My view from the top of the world...

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

class reunion

Mga klasmets,

Ti rigya ang pirambilog nga pictures kang aton alumni homecoming. Mangita pa ako iba. Nalimtan gid namon magpa-buol picture kay tama gid kasadya. Ang group pic nga diya urihi ron madumduman. Ti mayad man tshirt ta? Siyempre ako nag-design.

Si Veronica Salinga gali ang muse ta. Baw grabe gid tumbo nya kay naka-muse ron tana. Handom niya gid halin hi-skol nga ma-muse tana. Ti marikulkul pa gid tana eh.

Salamat gid sa tanan nga nag-contribute para magsadya man ang aton homecoming. Sa sunod ibutang ko ang listahan ka mga nag-atend.

Sa mga waay ka-atend, ti kitaay ta sa sunod ah. Happy grey hairs!

Pls click on pics to enlarge.

Friday, April 10, 2009

The next generation of astigs

Call it the improvement of your angkan. If you can't make it during your time, be sure your children carry on the baton for you. And succeed where you miserably failed.

This is the story of many of our classmates. Grabe gid handom nanda mag-valedictorian. O mag-honorablemention man lang. Pero daw di gid kaya. Kahit ano pang klase ang gagawing pagsusunog ng kilay.

The past hohor roll only had names like Aurora, Henry, Roselle, Bambi, Helen, and Marilen. It had no names like Edward, Lydia, Ephraim, Magdaleno, nor Gemma.

Ti, ano bala natabo kay Edward M, he with the short semi-atrophied tongue, bcoz kahit name niya di kaya i-pronounce. Kaya tawag sa iya Edwald. Anyway, handom gid niya mag-honor student pero pang section 2 lang gid ang IQ. So after marrying, he schemed night and day to father a would-be valedictorian. Ambot ano ginhimo niya. Siguro ginputos sa encyclopedia or pages of Advance Algebra ang inunlan sang baby niya. O siguro he read the whole of Canterbury Tales and the Legend of Lam-ang, inspite of his atrophied tongue, in front of his infanticipating wife. And presto! His son became the valedictorian of his CNCHS class. Kitam? Di man nakaya ng Tatay, kinaya naman ng anak.

Remember Lydia M, the one with the frizzy hair, dark skin, and motor mouth? She too had hidden valedictory desires. Pero bisan section 1 siya, the IQ had never risen from the level of the average section 1. Kaya kahit anong memorize niya ng Periodic Table, Pythagorean Theorem, and Oh Captain, My Captain, hangang imagination lang talaga ang pagiging valedictorian niya. O delusion. Kahit honorablemention, di niya nasungkit. So just like Edwald, she schemed night and day to conceive a valedictorian. Secret daw niya. Methinks she listened to Beethoven, Mozart and Bach the nine months she was pregnant even if her neighbors thought the sonatas were funeral hymns heard only in the funeral parlors of Crisme, Puga, and Baylon. Pero success naman. Her son was the valedictorian of his CNCHS class. Lydia is now prim and proper, minus the frizzy hair and motor mouth. Daw Nanay gid kang valedictorian.

Si Paray, aka Efraim P, may pabugal man. Salutatorian ang bata niya sa Regular Class. Hiposun lang si Paray sang hayskol. Pero grabe bunal. He married young sa isa ka beauty sa lower year. Possibly, they too attended seminars and yoga sessions on how to make an intellectual from their so-so genes.Probably, they consulted astrologers on how to time their libido with the ripening of their priciest seeds. Or read Shakespeare, or Edgar Allan Poe, or the Atlas before they switched off the lights or before they consumated their desires, whichever came first.

Not to be outdone, Magdaleno I, aka Magdo, also produced bright kids, one of them a Salutatorian. To note, his elder kids are all studying in UP. First time I saw his daughter in an inter-school IQ competition, I could not believe that Magdo was her father. Up to now I still referred to her as Magdo's adopted daughter. Bcoz, during our time, I could not imagine Magdo representing CNCHS in any interschool IQ challenge. Bisan sa contest nga patayog-tayog ihi daw indi gid siya ka-qualify. Pero, back to my opening thesis. I commend Magdo for reading the dictionary cover-to-cover in front of his pregnant wife, and for doing all the rituals sa libro kang mga mal-am to produce honor students because he could not become one during his time.

This observation was only based on the students of Cabatuan National Comprehensive High School. There was no formal study yet, nga pang-thesis sa graduate school, on the children of other classmates who are studying in other schools. It is possible that there are other surprises that await us. I heard that the children of a high school classmate from Barangay Bacan were honor students in the Laboratory School of the West Visayas State University.

BTW, remember Gemma B, the one who was so silent in section 1, she could be mistaken as a mannequin or a cloth thrown over a desk - waay gid abi ga-hambal bisan maglabay pa balabaw sa atubang niya indi gid mag-ek! Poise man gihapon nga gapungko nga daw mannequin. But her son was also a valedictorian in Puyas Barangay High School, was a DOST scholar in college, and he aced the Electrical Engineering board exam on his first try. Gemma could have followed her own ritual to produce such an intellectual. A talk with her mother revealed that since day 1, Gemma hammered on the psyche of her son that she is a close relative of her class valedictorian.

But without rituals, you still can be a father/mother of an intellectual. You got a personality bursting with x-rated hormones, that you can arouse the primal desires of even the most anti-social geeks in school? If you have such a personality, then marry yourself into a family of board topnotchers, summa cum laudes, or academecians wearing horn-rimmed glasses with half-inch thick lenses. It will be hard to adjust in the beginning. But you can always try reading Time and The Economist when your partner or family is around. And switch to jologs komiks and vernacular tabloids na kaya mong intindihin when alone in the toilet.

So, sa mga frustrated valedictorian diyan, if you didn't make it during your time, don't lose hope. Your kids just might clench it, kon ginhimo mo ang ginhimo ni Edwald, et al. If not, your grandkids just might. Or your great grandkids. Mga astig gid. But, frankly, if you happen to be laon, baog, or madre, I rest my case.@

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

ST. CLEMENT'S CHURCH

St. Clement's Church is like an oasis in the desert of the city. Its serene spirituality and simple elegance are welcome respites in the surrounding chaos. It is one of the three places of meditation near Iloilo that I like to visit. The other two are the quaint chapel atop Balaan Bukid, and the simple and quiet Trappist Monastery chapel with a bare rock as an altar. In these three places, I can really feel the spiritual and celestial ambience a church is supposed to offer. In other churches, I am usually awed by the trimmings - the ornate altar, the hodgepodge of images, the unending parade of worshipers, the mendicants and mentally ill who are supposed to be taken cared of by the government - all make a church visit an ambivalent experience.

St. Clement's is famous for its Perpetual Help novena every Wednesday. Many profess that their prayers are answered because of the novena. My mother would not argue.

Mother used to bring me to St. Clement's when I was a kid. She put on her veil (those days women still covered their heads with a veil when they attend a church service) and we had to kneel on the grass outside the church as we could no longer enter because the church was packed with devotees. Mother was pregnant and she prayed that this time she be given a girl. Already with 3 naughty boys borne in a span of five years, mother prayed for a girl in order not to add more chaos to our house. Every Wednesday she attended the novena masses. After a few months, she gave birth to a healthy baby girl. In gratitude, Mother appended Perpetua (in honor of the Perpetual Help) to her new baby's name. Today, my sister loves to hate her long and unusual name.

The Redemptorist Fathers private quarters form the left extension of the church.

Behind the private quarters is the building which was once the St. Clement's College, an exclusive boys' school. After the college folded up, the building was up for rent. It now houses the offices of the Department of Agrarian Reform and the Saviour International College (School of Nursing).

To the right of the church is the entrance to the St. Clement's Retreat House.

When I was a college student, the Sunday evening mass in St. Clement's was the occassion to be seen especially for students who have just arrived from their hometowns. Their clothes were freshly pressed with the fold marks still perceptible. They looked refreshed and healthy after eating homecooked foods as opposed to instant noodles and carinderia fares. Above all the students looked confident because their one-week allowances were still intact with nary a deduction.

Best time to visit St. Clement's Church is from 8:00 am to 9:00 am when only a handful of people are around. If you need to light a candle, there are candle stands to the right and to the left of the front entrance. Candles are available near the stands. No payment are exacted. Only drop a donation, if you feel like it, at the designated boxes.

There are morning and afternoon masses in English and in Ilonggo. @

Friday, February 13, 2009

There's a turtle outside my window

I like watching the NatGeo channel especially the wildlife documentaries. One docu I liked was about the Pacific island of Galapagos where time had seemed to stand still. I especially like the giant turtles crawling over the rocks.

My place is no Galapagos. But there are also turtles, exactly 3, crawling over rocks outside my dining room window. They are native fresh water turtles called bao. I built them rock enclosures so they can not stray away, and a small pond where they can swim and catch guppies when I forget to feed them with bread, fruits, or left over meat.

I started with one turtle, courtesy of my 7yo nephew. His teacher asked him and his classmates to bring a small animal each so they can show everybody the different ways the animals move or walk. I was planning to ask my farmhand to catch some fleas from our resident askal. Or dig for some earthworms, or look for maggots or cockroaches because I know that the teacher would squirm and would just ran away from the class in fright. (I like my nephew to standout in his class. Normal kids don't bring earthworms and maggots to class for show-and-tell. And normal parents don't allow their kids to bring earthworms and maggots to their teachers. Or I have to rephrase that. Parents don't normally allow their kids to bring earthworms and maggots to their teachers. There. It sounds less of a mental retardation.) However, a turtle was given to my nephew as his pet. After the show-and-tell, I adopted the turtle so it can live a happy normal life in our garden.

Later, Tita Au gave me baoB so that baoA will have company. But they just ignored each other. So my farmhand gave me baoC, but still they ignored each other. I was hoping that they will turn our garden into their version of little paradise as they fall in love and produce little baos. But no. They just ignored each other. The little fights which I presumed as courtship dances were actually real fights. They fought over food and space and continued to ignore each other. I asked my kids to research via internet on how to tell the sexes of the turtles. So far, no result.

One time my sister shouted that there were snakes in the garden. She knew there were turtles. But seeing a turtle from the neck up, without seeing the body, it really looked like a snake. Or a specie of reptilia that is about to sow terror in your yard. So I cleared the garden of pots and big stones that may impede the view of the turtle's body.

Meantime, the turtles crawled over rocks outside my window. And I remembered Galapagos.