about the slideshow showed that it has been published in several websites and in different languages. Whether Ricardo is the original author or he is just one of the many forwarders of this slideshow can not be determined from my research.

The slideshow touched me so much that I decided to publish it in a website that I was maintaining at www.paete.org after modifying the texts of the slideshow to make it suitable for both the father and the mother and changing the title to Parents' Wish.  In addition, I reformatted it into Windows Media Format so that it can be played by people who do not have the Powerpoint program or viewer.  Finally I added the background music "You Raise Me Up" (by Josh Groban) as I find it most suitable for the theme of the presentation.  I announced this modified slideshow to our group mailing list last August 10, 2005 and the word quickly gets around.

Seven months after releasing the modified slideshow, it became so heavily downloaded that it put too much stress on the server of my web hosting provider. They suspended my account last March 19, 2006 and reactivated it only after I agreed to remove the slideshow from their server.  I put-up a note in the website notifying visitors to the page that I will try to find a new web hosting provider for this very touching and poignant slideshow.  I received close to 6,000 emails requesting that they be notified when it becomes available for online viewing again.

In order to make it faster to download the movie for the benefit of people on slower internet dial-up access, I requested my good friend Rolando Celestino Malinis to convert the slideshow into a Macromedia Flash format.  He did an excellent  job and the appearance of the slideshow as you view it now is a big improvement from its original format.  By converting it into Flash, we were able to reduce the file size from 10Mb to just a little below 1Mb and thus save on bandwidth consumption. Hopefully this will reduce the load on our web server.

In order not to burden our web hosting account at www.paete.org, I decided to open a separate account just for this slideshow as well as its own internet domain: parentswish.com.  This new page opens to the public on Mother's Day, May 14, 2006.

The slideshow was taken offline on August 2, 2009 due to a copyright claim by Getty Images on the pictures that were used in the slideshow which were taken from the original powerpoint slideshow created by an anonymous source.

For a daily update on the status of this website, please visit our NEWS section.

The Webmaster
Email: webmaster@parentswish.com


Credits and Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to the following people who helped me put up this slideshow:

  • Rolando Celestino Malinis, a very talented web artist and designer who converted the slideshow into a Flash format presentation.

  • Tito Basa for giving us permission to use his beautiful photograph of our town, Paete, Laguna, Philippines, in the opening frame of the slideshow.

  • My wife, Cristina, and my children, Ryan and Christian, who provided us with significant inputs in the design and layout of the slideshow.

  • Mr. Josh Groban (the wonderful voice behind the background music, YOU RAISE ME UP)

  • The songwriters of YOU RAISE ME UP:  Secret Garden's Rolf Løvland  and  Brendan Graham.

  • Adrian Foo for providing us with an alternative viewing site from his server in Singapore.

  • A viewer who prefers to be anonymous for acting us one of our mirror sites in Massachusetts for a certain period.

  • Angels That Care and LADYRIA DOT US for providing us with a mirror site for a short period.

  • Bong Layumas, Pamela Hart, Carol Keene and other viewers who helped us edit the wordings of the slideshow.

  • An anonymous viewer who helped us edit the sound at the end of the slideshow.

  • Michael and Terra Peterson of Mike's Maze for providing us with a mirror site in Arizona.

  • www.WhySpirit.com for providing us with a mirror site in South Africa.

  • www.InspirationLine.com for providing us with a mirror site in California.

  • Narendra Lakshminarasimha and all the people who sent me financial contributions for the maintenance of the Parents' Wish website.

  • www.sandeepraval.com for providing us with a mirror site in Europe.

  • And last but not least, the ANONYMOUS person who composed the original text of the TRIBUTE TO DAD Powerpoint presentation for touching us with his or her message.