Living with coffins

IT’S THAT time of year again…no, not the ever-advancing Yuletide season, but All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, that gets my hometown its own Warholian 15 minutes of fame. Solely, for its principal product.     

So, time too to update this piece that saw first print eight years ago. 

There is no mourning in the casket manufacturing industry in Sto. Tomas, Pampanga.

I still distinctly remember the lead of my feature story in a mimeographed folio of featured industries produced by the general information and production division of the Department of Public Information, Region III office in November 1975.

Casket-making was the sunrise industry in somnolent Sto. Tomas in the late ‘60s through the ‘70s, when the principal industry, farming, became less and less profitable with the intrusion of saline waters in the rivers that adversely affected rice production.

The rivers were the principal sources of irrigation then.

If memory serves right, the pioneer mangabaong (coffin-makers) were a Kojak look-alike surnamed Tayag in Moras de la Paz, then only a sitio of Barangay San Matias; and Apung Esu Canlas, whose factory was based in Balut, Sapa also a San Matias sitio then.

Both sitios have since been made barangays that brought to seven the total number of my town’s basic political units. See how tiny Sto. Tomas is?

Casket-manufacturing went big-time with the establishment of the House of Woodcraft (HOW) in Barangay San Vicente, taking the industry from the backyard to the production line.

HOW also broke the sole proprietorship tradition of the business, going corporate with the surnames Kabigting, Calaquian, Tayag, Manese, among others, as shareholders.

As in the cases of the sari-sari store and hot pandesal – of profitable ventures getting over-replication – casket-manufacturing mushroomed all over town with company names ranging from Briones to Pineda to PPP Santos, and later Arceo – all of whom entering the political ring but only with Pineda – Romulo, and Arceo – Lucas, managing to get elected as mayor.

Yeah, there was one election where three of the five mayoralty candidates were casket manufacturers. Sorry, no buy-one-take-one sale though was proffered to the voters. 

The ‘70s saw Sto. Tomas as the casket center of the whole Philippines, its factories supplying the whole archipelago – from Appari to Jolo, and even exporting their produce to Asian countries and even the USA.

So used to coffins in all makes – high-end narra with all the intricate dukit (carvings), mid-level apitong and tangile, low-low class “flattop” of plywood – and in various stages of production were the townsfolk and the children that the horror the kabaong of lore impacted completely vanished in Sto. Tomas.

Yes, it was not uncommon to see workers napping in unfinished caskets at lunch break, or floating coffins being paddled by young boys during floods.

As a matter of course, at funeral wakes in the town, the first thing that the makirame (condoler) takes note of is not the dearly departed but the coffin in which he/she lies. Which is a clear give-away of his/her social status, if not of his/her value to the family left behind. Narra, wow! Flattop, eww! The ante further raised later with the entry of bronze and metal caskets.

In the ‘80s to the early ‘90s casket manufacturing nosedived. For a lot of reasons.

There was a glut in production. Then came the cut-throat competition resulting to sungaban presyu (underpricing). And ultimately the funeral parlors they supplied put up their own factories, with the help of the Sto. Tomas casket craftsmen themselves.

It was at this time when “stowing-away” among skilled workers, primarily carpenters and carvers, became a phenomenon in the town.

The funeral parlor owners or their agents from Northern and Southern Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao regularly called on the Sto. Tomas factories for their orders. This afforded the workers to know them and established some sort of connections.

So when the “stowaway” workers suddenly materialized in their funerarias offering their skills and services – usually as industrial partners – to put up their own casket factories, the funeral parlor owners readily welcomed them: the savings not only in freight cost of caskets, but also in time and materials, as primary motive.

That – plus the later liberalization policies that opened the Philippine market to imported caskets – virtually dug the grave for the casket industry of Sto. Tomas.

Today, casket-makers who have survived and even excelled – Lucas Arceo being the most prominent – have put up their own funeral parlors, serving as open, ready market to their production. 

Sometime in 2012 Mayor Lito Naguit, though engaged in the other Sto. Tomas industry of pottery-making, aimed to re-place the town in the national consciousness when it comes to caskets.

The mayor mulled the holding of a Kabaong Festival “to attract tourists and open up business opportunities.”

Indeed, such festival was held. But like the product it promoted, was buried after less-than-a-three-day wake. So who would flock to a festival of coffins?

No hare-brained scheme there though, rather think of Naguit as ahead of his time. If held today, the Kabaong Festival may just hit it big. What with all these killings in Duterte’s war on drugs!

Though not quite back to its glory days of yore, the casket industry in Sto. Tomas thrives well enough to merit once more that now forgotten blurb: Sa aking bayan, hanap-patay ang pangunahing hanapbuhay (In my town, the dead provides our principal livelihood). Bow.

Nanay's legacy

…(H)anggang dito na lamang po kami…(pero) bago po kami mag-retire gusto po naming maabot ang aming mga pangarap, ang pangarap ng lahat ng mga Kapampangan na sana ang ating lalawigan ay siya’ng maging pinakamaunlad sa buong Pilipinas.

A virtual valedictory Gov. Lilia G. Pineda delivered last Friday at the presentation of the inception plan Pampanga Megalopolis: Toward a Visions for the Pampanga Growth Triangle, which she hoped to actualize before her term ends less than three years from now.    

“That is why we are now on a fast track mode,” she said, looking at the legacy she would leave the Kapampangans that, she hoped, would not only be lasting but one of “high impact,” of “sure success,” and with “quick and responsive results.”

A legacy to leave her people, come to think of it, should be last thing in the governor’s mind. Not for anything else, but for the fact that she has already bequeathed to her cabalens one that is brilliant as to be awe-inspiring, and rock-solid as to be enduring, to wit:

Good Governance.

Not even the slightest murmur of corruption has been whispered in the governor’s direction. Not in her three terms as Lubao mayor, not in her sojourn at the provincial board. Not in her governorship. Clean, as clean can ever be.  

At the plus-plus side of the governmental spectrum is sound fiscal management translating to hundreds of millions of pesos in savings, balanced with continuing program, projects and services for the people.

Already, the Pineda administration is hailed as having caused the construction of more roads, bridges, school buildings, and other infra facilities than all the previous governors combined.

Quarry income.

Revenues from the quarry industry are already nearing the P2 billion mark – over two years ahead of the target date set at the end of Pineda’s third term as governor.

Unprecedented, truly a hard act to follow. Especially with cuentas claras as the express policy in the collections.

Investing in peace.

At a recent event in Camp Olivas, PNP Director General Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa opened his keynote speech with a direct address to Pineda – “Ma’am gusto ko pong maging provincial director ng Pampanga” – gushing how the governor provided the local police for all their needs in equipment, morale and even for their personal and family matters.        

With Pineda at the helm, the provincial peace and order council is as much active as interactive in maintaining a climate free from fear in the whole province.

So what about the shabu laboratories recently raided in Magalang and Arayat? Proof positive of the police hard at work to stamp out the drug problem in Pampanga that is, unarguably, even worse in many other parts of the country.    

For the rehab of drug dependents, the provincial government had dedicated two buildings at the Central Luzon Drug Rehabilitation Center in Magalang.  

Heart of service.

Government district hospitals were long derided as “Mona Lisa” facilities, after the lyrics of that Nat King Cole song “…they just lie there, and they die there” meant for those hospitals’ patients.

Not with Pampanga’s 10 district and one provincial hospitals though, with the governor rehabilitating them with new facilities, equipment, medicines, doctors and health practitioners.     

The universal coverage of PhilHealth in Pampanga, coupled with re-energized barangay health workers and the so-called “Nanay nurses” further assured the complete well-being of the Kapampangan.

Along with scholarships for the poor, the expansion of higher education opportunities was pursued with subsidies to public schools and initiatives in the establishment of satellite campuses – in Sto. Tomas and Porac towns, and soon in Lubao too – of the Don Honorio Ventura Technological State University.

The 4^th Commandment makes a core value of the Pineda administration. While the national government – the past dispensation, that is -- stalled on the cash gift to centenarians, Pineda speedily caused the passage of the ordinance gifting P100,000 to cabalens passing the century mark, and later reducing the cut-off age to 95.

And more, much more.

Pampanga ranked as one of the Top 10 provinces in the whole country in terms of economic development makes the greatest testament to the Pineda administration’s excellence at governance. Aye, there is her legacy right there.

As it has been when this paper made Pineda its Woman of the Year, barely six months into her governorship, to wit:

2010 MAY as well be “Year of the Mother” for the Province of Pampanga with the ascendancy of Gov. Lilia Garcia Pineda. 

In all her public incarnations – mayor, board member, and now governor – as much as in her private persona, motherhood has come to be the very definition of Lilia Pineda: its full meaning finding expression in her singular efforts to promote the health and well-being of her people. The endearing sobriquet “Nanay Baby” as much a manifestation of the reciprocal respect and esteem her people hold her in, as a testament to the nurturing care she unceasingly provides them.

The beloved Indu ning Kapampangan. What greater legacy than that?

EdPam's triumph

WITH THE Abacan River back to its placid state, Angeles City stirred to life anew. Edgardo Pamintuan, with an overwhelming mandate as elected mayor, electrified his constituents with the clarion call Agyu Tamu (We Can!) to inspire confidence that the city could rise, phoenix-like, from the volcanic ashes.

Pamintuan was inspired by a few intrepid city entrepreneurs who refused “to heed the voice of reason” and stayed put in the city to rehabilitate their factories and revive their productivity, foremost of whom was Ruperto Cruz who resumed his manufacture and export of high-end furniture within 45 days after the eruption.

To jumpstart the local economy, Pamintuan and his confidant, the activist Alexander Cauguiran, hit the buttons that sparked the city’s vibrancy – the entertainment industry.

Thus was birthed Tigtigan, Terakan Keng Dalan, street dancing and music in the Mardi Gras mold.

The whole stretch of MacArthur Highway in Barangay Balibago was closed to traffic.

The strip shone bright again in a kaleidoscope of lights. Bands on a makeshift stage on the highway itself played all types of music, from country to rock, rhythm and blues to OPM. Restaurants set their tables on the sidewalks.

Food was aplenty. Beer flowed like – in the spirit of the times – lahar. Thousands rocked and rolled in a celebration of renewal, of rebirth.

The shroud of grief over the Pinatubo tragedy had been lifted – in Angeles City.

THAT WAS the capping piece sub-titled Happy days of the chapter Lahar! in our book Pinatubo: Triumph of the Kapampangan Spirit (2008).

Tigtigan, Terakan Keng Dalan marked a defining moment in the deathly struggle and ultimate victory of the Angeleno over the devastations of the Mt. Pinatubo eruptions.

Much similar to Bacolod City’s Masskara Festival which signature smiles defined that city’s rise from the hardships that came in the wake of the collapse of the sugar industry in the ‘80s, if I have my chronology right.

That Tigtigan, Terakan Keng Dalan became the signature festival of Angeles City was a testament to its lasting impact the psyche of the city residents, and a recognition of its prime value to their survival as a people.

So at its staging in the last weekend of October since 1992, Tigtigan, Terakan Keng Dalan serves as a look-back to the nights of fear and anxieties, to the days of hope and struggles until the rebirthing of the city now soaring in the firmament of economic development. Truly a cause for celebration. Of the very soul of the Angeleno in triumph.

Twenty-four years! Has it been that long since Tigtigan, Terakan Keng Dalan came to being and stirred Angeles City’s re-borning from the volcanic ashes? Aye, of the city’s abandonment by the American occupying forces that served its very cause of being?  

Angeles City did survive, and how! No, Angeles City even excelled its purely Sin City past. 

Twenty-four years, turning full circle from neophyte Mayor EdPam’s sowing the seeds to world-class Mayor EdPam’s reaping – and sharing – the fruits of the city’s toils and privations.

Aye, as much as the Angeleno’s, the triumph over the devastations of Mount Pinatubo is, rightfully, Pamintuan’s too.

Of birds and frogs

GOOD NEWS for the culture vultures: Candaba mayor vows support for revival of Ibon-Ebon Festival.

Wrote Joel P. Mapiles: Mayor Danilo “Boy” Baylon vowed to support the revival of the annual Ibon-Ebon Festival together with ex-Mayor Jerry Pelayo who initiated the event during the latter’s stint as town’s municipal chief executive.

 The mayor announced during the Grand Eye Ball of the members of Anak ng Candaba, now an NGO, who want to be of help to the municipality.

In fact, the Ibon-Ebon icon was unveiled at the boundary of the town in Pansol, Pasig adjacent to the municipality of Sta Ana.

It can be recalled that during the term of ex-Mayor Rene Maglanque, the festival’s budget was scrapped and purportedly ‘politicized’.

The Ibon-Ebon (Kapampangan for “Bird-Egg”), drawing from the town’s primary egg industry and the migratory birds drawn to its wetlands, served as signature festival during the three terms of Kuyang Jerry that put Candaba in the tourism map. Deeply lamented was its demise during the incumbency of Maglanque.

With its revival, the veil of mourning is now officially lifted.

Even as I rejoice with the people of Candaba over this happy development, I remember -- in grief – what the City of San Fernando has ceased to celebrate at  this time of the year: the once glorious now all forgotten Pyestang Tugak.

Birthed during the administration of Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez, buried right on the first term of Mayor Edwin Santiago, may well serve as its simple obit, belying the fullness of its meaning, the depth of its roots in the Fernandino life.  

Here’s Zona Libre’s take from October 2010.

The Great Leap

IN 1958, Mao Zedong launched a national program to modernize the Chinese economy with the express objective of rivaling that of the United States by 1988. It was called the Great Leap Forward.

Mao’s target fell short by 20 years, and China’s modernization and coming into its own as global economic megapower hardly attributed to him, but even considered as a repudiation of him: the credit readily bestowed on the liberalizing Deng Xiao-ping. The same Deng vilified in Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as a “capitalist roader.”

The Great Leap Backward, so was Mao’s program ridiculed, its centerpiece program of backyard steel industry with as many as 600,000 furnaces backfiring with sub-standard produce, and the corollary agricultural program ending in a massive failure that led to starvation causing the death of millions.

In 1959, the Great Helmsman himself acknowledged failure: “The chaos caused was on a grand scale, and I take responsibility. Comrades, you must analyse your own responsibility. If you have to fart, fart. You will feel much better for it.”

No farting now, but all croaking in the City of San Fernando with once Mao’s comrade-in-thought Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez declaring his domain’s own Great Leap Forward thus: "Kokak, kokak, Sisigpo la reng tugak, Kayantabe ya ing Syudad." Okay, that translates to “Ribbit, ribbit, the frogs are a-leaping, along with the city.”

For the strides, nay, the leaps and bounds with which the City of San Fernando managed to attain a level of socio-economic development that has yet to find parallel in any other metropolis in the country, the city appropriated for its symbol not the soaring eagle nor the roaring lion, but the lowly frog.

On one hand, it is a fitting representation of the humble beginnings and innate humility of the man who leads the city. The story of Mayor Oca finds parallelism to that fairy tale about the frog turning to a prince at the kiss of a princess: the plebeian Oca, aka Ka Jasmin, at destiny’s kiss transformed to congressman and then mayor, yet ever in love with his people.

On the other, it is a proper recognition of the critical role the frog plays in local history and culture.

So it is said that the pangs of starvation were never felt in Pampanga – not in the days of the Philippine Revolution and the War against Imperial America, not even during the Japanese Occupation – thanks to frogs, which along with the

kamaru (mole crickets) provided a staple, if protein rich, diet.

From ageing memory comes a ditty from our youth: ‘Kikildap, kikildap, sisigpo la ring tugak… (With the lightning, the frogs are leaping…)” thereby signaling the start of the frog-catching season.

And from pamate-danup (stop-gap to hunger), the lowly frog has found center place in the Kapampangan culinary culture with such delights as betute (stuffed frogs), tinola (broth of frog with green papaya and pepper leaves), among others.

And so these heady days of October, the frog is most honored in the City of San Fernando with its own three-day festival – Pyestang Tugak – complete with street-dancing and free-dance competitions, frog-mascot contests, frog races and the lundag-tugak show-jumping.

On this the sixth year of the festival, a "frog chorale" contest will be staged at SM City Pampanga. Participants will perform any song they wish but have to replace the lyrics with croaks of "kokak."

A regular feature in the fest, paduasan tugak, catching frogs with rod and line will be held at the wet grasslands behind the Heroes Hall. The winner determined by the largest frog caught.

Capping the activities is the Kokak-tober Fest music jam in front of city hall.

The frog festival in a way serves as a fitting triumph – in the Roman tradition – for the city’s elevation to the 2010 Palladium Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame, the “gold standard of strategic performance” given to successful and high-performing private and public organizations all over the world.

Said Mayor Oca: “This prestigious award not only helps reaffirm the status of San Fernando as a world-class city, but also raises our nation’s pride by having globally recognized local government units.”

Making it to the hall of fame was no walk in the park, with Mayor Oca harnessing the resources of the city, mobilizing the citizenry and partnering with the private sector in applying the Performance Governance System of the Harvard-pioneered Balanced Scorecard management system to achieve and sustain breakthrough performance results.

Truly great leaps forward – on to progress – the frog, Mayor Oca, and the City of San Fernando have all made.

Go, croak.

Seniority rules

IT’S GREAT to be a senior citizen. Yeah, I fully embrace the advancement of years many others have not been blessed with.

I haven’t slowed down from having a blast since reaching – in February 2014 – the  discounted life, meaning: 

Less figuratively now – that is the shortened distance to the end-times which heralds either dread of the unknown or great anticipation of the heavenly reward, depending where one sits in the religious divide.

Most literally now – the 20 percent discount in transport fare, resto bills, purchases, especially of maintenance meds, etcetera that comes with age 60 and stays on until, well, kingdom come.

Where before those charming pharmacists at SM City Clark Watsons got their noses bleeding, their tongues twisting with the King’s English when I bought my maintenance dosage for the week, ever-mistaking me for some European or Latino, now they get shocked in disbelief when I flash my senior citizen card to avail myself of my 20 percent discount. Love it both ways, then and now. The ego – pogi, eh – gets sated many, many times over.

Great too getting Wendy’s pretzel bacon cheeseburger – what with a lane dedicated to SCs and PWDs, fully respected and observed even when the other lanes are clogged with younger patrons. And no signatures asked, the SC card sufficed.

Even stricter with the SC lane are SM malls’ hyper- and supermarkets, ditto Walter Mart’s – no SC card, no pass at the cashiers’ slots, no matter how kilometric are the queues on the other lanes. I find here my SC card superior even to my SM Prestige card      

No dedicated lanes for SCs but just as breezy with their service for the elderly are Krispy Kreme and Starbucks – you just get seated and get served, the discounted bill coming later. Of course, it pays to have Sun-Star Pampanga’s Rey Navales at the former and this paper’s Ashley Manabat at the latter, being virtual fixtures at the said coffeeshops, earning them not only credit but the staffs’ trust and confidence.   

At BDO, BPI and Metrobank where deposited the little that remains from the charities of family and friends, my SC card makes easy access pass – no, not of the DOM kind, but for deposits or withdrawals, duh – to the tellers. Wish though the banks have dedicated restrooms for their customers, especially for SCs undergoing water therapies or afflicted with busted bladders.

It is in airports though that I find my SC card most magical. At a recent trip to Boracay, it was a breeze for me through the check-in counter at the Kalibo Airport, notwithstanding their downed operating systems. While my press juniors had to go through the longest queue. Aye, it pays to be old.   

Woe unto them though that don’t observe the seniority rule! Here the SC card turns into some weapon against injustice.

McDonald’s at Dolores Junction has this “Priority Lane for SCs and PWDs,” which, sadly, is more honoured in the breach. I had had two rows with McDo on this clear violation of the SC law. Senior moments, in a different, aye, affirmative, sense they are to me too.

The first time, I was not an SC yet, buying breakfast meals for the unmistakably elderly punye…, er, poetang Kapampangan Macky Pangan and laureadu Felix Garcia, who both happened to have a sudden bout with gout that restricted them to their seats.

Lined up at the clearly marked priority lane for SCs and PWDs were teens in their school uniforms, a young couple with tots, some employees. Last in the queue of 10, I patiently waited for my turn. My temper got the better of me when I got to third in line, snatching the priority lane sign and slamming it on the counter.

“Useless, you don’t follow it anyway,” I shouted at the service crew, drawing the attention of the security guard whom I put in place with a snarl: “Wag kang makialam, lumalabag kayo sa batas dito.”

The manager was profuse with her apologies and offered to get my orders herself and serve them at our table which I rejected, lecturing her on the rights of SCs while I waited for my turn at the counter.

And then, five months into my senior citizenship, again with Macky and Felix. The priority lane had an SC at its head, followed by four school-age kids and two 30-something ladies.

The open lane had only two in line so I took the slot and got served fast. I did not want to make a fuss this time.

Finishing our pancakes and sausage breakfast, I noticed the priority lane still clogged by the young, with a manang holding her SC card at the tail end.

I stood up, asked the manang to please get to the head of the line, and ordered – in a voice that boomed across the place – the service crew to serve her as it is her right to be served first, warning them: ”You are discriminating against senior citizens here.”

All eyes of the customers were on me but what did I care? Senior ito! I know our rights and I shall make sure they are respected, they are upheld, whenever challenged.

Just a week before the above cited incident, City of San Fernando Mayor Edwin “EdSa” Santiago paid the highest respect to the elderly, enjoining the community to treat them as “senior-itos and senior-itas” if only for their contribution to the development of the city. This, at the launch of the “Libreng Sine para sa Senior Citizens” program at the SM City Pampanga mall, where the elderly can avail themselves of free movie viewing every first screening on Mondays at the two SM malls in the capital city and at Robinsons Starmills.   

And that – seniority rules – is what it ought to be. Nothing special there, just simple respect for the law.

If this piece sounds like my faithful readers have read it before, they have. Rehashed as it is from two years back, in celebration of the Week of the Filipino Elderly last week yet but missed. Blame it to senior moments.

 

To my teachers, in gratitude

MY MATERNAL grandmother, Rita Pineda Canlas vda. de Zapata was my first teacher. Before I could learn to read and write she already had me memorizing – by rote – the prayer the Lord taught us, the invocations to the Virgin Mother, and the Rosary, plus the Confiteor.

Contemporaneous with my religious instruction was the caton from my maternal grandaunt, Carmen Pineda Canlas. That’s the Spanish alphabet, spiced with Caramba! Que horror! and the most welcome vamos a comer.

It is to my mother that I owe my love of reading, reading to me just about every material she could find: books, magazines, most especially the Liwayway which issue she never missed. This, even before I went to school.

No, I did not go to kindergarten. Instead, I was salimpusa in the Grade I class of Mrs. Gloria R. Reyes, at the time a most fair maiden wooed by the debonair Joe Reyes who later founded Pampanga Times.

I started formal schooling at the barrio San Vicente Elementary School in Sto. Tomas town as, being eight months short of my seventh birthday, I did not merit entry at the Sto. Tomas Central School. I walked two kilometers to school daily, many times bare-footed. My teacher was Miss Maria David, pursued by two suitors, Rene Velasquez and Porciano Canlas, whom she married. Indang Maring is childhood friend of my mom, so I guess that was how I was allowed in as regular grader.

Grade 2, I transferred to Sto. Tomas Central School, about five-minute walk from our home. My teacher was Mrs. Felisa Canlas, mother of former NEDA Director- General Dante Canlas.

Grade 3, my TIC – that’s teacher-in-charge – was Miss Estrelita Galang who later boarded at my Apung Mameng’s house. She returned to her native Ilocos Norte after marrying her childhood sweetheart Joe Paz.

Grade 4, my TIC was Miss Rose Intal. It is my music and arts teacher though that I remember with fondness – the most beautiful Miss Maria Galura, ardently wooed and won by a dashing young lawyer from nearby Minalin, Ricardo “Boy” Sagmit, later elected delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1971.

It was in Grade 5 that I really got started on the writing path, with the direction of Miss Cristina Tayag who drilled us, with the zeal and discipline of a Marine sergeant, on the English language with theme writing as a regular exercise.

Grade 6 was a breeze with Miss Rosita Canlas. I earned salutatorian honors at graduation, with a silver medal and the princely sum of P50, donated by Barrio Poblacion’s richest man, Mr. Aurelio Batac, Sr.

A totally different ballgame was the Jose Abad Santos High School which has since reverted to its former name Pampanga High School.

In Section 1 of over 20 sections, I was farm boy lost in the big town with my classmates – mostly from the “highly advanced” San Fernando Elementary School  -- dominating all the subjects, primarily the then novel Mathematics handled by our class adviser Miss Carmelita Perez. Once CDC vice president Teng Gorospe was the valedictorian of that class.

So I did where I thought I could excel – joined the campus papers The Pampangan with Miss Gervacia Guarin as moderator, and Sinukuan under the guidance of Miss Jasmin Dizon. I can still feel the thrill of seeing my first by-line under the article “Discipline via the squad system” on how the creme de la crème of the JASHS freshmen maintained the highest standards in the classroom through a conduct reporting system participated in by every student clustered in squads.

On my second year in high school, I transferred to the Mother of Good Counsel Seminary where I was remanded to first year, Infima Class.

Latin instantly became my favourite, the difficulty of conjugation – with verbs, as in amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant,  and declension – with nouns, as in rosa, rosae, rosam… for the feminine, and rivus, rive, rivum…for the masculine adding to the appeal of the subject. A philosophy graduate, Dan Basilio was my first Latin professor with Ars Latina. In Media Class, it was then Fr. Miles Pineda with De Bello Gallico; in Suprema Class was Fr. Martiniano Urbano with Cicero; and in Poetry Class, Fr. Paciano B. Aniceto with Ars Poetica and the Aenead.

I did well too in Geometry in second year with Mr. Velasquez, and Trigonometry in Suprema Class (third year) with Mr. Gregorio “Odo” Dayrit, also our Physics professor in our fourth year (Poetry Class). I remember Odo most for two things: he gave me a 98 grade in Physics for being the only one able to solve the problem he gave us for our finals: A single problem with only one equation and with zero as the only given; and he introduced me to Marx and Engels, Lenin and Mao, right on my second year at the seminary.

Generations of seminarians learned their birds-and-bees with the incomparable Mr. Leoncio Lising; their history – Philippine, American, Asian, World – with Mr. Narciso Tantingco; their economics with Mr. “Hammurabi” Amurao.                     

English, the seminary’s lingua franca, I assimilated through various professors in Composition as well as Literature – Fr. Mart Urbano, Fr. Jun Franco who was also president of Assumption College, Miss Julie Meneses, and Miss Nancy Ladringan, who would later become my first moderator in The Regina of Assumption College.

I learned my balarila and panitikan from Miss Estrelita David who always came to class all-smiles but would leave in tears even before the bell rang, due to our childish pranks. She is now Sister Lita of the Dominicans.

Finishing salutatorian at MGCS but fearful of being expelled from Rhetorics Class, I hastened to San Jose Seminary and Ateneo de Manila.

The lasting impressions I hold of my Jesuit professors there are those of Fathers William Keyes and Vincent Towers, in my English subjects; and Fr. Nick Cruz, in Film Appreciation.

Out of the seminary, to Assumption College. But not out of ex-seminarians for mentors, principally in philosophy: Narciso Garcia in Ethics and Epistemology, and Percival Cuevas in Logic.   

With English as major, Creative Writing with Mrs. Nicodemus – where coming to class high on grass during the finals, I was laughed out by the whole class when it took me all of five minutes to submit my composition. I got the last laugh though with a grade of 1 for my work – “The Effects of Laziness” – with that title the only thing written aside from my name on a totally blank test paper. And Journalism, with Sol Jay otherwise known as Consolacion Jaime as prof.    

With The Regina as the center of my orbit, it was Mrs. June Velez-Belmonte, since emigrated to the US and now Mrs. June Whitmer, that may well have served as the jeweller that polished the raw gem in me as a writer and editor.

“The hand that rocked my journalism cradle,” I inscribed on all my books I brought her in my visits to her home in San Jose, California, befitting of her motherhood I was most blessed with. 

On this the month honouring teachers, I remember and honor all those who crafted me to what I am now.              

I shall always be grateful, my beloved mentors. 

(Updated from Zona Libre, Oct.4, 2012 with additional remembrances)

State of mindlessness

photograb from Benny Guinto fb account

IS THERE a functioning government in the City of San Fernando?

After the slew of anakpu… and taknayda…came that realization to this logical one, stuck in horrendous traffic at the Gapan-San Fernando-Olongapo Road, er, Jose Abad Santos Avenue, last Friday.

Horrendous, graaabeee, as in bumper-to-bumper from Mexico westward and vice versa at JASA, and two-lanes of the NLEx, both northbound and southbound, to the San Fernando Exit occupied for over a kilometer.

The cause? Sale at the S&R Membership Shopping warehouse. Where two lanes of JASA became instant parking lots.

Coming in from Sta. Ana, we started our long road to Calvary right in front of the Mexico parish church – aye, on hindsight now, a precursor of the distress to come: the patron Sta. Monica traditionally dedicated to sufferings, for her anguish over the iniquities of her son Augustine in his youth.

That was 11:15 a.m. Travelling virtually by inches, we reached the Lagundi rotunda after about an hour – a distance of three kilometers or so.

Finding a break at the rotunda going to the old road, we veered from the JASA traffic that had come to a standstill approaching SM.

It was like going from the frying pan into the fire. Traffic was as, if not more, intolerable, given the road being much narrower than JASA. And seeming like just about every motorist going eastward or westward had the same idea I had to avoid JASA.

A short three-kilometer stretch took all of some 45 minutes to negotiate, finding some relief in a detour in Barangay San Jose through that one-lane steel bridge to the University of the Assumption. And, serendipitously, finding that newly constructed concrete two-lane bridge with a house for its northern approach – yeah, as stupid as any traffic solution can get here. 

It was a breeze therefrom through Unisite Subd. to MacArthur Highway to the connecting road to Gen. Hizon Avenue, through Sta. Lucia to Capitol onto Lazatin Boulevard and home to St. Jude Village.

All of a little over two hours. And we were luckier. Those who stuck by JASA took much longer.

Maybe, they had a higher level of tolerance to suffering. Or that they had the same mindset as Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade’s that traffic is just “a state of mind.”

Honestly, I tried Tugade’s illusion. Thinking of pleasant, beautiful things – our courtship, complete with papungay-pungay mata to the wife at the front passenger’s seat, our autumn in Kyoto, by the beach WHHPSSP – that is walking-hand-in-hand-pasway-sway-pa...But still, the reality struck: we are stuck in a gridlock. And not even the deepest om-ah-hum meditation can alter that reality.

Being stuck in traffic simply sucks.    

So, we look for the scapegoat to blame.

So, was there a functioning government in the City of San Fernando that Friday?

A big yes: the city living up to its hall-of-fame elevation as most business-friendly city – can it be any friendlier to S&R by dedicating two lanes of JASA as its private parking lot?

On the other hand, one can’t help but wonder how the city executive could ever be bestowed a Lingkod Bayan – public servant – award when that single sales event can hold virtually the whole city to a standstill, the public greatly inconvenienced to say the least.

Ayayay, the moniker of hizzoner nga pala is EdSa. See any konek there?

Aye, in the context of Tugade’s thesis: with EdSa, the state of EDSA is transposed to JASA.      

No, I am not accusing anyone of incompetence here. The horrendous traffic last Friday being a mere state of mindlessness, to inversely, if not perversely, paraphrase my favorite Tatalonian Toughie at CDC, now DOTr heavy.

Yeah, as one former mayor of San Fernando – no, not Oca Rodriguez – used to say: “Traffic is a sign of progress. The more traffic, the more progress.”

So, decongest Metro Manila, bring everything to Pampanga.