Jing's posts with tag: personal
|  | My mountaineering adventures from 1992 to present. History captured by images. |
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.
Animated GIF banner done in Textmaker.
 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.
 150925 March 2007:
"Curiosity killed the cat." Yes? No! Not with this cat. In fact, curiosity did give life to this site at Multiply on a boring Tuesday afternoon of 13 March 2007 while tinkering with the Cebu City government forum site where, one thing leads to another and, voila!, Here it is: I have my own site now. A blog (kuno) of some sort. Hope you don't mind. Heh...heh.
I manipulated and customized my site to some theme to suit to my tastes and upload a picture of one ancestor of mine - an Apache warrior - which I used as my avatar. I then scheduled on my events calendar the holding of a Basic Mountaineering Course which falls on March 22-25, 2007 at Mount Manunggal, Balamban, Cebu, Philippines ditto with the Mt. Manunggal Anniversary Climb which falls on March 16-18, 2007 on the same venue/site.
Mind you, I'm a mountaineer myself and have scaled some of the most rugged mountains here in the Philippines - which I will give some discourse on another time - and it is just fair that I give space to such activities like this on my blog or whatever you may call this thing.
I will be blogging from now on and any interesting subjects, ideas, events, or whatever, that needs to be explained, expressed, expiated, expunged or expelled would find print on an irregular basis here depending on my writing urges, moods, and availability of resources and time. That's a promise. Good day to all and God bless you.
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