Scribblings Beside a River of Ideas. | |
Featured at www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on March 25, 2008 DURING THE DATES November 25-27, 2007 three phenomena occurred inside the Philippines. It gave me goose chills for these series of events were unprecedented in meteorological and climatic history in this part of the world that gave rise to the suspicion that climate change have now reared its fearsome effect upon us.
First of these were the appearance of three tropical storms, all at the same time, within the Philippine area of responsibility. Storm “Lando”, which was in the process of exiting the country after wrecking havoc over Central Philippines in its westerly route the week before; storm “Mina”, which got stalled at the vicinity of Catanduanes Island packing 175 kph winds; and storm “Nonoy”, following the trail of “Mina”.
The second phenomenon was the circling dance of the storms “Mina” and “Lando” in what the meteorologists termed as the Fujiwara Effect. This climatic oddity was first observed by Dr. Katsuo Fujiwara in 1902 in Japan, for which name was eventually attributed to him. The stronger “Mina” seemed to have siphoned off the weaker “Lando” causing the latter to change direction in a semi-circle and reversed back to where it came!
Then, for a preview of worse things to come, the sea water, spawned on by the gravity pull of a full moon and a storm surge, rose to an unprecedented level. In the Mactan Shrine of Lapulapu City (site of the Magellan and Lapulapu monuments), what always used to be dry land, suddenly, got inundated with sea water while seafood restaurants erected on stilts on the seashore nearby saw their floorings being flooded for the first time.
At Cebu City, sea walls located at the villages of Ermita and Pasil, where engulfed by large sea swells causing four houses to float and being removed from their foundations. Elsewhere in other parts of the Visayas and Northern Mindanao, hundreds of families were evacuated to safer grounds as big waves rose to great heights destroying their homes.
Fortunately though, the attempted putsch of Trillanes et al at the Manila Peninsula Hotel in the financial district of Makati which came at a later date (November 29) after bolting out from their guards from the middle of a court hearing did not classify as a phenomenon even though the possibility of a lunar interference which, sometimes, a full moon does to a body of flexible matter like fluids or of a living organism or creature whose body mass contained fluid-like attributes, causes it to move or act in a strange and radical manner, which that attempted power grab episode seemed to indicate.
 It is a political absurdity though that occurs now and then up there in Manila that usually get a good exposure by an equally comical media that, altogether, makes the market barometer stick gyrating and shaking up and down crazily in the Philippine Stock Exchange.
Even though we in the south are isolated from those political troubles affecting the National Capital Region, still, tremors caused by those events affect us down here in the provinces. Politically, we're immune to the turmoil up there and life goes on here oblivious of the drama, but what got our goat is when those foolishness occur prices of basic commodities would go berserk in the provinces without our doing and, most of the time, fundings for projects would halt to a trickle and national basic services would drag in a wait-and-see attitude.
And why does Cebu, the rest of the Visayas and Mindanao suffer the same fate every time clowns do their thing up there in Imperial Manila? I can't find any good answers but just hope and pray that we don't contract the grime and the diseases that they love to wallow in up there.
In the meantime, let's worry more about the wrath of nature.
Document done in OpenOffice 2.1 Writer, Trebuchet MS font, size 12.
LINUX (lae-noks, lee-nooks, lye-noks, lye-nooks), in whatever way you pronounced it, is the most beautiful word in the English language in use today, or of any other tongue that may have adapted it in their vocabulary. It is beyond ethnic, religious and ideological doctrines and borders. It is convergence in itself, fusing differences in patent, licensing and cost. For Linux is synonymous with freedom and liberation. Freedom of use. Freedom of making Linux work for you. Freedom of cost.
Freedom also from the bondage that Microsoft is exerting upon ordinary users. Linux is that sword that shall set us free against that kind of oppression on the desktop front. A double-edged sword at that.
Tech guys associated with using Microsoft Windows for years and who shuddered at the thought of working in a Windows-less environment just laughed at us people who wanted to use open source operating systems like Linux reasoning that Windows is a much better OS platform, technically and user-friendly wise. Yes, that could be true two or three years ago, but, not anymore.
Linux has evolved into so many different distros and in different versions in such a pace that one version is obsolete by a half year's time with another newer version released. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) environment with which Windows has dominated for years and which it had relied upon as benchmark for market dominance has been shrinking as newer Linux versions began to behave Windows-like but, unmistakably, retaining that effervescent Linux signature – the all pervading FREEDOM. Which is what Linux is all about.
When you talk about Linux, you will also talk about security. How secure is Linux from malicious software, from internet worms and from virus? To tell you the truth, no software is invulnerable to these kind of threats but the chances of it infiltrating on a desktop running on a Linux OS platform is lesser than what is one having a Windows would have experienced. It's almost nil. That's how hard it is for malware writers to crack open Linux codes than for them to crack one with Windows.
But, for sure, there will come a time when they find cracking Windows open a boring and witless preoccupation and turn their enthusiasm and creative damage at Linux instead. By that time, newer and better Linux versions would have been miles away from their harm as it is evolving and developing at warp-speed beyond that of any proprietary software company's idea and capability.
In all my 40 years or something living as a resident of Cebu City,  a metropolis in southern Philippines; I have never found, except one, of a semi-permanent and conspicuous advertisement billboard wherein Linux is offered as one of a computer-related business' services. Though I find many such advertisements in newspapers, magazines and websites; but never in such a prominent place and on a real and analog structure.
What amused me though is that Linux is placed prominently above that of  Windows and it is not alphabetically arranged either. And to think that Cebu is a market dominated 99.8% by Microsoft where they poured out millions of pesos here just for advertisements and perks on all PC and software distributors and stores just to keep their iron grip here. But not all.
The billboard is found on Governor Cuenco Avenue (the old Banilad Road) corner Paradise Village Road in Barangay Kasambagan. The owners, perhaps, have foreseen the prominence with which Linux would affect the desktop world and the Internet in the near future and have, in the process, preconditioned the arrival of Linux in this part of the world by putting up this sign. Or perhaps, they are just unaware of things to come and, by chance, some typo error have robbed the other of that order of importance. Whichever that may be.
We do like to own personal desktops with something like Windows or a Mac OS X running in it, don't we? But, it does take a small fortune to invest  in having one. I, myself, could not afford it. So are my workmates and my neighbors. I have solved that predicament by switching my use to that of Ubuntu Linux and I am quite comfortable with it. Or let's just say, that I was quite desperate then. Or delirious. Whatever it is or was, Ubuntu OS rocks so well with my tune!
I need not have to elaborate. It is for you to find out. Though we are a third world country, it doesn't mean that we don't deserve something good and, at the same time, free like Linux, do we? Do you? Linux is open source technology's gift to mankind. And don't they say that “all good things in life are those that are given free”?
Document done in OpenOffice 2.1 Writer, Trebuchet MS font, size 12.
¡Ola, señoritas y señoritos!
Richard Salsbury (I don’t know if you have heard of him, I haven’t), an English author of award-winning short stories, articles and essays; developed RoughDraft, purposely designed for writers like him. It is freeware: meaning, you don’t have to pay a cent to own one. It is downloadable from Mr. Salsbury’s site at http://www.richardsalsbury.com. It is only available for Windows 95, 98, Millenium, NT, 2000 and XP and it will only cause a slight dent on your hard disk space because it is only 1.25 Mb in size.
RoughDraft Version 3.0 was released last April 2005. It has features specifically designed for creative writing: novels, short stories, articles, plays and screenplays although it could be suited for general use. It's designed to be as practical as possible, offering all the features you need, but without being complicated or awkward to use.
It has a special mode feature which allows you to choose screenplay, stage or radio play, prose or normal writing. You could format the paragraphs into that of single-line spacing, 1.5 line or double-line spacing; like that of a typewriter’s! It is equipped with tools for dictionary, spellcheck, word count, calculator and could convert straight quotes into curly quotes and vice versa. Help feature will let you access internet reference like Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com, Dictionary.com, OneLook Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Quotez and RhymeZone; as well as download dictionaries.
Saving of files is in Rich Text Format and Text (*.rtf and *.txt) and it could be opened up in just any of the existing word processors available. RoughDraft is not designed to compete with major commercial word processors and does not provide the following features like a full page view for editing, indexes and tables of contents, tables, pictures, footnotes and a grammar checker.
It has a side panel that could not be removed but could be transferred either left or right depending on your choice. It contains a writing pad and special characters that could be inserted into your articles. You could access other RoughDraft files from there and could open said files in a tabbed page style (a la Mozilla Firefox) instead of a separate page .
There are many features and add-ons that I haven’t yet dissected right here and it is for you to discover and enjoy. For me, I have reached the end of my journey of finding a good word processor that is compatible to me and to any word applications software that is comprehensive yet simple and very light on my hard disk space.
Ciao!
Document done in RoughDraft 3.0, Trebuchet MS font, size 12.
Featured on January 16, 2008 at Blogger. MOUNT PANGASUGAN (5,650 feet above sea level) is the first adventure  trek which I had with the Cebu Mountaineering Society or CeMS. At that time, I was not yet a member but trying out to be one and on July 31, 1992 we left Pier 3, Cebu Harbor on board M/V “Pink Rose” for Baybay, Leyte at 8:00 in the evening to achieve one of the many requirements for membership with a major climb at Mt. Pangasugan, with or without a typhoon.
My rag-tag gear then were composed of a cheap day pack, which I hurriedly bought for this trip, a borrowed A-type tent, a borrowed “Mickey Mouse” sleeping bag for kids and a borrowed pair of work boots resoled with threaded tire. (You know what, that shoe really held its own against expensive and branded trek boots in the treacherous terrain of Pangasugan.)
Stuffed inside my pack and within its four different pockets were the tent, twelve assorted canned goods, four t-shirts, a pair of shorts, a pair of jogging pants, 2-1/2 kilos of uncooked rice, a kilo of cooked rice, a sweatshirt, a Minolta 110 camera, a loaf of bread, 2 one-liter bottled water, a plate, a cup, fork and spoon, three noodle packs, packets of coffee, sugar and powdered juice, a small Eveready flashlight with two AA batteries and a pair of flip-flops.
The sleeping bag I fastened above and outside of the cover flap of my pack in a Boy Scout manner. Man, it was heavy and I thought that the shoulder straps would give way, but, thanks to God, it held fast for the duration of the climb. I carried a plastic insulated 500 ml. water drinking jug which I slung around my neck which was quite heavy and moved like a pendulum as I walked. I looked goofy with my gear and I stood out among my peers, who carried or wore branded backpacks, gears and equipment all suited for the sport of mountaineering.
 We arrived at dawn of August 1 at the quay of Baybay and proceeded by bus for the Visayas State College of Agriculture (VISCA – now the Leyte State University) from whence Mt. Pangasugan is within its exclusive administrative domain. We started off by 8:00 in the morning and what was an otherwise a promising and golden sunrise turned later into a gloomy state as dark stormy clouds generated by an oncoming tropical depression began to appear on the horizon.
With mixed feelings, I trudged on along the upward jungle trail following the long line of seventeen members of CeMS and fourteen from the VISCA Outdoors & Recreation Group (VORG), led by Mr. Toto Antopina. Our guide then was Manoy Berting, a former CAFGU, a para-military civilian-volunteer component of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) tasked to fight communist insurgents. (Mind you, the area that we will intrude into is not yet cleared of armed communist fighters and a week before that an encounter between CAFGUs and these red fighters resulted in casualties on both sides.)
After an hour and a half of walking, I and Manoy Berting reached a rare clearing in an area otherwise abundant of very thick foliage of diptherocarps and undergrowths. This clearing is criss-crossed by several giant fallen old logs and some old giants stood by to give shade with their high branches. We both rested here and then others arrived and did likewise.
Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a fully-grown Philippine great eagle 
appeared from below these branches gliding. So majestic it came to my direction and I noticed the ground where I sat dimmed as he neared, whose spread wings I estimated, could be seven feet, more or less. So near I could almost touch his talons and as he passed by me he left a lone feather that fell exactly where my hand was. It was so perfect and I was so awed and so shocked that I was not able to scramble and draw out my camera from my bag in time! Looking up to see where the eagle has gone to, I never knew where it went. It just went pffft!...gone!...disappeared!
The presence of my eagle only affirms the rich bio-diversity of the area in and around Pangasugan. Calls by a multitude number of hornbills echoed and reverberated on the mountainsides like a running machine and have added to the staccato of countless other bird and insect sounds and bleats of wild deer. Amid that cacophony of pleasant noise there were fresh droppings of deer and wild boar, as well as, molted skins of all sorts of scaly creatures like monitor lizards and snakes.
Carrying my prized feather in my bonnet we trekked on higher ground and, by noon, we reached a grassy clearing on the top of Mount Guintangisan and stopped by for a quick lunch. I passed by three resting CeMS guys: Bebut Estillore, Tony Cabigon the CeMS president and Patrick Ng; and one of them requested me to carry an extra luggage – two Tanduay Rhum 375 ml. bottles – to my already bursting day pack, to ease Patrick from some load, who appeared to be greatly fatigued.
We then traversed a saddle and up a ridge then down to a brook where we pitched our tents for the night. I, however, never used my borrowed tent because there was no ground for the tent's stakes to be pierced into and, mostly, I'm a bit embarrassed seeing others owning tents with names like The North Face, REI, Marmot, and so forth. Miraculously, it never rained on that day and on that night, as well!
It seems, on my first day I passed my self-evaluation by consuming only a liter of water, two canned goods and a kilo of the cooked rice; trekking, more or less, 10 kilometers of slippery and precipitous trail and despite the weight on my back which, I doubted, only a few grams had been shed. (Or added. Remember the 2 rum bottles?) How's that for a newbie?
The second day of our trek was hard. The guide lost the trail. He had to hack away at the thick foliage to create one. It was hard work trailblazing. What made it harder is that the vegetation is a lot wilder and thornier and there were no water source. Rattan vines and other thorny thickets abound on the route we created, our clothes and packs got snagged each time a thorn clung and it hurts when your own hide got stuck to it. By this time, people started to complain of thirst, of fatigue, of pain.
There was a breakdown of poise and self-control as the single line became spread out thinly and scattered in groups instead of one continuous line. (It was old-growth jungle and visibility is good only for five meters or less.) Some forgot to take their daytime meals afraid that they might be passed over by others and be left behind. I lunched on my loaf of bread and a canned food and canned juice, happy to relieve of the unwanted weight, but, overdone it by offering one full bottled water to a beautiful lady. Gentleman's habits die hard, don't they?
I was following the guide and thought I had a good head start and took my siesta near a rock overhang, but, I overslept and when I awoken I could hear no more movement or some rustle of vegetation. I called out and I heard a distant reply way, way down below. Getting rattled now as the sun was nearing four in the afternoon, I decided to risk danger by sliding down the mountainside that is overly grown with thick vegetation, including that pesky thorny rattan vines! (I lost my treasured feather here.)
Whew, that was a race that ended in luck for me as I landed in front of Dennis Legaspi, just missing a cliff by a few meters but got tagged with several superficial wounds and scratches on my skin instead. Tough luck! Winded of my travail I almost gulped empty my only remaining bottled water.
After an hour of crawling pace, we ran out of water and some could not move forward anymore due to extreme fatigue caused by dehydration. Luckily, Manoy Berting came back just before sundown for us and carried bottles of “fresh” water to relieve and quench our thirsty throats! I drank a half bottle and shared what's left to others. By that time, it was already dark and I decided to make camp just by my lone self above the trail cradled by a curled root of a giant tree twenty meters behind the forward camp. I ate supper on two canned goods without rice and without water. Lucky me, it had not rained that night.
Feeling refreshed the following day I moved up to the forward camp and, to my dismay, that “fresh” water we drank last night was just a puddle of stagnant, wriggler-infested and debris-filled water in a rock hewn out by spring run-off that went dry. Anyway, it saved my butt and those of others, as well. Hehehe!!!
We were now just a few hundred meters below Mt. Pangasugan's crest and separated by an impenetrable wall of thick vegetation. But, then again, seeing the condition of our companions, we decided to divert our goal – which is Pangasugan's peak – and try to reach for Guinatanguisan river, about two-and-a-half kilometers distant below us, and abundant water! In almost two hours we reached the headwaters of the Guintanguisan and followed it downriver for VISCA and civilization. But, it wasn't easy sailing for us.
Guintanguisan (in Waray dialect it meant “teardrops of pain”) refused to let us go without first negotiating two very high falls having an elevation of around 50 feet, more or less; and five (5) lesser falls having drops of between 20 to 30 feet! In this trek where we never ran out of good fortune: the two highest waterfalls we discovered have the same passages underneath their headrock and both have similar caverns under, or behind, the waterfall itself like that scene of that movie, The Last of the Mohicans!
The five minor falls we either jumped far below (the girls started it) or by rappelling down. Here, Sir Menmen Paredes almost got drowned when the rope he was rappelling with got swirled by the current so hard that the rope coiled and got entangled around his legs and his body leading me and Etche Bongbong to rescue him in time.
We arrived at VISCA at around 3:00 in the afternoon and we rested at its sandy beachfront whiling away time finishing the two bottles of rum (which I carried up in the mountains and back from whence it came!) with Bebut, Patrick, Dennis and Tony; joined now and then by Ben Lao, Matt Lao, Etche, Sir Joe Avellanosa (+), Daddy Frank Cabigon, Dr. Abe Manlawe, Sir Rex Vecina and Sir Menmen and by the ladies: Arlene Lee, Joy Yap, Lilibeth Initan, Ann-ann Ragaza, Anne Vidal and Cla-cla Abrahan.
That misadventure we experienced at the fastness of Mount Pangasugan closely bonded us so well that in the following months that I get to know more of my climbing companions they became almost like family to me, be it huddling inside tents of some bleak and cold campsite or at 16 Kabahar Street, Guadalupe, Cebu City – the CeMS unofficial headquarters then and meeting place and, sometimes, our watering hole.
We slept soundly that night at VISCA and the following day we spent another whole day at the campus nursing our bruises, scratches and minor wounds, leech marks, muscle pains and all other body aches. By 4:00 P.M. we left VISCA for the pier of Baybay to board our boat for Cebu (and home at last!) that will leave Leyte at 6:00 in the evening. In the meantime, I got marked absent for two days in my work. Well, that's okay. It was worth it.
Self Assessment:
THE TREK AT Mount Pangasugan has given me good insights of how to improve on the following areas where I find it most wanting:
-
Better Gears. It doesn't have to be branded or imported and, therefore, expensive; but, rather, it should be sturdy, durable and dependable. But, mostly, cost does have its advantages over cheap gears and that brings me back to square one – the branded and imported ones. -
Big Backpack. The day pack I used, it seemed, is not suited for a multi-day climbing activity. It's just too small and too frail for my frame and pace. I would replace it right away with something big that would accommodate all my gears inside and strong enough to withstand the weight and sudden jerky movements. -
Waterproofing. So far I have been lucky on that climb at Mt. Pangasugan: that it didn't rain for the whole duration of the trek or that the water level in rivers where we trekked have not swelled higher and are not deep enough (crotch level). I have not had the slightest idea about keeping all my cargoes dry by insulating it against water by stowing them inside a large plastic bag that's thick enough to withstand force and pressure. -
Portable Stove. What if I got separated from the group? How would I prepare and cook my own food? This one's a priority. -
Earth Pad. A camping accessory that should not be ignored also. -
Racing Mentality. I kept looking over my back who is following me and too eager also to overtake somebody who's in front of me. I have to teach myself all over again that this is not a race and everybody crosses the finish line as equals, irregardless of who's first or who's last. -
Accountability. Sleeping beside the trail speaks of an irresponsible demeanor. I have never had the idea that the group would be held accountable if ever I would be found missing. I am accountable, not only to myself, but, to the whole group as well.
Document done in OpenOffice 2.1 Writer, Trebuchet MS font, size 12.
Featured at Blogger on February 1, 2008 LAST DECEMBER 2004, WE decided to transfer residence to a new, yet, unfinished house on the same place and on the same address. What used to be an airy space infront of the old house is now occupied by this two-storey steel-and-concrete structure which we now proudly call home.
Said house was started construction last May 2003 and occupies a 40-odd square meters of space, which was then serving as our frontyard and was planted then with acacia, eucalyptus and caimito trees that all gave a cool shade and whose topmost branch and twigs towered that of the old two-storey house.
The old house, which was constructed in 1974, served as a house for rent for many years and a source of income to our family until that great conflagration in our neighborhood at Barangay Tinago on January 1988 did our family utilized it as a temporary home. My family left the place after a new house was constructed in Lahug and I moved in here with my wife on December of that year. Both of my boys were born and reared there.
As we abandon the old place, I decided to demolish it by myself to give us free space which we surrendered many months ago due to the construction of that new house. Only there were no available time for me back then to actively pursue that objective until, only last August 24, 2005, when I was waylaid from work that I did find that very slippery opportunity to do that hard manual task.
9:00 AM, Friday, September 9, 2005. First day of my demolition job. After a short prayer invoking the Lord for strength and wisdom and for my safety, I started for the roof.
There were 25 corrugated G.I. roof sheets of 4-feet by 8-feet dimension attached in a north to south axis on the wooden roof beams by mushroom nails having an east to west arrangement. Most of these nails adhered to the grain of the beams due to time and rust, and the removal of these might need great amounts of pressure which I don’t have the luxury to exert freely at that elevation which is a very precarious one.
There are also sheets of corrugated aluminum roofing that line the edges of the overhanging roof eaves and overlapping the edgemost part the G.I. sheets.
Slowly, I removed each nail by a steel crowbar on every sheet of roofing. Then I removed one sheet at a time. It was slow and painstaking work hampered by heat from the sun which bounced off the metal sheets stinging into your skin and hurting your eyes by its glare.
By dusk I was able to remove 23 of these iron sheets and let it fall to the ground, save for two and those aluminum sheets that are attached at the outer fringes of the roof frame.
Day 2. I removed the last of the G.I. sheets and detached the wooden eaves, letting it fall, along with the aluminum sheets, to the ground. Then I removed the wooden roof beams one by one after which, I pushed down the plywood ceilings and letting it fall to the floor. Then I started to remove the much bigger, longer and heavier wooden (6”x½”x12’) cross-beams; that were placed on a north-south orientation. I was only able to remove two of those before I say it quits when dusk came.
Sunday was a day of obligation to hear Holy Mass at the church and to observe the day of rest.
Monday and Tuesday were raining and on Wednesday it was sunny enough to start the third day. I began by removing away an old cabinet and two wooden double-deck beds for giveaways for my neighbors. My old and tattered big mattress I discarded and disposed of by burning the fabric and its inner foam while giving joy to a passing scavenger with the twisted coils which he converted into cash in a junk shop.
Then I started repealing the inner and outer walls of the upper part of the house. These were made of ¼-inch thick marine and ordinary plywood and removing it were never a problem and as was done with the other debris, I let it fall down. By 11 AM it rained and I stopped work.
Day 4. It was raining on Thursday morning and, at around 2:00 PM, it stopped. I continued removing all the plywood walls as well as detaching the doors of the two rooms occupying the upper part of the old house.
Day 5. Friday morning was raining, after lunch it stopped. I started removing the six wooden jalousy windows which I planned to give and recycle its use. Removing it whole and intact was quite difficult and I was only able to remove three of those when dusk fell.
Saturday, September 17. It was the sixth day of my demolition job and I began on a sunny morning by climbing to the roofless top. There I continued removing the heavy cross-beams where I successfully removed the remaining five and let it fall on the upper flooring. Ditto with the wooden cross-beam supports which are almost of the same dimensions with the former.
In the middle of afternoon I began to remove the wall frames one by one and by dusk I was able to remove 80% of them, as well as the last three jalousies intact.
Monday came and so was the seventh day of my task. Removed all the upper structures except the six standing posts and the wooden floor and I call it a day.
September 20, 2005 I left for Manila on some important business and came back on the 23rd.
By the 26th, Monday, I began day 8 of the demolition. I pried easily all the 3/8-inch thick wooden slats which served as flooring for the upper level of the house and once removed I started for the wooden flooring beams which I removed all in the morning.
By afternoon I went for the floor cross-beams which were seven in all where its dimensions are just like those located on the roof. Prying it took considerable amount of pressure and strength which I generously applied for it was not that high from the ground unlike that of the roof. I removed five except the two, which were attached to the wooden stairway, as well as the front door.
Day 9. Tuesday. September 27, 2005. Morning started just fine and I started to remove the cross-beam supports after which I removed the lawanit board double walling and its wooden frames on the ground level. I detached a steel canopy structure that was attached above the front door.
By afternoon, I was armed with a sledgehammer and targetted in demolishing the concrete component of the house like the 3-foot high walls and its decorative features installed three feet above it. I was also able to detach four of the six posts from its steel anchors. By dusk only 10 percent of the structure remained.
Day 10 came and I took the sledgehammer on the remaining concrete structures. I took very care not to let the concrete debris to fall in the creek running beside my place. I succeeded there, except for one big block of concrete that used to be the other half of the 1.5 square meter-sized toilet/bath floor. It fell and splashed on the river bed. Actually, there was already a big crack separating the other half of the floor and, as I was breaking up the walls, it suddenly gave way. Luckily, a water pipe that ran at the back of the toilet’s wall, held fast and gave me time to extract myself there or else I might have gotten hurt.
Thursday and it was the 11th day. The area was now exposed to sunlight and very hot especially from 9 AM to 3 PM. Slowly, I removed the whole wooden staircase by myself by prying the upper part from its landing. It was very very heavy but I managed to remove it after which I detached the beams that supported the stair. The place now looked very level except for the discarded lumber, iron sheets and other debris.
The first phase done, now the second phase -- clearing the area and figuring what to do with all those discarded lumber! Those that were totally unusable for recycling became firewood and for more than a year it became fuel for the cooking fires in my household. Those that were recycled I used it to construct a “dirty kitchen”, chicken coops and benches.
Today the place is used to dry our laundry and underneath the laundry lines is a backyard plot planted with all sort of vegetables. I planted a grafted mango tree, a tambis tree, a jackfruit tree, papayas and an anahaw palm to replace the trees which I have cut before. My place is green again.
In 11 days I was able to demolish the old house by my lone self. It was my first time to undergo that kind of task. It was hard and demanded great strength and stamina. It was also a good therapy for me to get rid of the hurt after I was laid off from my job. It made me stronger physically and emotionally. Surely, God knows how to take care of you and afford you other distractions to overcome the things and events that you have no control and power to prevail over with. But, in His own good time, I know, He will give back to me what He has taken away.
Document done in RoughDraft 3.0, Trebuchet MS font. size 12.
Featured on Blogger on January 7, 2008 THERE WAS A TIME WHEN being associated with a fraternity or sorority was considered vogue and brings with it prestige, popularity, pride and a sense of belongingness. During those times, the fraternity and sorority organization only recruited those whom they feel would become a good asset to their organization. So it is common for them to get only the best student and the brightest scholar, the most popular coed or the strongest athlete and the richest guy or the most influential brat. Fraternities and sororities are known to support each other in their scholastic pursuits and even beyond it like landing a job position or being promoted to choice seats of authority. I think, I belong to that era. And we took care not to tarnish the image of our organization so that its standing within the campuses, which it thrived upon, would not be hampered, especially in recruiting neophytes. Also, it was wise not to attract the ire of the school administration, much less the government authorities. Only on one occasion though -- my fraternity became a part of a civil disobedience campaign during the Marcos regime! And we won that one and could look back with pride. Fast forward to today. Cebu City’s news headlines are always assaulted by the repeated nuisance with which the Alpha Kappa Rho and the Tau Gamma Phi are preoccupying against each other. Both of these fraternities (I would rather call them organized criminal gangs having Greek letters for a name) are engaged in a war of attrition against each other and so many promising young lives are wasted every week for just being associated with either one. The police, on the other hand, has been making threats to classify AKP and TGP as organized criminal gangs and have them placed in their order of battle. But, so far, it has done nothing except to announce that threat to the media and, later, doing another nothing by being seen photographed with these so-called fraternity leadership after a peace council was held. Days after that it’s back to square one. There’s nothing wrong to fight for your turf but when it gets out of hand there must be something wrong out there. Gee, there must be had with regard to their respective leadership and their organization’s thrusts and objectives? Their leaders always pay lip service to media assuring the city authorities (and the victims’ families) that they are doing their best to correct the situation. So far, I have not seen nor heard of any back-channel talks. They only show up to each other when compelled upon by the authorities for mediation after a series of shootings caused their members’ brains splattered upon the asphalt pavements and alarmed the local residents. I heard that both groups have employed a rather unorthodox tactic of attracting neophytes. They call it the “community outreach recruitment program”. I have a first cousin, who is a college drop-out and have not been studying for more than nine years, appointed, after being initiated, as a community chapter leader of one group. And under him were high school and elementary students and drop-outs as his chapter members or “brods”. I think it is time a law be passed to compel every school organization, scholastic or not, for it to secure Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) registration papers. It is also important to secure another permit from the provincial or city civil authorities and from the police, with recommendation from the schools where their chapters are entrenched, so as to regulate and control their excesses. Recruitment of out-of-school youths as fraternity neophytes should be dropped from their programs and discouraged. What is important here is not quantity but quality. Like it or not, those who fail to comply will be regarded as nothing more than just another criminal group and any criminal acts like murder, homicide or physical injuries attributed to a group, of whose officers and members are publicly known, will be criminally liable being that of either as principal, accomplice or accesory to the said crime being committed. We, the community, are fed up of their skewed dispositions with regard to running their own organization and I am ashamed even to call myself a fratman, much more so, of being known as a member of a respectable fraternity that has nothing to do with those frat wars and killings that these groups are well aversed at. Document done in RoughDraft 3.0, Trebuchet MS, font size 12
 Featured in Blogger on December 6, 2007. AFTER AN ABSENCE OF more than two years, a home utility appliance reappeared in my home. Recently, last November 9, 2007, I bought a refrigerator -- a metallic silver Condura 2-door -- and accommodated its valuable 10 cubic feet of cooled space into a vacant part of my house which was reserved, well, for a new refrigerator.
It replaced an ageing Hitachi 6 ft3 box which has ceased to properly function owing to time and to wear and tear. Since 1989, the latter served my family’s needs and have been sturdy enough to survive several floods that occured in my old house during the ‘90s and in the early part of this decade.
The happiest member in my household would be my wife. She will now be free of the hassles of walking to and fro from the house and to the marketplace everyday for several times of the day be it under a sunny sky or a forlorn rainy evening to buy something to eat or to cook our meals. A stretch of roughly 400 meters which she will now see less and less.
The boys are happy too. They will not be coerced anymore into buying plastic-tubed ice.
But I’m the least happy. It would be another burden to pay the additional increase in our power consumption caused by the addition of the ref in our household’s use.
However, I made sure that the ref I bought has the lowest power consumption among the throng displayed in an appliance store -- 114 watts. It also has the highest energy efficiency rating at 232! So I feel safe with my choice there. I should be happy.
Right, I am happy about the requisition. I bought a Philippine-made appliance which indirectly helped the Philippine economy. It’s the least I can do for my beloved country and I feel happy about it to have reserved this article for my blog.
If it would be possible for you, buy a Philippine product.
Be a good citizen.
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Featured simultaneously in Blogger
THE CEBU MOUNTAINEERING SOCIETY or CeMS, of which I am a member, recently celebrated Christmas party at Sierra Tree Farm in Gaas, Balamban, Cebu last December 8-9, 2007. Me and my youngest son, Cherokee, were there; as well, as members of CeMS, active or not, who all came strong and in high spirits with their backpacks, exchanging gift presents, foodstuffs, tents and all. Cliff and Claribel Abrahan even brought their two boys and their mansion-sized tent!Hosted by Ramon and Ann Vidal, owners of Third World Outdoors (TWO) all-weather sandals favored by mountaineers and outdoor enthusiasts, they were very accommodating, especially with the use of their humble mountain refuge along with their beautiful and well-manicured frontyard lawn. All told there were 17 tents set up on the saddle of two peaks which afforded a very nice view of the rolling valley below and a glimpse, now and then, of Canlaon Volcano in the distance.An induction climb for the incoming CeMS members coincided with this event, where it started from Barangay Tabunan, Cebu City and traversing Mount Manunggal early in the morning of December 8. Later that evening, the five neophyte CeMS climbers were welcomed by the veterans led by the indefatigable Daddy Frank Cabigon and Doc Abe Manlawe and the incumbent CeMS president -- Rosebelle Daculan during the induction ceremony. Present were past president Lilibeth Initan, Nonoy Edillor, Sarina Avellanosa and her daughter, Dennis Legaspi, Boy Olmedo, Roy Ragaza, Joy, Paeng, Jon Consunji, Jecris, Andrew, Julienne, Pen-pen and daughter, Glen Domingo and daughter Sam, Glenn Lao, Brian Gera, Grace Ventic, Aldrich Apaypon and, of course, Ben Lao, who just returned home after a very long stint at Dagupan City in Pangasinan.Ben brought a videoke machine for this purpose along with a 14” TV set, an amplifier and two 4-foot tall MB Quatro speaker baffles. I carried one of those heavy baffles on my shoulder thinking it would be a light workout, but, it was a killer exercise of futility that I got and I almost fainted negotiating that short 300-meter distance! Took me almost an hour negotiating the trail from the trans-central highway to the Vidal’s resthouse. Whew...tough course!Then the party dinner started during nighthfall where a special lechon baboy and lechon manok, pasta, fresh lumpia, ngo-hiong, fresh vegetables and steamed saang shells were served while the desserts consisted of fruit and macaroni salads, sweet pastries and pies and binignit, masi and botsi. The meals would not have been complete without the usual spirits which were served right after that to help in digestion.Master of ceremonies was, no other than, Ramon V himself, the acknowledged dean of Cebu mountaineering. He gave life to the small party with his puns and antics, especially, during the “improvised” exchanging gifts episode which was the highlight of the event, after all, it was a Christmas party, wasn’t it? A time of gift-giving.Distilled spirits brought out the singer in us as we competed with each other to reach the perfect score on Ben’s videoke machine and, so far, only the geckos and the moths seemed to applause us after every song we belted out, but, never mind, it was fun all the way which all of us will never forget. Our voices echoed even in the wee hours of the night until our throats got sore.The second day in Gaas were appreciated very much by all of us as we decided to have a little excursion to stretch our muscles to beat the early morning cold. Some of us went to the nearby cave that claimed the life of Dr. Adolph Espina II of Speleo-Cebu just a week ago. The disturbed grasses all around bore and told a great activity of people gathering that centered around the rescue and retrieval of the body of the late doctor inside this partly-unexplored cave by Ramon V and company.Fully satisfied with our own investigation we went back to the cabin to feast on breakfast of hot coffee, bread, some leftover pasta and food and fresh fruits and then it was time to break camp by folding our tents. We left at noon after feasting on a steaming native chicken soup. We took the trail down to where we came up from yesterday and bid goodbye to Ramon and Ann for home.  Document done in RoughDraft 3.0, Trebuchet MS font, size 12.
 First appeared on Blogger on November 16, 2007.
LAST OCTOBER 15, 2007, I WENT to Mactan Island on some official business. I went to Pier 3 to board the River Ferry launch that was to take me to that island from mainland Cebu. It was 2:30 PM when the launch proceeded to cross the Mactan Channel. The rain had just stopped minutes ago where there was heavy downpour that lasted for about an hour before that. As the launch was now cruising on the livid blue-green waters of Cebu Harbor, I noticed swarms of marine birds, unusual in number, dived and skimmed on the water’s surface. They happened to peck and pick on the flotsam and jetsam that the floodwaters of the Lahug Creek disgorged, whose river mouth is now but a square hole underneath the asphalt-and-concrete berthing area. As far as the eye could see, discarded pieces of plastic in huge volumes and other kinds of household debris and industrial wastes were floating and bobbing on the surface, scattered over the whole width and length and depth of the channel. It was brownish and dirty and fast approaching the dirty notoriety of murky Manila Bay. The harbor waters wasn’t THAT dirty 30-35 years ago. I remembered in my  pre-adolescent years when the city’s waterfront area was my favorite playing ground and hang-out. I learned (or was forced) to swim there after being pushed intentionally and I swam like a dog. Back then, whenever my time would warrant I would take a dip there. Sometimes, as a sport, we would dive from a departing boat and swim back to the pier and the one who left the boat when it is farthest from the shore was declared the winner! Marine life were abundant back then. Jellyfish would parade like an army of strange aliens. Squid or cuttlefish would appear in droves when no moon appeared in the night sky and find refuge under the glare of lights of berthed ships. All kinds of fishes could be angled from its depths as well as crustaceans caught inside cagetraps from beneath. Seashells could be had by the mere picking during low tide by swimming towards the exposed reefs, sandbars and rocky beds nearby Pilipog (Shell) island which is a half-kilometer away from the Aduana*.
Today’s condition of the sea is a far cry from that sea of long ago where I used to swim.
As the launch moved on in the middle of Mactan Channel we passed by Mandaue City. The Subangdaku River let out the same kind of debris and wastes, marked by swarms of marine birds, and they took on a pattern as if it were parading in a straight and wavy line going south. Farther north, it was the same discouraging look as the Butuanon River and other northern rivers aped the previous two.
I have done my share by watching the part of the Lahug Creek where I am living and discouraged my household and my neighbors from disposing their garbage on the waterway for it would surely wind its way to the sea. It has been my advocacy for many years now and, I know, it is not enough. It would take a whole mass of people with the same mindset as I have to reverse this trend.
People living upriver and below mine find it convenient to throw their wastes directly on the creek. My heart ached when I see whole canvass sheets, garbage wrapped inside plastic shopping bags, discarded rubber tires and islands of styropor stuck on the river bed impeding the flow of water and it will take a great downpour to erase that stigma. Which the harbor waters graciously receive into its depths that, I know, is a never-ending vicious cycle imposed by man on his environment.
After witnessing the condition of the Mactan Channel after a heavy downpour did it occur to me to involve myself more by writing this story on my blog and disseminate this information into as many people as possible thru the Internet. I would broaden my advocacy on the World Wide Web.
I surmised, that modern science and technology have made plastic and other synthetic material more harmful to man than good in an indirect manner. Especially, if they happen to be used by some people living in Metro Cebu.
Then you add the government bureaucracies that line the shores of this narrow channel who don’t give a damn about its environs and content themselves passing some toothless garbage ordinances that nobody wanted to enforce! Lack of foresight, laxity, ignorance, carelessness and a "don’t care" attitude make up for disastrous elements that may cloud the future of our children.
If I may have my way I would opt to ban plastic and other synthetic materials and those goods contained therein for it doesn’t do no good if they happen to be in the hands of those mindless zombies. For the future of our generation, I say, we BAN THOSE PLASTIC AND SYNTHETIC MATERIALS!
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========================================================================= * The old Bureau of Customs building. Now the alternative seat of the President of the Philippines and known as the Malacañang of the South.
PEOPLE TEND NOT TO use their real names, in more ways than one, on things and means that do not harbor on purely “official” business and functions. Aliases, false or fake names, nomes de plume or nomes de guerre and, in some instances, special characters and icons; are being used to protect the user’s real identity and privacy. It is a natural thing to do when you tread on grounds not to your own liking or of your own comfort.
Take for instance blogging. You publish your articles online for everybody to see or read and to be commented upon. You know that your posts would be under the scrutiny of some critical eye and you are not an accomplished writer yourself. Meaning, you have this inferiority complex thing developing somewhere inside of you and, to shield you from your weirdest expectations, you use a pseudonym.
I am vulnerable to that kind of fear. I am not perfect. So, I use an alternative name - Nighthawk49.
Why Nighthawk49?
First the letters. “Nighthawk” is a bird of prey that hunts at night, right? Could be? So it could be associated with an owl? Maybe?
But, no! It isn’t what it is. Nighthawk is the name of the clan of my mother’s people. It is translated from piishii, a Chiricahua Apache word for nighthawk. So that’s explain the “nighthawk” thing.
Now the number “49”. Commonly, people would add numbers to their name or pseudonym to signify their uniqueness, especially when they register for an email or blog account and find their choice of name unavailable for registering.
Normally, it would indicate their date or year of birth or the year they were registered like those you saw used on somebody email’s address, i.e. “john65@yahoo.com” or ‘john_65@gmail.com” and so on.
But the number 49 is not the date or year that I was born either. If that would be the case I would have been in my late 50s today. Ha! ha! ha! I am still in my early 40s, mind you. (Ssssh...keep that a secret.) Actually, it is the troop number of my Boy Scout unit during my high school days at Colegio de San Jose-Recoletos (now USJ-R).
I liked that number so much that I preferred it to using as the number below my surname on all my basketball jerseys and the number found on the left spot of all my basketball shorts.
So that clears the name puzzle. How about you, do you have any idea why you’re using a pseudonym?Document done in RoughDraft 3.0, Trebuchet MS font, size 12.
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The Way of the Shield
THEY BLINDFOLDED ME on that early Sunday morning of March.
They made me stand up, my body bent forward while my hands held in support of my crotch, or should I say my “balls”. I was almost at the halfway point of this rite of passage. Of laying claim to be a part of a brotherhood of men.
“Omega Pelta Kappa. Omega Pelta Kappa. Omega...,” I trembled as I recited those three Greek-sounding words over and over again like a mantra expecting a sudden whack from a wooden paddle from behind me. I received, I mentally counted, twenty-four paddle strikes at the back of my now tender thighs. The last one had been unpleasant for it had been done in a deliberate and chopping manner instead of the flat piece of the paddle hitting you. And the two before that on my poor rump...
“WHACK!” Came the twenty-fifth!
“Arrgh!” I jumped up and down as an agonizing pain swept up through my body from my swollen thighs, sweat poring down on my forehead. I began to doubt my brazen determination and my patience wore thin. Now how did it came to be that I was made to be a part of this extra-curricular foolishness? This weird and cruel test? This demeaning and humiliating initiation?
Prologue
I remembered then about two months ago when I visited my girlfriend at her home and I noticed that she was not feeling well. Concerned with her condition, I offered to buy medications for her or, if need be, to accompany her to a doctor for a look-see. But she was adamant that there was nothing wrong with her.
Then at some point of our verbal see-saw she admitted that she just came from a sorority initiation. I saw bruises on her shoulders and arms and the marks of the paddle on the back of her legs. I was shocked! How could she do that? I was so stunned! It was she, of all people, who forbid me not to join a fraternity or else... Wow! I got so envious of her. Believe me, she hurt my pride so bad back then that I felt myself to be just a miserable wimp incapable of protecting the woman of my affection. How could they do that to my girl? I will have my revenge (sic)!
The Crucible and The Acceptance
“To be or not to be.” My thoughts debated if I should quit or not. To quit now meant I won't be able to savor that sweet smell of my own self-styled revenge and the pain won't go away if I suddenly halt abrupt this painful interlude. Besides, I will lose face. No, I have to go on. I have to go on and offer my behind to the divine dictum of the paddle wielder and face the consequences. I can stand the scoldings of my parents later, if they will know. Maybe I can stand the threat of a break up my girlfriend promised if I ever join a fraternity organization, if she will know. I have already burned my bridges behind. I cannot turn back now. Come hell or high water I have to continue this!
“WHACK!” The fifty-seventh came as I have expected. The last ten paddles or so were now painless maybe because I know that the initiation is nearing its end or maybe because my legs were already so thick with the constant flogging and so severely numbed that the feeling of pain is now absent. Somebody removed my blindfold. Then I got my dues. Someone I knew shook my hand and called me “Brod” and so did the others. Then they sung the Peltan's Song. Everybody welcomed me as one new addition to their numbers. I cried that I passed my test of manhood. Elated, I forgot the pain. It was already dusk.
The Aftermath
I got home that night and nursed my swollen thighs. Reality came. It was hell removing the pair of jeans from my legs for my bloated skin adhered itself to the very grain of the thick fabric itself. I thought it looked like longaniza or a bloated sausage!
Monday morning came and it was the final examination day in my school. Still reeling from the bruises, the pains, the cramps, the aches and the who knows what from yesterday, I have to rise up from the comforts of my bed and it was pure torture when I stood up. My mind swam in dizziness and my eyes blinked as the pain swamped and shocked my very existence as I held on to my room's wall for balance. Then another torture came as I maneuvered my lumpy legs to fit inside a clean pair of jeans.
I walked slowly, slightly limping, and pain shot through me as I sat inside a PUJ. I let out an expletive under my breath as I tried to ease my legs from touching the seat. Reaching school, I went upstairs to take my exams at a room in the fourth floor! Hey, it was like carrying a cross to Calvary only my cross was my stubbornness. My willingness to accommodate pain in order to be a Peltan provided me those times of disquietude bereft of comfort. What a jerk I am.
“Never again,” I said to myself.
“Sure, you won't. Instead, you'll gonna be the one doing that thing to another, when you are fit.” My other conscience told me so.
But it was all worth it.
Epilogue
That I did some months later and it was already more than twenty-six years ago today. My parents never found out about my joining a fraternity. My girlfriend did found out about it and we broke up two months later. I am still a Peltan. In name only. I have been inactive for quite sometime.
But the Omega Pelta Kappa Fraternity and Sorority is still here and we just celebrated the 42nd Founding Anniversary last September 8, 2007 at D' Family Park in Nasipit, Talamban, Cebu City.
Peltans forever...!!!
This document is written in OpenOffice 2.1 Writer, Trebuchet MS, size 12.
 I AM NOT a writer. I was not trained to be one. I am not schooled in the ways and techniques in writing a story, an essay or a poem. I was schooled in the art of close-quarter combat and strategy and the enforcement of laws. I have never had need of a teacher to guide me on why, how, where, when and what should I write?
Still, I persevered, and I discovered that writing gives me a kind of therapy and energy. It gives me utter joy as it released all my pent-up emotions and urges that have been bottled inside of me for years. Or, were they not called memories?
The quest to write something is my preoccupation for the last six months or so. The personal computer is a good tool and a perfect aid in achieving that. Where, before, there was the typewriter. The hassles of editing and re-editing an article by that mechanical contraption totally discouraged me into writing during my early years, though I did gave it a try and persevered for a while.
Ditto with pen and paper. God knows of how many pieces of paper I have thrown into the wastebasket! Or have recycled when recycling was not yet in vogue.
A desktop with Windows to commence my writing is alright with me. I have started with that operating system since it was called MS-DOS back then. But I love Linux better. I don’t encounter the hang-ups and the system crashes that the former has. But it would be nicer if I could own a Power PC ran by a Mac OS X? It would be a dream come true for me.
Putting your ideas into writing and into an opaque screen is quite a breeze, especially if you have a good word processor to accomplish that task. I don’t stick to just one word processing tool. I try them all. I love to experiment.
I have MS Word, OpenOffice Writer, AbiWord and RoughDraft and they are placed as shortcuts on my desktop screen for good measure. I installed other word utilities like yWriter2, Notepad, Scribus, MS Publisher, FreeMind and LaTeX; hidden and accessible on the “Unused Desktop Icons” folder.
Internet connection is a most welcome addition, without which I would have no possible outlet to publish my works. Blogging, that’s what they call it.
Blogging. Yeah. I reckoned there are quite a lot of free web-hosting outfits out there and you only have to choose which one’s better and have features that is or are acceptable to your tastes and standards. I have tried many of those and dropped an almost same number from my retinue. Then I got stuck with Blogger, Multiply, MyOpera and, to a lesser degree, Tabulas.
With MS Word, a bad writer becomes a good one and an average writer becomes better. It has an automatic spellcheck function and has a built-in grammar-correction feature. With a click of the mouse you could access the dictionary and thesaurus and all your needs are attended to.
But I discourage myself from using Word, no offense meant for Mr. Bill Gates there. It does not teach me to improve on my writing by relying on the comfort and ease that these add-ons provided therein. I am a non-conformist. I belong to an old-school line of thought and I give justice to my being one by using “less-comfortable” software. “To thread on trails were few have gone to”. Now, that settles all my preferred writing media.
What writing experience I had are confined to personal letters, a handful of poems, office correspondence and creating lots and lots of criminal affidavits. Modesty aside, the affidavits I have written were masterpieces of a craft in a department wanting of dynamic and creative investigators.
It is neither bland nor full of legalistic innuendos and is done in a language much easily understood by the common masses yet in a much refined manner. Simple yet superior. It elicited awe then from my peers and my superiors, a blessing for the plaintiffs and a curse for the accused and their counsels.
I am now in my 40s and it is obvious that I am late in arriving to make a shift in my thoughts and habitual disposition. It’s alright. Writing happens to run in my veins and capillaries.
My late grandfather, Atty. Gervasio Lavilles, is an accomplished historian, poet and essayist. He authored a book entitled Cebu: A History of its Four Cities and Forty-Nine Municipalities, published by Mely Press in 1965 and I saw his works printed on English-, Cebuano- and Spanish-speaking periodicals and newspapers a long time ago.
His daughters, Evangeline and Marietta, my aunt and my mother, respectively; are both creative technical writers, essayist and poets themselves. Both are Theresians and they are able to juggle between their craft, their careers and mothering with such ease.
They might have influenced me to write but never the writing style. What style I might have developed, probably are mere reflections and mirrors from hundreds of thousands, nay, millions; of words, sentences, paragraphs and quotes that I have digested through the years reading and re-reading novels, books, magazines, newspapers, documents, even chocolate and candy wrappers.
I must admit that reading a blog is quite different from reading on a piece of paper. The glare from a screen are just too much for my ageing eyes, then, you tend to read in haste instead of enjoying what you read.
But that disadvantage, as illustrated above, does not hinder me to keep on writing (or blogging). I write for the pleasure of writing. For the sake of writing. For the love of it. It is there for the taking. It is free!
It is one of the crafts I learned on my own power. Like Miyamoto Musashi, the great “Sword Saint” and samurai strategist, I, too, embarked on my own “warrior pilgrimage” and have come to a point to learn the Ways of different crafts apart from the ones where we were born and made into.
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 EVER SINCE James Naismith invented basketball in 1899, this sport has taken great leaps and bounds and has been popular ever since, in almost all countries and in all continents (except Antarctica). The sport has made tremendous growth and development (and popularity) since the founding of the National Basketball Association (NBA) in the United States whereby the game's standard has been raised to a higher and a much competitive level by such immortal greats as Bob Cousy, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Julius Erving, Larry Bird, Earvin "Magic" Johnson and His Airness - Michael Jordan. Basketball is basically a big man's game and is well suited to Europeans, Americans and some peoples of South America, Africa and Asia where height and heft is an advantage. This game was brought by American colonists in the early 1900s here in the Philippines and it quickly gained acceptance by the islanders due to its simplicity and accessibility with regards to equipment and playing field as compared to another American invention and import - baseball. The Philippines, despite a population having only an average height of only five feet and three inches (5'3") earnestly played basketball with such passion, ardor, skill and heart that it became champions many times in basketball in the Far East Games of the 1920s up to the advent of World War II, beating taller and bigger teams like China and Japan. The "islanders", as they were called, placed seventh in basketball in the 1928 London Olympic Games (its highest finish since) and, at one time, 12th in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. In the World Basketball Championships, the forerunner of the FIBA Cup, Filipinos have been running roughshod over bigger and taller teams by placing third in 1954 and  fourth in 1956. Here in Asia, we were masters of the game in the Asian Games from 1950 up to 1961 and in 1969. The last international title we held where we sent native-born cagers was the 1975 Asian Basketball Championships, from whence the core of that squad became the pioneers of the second basketball professional league in the world - the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA).The Filipinos would talk about basketball in much the same length and breadth the Italians and Brazilians would talk about football or England about cricket. It is the staple of all topics whether you are in Malacañang, in the schools, in the slums, in high-end villages, even in combat zones. Every generation, every child aspires to play basketball just like their idol and it is a common sight that you would see pick-up games or grassroot leagues played in makeshift basketball courts right on the streets, on dirt and grassy fields, on mountainsides and on anything that is almost flat and has space. I belong to that generation wherein basketball is played in makeshift courts, and playing in a covered court or gymnasium is considered a luxury. I was fourteen when I started playing basketball. We were so damn good then in dribbling the ball in pot-holed and gravelly fields that when we played in cemented courts its as if our feet have wings. Much more so in a wooden parquet-tiled court. At 14 and at 5'4'' I was tall enough to play point guard and developed the skill to dribble efficiently in both hands. I also developed a good shooting touch from all angles and, being a left-hander, opponents find it difficult to defend against me whether I'm shooting a jumper or scoring on a lay-up. But by 17, I grew to 6'1'' so fast that I find it hard to execute my moves as a point guard. The added weight stretched and slowed me so much and that I was not accustomed to play in a higher horizontal level leaving me gasping and disoriented due to the rapid change of my growth hormone. Although I shot and made long jumpers, I was forced to play an unfamiliar position of center, my teammates contending that there wouldn't be anyone to snare the rebound if I miss those long jumpers. And they were right. In the early 1980s, PRT gyms are quite exclusive and expensive and it would have helped me in developing my stamina and my strength, but, I opted to change gears: I played and practiced soccer instead, for a year, wherein it helped me gain my speed, my agility and the total control of the game once more. In 1982, I tried out (and got accepted to play) with the University of Southern Philippines (USP) Panthers but went to play instead with the Cebu State College of Science & Technology (CSCST) Builders after my school records in another university got snagged. I hogged the bench that year where we were winless, but in my second year as a Builder, I averaged 7.4 points and 2.6 rebounds in the Cebu Amateur Athletic Association (CAAA) where we notched a win at the expense of the Cebu Technical School (CTS) Scanners. In that year I could never forget the 60-152 lashing our team got from powerhouse University of the Visayas (UV) Lancers, who eventually won the CAAA, the Zonal Championships and the National Students' Basketball Championships. For the next two years we logged two wins against CTS and a win against USP. We also became champions in basketball competitions of the Association of Vocational Institutions of the Philippines (AVIP) in Region 7 twice and, in 1986, CSCST represented Region 7 during the State Colleges Universities Athletic Association (SCUAA) held in Tacloban City, wherein we placed third behind Region 3 and the National Capital Region. During my last year, we snatched two wins: against Salazar Institute of Technology (SIT) Skyblazers by a wide margin and, again, CTS. By the time my eldest son was born in 1989, I hung up my sneakers from competitive playing. Sometimes, I got invited to play in basketball tournaments by some teams, but the zest for the game was now missing and I have to oblige their invitation by showing up in some games and practices (and the free uniforms!). I thanked God for protecting me from injuries that many of my peers have incurred and incapacitated their physical movements and I took care not to experience those injuries now late in my age. What skills I have learned and studied I will pass on to my sons, Gringo and Cherokee. Definitely, there are no more basketball games for me, but there is the TV where I tune in to and watch with millions of other Filipinos of the country's greatest of all pastime - BASKETBALL!Document done in AbiWord 2.4.6, Trebuchet MS, font size 12.
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