Losing Maia

Overshadowing Lavinia

2010-08-31T20:25:00.003+08:00

“I don’t like her!” This was my 10-year old’s pronouncement thirty minutes into “Master Class”, a play based on the series of master classes given by legendary opera singer Maria Callas at the Julliard School of Music in New York City in 1971 and 1972.

I must say that I agree with my daughter’s observation. Arrogant, insulting, dismissive, condescending, haughty, difficult, impatient ... are but a few of the words that I could think of to describe this diva. She spoke her mind at will and with a wave of her aristocratic hand, trampled on people’s emotions as if they were dirt under her feet. Yes, she wasn’t likeable at all.

But likeable or not, Maria Callas must have been an awesome human being. And this very quality, this essence that was Maria Callas, was brought to us by Ms. Cherie Gil with such clarity and intensity that left us reeling. That was some emotional roller coaster ride Ms. Gil made us go through.

Ms. Cherie Gil was Cherie Gil when we first met her during the press conference. But the person who came to the stage was Maria Callas, a formidable woman who, with the slightest tilt of her chin, made it clear to us that we mere mortals being graced with the presence of a goddess. From that point on, we were not seeing Ms. Gil. We had Maria Callas before us.

At the beginning, we hated her with as much fervor as her “victims”, as she called them, must have hated La Divina herself. We laughed at her wicked humor and we sat in awe as we witnessed her live her art and delve into the passion of the characters she played in the opera.

But something unexpected happened towards the end. We stopped hating Maria Callas. And this was where Ms. Gil’s acting genius came to full force. She revealed to us a Maria Callas who was just as human as we all are ... she was lonely and she wanted to love and be loved just like any one of us. We cried for her as she gave up her unborn child for the love of a man who treated her with as much disdain as she treated those around her. And we held our breath as, letting go of every bit of pride she ever possessed, she begged and pleaded for him to marry her. She did not want to be alone. But it was all in vain. The love of her life chose another woman over her. We felt her pain. We felt her despair. Ms. Gil made us feel all that.

Ms. Gil as a consummate actress came to be as Maria Callas. The bratty Lavinia who hissed, “You’re nothing but a second-rate, trying hard, copy cat!!!” to a hapless Sharon Cuneta a long time ago is a far cry from the commanding figure we saw on stage, an aristocratic woman who could cower an entire auditorium into silence with a single look.

Admittedly, that line has achieved an almost-legendary status and continues to tickle our fancy through the years. Young children, including my 10-year old daughter, can deliver it with as much venom as Ms. Cherie Gil did in the movie Bituing Walang Ningning. This is a richly-deserved honor for Ms. Gil. But it’s time to move on.

Ms. Gil shouldn’t be known as Lavinia alone for she shone even brighter as Maria Callas. Her strength as an actress has never before been laid out to an audience with as much intensity as it was in Master Class.

Forget that copy cat line. Ms. Cherie Gil has outgrown Lavinia. She is now Maria Callas, a woman, who without any shred of doubt in her being, could dismissively declare to the world: “How can I have rivals when no one can do what I can do?”

And those very same words could very well apply to Ms. Gil herself. For who, indeed, can do what Cherie Gil can do? Kudos to our favorite villainess. Keep the passion.

MARRIAGE AND (IN)FIDELITY

2010-08-08T22:27:00.007+08:00

A friend and I recently spotted a familiar face with a sweet young thing in tow. This was naturally very disturbing as we haven’t heard of his wife having passed on to the hereafter recently. Mind you, we were not just two nosy ladies putting one and one together and coming up with eleven. That sweet young thing with her nubile body kept resting her head on his shoulders. Now tell me, what were we supposed to think about that? Of course, they could be father and daughter bonding together. But at past 11pm in the company of drinking buddies? Right!

It was none of our business of course. But I am making mention of that incident because it led up to this topic and my admission that what I saw is forcing me to confront my own insecurities as a wife and has left me obsessing on thoughts of marriage and infidelity.

These “demons” – as I call them – are never far away from me. They are always present in the fringes of my mind. But I had always been able to keep them at a safe distance until this forced confrontation brought about by what I saw.

I would suppose that this is also the case with every woman of every status, age, color or creed the world over. Any woman reading this would probably understand when I say that no matter how happy and secure our marriages or relationships are, no matter how loving and caring our husbands or partners may be, and this is very important ... no matter how young and beautiful, or sexy and desirable, or intelligent and accomplished we may be ... those demons still come from time to time to tease and taunt us, to cast a dark shadow over our lives and upset that delicate balance we call marital happiness and contentment.

These taunting could come in different forms. It could be in the news about movie stars breaking up because of “third parties” or it could be what’s happening to people close to us – friends, relatives, or simply people we know from a distance. But in whatever form the taunting may come, it always gives us pause and makes us contemplate our own marriage or relationship ... because whether we are watching as a wife, a girlfriend, or a partner, and no matter how vehemently we may deny it to ourselves, deep inside, we cower in fear at the thought that what is happening to other women could also happen to us.

I am particularly vulnerable to these demons because my husband is a seaman. Not that he has given me reason to doubt his fidelity, but we are dealing with realities here, not the ideals, and it is a fact that seamen can commit countless acts of infidelity with impunity simply because they are too far away. The normal controls do not apply to them. The risk of getting “caught” is minimal to nil.

Of course, not all men do it. I am certain that we can still find men who take their marital vows to heart. And seamen’s wives, as probably ALL wives do, cling to that hope ... that our husbands are among those few men. Kind of naive, that’s true, but what else is there?

As I mentioned earlier, this prickly subject has been gnawing at my equilibrium lately. It is not only that encounter with that sweet young thing that triggered this. Somebody I know is going through the very same thing that we all fear. She is, like me, a seaman’s wife and she just recently discovered her husband’s infidelities and her life is falling apart right now. My heart goes out to her as I am painfully aware that, sharing parallel lives as we do, it can easily be me in her place right now.

In fairness to the male species though, I have to mention here that it is not only the men who can be unfaithful. We women are just as capable of cheating as men are on their wives. There is no question about that. It is simply a matter of letting go with our conventions and making the decision to do it.

But do all of us do it? Of course not! My personal opinion is that there are more faithful wives than there are husbands. We take our vows more seriously than men do. But then again, this is only my opinion.

So how am I coping now? First of all, I do not go into denial. I am perfectly aware that my husband, by the mere fact that he is a man whether seaman or not, is as capable of cheating on his wife as the man next to him. Again, this bears repeating: we are talking of realities and generalities here.

Has he been doing it? I have no idea and I hope and pray that he never has and never will.

But what if he has been doing it all these years? Let me share something with you. When the question as to whether or not he had been unfaithful to me and continues to be so came up in one of our discussions, I asked him to do three things for me: please do not ever let me know, please do not bring me any form of disease, and please do not ever fall in love.

Come to think of it, don’t we all women want the same things when it comes to our marriage? We dream of a perfect husband and a perfect marriage. But if we can’t have perfection in the area of fidelity, we might as well settle for the next best thing: we ask for ignorance ... for isn’t ignorance bliss?

Do I trust my husband? My heart does. My man is a good and decent person and a wonderful husband and father and I love him and I thank God for him every day. And most of all, my heart trusts him because I completely trust his love for me.

But my mind sometimes disagrees with my heart. Why? Maybe because it sees too much of what is actually happening in many marriages around us? That’s me. I am too realistic for my own good. So realistic in fact, that I can’t give my husband my unquestioning faith because I can’t ignore what I know about men and human nature and what happens in the real world. This is the reason why I am sometimes vulnerable to my demons – as they are always present, chipping ceaselessly at that wall of trust that I carefully built and is continuing to build around my marriage.

I wonder. Is it just me or is this something that I share with every woman out there? Is there a constant battle being waged within you too? Are you also lost in the midst of this silent war that is raging between our hearts and our minds? Have you also been told to just trust? And like me, did you answer: “Yes, I’d like that ... to trust fully ... if only I could stop thinking!” I would really like that. If only it were that simple.

I wonder. Is there any woman out there who can truly and honestly say that she completely trusts her husband without any shred of doubt whatsoever? I envy her. I wish I could be that kind of wife.

So going back to that question I asked earlier: how do I cope? I hold on tightly to that trust and I pray and pray and pray ...

Elsie's Smile

2010-07-31T20:14:00.004+08:00

The first time I saw Elsie, Sister Celina was showing her an outgrown dress of my daughter’s, and telling her that it was going to be hers. Right there and then, I witnessed and was captivated by one of the most beautiful smiles I have ever seen. That was Elsie’s smile. It was hardly a smile that would qualify for a toothpaste commercial. All you could see were her gums and a few front teeth that have been eaten up and blackened by decay. But boy! was it beautiful!! It brightened up her entire face and shone with all the innocence that only children could muster. But it was more than that. Elsie’s smile that day radiated her joy and excitement at the thought that she was going to have another dress.

You see, Elsie just recently arrived at Casa Cittadini – Home for Girls. She only had one set of clothes that day she came in ... the very ones on her back. She had to borrow from the other girls during her first few days at Casa. When Sister Celina was finally able to buy her one dress, she asked a question that was of utmost importance to her: did she still have to return that dress?

That day when Sister handed her my daughter’s old dress, Elsie’s smile showed her joy as she finally understood – that dress was going to be hers alone. Nobody was going to take it back.

Today, Elsie continues to smile with that same contagious, joyous smile of hers. I would like to believe that it is a reflection of her inner joy and contentment. Having been taken in by the Ursuline Sisters at Casa Cittadini, she now lives a much better life.

Elsie’s life had not always been this good. At her tender age, Elsie already knows how it feels like to be abandoned by her own mother. Yes, tiny Elsie, who at age six looks no bigger than a four year old, has seen some of the worst that life has to offer. She still talks about her baby sister whom her father gave up for adoption due to poverty. And at that age, Elsie learned to cook rice by herself. Her case study reveals that their father often had to leave her and her brothers a week at a time because of his work. During these times, the children learned to survive on their own, sleep unaccompanied by any adult in a filthy shanty wearing the same unwashed clothes for days on end, and yes, cook rice when there was rice to be cooked.

But all that is behind her. Elsie now lives at Casa Cittadini along with 25 other girls under the care of Sister Celina and Sister Maria Fe. They all go to school and have a safe, secure, and loving home to return to each day where nutritious meals and clean, warm beds await.

Elsie is but one girl. But her life mirrors that of the 25 other girls whose life stories do not differ from Elsie’s. Fate brought them to Casa. Now they have a better shot at a future that is full of promise.

There are more institutions like Casa Cittadini that provide the same kind of service to disadvantaged children around Negros Oriental. Little Children of the Philippines, GWAVE, and GP Rehab are but a few of the non-governmental organizations that are actively working right now for these children’s welfare.

There was a time when these organizations worked individually and independent of each other and with little or no knowledge of the others’ existence. The idea to bring them together under an umbrella organization to maximize their effectiveness and to enable them to share their resources and expertise in their respective fields came up and thus, the Oriental Negros Children’s Advocacy Network (ONCAN) was formed. Under the Presidency of Baby Jambora of Chapel of the Doves, ONCAN is a fully functioning network made up of more than 30 member NGOs. It is actively working towards the advancement of its members’ capabilities and capacities with the end in view of maximizing their potential for the benefit of all the children under their care.

There are thousands more of little Elsies out there. And each of them is receiving the same kind of care and nurturing that Elsie of Casa Cittadini is getting. But the sad reality remains that there are probably hundreds of thousands more out there who have not been reached by the members of ONCAN yet. They have a daunting task ahead of them, but having seen their dedication and commitment, I am certain that they will get there.

If you wish to get involved, you may email me or visit the following websites:

http://www.oncan.org/CasaCittadini/CasaCittadini.htm

http://www.oncan.org/

(ONCAN is hiring a full-time psychologist to do counselling and evaluation of children who have been victimized, abused, or traumatized. Salary range is P10,000.00 to P30,000.00 depending on qualifications. If you are interested, please email me so I could give you more details. ONCAN will be accepting applications until August 5.)

The Never-Ending Battle with the Bulge

2010-07-17T07:14:00.004+08:00

What is it that women of every age, race and creed continue to obsess on? What topic would we invariably talk about whenever we’d get together? What has caused and is continuing to cause us women endless frustration and dissatisfaction the world over? What have we been battling and kept losing to over and over again?

A woman reading this would have guessed already. Yes, it’s our figure or more specifically, our loss of figure. Yeah, I know – sad isn’t it? We continually lament over our bulges ... you know, that thingy that we’d see right away when we look down? Yes, that thingy – also the culprit behind those rolling undies. They really do stand out, do they? No amount of inhaling on our part could keep those tummies in. The bulges are not that bad though. They can be a source of great amusement, but only if you have an irreverent kid like mine. My brat loves to jiggle it and watch it move about like jelly. That never fails to bring out peals of laughter ... joyful laughter from her. Mine was more of the agonized kind. (sigh!)

And did you know that we also have the much sought-after, macho male must-have six- pack? Ahh! And you thought that it’s only Taylor Lautner (Jacob of the Twilight saga) and his kind who have those!!! How wrong could you be? Heavily endowed ladies like yours truly have those too and more! But ours got misplaced. Somewhere along the way to our abs, our six-pack changed course and found its way into our backs. If you are one of those who now looks at your image in the mirror with increasing dismay, do this at home – put on a tight brassiere and a close-fitting shirt – then look at your back. You won’t miss them.

But whether it’s the bulge or the six-pack, our battle boils down to one thing: weight gain. This is a curse that most of us are born with. We only get to enjoy our slimmer selves for a short while. After the babies start coming, off to heavyville most of us go.

Weight gain almost always comes with motherhood and age. It is as inevitable as the onset of wrinkles and the white hairs. But there are those of us who hasten this process because of our passion for all the sinful food out there!

Oh! If only there is fairness in this world, the vegetables and the fish would be the definite no-nos!!! Then we’d get to tell our children ... “no, you cannot eat vegetables ... they are baaaad for your health!!!” Wouldn’t that be great? Then children would joyfully eat “healthy” food.

I have been working out in the gym these past 5 weeks because I finally admitted that dieting alone wouldn’t get me where I want to be. I recently ballooned to almost 180 lbs after I’ve had another pregnancy. In an effort to keep our baby from being lost, I had to take prednisone among other medications. The steroids, plus my mandatory bedrest and all the yummylicious food I could demand from my very attentive and compliant husband, all contributed into making me the female version of the sumo wrestler.

My yo-yo dieting actually helped me lose around 10 lbs at a time but I gained back about half of them in a matter of weeks because I didn’t do any exercise. So raised the white flag I did. I dragged myself into the gym and with a heavy heart, I joined in.

And so, as I agonized over the aches and the pains that come along with the gym scene, and as I counted off the repetitions for the weights that got heavier by the second, my mind would wonder off somewhere and dream about a parallel universe where chewing is the only exercise that we needed to do. And if we wanted to go the extra mile, we could actually add to our exercise routine using only our thumbs as we press the buttons in the remote control. Yes my like-minded sisters, in my parallel world, the best exercise there is, is lying on the bed comfortably propped up by pillows as we face the TV while munching on fat-burning lechon skin.

Yes, if only the world were fair. But back to reality I must return. My fantasies made me lose count. How many leg raises have I done already, by the way?

Falling into the Love Trap

2010-07-09T09:00:00.012+08:00

I remember reading about a man who was watching a butterfly struggle out of its cocoon. He pitied the straining creature so he did what every Good Samaritan would do ... he helped it out to ease its passage from the dark confines of the cocoon into the bright new world that awaits it. I guess that we all know what happened next. The butterfly’s wings became crippled because of the man’s kindly efforts. Unbeknownst to him, the poor creature had to go through that painful process. The butterfly needed to struggle out of the cocoon so it could emerge whole and capable of flight.

The article went on to explain how this story is an analogy of every parent’s primordial instinct to shield their children from every hardship that would come their way. There is no argument against that. As a matter of fact, this very instinct is what guarantees the survival of our race. But as we all know, too much of anything is not always a good thing. As in the case of the man and the butterfly, a loving parent wanting to show his love through every means possible, including easing the way for his child and doing everything he could to spare his little one from going through the same struggles and difficulties he grew up with, might be doing his own child a great disservice. For he may not know it yet, but he might be raising a spineless individual, one who, not so unlike the flightless butterfly, is incapable of standing on his own two feet.

I read this article from the Readers’ Digest when I was in college, a time in my life when it felt as if things could not get any worse. To put it simply, life was very, very hard. From a relatively privileged childhood where everything got done for me by other people, I suddenly found myself living in Manila in a cramped rented room and sharing a dilapidated house with three other families. Money was very scarce. Every food on the table was a result of my father’s mighty struggle for survival. And on those times when there were none, we would walk over to a nearby used clothing store and sell off our own clothes. Then we’d have rice to cook for that day.

The circumstances surrounding my life may have been the reason why I never forgot the butterfly’s story and why I made the resolve to learn its lesson: don’t fall into the parental love trap. The word “trap” is always bad, and so it is when, loving parents as we are, we want to do everything for and give everything to our children to make their lives as easy and as struggle-free as we could make it.

And how does this translate into my being a mother? Of course, like every doting parent out there, I would never wish the life I had on my only child. But I keep reminding myself that that very life that I pray she would never get a taste of, was the very same life that moulded me into the kind of person I am now. I am a survivor. I came out of it a much stronger person. Circumstances forced me to learn early on that our parents cannot provide for all our needs all the time ... that we cannot and should not expect other people to take care of the same for us ... that later in life, when we grow up, we will have to work hard for all our needs and wants.

And so my daughter began her training on independence and self-reliance as a baby who was still learning how to walk. I was always beside her, ready to help whenever she needed me. But oftentimes when she would fall, and I knew that she could get up on her own, her mama just stood by and watched her proudly as she struggled back to her feet. Lesson: “Rely on yourself. You can do it.”

Abby’s training continues until now. She has to work hard if she were to get what she wanted. With God’s grace, hers will be a different form of struggle. I pray that she will never have to experience hunger or deprivation, but learn the value of hard work ... she must! Lesson: “Things do not come for free. You have to work hard for them.” Of course there are things that I provide to her freely – but these are things that are intended to equip her for life ahead – her needs.

Staying true to this course is also a struggle because as a mother, the desire to shower my only child with all the pampering and material comforts I could muster is understandably strong. But I try to stay on course by looking around and seeing the children who have been crippled by their parents’ great love. I see grown-up sons, married and with children, still living with their parents and relying on them to see to their own children’s every need. I see young men whose needs have always been provided for by doting parents, too lazy to fend for themselves, and resorting to theft and drug peddling for its easy money when the parents were no longer there to provide for them.

I believe that it is the little things that matter. In Abby’s school (Catherina Cittadini St. Louis School) for example, Sr. Marissa, the Principal, has always encouraged the children to take their bags to their classrooms by themselves and not to rely on their parents to do the same for them. I am certain that there are parents who oppose this policy under the mindset “why let my child do it when I can do it for him?” I could only hope that they would see how this little act can go a long way into forming their children’s character.

We can’t love our children enough. Or to put it in another way, there is no such thing as too much love. Our love has no bounds, but I also believe that too much pampering does not always translate into loving the child. This mother believes that letting a child taste a little hardship or inconvenience to prepare him for what lies ahead is a form of loving no child should go without.

Unlike that man with the butterfly, we should not make life too easy for our precious ones, lest we cripple their wings and miss the chance of seeing them take flight and soar.

A Taste of Broadway

2010-07-09T08:36:00.005+08:00

Not all of us have the means to set foot on the US and have the chance to enjoy the musical and visual delights of Broadway musicals. In the 80’s where Madonna and Cindy Lauper ruled, I was the odd one who spent nights listening to the recordings of Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, Cats, Phantom of the Opera, West Side Story, and so many other popular musicals. I could only imagine how it must be like to be actually there, watching the musical unfold before me on the stage, and soak in all the drama and the heights and depths of a truly passionate performance by professional stage actors and actresses. I have read of the elaborate sets, the moving and revolving stages, the lights, the full orchestra with their music that could fill one’s soul ... and I could but sigh and dream and imagine! Alas! Not everyone have the good fortune.

Music continues to move me. Even with marriage and motherhood, and all the seemingly endless concerns that life brings to us daily, I still take every opportunity I could get to indulge this one interest that has persisted through the years. Fortunately, the hub of Dumaguete’s cultural soul, the one we simply refer to as “Luce”, is but a stone’s throw away.

Thursday, July 1 saw me and my daughter headed towards Luce to watch Hinilawod, an epic tale of love and heroism, of vanquishing monsters, and adventurous princes whose exploits paved the way for the rising of Panay Island from the sea. I went there expecting an enjoyable night of music of which I was not disappointed. But what I did not expect was the texture and the detail that went into everything! Simply put, the richness of the production left my mouth hanging wide open. It was simply amazing!

I guess that I had gotten used to the usual productions that we see here in Dumaguete, rich in performances but kind of minimalist in terms of settings. We focus on the performance or the story but everything else that goes around is left pretty much to the imagination.

But this time around, we walked through dark scary forests and fought horrible monsters. We entered caves and shot down a monstrous flying bat. And we survived a catastrophe which saw people drowning in gigantic waves. We witnessed everything in vivid color and vibrant sounds. We were entranced by the energy of the entire production as the story was told in songs and dances amid music and sounds made by traditional instruments.

Hinilawod was a wonderful experience and should not be missed especially by children who have always wondered how a tikbalang looks like. Too bad the tickets are all sold out. But despair not. Hinilawod will be coming our way again on April 22 and 29, 2011 as announced in its website http://www.hinilawod.com/.

That is something to watch out for, for Hinilawod is not merely a production wonder. The epic itself should be introduced to our children as a source of national pride. It is a testament of our people’s creative genius and an integral part of our culture. Furthermore, the epic is a testament that the Filipinos were a far cry from the depiction of an unenlightened race that the Spaniards “discovered” and had introduced to “civilization”.

On a more personal level, this Broadway dreamer took great delight at having watched Hinilawod as it showed a little glimpse of what a Broadway musical could be like. Simply wonderful.

Three Beloved Angels

2010-01-15T08:50:00.007+08:00

Three beloved angels
Gone too soon,
To you I had to say goodbye
Before I could even say hi,
Mama’s heart fills with sorrow
Your sweet love I'll never know.

All my life I’ll wonder
How each of you would have been ...
Are you like your papa?
Loving and tender,
He makes my heart sing.
Or maybe like your Ate?
Love of my life,
Happiness she bring.

The sound of your pealing laughter
I will never hear.
The warm sweetness of your kiss
I'll forever miss.

I take comfort knowing
In heaven you’re in God’s holy grace
I will smile at you thinking
In Mama Mary’s sweet embrace.

I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
My sweet angels I’ll always do.
And when Mama’s time on earth is over,
In heaven’s gate I know you’ll wait.

Then at last I'll see you my babies!
And hold you ...
I will never let go.

May 9, 2006
May 4, 2008
January 19, 2010

DO DOGS CRY?

2009-08-14T16:50:00.004+08:00

She was a frightened little puppy, barely a month old, a sorry little creature made up of nothing but skin and bones. For days, she cried pitiably for the family from whom she was separated far too soon.

I never paid this puppy any particular attention. Our houseboy brought her home so technically she was his puppy.

I quickly forgot all about her as soon as she quieted down. I am used to having dogs and cats of all ages around our home. Abby and I have a habit of picking up abandoned kittens and puppies that we’d pass along the streets. We do not have the heart to leave them to their inevitable fate … a slow, agonizing death by starvation or a quick, gruesome one brought on by the crushing wheels of uncaring drivers.

We have had our share of deaths over the years. Most of the kittens we picked up were far too gone to be saved. But we also have our successes. Just a few days ago, one cat I rescued as a kitten brought down her two adorable bundles of fur from our roof.

Like most of our cats, she has remained unnamed. I have long since given up naming each and every one of them. But they are all loved and cared for. My wish for them to have a home where they are safe and well fed has been fulfilled.

We also have our share of adopted cats and dogs like Kitty Girl, a pretty white cat that could no longer be kept but its previous owner, or Creepy who, despite his name, is the most lovable imp there is. He almost drove his former owners and their neighbors crazy with his nightly pleas to be allowed inside their home. Then there’s friendly Brownie, abandoned by our neighbors, and fearsome Takoy, an all-black mongrel whom my husband Nonoy rescued from a certain death. Takoy, along with gentle Cutie, another adoptee, added three more dogs to our zoo, as Nonoy would call our home.

And a virtual zoo, our home is! Our houseboy had also picked up our habit and started bringing back his own collection of animals starting with a black cat and ending with several fighting cocks along with hens that have since given us a periodic supply of eggs. Add to that the flock of bantam chicken that have so fascinated me and lo and behold! A home, zoo and farm all rolled into one! Our little piece of heaven.

And then there was that scrawny brown mongrel pup that kept to herself. I barely noticed her and only came to know so much later that our houseboy had named her Dayang. Abby got to know her first. They quickly built a friendship and often played their favorite game together - fetching stones.

Without my knowing it, this little askal slowly wormed her way into my heart with her sweet and gentle nature. What a joy she was! She was always the first to greet me when I’d arrive home. My fondest memory of Dayang is of her coming towards me with tail wagging shyly, eyes half-closed, ears pulled back with glee and a face that exuded nothing but pure goodwill.

Dayang left us today. She started ailing a few days ago. I was supposed to take her to the vet today. Instead, I found her lying flat on the ground, her entire body convulsing wildly. I have never seen a more horrible sight. And I have never felt more helpless. But what broke my heart was to see this tormented little dog managing a weak wag for me when I came to her. I cried when I saw what looked like tears welling up from her eyes as her whole body shook and convulsed. Do dogs cry? I stayed with her until the end, telling her that I loved her, and praying for God to end her agony.

I really loved that little dog. But I remember how I used to shoo her away as I gave food scraps to our 11-year old Nono and 10-year old Chacha, geriatrics in the canine world … often telling Dayang that the food were only for the lolo and lola. I used to tell her, when you’re old, you’re turn will come. But Dayang never grew old.

Dayang’s death today taught me a very valuable lesson about relationships. It’s something that I have always known with my mind but have never felt with my heart. It’s all about love and letting our loved ones know today that they are loved. We should never reserve that expression of our love for later. Today is what matters. For we never know what will happen tomorrow.

OUST WILLIE REVILLAME!

2009-08-08T08:51:00.003+08:00

I AM JOINING THE CALL OF THOUSANDS OF FILIPINOS FOR THE OUSTER OF WILLIE REVILLAME FROM NATIONAL TV!

I AM JOINING THE CALL FOR HARSHEST FORM OF DISCIPLINE THAT COULD BE METED ON WILLIE REVILLAME!

I AM JOINING THE FILIPINO PEOPLE IN CONDEMNING WILLIE REVILLAME FOR THE EXTREME DISRESPECT THAT HE SHOWED TO OUR BELOVED PRESIDENT CORY!

Those who wish to sign the petition, please follow the link below:

http://www.petitiononline.com/badwilly/petition.html

* I am reproducing here a copy of the petition.

To: ABS CBN Management, MTRCB and PANA
To Whom It May Concern:

I am an avid viewer of ABS CBN and I am very well up-to-date regarding their shows. Without any doubt, I am a Kapamilya. However, last August 03, 2009, an incident happened when Wowowee Host Willie Revillame blurted out comments when a video of Pres. Cory's cortege appeared on the screen.

While a contestant was dancing for the talent portion, a snippet of Pres. Cory Aquino's cortege was shown on the screen. But Willie did not cut short the dancing portion. Instead, he let the contestant finish her routine. After that, he blurted out comments regarding the video of Pre. Cory's cortege. He said:

"Kung ganyan, pakita na lang natin 'yan. Kasi nagsasaya kami dito, tapos... Masakit sa akin 'yan, e. Nagsasalita ako dito... 'yan, please. Sana maintindihan n'yo. Nagsasaya kami dito, papakita n'yo sa amin yun ang... di ba? Hindi tama, e. Okey? Hindi ba?"

"Pangit! Hindi ho maganda sa atin. Nagsasalita, ipinapakita yung kabaong ni Tita Cory, hindi ba? Papano kami makapagsasaya, nahihirapan kami? I'm sorry ho, ha. Pero ako, totoo ako, e. 'Wag n'yo akong pagagalitan, kasi totoo ang gusto kong malaman...

"Pagkatapos ng show, ipakita n'yo ang gusto n'yong palabas. Kasi itong Wowowee, gusto ko... Hindi ba, at alam din ni Tita Cory 'yan dahil napasaya rin siya ng show na ito na laging masaya dito, ok?"

Some may argue that Willie's intention was good, but I rather find these statements rude and arrogant. Wowowee and Revillame is known by millions of Filipino viewers and the show is even watched across several countries through TFC. To react in such way is downright arrogant and disrespectful to the former President Corzaon Aquino. I know that it was a bad taste for ABS-CBN to show a snippet of the funeral on Wowowee, but it was worst for Revillame to react that way.

Willie have chosen to let the contestant dance instead of cutting short her act and give way to the coverage of the cortege. Willie have chosen to blurt out his rude comments ON-AIR instead of Off-cam. In short, Willie have chosen to have fun instead of giving way to the funeral of Pres. Corazon Aquino. So they'd rather have fun instead of pay our respects to our democracy icon? That was not a good example to our youth today.

Was it really hard for him to be humble and human? I believe that this is not the first time that he aired his views and rather arrogant comments On-air. He embarasses his staff, makes fun of the contestants, and arrogantly act on TV almost everyday. Pres. Aquino taught us humility, and Revillame is showing us the exact opposite: arrogance.

This time, Willie's statement should be condemed not only by the public, but by the management of ABS-CBN as well. It also creates a public outrage in the internet forums, chatting boards, and online-newspapers. Majority have negative reactions and have condemned Willie Revillame's brutal statements.

With this, I am calling the attention of the management of ABS-CBN to stop the â€œarrogant actâ€ of Willie Revillame on National TV program and reprimand him because of his actions. Willie Revillame had been very disrespectful to the Pres. Cory Aquino's cortege, Filipinos icon of democracy. It was also worst for your company that your own employee criticize you on national television instead on off the air conversations.

I am calling the attention of the MTRCB to be more vigilant, so that this lowest form of personal attack by a tv showbiz talk show host, for her/his personal agenda, will not happen again

I am calling the PANA to stop supporting Wowowee until they axe or reprimand Willie Revillame due to his actions. With him as one of the hosts, your product does not project a positive image to the public.

The public and TFC subscribers deserve better programming, and we deserve better than the likes of Willie Revillame.

Sincerely,
The Undersigned

HOW DOES ONE SAY “THANK YOU”?

2009-08-08T08:29:00.002+08:00

I am going and you can’t stop me!” I was 18 years old then. I stood in front of my Dad defiantly and repeated that I was going to EDSA with or without him. With that, I marched out of the house, with only one 5-peso bill tucked between the pages of a pocketbook I was reading at that time, a bottle of tap water, a towel and my school ID, just in case …

My mind was in turmoil, trying to figure out how I could get to Ortigas Avenue from Quezon City. I was halfway out of the gate when Daddy ran out after me and told me to wait for him. His concern for his headstrong daughter overcame whatever trepidation he may have had about going to EDSA on that day.

With public transport practically non-existent, we walked from our home all the way to Muñoz Market and hitched a ride to Cubao. Again we walked to Camp Aguinaldo and Camp Crame.

And glad that he went, Daddy was! Those days in EDSA proved to be the most triumphant days we’ve ever had. We survived on shared food and slept on the ground. We joined fellow Filipinos as we chanted the name of Cory until our voices became hoarse. We scampered for cover whenever helicopter gunships would come into view or when word about nearby loyalist troops would reach us. But stayed we did. In our minds at that time, if worse came to worst, we would stand our ground.

We were in EDSA when the first of those gunships landed in Camp Crame. Oh! The jubilation as we witnessed one land after another and we realized that they have come to “our” side. We shouted with joy and Daddy danced in the street! We laughed and hugged each other and together, we all prayed. Laban signs flashed all over.

We were in EDSA when news of the Marcoses’ flight reached the people. We were in EDSA when Corazon C. Aquino was sworn in as President of the Philippines.

Those were the heady days of EDSA, when after years of darkness, we finally saw the sun again.I have never been more proud of being a Filipino than in those days when we amazed the world … timid Filipinos finally rising up to topple a dictatorship in a way never before seen in history. I have never loved our country as much as I loved the Philippines then. All that love, that hope and optimism, all that pride of our accomplishment as a people, I directed them all to President Cory. How I loved and respected her. I hanged on to her every word, scanned the papers for the latest news about her, and had my heart almost bursting with pride each time she went abroad .. that little, bespectacled housewife in yellow, receiving the world’s accolade, standing shoulder to shoulder with its greatest leaders.

But reality soon caught up with us Filipinos. The President started getting criticized by people who expected too much, too soon. But I stayed by her side, my faith unwavering. I believed in her and knew that what the people had expected from her was too much for anybody to ever achieve. Twenty years of looting could not be undone in one or two years.

In the years that followed however, as President Cory faded from the national center stage, I became guilty of forgetting her. I became cynical again, weary of politics and blasphemous of anything nationalistic. To me, she eventually became simply the ever-supportive mother of Kris Aquino. I’d see her in the news occasionally, espousing one cause or another, and the most thought I’d spare her had been, “she’s too old to be doing that” or “she is better off staying home”.

News of her illness barely moved me as well. My reaction had been more of personal concern over the indiscriminate reach of cancer.

Then one day, as I was driving towards my daughter’s school, I caught a glimpse of a newspaper headline. It blared: “Cory fighting for her life!” I choked as if my entire heart just went up my throat and tears started falling. I could barely see the road. My beloved President Cory was dying! Everything that I ever felt for her came rushing back. I was beside myself with grief.

And now she is gone, that lone ray of hope that guided us Filipinos out of the darkness. She is gone, that shining example of how every Filipino, every person, every woman, every mother, and every leader should be. Bundled all together in her small frame was the purest form of integrity and humility, selfless service, strength of conviction, and indestructible faith in God. Now that she is gone, who else will show us how we should be?

And how do we say “Thank You” to President Cory for the person that she was? How do we say “Thank You” for giving herself so selflessly to us? How do we say “Thank You” for that hope that she inspired, for that fierce pride that she made us feel, for that intense love of country that she gave us?

How do we say thank you to a beloved? How do we say goodbye?

GOODBYE BELOVED PRESIDENT

2009-08-02T21:07:00.003+08:00

CORAZON C. AQUINO
President
Republic of the Philippines
1933 - 2009

KIDS AND THE FLU

2009-07-31T20:06:00.001+08:00

What I have in mind now might cost me some acquaintances and a lot of goodwill among some readers. I actually spent time debating with myself whether to take up this topic or not. But those who know me well enough are aware that I couldn’t let go once something starts eating at me. I just have to take that off my chest or I’ll explode!

I hope that we have broadminded readers who will understand that I am not deliberately targeting anybody. I may appear critical of some parents and I may be met by a lot of opposing ideas after this. But that’s a risk that I’m prepared to take. Bato-bato sa langit na lang …

It’s really very simple, nothing big and earth shattering. It’s about the flu and the issue of whether or not we should send our kids to school when they start exhibiting symptoms of the illness.

At first look, the answer seems pretty simple: child with fever = home.

But you would be surprised to know that there were actually some parents who still sent their kids to school despite elevated temperatures! I have seen this happen first hand. I have also heard of stories, uncorroborated of course, of parents who pressed ice cubes into their children’s foreheads so they could pass the temperature check at the school entrance. Others were said to have given their children paracetamol prior to going to make sure that their temperature would be down by the time they got to school.

I personally know of others who had to struggle with the idea of a slightly sick child having to stay home, thereby missing seatworks, quizzes and exams.

From what I have gathered, all these boil down to one concern: inconvenience. It is inconvenient for some to go after teachers to arrange for make-up quizzes and exams for the absent child. It is too much effort for some to borrow notebooks so their kids could copy the notes that they missed while they were sick.

I am perplexed. These stories, if true, are entirely against what I believe to be every mother’s primordial instinct when her child becomes sick! And that is to keep the child at home, well rested and fed and properly medicated to boot!

I had hoped that these stories were nothing but mere fabrications dreamed up by tongues that had nothing better to do. But the sad fact is that there are actually parents out there who do not consider a slight illness or an elevated temperature as enough justification for a missed day in school. They had to wait for 40-degree fevers perhaps?

And why is that? It seems that there is concern that their kids’ absence will affect their academic performance. I am thinking right now of what my daughter’s school principal, Sister Marissa Palomar, repeatedly says to the parents: let you children be children. Let them enjoy being such. Do not concern yourself too much over their academic performance. Their grades in elementary and high school will not show when they will apply for jobs in the future.

I completely agree. And if I may add … when they are sick, let them stay home even if they insist on going! Who are the parents anyway? I say, forget the missed quizzes and whatnot! Your children will not fail with two or even more missed seatworks.

And in addition to that, I enjoin parents to think of the other children who will be interacting with your sick ones. Spare them from contracting the same illness.

And this brings us to the crux of the matter … I can’t help but think that if the parents of sick children had only exercised the right discretion, maybe, just maybe, the reach of the flu would not have been as widespread as it is now. After all, if the sick ones had stayed home, who would infect the healthy children in school?

MORE!!!

2009-07-24T22:08:00.003+08:00

This probably is one of the most popular clamors around Dumaguete nowadays, next only to the people’s collective shout of “ENOUGH!!!” as they struggle through the ongoing road construction projects that got our streets shrouded under a perpetual cloud of dust.

I can think of a few choiced words and phrases to express the sentiment of most, but I would rather keep them to myself. Instead, I’ll content myself with “FASTER!!!” and “NEXT TIME, COULD YOU DO THESE PROJECTS GRADUALLY?? MEANING NOT ALL ROADS AND HIGHWAYS AT THE SAME TIME??? or DID YOU HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL IT’S ALMOST ELECTION TIME???”

But here I go again, getting carried away, as in literally getting away from my intended topic. “More” is about the popular clamor for a repeat of the Cebu Exporters’ Furniture Sale that was held in Hypermart recently. For those who did not know about this, woe to you. You just missed what I would personally refer to as the buy of the lifetime.

This furniture sale came to us through the Department of Trade and Industry whose efforts facilitated the coming over of Cebu-based furniture exporters. Mind you, the furniture that were put on sale were not merely export-quality … these were the real deal, furniture made for an intended foreign market, but which were not shipped out to serve as showpieces for the manufacturers. This accounts for the fact that, for most of the furniture that were brought over, only one unit per design was put on sale.

The cream of Dumaguete’s society came in droves, the landed gentry, the professional circles and of course, the people who make up our City’s business community.

I would say that this sale came as a pleasant surprise to us who went over to Hypermart. Not only was the actual event unprecedented, but the furniture that greeted us as we entered the exhibit area left as gasping and incredulous! These were the kind of furniture that we see only in glossy foreign magazines!!! These were not the ran-of-the-mill China-made types that are practically the only ones that are available around here!!!

But what really got Dumaguete dizzy with delight (with the exception, of course, of the local manufacturers and furniture dealers) and got yours truly drooling with desire and at the same time sighing with regret … were the prices! OMG! The prices were to die for, believe me!

I am not saying that the furniture were cheap, but they came to us at almost 50% off … and that my friends, was what got Dumaguete’s elite scrambling over each other in their haste to snatch up the most beautiful pieces.

Even at 50% off, most of the pieces were still too steep for us unfortunate souls, but to the monied ones, they were too good to pass up. By the end of day one, I would say that almost 80% of the pieces that were brought over from Cebu have been marked “sold”.

This actually came as a relief to me. Imagine how it made me feel, wanting to own a beautiful and oh-so-comfortable sofa so much that I could cry, but helpless to do something about it because I could not afford it? Multiply that agony a dozen times over … and that my friends, was my emotional picture down there at Hypermart.

A piece of L-shaped sofa, originally priced at more than sixty thousand pesos, was offered for only thirty-five thousand and after much haggling, sold off at twenty-eight! That was actually cheap considering the quality, but really “cheap” only for those who could afford.

That was why the sight of that hated word “SOLD” actually came as a relief to poor me. At least, I could stop thinking of what I could pawn off to raise the amount I would need to buy off everything there, ha ha ha! With the exception, of course, of that headless naked figure of a reclining male! I would gladly have somebody else walk away with it!

Incidentally, I had the hardest time with my brat when it came to that figure. She saw it first! Poor doberdog mama was too late! Abby had already seen it. And the reaction? … “ewwww! Who would want to buy something like that?!?!” It was too anatomically accurate for words. I could only order, with all the authority that I could muster … “stop looking at it!!!” But that was like closing the gate after the flock had ran off …

Looking back though, now that I could view that incident with some sort of objectivity … me, Abby and that figure were kind of funny in the sort of praning-mom way. Preventing my daughter from wising up to the world is like trying to stop the tides from turning. I can but sigh!

And I veered from the main topic again! Well, that’s me! Your impoverished housewife, recently tormented by that figure and all the cheap furniture and accessories that were not really “cheap”!!!

So I’m now joining the clamor for “MORE” of that sale. More!, More!, More! … as if, granting that there would be a next time … I won’t be left tormented again. But who knows? I could start betting in the lotto … who knows?

I Love You Dumaguete!

2009-07-21T10:51:00.006+08:00

My love affair with Dumaguete started the moment I set foot on its shores. I love her, love her, love her!

But this love affair is nothing to the fire and passion between this City and Prof. David Padilla, a professor in the College of Law of Silliman University.

Let me share with you what he had written about our beloved ...

"I suppose it’s a bit odd to be sitting and proctoring a three-hour final examination on the law of corporations in a classroom in Kigali, Rwanda while musing about Dumagete on Negros Oriental in the Philippines. But my life has sort of gone that way since retiring as a lawyer and becoming an itinerant college professor.

But Dumaguete is special. Not to take anything away from Kigali or Pretoria or Miami, where I also teach each year. Dumaguete, a city of maybe 100,000 people, an hour’s flight south of Manila, is the home of Silliman University where I first taught two years ago on a Fulbright. Now I go back each year as long as they’ll have me.

The place is a noisy, joyful, unvarnished tropical paradise, a mix of Asia and pop western culture where Catholics and Buddhists meet and marry, do business and play.

These jottings are not only a reflection of the pleasant nostalgia I feel for Dumaguete and Silliman University, but also the fulfillment of an overdue promise to my friend Ipe Remollo, the ex-Mayor, who one evening at his home while listening to the visiting Manila Symphony Orchestra, said to me in so many words – “If you’re so crazy about our town why don’t you write about it?” I said “OK”. And here it is, more than a year later.

Dumaguete, home to four universities, sits on the Sea of Tanon on the Pacific Ocean. It’s located in Negros, one of more than hundreds of islands in a cluster called the Visayas. The town is a port and its Boulevard runs the curve of the sea.

The streets are a controlled chaos of motorbike-propelled tricycles and thousands of mostly university students mounted on motor scooters weaving in and out of traffic. Despite the law, virtually no one wears a helmet. A two-kilometer ride in a colorful tricycle carriage will set you back 12 cents. There are no traffic lights and only one stop sign, a home made job a resident placed in front of his home.

Yet everything moves, the streets are teeming and, amazingly, there are very few mishaps. Nothing is more delightful than to sit at an open air cafe on the Boulevard to watch single-man bancas and large white pump boats with graceful outriggers bob on the water. From there one's eyes drift to the vehicular madness of the roadway, endless, joyous, confused but functional.

Dumaguetenos are so polite. I’ve yet to see an accident, and have never witnessed an argument. And while I’ve never seen a youth carded at a bar, I’ve also never seen drunken students causing a ruckus.

I’ve never heard bad language, at least in English which is widely spoken and along with Tagalog is one of the country’s official languages. I should hasten to add that in these parts people speak a Visaya dialect they refer to as Cebuano – named for Negros’closest sister island – Cebu.

Of course there is the natural beauty of the place. The palms, the flowering trees, the lianas and bougainvillea which soften and give charm to the architectural hodgepodge of new and old, modern and Spanish colonial buildings and homes. And the mountains and nearby waterfalls and the thermal energy taken from the earth which powers the island’s electrical system.

And if you stand in the sun at midday you will perspire. But step into the shade and the sea breeze will put things right.

But let me return to the people and the food and the music, and inevitably, the cost of living.

Men are called “Sir,” and ladies, “Maam.” Students rise to recite in class, and smile naturally. Please and thank you, good morning and “bless you” are the universal civilities, not just on campus, but on the street and in the shops of Dumaguete. A child on meeting an adult takes the back of the elder's hand and presses it to his forehead and bows out of respect. Across

the parking lot at the municipal airport there is a sign on a somewhat dilapidated eatery

that says, “Welcome to Dumaguete – Home of the Gentle People.” And it is true.

There may be corruption in Manila, but I’ve never encountered it in Dumaguete. And

while friends, and I’ve made some good ones, descry crime in Dumaguete, for a boy who

spent the first half of his life in Detroit, and the second in Washington, D.C. with stints in

Philadelphia and Boston, crime there is laughable. Once a month you’ll read about a

purse snatching near the market.

Do you like seafood? Blue marlin, sea bass, and varieties too numerous and

unpronounceable to mention abound at local restaurants. Oysters and swordfish. And

rice, of course, at every meal. I draw the line at breakfast rice. But you rarely see an

obese filipino. A friend recently told me about a new Italian restaurant in town but he cautioned, "it's kind of pricey." The most expensive item on the menu is $7.00.

Street life in the barrios is lively. Kids play basketball especially at night on

jerry rigged courts. The churches are full on Sundays and feast days.Ex pats from Australia, Scandinavia and a few Americans have begun to discover Negros. A considerable number have married attractive Philippine women and settled down. And why not? Cyber cafes, bookstores, four-dollar Thai massages, beach front

property - a buildable lot twenty minutes out of town is available through a legal loophole for a dirt-cheap price

Did you know that the Philippines is the cell phone and text messaging capital of the world? Did you know that Filipinos are extremely musical? Videoke and karaoke were supposedly invented there and are featured in many bars and restaurants that line the Boulevard in Dumaguete. Those without the machines often feature live singers and musicians who may only have a rudimentary command of English but close your eyes and you will think you're listening to a live performance by top international stars. As a matter of fact, Filipino entertainers are in demand throughout the middle and far east.

And a sense of humor? A couple of years ago some fifteen thousand people in Manila set a new Guiness book record for the most people brushing their teeth at the same time.

And nicknames given with affection among my friends include Raffy, Boy a/k/a Dad, Bong and Bimbo.

How about this? The yo yo was invented in the Philippines more than five hundred years

ago. On flights to and from Manila on Cebu Pacific Airlinesmostly adult passengers play "Show Me," for small prizes.The flight attendant says "Show me a rosary" and the first passenger to hold one up wins a baseball cap or a key chain.

Sports nuts? Besides basketball, cockfights, pool and boxing are big. Manny the 'Pacman" Paquiao is the current lightweight champion of the world and his following is huge and fanatical.And I have friends, including some ladies, who can relate the last three minutes of the final game of the NCAA tournament in 1997.And I almost forgot to mention world class scuba diving on Apu Island as well as spectacular reefs just off shoreAnd while not a player, I should mention that Dumaguete has a number of golf courses. Finally, let me mention that the Philippine wushu team took the gold in this exhibition martial arts sport at the recent Beijing Olympics.

Problems? By all means. Mostly economic. But life in Dumaguete is pretty laid back. Cheering contests among

students, municipal festivals, parades, student carnivals, and at the school where I teach, the pageantry and anxiety of Silliman graduates sitting for the bar exam along with thousands of others gives the place a special tone and spirit.

I have also found a serious side in Dumaguete, a pride and competitiveness in its best students known as "top

knotchers."The campus fences are draped in long streamers proudly listing graduates who have passed licencing exams or achieved special honors in law, medicine, nursing, business and other fields. Young people who earn distinction or go abroad on post graduate fellowships, and there are a considerable number of them, are particularly lionized.

In the final analysis what makes for a coherent community that welcomes the outsider is kindness in the form of hospitality and pride in its achievements. These I found in Dumaguete.

UPDATE:

It is now eight month later and I am back in Dumaguete once again teaching at Silliman University. Yesterday on my way to swim my small moptorbike came to a sudden and noisy halt. I thought I had blown the engine. A little old man happened by. He pointed out that my chain had come off and promptly put it back on. I gave him a little money and he was happy. A mile later the same thing happened. This time a tricycle driver stopped and got out his tools, shortened the chain, reinstalled it and oiled the whole thing as I stood by uselessly. I offered to compensate him. He smiled, refused politely and drove off."

His article came out in Metropost, July 19, 2009.

MISSING SOMETHING AND NOT EVEN KNOWING IT

2009-07-17T20:04:00.001+08:00

Have you ever left something behind and never looked back? You move on convinced there was nothing to look back to. You live your life … past memories consigned to the farthermost parts of your mind … life is good now … it’s all that matters.

Then one day your past waves a hand at you. You stop in mid-stride … it looks familiar and it is beautiful! Your memories, long suppressed and denied, come back to you in trickles … then the tears come … the very ones you didn’t shed before, back at that time when you have convinced yourself that there was no reason to.

You catch a drop in your finger and you ask yourself what this is for? But you already know … deep inside you know what your tears are for … you are crying for that that is lost and you are crying for those that are missed.

My tears were for the childhood that I lost, for the young life that I missed out. I cried for my lost family, my lost home, my lost friends … and for the joys of childhood that I never again experienced.

This is what happens to children when parents decide that they have had enough. They become collateral damage, bemused onlookers to an event too incomprehensible for their young minds to grasp and beyond their power to stop. That’s when childhood ends. A child went to bed. A weary old man woke up.

But I survived. Oh yes! I survived and I did well. I didn’t travel that road where so many like myself have gotten lost in. People commended for me my strength, praised me for not letting my sorry past affect my present. “Of course!” answered confident me. “I couldn’t be affected by something that isn’t of my own doing!”

But did I really manage to escape unscathed? Could it be possible that the shards left by my broken family missed wounding me in any way?

I realize now that it couldn’t be possible. A blow like that couldn’t miss leaving a wound. I didn’t even know that the wound was there. The discovery of a scab was met by amazement. Like a child mesmerized by the newness of its discovery, I couldn’t stop looking and just like any child, I couldn’t stop peeling off a bit, just to see what wonders it might hide.

But I didn’t discover wonderful things. Instead I found a wound as raw and as fresh as the day when it was inflicted. Then the pain hit me. And I cried as I should have cried 28 years ago.

No. We can’t ever escape unscathed. We will always carry that baggage with us wherever we’d go. Some may be painfully aware of its burden, others carry on like I did, blissfully unaware of that extra weight.

Opening that wound left me wondering … has it belatedly crippled me? I hope not. Rather, I would like to believe that the pain that I have denied for so long is going to make me a better wife and mother. Pain at its most raw for the first time in 28 years strengthened my resolve to spare my own child from the same fate. I could do it. It’s within my own power this time. With God’s help I’ll spare her.

Life is good now. Happy with my present and surrounded by the warmth of my family’s love, I should stop looking back to that life of long ago. But there are times when I couldn’t help myself … I had to go back and remember that beautiful childhood that I so suddenly lost. My heart would then feel heavy with regret … and the tears would begin flowing again.

Abby and Myles: One's my baby .. the other's my dream baby ...

2009-07-16T10:08:00.002+08:00

I Say -- this is taking "putting one's affairs in order" to a whole new level!!!

2009-07-16T09:54:00.004+08:00

Man, I'll tell ya, women can be cold until the end!

The doctor, after an examination, sighed and said, 'I've got some bad news. You have cancer, and you'd best put your affairs in order.'

The woman was shocked, but managed to compose herself and walk into the waiting room where her daughter had been waiting.

'Well, daughter, we women celebrate when things are good, and we celebrate when th ings don't go so well. In this case, things aren't well. I have cancer. So, let's head to the club and have a martini.'

After 3 or 4 martinis, the two were feeling a little less somber. There were some laughs and more martinis. They were eventually approached by some of the woman's old friends, who were curious as to what the two were celebrating.

The woman told her friends they were drinking to her impending end, 'I've been diagnosed with AIDS.'

The friend s were aghast, gave the woman their condolences and beat a hasty retreat.

After the friends left, the woman's daughter leaned over and whispered, 'Momma, I thought you said you were dying of cancer, and you just told your friends you were dying of AIDS! Why did you do that??'

'Because I don't want any of them sleeping with your father after I'm gone.'

And THAT, my friends, is what is called, 'Putting Your Affairs In Order.'

DIVINE

2009-07-15T14:07:00.005+08:00

Love and tenderness ...
Frail man ...
The image of God's love in my mind.

There was a time when I belonged ...

2009-07-13T08:20:00.007+08:00

Immaculate Conception College
High School Batch 1984
Ozamis City

I've been away from Ozamis for so long. I have lost touch with friends whom I've had since since grade 1. Joining our batch's social network (at www.ning.com) sort of made me return to what I refer now as my Ozamis life.

Looking at the pictures of old friends ... I felt lost. I could not remember anybody. Had I not known that it was Michelle Buot in the picture, for instance, I would never have recognized that lady in the picture as the very first bestfriend I have ever had. I had difficulty remembering Rose, Carla and Christine. Jun Garcia I remembered but I felt awkward about it. Then it dawned to me. I used to call him Flor. There were others whose name I immediately recognized ... Noel Pombuena for their bakery in Annex, Julius Guangco because his sister was my jazz teacher ...

I kept going back to our site to jog my memory. Then they started to trickle in ... memories of Carla and Rose and Chris came back ... I recognized Julita's name ... I knew Ann Jalalon! Adonis just clicked into memory last night! I wouldn't recognize Roehl if I bumped into him today but I associate his name with fun and laughter and a little of "mischief"?

Thanks to Suzette (whom I'll always associate with her Sanrio collection back in our elementary days!) for posting our old pictures. I shed tears looking at them. I cried for the good memories and for the lost childhood, I guess. I cried even harder when looking at later pictures, when I was no longer there. I cried for the childhood friends I've lost, for the good times that I missed. Looking at your pictures in a beach outing, I kept thinking ... I should have been in those pictures too .. they were all there except me!

But where are the rest of our friends? Remedios, Lulu Bernad, Emilyn Ybañez, John Paul Manalastas, Celeste Lim, Rhea Abella ... how about classmates from our elementary days like Randolph Villamor, Robert Dimagiba, D'Marie Singson ... ?

The names and faces are coming back so much easier now, but they don't necessarily match. I see faces but can't remember names or remember names but couldn't match those with faces. I must have bumped my head some time after I left ICC but had also forgotten about it ... to account for my memory loss ...

Thanks to Noel for creating this site for us. Thanks to Michelle for leading me there. Thank you old friends, for warmly welcoming me back!

1st Year, with Michelle Buot and Suzette Salvosa

1980. Grade Six Graduation.
Held in secrecy. Not even our parents were allowed to attend due to the bombing of 2 moviehouses in Ozamis which happened before our scheduled graduation day.
Pretty much like what is happening in Mindanao nowadays!

1st year High School

Childhood friends. 1st Year Sampaguita.

Grade Six Class Picture. Miss Briones.

After my 2nd year in High School, I was uprooted, or more aptly put, violently yanked away from my home and friends. That's what happens to children when parents decide they've had enough.

That's when I became lost, living in the fringes, never again to belong ...

Until now ...

I'm in a new life now. A better, happier life ... warm in the love of my husband and child ... secure in the affection of my new friends ...

But sometimes, I look back to my lost childhood, and I shed tears of regret.

WE LOVE YOU PRESIDENT CORY!

2009-07-11T18:25:00.002+08:00

I never loved our country as fiercely as I did, when as a young girl, I went out into the streets to fight for our freedom with you as our leader President Cory. I have not felt that love for country nor that pride of being a Filipino since then. You can't leave us yet. We still need you. We need you to be our moral leader. Help us find that love again. Help us regain that fierce pride. Help us see that there is still some decency left among the people who lead us today. I see nothing but gloom in our future. Please be our light once again. Don't leave us President Cory. Your people need you.

We can leave messages for President Cory Aquino in this Facebook account:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/cory.aquino?ref=nf

Happiness is ... FAMILY

2009-07-11T10:46:00.005+08:00

THE OTHER SATELLITE THAT REVOLVES AROUND OUR SUN

2009-07-09T10:20:00.008+08:00

Nonoy, my other half, in his spare time touring the decommissioned carrier,
USS Lexington in Corpus Christi (Texas?)

THE SUN AROUND WHOM THIS MOM REVOLVES!

2009-07-06T15:59:00.004+08:00

Abby as Princess Jasmine in a school play

My beautiful flower girl

Abby's First Holy Communion

My Birthday Girl!

My little twirler. She's so exhausted she could barely

manage a smile for Mama!

T-Bone Steak

2009-07-05T21:44:00.005+08:00

Borrowed this from my inbox again. It's a very poignant story and carries a very special message ... let us cherish every moment we have with our loved ones.

I walked into the grocery store not particularly interested in buying groceries. I wasn't hungry.. The pain of losing my husband of 57 years was still too raw. And this grocery store held so many sweet memories..

He often came with me and almost every time he'd pretend to go off and look for something special. I knew what he was up to. I'd always spot him walking down the aisle with the three yellow roses in his hands.

He knew I loved yellow roses. With a heart filled with grief, I only wanted to buy my few items and leave, but even grocery shopping was different since he had passed on.

Shopping for one took time, a little more thought than it had for two.

Standing by the meat, I searched for the perfect small steak and remembered how he had loved his steak.

Suddenly a woman came beside me. She was blonde, slim and lovely in a soft green pantsuit. I watched as she picked up a large package of T-bones, dropped them in her basket.. hesitated, and then put them back. She turned to go and once again reached for the pack of steaks.

She saw me watching her and she smiled. 'My husband loves T-bones, but honestly, at these prices, I don't know.'

I swallowed the emotion down my throat and met her pale blue eyes.

'My husband passed away eight days ago,' I told her. Glancing at the package in her hands, I fought to control the tremble in my voice. 'Buy him the steaks. And cherish every moment you have together.'

She shook her head and I saw the emotion in her eyes as she placed the package in her basket and wheeled away.

I turned and pushed my cart across the length of the store to the dairy products. There I stood, trying to decide which size milk I should buy. A Quart, I finally decided and moved on to the ice cream. If nothing else, I could always fix myself an ice cream cone.

I placed the ice cream in my cart and looked down the aisle toward the front. I saw first the green suit, then recognized the pretty lady coming towards me. In her arms she carried a package.. On her face was the brightest smile! I had ever seen.. I would swear a soft halo encircled her blonde hair as she kept walking toward me, her eyes holding mine.

As she came closer, I saw what she held and tears began misting in my eyes. 'These are for you,' she said and placed three beautiful long stemmed yellow roses in my arms. 'When you go through the line, they will know these are paid for.' She leaned over and placed a gentle kiss on my cheek, then smiled again. I wanted to tell her what she'd done, what the roses meant, but still unable to speak, I watched as she walked away as tears clouded my vision.

I looked down at the beautiful roses nestled in the green tissue wrapping and found it almost unreal.. How did she know? Suddenly the answer seemed so clear. I wasn't alone.

Oh, you haven't forgotten me, have you? I whispered, with tears in my eyes. He was still with me, and she was his angel.

COULD SAYING “SHIT” EVER BE “NOT BAD”?

2009-07-03T16:00:00.008+08:00

This was the contention of a British man I had an encounter with lately: that “shit” for him is kind of bad-bad … but not really baaaad? I answered him that the use of profanities may not be “bad” for him but for Filipinos like myself it’s a big no-no especially with our children!

This exchange transpired when this foreigner, who is also a parent in my daughter’s school, brusquely said to Abby and her classmate, “You're talking about shit! Get out of my way!” I went cold with rage when Abby reported this incident to me. For a foreigner to act in this haughty manner to two little girls right inside their school campus is absolutely and totally unacceptable!

I could not take this kind of behavior sitting down. It’s bad enough that some foreigners treat Filipinos with disdain, but for this man to actually act in such arrogant and high-handed manner to children right in their own turf (not to mention FILIPINO children right in their own country, THE PHILIPPINES!!!), and to my own child at that, almost got me choking with fury!

I marched up to him and told him in no uncertain terms that we do not tolerate that kind of language or behavior towards our children. He reasoned that saying “shit” is normal to him, that it didn’t really mean anything. To that I countered that he is in the Philippines and that being such, he should respect the fact that we have different sets of values and sensibilities that he should abide to.

He may be used to dealing with certain kinds of Filipinos, but these Filipinos are different! I wanted to pound into his head that these Filipinos do not use profane language in our homes nor do we allow our children to speak, or be spoken to, in that way. These Filipinos expect their children to be treated with the respect that is due to them.

Our children are not mere clutter lying around for this man to kick out of his way!

Civil people in this country say “excuse me” to people blocking their way. We do not say “get out of my way!”

I say this to all our foreign guests out there: I know that some of you see your Filipina wives and their families as leeches sucking up whatever money they could get out of you. I am honest enough to admit that this could be true in some cases. This is very unfortunate but there is nothing that I could do about it!

But do not ever think, even for one moment, that all Filipinos are the same, and ergo, are to be treated in the same way. In the other side of the fence are Filipinos who keep their distance from you, Filipinos who do not come to you with palms up and arms outstretched.

As guests, you conform to our ways and not the other way around!

We treat you with respect and we expect to be respected in return.

But most of all, we expect you to respect our children!

Foundation for Battered Women Launched

2009-07-03T14:03:00.003+08:00

A Foundation for battered women was launched last June 27, 2009. The first of its kind in Dumaguete, this advocacy focuses on empowering women victims by providing them with a means of gaining financial independence from husbands or partners who have been abusing them.

Fully named ZET Anti-Violence for Women Advocacy Foundation Through Livelihood, this movement is the brainchild of Analyn Zuñiga, a native of Dumaguete and herself a victim of domestic abuse. “I’m beyond personal ambitions now”, said Ms. Zuñiga in an interview with Metropost. “I want Dumaguete to know that there are thousands of battered women in this City and I want these women to know that I am here for them. I have gone though what they are going through. I understand. I want to use my experience as a catalyst for improving their lives. That is my goal in life now.”

Ms. Zuñiga disclosed that being financially independent made it easier for her to leave her partner. But she realized that for most battered women, leaving their abusive husbands is not option because of their inability of support their children when they do so.

The ZET Foundation is currently giving free training on therapeutic massage and other spa services to six women with histories of domestic abuse. Ms. Zuñiga hopes that after they have completed their training, she would be able to help them get employment abroad through her foreign business partners.

The Foundation also aims to create public awareness about the prevalence of physical abuse in the homes, not only against women, but also against their children. Ms. Zuñiga plans to talk to the women in the barangays to let them know that there is a law that protects them (RA 9262 – Anti-Violence Against Women and their Children Act of 2004) and that they have the ZET Foundation to go to.

Those who are interested may see SPO3 Josefa Lacandula at the PNP Women’s Desk.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE INHALE DUST?

2009-06-27T01:04:00.005+08:00

In my last article I wrote about the deplorable condition of the highway fronting the Catherina Cittadini/Don Bosco compound. I ranted and raved over the horrendous traffic clog up caused by the unfinished roads. Needless to say, this situation continues to cause immeasurable misery not only to the parents and students, but also to the countless motorists traveling to and from Dumaguete proper.

This past week, as I continued to literally inch my way towards my daughter’s school, I often thought of this road as either the road to sainthood or damnation. Truly, we don't “drive” through this disaster we call development, we struggle through it. Believe me, the things we have to put up with will test even the patience of a saint!

Being able to keep my cool day after day has become a daily test of patience for me. I count my day a success if I could suppress every urge I’d get to give each and every abusive and undisciplined driver I’d encounter the spanking they so rightly deserved!

Lately though, my concern has shifted from traffic to the perpetual cloud of dust that covers the area. I am often horrified to see children being driven through this cloud without even the most basic covering for their noses! Those children were freely inhaling all that dust and getting all kinds of particles deep into their respiratory system!

I am particularly concerned over this because I suffer from dust allergy. Let me inhale dust for two days or so and you’ll soon find me with a clogged nose and totally knocked down by severe headache.

Before starting to write this, I went online to educate myself about the ill effects of dust inhalation. Let me share what I have learned. But before that, let’s keep in mind that I’m not a doctor, so please pardon any slip-up.

What are dusts? Dusts are tiny solid particles scattered or suspended in the air. The particles are "inorganic" or "organic," depending on the source of the dust. Inorganic dusts can come from grinding metals or minerals such as rock or soil. Organic dusts originate from plants or animals.

Our lungs are constantly exposed to danger from the dusts that we breathe in. Luckily, the lungs have defense mechanisms that protect them by removing dust particles from the respiratory system. On the other hand, even though the lungs can clear themselves, excessive inhalation of dust may still result in disease.

What happens when we breathe in dust? The lungs are protected by a series of defense mechanisms in different regions of the respiratory tract. When a person breathes in, particles suspended in the air enter the nose, but not all of them reach the lungs. The nose is an efficient filter. Most large particles are stopped in it, until they are removed mechanically by blowing the nose or sneezing.

Some of the smaller particles succeed in passing through the nose to reach the windpipe and the air tubes that lead to the lungs. The airways are lined by cells that produce mucus and these catch most of the dust particles. Tiny hairs called cilia move the mucus upward and out into the throat, where it is either coughed up and spat out, or swallowed.

The air that reaches the tiny air sacs in the inner part of the lungs may carry dust particles that have avoided the defenses in the nose and airways. Special cells called macrophages will attack this dust. Macrophages virtually swallow the particles. Then in a way that is not well understood, they reach the part of the airways that is covered by cilia where the wavelike motions move the macrophages that contain dust to the throat, where they are spat out or swallowed.

What are the reactions of the lungs to dust? The way the respiratory system responds to inhaled particles depends, to a great extent, on where the particle settles. For example, irritant dust that settles in the nose may lead to rhinitis, an inflammation of the mucous membrane. If the particle attacks the larger air passages, inflammation of the trachea (tracheitis) or the bronchi (bronchitis) may be seen.

The most significant reactions of the lung occur in the deepest parts of this organ. Particles that evade elimination in the nose or throat tend to settle in the sacs or close to the end of the airways. But if the amount of dust is large, the macrophage system may fail. Dust particles and dust-containing macrophages collect in the lung tissues, causing injury to the lungs.

From what I have learned so far, I think that every parent’s more immediate concern for children who are continually exposed to dust is the development of allergic rhinitis, sinusitis, or asthma.

We have already learned that rhinitis is an inflammation of the mucous membranes of the nose. This is caused by allergy-causing irritants such as dust. Symptoms include: sneezing; itchy nose, roof of the mouth, throat, eyes or ears; runny nose; congestion; and watery eyes.

Sinusitis is a painful, long-lasting inflammation of the sinuses. Sinuses are the hollow cavities around the cheekbones found around the eyes and behind the nose. Symptoms of sinusitis include: congestion; green or gray nasal discharge; postnasal drip; pressure in the face; headache; fever; a cough that won't go away.

Sinusitis may last for months or years if it is not properly treated. Colds are the most common cause of acute sinusitis, but people with allergies are much more likely to develop sinusitis than people who do not have allergies.

Is It a Colds or Allergies? Colds, which result from viral infection, are more likely to occur at any time (though they're more common during the rainy season). On the other hand, if during summer season your child is sneezing and wheezing, he may suffer from allergies.

Although colds and allergies produce similar symptoms, colds usually last only a week or so. And although both may cause your child’s nose and eyes to itch, colds and other viral infections may also give him a fever, aches and pains, and colored mucus. Allergies wont cause these. Cold symptoms often worsen as the days go on and then gradually improve. Allergies, on the other hand, begin immediately after exposure to the offending allergen and last as long as that exposure continues. If you're not sure whether your symptoms are being caused by allergies or a cold, talk with your doctor.

How about asthma? Asthma symptoms can be brought on by dozens of different things, and what causes asthma flare-ups in one person might not bother another at all. The things that set off asthma symptoms are called triggers. The following is one of the more common triggers: allergens. An allergen is any substance that causes an allergic reaction in some people. Some people with asthma find that allergens can be a major trigger. Common allergens are dust mites (microscopic bugs that live in dust), molds, pollen, animal dander, and cockroaches.

Another common trigger are airborne irritants and pollutants. Certain substances in the air, such as chalk dust or smoke, can trigger asthma because they irritate the airways.

I hope that parents reading this will see the point that I am trying to drive at. While excessive inhalation of dust could cause long-term damage to our and our children’s lungs, we should also concern ourselves with its immediate effects.

If your child is having colds that has been going on for weeks, this means that he has developed an allergic reaction to dust. He will most likely develop sinusitis. Believe me, having this condition is not easy. I suffer from migraines because of my allergies. There are nasal sprays that I could use to protect myself against allergens, but they are very expensive, with prices ranging from P700.00 to as much as P1,200.00 and probably even more! There are times when I’d go unprotected because I had either ran out of spray or did not have the extra money to buy another bottle. These are times when I’d be knocked down by excruciating headaches. My experience through the years had made me realize that when our sinuses are clogged, drinking cold water could trigger the headaches.

I am writing about this topic now because I am very concerned for the children that I am seeing everyday being driven through the dust on their way to and from school. They may not be feeling the ill effects now, but it will come. There is no avoiding them.

So what should we do? If our only means of taking our children to school is by open transport such as motorcycle or a multicab, we should ensure that their noses are appropriately covered in the hope of minimizing their exposure to dust.

And children being children, we cannot trust them with mere hankies. Sooner or later, they will most certainly forget that they had to keep holding their hankies up against their noses. Maybe the best that we could do is to make them wear facemasks when we drive through dusty streets.

I don't really know if facemasks are effective protection against dust, but in my mind, it’s better than nothing at all. So what are we waiting for? It’s our children’s future health that we are talking about! Let’s start doing something now!

I Dreamed a Dream

2009-06-19T20:23:00.001+08:00

No, this is not about that beautiful song from Les Miserables that Susan Boyle made even more famous.  It’s my dream that came to me as I was driving around these monstrosities we call Dumaguete streets.  
I dreamed of an election-free Philippines.  Yes. I dreamed of a time where the word “election” is but a distant memory. And why not?  What’s the use of elections anyway, when it’s nothing but a farce, a charade where we fool ourselves into believing that we are electing people who would represent us in this great exercise we call Democracy.  Ha-ha! Fat chance!  We all know that those whom we send to walk the corridors of power represent all but one thing: their own interests.  I need not elaborate on that.  We all know what that means.
So how do our leaders come to us?  How about via succession like how the royalties do it?  In my dream, I had a vision of the son taking over the reign of the father.  And why not again? It’s not as if this idea is totally foreign to us!  Are we not seeing political dynasties everywhere we’d turn?  Don’t sons, or grandsons, wives, and even mistresses join in the foray, with virtually the same motivation that aristocracies had when they intermarried … to keep the spoils within the family?  
This is really sad.  But let’s get realistic for a while.  Isn’t this pretty much what is happening already?  
I have to say this again.  This is really sad.  And what is sadder is that the condition of our streets had what prompted me to get transported into this ra-ra dreamland.  I thought that with elections gone, we won’t have to do this daily rigodon as we travel around our city.  Do I still have to elaborate on that?  Ok.  Are we not all saying, to explain away all these flurry of road cementing, that it’s because elections are in the air?  I rest my case.
If I sound bitter, that’s because I am!  Anybody who has passed through Calindagan will understand my sentiments.  Half a kilometer away from the Catherina Cittadini/Don Bosco compound, you could already see the dust enveloping the area like a thick fog!  On top of that is the monstrous traffic clog up during rush hours that has brought countless motorists unfathomable frustration, not the least of whom are the parents (that includes me!) of students of Catherina Cittadini and Don Bosco.  
I just couldn’t, for the life of me, understand why the planners of this so-called road development project didn’t plan the cementing of this part of the highway in a better, more intelligent and more considerate manner!  I am pretty certain that they didn’t miss out on the fact that there are two schools in the Calindagan area (not to mention Dumaguete City High School) with hundreds, if not thousands of students!  
Could they not have anticipated the horrendous traffic that would result when the schools opened?  THEY COULD HAVE, AT LEAST, FINISHED CEMENTING THAT STRETCH OF THE HIGHWAY FRONTING THE TWO SCHOOLS DURING VACATION TIME.   Isn’t that pure and simple common sense?  
Instead, they went on their merry way digging up the existing asphalt all the way to eternity and left the cementing until … surprise of all surprises (the surprise being  all on their side of course, these brainiacs not having thought of hello?... THE STUDENTS!!!) …  the students returned, unwittingly finding themselves tied up in knots in several places, as they troop to their schools by the thousands day in and day out!
And it gets worse!  At some point in this nightmare of ours, the two gates in our school compound will not become passable for some period.  And do you know what they expect us to do?  Drop our children off in the Teletech area and leave them to their own devices from that point onwards. As if!!! If you are as conscientious a parent as I am, would you leave your children alone and allow them to walk all the way to their school unescorted and lugging their heavy bags behind?  Of course not! And there are hundreds of similarly-minded parents out there.  We would have to leave our cars where we could and walk our children to school.  I wonder how they plan to fit hundreds of cars in that area outside the Teletech compound.  This I have to see.  But deep inside I know already.  It will be the usual “bahala na mo sa kinabuhi ninyo kung mag-unsa mo!”  scenario.  As always, poor, poor us!
I can think of only one explanation why our present problem was never considered … these brainiacs do not have children in either Cittadini or Don Bosco!  Otherwise ….   Am I brilliant or what?  
Whew!  Huffing and puffing over our roads can be quite tiring!  How about you?  Any novel ideas borne out of frustration and acceptance over how powerless we really are?  We are nothing but pawns, and pawns we’ll remain unless we do something.  But what?  That is the question.  Vote?  Ha-ha!
 

BAN PLASTIC BAGS! LET’S USE THE BAYONG!

2009-06-11T10:03:00.009+08:00

I recently became interested in the bayong because of my friends Bing Sumanoy and Chedette Mascardo. They work in the Department of Trade and Industry and are presently promoting the use of bayong in lieu of plastic bags for carrying our purchases in the market. Likewise, they are also busy providing technical support to bayong weavers all over our province. There is a dual aim for this: save the environment and create employment opportunities for the unemployed and displaced OFWs.

The bayong is a simple woven flat basket made of indigenous materials like buri, bamboo or rattan strips. I guess that most of us are not old enough to witness the popular use of the bayong during the time of our lolos and lolas. Like me, your exposure to the bayong most likely came from movies where probinsianos are portrayed arriving in Manila carrying these bayongs laden with vegetables with the occasional chicken head sticking out.

But I did live through the times when we still used the round baskets for carrying our fish and vegetables in around the market. I remember that as a child, I used to stay clear of “the basket” that stank of fish.

I cannot remember exactly when plastic bags became widely used. My farthest recollection is during the mid-80s when I became actively involved in marketing chores. We were already using plastic bags by then. I guess I wasn’t of much use to my family with these tasks during my earlier years, hence the blank in my memory as to whether plastics were already in rage from mid-70s up to the early 80s.

What I cannot blank out though is the devastating effect that plastic must be causing to our environment. I learned from my friends at DTI that 80% of groceries and stores all over the world use plastic bags for packaging and that about a TRILLION are being consumed worldwide … EVERYDAY!!!

I learned further that in a study conducted by the National Solid Waste Management Commission, the volume of solid wastes in Metro Manila alone reached 6,720 tons per day, 25% of which is comprised of plastics. Greenpeace Asia and Ecowaste Coalition claimed that 76% of wastes floating in Manila Bay consist of plastic products, broken down into 51% plastic bags, 19% sachets and junk food wrappers, 5% Styrofoam materials, 1% hard plastics, 11% rubber materials, and only 13% biodegradable discards.

China, as always, is already leaps and bounds way ahead of us. Alarmed by the millions of plastic bags clogging their canals, its governments recently banned the use of plastic bags, and promptly ordered its citizens to start using baskets or re-usable cloth bags for either shopping or going to the market. Chinese citizens were warned that those violating the ban will pay high penalties and that the government will close down shops still using the same.

I found out from my own research that the City of Makati has promulgated an ordinance requiring all food chains, restaurants, supermarkets, eateries and other like establishments to replace all plastic and Styrofoam packaging with environment friendly materials. Los Baños, Laguna and the Municipality of Sta. Barbara in Iloilo have banned the use of plastic bags. The latter received an award from the Mother Earth Foundation for this initiative.

How about us? What part can we play in this increasing worldwide endeavor to spare Mother Earth from further destruction? There are little things that we can do. I, for instance, decline plastic packaging for purchases that I could easily put inside my bag. I just make sure that I do not lose the receipt. And I request store personnel to put additional items I’m buying into plastic bags that I already have containing earlier purchases. Small steps. But with a lot of us doing the same, maybe, just maybe, we could put a minuscule dent on the trillion being consumed daily.

We could also start using the bayong. But unless somebody up there gets serious against the use of plastic bags, market vendors will continue to use the same for every kilo of fish or vegetable that we would purchase. This would definitely defeat our purpose of using the bayong to help save our planet.

The bayong project of DTI is very laudable. But to my mind, for it to be able to achieve its worthy goals, it has to be paired with the banning of plastic bags. Unless this happens, the use of the bayong would merely become a ludicrous exercise. Even if all of us would use bayong in the tiangge, the continued use of plastic bags by the vendors will nullify all our efforts.

I have nothing but full enthusiasm for the bayong initiative. But … I do have one “but” … the bayong has to be strongly constructed out of sturdy materials for me, and all like-minded housewives out there, to consider using it on a permanent basis. It should be able to withstand the weight of several kilos of purchases.

I am fairly certain that nobody would want to keep using the bayong if they would have to buy one each time they would go to the market. One bayong should at least last for months. Minus this very important factor, it will be difficult for buyers like me to support this program. And without the consumers, the budding weaving industry will crumble.

Finally, we should all urge the City Council, if it has not done so yet, to promulgate ordinances similar to those that were imposed by Makati, Los Baños and Sta. Barbara in their respective jurisdictions. If they were able to do it, what is stopping Dumaguete?

Hayden in our Homes

2009-06-11T09:37:00.010+08:00

I’m a Hayden victim too!

Ha-ha! Fat chance! But seriously, I count myself a victim .. sort of. That is, if you consider missing the evening news at the peak of this sex video brouhaha the kind that would qualify me into that category.

Let me put this into frame. My daughter Abby owns the TV. Weekends during schooldays and during the entire summer vacation, Abby holds absolute dominion over the TV remote. I have long since given up the fight for it, but I did managed to squeak in my parental prerogative for American Idol and the evening news.

But wait! Before anyone starts getting images of a wild child running loose in our home, let me clear things up. The word discipline hangs heavily over this household. I simply do not stand my ground on every issue that comes between my daughter and myself just because I could. I let her get away with inconsequential stuff (like the remote) and dig my heels in only for those things that really matter.

With that out of the way, let’s get back to my TV privileges and Hayden. As I was saying, I insisted on getting the TV only to watch American Idol and the news. Imagine Abby’s delight when AI had its finale … “I’m so happy!! Now I can have the TV back!” So I only had the evening news left as my sole claim to it. This was the only time when I could tell her to go to MY channel, regardless of what she may be watching at that time. And I had to give this up too because of HIM!!

I know that almost everyone is as sick and tired of this pathetic excuse of a man as I am. But I am writing all the same because this issue had not been tackled down to the level of family, more particularly, its impact on my child and how it had caused a big upset on my efforts to raise my child in ways I think best. Maybe the distasteful effects of Hayden’s capers have reached your homes too.

We all reacted in various ways when this scandal broke the surface. But react, we all did! We all professed shock and disgust over this man but undeniably, many of us got curious. Countless Dumagueteños crowded around office computers to scour the internet for these videos. I know of many who have the videos in their cell phones and flash disks. CDs sold like pancakes.

But while everyone waited with bated breath for the next installment of this latest melodrama, I became wary of TV news and started avoiding it altogether! And that’s how I missed out on almost everything that went on during that time. I had to. Abby watches with me and I did not want her to see half-naked Hayden and Katrina gyrating before her in the TV screen, or be bombarded by blurred but still highly suggestive and thought-provoking photos of an apparently-naked man and woman while the news screamed SEX SCANDAL!!! I knew exactly the kind of questions that I would be inundated with. And I wasn’t, and still am, not ready for them.

But as we all know, even the fiercest guard dog (that’s me) couldn’t keep the guard up at all times. Almost immediately, I slipped when I left Abby briefly in the care of our house helpers when she was in the hospital. When I returned, I found all three of them staring up into the TV screen seemingly mesmerized by those hateful images. I could only imagine what may have been going through Abby’s impressionable young mind as she watched them. Children’s brains soak up information like hungry sponges. I braced myself for the barrage of questions that I knew my inquisitive child had coming for me.

Abby is no stranger to sexy scenes though. She sees them in TV all the time. The reality is that THERE IS NO AVOIDING THEM. They come to you even while you are merely surfing for channels. Even cartoon characters smooch non-stop in kiddie channels. I have already been asked why foreigners sleep without their clothes on. She considered it stupid because the lady would have to keep holding the blanket up to cover her chest.

But I don't think she ever gave any of it much thought except probably to shake her head in wonder at the stupidity of some grownups’ peculiar habits.

But things changed after this Hayden scandal. The tiny wheels inside her head started turning and putting two and two together and whoa!! she had become wiser on this subject! She must have picked up snippets of information from her school friends, from TV and movies, and from everywhere else then lumped them all together and came up with an almost-perfect picture.

Then the questions started. I wanted to wail. I wanted to scratch Hayden’s eyes out! I wanted to give him the kind of circumcision that finishes everything off! I thought of that former policeman who poured water over his head and wished he had used muriatic acid instead!

“Mama, what is sex?” (waaaah!!) “No, not the male and female thing! I mean THE BAD THING!” (WAAAAH!) By then, she had me cornered! I could not think. My mind was filled with images of a glistening pair of scissors, clicking ominously, as they moved with deliberate slowness towards a cowering Hayden for that much dreamed-of circumcision!

How do we talk about sex to our children? How old should they be before this sit down about the birds and the bees becomes imperative? I have absolutely no idea. There’s supposed to be a book on this subject at National bookstore. I should have gotten that the moment I knew that I was going to have a child!

But it was too late by then. I was unprepared for her direct questions. I crossed my fingers secretly and lied through my teeth … “it’s another word for mating Langga, you know, like what our dogs, chicken and love birds do to have babies.” (It’s still partly true, I told myself!) “I KNOW THAT ALREADY!!” (Huh? Oh yeah! There goes my chance to wriggle out of this!) “So, what is “it”? Why is it bad? What is a scandal?” (HAYDENNN!!!) If I were really that guard dog I said I was, I’d be baring my fangs and growling and bristling at him by that time! But deep inside, I was writhing in agony. Add a foaming mouth in your mental image and that’s the accurate picture of what I went through at that time!

There was no way out by then. I had to face my curious child’s questions (although I still wasn’t above skirting some if I could). In essence I told her that sex is what people do to have a baby. I added that, by itself, it is not bad and that in fact, it is very beautiful and good. But I told her that it is beautiful only when done between husband and wife as God commands it. And it becomes bad only when people do it before they get married. “Or ARE NOT married!”, Abby added.

After this I braced myself for the particulars, the HOWS … I had absolutely no idea how to answer this or even how to avoid answering the questions I was sure were coming next … should I tell her already how it happens and exactly what parts of the anatomy are involved? In my mind, I was still deliberating over truths vs. lies when my brat dropped her million-dollar conclusion … “So you and Papa do it, right?” (Oh my God! I did not expect this! This is killing me! How does anybody ever answer THAT question to a nine-year old?) “But how come I don't see you take your clothes off? Or dance like this?” She raised her arms and wriggled her hips! These are obviously the images that she associates with sex.

By then, I was too exhausted even to give Hayden Kho a mental growl. I sought refuge in my lies and told Abby that those things are done only in the movies. “Besides, can you imagine me dancing like that??? With all my bilbil (tummy blob) hanging out???”

Humor saved me from further torture that day! We had a long, good laugh over that. Abby couldn’t get over the ridiculous idea of her mama (with her bilbil flying all over the place) and papa dancing the way Hayden and Katrina did. Then an idea occurred to her, “Oh yeah! I came from medicines right? You had to be injected so you could have me!” I just nodded vaguely. I was thankful for this temporary relief from the questions and the need to be upfront with her.

For now, I am happy that the questions have stopped coming. She seems content with the knowledge that she developed directly through the fertility drugs that I received while undergoing treatment.

But the crucial question still remains. How and when should we talk about sex to our children?

I know that some readers may find me too conservative regarding this matter. But is it too wrong to want your daughter to remain innocent for as long as possible? What parent wouldn’t want that for his child?

I have no intention of not taking up this topic up with Abby. I just think that at nine years old, she is still way too young for these sorts of worldly concerns. I would have wanted her to remain, in every essence a child, for as long as possible.

But what can I do? Time and circumstances have gotten way ahead of this mom. There is nothing much that we can keep from our children nowadays. The wisest course of action at this point for me will be to educate Abby about sex not only within the physical context but more importantly, within the proper context of God and religion, family, society, consequences and responsibilities, and of course, morality.

As for Hayden Kho, I still have modified circumcision in mind for him. Seriously though, his utterly selfish acts have far-reaching repercussions, way beyond the obvious damage that it is doing to the women he had victimized. He almost single-handedly corrupted the minds of countless children all over the country (with the help of the sensationalized treatment given by irresponsible TV journalism) thereby robbing them of precious innocence.

He forced into my Abby an awareness that she can still do without. He is forcing me to confront an issue that I’m still not prepared and not willing to meet at this time.

But there it is. The need has arisen. I have no choice. So off to the bookstore this Mom goes!

Is Dumaguete Ready for the AH1N1 Flu?

2009-06-11T09:20:00.002+08:00

When this article came out in the May 30 issue of the MetroPost, the Philippines barely had 10 confirmed AH1N1 cases. As of today, the Department of Health announced 77 cases. WHO declared the Philippines as having the most number of cases in Southeast Asia.

Dumaguete has been spared so far. Last week, 2 foreign students of Silliman University exhibited flu-like symptoms and were advised to go on quarantine. As of this writing, there has been no update as to their status.

The children have gone back to school. Colleges and universities will be opening their doors on June 15.

We continue to hope and pray that Dumaguete will be spared from the H1N1 virus.

This column has to come out of hibernation to ask this question: are our hospitals prepared should, God forbid, a possible H1N1 case rears up its scary head?

I remember that during the SARS scare our hospitals, albeit belatedly, set up screening points in their entrances. Looking around now, I am dismayed to see that, while the whole world seems to be panicking over swine flu, Dumaguete hospitals are still in their “business as usual” mode.

Why is that? Shouldn’t they be the very first ones to “panic”? After all, hospitals are where sick people ran to at the first signs of illness. And especially at this time when the threat of an H1N1 pandemic is very real, our hospitals should be gearing up to meet this head on.

So what are they doing about it? How are the hospitals planning to handle a possible swine flu patient? Have they set up plans to protect the other patients from possible transmission of the virus? Like isolation or something? I am particularly concerned over this because my mother-in-law is presently hospitalized. Would they place a possible H1N1 patient in a room next to hers? How would that affect visitors and family members like us?

Has the hospital staff been briefed on what should be done in this event? They should not be clambering over each other asking what they should do to protect themselves, should a consultant for instance, call up to inform them that he’s sending up a patient who had just flown in from Central America and who is exhibiting with flu-like symptoms!

Does Dumaguete have the antiviral drugs to combat this flu?

I just have to ask. I am not a doctor, and obviously, I do not know enough. All I know are what I hear from the news and what I see and hear in our hospitals.

And from the inaction that I have seen so far and from the stories that I have been hearing, I should start getting seriously alarmed!

HUMANITY: AT ITS BRIGHTEST AND DARKEST

2009-06-11T08:48:00.004+08:00

Whenever we’d sing praises of Dumaguete, we almost never fail to mention how fortunate we are to have mountains shielding us against the worst of weathers. February 7 made us realize that we are not that fortunate. We didn’t even have the worst of weathers that day. News reports informed us that a low-pressure area over Eastern Mindanao had brought about the rains.

And yet last Saturday, Dumaguete and its neighboring towns were driven to their knees, its people incredulous at the sight of floodwater as it started to gather at their doorsteps. We all know by now that those waters did not merely stop there. They continued to rise as the rivers swelled. As a consequence, precious lives were lost, homes, belongings and valued livestock carried away, and the collective fallacy of Negros being a haven against nature’s fury shattered into pieces.

Although many of us were fortunate enough not to get flooded, somehow, we still felt the brunt of Banica’s ferocity. For instance, we lost our water supply for more than one day here in Batinguel. We were informed that rampaging waters busted the main supply pipe in Candau-ay. Yes, there was no escaping Saturday’s calamitous event. In some way or another, we all felt, and continue to feel, Mother Nature’s unequivocal message: we have always been and will always be at her mercy.

And yet, it is during times like these that our humanity shines at its brightest. Many a time we read about people rising above their own selves to lend help in times of disaster. Many a time we silently rejoice as we listen to stories of ordinary men doing extraordinary deeds. For who wouldn’t rejoice at shining moments that give boost to our sagging faith on the basic goodness of man?

It is no different this time. People banded together to help neighbors. Lifelines were provided and countless men, women and children made it to safety. A life was given to save a loved one. Who hasn’t heard of the heartbreaking story of the father who let go of the rope that would have dragged him to safety? He did so to save his child, losing his life in the process. We could all identity with this father. We’d do the same for our children.

A poignant image struck me in MetroPost’s issue last Sunday: that of the boy and his dog. In times of disaster, we worry about saving our loved ones and ourselves first, and only of the other family members next. It warmed my heart to see that this boy had not forgotten his pet. I worried for our 11 dogs and 6, 7, or 8 cats too. I had mental pictures of all these dears running amok in our bedroom in the second floor as I thought of the possibility of the floodwaters reaching our area.

But just at humanity had shone in this dark day, my family had a brush with man at one of his darkest. It was really an insignificant encounter, forgettable even, but thinking of that incident, I realized how that little event mirrored a sickness that ails the hearts of so many: selfishness.

As I had mentioned, we lost our water supply. Although we managed to store some, it eventually came to a point where we had no water left even for cooking rice. My husband, Nonoy, then decided to get water from a barangay artesian well located near his brother Joel’s house. After securing the necessary permission from the man in-charged of the well through my sister-in-law, Trining, he proceeded to draw water with the help of our houseboy, oftentimes stopping to give way to the residents who also came for water. They weren’t able to finish though. A woman accosted them, questioning their right to draw water in Taclobo after learning that they were from Batinguel.

Indeed, it was a small event. But against the backdrop of the disaster that had just hit our City and the need for water that became extremely urgent for some of us, this lady had effectively declared: what is ours is ours alone.

Sharing that water with anybody in this time of need would not have cost her a thing. In fact, it would have been an opportunity to lend a helping hand to anyone who had been affected by the recent flooding. And it would not have even created a dent in the underground reservoir.

Pray answer this then: isn’t that an illustration of man in one of his darkest?

MY WISH LIST

2009-02-14T10:11:00.003+08:00

There are quite a number of us housewives who can add “driver” to our long list of job titles. This we do almost without fail from Monday to Friday, and maybe even Saturdays when it’s time to take our kids to their ballet classes, or probably to their voice or violin lessons, maybe even drums and guitar. Or it could be soccer practice or taekwondo! Name it and we housewives have covered it!

This particular job takes a big chunk off my day, what with the increasingly clogged streets that we Dumagueteños have to grind our teeth through! The traffic is simply horrendous nowadays, not to mention hair-raising! Have you ever tried passing through the busy roads close to bag-ong tulay or the Banica River Bridge at Angatan? During rush hours? I suggest you try it and believe me, you’ll start sighing for that Dumaguete of long ago.

I have to suffer through that traffic almost everyday. Generally, I don't mind the delay. I’m more concerned over the safety of the police trainees who are being utilized as human dividers, as MetroPost called them last issue.

Detailing these kids as human dividers is risky business. Would you allow your kid to be placed in that position? I often wondered what their parents think of this assignment. I also wondered what their school’s, or the city’s liability would be if, God forbid, they are hurt while doing this job in the name of “training”. But I’m digressing here.

I actually wanted to write about the little wish list that I have compiled as I drive around our once placid Dumaguete. Here goes:

I wish that motorcycle drivers would not drive and text at the same time! Never a day goes by when I don't see one of these morons. Not that it’s any of my business but I cant help becoming worried that they might end up looking like Humpty Dumpty (whom all the king’s men and horses couldn’t put together again) after they have smashed themselves into a post or something, or worse, cause injury on someone else for no other reason than sheer stupidity on their part;

I wish that gasoline stations would be stricter when it comes to implementing their “no smoking/no cell phones” policy while vehicles are being filled up. I’d hate to be in the car that’s next in the line if some mishap would occur;

I wish that teachers (particularly of public elementary schools) would teach their pupils how much wiser it is to walk left. We all drive on the right side of the street, right? Then pedestrians, especially schoolchildren, should walk on the left side. This would enable them to see oncoming traffic. Walking on the right side means that they would have their backs turned on traffic and therefore unable to see any daredevil on wheels who might be speeding towards them;

And not only do I wish that people would walk left, I’d like to add this little gem: I wish they they’d wear light colored clothes or shirts if they have to walk along darkened streets and highways! People in dark clothes are very difficult to spot at night. And what makes this doubly hard for us drivers is when we are temporarily blinded by the lights of oncoming cars. I’m sure that not a few of us have had the fright of our lives when we belatedly realized, after getting blinded, that there was a person casually sauntering along the roadside. After doing what we had to do in such situations, we drove on, albeit with cold sweat breaking out, pounding hearts, and a little trembling here and there. And what about our pedestrian? He merrily goes his way, blissfully unaware that he just missed meeting his Maker at an earlier date.

(To be continued.)

Thank You Teachers!!!

2009-02-14T09:49:00.002+08:00

"Whose child is this?" I asked one day
Seeing a little one out at play
"Mine", said the parent with a tender smile
"Mine to keep a little while
To bathe his hands and comb his hair
To tell him what he is to wear
To prepare him that he may always be good
And each day do the things he should"

"Whose child is this?" I asked again
As the door opened and someone came in
"Mine", said the teacher with the same tender smile
"Mine, to keep just for a little while
To teach him how to be gentle and kind
To train and direct his dear little mind
To help him live by every rule
And get the best he can from school"

"Whose child is this?" I ask once more
Just as the little one entered the door
"Ours" said the parent and the teacher as they smiled
And each took the hand of the little child
"Ours to love and train together
Ours this blessed task forever.”
Author unknown)

Time and again, I wrote about how motherhood has brought me boundless joy. I also wrote of the depths and heights of rage and frustration that only our beloved children could make us go through.

Becoming a mother forced me to confront myself more often than I wanted to and made me face truths about myself I would have preferred not knowing … truths like frailties and limitations that I’m certain most of us would rather not have.

One is foremost in my mind right now … that I can’t be Abby’s mother and teacher at the same time. Sure, I’m her teacher about life’s basics, but I stop there.

Beyond that and it’s flying notebooks and pencil cases, broken rulers, stinging palms (mine from banging the table), hurt looks in the eyes and tears streaming all the way down to quivering lips.

I have close to zero tolerance for Abby come time to do assignments or prepare for quizzes and exams.

I lost no time seeking a tutor’s help to spare us both from this ordeal.
Realizing this, I discovered a newfound respect, profound admiration, and the deepest gratitude for everyone in the teaching profession.

If one child could drive me to the edge of sanity, I can’t even begin to imagine what thirty or so children could do to one teacher day in and day out.

And yet, day after day, they persevere. Morning after morning, they troop into our schools, as fresh as the day itself, ready to face once more, a day that only they could truly know.

William Arthur Ward once said, “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”

So as Catherina Cittadini (St. Louis) School celebrates Teachers’ Day on January 27, the feast day of St. Angela Merici, Patroness of Teachers, I join all Cittadine parents in saying … For taking their hand and walking along with us parents as our children journey towards their future … we can only say … thank you, THANK YOU!

To our Cittadine teachers …

Happy Teachers’ Day!

An Incredible Love Story

2008-09-02T09:14:00.008+08:00

I'm an incurable romantic. Stories of great love always touch me. This story was forwarded by a friend. I'm borrowing it for this blog. It's such a great story, I just have to have it right here!

HOPE is a Waking Dream ...
with LOVE everything is POSSIBLE!

An incredible love story has come out of China recently and managed to touch the world.. It is a story of a man and an older woman who ran off to live and love each other in peacefor over half a century.

The 70-year-old Chinese man who hand-carved over 6,000 stairs up a mountain for his 80-year-old wife has passed away in the cave which has been the couple's home for the last 50 years. Over 50 years ago, Liu Guojiang, a 19 year-old boy, fell in love with a 29 year-old widowed mother named Xu Chaoqin...

In a twist worthy of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, friends and relatives criticized the relationship because of the age difference and the fact that Xu already had children.

At that time, it was unacceptable and immoral for a young man to love an older woman.. To avoid the market gossip and the scorn of their communities, the couple decided to elope and lived in a cave in Jiangjin Countyin Southern ChongQing Municipality.

In the beginning, life was harsh as they had nothing, no electricity or even food. They had to eat grass and roots they found in the mountain, and Liu made a kerosene lamp that they used to light up their lives. Xu felt that she had tied Liu down and repeatedly asked him, "Are you regretful?" Liu always replied, "As long as we are industrious, life will improve.." In the second year of living in the mountain, Liu began and continued for over 50 years, to hand-carve the steps so that his wife could get down the mountain easily.

Half a century later in 2001, a group of adventurers were exploring the forest and were surprised to find the elderly couple and the over 6,000 hand-carved steps. Liu MingSheng, one of their seven children said, "My parents loved each other so much, they have lived in seclusion for over 50 years and never been apart a single day. He hand carved more than 6,000 steps over the years for my mother's convenience, although she doesn't go down the mountain that much."

The couple had lived in peace for over 50 years until last week. Liu, now 72 years, returned from his daily farm work and collapsed. Xu sat and prayed with her husband ashe passed away in her arms. So in love with Xu, was Liu, that no one was able to release the grip he had on his wife's hand even after he had passed away.

"You promised me you'll take care of me, you'll always be with me until the day I died, now you left before me, how am I going to live without you?" Xu spent days softly repeating this sentence and touching her husband's black coffin with tears rolling down her cheeks.

In 2006, their story became one of the top 10 love stories from China, collected by the Chinese Women Weekly. The local government has decided to preserve the love ladder and the place they lived in as a museum, so this love story can live forever.

Never a Dull Moment

2008-08-29T11:18:00.013+08:00

Last Sunday, I dressed wearily for the gala performance of the Bayanihan, the Philippine National Folk Dance Company, at the Luce Auditorium. I would have loved nothing more than just stay at home and curl up in front of the TV after our long hot day at the beach. (You know how it is going to the beach. You come home feeling dry, sticky and exhausted to the bone although you did nothing but sit all day.) Besides, I had reservations about my daughter, Abby, being able to stay awake during the performance, having swam and played all afternoon long.

But the thought of our two season passes sitting unused and gathering dust in the drawer, and to quiet down that tiny voice inside my head persistently reminding me to “think of how much each pass cost! Think of how much each pass cost!!” … firmed up my resolve. We’re going! Abby can curl up in her seat and snore to her heart’s content, but we’re using those tickets!

So there I was, facing my closet, trying to decide which one of my three good slacks I would wear that night (which, incidentally, were all colored brown, so there was actually no justifiable cause for my indecision) and still fighting the urge to return to the bedroom and just be my usual couch potato self.

But then, I thought of my reason for getting the two season passes for Abby and myself in the first place. I thought that at eight years of age, it was time for her to get introduced to Dumaguete’s cultural life. I didn’t want her to grow up thinking that the only forms of entertainment available are the television, the movies and the occasional Tayada sa Plaza events.

Dumaguete offers so much more and being a native, Abby should realize that she is very fortunate that we have Silliman University at the center of this city’s rich cultural life.

My apprehensions proved to be unfounded. My daughter was hooked from the very beginning. She leaned forward in her seat practically all throughout the performance, small fingers tapping to the beat of the music, her small face transfixed by that cacophony of movement and color on the stage, and barely sparing me a glance whenever I’d say something to her. I sustained her interest by whispering snippets of information like pointing out that Filipino girls wore those long gowns during Spanish time. I was rewarded by “Whoa!!! No pants or shorts?”

Thus, our evening at Luce turned out to be an invaluable learning experience, not only for Abby but also for myself. Take this for instance. When I told her to look at the musicians, particularly at that girl playing that “drum thingy”, she quickly told me that, it’s not a drum Mama, it’s the Kulintang! What??? How did you know that? From Makabayan, where else? (She said that in a tone which seemed to ask, “Hello??? Where have you been lately?”)

She also immediately recognized Tinikling and Singkil although she had not seen these dances performed before. This was an added bonus to my original intent of merely exposing her to cultural shows.

My investment of one thousand five hundred per season pass, which I thought, would merely entertain us, had become an extension of my daughter’s education. For Abby to actually see the pictures from her books come to life is priceless! The money spent for her season pass was money well spent indeed!

On top of that, the Bayanihan dancers gave us a very entertaining and highly enjoyable evening. From the controlled grace and elegance of the dances portraying four centuries of Spanish influence, to the explosion of colors, movements and sounds celebrating the joyous Filipino spirit, we sat enraptured and spellbound, our palms stinging as we gave one deafening applause after another, never holding back as we showered the Bayanihan dancers and musicians with our sincere appreciation.

Now, as I think back of that night, only one thought keeps coming back … there was never a dull moment indeed!

(For inquiries and ticket reservations, please contact the Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee Secretariat at (035) 422-6002 local 520 or 0917-300-0783.)

Truly Awesome!

2008-08-22T13:37:00.018+08:00

I knew that I was fighting a losing battle but I still managed to put up a valiant struggle.

I knew that I was up against an overwhelming opponent but I still waged a war that could only be described as Olympian … but I still lost in the end.

Sleep claimed me and I snored the night away as rhythmic gymnasts danced their hearts out for the gold.

Did I lose you there? Yes, I was referring to the Beijing Olympics, the rhythmic gymnastics competition in particular. It was an awesome display of precision gymnastics combined with the grace and elegance of ballet. I had been looking forward to watching it, and woe of all woes … my eyes simply would not stay opened!

I’m not exaggerating my disappointment here. I feasted on the beauty and elegance of the performances while marveling, with something close to awe, at the single-minded dedication that each athlete must have poured into their craft to come up with such perfection. I would have wanted to watch all night …

The word awe pretty sums up how I feel about the Olympics. I was hooked from day one, when China opened with a ceremony that could only be described as SPECTACULAR!!!

And who wouldn’t be? Starting from that phenomenon in the Water Cube called Michael Phelps (whose broad shoulders that seem to stretch forever, by the way, not to mention those magnificent abs, are a definite pleasure to watch!) all the way down to Hong Kong where the equestrian competitions are being held … I can only say … absolutely fantastic!!!

Dressage and horse jumping in equestrian kept me glued to the TV. The poise and elegance of the world-class riders astride those breathtakingly gorgeous thoroughbreds kept me amazed at the many facets of beauty. (Note: A blog visitor kindly informed me that almost no good dressage horses are thoroughbreds - they are warmbloods. Although I do not know what warmbloods are, I deeply appreciate that information.) My friends can attest to my fascination with those horses and at how beautiful they are to my eyes! One commentator speculated that the best of them could fetch prices as high as two million euros!!! Now, that’s quality for you!

It’s amazing how those horses could dance to the beat of music in dressage! I thought that if their trainers could teach them those intricate moves, surely they could also teach me the cha-cha! But that’s only wishful thinking. I’m afraid I’m untrainable in dancing. Each of those horses has more talent than a dozen of me put together. Hello? As if that’s not obvious enough! That’s why people are willing to pay millions for them, remember?

But my fascination with the horses and Michael Phelps’ abs, notwithstanding, the one image that will stay in my mind for a long, long time is that of a muscle-bound, fully bearded athlete crying openly while pressing his silver medal to his face and lips.

The enormity of his triumph, and those of many others, hit me there and then. That medal meant the world to him. Encapsulated in that tiny piece of metal are all his dreams and aspirations, all the sacrifices that he had to make, all the pain and agony that he had to endure … everything that he had in him, he gave into winning that medal. And it was finally his! Tears flowed out freely, unashamedly. Watching him, I had to swallow a big lump in my throat.

And just as there was triumph, I witnessed the agony of defeat. Many a time I watched as tough looking, muscle-bound amazons fight back tears as their Olympic dreams slipped away from their grasps. A lifetime of preparation and training gone in a matter of seconds!

This drama could not be more apparent than in canoe and boat races. There, at one glance, you would see the deepest depths of agony and defeat in sharp contrast with sights of victorious celebrations. Shouts of victory, hugs, and fists pummeling the air in triumph as against men slumped on their seats in crushed silence, exhaustion and disappointment heavily permeating the air.

And that, my friends, is the Olympics for me. Beyond the pleasure of watching the athletes compete and dazzle with their raw power and strength, their speed and endurance, their grace and elegance, and their sheer ability to defy the rules of nature by pulling off those awe-inspiring feats … beyond the pleasure of watching men and women at the peak of the physical perfection … beyond the pomp and pageantry …

In the Olympics, I had the privilege of catching a glimpse of what is inside the heart of each and every Olympian … that burning fire at the very depths of their being, that hunger for excellence that keeps gnawing at their core, that drive to be the best, that hunger that kept them going, pushing their abilities to the limit and beyond, and rising above themselves to become larger than life. All that, plus the inner strength that drove many to rise up after a crushing failure or defeat, again and again and again, is the essence of the undefeatable Olympic Spirit.

And that’s what made me say … truly awesome!

The Girls at Casa Cittadini

2008-08-17T14:32:00.009+08:00

Two weeks ago, I wrote about a pint-sized survivor I called Angel. This 4-year old girl survived six days and nights all alone in a forested area, without food, her tiny body covered with wounds, and all the time tormented by maggots.

I wrote about her for a variety of reasons. I wanted to thank my friends who did not hesitate to send help to Angel. I also wanted to bring her plight to the attention of readers, hoping to touch some hearts into giving to the child the same love and kindness shown to her by many others. Finally, it was my own way of giving kudos to this extraordinary little individual. I want to believe that she is destined for something really, really good.

This week let me introduce little Manilyn to you. There was a time when Manilyn had to beg for food to survive. This came after her father died of tuberculosis and her mother abandoned her and her six siblings. But good fortune smiled at her. She has been taken in by loving arms and given a secure home. She no longer has to worry where to get her next meal. And she is now in grade one.

Then, there are the sisters Melrita and Sherlita. Just like Manilyn, their mother abandoned them. They continued to live with their farmer-father, but with nine mouths to feed, life was hard. The children learned early in life to survive on their own. They were often hungry and had to resort to combing the fields for food. When they got lucky, they would feast on raw cassava, banana and other crops.

But this life is behind Melrita and Sherlita now. They have also been taken in by those same loving arms and given a good life and a shot at a better future ahead of them. The older girl, Melrita, is now in 2nd year high school, and Sherlita in grade five.

And then, there is Lady Princess. Her father was too ill to provide for his family, thus, her older brothers had to step in. They brought home food for the table by gathering and selling firewood. But the efforts of these boys were not enough. The family, with nine hungry children, could barely eat one meal a day. To add to this miserable existence, the children barely got the chance to go to school.

But Lady Princess was one determined little girl. She wanted to go to school and it was this determination that led her to her new home. She is now in 1st year high school and belongs to the top ten of her class.

The stories of Manilyn, Melrita, Sherlita, and Lady Princess are like mirrors that are reflected over and over again in the lives of twenty-three other girls, whose age range from four to twenty-one. The same thread of poverty, abandonment, neglect, and oversized families ran through the fabric of their parallel lives.

Some of them came from Luzon, others from Mindanao. But they all came together in Jawa, Valencia, living a better life, facing a brighter future, and safe and secure under the loving embrace of the Ursuline Sisters of Somasca.

These kindly nuns recognize that the children are the most helpless and vulnerable individuals in any society. They thus took these young girls in when they knocked at their convent’s door and provided to them the physical, moral, spiritual and educational nurturing that they have been deprived of during their early years.

Thus CASA CITTADINI came to be – a home for orphaned, abandoned and neglected girls.

Following the examples of Blessed Caterina Cittadini – a woman who lived for God and who devoted all her life towards giving Christian education and formation to young children – the Ursuline Sisters opened the doors of Casa Cittadini with the mission of caring for these lost children. They educated them, provided to them the love of family that they have missed out, and gave to them all they need to make them happy children of God.

The Ursuline Sisters seek to cultivate in these girls a strong faith in Christ and to promote the formation of Christian values. They hope to develop in them the whole person and to mold them into becoming good and responsible Christians capable of giving themselves in service to the Church and society.

But the Sisters cannot achieve these worthy endeavors by themselves alone. They need our help. This time, they are the ones knocking at our heart’s doors, seeking our support as they labor to raise the girls at Casa Cittadini into young women who would bring praise and honor to God’s name.

These girls have known nothing but adversity all throughout their early years. The Ursuline Sisters came to make them feel God’s love by nurturing them with their mothers’ hearts. Let us help them continue doing this noble task.

We can be a mission sponsor or partner. As partners, we can donate as low as one hundred pesos monthly. It may not be much, but if there were ten of us, the amount we will put together will be enough to feed one girl for one month.

The Ursuline Sisters may be reached through the following numbers: +6335 2261160 and +6335 2250318. Please ask for Sister Molly.

Or you may email them at casacittadini@yahoo.com.ph
or visit their website http://philippineweb.net/aa_casacittadini/index.php

Dumaguete Policewoman received COPS Award

2008-08-09T08:12:00.005+08:00

SPO2 Josefa L. Lacandula, Chief of the Women and Children Concerns Desk of Dumaguete City Police, was honored with the Country’s Outstanding Policemen in Service (COPS) award for her unswerving commitment and dedication to her work along with her exemplary and laudable accomplishments.

She is one of ten men and women in the police force who were honored by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo last August 1, 2008 during conferment rites held at the Malacanang Palace.

The nationwide search for outstanding police officers is a joint project of the Metrobank Foundation and the Rotary Club of New Manila East in partnership with PSBank and the Philippine National Police.

COPS aimed to identify police officers whose selfless service and dedication to duty have made a positive impact on the communities they vowed to serve and protect.

Following the nationwide selection process, 20 COPS finalists were pre-selected from 108 nominees from across the country. The judges poured over the 20 finalists’ documentation of achievement and answers to essay questions. In the interview phase, the judges rated the finalists based on validity and accuracy of accomplishments, attitude towards their profession, and responsible citizenship.

The Board of Judges was chaired by Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara and composed of Sandiganbayan Presiding Justice Diosdado Peralta, Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Pasig President Rosalinda Tirona, Manila Bulletin columnist Julie Yap-Daza and Galing Pook Foundation Executive Director Dr. Eddie Dorotan.

Of Goodness and Evil

2008-08-01T13:52:00.000+08:00

I heard of the 4-year girl who was allegedly raped by her 16-year old cousin. The story goes that he threw her down a ravine because “she made a lot of noise”. That would have been the end of this little girl’s story, whom I will hide under the name “Angel”.

Angel would have become part of statistics, just another figure in that long list of defenseless little girls who have fallen victims to crazed attackers.

But Angel didn’t die. For 6 long days and nights, she wandered all alone in a forested area. She must have been scared. She must have cried endlessly for mama and papa. She must have been hungry. With wounds and grazes all over her tiny body, she must have been in pain. And with maggots in her wounds, yes, she must have been in torment.

I thought of her all alone during the cold dark nights, shivering not only because she was scared and not only because of the pouring rain, but also because of that gnawing pain in her stomach … I thought of her fighting off mosquitoes at night, and flies during the day … I imagined her feeling nothing but terror, pain, hunger, thirst, confusion … I tried to imagine all these, and yet, I still could not fathom the horror this 4-year old little girl went through.

Then I thought of my young daughter who sleeps beside me night after night, safe and secure under the knowledge that mama is not far away … and I wept for little Angel.

I wept for the brutality that was committed against her. I wept for those six days and nights. I wept for a little girl whom I fear will never be whole again.

That same day, my friend Chedette and I went to NOPH to offer our little help. We talked with Angel’s father. We saw a defeated man with dull, lifeless eyes.

We made a resolve to continue the text campaign started by some kindhearted soul soliciting help for little Angel. I forwarded the message to every friend I could think of.

I was overwhelmed by the responses that came back to me one after another. Tita Carmen Cabrera promised she would visit Angel the following day. Jackie Antonio went to see her that same night and brought food for Angel and her father. Friends like Dra. Maebelle Siao, Donna Martinez, Geraldine Valencia, Dra. Idelle Yurong, Mayette Diaz, Lloyd Lopez, Ken and Agnes Tuale and so many more, asked the same questions: where could we find her? My answers were brief: ICU, Surgery Dept., NOPH. How can we help? I said, with whatever means you could spare: cash, medicine, food. Some mothers thought of giving toys to Angel. Yes, I said. Why not? Some cuddly stuffed toys will bring great comfort to a traumatized child. How about kiddie snacks? Great idea. Anything our own children would love to eat, 4-year Angel would probably also love.

Sister Marissa, the principal of Cittadini, visited Angel right after being informed of her plight. She promised that the school’s First Friday Mass would be offered for her. She also gave cash coming from the hearts of the Ursuline Sisters.

Some Cittadine mothers heard our calls for help for Angel and went directly to NOPH. Others like Gina, Heidi and Jovie pooled their resources and came up with an amount that would go a long way towards helping Angel and her family.

I have always believed that some good could still be found amidst the most evil of circumstances. We saw the outpouring of goodness when Dumagueteños showed up to give love and kindness to little Angel.

Indeed, evil flourishes in our midst. But there is still so much goodness all around us. Yes, the good will still triumph.

The Great Equalizer

2008-08-01T13:49:00.000+08:00

I thought of my father’s life while visiting his grave. I could not help but compare it to that of the man buried only a few feet away from him. Like my Dad, he started life filled with so much promise. But that is the farthest their parallels could go.

This man went on to make millions while still in his thirties. In his forties, life continued to smile at him. Life was good until it was snuffed out.

My Dad reached his plateau early on. At some point after that, it became a downhill struggle for him. He experienced some brief highs along the way, like the quite joys only love and family could bring, delights that no amount of poverty could take away. But he still died a broken man.

Two lives so vastly different from the other. Yet here, at the end of their day, they lay almost side by side, all differences and barriers gone.

Then it hit me. I always thought I knew how, beneath our skin, we are all the same … but during that quiet morning, I came to truly understand.

All we have in this life, everything about us … wealth, title, beauty, fame, achievements, talents, profession … everything that distinguish us from others … everything that held us above the rest … or simply made us better one way or another … are all stripped away when we leave this life.

Under the ground, we become equals with the poorest of the poor, even the lowest of the low.

I was brought me to my knees. I was humbled.

A Champion in our Midst

2008-08-01T13:47:00.002+08:00

This mother starts her day at the crack of dawn cleaning up around her home and quickly doing some laundry. Then she wakes up her two boys and the mother transforms into a figure reminiscent of a drill instructor running a marine boot camp as she herds her sons from their beds to the bathroom. In between occasional yells for Pol and Pat to pick up their speed, this drill instructor undergoes yet another transformation. This time, she becomes the harried cook busily banging pots and pans in the kitchen as her prepares her boys’ breakfast and lunchboxes.

After the boys are taken to school, this mother puts on her uniform and SPO2 Josefa Lacpao Lacandula, along with husband Luis, also a PNP member, starts yet another part of her day, this time, as Chief of the Women and Children Concerns Desk (WCCD) and the Family, Juvenile and Gender Sensitivity (FJGS) PNCO of Dumaguete City Police Station.

For the uninitiated, SPO2 Josefa Lacandula, or Jobie to her friends, is the lady police women and children ran to when they are in trouble. Battered wives, rape victims, and abused children all know her face. Every one of them would attest that behind that no-nonsense façade lies genuine kindness and warmth and a truly compassionate heart whose concern for each victim’s plight extends beyond the 8am to 5pm confines of her job.

This may come as a shock to some, but cyber sex operators have arrived in this genteel city. Four minor girls, who came to the city to work as house helpers, were induced with promises of easy money, to work as subjects in a cyber sex operation. They were made to perform unmentionable acts in front of a web camera and viewed by foreign clients via internet for a fee.

This was brought to the attention of the Police by an aunt who became suspicious of the inordinate amount of money in the girls’ possession vis-à-vis their supposed earnings as house helpers.

SPO2 Lacandula wasted no time acting on this information. She personally conducted surveillance operations night after night and purposely did not bring in male police personnel to avoid detection by the operators and the relatives surrounding them.

She did this at great peril to herself, and more often than not, used her own vehicle and spent personal money to expedite her operation. Her tireless efforts lead to the apprehension of the suspects and rescue of the victimized minors.

This praiseworthy accomplishment is only one of SPO2 Lacandula’s countless triumphs as a champion of women and children’s rights within the police force.

She also rescued five minors from the Cebu province who were brought over to Dumaguete City to work as commercial sex workers. After learning about these girls and how they have been living in the streets after they ran away from their abusive employer, she proceeded to search for them by conducting night patrols for fifteen straight nights until she found them. A mother at heart, she did not stop at mere rescue. She extended her efforts at rehabilitating these children by finding them sponsors who’d shoulder the cost of their education.

She did the same thing for countless street children, most of whom have fallen into the habit of sniffing dangerous substances. In her back-to-school program, she found funding for their return to their families and provided them with school supplies through a foreign sponsor so they could return to school.

She was also in the forefront of a buy-bust operation aimed at stopping the proliferation of pornographic lighters in the City. In a Frustrated Homicide case, her efforts led to the arrest of a suspect who viciously and repeatedly attacked and stabbed his wife in the presence of their two daughters. In another case, her immediate response also led to the quick arrest of the common law husband who stabbed the victim to death after she ended their relationship. The next case involved a French pedophile who victimized four minor Filipino boys. Finally, SPO2 Lacandula convinced witnesses to talk leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator, a family friend of the 10-year old child whom she robbed and strangled.

And as if her day is not busy enough, SPO2 Lacandula still finds time to conduct training seminars among student advocates, women groups, youth groups, and male advocates in the barangays and schools on laws protecting women and children. She also produced information materials pertaining to these same laws and distributed them to families, offices, schools, churches and other public places.

Her busy day does not end when the clock strikes five. Amidst her duties as wife and mother, and in between household chores and her children’s assignments and quizzes, SPO2 Lacandula still finds time to conduct frequent surprise visits to hotels, pension houses, motels, karaoke bars, internet cafés and other nightspots. This is in connection with the implementation of the Anti-Indecency Ordinance that aims to ensure that women, children and youth are protected from abuse.

SPO2 Lacandula’s unswerving commitment and dedication to her work, along with her exemplary and laudable accomplishments, did not go unnoticed. Chief of Police and her immediate supervisor Supt. LEOPOLDO ECHICA CABANAG recommended her for the nationwide search for the 2008 Country’s Outstanding Policemen in Service (COPS).

And indeed, the organizers know a good cop when they see one. SPO2 Josefa Lacpao Lacandula will be honored this month as one of the Philippines’ Top 10 awardees of the 2008 Country’s Outstanding Policemen in Service (COPS) award.
To Jobie, her family and the entire Dumaguete Police Force, our congratulations! Keep up the good work!

On Joy and Sorrow

2008-07-31T19:32:00.000+08:00

Written May 1, 2008

These past few weeks, my heart was filled with a quite joy I shared only with those nearest and dearest to me. That which I have been longing and praying for has finally been granted. I was going to have another baby.

I started to dream for this baby again, just I dreamed for my little Maia, another baby I lost two years ago.

But my dreams were quickly shattered when at almost nine weeks, we learned that I lost this little one too. The depths of my sorrow could be equaled only by the heights of my joy as I happily anticipated holding another baby in my arms.

Early embryonic demise. No cardiac activity. These words appeared in the ultrasound report. But I did not have to read it to know. Watching the face of the doctor who did the ultrasound told me everything there was to know. My heart went cold. I could only cry for another baby I will never come to know and love … another baby who would have completed our little family even more.

What followed was a blur of indecision, of me adamantly refusing to take the drugs to induce the expulsion of my baby from inside me, of refusing to consider a D&C, of wanting the process of losing this child to take its natural course … to accepting the drugs when a follow-up ultrasound confirmed my loss, to wanting a D&C and then not wanting it … and finally, to admitting that the waiting was taking too much toll on me and my family … that emotionally, spiritually, physically and psychologically, I am drained to the core of my being.

I am having my second miscarriage as I am writing. I started bleeding as cramps wracked my body last night. This came as a welcome relief to my weary soul.

I was on denial when I had my first miscarriage. I refused to accept my baby’s death even though pain tore through my body day after day. I fought hard by imploring God to give life to my child. As long as I had hope in my heart, I refused to let go. I was willing to do whatever it took if it meant life for my little one. But as fate would have it, my baby and I lost that battle.

This time around, I put up no fight at all. Maybe the past made me more resigned, more accepting of the undeniable fact that losing a child, one that seemed so improbable and so incomprehensible before, has become a recurrent reality in my life.

But while I accepted my third baby’s death, I still refused, and continue to do so up till now, to have a D&C. Only when the choice is taken out of my hands will I submit to that procedure.

But while I still have that choice, I choose for my little one to leave me as God had intended. I want to wait for nature to take its course. But without medical intervention, I realized that the waiting could take so long. And it started to take its toll. Everything in me grew weary from being suspended in a state where I was neither here nor there … where my body felt pregnant yet with no growing life within it … where I grieved and not grieve at the same time. Finally, all that I ever wanted was to reach closure, to be able to move on and open myself up to my family again.

So I finally sought medical aid. I took the medication that would induce the expulsion process. When the cramps came, I welcomed them with relief. There is no use holding on when there is nothing more to hold on to.

I have been asked why I did not want a D&C. I said that going into surgery scared me and that I did not want to expose myself to the risks accompanying this procedure.

But I have been less than honest with these answers. While I do feel this way about D&C, the real reason behind this refusal is my desire for privacy and dignity, for wanting this miscarriage to happen just between me and my child, not in a roomful of strangers where my baby will be referred to as tissue or product of conception and handled in much the same way as medical personnel would handle a surgically-removed appendix or cyst. So cold. So distant and uncaring. So professional. I do not want my baby to leave me that way.

When my baby will finally leave, I want nobody else except me touching it … where it will be held with love, tenderness and great respect.

With Mama alone, this baby will be spared from becoming the subject of cruel jokes by dispassionate medical workers. The first baby I lost suffered that fate. Cheerful lab workers, oblivious to my pain, talked about urinating on the cup containing my poor little one right in my presence.

That is not going to happen this time. This baby will be spared from that kind of indignity and disrespect. This time, my child will receive nothing but all the love and respect it deserves as another one of God’s creations.

Picky Eaters: Born or Made?

2008-07-31T19:29:00.002+08:00

Those of you who read this column once or twice might have chanced upon me complaining over how picky my daughter is with her food. It has always been a constant source of friction between me and my pint-sized nemesis, who from day 1 – and I mean DAY ONE!!! – defied me over the subject of food! Can you imagine that? Me? Who worships every gastronomic delight I could lay my hands on … has a daughter who does not want to eat?

As I said, it started all the way back from Day One – when she absolutely refused to suckle from me! I still remember Abby (who was only a few days old then) turning as red as a tomato as she bawled and screamed and kicked and pushed at my face … just to free herself from my breast!

My husband and I figured at that time that if we could manage to make her open her mouth wide enough to take a nipple and then quickly hold her head to prevent her from turning away, that she’d somehow realize the futility of her refusal, cave in to our superior will, and start taking and liking my milk!

Oh well … she put up such a valiant struggle (you wouldn’t believe how strong a newly- born infant could be!) we quickly raised the white flag for fear that she’d dislocate something as she relentlessly twisted and turned her head to get free!! I still remember the raucous that attempted forced feeding caused! The neighbors must have thought we were trying to murder our new baby! And that red, red, RED face … unforgettable!

Down the drain went our superior will … will somebody get the bottle please?

And so the pattern for the next few years was set … feeding time became synonymous with battle of wills … where getting her to take a spoonful only signified the start of the next battle, which was to get her to chew … after which the next challenge awaited … how to make her swallow.

As she grew older, Abby became uncompromising in her refusal to eat food that she thought she wouldn’t like. Can you believe that? If something doesn’t look good to her eyes, it must not be good enough to eat then.

But if she did took a liking to something, she’d eat nothing but that alone for a few days … until she becomes tired of the food, and poor mama has to search for something new to entice her brat with again.

I have always attributed her pickiness as a trait that she picked up from her lola, my mother-in-law, the alpha and the omega, the absolute mother of all picky eaters!

Thus, I came to the conclusion that a child is either born a picky eater or not. There was a time when I saw children from less fortunate families gobbling up their rice with nothing but sabaw sa kamunggay. I remember thinking then that it was a good thing none of them was picky like Abby.

But I had to revise this thinking and consider another possibility when I saw the commercial of Lactum with Claudine Baretto and her daughter. I believe that this was the child who was abandoned outside her home and whom she later adopted.

The ad was about Claudine giving Lactum milk to her daughter to supplement her diet as she would eat nothing but hotdog. Granting that she really is picky in real life, I wondered whether she would still be as choosy had she stayed with her biological family, whom we can fairly assume, would be incapable to giving her the same privileged life she is enjoying with Claudine.

Could it be possible then that picky children are made, not born? It is probable that children from marginal families learn early in life to eat whatever is on the table because there simply is nothing else to eat!

And our choosy dears? They must have also caught on early that if they stood their ground on the food they say yes and no to, mommy and daddy would sooner or later give in to their demands. Why? Because they can. They have the means to give to the child what it wants. Their less fortunate counterparts do not have that luxury, so their children either have to eat whatever is there, or face starvation.

So next time we feel like banging our heads against the wall out of frustration, maybe the thought that we might have brought this upon ourselves in the first place, will somehow extend our diminishing patience.

Imagination Going Wild

2008-07-31T19:29:00.001+08:00

We talk about how we’d rather lose electricity than not having any water at all. I’m sure that almost everybody will concur to that. But it sure is hell not having any electricity, isn’t it? I know we can all relate to this because of the series of brownouts that hit our city lately.

Suffering through the inescapable heat brought about by the brownout, I was horrified to realize how soft we have become … how very easily we wilt, sapped of all strength and the will to move even an inch, in the absence of that comforting blast of cooled air which modern times have blessed us with. A blessing? I’d say definitely!

But on the downside, it really is horrifying to realize how dependent we have become on modern technology. Take the lowly matchsticks for instance. Would most of us still be able to light a fire without it?

Have you ever thought about how we’d all cope if we were stripped of all the modern conveniences we surround ourselves with? The recent brownouts denied us the use of our electric fans and airconditioners. The heat was unbearable, wasn’t it? How much more if we were to lose everything … and I mean every little and big thing that we take for granted and would miss only when they go missing. Can you imagine us losing our basic soap and shampoo, for example?

Through the years, we evolved from being producers to mere end-users or consumers. Look around you. What do you have in your kitchen right now that you yourself produced? In our case, except for the malunggay, sili and tanglad growing in the yard, we get everything else from the market or supermarkets.

Have you ever wondered what would happen to us if these stores were to close because the supplies have stopped coming? Where will we get our food? Start planting? Ok, granting that we have a sizable land to plant crops in, which unfortunately, not all of us are blessed with, still, can we imagine us growing our own food???

Imagine no electricity. No water supply. No gasoline.

Our life, as we know it now, will never be the same. Scary!

KUMPYANSA

2008-07-31T19:26:00.000+08:00

Are you the type who compares your doctor’s prescriptions against what the pharmacy assistants give to you? I’m not. I recently realized the importance of doing this when my daughter was prescribed medicine in infant drops form instead of the type more appropriate for her age. No big deal really. The mistake was quickly corrected when I called the doctor for clarification.

But this incident got me contemplating on the word kumpyansa…I’m not really sure how this word translates to English, but if I were to define it based on my own understanding of the word, I’d say that it’s complacency born out of placing too much trust on something or someone. In a broader spectrum, it could mean betting too much on chance, trusting that the universe wouldn’t somehow conspire to throw some bad lot our way, thus we toss caution into the wind.

A few nights ago, I thought I heard Abby wheezing during her coughing fits. I had my husband, Nonoy, as well as my in laws, Dominador and Marlene Uy, listen in and they all confirmed my fears. Abby could be having an asthma attack! Nonoy had asthma before. My in laws have two asthmatic children. They should know!

Being the praning that I am, I wasted no time dragging Abby, with Nonoy not far behind, to one of our local hospitals for a consult. Waiting until the following day to see her pediatrician was out of the question. She had to be seen by a doctor right there and then.

The resident who examined her told us that she could hear no wheezing and sent us home with a prescription for antihistamine and Salbutamul. I wanted to question her findings. How could four people be wrong about it? But hey! She’s the doctor! I bowed down to her superior knowledge.

But just we always do, we took Abby to her pediatrician the following day. And surely enough, Tita Doc found her wheezing and crackling and proceeded to treat her condition accordingly.

So what’s the moral of this story? Very simple really. We should still take our children to their own doctor, even after a night consult, at the first opportune moment. Except for the additional cost and the time we have to spend waiting for our turn, we don't lose in any way.

Can you imagine what would have happened had we not taken Abby to her pediatrician? Her asthma would have gone untreated and it could have progressed to pneumonia!

Another lesson learned from this experience is checking that we are getting our medicine from the pharmacy exactly as they were prescribed. Fortunately this time, the clerk spotted the erroneous prescription herself. But mistakes could still be very easily made by fatigued, stressed out, and even harassed pharmacy assistants.

So let’s start checking, shall we? Let’s do away with too much of kumpyansa. After all, nothing is too hard when it comes to our children’s best interests.

Surviving Big School

2008-07-31T19:25:00.001+08:00

Another old article

We made a really big move this school year. We decided to send Abby (or Noelle to her new classmates) to a bigger school where almost everything became a first for us.

Why? As Catholics, my husband Nonoy and I decided that it was time for Abby to start getting a Catholic-based education.

Having came from a smaller school where I, as a parent, have grown very comfortable in, with teachers who knew and loved Abby since she was a toddler, and with a population that was small enough we were always assured that our children were well-looked after, moving Abby almost felt like throwing her into an open sea where she’d become fair game to whatever that bigger world could throw at her.

Contemplating that big move, I could not help but imagine my baby thrashing about as she struggles for breath amidst tossing waves, barely staying afloat in a world that’s alien from the sheltered one she had been the last four years of her life.

But steeled my resolve I did … I told myself that she either had to learn to swim or sink in the process. For wasn’t our intention also to introduce her to the world beyond what we consider to be safe and secure? Nonoy and I decided that we’ve sheltered her long enough during her first seven years. Time to start letting go … a little.

As it turned out, I worried too much over nothing. All that imagined thrashing amid turbulent seas should have been reserved for me alone. I was the one who barely survived big school … Abby never had to. My girl breezed through her first days and proceeded to take in all her new experiences in a stride. Her leap from a class of 6 to 36? No big deal! Before long, I started seeing her hanging out with friends from grade 1 or grade 4 or even from high school with equal ease.
Thus it came to be that despite almost five years of prior schooling, it wasn’t until my daughter reached Grade 2 that I truly got to experience the horror stories other moms have been talking about for centuries: school exams!

My friend Jobie once told me how her voice got hoarse from all the yelling she had to do at her two boys as she hovered over them during study time or as they prepared for their exams.

I had the nerve then to assume that I’d do better. Before I had Abby, I was very judgmental on mothers I’d observe snapping or just being generally impatient with their brood. More particularly so with those I’d see spanking their youngsters. I used to tell myself (with absolute certainty) that I’d be different, that I’d never get impatient, angry, yell, or spank … that I’d only have to speak calmly ONCE and my perfectly-behaved and ever-so-obedient child would immediately obey …

I also had this mental image of myself as the incarnation of infinite grace and patience, holding out a book in front of a well-behaved and cooperative angelic-looking Abby as she poured over her lessons with nary a complaint night after school night …

Prrrrrrt!!! Enough with fantasy! Let’s get back to reality, shall we? As it turned out, motherhood in real life is never picture perfect! I never had to worry about studying at home before. But in our new school, come examination period (or almost every night at that), and it’s nothing but dried-up patience, BP raised to ceiling heights, broken rulers, hoarse voices, tempers serious enough to tempt one to start wringing one cute little neck, palms stinging from hitting table surfaces, pencils, papers or smuggled toys flying off to all directions … and what else? Oh yeah … upturned teary eyes and quivering lips seemingly wanting to ask … “what’s happening to you Mama?”

Yeah, what’s happening to Mama? To the entire barangay listening to me vocalize when I start blowing my top, it must have been bad, bad, Olga indeed! A friend of mine once attempted to lecture about being patient and calm … I cut her off by saying, try having a brat like mine first, then we’ll talk again!

All you moms out there … did that seem familiar? If not, lucky, lucky you!

I was told that this was partly the reason why it is best to hire tutors for our kids. They tend to act up less when they are with other people, particularly when the tutor happens to be their teacher as well.

But with moms, believe me, the complaints I’ve been hearing are so similar they seem to come from the same script! Mind you, we don't get mad when our kids don't get their lessons. But what really gets the full solo concert going is the amount of interest they are willing to devote to the lesson at hand, which is considerably less than what they would otherwise give to the lizard stalking its meal at the ceiling, for instance. Yeah! That’s it! Everything else is interesting except …

Can you imagine explaining something to a restless figure who seemed to have assumed every conceivable position there is over the desk only to settle down slumped over it, albeit with the assurance: “I’m listening, I’m listening!!” … only to be answered with “huh??” once you’d start asking questions? Grrrrr!

And how about all that fidgeting with the hands? Even doodling can be very distracting, so you order them to “stop!” and away goes the pencil … for 3 seconds! So you’d say again, “I said stop that!” … and it goes on and on until you’d have to say, “one more time and I’ll throw that pencil away!” In the end, you’ll discover that it saves more time and energy to just get that pesky pencil without a word and throw it to some hard-to-reach area. Believe me, that alternative is much better that giving in to your desire to throw away the child itself!

So who did I say survived big school? Let me check … heart still working, only one or two additional wrinkles, more white hairs though, BP still normal, can still speak, no burst capillaries … yeah! I survived big school! Rejoice!!

Housewife's Back!

2008-07-31T19:20:00.002+08:00

I wrote this piece a long time ago, around February 2008.

Yeah! I’m back and for good this time … I hope. I have not written for around five months. It feels like it was only five weeks ago! Time does fly indeed!

Friends have been asking me why I stopped writing this column. My editor Irma Faith Pal was equally perplexed but she never gave up on me. Time and again, she reminded me of my deadlines, and time and again, I broke my word about coming up with something. Actually, I made several attempts to write and had in fact finished one, but they never got off the ground, so to speak.

So what cataclysmic event brought about this silence? Nothing much. I just went on a diet.

Whaaat? Diet? Yeah, I went on a diet. Hey! You out there, you can stop smirking at my diet. I may have stated earlier that it was nothing much, but if truth is to be told, going on a diet turned out to be a heartbreaking roller coaster ride that had me going three steps forward and four steps backwards. Ask anybody who, like me, loves food and hates exercise with equal fervor … and they’ll tell you how it is.

You may be wondering now where dieting and writing connect? I don't know if there is any medical basis to my observations, but when I started Southbeach Diet, nabotol ko. Yes, my mind just seemed to stop working at its usual pace. My thought processes slowed down, my memory became foggy, my body became more lethargic than usual … in other words, an 80-year old grandma would have had a mind that’s sharper than the one I had in the midst of my dieting frenzy.

To the uninitiated, Southbeach Diet is composed of 3 stages, the toughest being Phase 1 which lasts for 14 days. In a nutshell, Phase 1 is an absolutely NO CARB stage. It entails total deprivation of the body of sugar and fats to compel it to utilize its reserves thus leading to weight loss, lowering of blood sugar, healthier heart, etc. And it’s not just our plain old table sugar variety, mind you! By sugar, we mean any food that the body could chemically break down into sugar, which by the way, is what fuels our bodies in much the same way that gasoline is fuel for our vehicles.

To give you a clearer view of what I had to go through, here’s a list of what I was ONLY allowed to eat or have during Phase 1: lean white meat, fish and other seafood (only boiled or broiled), leafy veggies, canola oil or olive oil, a limited number of nuts, black coffee, tea … and oh yes! let’s not forget water because I was allowed to drown in it! Are you seeing the bleak picture now?

Now, here’s what I could NOT eat (and it’s all the good things in life!): fatty cuts and innards, red meat, veggies like carrots and potatoes (because they contain starch which the body could convert into sugar), cheese, all fruits and juices, softdrinks, ice cream, milk, yogurt, and here’s the worst! ALL CARBS … and this translates to NOT BEING ALLOWED TO EAT RICE, BREAD, CAKE, COOKIES, CEREAL, OATMEAL, PASTA, PASTRIES … could anybody be in a worse situation? Could I just let this out? Waaaaaah!

I know, I know … it’s for a healthier body and ultimately a longer life. Hey, that was why I started dieting in the first place! But who am I kidding? My husband was coming home! Honestly? That was my first and foremost reason for this self-imposed torture. Health comes a poor second.

I’d like to go on and on, but I have exceeded my word limit already. Next week, I’ll write more about my chacha-like efforts in preparation for hubby’s homecoming. Friends, no teasing please! OFW wives, rally behind me! Tell those who are still in the dark that it’s not only me. We all go through this pa-gwapa frenzy a month or two before hubby’s return, right? More about that next week.

FRENZIED OFW WIFE

We all know for a fact that most of us ladies let ourselves “go” after we get married. Generally speaking, weight gain becomes particularly inevitable after a baby or two starts coming.

Only a lucky few are able to keep their 20-something figure. For most, sheer willpower, I’m sure! But some, I guess, are simply not genetically predisposed towards obesity. I call these lucky ones genetic lotto winners. But for the rest of us sorry souls, we could only but sigh at the sight of those nubile young things we see parading around in our streets.

I most unfortunately belong to that latter category. Not too long ago, I used to possess a cola-cola body (sigh!) … mind you … I still got that enviable figure … albeit it’s now in cans! (sigh again!)

I’d often catch my husband looking at me with that bewildered look on his face, as if wondering where that shapely thing he married eleven years ago has gone! In fairness though, I still have all those shapes, they just went to all the wrong places!

Being an OFW wife, it was particularly easy for me to let my figure go. With no husband to make pa-gwapa for ten months at a time, plus add the fact that I am not particularly arte … not to mention my love affair with every gastronomic delight Dumaguete could offer … and let’s not forget my most strenuous activity … surfing TV channels … no wonder I ballooned to unmentionable figures after only one child!

I don't really mind being the “fat lady” … that is, during the first eight months after my husband’s departure for his work overseas. But come the last two months prior to his homecoming, and you’ll find me in a whirlwind of activities that could only be only be described as Olympian!

I know that most OFW wives go through this pa-gwapa stage before hubby comes home. My friend Pam told me how she jogged every morning, ate practically nothing, and started swallowing those whitening pills in preparation for her husband’s homecoming. Good for Pam her that efforts paid of. She stills glows whenever she’d recall the look on hubby’s face when he caught sight of her new look at the airport. Her reward? Instead of rushing back to Dumaguete to their three daughters, they stayed five days in Manila for what could only be called a second honeymoon! Now, if that’s not a happy ending, I wonder what else could be!

And how about my own efforts? Could a heavy sigh be answer enough for you?

Believe me, I’ve tried every diet there is! About three years ago, I had success with the Southbeach Diet and actually lost about fifteen pounds! But sadly, this time around, I could no longer summon the willpower to finish one entire phase without cheating.

Here’s the picture: you’re supposed to finish Phase 1 in 14 days, right? I’d do like 7 days and lose like 5 lbs. Beaming with success, I’d decide to take a one-day breather and reward my gargantuan efforts with a trip to Chow King with my eating pals Maru and Chedette, who, by the way, love Chaofan and Halo-Halo with as much passion as I do! Before I knew it, that one-day break would stretch to two or even three more days. And those 5 pounds I just lost? Take a guess.

Just as girlfriends Maru, Chedette and I binge together, we also start our doomed-from-the-very-beginning diets and weight-losing efforts together.

We have tried going to the gym and invaded Mr. Sy’s realm at Cellutrim with enthusiasm that quickly trickled into nothingness as tortuous week after tortuous week dragged ever so slowly. During our lowest times, we usually comforted our aching muscles with a quick detour to Chow King. Another rational behind this is to give equal exercise opportunities to all our body parts. We can’t be accused of neglecting our jaws, you know! Hence, that trip for the rigorous jaw workout it offers!

And in between those sinfully heavenly trips, together or singly, we tried the pastrami diet, the carbo lovers’ diet, no meals after six, the eat-only-oatmeal thingy, and yeah … the 3- Day diet that I’ll never forget for it’s hellish grapefruit juice! And what did we lose in this last endeavor? Negligible amount of pounds and very substantial amounts from our wallets!

My editor Irma Faith Pal tries to help by inviting me along her biking sorties to Valencia. I’ve lost count of the number of times I said yes only to chicken out at the last minute. But can you blame me for becoming terrified at the idea? The last time I spent considerable time in a bike was astride my easyrider way back 30 years ago!

But I did find an exercise routine that I could live with. It’s a very easy-to-do 45-minute exercise that I could do right inside my home. It’s the 3-mile walk video shared to me by Tita Nini Cabrera. All you need to do is follow the walking movements they do on video. It’s guaranteed to squeeze all sweat out of your body.

My frantic but doomed efforts usually wind down about two weeks from D-day when I’d look at the mirror and decide my poor hubby will just have to adore me for my winning personality!

But all hope is not lost though! My girlfriends put their heads together and came up with makeover in lieu of weight loss. They took me shopping for clothes that could hide my bulges and had Maria Havranek of Cuttin’ Loose get rid of my manang look.

I was a nervous wreak before we started. Imagine having my hair colored for the first time! That was a very big step. But bubbly Maria soon took care of my nerves and proceeded to do a fabulous job with my hair! I love it! She also gave my editor Irma Faith her first-time ever streaks earlier that day! Talk of pleasant coincidences.

So what did my husband had to say about all these? Just like any typical dense-headed male … he didn’t even notice! I practically had to stand under the midday sun before it finally dawned on him. I should have asked Maria to give me a carrot hair … that would have saved me from sunburn!

Call Me Rudolpha

2007-09-12T11:11:00.000+08:00

The culprit which caused all my misery!

Good thing it was a big hit among my party guests!

A part of me has become rather interesting to a lot of people nowadays. Heads would turn everywhere I’d go and I’ve had children staring with unabashed fascination … I should be enjoying all these attention. Instead, I keep longing for that get up, you know … the all-time fashion craze among Taliban women?

You see I’m smart enough to figure out how to skin one whole chicken without causing any tear and come out with a mouth-watering Chicken Galantina, but apparently not smart enough to keep my nose a respectable distance away from the steamer when I opened the lid. Ouch!

Yeah! It hurt! As my friend Chedette said, “poor Tita Olga!”. Yes, poor Tita Olga indeed.

And as a consequence of that stupidity, I sported an angry red, swollen little nose for a day or two that had everyone believing I was Rudolph’s long lost cousin.

Right now, it has turned kind of purple with a hint of brown and red … call me Barney this time…

I should be worried sick at how this would affect my beauty … (ok, ok, you can lower that raised eyebrow now) … considering that I am a keloid-former. Good if the scar would grow upwards, giving my vertically challenged nose a much-needed boost or an interesting tilt at the very least.

But heaven forbid it would grow sideward … and sit astride the tip of my nose … wouldn’t that make me look like a hammerhead shark? Shivers…

But I’m actually more concerned of people thinking that I had a misadventure with shabu. You know, Olga too sabog to realize she had the flame under her nose instead of elsewhere, or as friend Cris Bonga joked, maybe some would think that I was an enthusiastic, first-time user who got the hot tinfoil sticking like glue to my nose. That would have been hilarious had I not been so miserable.

My husband Nonoy tried to help by suggesting that maybe people would think I was a sunburned balikbayan. Yeah, that was really comforting. Maybe I was touring the Sahara Desert and forgot to apply sunscreen on my nose!

Chedette also tried to be helpful by suggesting that I tell folks I dove right into a birthday cake and started licking off the icing while the candles were still lighted. Now, that’s me through and through!

I asked another friend Mayet to guess what new look my nose was sporting. She could not decide between a nose job and a broken nose that resulted from being punched by somebody whom I picked a fight with.

Oh … that’s a winner! You should have seen me doubling up with laughter at that one. Too bad I can’t tell here who it was that Mayet suggested I picked a fight with! She does know me inside out!

Why all these fuss about my nose? Well, this is supposed to be a housewife’s corner. So let me share one recently gained housewifely insight … keep your nose away from steaming pots! (As if somebody actually needed to be told that! It seems only I didn’t get that the first time.)

Oh yes! I’m also hoping somebody would take pity on my poor nose and email me some info about how to keep keloid from forming on my already-bulbous nose. That would be a great help!

By the way, I’d like to thank Ernie Bhagwani for his glowing comments about MetroPost and its writers. As my editor Irma Faith Pal said, feedbacks like that from our readers lighten things up during times when the burdens of running a paper like MetroPost gets kind of heavy.

Mr. Bhagwani was right. This paper does stand out. It’s in a class of its own and we have our hardworking duo Alex and Irma to thank for that. And oh! Let’s not forget their impeccable knack at choosing columnists for this paper! (ehem!)

It is very gratifying to know that all the hard work being put into MetroPost, including that by its columnists, is being appreciated. We all do this for the love of writing.

And yes, we do have some world-class writers among us, and it’s a privilege to be named next to them. Although I must say that I am not deserving of that title. What you read in this column is simply my chatter set on print. If I could include me laughing out loud in it, I would.

Thank you Mr. Bhagwani. I’m sure your comments made everyone’s day!

My Beloved Dumaguete

2007-09-12T08:46:00.000+08:00

Don't you just envy me that I call Dumaguete my home?

Find out more:

http://www.dumagueteinfo.com/

http://www.dumaguetecity.net/Dumaguete%20blogosphere.html

Proud of our Alma Mater

2007-09-04T16:15:00.000+08:00

TOP 20 SCHOOLS IN THE PHILIPPINES

This statistics is a result of the study conducted by the Professional Regulation Commission(PRC) and the Commission on Higher Education(CHED), based on the average passing in the BOARD EXAMINATIONS OF ALL COURSES of all universities and colleges in the Philippines.

This study is concluded every 10 years. The following is the result of the first study from1992 to 2001. Eleven schools come from Luzon, two from the Visayas and seven from Mindanao.

1. University of the Philippines (Diliman Campus/Luzon)
2. University of the Philippines (Los Banos Campus/Luzon)
3. University of the Philippines (Manila Campus/Luzon)
4. SILLIMAN UNIVERSITY (Dumaguete City/Visayas)
5. Ateneo de Davao University (Davao/Mindanao)
6. Ateneo de Manila University (Manila/Luzon)
7. University of Sto. Tomas (Manila/Luzon)
8. Mindanao State University (Iligan Institute ofTech/Mindanao)
9. Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (Manila/Luzon)
10. Saint Louis University (Baguio City/Luzon)
11. University of San Carlos (Cebu City/Visayas)
12. Xavier University (Cagayan de Oro/Mindanao)
13. Mindanao State University (Main/Mindanao)
14. Urios College (Butuan City/Mindanao)
15. Polytechnic University of the Philippines( Manila/Luzon)
16. De La Salle University (Manila/Luzon)
17. Mapua Institute of Technology (Manila/Luzon)
18. Adamson University (Manila/Luzon)
19. Central Mindanao University (Bukidnon/Mindanao)
20. University of Southern Philippines (Davao/Mindanao)

TOP Nursing Schools in the Philippines

Based on Board Exam passing rates for 2000-2004 only 12 of the 175 Nursing schools had passing rates of 90% or higher. RANK SCHOOL OVERALL % Passing Rate

1. UP-Manila 100%
2. St. Paul College-Iloilo 99.57%
3. SILLIMAN UNIVERSITY - DUMAGUETE CITY 98.39%
4. West Visayas State University 97.06%
5. University of Santo Tomas Manila 96.67%
6. Saint Louis University - Baguio City 95.05
7. Mindanao State University Marawi City 95.0%
8. St. Paul College-Dumaguete City 93.38
9. Pamantasan ng Lunsod ng Maynila 92.53%
10. Saint Mary's University - Bayombong 91.02%
11. St. Paul College-Manila 90.81%
12. University of the East-Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Center 90.57%

This is old news but again just to relish the fact Silliman University has always been the best in campus life. Pards, we are all very lucky to be part of it. Cheers!!!

Note: I got this from the email of one of my high school classmates.

On Dom Cimafranca's "LOLITA"

2007-08-30T14:05:00.001+08:00

Thank you Dom for writing “Lolita”.

I am glad that Dom trained the spotlight on what has become of the Filipino family’s favorite noontime fares.

There was a time when I loved watching noontime shows, from Student Canteen and Eat Bulaga, to Magandang Tanghali Bayan, especially during the peak of the “Pera o Bayong” days.

Back then, these shows were relatively tame, although I distinctly remember the time when Gracia (of Eat Bulaga) became a household name. (I remember because I used to turn purple with jealousy whenever my then-boyfriend, now husband Nonoy, watched Gracia climb out of a pool during one of Eat Bulaga’s games, with her protruding nipples clearly showing under her soaking-wet shirt or jiggle her ample bosom to the beat of some 90’s dance hit. Now that’s what you’d call a confession! ha-ha-ha! I’m over that now. I hope.)

If I am not mistaken, this was roughly the time when dancers, with their sexually provocative moves, started enjoying a bigger share of the limelight.

But I believe that it’s the Sexbomb Girls that really hit the jackpot as far as putting sexy dance groups in the forefront of the noontime shows, along with the rise in popularity of such songs as Sexbomb, Spaghetti Pababa, Otso-Otso and the like.

With a rapidly growing, impressionable young daughter, I banned the watching of noontime shows in our home. I’m not turning my nose up on these shows, mind you. But I happen to believe that there are dances that are suited for general patronage and that there are dances that properly belong to the beer houses.

And the ones mostly shown in Wowowee or Eat Bulaga nowadays properly belong to that latter category. I am doing my best not to sound judgmental here, but I just couldn’t see how madly gyrating girls and cameras angled up so viewers could peep under these girls’ skimpy skirts and catch teasing glimpses of their panties, could pass for family entertainment!

I am very happy that the principal of the school my daughter is attending shares my views. She too doesn’t approve of the students dancing to the beat of the novelty songs that are very popular nowadays, nor of the dance moves that obviously were copied from TV.

That’s why nobody will be seeing students from my daughter’s school performing anywhere in that manner. Thank God for that!

Do I sound too straight-laced and narrow-minded and so boringly conservative, and as some would put it, too tight-assed? That’s what I think of myself too, at least, as far as this subject is concerned. But for goodness’ sake, mothers! Think again! Our little girls may look absolutely cute and infinitely adorable doing those moves they see on TV … but do they really have business dancing and moving like miniature a-go-go dancers or strippers?

Children should always be children and should be given every opportunity to enjoy their childhood for as long as possible. They have no business dancing like miniature adults, and lasciviously suggestive ones at that!

If they have to dance, let them dance like Hi-5 … or what the heck! Let them dance like Po of the Teletubbies! What’s wrong with that?

How I wish that school authorities would start taking notice. I hope that readers will agree with me that there are dance numbers that are highly inappropriate for young children and should be done away with in school programs.

I wish that parents who share my views would talk to the teachers and principals about their views on this matter. Hopefully, one by one, we can effect some little change and help bring us back to simpler, more innocent times, when children were really children.

Reunion, Reunion, Reunion!!!

2007-08-28T10:54:00.000+08:00

Silliman University College of Law Batch '97

10th Alumni Homecoming

Time flew by so fast most of us did not even notice it. If not for Ma'am Futs' initiative, this reunion would not have happened. We would not even have remembered it's been 10 years already!

So much has changed in all of us. And yet, somehow, we haven't changed at all. We're a bit older now, and some have become more rounded than since we last met, but the ring of our laughter remained the same.

There's one definite change though: photographs of cherubic toddlers and grade schoolers went around the table as we proudly showed each other what we've been up to these last 10 years.

Many among us have now become lawyers. They make our group proud. We hope to see more of these success stories in the years to come.

Standing: Mabinay ViceMayor Djanggo Uy and son, Atty. Cris "As In" Bonganciso, Marilyn "LB" Elemia, Atty. Gloria "Ma'am Futs" Futalan, Bing Villaflores-Sumanoy, Atty. Chubs Caiña, Seated: Jo Senador, Atty. Lemuel Nacita, Fermin Cimafranca

Lemuel, Atty. Jun Umbac, Teddy Reyes, Djanggo

Batch 97 ladies in their most provocative poses: LB, As In, Bing, and the awesome Ma'am Futs

Bing and As In letting loose ...

Preparing for the annual parade: LB, As In, Abby and Ma'am Futs

SU Law Faculty: old professors Atty. Myles Bejar, Atty. Levi Estolloso and Atty. Denura

Atty. Jun Umbac and Jo Senador during the parade

What being a Sillimanian means to me

2007-08-24T11:18:00.000+08:00

Yeah, I know! That title sounds like that dreaded essay from high school. I’m pretty certain every Sillimanian from Grade Four to college had encountered this question at least a dozen times!

How about you? What does being a Sillimanian mean to you? I haven’t really thought of that myself until I got hit by SILLIMAN UNIVERSITY's Founder’s Day fever and found myself in the midst of frantic preparations for the 10th Year Homecoming of SU College of Law, Batch ’97.

Getting together with old classmates to plan our reunion brought back memories of carefree fun, which to my mind actually outnumbered those days when we got serious enough to dig into our books.

As I went though old photographs with old classmates Bing Sumanoy and Marilyn “LB” Elemia, together with our success stories Atty. Gloria “Ma’am Futs” Futalan and Atty. Cris “As In” Bonganciso, it suddenly struck me how I have made that transition from being THE STUDENT bent only on exploring the booth area or shouting my throat hoarse during cheering contests or excitedly rushing to our favorite hang-out, the now defunct “Forum” … to now being one of those kind of senior-looking and mostly round figured RETURNING ALUMNI who have come back home to revisit the Alma Mater.

Get my drift? Student: young. Alumni planning reunion parties: kind of not so young. That’s all I care to say on this unsavory but undeniable subject!

So what does being a Sillimanian mean to me? Let me attempt to translate into words here the significance of the word “Sillimanian” from my own perspective.

I used to step back from the throng and observe from the outside. I have always been amazed at Silliman’s magnetic pull over its alumni and how the bonds that were formed during school days continue to hold strong, particularly among Sillimanians abroad. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this holds true for everyone. Even complete strangers who bear the stamp of Silliman automatically become members of the bigger family.

I have seen first hand how kind, generous and unselfish arms have reached out across the miles to extend assistance to old classmates to see them through rough times.

As for me, I feel pride for Silliman and everything that it stands for. My Alma Mater may not be perfect (as nothing is and will ever be), and has seen its share of bad days in its 106 years, but the fact that it is there as a beacon of truth and everything that is good and right in this life, is reason enough for me to be proud.

We may choose to follow its ideals or not, and it is without doubt that many of us have fallen off the track along the way, but there is always our Alma Mater to look up to and to lead the way.

I also feel the warmth that comes only from knowing that one belongs to something that is bigger and greater than all of us put together, and I belong to Silliman, and that is something that nothing and no one can ever take away from me.

Silliman is a gateway that enables us to travel back in time … that time in our lives when we were younger and more carefree, when there was endless laughter and fun, when the whole wide world was still out there, waiting to be conquered … a time in our lives when we were still untouched by the life felt only by our parents then … no hardships and disillusionments yet, only promise of greater things to come.

So that’s what being a Sillimanian is to me … pride of this great institution itself, and along with it, pride at having my own niche, no matter how small, insignificant and unremarkable, it is mine.

Now I know why our alumni always come back home and why I am coming home as well. We want to see old friends and hopefully feel that old magic that only youth could bring spark back to life once again.

Top 10 Reasons Why There Couldn't be a Filipino-American US President

2007-08-23T09:33:00.000+08:00

WE Filipinos love to laugh at ourselves, especially when it's true and speaks of the worse in us!!! No, I did not write this one. Got this in my email just now.

All these below show the "typical" Filipino ... some kind of show us in the bad light ... but I still find them endearing.

(Said to have come from ) David Letterman

10. The White House is not big enough for in-laws and extended relatives.

9. There are not enough parking spaces at the White House for 2 Honda Civics, 2 Toyota Land Cruisers, 3 Toyota Corollas, a Mercedes Benz, a BMW , and an MPV (My Pinoy Van).

8. Dignitaries generally are intimidated by eating with their fingers at State dinners.

7. There are too many dining rooms in the White House - where will they put the picture of the Last Supper?

6. The White House walls are not big enough to hold a pair of giant wooden spoon and fork

5. Secret Service staff won't respond to "psst... psst" or 'hoy....hoy. ..hoy...'

4. Secret Service staff will not be comfortable driving the presidential car with a Holy Rosary hanging on the rear view mirror, or the statue of the Santo Nino on the dashboard.

3. No budget allocation to purchase a Karaoke music-machine for every room in the White House.

2. State dinners do not allow "Take Home".

AND THE NUMBER 1 REASON WHY THERE COULDN'T BE A FILIPINO-AMERICAN U.S. PRESIDENT IS...

1. Air Force One does not allow overweight Balikbayan boxes!

Tarung nga Buang

2007-08-14T17:23:00.000+08:00

Could there ever be one? Tarung nga buang? The only English translation I could think of that would approximate what this term is trying to get across, is “sane lunatic”, and that’s insane. For can somebody who’s insane be sane at the same time?

Not possible? Think again!

Take this woman named Elsie, for instance. Some twelve years back, Atty. Frank Yap took her under his wings. During her lucid moments, he allowed her to work in Gemini in exchange of free meals and a meager income. According to him, she was in and out of “Talay”, referring to a rehabilitation center for the mentally ill located in Talay, Valencia.

Elsie did have her lucid moments. She used to buy food or bread then walk all the way to Talay to bring these presents to her friends.

But she often disappeared for days on end. When she would finally return, she’d be grimy and reeking with the sweat and dirt that had accumulated on her unwashed body for days, weeks even. She’d be totally incomprehensible and often appeared dazed and every bit the “buang” as how we’d all imagine a buang would look, sound, and smell like.

Elsie had three pregnancies that I know of. I don’t know what happened to her first child, but I heard that her second was given up for adoption. I witnessed her third. It just happened. One day, we began noticing that her belly was bigger and rounder. We could only surmise that she conceived during one of her dark periods, when she was lost in that hazy world known only to her.

Elsie did not forget me over the years that followed. Whenever she’d see me, she would immediately rush over with her big broken smile and that look of pure gladness in her eyes, calling me “Uu-gah” again and again. She must have been living in the streets by then. Shame on me … except for the food and cash that I used to hand over to her, I did very little to help her.

The last time I saw her, she was slumped on the sidewalk, thin as a reed. I went over, expecting that I’d be met by that same big smile. But Elsie wasn’t there anymore. There was only blank look in eyes that used to light up whenever they’d see me.

I don’t see Elsie around Dumaguete anymore. I heard that she passed away.

Memories of Elsie kind of fades away but they come back whenever I’d hear stories of aborted babies like the 7-month old fetus found buried in Silliman Beach recently.

Elsie, and everything that she stood for, came sharply into focus when a friend narrated to me the fate of another aborted fetus found in Bantayan. As if killing it was not enough, whoever had this baby doused it with gasoline to burn it, then ran a vehicle over its burnt little body, crushing its tiny skull. I can’t think of anything more to say on this subject. I can only cry.

And then, I’d think of Elsie. Her story is not over yet.

Social Welfare Office personnel took custody of her third child after she gave birth. My friend LB was present when her baby boy was taken away from her.

Years later, Elsie continued to seek out LB to ask for her baby. She used to say that she would save the money that LB and her officemates gave to her so she could go to America to see her child.

Yes, Elsie, an eyesore whom city officials would rather be anywhere but in Dumaguete, remained a mother in her heart. In that hazy world that she lived in, she remembered and she cared.

And now, I’d think of those who deliberately kill their own innocent defenseless children to hide their shame, or those who commit acts so despicable, I cannot find the words to express my disgust.

I can’t help but ask … who is tarung and who is buang?

Innocents in Paradise

2007-08-10T12:02:00.000+08:00

I said again and again that I wanted Abby's childhood to last for

as long as it could. Here are some really great reasons:

It's that joyous abandon that can be found only in childhood ...

It's that innocence that says to h-ll with society's conventions ... there's time enough for that ... and it's the rest of our lives ...

For now, we'll just be children as only children could ever be!

It started as a family lunch out one lazy Sunday (after attending Mass) at El Dorado Beach Resort in Dauin, Negros Oriental to celebrate Tito Carl's birthday, dad of cousins Gabby, Raffy and Cody.
Just lunch. No swimming.

So off we went with Abby only in her shirt and skirt.
They asked for permission to frolick in the sand ... no problem! "Go ahead" ... said parents too busy chatting with each other to pay close attention to what the children were up to next.
Before we knew it, one child was ankle deep in water ... "Mom! Can we wet our legs?" .....

Well, to cut this story short, mothers Tita Nini and myself finally decided to take their shirts off (Gabby, Raffy and Cody had only one spare each while Abby had absolutely none).... as one child after another went in deeper and deeper into the water....

We knew our brood well enough to realize that saying NO to swimming was futile. Children being children, you know .....

On Bloods and Crips (in Dumaguete)

2007-08-01T14:42:00.000+08:00

I channel surfed one late Saturday night and came upon Fil Product’s airing of one of the City Council’s sessions. Out of curiosity and for lack of more interesting shows in the other channels, I decided to stay on and quickly got hooked when the Bloods and the Crips were discussed.

I first came by the names Bloods and Crips when my friend SPO1 Jobie Lacandula mentioned that these local gangs are fast gaining ground among Dumaguete’s youth. Little did I realize how grave their threat was, until I listened to one enraged father speaking out against the Bloods and Crips before the City Council. His 15-year old son’s skull was fractured after gang members attacked him at Mart One in broad daylight.

To better understand these gangs, I looked into their origins and learned that the Crips are a primarily, but not exclusively, African-American gang founded in Los Angeles, California in 1969. It thrived in the culture of ghetto violence and through the years, it has grown into one of the largest and most powerful gangs in the United States with membership that exceeds well over 30,000.

The Crips are known to be involved in murders, robberies, and drug dealing, among many other criminal pursuits. The gang is notorious for its members’ flamboyant use of the color blue in their clothing. They are known to have an intense and bitter rivalry with the Bloods.

The Bloods, on the other hand, started as an alliance formed by several smaller gangs being targeted by the Crips. These embattled groups got together to form a united, thus stronger, organization to combat Crip intimidation and encroachment in their turfs. In contrast to the Crips’ use of the color blue, the then newly formed Bloods took on the wearing of an opposite color, red.

The local Bloods and Crips are copycats with no affiliation or recognition from the US originals. According to Police Chief Supt. Dionardo Carlos, they are merely emulating the activities of their so-called idols, from identifying their gang affiliations through their use of either red or blue bandannas, to engaging in open warfare against each other, often attacking members of rival gangs who’d cross their path.

According to P/Supt. Carlos, Bloods gang members come from families in the upper echelon of society. They recruit male and female students from private high schools like Silliman University HS, Foundation University HS and St. Paul University HS. Members are easily identifiable through their use of black shirts with red bandannas often worn as headscarf, or slung across the shoulders, or tucked in the back pocket of oversized hip-hop pants.

The Crips recruit from public high schools like NOHS and Dumaguete City High School. They also wear black shirts and hip-hop pants and favor the use of blue bandannas.

P/Supt. Carlos mentioned sons of political leaders as members of the Bloods gang. I have also heard from other sources of children (not gang members) of prominent public personalities, businessmen and professionals having been recruited, or ganged upon and subjected to threats and intimidation by members of either Bloods or Crips.

As parents, this growing notoriety of the gangs and their penchant for violence against rival gang members and non-members alike should become our primary concern. This should be more so if we have teenaged boys and girls who might become drawn into the promised brotherhood and offer of protection and support from other members, not to mention the element of being “cool” or “in” – at a time in our children’s lives when, more often that not, outward appearances and affiliations are of paramount importance.

P/Supt. Carlos informed the Council that these groups are primarily hip-hop groups who merely wanted to come together to dance and play rap music together (that is, if they are not fighting rival gangs).

I say that we should not allow this statement to lull us into any sense of false security. History shows us that the Crips in the US was started by 15-year old Raymond Washington with the initial intent of continuing the revolutionary ideology of the 1960s and to act as community leaders and protectors of their local neighborhoods. But the revolutionary rhetoric did not endure. Because of immaturity and lack of political leadership, the budding Crips gang was never able to develop an efficient political agenda for social change within the community.

Instead, it took very little time before their group started engaging in criminal activities, from mugging elderly Japanese women to hardcore drug dealing, murder, robbery and the like.

It goes without saying that we do not want Bloods and Crips activities here in our city to escalate to that point, or for the groups to become more violent in their skirmishes as it had in Cebu and Baguio, for instance.

I learned from my research in this subject that in Cebu, a law graduate who planned to enter the seminary after taking the bar, was caught in the crossfire between these rival gangs, and was shot dead in Mango Avenue Square. What was so poignant in this story was the mention of his rosary that was found among his law books, as they lay scattered next to his body.

Such waste of a life that held so much promise. And for what? For a battle rooted on blind and senseless hatred? Where the combatants themselves are clueless as to what that hatred was for?

I also read of news reports of bloody gang clashes in Baguio, resulting in the death of several young men in their late teens. The same scenario played over and over again: 20 to 30 to 40 attackers armed with knives, lead pipes, bats, beer bottles and bare fists.

The victims of these vicious attacks often had multiple skull fractures. One had 30 stab wounds in his body. They were gang members felled by rival gangs.

Do we want this same lawlessness happening in our City? We have already been held hostage by hardened, gun-wielding holdupers and snatchers plaguing our every move. Are we going to be held hostage once again, this time by mere children who barely got their mamas’ milk out of their lips?

We can’t just say that they just fight each other anyway! Because they don’t! Even innocent non-gang members have fallen victims to their aggression. A single look or a meeting of eyes considered to be offensive by one party could bring down a whole pack of gang brothers hungry to prove their superiority on one hapless teener.

Innocent bystanders have fallen victims already, caught in the crossfire as these gangs battled each other. We, too, can become victims. And yes, our children as well.

In other cities, Crips and Bloods members included out-of-school youths and hoodlums. I would like to ask P/Supt. Carlos if such is also the case here in Dumaguete. If so, it is frightening to think how short their leap will have to be, from mere rapping and doing the hip-hop, and obviously smoking and drinking, to drugs and drug-dealing, armed robbery and murder, and only God knows what else!

My heart goes out to the father whose son was attacked at Mart One. I could empathize with his seething anger. Any parent would be furious at seeing his child suffer from near-fatal injuries in the hands of gang members for apparently no reason at all.

I could understand his utter frustration at the seeming inaction of the Police. To a parent whose heart longs for concrete action and solutions to a problem that has come to his doorstep, the soft approach being undertaken by our Police in addressing this problem, consisting of dialogues, mediation, intervention and clash prevention, may seem lame, inadequate and halfhearted.

But I also fully understand that the Police’s hands are tied behind their backs. P/Supt. Carlos was correct in pointing out that unless these gangs are actually committing a crime, there is little that the Police could do. The most would be to disperse these groups once they are spotted converging in one area.

Besides, with the promulgation of RA 9344, the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act, which spares individuals 15 years and younger from criminal liability, young offenders falling within that age bracket could not be held accountable for their criminal actions even when caught red-handed. And according to P/Supt. Carlos, most members fall within this age group.

So what now? With the Police practically helpless to curb these gangs’ increasing numbers and with the gang members themselves becoming increasingly bolder by the minute, where does this leave us? Turn to vigilante justice as what the father of that victim said he would do?

Those of us whose lives have not been touched by the ferocity these young men are capable of can very easily take the high moral ground and express shock and indignation over his audacity to even contemplate such an unthinkable option.

It’s basic human nature to take the emotional backseat as we watch human dramas unfold. Very seldom could we fully empathize with the range of emotions displayed before us. More often than not, it is only when those closest to our hearts are affected by the same forces that we’d bother to get out of our comfortable seats to join in the fray.

But if we look deep into the psyche of this father, we’d understand the rage and extent of the frustration that drove him into saying what he said. I believe that he said he would turn to vigilantes only to make us all understand how angry and how frustrated he was over what he perceived to be Police inaction.

His talk of resorting to vigilante justice merely existed in the realm of contemplation. There is no crime in that. What is criminal is when what has been contemplated is translated into concrete action. Now, that’s another story.

According to him, vigilante justice had been effective before and they could still work now. He mentioned notorious Dumaguete gangs in the past that spontaneously disbanded after members got terminated one after another.

What, if indeed, there are similarly victimized people out there who would go beyond that contemplation stage? I heard one person declare that he’d be willing to contribute to a vigilante fund.

Would parents, who’ve previously been in denial regarding their children’s involvement with the gangs, be compelled to act decisively and keep them home under lock and key, if gang members would start suffering the same fate as their predecessors?

Heaven forbid if ordinary citizens would decide to take matters into their own hands! But we do not have to come to that. I believe that the parents are the key to this dilemma.

P/Supt. Carlos hit the nail squarely in the head when he said that this matter would not have gotten to this point had the parents had been more involved and vigilant of their children’s activities.

I completely agree. But vigilant of what? Bad barkadas? Fine. But if we conduct a survey right now, I wonder how many among us are adequately aware of this threat? Maybe, SUHS parents are, because I understand that the PTA is actively addressing this problem. But how about the rest of us?

A private group whose name I cannot recall right now has taken the commendable step of conducting information drives among high school students, warning them against joining these gangs.

But our local leadership should also undertake steps to extensively inform the very same people who are the first lines of defense in this war: the parents. To our leaders: what have YOU done so far to inform us about this danger to our children?

Let me do your job for you here: Parents, take note. If your sons and daughters would begin sporting black shirts and those oversized hip-hop pants, accompanied by red or blue bandannas … warning bells should start ringing in your heads already. That could spell only one thing … B-A-D.

They are in grave danger. Hardly from the irate parents I’ve been writing about, but from members of rival gangs who’d gladly attack for no reason other than that they belong to a different group.

Let me quote an American mother who lost her son to gang violence in 2003. He was 18 years old and he was a gang member. She said, "Every parent should pay attention to signs that I ignored as a parent and paid the ultimate price of losing a child."

Earthquake Drills in Schools Please!

2007-07-26T18:15:00.000+08:00

The July 13 earthquake literally shook me out of my blissful state that early Friday morning when Mother Nature decided to remind us how puny we all are against her awesome power.

It was pretty scary how our home seemed to creak and groan as it swayed from side to side. My first thought was Abby. If the earthquake had been scary for me, how much more terrifying it must have been for her, and for all other young impressionable children who never knew the ground they stand on could shake the way it did.

She told me later on how scared they all were. But much to the credit of her teacher, only one or two from her class cried unlike children from other classes, who according to her, cried in unison during the tremors.

I give credit to her teacher who remained calm and composed when the two earthquakes struck. In events such as these, children take their cues from adults. Presenting a brave front to the children will help them cope with their own fears. Showing fright or even the slightest hint of panic, on the other hand, will crumple whatever resolve they may have at being courageous in such situations.

So what causes earthquakes? Quick research taught me that the earth is divided into three layers - a hard outer crust, a soft middle layer and a center core. The outer crust is broken into massive, irregular pieces called “plates”. These plates have been moving very slowly for billions of years, driven by energy forces deep within the earth. Its movements continue to shape the physical features of the earth’s mountains, valleys, plains and plateaus. Earthquakes occur when these moving plates grind and scrape against each other. The Pacific Plate grinds northwestward past the North American plate at a rate of about 2 inches per year.

According to a news report, the earthquake could have resulted from a break or stress in the local fault line in Negros or some movement in the Philippine trench. Now, this part about our very own fault line in Negros should give us cause of concern. It can only mean that we should be expecting more of these earthquakes in the years to come.

As a parent then, I am calling on all schools to start instructing and drilling students on emergency procedures right away. It is important that the children are oriented on earthquake preparedness so they would know what to do before, during and after such event.

I know that Silliman Elem, for instance, conducted earthquake drills last school year and that Cittadini will be having one soon. But I don’t know if other schools have similar plans.

Emphasis should be given on the proper training of the teachers. According to PHILVOLCS, “during an earthquake, school children are one of the most vulnerable. As such, it is important for school administrators and teachers to be informed on how to properly conduct an earthquake drill. Teachers are the ones who will guide the students. They are the ones who will teach students how to protect themselves. The conduct of an earthquake drill requires planning and designing of evacuation procedure, as well as orienting teachers and ultimately students on how to do the earthquake drill.”

I found two very helpful websites on earthquake drills. Anyone who’s interested should check-out the following: http://www.cnmiemo.gov.mp/Earthquake%20Brochure.htm and
http://www.phivolcs.dost.gov.ph/news/eqdrill.pdf

I was introduced to the “duck, cover and hold” method. It teaches children to (1) turn away from windows; (2) crouch under a desk or table; (3) put both hands on the back of their neck; and (4) to tuck their head down. If the desk or table moves, it advises: hold the legs and move with it.

At least 30 minutes in each school month should be used to instruct students on fire, earthquake, and where appropriate, tsunami dangers and drills. At least two drills on earthquakes and fires must be conducted each year, and in schools in a coastal zone, at least three drills on earthquakes and tsunamis.

Earthquake drills are simple and easy to do. It only requires planning ahead (with a little guidance from PHILVOLCS) and constant practice. Just visit this web page for those guidelines: http://www.phivolcs.dost.gov.ph/news/eqdrill.pdf.

So come on beloved schools. Show us that you are taking care of our children every way you could! Let us know that you will be having those drills SOON! The parents are waiting.

Finding Kindred Spirits

2007-07-21T12:40:00.000+08:00

Today, I posted the following in the message board of The Baby Center dealing with the topic: First Pregnancy, Ending in Miscarriage.

Hello everyone, first of all, may I say how sorry I am for your loss and for the pain that all of you had to go through. I know exactly how you felt when you lost your baby because I had been through that myself.

Although my miscarriage was not my first pregnancy, I too lost my baby in my 8th week. I mourned my loss deeply because I wanted that baby very badly. You see, I have polycystic ovaries syndrome. I was able to have my first child only through the grace of God and the aid of this wonderful drug called gonal-f.

My husband and I tried to have another child last December 2005. This time, I had puregon. I went through two rounds of artificial insemination but both attempts failed. We soon gave up because of financial constraints. Here in the Philippines, fertility treatments are very expensive.

I gave up hope of ever conceiving by natural means. but unexpectedly, I found out that I was pregnant by April 2006. My joy cannot be described especially because it was a spontaneous pregnancy, a miracle that came into our lives when we least expected it!

I started spotting soon after my discovery. I was devastated. I did what I could to save my baby. I went into full bed rest and begged my doctor for whatever medicine there was that would somehow keep my baby alive in case I was losing it.

Several ultrasound examinations revealed no heartbeat. They could not even find the gestational sac. But I insisted that I was pregnant because my pregnancy tests said so!!! I think people thought I was crazy then ... but when you are somebody who wanted another child I much as I did, I think you would understand how I felt then. I even had a name in case my baby would be a girl, Maia.

I finally had my miscarriage May 9, 2006. As doctors would put it, the "product of conception" was "expelled". My pain was overwhelming. My husband was not with me then. He was abroad at that time. I had nobody to comfort me. And I was filled with guilt. Somehow, I could not help asking if somehow, it had been my fault that my baby died.

I took my little one to a clinical laboratory for examination, to try to determine what the cause of my loss was. My baby, whom they coldly referred to as "specimen", was placed in a plastic cup before it was taken from me.

The technician who was holding the cup then jokingly handed it to another lab worker and jokingly told him ... " here, you urinate in this". He said that right in my presence.

I cannot even begin to describe to you the pain and the hurt that i went through that day. Here I was mourning the loss of a child that I wanted to have with all my heart ... and hearing somebody callously make my dead baby the butt of his joke by having it urinated upon was excruciating. It was utterly cruel at its best.

The lab report stated I had an early pregnancy failure ... that only the placenta developed, but no baby. The general attitude I encountered here in my home city was like ... what was the big deal? There was never any baby after all, so why all this fuss?

I don't care whether a baby developed or not at all. In my mind and in my heart, I had a child that was not meant for me. Last December 2006, I had a chance to visit one of our hospital's nursery. I dropped by intending to enjoy the sight of beautiful babies only to end up crying my heart out because I could not help thinking that my own baby should have been there as well. If I had not lost my little one, I would have given birth on December 24. Today, I would have had bouncing and crawling 7-month old. I still ache. There are times when the pain is not as raw, but times like this, my pain is as great as on that unforgettable day.

I am glad that i stumbled into this site and read of your posts. I am glad that I have found kindred spirits in you. I dont feel so alone anymore. I've corresponded with other parents who have lost their children, but I could feel that they could not empathize with me totally because my loss is not an tangible as theirs. They had real babies they have held in their arms. I only have my failed expectations.

For a while, i thought that I should stop feeling this way because I did not lose a real baby anyway, as some have pointed out to me. But I continue to feel the pain. I am glad that there are others out there who feel the same way I do. thank you for sharing a bit of yourselves with the rest of us.

Hello everyone, first of all, may I say how sorry I am for your loss and for the pain that all of you had to go through. I know exactly how you felt when you lost your baby because I had been through that myself.

Although my miscarriage was not my first pregnancy, I too lost my baby in my 8th week. I mourned my loss deeply because I wanted that baby very badly. You see, I have polycystic ovaries syndrome. I was able to have my first child only through the grace of God and the aid of this wonderful drug called gonal-f.

My husband and I tried to have another child last December 2005. This time, I had puregon. I went through two rounds of artificial insemination but both attempts failed. We soon gave up because of financial constraints. Here in the Philippines, fertility treatments are very expensive.

I gave up hope of ever conceiving by natural means. but unexpectedly, I found out that I was pregnant by April 2006. My joy cannot be described especially because it was a spontaneous pregnancy, a miracle that came into our lives when we least expected it!

I started spotting soon after my discovery. I was devastated. I did what I could to save my baby. I went into full bed rest and begged my doctor for whatever medicine there was that would somehow keep my baby alive in case I was losing it.

Several ultrasound examinations revealed no heartbeat. They could not even find the gestational sac. But I insisted that I was pregnant because my pregnancy tests said so!!! I think people thought I was crazy then ... but when you are somebody who wanted another child I much as I did, I think you would understand how I felt then. I even had a name in case my baby would be a girl, Maia.

My finally had my miscarriage May 9, 2006. As doctors would put it, the "product of conception" was "expelled". My pain was overwhelming. My husband was not with me then. He was abroad at that time. I had nobody to comfort me. And I was filled with guilt. Somehow, I could not help asking if somehow, it had been my fault that my baby died.
I took my little one to a clinical laboratory for examination, to try to determine what the cause of my loss was. My baby, whom they coldly referred to as "specimen", was placed in a plastic cup before it was taken from me.

The technician who was holding the cup then jokingly handed it to another lab worker and jokingly told him ... " here, you urinate in this". He said that right in my presence.

I cannot even begin to describe to you the pain and the hurt that i went through that day. Here I was mourning the loss of a child that I wanted to have with all my heart ... and hearing somebody callously make my dead baby the butt of his joke by having it urinated upon was excruciating. It was utterly cruel at its best.

The lab report stated I had an early pregnancy failure ... that only the placenta developed, but no baby. The general attitude I encountered here in my home city was like ... what was the big deal? There was never any baby after all, so why all this fuss?

I don't care whether a baby developed or not at all. In my mind and in my heart, I had a child that was not meant for me. Last December 2006, I had a chance to visit one of our hospital's nursery. I dropped by intending to enjoy the sight of beautiful babies only to end up crying my heart out because I could not help thinking that my own baby should have been there as well. If I had not lost my little one, I would have given birth on December 24. Today, I would have had bouncing and crawling 7-month old. I still ache. There are times when the pain is not as raw, but times like this, my pain is as great as on that unforgettable day.

I am glad that i stumbled into this site and read of your posts. I am glad that I have found kindred spirits in you. I dont feel so alone anymore. I've corresponded with other parents who have lost their children, but I could feel that they could not empathize with me totally because my loss is not an tangible as theirs. They had real babies they have held in their arms. I only have my failed expectations.

For a while, i thought that I should stop feeling this way because I did not lose a real baby anyway, as some have pointed out to me. But I continue to feel the pain. I am glad that there are others out there who feel the same way I do. thank you for sharing a bit of yourselves with the rest of us.

What is Blighted Ovum?

2007-07-21T10:54:00.000+08:00

I started asking this question seriously when fellow blogger ROBERT sent me a link to the Priests for Life website that showed IMAGES OF FETAL DEVELOPMENT.

The picture to the right shows a 7-week old embryo, a week short of the stage my own baby was supposed to be in when I lost her. Another picture below shows an 8-week old embryo. My own Maia would have looked like this one when I lost her.

But this is really nothing but pure fantasy on my part. I was informed that I had an Anembryonic Pregnancy or what most probaby know as blighted ovum.

I had a rough idea then what a blighted ovum was. It meant that my baby stopped developing shortly after fertilization, or that she never started developing at all. I never had a baby that looked like these embryos in the pictures.

But it does not really matter to me. I believe in my heart, whether rightly or wrongly, that God breathed life into each one of us at the moment of conception. From that moment on, each child, no matter how briefly it had lived, had a soul, and this soul went up to heaven to be reunited with its Maker.

Oh yes! I had a second baby, and this baby is now an angel in heaven. Even if she lived for only a fraction of a second, what matters to me is that she had started living. Everything else is immaterial.

Seeing these pictures of these beautiful creatures of God made me want to learn more about blighted ova. This was what I learned:

"What is a blighted ovum?

A blighted ovum (also known as “anembryonic pregnancy”) happens when a fertilized egg attaches itself to the uterine wall, but the embryo does not develop or stopped developing shortly after fertilization.

Cells develop to form the pregnancy sac, but not the embryo itself. A blighted ovum usually occurs within the first trimester before a woman knows she is pregnant. A high level of chromosome abnormalities usually causes a woman’s body to naturally miscarry.

How do I know if I am having or have had a blighted ovum?

A blighted ovum can occur very early in pregnancy, before most women even know that they are pregnant. You may experience signs of pregnancy such as a missed or late menstrual period and even a positive pregnancy test. It is possible that you may have minor abdominal cramps, minor vaginal spotting or bleeding. As with a normal period, your body may flush the uterine lining, but your period may be a little heavier than usual.

Many women assume their pregnancies are on track because their hCG levels are increasing. The placenta can continue to grow and support itself without a baby for a short time, and pregnancy hormones can continue to rise, which would lead a woman to believe she is still pregnant. A diagnosis is usually not made until an ultrasound test shows either an empty womb or an empty birth sac.

What causes a blighted ovum?

A blighted ovum is the cause of about 50% of first trimester miscarriages and is usually the result of chromosomal problems. A woman’s body recognizes abnormal chromosomes in a fetus and naturally does not try to continue the pregnancy because the fetus will not develop into a normal, healthy baby. This can be caused by abnormal cell division, or poor quality sperm or egg.

Should I have a D&C or wait for a natural miscarriage?

This is a decision only you can make for yourself. Most doctors do not recommend a D&C for an early pregnancy loss. It is believed that a woman’s body is capable of passing tissue on its own and there is no need for an invasive surgical procedure with a risk of complications. A D&C would, however, be beneficial if you were planning on having a pathologist examine the tissues to determine a reason for the miscarriage. Some women feel a D&C procedure helps with closure, mentally and physically.

How can a blighted ovum be prevented?

Unfortunately, in most cases a blighted ovum cannot be prevented. Some couples will seek out genetic testing if multiple early pregnancy loss occurs. A blighted ovum is often a one time occurrence, and rarely will a woman experience more than one. Most doctors recommend couples wait at least 1-3 regular menstrual cycles before trying to conceive again after any type of miscarriage. "

My interest on this subject lead me to the website of the Baby Center where bulletin boards were started dealing with the topic: MISCARRIAGE, STILLBIRTH, AND INFANT LOSS.

Finding this board was heaven sent. I do not feel so alone anymore. I finally found other moms who felt and thought and grieved for lost babies the same way I did.

For a while, I actually considered myself as some sort of freak because nobody at home could fully empathize with my loss. It was not a tangible loss, as they said. It was not as if I've actually held the baby in my arms.

Some people here actually think that they become parents only at the moment of birth. They do not realize that parenthood starts at the exact moment of conception.

They could not understand that I loved my baby from the first moment I knew that I had her. I started thinking of names for her, I wanted her to be another girl, I planned where and when she would start attending school ... I already had dreams for my baby!

Naming her and thinking of her as a girl and talking of my angel in heaven were even considered by some as some sort of sentimental b/s. Even my husband could not fully understand me.

But the mothers in the bulletin boards understand me perfectly. They have been through the same experience. Some are still going through it. I read of mothers' stories about losing their babies at 5th, 6th, or 7th week ... and they grieve just like any mother would for a baby that she has actually held in her arms.

Nobody there reading my sentiments will think of me as some sentimental, over-acting, attention-grabbing loser who is making a big deal out of something that some people would probably consider as an inconsequential, everyday, no-event occurrence. They understand grief and loss as only people who have been through the same pain could.

My daughter Abby also knew exactly what was going on. When I had my miscarriage and subsequent to that, my UNFORTUNATE ENCOUNTER with the lab technician who joked at having my dead baby urinated upon, her little heart got broken along with mine.

When the lab tech sent me a card saying how sorry he was for causing me more pain, she sent him back a LETTER him that he should say sorry to her little sister as well, because he also hurt her feelings. She even drew a curled up little figure (much like how 8-week old embryos look like in her book) with a halo and tiny angel wings.

Until now, she still wonders aloud what her little sister could be doing in heaven. She likes to think that she is happily doing anything and everything that she'd like to do, like eat ice cream all day long.

For a while, I struggled with the question WHY? Why did God give me great unexpected joy only to take it back so soon? Although I still ache every now and then (like when I'd see pregnant mothers or babies), I finally found peace in my heart by accepting that there is a reason for everything, that God has a grand plan for all of us, and that everything that happens to each one of us is part of that big puzzle, and that maybe, in the end, we will be privileged enough to know what that purpose or reason is.

Natalie's Laughter and Junrey's Journey of Faith

2007-07-20T06:10:00.000+08:00

Mending Kids International (http://www.mendingkids.org/) is a non-profit charity in Sta. Clarita, CA. It gives indigent Filipino children free medical care through their US Care Program at top Southern CA hospitals such as UCLA MedicalCenter, L.A. Children's Hospital, Cedars Sinai and the Shriners Burn Center.

In the Philippines, even the poorest Filipino patient must pay for all medicines, tests and supplies. Since over 40 million Filipinos get by onless than $2 a day, indigent Filipinos need help from charities like Mending Kids International [MKI].

The PAL [Philippine Airlines] Foundation helps these Filipino children to get there. However, our poor Filipino children need foster families so that they can have the free care in Southern California.

Below are two of these very special children we need you to help us find loving families and good homes for. PLEASE FORWARD TO THOSE WHO MIGHT BE ABLE TO HELP. Thank you.

NATHALIE's LAUGHTER

Little Nathalie Drew Tam Suan of Cebu, just turned one. Congenital heartdisease has made her as tiny as can be (she weighs only 16 lbs.) but she's as bright and bubbly as they come. She loves watching Dora the Explorer with her older brother David. How she giggles and wiggles whenever she hears the theme song! Because of her heart disease, Nathalie cannot walk yet but she would love to be up and about and exploring too, just like her favorite Dora. Her young parents are poor. Her father got laid off and her mother is a school teacher earning US$150 a month. They live in a flimsy one room house. Nathalie needs a foster family for about two months so that she can have free heart surgery from MENDING KIDS INTERNATIONAL.

Please email the undersigned or http://us.f316.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=mendingkids@sbcglobal.net if you would like to help them take care of little Nathalie.

JUNREY's JOURNEY of FAITH

The Tapao Family with Junrey at the center, outside their humble home in Zamboanga City. 16 year old Junrey Tapao is an only child and the center of his parents' lives. He was born with congenital heart disease but his family cannot afford the cost of surgery to correct his ventricular septal defect (VSD). They can barely manage to keep him on his maintenance medications. His father Diomedes is a driver earning PhP6,000 (US$120) a month. Like a good Filipino son, he also supports his parents. The Tapao Family lives in one tiny room of a ramshackle house shared with other members of a poor but loving extended family. Junrey's mother Matilde never finished high school and since Junrey is so sickly, she has to stay home and take care of him. Now in his teens, Junrey is frail and slightly built, weighing just 95 lbs. Although he has never been able to play sports like other boys, his parents are proud that Junrey is an altar boy at their parish church. As his parents are getting on in years, Junrey desperately prays that he may also be able to take care of them some day.

MENDING KIDS INTERNATIONAL has promised to help Junrey to have open heart surgery to correct his ventricular septal defect (VSD) but he needs afoster family who will take care of him for at least six weeks. Please contact the undersigned or http://us.f316.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=mendingkids@sbcglobal.net if you can help Junrey grow into manhood. You may also contact the undersigned if you have any questions:

Ma. Carmen "Menchu" Aquino Sarmiento
mailto:menchu_sarmiento@pal.com.ph;
+63917.823.1427
Executive Director
Philippine Airlines (PAL) Foundation
Gate 1, PAL Maintenance Base Complex
Andrews Avenue, Nichols, Pasay City 1309
Phone: (632) 851-2980; (632)
855-8000 extension 2563 Fax: (632) 852-6096

Inspiring Thoughts from Rick Warren

2007-07-19T11:14:00.000+08:00

Once again, I received an email that has touched and inspired me so much, I could not help but want to share it with anybody who might stumble on this blog. Here's the full text:

You will enjoy the new insights that Rick Warren has, with his wife now having cancer and him having "wealth" from the book sales. This is an absolutely incredible short interview with Rick Warren,"Purpose Driven Life " author and pastor ofSaddleback Church in California. In the interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, Rick said:

People ask me, What is the purpose of life?

And I respond: In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven. One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body-- but not the end of me. I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act - the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity.

We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense. Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one. The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort. God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy. We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.

This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer. I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth.

I don't believe that anymore. Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life. No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for. You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems. If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness,"which is my problem, my issues, my pain." But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.

We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her. It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people. You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life.

Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy. It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don't think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease.

So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, II Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72:

First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases.

Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church.

Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor , care for the sick, and educate the next generation.

Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free.

We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God's purposes (for my life)?

When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don't get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better. God didn't put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He's more interested in what I am than what I do.That's why we're called human beings, not human doings.

The Hands that Prepare our Food

2007-07-18T21:49:00.001+08:00

How clean are they? Seriously! Have you considered how clean our helpers’ hands really are as they handle our food?

I’m not some cleanliness freak – that, I have to stress! But this question bothered me when, years ago, I observed a mother in a rural area clean up her toddler with only water after he made poo-poo. But what really sent my paranoiac tendencies soaring was seeing her wash her hand with only water. That was it? No soap or anything? Yeah! That was all!

It got me thinking of our own angels in our kitchens. It’s so easy to imagine, you know. Call of nature … quick wash … then off to the kitchen to continue slicing some green leafy vegetable that we all know should only be blanched. Now, if that won’t make your skin crawl, I don’t know what will!

What if unhygienic practices such as that one I witnessed are more common than we think? What if we have some members in our household who are as unenlightened as that woman who got me hyperventilating?

They prepare and serve our food, you know. They make sandwiches for us, lay out utensils on our tables, or bring milk or snacks to our children, even feed them or touch their faces… We take great pains at ensuring that our children, home, and food are clean, but beyond that, this matter concerning the hands that prepare our food must be given equal importance.

For the sake of food safety (and my peace of mind), I do not only instruct every new household member about thorough hand washing, but I have also provided my angels with liquid antibacterial soap in their own comfort room, with strict instructions to use it at least twice after each you-know-what. I know, it's kind of expensive. But the P150 or so per month is additional expense that I can take, if it would mean continued safety and good health for my family.

I opted for liquid antibac soap because I do not have much confidence over soap bars and their ability to kill germs. Besides, there’s this matter that really bothers me: the thought of hands fresh out of their behinds reaching for that bar of soap, rolling it around to make suds, before going back … then reaching again for that same bar to either do a second washing, or to finish off with a hand washing.

Maybe I’m obsessing too much over germs … but is it too crazy for me to believe that soaps couldn’t do much cleaning anymore if it had been held by a hand that has had prior contact with that gooey matter we refer to as poo? Whether or not toilet paper was used, wouldn’t bacteria somehow get transferred to the soap? Wouldn’t going back for that same soap for the final hand washing merely result in further transfer of the bacteria from the soap back to the hand?

Here’s the worst: have you thought of the possibility of our precious yayas also using our kids’ bath soap to clean them up with after our little ones have had their du-du? (shivers!) That’s why we’re all using liquid antibac for after-toilet cleaning-up purposes.

I hope I haven’t ruined somebody’s early Sunday coffee with this gooey topic. But I decided to share this concern because of my daughter’s bout with gastroenteritis, which I have reason to believe, may have been brought about by her exposure to a contaminant of fecal origin after swimming in water that practically had no chlorine.

My baby suffered from high-grade fever, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, fever, chills and headache. It was an ordeal that I wish, nobody, especially young children, would have to go through again.

What happens outside our homes is beyond our control. But we have a complete say over what happens inside. A little education is all that is needed.

Earthquake in Dumaguete

2007-07-16T08:17:00.000+08:00

My pleasant morning telephone chat with Tita Nini was rudely interrupted when I felt my bed shaking around 8am, last Friday, July 13. For a split second, I thought of my tiny pomeranian and how I didn't know that she was under the bed, probably scratching herself or something. When it didn't stop, I even looked behind me, thinking she might have climbed up the bed without me knowing .... only then did it finally dawn on me ... EARTHQUAKE!!! The french doors were swaying and making those horrible noises ... then it stopped.

Tita Nini and I laughed nervously! I quietly marveled at my stupidity, you know, seemingly accepting even for just a split second that a 2-kilo Pomeranian could move a bed made of solid oak (that even 4 men would have a hard time lifting!) with her cute little legs! Oh well, I must have been THAT engrossed over my chat with Tita Nini.

When our home started shaking again, I told her ... "it's happening again! Ba-bye! I'm going downstairs!!" My first thought was to turn off the main switch to prevent accidental fires from starting. I then called my daughter's school asking if the children were ok. Thank God they were. Abby told me later that she just prayed, asking God to make it stop, while other classmates started crying.

I learned later that the two quakes measured intensity 5 and 6 in the Richter scale, respectively, with epicenter around 18-20 kilometers from Dumaguete City (somewhere between Dauin and Zamboanguita).

For more of this news, click this link: http://news.balita.ph/html/article.php/20070713095458278

This got me thinking about the schools' disaster-preparedness programs. Have the authorities conducted earthquake and/or fire drills with the schoolchildren already? If so, how effective were these? Did they see this actually working during the recent earthquake or was there pandemonium with everything they learned from the drill all forgotten in their panic?

News reports from MetroPost concerning children from Silliman University Elementary Department revealed that the drills they had last year proved futile. The children panicked. I intend to look into this, particularly in my daughter's school.

Why God Created Children (and Grandchildren in the process!)

2007-07-14T19:27:00.000+08:00

I just received this forwarded message from one of my cousins. I had a good laugh with it. Hope you will, too!

If you are not a parent yet, and can't relate to this, believe me, someday, you will!

To those of us who have children in our lives, whether they are our own, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, or students... here is something to make you chuckle.

Whenever your children are out of control, you can take comfort from the thought that even God's omnipotence did not extend to His own children. After creating heaven and earth, God created Adam and Eve.

And the first thing he said was "DON'T ! "

"Don't what ? " Adam replied.

"Don't eat the forbidden fruit." God said.

"Forbidden fruit ? We have forbidden fruit ? Hey Eve..we have forbidden fruit ! "

" No Way ! "

"Yes way ! "

"Do NOT eat the fruit ! " said God.

"Why ? "

"Because I am your Father and I said so ! " God replied, wondering why He hadn't stopped creation after making the elephants.

A few minutes later, God saw His children having an apple break and He was ticked ! "Didn't I tell you not to eat the fruit ? " God asked.

"Uh huh," Adam replied.

"Then why did you ? " said the Father.

"I don't know," said Eve.

"She started it ! " Adam said.

"Did not ! "

"Did too ! "

"DID NOT ! "

Having had it with the two of them, God's punishment was that Adam and Eve should have children of their own. Thus the pattern was set and it has never changed.

BUT THERE IS REASSURANCE IN THE STORY ! If you have persistently and lovingly tried to give children wisdom and they haven't taken it, don't be hard on yourself. If God had trouble raising children, what makes you think it would be a piece of cake for you ?

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT !

1. You spend the first two years of their life teaching them to walk and talk. Then you spend the next sixteen telling them to sit down and shut up.

2. Grandchildren are God's reward for not killing your own children.

3. Mothers of teens now know why some animals eat their young.

4. Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.

5. The main purpose of holding children's parties is to remind yourself that there are children more awful than your own.

6. We childproofed our homes, but they are still getting in.

ADVICE FOR THE DAY: Be nice to your kids. They will choose your nursing home one day.

AND FINALLY:

IF YOU HAVE A LOT OF TENSION AND YOU GET A HEADACHE, DO WHAT IT SAYS ON THE ASPIRIN BOTTLE:

"TAKE TWO ASPIRIN" AND "KEEP AWAY FROM CHILDREN"!!!!!

Quick, send this on to ten people within the next five minutes.

Nothing will happen if you don't, but if you do but, ten people will be laughing

Good Deeds Do Come Back

2007-07-10T11:07:00.000+08:00

I remember watching a show in TV that featured a family living in a rectangular box that was no bigger than a coffin. A large plastic that hang over it served as its roof, the family’s sole protection from the harsh winds and biting cold brought on by the rains. Very sad. But what was even sadder was the sight of two very small children and a third on the way. The mother revealed that she gave birth to her second child in that box, and was most likely giving birth to her third in that very same place.

Flashback: Malate, Manila, 1997. Everyday, I’d see this family of four living along the bangketa, sharing one folding bed that has seen better days. Two grimy and unwashed young children ran around in the sidewalk stark naked. I remember watching the younger one amble towards the middle of the road to squat. Before I could start wondering what he was squatting for, he proceeded to defecate. There was no reaction from the parents. For them, it was part of the natural course of things.

It is a big enough tragedy that people have to live in these conditions, and knowing that there isn’t much that one can do except give the occasional dole-outs that really does nothing to improve their lot except fill their stomachs very briefly.

But the bigger tragedy is seeing children having to live and grow up in this way. It tears my guts out to see them living like animals and with all the ways of one. How would they ever develop self-value and -respect when they know only of a life that is no better than that of dogs that live by scavenging?

Indeed, it is very sad that poverty will always hound our country and people and that the end is nowhere in sight. Except perhaps for a lucky few who will manage to escape into a better life, these children are doomed to perpetuate this vicious cycle that started long before they were born.

I’m writing about this now hoping that maybe, each one of us in our own little way, could help even just one child struggle out of this quagmire of hopelessness. We need not expect any reward or recognition at the end. The satisfaction will come at knowing that we helped. At the end of the day, their triumph, whether spectacular or not, will also be our own. And who knows, that helping hand we’ve extended might just come back to us in most unexpected ways.

Take the story of one young doctor who worked in the slums of London a long time ago. I don’t really know if this story is true or not, and my recollection is kind of vague. But it generally went this way: the young doctor was summoned to assist in a very difficult delivery. He noticed how poor the family was, living in one dingy room with a dozen or so children. When the child was finally born, it was barely alive. To add to that, the baby had some sort of leg deformity that would make walking extremely difficult for him later in life. The doctor thought that he would be doing this baby a great favor if he’d simply leave it to die rather than let it enter a world that promised nothing but misery and hardship. But revive the baby he did.

That would have been the end of the story if not years later when his granddaughter had an accident requiring a delicate brain surgery. Only one surgeon could perform that specialized surgery, a deformed little man who bore the same name as that of the old doctor’s. This brilliant surgeon’s mother named him after the young doctor who gave him the life that he almost lost soon after his birth.

Tears filled the old doctor’s eyes. He remembered the scrawny little baby he almost gave up for dead years ago.

Yes, whether we expect it or not, good deeds do come back.

Blame Parents, Not Teachers!

2007-07-08T16:17:00.001+08:00

This was the title of an article written by Ed Christian, an English and Biblical literature professor for twenty years at the Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, USA.

This was written in response to an issue in the US so to whether schools should be blamed for their students’ failure to learn. Mr. Christian believes that the problems in education are the parents’ fault, that “more money, smaller classes, and national testing may help a little, but they won’t solve the problems. Only parents can solve them.”

He gave ten suggestions as to what parents could do. I do not necessarily agree with all of his ideas, but they are worth sharing with you because some of his observations are very relevant to us.

First, he believes that we should get rid of the TV, or at least, limit its use. An hour or two a week is already considered plenty. Children should be encouraged to watch nature or history programs and carefully chosen videos.

I agree. My own daughter watches National Geographic and Animal Planet programs but I also allow her to watch Disney Channel and selected programs in Cartoon Network on weekends.

She also gets to watch on weekdays as a sort of reward. If she finishes her assignments and studies early, the time prior to her 9pm bedtime becomes her “free time”, during which she could do whatever she pleases.

She’s still a child. She should still be allowed to enjoy the things that most children would enjoy doing. To deprive her of these joys would be like chopping off a big chunk of her childhood.

Second, Mr. Christian urged parents to get rid of video games as the excitement exhausts children and make them think that everything else is boring.

But then, wouldn’t all work and no play make Juan a dull boy as well? Wouldn’t it make better sense if, again, we just limit this type of activity during weekends?

Third, “limit computer use to educational games, writing and learning to type, and even then, not more than an hour a day. Chat rooms and Web surfing, as generally used, have little to do with learning.”

Fourth, “forget about competitive sports. Playing sports consumes study time and can leave students too exhausted or excited to study. Running or walking a few miles or shooting hops for half an hour are fine, but the competition of team sports is wasted time and effort.”

This one’s absolutely bulls--t! If this guy could have his way, all children would turn into sedentary overweight bookworms who’d be scared shitless at the slightest suggestion of sun or sweat!

Child development should be wholistic and should include a variety of activities such as sports. Focus should not be confined to academics alone.

Fifth, “buy books; visit libraries; have books in the house.”

Sixth, “read to your children for at least half an hour every day. If you choose books that are interesting but a little above your children’s level, their interest will lift them higher.

I agree. Reading time can also double as bonding time between parent and child.

Seventh, “keep your students home after supper. Little useful learning takes place in malls, restaurants, or cars.”

Eighth, “early to bed. Students who have read for three hours after supper often grow sleepy. If they’re asleep by 9:00 or 10:00, they’ll be alert in school and learn more.”

Ninth, “limit phone calls to five minutes each. Hours of telephone gossip are not educational.”

Tenth, “if you have a sense of wonder that makes you continually fascinated by the world, share it with your children.”

We parents play a very crucial role in the education of our children. As Mr. Christian observed, we can help them develop a love for learning if we make learning interesting for them. How? For one, provide them with a rich learning environment in the home. When it’s “no TV” for the child, it should be “No TV” for everyone else. We cannot expect the child to be able to focus if the TV is blaring nearby.

As a final note, Mr. Christian stated: “True, implementing these suggestions will change the lifestyle of parents as well, but isn’t the success of our children worth the effort?”

Amen to that!

Counting my Centavos

2007-06-26T10:20:00.000+08:00

I recently opened Abby’s coin banks and took away her collection of P.05’s, P.10’s and P.25’s after hearing the news that so much of these coins have been “saved”, there isn’t much left circulating around.

Now, before anyone starts thinking how patriotic I am by wanting to spare the government from spending P.80 centavos for each P.05 centavo coin made, and nominates me for membership in the gallery of nationalistic martyrs … well, that’s only my second consideration. My foremost concern actually is the preservation of my own equanimity. You see, one of the things that are guaranteed to raise my hackles is getting shortchanged, and I’ve been getting a lot of that long before that news came out.

Cang’s is particularly notorious for this practice some time ago. I’ve had enough of my change lacking as much as P.15 centavos each time I’d buy from them, I finally demanded an explanation. You see, my thinking goes along these lines: Since I’m paying the exact price being demanded for the merchandise I’m purchasing, I expect to receive the exact change due to me! Is that too much to expect?

About two or three years ago, when I demanded for that explanation, the cashier at Cang’s answered dismissively that they didn’t have the coins. The lady did not even bother to glance up as she spoke to me. With my blood pressure shooting up to record heights, I said, “So … you don’t have P.05 centavo coins? I can help you with that!”

I marched to Veteran’s Bank and had a P20.00 bill converted to P.05 centavo coins. (Looking back, I should have made it P100 or better still P500, but on second thoughts, that would be too heavy, or most likely, I didn’t have that much money at that time. Knowing me, I would have gone for the P500 if I had that amount right there and then!)

Needless to say, I went back, got something and paid with my plastic-full of P.05 coins with a parting shot: “There! Now you can give the right change to all the customers!”

That incident also got me started at counting my change to make sure that I’m given the right amount. I always call cashiers’ attention to any mistake, whether it is to my advantage or the stores’. I once gave back P50.00 excess change. The cashier practically grabbed it from me without a word. I sighed wondering where good manners have gone.

Two months ago, I almost lost P1.00 in a single day: shortchanged by P.25 at Lee and by P.75 at Fortune Mart. No big deal to most, but it mattered to me.

I’ve heard comments like “singko ra bitaw”, the point being, “why bother?” What is it with these kinds of people anyway? Is it a matter of pride? That being seen making tilok (scrapping the bottom of the barrel) of the lowly singko s'tabos might risk being thought of as destitute?

Or do we simply have too much we can’t be bothered with singko anymore, or diez or biente singko for that matter? Don’t we all know that there can’t be a million without even one centavo?

If you’re a student living in anticipation of your next allowance, try this: see if inadvertently finding a single piso won’t send you singing praises when you’re down to your last singko pisos, with next allowance not due for two more days.

With conditions as they are now, I am sure that the public would understand if stores are unable to give exact change. However, I demand that storeowners should train their cashiers to take the time to explain their lack of coins and to ask if it was all right with the customer concerned.

Indeed, there are those who’d ask if you had P.35 or P2.85 and so on (so it is easier for them to give a round change), but we still see plenty who’d just casually hand over change that’s a few centavos short, fully expecting the customer to accept meekly like the proverbial lamb.

This should change. Consumers, we should be more vigilant and assertive of our rights.

Storeowners, teach your employees Good Manners and Right Conduct. That’s basic.

She makes my heart happy!

2007-06-20T09:46:00.000+08:00

That's Powpee ... Abby's baby. She refers to herself as Powpee's Mommy. Of course, that makes me the Lola (grandma)!!!

We got this mixed Pomeranian for Abby two and a half years ago when she saw a falling star and started wishing for a puppy.

At five years old then, we wanted her to go on believing that the world still held wonders such as falling stars and tooth fairies.

She named her puppy herself, Pow-Pee ... because she was always pooing and peeing ... see?

Next to Abby (or is it Abby next to her?), Powpee is the most adored member of the household! Even my husband cannot resist her charms.

Too bad she eats mostly inun-unan, that's fish cooked in vinegar, salt, and garlic. That made her breath deadly!!! But we love her nonetheless! We just don't encourage her to open her cute little mouth when she lies down like that on our laps :)

My Southdale Separation Blues

2007-06-16T12:48:00.000+08:00

In Southdale, children are loved. We parents did not have to worry about sweaty backs or messed up hairs - their teachers would take care of those concerns for us. And they do not leave the school until all the children have been picked up! I wholeheartedly miss all that!

I equally miss the friendship and camaraderie that formed among us parents and between us and school personnel. I miss seeing my friends Teacher Maru and Tita Chedette everyday!

So why did we transfer Abby to another school?

As with any other organization or thing or endeavor or in everything else in life, we experience dissatisfaction and we complain - we had these in Southdale, too - but these, by themselves, would not have caused us to decide to transfer elsewhere.

Rather, let me state the most important ones, ones that have become our foremost reasons for making our painful move.

- Firstly, we wanted Abby brought up with Catholic principles and values under the guidance of the nuns;

- secondly, we wanted her educated under the discipline and structure that Catholic schools provide;

- and finally, we want to toughen her up by allowing her to continue growing in an environment where she is not so pampered or cuddled; where she has to learn to swim or sink - in other words, get her used to living in the real world, where one does not always find warmth and care; where more often than not, there is indifference and one has to fend off for one's self alone - no more loving angels to watch over one's back; and where one has to move, not at one's own pace, but at the pace that the majority is moving, or be left behind!

In a nutshell, we believe that Abby will be more likely to develop strength of character in a tougher environment, where there is competition and where she gets to meet and learn to deal with people and fellow children from all walks of life;

- and in a place where things are not being taken cared of for her any longer, we hope that she will learn to get by under her own efforts and initiative;

- in a place where one has to assert one's self to get noticed or heard, we hope that she will develop competiveness and assertiveness, a toughness in spirit, and a steely determination to get whatever she is aiming for - for in the harsh world that awaits her when she grows up, one gets ahead only with these qualities.

After all, we parents have been through all those as we were growing up, and those were what made us who and what we are now. If we have risen from humble beginnings, we did so because we had the drive and the character to do so. We particularly did not want Abby to grow up soft and without any motivation whatsoever to reach up for something better, specifically because everything has been laid out for her.

Of course, we want these tempered with the right values that we, her parents, and with the help of her school, hope would be instilled in her - love and compassion for others.

I know that that's a tall order - but hey! if we have to dream for our children, we might as well aim for the best!

But I still do miss, sincerely and with all my heart, the loving and caring my baby would have received in Southdale.

In her old school, Abby developed into a beautiful, smart, confident, and caring individual. Academically, she can hold her ground with the best there is! Under Southdale's tutelage, English became her first language and Abby can't be cowered into silence when faced by foreigners! She will take them on as easily as she would any other person she would meet, Filipino or not!

I will always be grateful for that and I will acknowledge that everywhere and at all times!

Small Town Blues

2007-06-15T22:19:00.003+08:00

A view of our beautiful Rizal Boulevard

Perdices Street - the center of commerce - home to SuperLee Plaza, Cang's Department Store, Nijosa, Mart One, Unitop, and Tops and Bottoms! Practically all the "major" stores in Dumaguete. Together, they provide us Dumagueteños with our basic day-to-day needs.

I fell in love with Dumaguete from the first moment I stepped into her shores. There and then, I promised myself that I would make her my home. True enough, here I am!

I love living under this small town atmosphere. Dumaguete offers just enough of our needs, especially good schools for our children to thrive in. We have restaurants, sufficiently equipped hospitals, cable TV, internet access, lots of mountains and beaches, and of course, stores that have a little of almost everything … and that was what gave me the rankles recently … that “little of everything” part.

I was never very particular with the things that I buy for my family, so I never minded having limited choices available to me, compared for instance, to what Cebu, Bacolod or Manila have to offer. But entire Dumaguete running out of girls’ undershirts under size 30??? I almost cried out of frustration as I hopped from one store or another. I even tried the ones off the beaten track to no avail.

But how did I get into this predicament in the first place? My fault, actually, but excusable due to ignorance, I hope. Let me backtrack a bit.

We transferred my daughter to Catherina Cittadini (St. Louis) School because her father and I wanted Catholic education for her. I got my introduction to Real World 101 when school opened last June 4. I was overwhelmed seeing for the first time that heaving mass of children hurrying around in all directions.

(Of course, I see that sight every time I’d pass by Silliman Elem or any other elementary school for that matter, but the difference lies between just looking as against actually seeing something because you are already living it, having become a part of that world.)

My culture shock could possibly be explained by the fact that Abby spent four years in a school with only fifty or so students. I got my first ever case of separation jitters (not Abby, but ME!), when I found myself hesitant about leaving my baby all alone among strangers in that big world. Unlike Southdale where the teachers knew each child and would greet them each day with smiles and huge hugs (Oh! how I miss that!!! Whenever I'd think of big hugs, I'd see Teacher Shwa with her arms around frighten little children!), this new world we have ventured in lacked the warmth and familiarity that we have become accustomed to.

But I’m digressing here. Let’s forget my separation blues and get back to my small town blues. It started when I caught sight of those enormous box bags that more than half of the student population lug behind them. They simply were too heavy and too bulky to eyes that were used to seeing only Teddy, a towel, and a water tumbler inside Abby’s tiny schoolbag. (In Southdale, books and notebooks did not have to be brought home.)

I immediately told my husband that Cittadini children looked like they were going abroad with all those "luggages" they were heaving around!! I dismissed it as a fad or trend that the children were seriously into. Little did I know that those huge bags were a necessity, with all the books and notebooks that have to be brought to and from school each day.

I got tired of seeing Abby off to school with two bags (not to mention hurrying back to the house when one bag got left behind) so off I went to the SuperLee, and Mart One, and guess what? Nada. No more box bags for girls! There was one left at Cang’s though, but at P2,000.00 (US$36.00, more or less), it was obscenely expensive!

I could not afford it right there and then. When I finally went back, it was gone. I hunched my shoulders and wearily trotted off to Nijosa, not really expecting much, but … Alleluia! … they still had 3 box bags left! I should have taken time to reflect: how come they’re still there when others sold like hot pancakes in the other stores? Yeah! You guessed it right! Those Illustrazio bags were even more obscenely priced than that one in Cang’s!

That was when I first realized that blissful Dumaguete is not that heavenly after all when one needs something it cannot provide. How I wished I were in Cebu or Manila. That wish stayed on when life found me hunting for the next item in the list … that cursed undershirt that I did not know was part of the new school’s required get up. I started with oh-so-high standards; aiming for cotton soft sandos I wanted Abby to have. Finding none of them, my standards went down a notch and I decided to settle for Guitar brands instead … and lower and lower they went … until I was down to praying, "Lord, please help me find size 28 sandos … maski unsa na lang Lord basta gamay!"

Then there’s the case of the girls’ panty shorts. Would you believe we could buy panty shorts for little girls only at SuperLee? And that only Barbizon carries that product line? Of course, they’ve run out of stock … again!

Next in my list were Burlington girl socks similar to the one Tita Nini Cabrera bought for her daughter Cody. They were soft and dainty and the garter does not leave marks around the ankles like the alligator brand socks that I got for Abby. I started hunting for those and found them sold only at SuperLee! This time, I got lucky. I snatched up the last 6 pairs.

When Tita Nini went back to SuperLee to buy more of the same socks … oh well … I wanted to say to her, "Sorry! But what did you expect? You are in Dumaguete! No shoppers’ heaven here."

Filipinos: A Look into Ourselves

2007-06-12T07:47:00.000+08:00

A VERY INTERESTING PERSPECTIVE: In one of the luncheons he hosted recently for clients of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., Ambassador Alfonso T. Yuchengco asked the writer Francisco Sionil Jose to share some of his observations of the current scene. This is the paper Mr. Jose read on that occasion.

What did South Korea look like after the Korean War in 1953? Battered, poor - but look at Korea now. In the Fifties, the traffic in Taipei was composed of bicycles and Army trucks, the streets flanked by tile-roofed low buildings. Jakarta was a giant village and Kuala Lumpur a small village surrounded by jungle and rubber plantations. Bangkok was criss-crossed with canals, the tallest structure was the Wat Arun, the Temple of the Sun, and it dominated the city's skyline. Rice fields all the way from Don Muang airport - then a huddle of galvanized iron-roofed bodegas, to the Victory monument.

Visit these cities today and weep - for they are more beautiful, cleaner and prosperous than Manila. In the Fifties and Sixties we were the most envied country in Southeast Asia. Remember further that when Indonesia got its independence in 1949, it had only 114 university graduates compared to the hundreds of Ph.D.'s which were already in our universities. Why then were we left behind? The economic explanation is simple. We did not produce cheaper and better products.

The basic question really is: why we did not modernize fast enough and thereby doomed our people to poverty? This is the harsh truth about us today. Just consider these: some 15 years ago a survey showed that half of all grade school pupils dropped out after grade 5 because they had no money to continue schooling. Thousands of young adults today are therefore unable to find jobs. Our natural resources have been ravaged and they are not renewable.

Our tremendous population increase eats up all of our economic gains. There is hunger in this country now; our poorest eat only once a day.

But this physical poverty is really not as serious as the greater poverty that afflicts us and this is the poverty of the spirit. Why then are we poor? More than ten years ago, James Fallows, editor of the Atlantic Monthly came to the Philippines and wrote about our damaged culture which, he asserted, impeded our development. Many disagreed with him but I do find a great deal of truth in his analysis.

This is not to say that I blame our social and moral malaise on colonialism alone. But we did inherit from Spain a social system and an elite that, on purpose, exploited the masses. Then, too, in the Iberian peninsula, to work with one's hands is frowned upon and we inherited that vice as well. Colonialism by foreigners may no longer be what it was, but we are now a colony of our own elite.

We are poor because we are poor - this is not a tautology. The culture of poverty is self-perpetuating. We are poor because our people are lazy. I pass by a slum area every morning -dozens of adults do nothing but idle, gossip and drink.

We do not save. Look at the Japanese and how they save in spite of the fact that the interest given them by their banks is so little. They work very hard too.

We are great show-offs. Look at our women, how overdressed, over-coiffed they are, and Imelda epitomizes that extravagance. Look at our men, their manicured nails, their personal jewelry, their diamondrings. Yabang - that is what we are, and all that money expended on status symbols, on yabang. How much better if it were channeled into production.

We are poor because our nationalism is inward looking. Under its guise we protect inefficient industries and monopolies.

We did not pursue agrarian reform like Japan and Taiwan. It is not so much the development of the rural sector, making it productive and a good market as well. Agrarian reform releases the energies of the landlords who, before thereform, merely waited for the harvest. They become entrepreneurs, the harbingers of change. Our nationalist icons like Claro M. Recto and Lorenzo Tanada opposed agrarian reform, the single most important factor that would have altered the rural areas and lifted the peasant from poverty. Both of them were merely anti-American.

And finally, we are poor because we have lost our ethical moorings. We condone cronyism and corruption and we don't ostracize or punish the crooks in our midst. Both cronyism and corruption are wasteful but we allow their practice because our loyalty is to family or friend, not to the larger good.

We can tackle our poverty in two very distinct ways. The first choice: a nationalist revolution, a continuationof the revolution in 1896. But even before we can use violence to change inequities in our society, we must first have a profound change in our way of thinking, in our culture. My regret about EDSA is that change would have been possible then with a minimum of bloodshed. In fact, a revolution may not be bloody at all if something like EDSA would present itself again. Or a dictator unlike Marcos.

The second is through education, perhaps a longer and more complex process. The only problem is that it may take so long and by the time conditions have changed, we may be back where we were, caught up with this tremendous population explosion which the Catholic Church exacerbates in its conformity with doctrinal purity.

We are faced with a growing compulsion to violence, but even if the communist won, they will rule as badly because they will be hostage to the same obstructions in our culture, the barkada, the vaulting egos that sundered the revolution in 1896, the Huk revolt in 1949-53.

To repeat neither education nor revolution can succeed if we do not internalize new attitudes, new ways of thinking.

Let us go back to basics and remember those American slogans: A Ford in every garage. A chicken in every pot. Money is like fertilizer: to do any good it must be spread around. Some Filipinos, taunted wherever they are, are shamed to admit they are Filipinos.

I have, myself, been embarrassed to explain for instance why Imelda, her children and the Marcos cronies are back, and in positions of power?

Are there redeeming features in our country that we can be proud of? Of course, lots of them. When people say for instance that our corruptionwill never be banished, just remember that Arsenio Lacson as mayor ofManila and Ramon Magsaysay as President brought a clean government.

We do not have the classical arts that brought Hinduism and Buddhism to continental and archipelagic Southeast Asia, but our artists have now ranged the world, showing what we have done with Western art forms, enriched with our own ethnic traditions. Our professionals, not just our domestics, are all over, showing how an accomplished people we are!

Look at our history. We are the first in Asia to rise against Western colonialism, the first to establish a republic. Recall the Battle of Tirad Pass and glory in the heroism of Gregorio Del Pilar and the 48 Filipinos who died but stopped the Texas Rangers from capturing the President of that First Republic. Its equivalent in ancient history is the Battle of Thermopylae where the Spartans and their king Leonidas, died to a man, defending the pass against the invading Persians.

Rizal - what nation on earth has produced a man like him? At 35, he was a novelist, a poet, an anthropologist, a sculptor, a medical doctor, a teacher and martyr.

We are now 80 million and in another two decades we will pass the 100 million mark. Eighty million - that is a mass market in any language, a mass market that should absorb our increased production in goods and services - a mass market which any entrepreneur can hope to exploit, like the proverbial oil for the lamps of China. Japan was only 70 million when it had confidence enough and the wherewithal to challenge the United States and almost won. It is the same confidence that enabled Japan to flourish from the rubble of defeat in World War II.

I am not looking for a foreign power for us to challenge. But we have a real and insidious enemy that we must vanquish, and this enemy is worse than the intransigence of any foreign power.

We are our OWN ENEMY. And we must have the COURAGE, the WILL, to CHANGE OURSELVES.

The Donkey

2007-06-11T16:24:00.001+08:00

One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do.

Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn't worth it to retrieve the donkey. He invited all his neighbours to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well.

At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone's amazement he quieted down.

A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing.

He would shake it off and take a step up. As the farmer's neighbours continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up.

Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!

MORAL :Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up.

Each of our troubles is a steppingstone.

We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.

Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

1. Free your heart from hatred - Forgive.
2. Free your mind from worries - Most never happen.
3. Live simply and appreciate what you have.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less

This story was forwarded to me by email. I was so inspired by it I decided to share it with everybody who would stumble into this blog. It tells of turning life's adversaries into one's own advantage, of rising above one's own difficulties ... Be inspired, as I was by the simple but profound lesson that it told.

Remembering David Atwood

2007-06-10T16:23:00.000+08:00

He embraced life with all the joy and enthusiasm of a child; in their four short years together, he showered his wife Caye with all the love that will last her a lifetime; he was a fiercely proud father who strove to see only the best in his children; he fell trying to defend his daughter from a brutal attacker and took the blows that would have been for her; he fought valiantly for that life that he loved so much, and he fought long and hard before he lost; he touched the lives of many Filipinos and they were all the better because of him. That is the David Atwood I will always remember.

I met David through this column. It is but fitting that I’d say goodbye to him here.

I never expected having this column would bring me such a sweet reward as having David for a friend. He was truly a sweet Welsh gentleman who came to the Philippines in his twilight years to marry a widow with five children. He took them into his heart, Caye and all, made them his own.

He first emailed me last December after reading an article I wrote with which he identified with. We became cyber friends since then. What would have been our first meeting turned into a comedy of errors when he invited me a day earlier for the Christmas party that his family was having. He lamented saying … “Olga, what can I say? I am 70 years old. Please forgive this old man.”

We regularly chatted online and discussed almost everything under the sun. But mostly, he despaired over us Filipinos. He saw so much promised in us and was bewildered at our stubborn refusal to better ourselves. These sessions were almost always ended when he would write … “I have to go now Olga. Caye just woke up and I have to cook her breakfast. She is so beautiful even early in the morning. I love her so much.”

And that’s the David I will always remember with the most affection … the passionate and devoted husband who still wrote and hid love notes for Caye to find among her things even after four years of marriage.

David is no longer with us. What would have been his last words? I knew him only for a very short while, but I knew him well enough to know that if he could, he would want to say these to all of us, most especially to his beloved Caye –

Don’t grieve for me, for now I’m free
I’m following the path God laid for me
I took His hand when I heard Him call
I turned my back and left it all.

I could not stay another day
To laugh, to love, to work or play
Tasks left undone must stay that way
I found that place at the close of the day.

If my parting has left a void
Then fill it with remembered joy
A friendship shared, a laugh, a kiss
Ah yes, these things I too will miss.

Be not burdened with times of sorrow
I wish you the sunshine of tomorrow
My life’s been full, I savored much
Good friends, good times, a loved one’s touch.

Perhaps my time seemed all too brief
Don’t lengthen it now with undue grief
Lift up your heart and share with me
God wanted me now, He set me free.

David Atwood died in Wales. His daughter Jayne will be sending his ashes to Caye. There will be a memorial to celebrate his life. As he requested, his ashes will then be scattered in his favorite places here in Dumaguete.