It could only happen in Australia: A lowly aspiring ”barangay-level” Filipin-Oz politician literally bumping into the Australian Prime Minister for a quick chat. I cannot imagine that happening in the Philippines. <\/p>\n
Neil Galang, a small business owner from the city of Blacktown in Sydney’s west, was on a family holiday in the resort town of Cradle Mountain, in the isle of Tasmania just south of Melbourne, when he spotted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd walking by.<\/p>\n
Mr. Galang casually walked up to the PM and introduced himself: ”G’day, Mr. Rudd; my name is Neil Galang from Blacktown. How are you?”<\/p>\n
Mr. Rudd shook his hand: ”I’m fine, thank you.” And, at Mr. Galang’s request, the PM put a prime ministerial arm around his shoulder for a snap-shot. If there were any bodyguards around, no one noticed.<\/p>\n
”Actually, it was not the first time I had met Mr. Rudd,” Mr. Galang said. ”In the 2007 national elections when he was campaigning, I served at the Labor Party branch in Blacktown and he paid us a visit. But I was with other Party members when I met our would-be-prime minister.<\/p>\n
”I reminded Mr. Rudd about that, but I know he did not remember. I understand. We had a brief chat anyway.”<\/p>\n
This time, however, Mr. Galang’s family ~ wife Vicky, sons Patrick and Francis ~ shared the experience of a face-to-face meeting with and greeting the Australian Prime Minister. <\/p>\n
Incidentally, Neil is the brother of Calasiao Pangasinan Vice Mayor Ferdinand Galang who is running for mayor next election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It could only happen in Australia: A lowly aspiring ”barangay-level” Filipin-Oz politician literally bumping into the Australian Prime Minister for a quick chat. I cannot imagine that happening in the Philippines. Neil Galang, a small business owner from the city of Blacktown in Sydney’s west, was on a family holiday in the resort town of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}