April Fool

As I was trying to compose myself once again for my comprehensive review after three days of idleness brought about by the 35th commencement exercise of UPLB, I couldn't avoid but reminisce the days exactly one year ago when I was at the same summer event. I recalled the mountain gimmicks with dear friends who graduated in the same year and some who graduated just yesterday.

The following is a story I composed last year just after our group went to fool Mt. Marami but only to find out that we were the ones fooled! It was earlier posted in Alkin's website to which I am sharing again in here as:

‘Twas again the end of the 2^nd semester SY 2005-2006 – gimmick! Days and weeks of exhausting reports, term papers and exams needed awhile away from it.

Target gimmick place? In Mt. Marami somewhere in the Magallanes-Maragondon boundary in Cavite.

It was April Fool’s Day and nobody in the group seemed to notice it. As usual, we left the IH in the afternoon of that day. We were seven (7) and to name: Veronica “Vero”, Jessie, Alquin, Vijay, Michelle and Jenny (from IH who joined the group for the first time) and me.

Just like our weekend gimmick to Majayjay 3 weeks ago, when we claimed to be all set but our dig cam was not fully charged so we only had few pictures of the place.

Now, for this particular climb, we were also prepared for the best. We were prepared of course because we were able to reach the peak safe and sound at around 10:30 in the night. It was a night trek to the top with a hired guide pa! So, talagang well prepared kami!

Upon reaching the top, of course all were so weary and so hungry and so thirsty so that we were also quick to spot a place to settle down and cook dinner. All of a sudden, a kilo maybe or more of rice grains were all shouting to be cooked! Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend me your ears… here at the peak of Mt. Marami, can you hear them? From where are those grains shouting? At either Alquin’s or Vijay’s room back in IH!!! So, what??? Riceless dinner???!!!! Of course!!! ‘Imagine all the people ….’ is all what I can only remember of the song!

Our dig cam kept on displaying, ‘batteries depleted’ and our cooking pots shouted, ‘rice forgotten!’

I just sat down and traced each move of Jessie and tried to figure out if he and these other guys were fooling the girls. I was still waiting for them to tell us that they were just kidding but it seems that Jessie was serious. I then asked for the loaf and peanut butter that one of the guys carried but it was also nowhere to be found. I don’t know where it went; maybe back also to the “land of loaves!” We found out the following day that it had also been shouting overnight because it was left from where we took our last stop of rest.

Let me name our meal that night: 4 packs of pancit canton with calamansi and 2 egg noodles (in the usual package size), 4 small - sized canned goods, 2 small sachets of mayonnaise and 150? gms 3 in 1 ovaltine powder that Vijay and I bought at the Walter Mart in Calamba and to which I was able to carry in my backpack. That was it and nabusog naman po kami!

While preparing the noodles and coffee mix, the atmosphere suddenly became a shooting for a movie. I can’t only discern though if it was to be categorized as drama or comedy. (It’s still for nomination either for Famas or Oscar Awards). Who was/were the main actor/s? Ask the rocks in Mt. Marami. Marami silang alam better than we do.

Anyway, we still found ourselves to have enjoyed the climb. After our late riceless dinner, we spent some moments watching city lights from afar and shooting stars from above. No wishes however, were counted. Bakit kaya?

I became somewhat stupid that moment so that when I saw the blinking lights of an airplane, I made it a shooting star! It’s not common for me to make wishes upon a star, especially upon a shooting star so I don’t say anything upon seeing one except a tailed waaahhhhh… Of course, Vijay and Jessie who were beside me laughed at my shooting star!!!! Heh, inggit lang kayo! “Vero, why are you quiet there?” “Alquin, be careful! One mistake and you will roll down the slope.” Jenny became deaf. She was so engrossed with her music of the night in her MP3!

Around 2:30 in the early morning, that was Sunday na, we went back to our tents and joined Michelle who was already in Disneyland. (She was left in the tent when we passed time at the peak).

The following day, we continued the “shooting” with many pairs of batteries from Michelle’s backpack pocket and kahit papaano e, we were able to produce good pictures enough to tell that we were once at the peak of Mt. Marami. Supported naman with Jenny’s still camera - soooo… prepared kami talaga! ‘di ba?

Enjoyed the morning then had to pack again and hike back. I led the way down until our last stop the night before and found the “lost loaf bread and peanut butter” of Mt. Marami, still on its place. 'Twas good there were no roaming horses or cows during the night, kung hindi e wala na kaming pangbreakfast with the left-over na 3 in 1 ovaltine.

At nearly 11:00 in the morning, we reached the jump-off point at baranggay Ramirez in Magallanes. (please check). Prepared our lunch with the assistance of the Punong Baranggay. At last kakain na kami uli ng ‘rice.’ Ulam? A kilo or more of fish and cubed Indian mangoes, eh, green mangoes pala, tomatoes, onions and savored with salt. Wow sarap!

The group reached back IH at 4:00 in the afternoon. Call it a break!

(Mt. Marami has a rocky peak and stands at 840 masl according to a data from the internet that the group downloaded. A few meters before the peak are vine-like bamboos somewhat thick along the way. Slash and burn farming is so evident in most faces of the lower peaks. Some grassy areas get burned and this has something to do with grazing when rain comes.

A deep hole is found somewhere at one of the edges of the peak and is so dangerous especially at nighttime.

A night trek or bleak day trek is better since it’s deadly hot to hike during the day).

Porch Monkeys!

The day I went for a hike with some of my dorm mates to NACP, Ryan and I went a bit ahead of our companions while digging up and forming if not recalling stories of any topic under the sun. Finally, our conversation crossed the monkey world but avoided the issues of a monkey as either a man's look alike or what science claims as where man evolved from. (What is the difference of a monkey and an ape?) Instead our stories revolved around a different corner of the monkey world.

This conversation brought me back to the days when I was about 4 or 5 years old when I can remember myself always nagging my mother to repeat a monkey story that I earlier heard from her. It may had always been a boring time for her to tell the whole story over and over while I enjoyed listening to it! It was about a turtle and a monkey who finally decided to divide a banana plant into two so each one can plant and take care of his own. By ruling his power, the monkey chose and grabbed the half of the banana with the leaves intact because he thought that it would grow faster for sure than the other half which was just a stalk without any leaves! It had no leaves but it had roots intact which was left for the turtle to plant.

Ryan and I reached a place further uphill where we spotted a horse and a couple with two kids sitting down for a rest beside the road. He said that we are approaching some "porch monkeys." "What? Porch monkeys?," I repeated quizically. I accept I am so poor in vocabulary and to add to this it was really my first time to hear the phrase. He explained that monkeys are also called as such because it is one of their characteristics to sit down (on their porch) and stare to passers-by. "Why is it that monkeys are accused of this manner? Don't human beings also do it?", I kinda asked him. "What if we also get tired an hour later and take a rest by sitting down beside this road and if someone passes by, will we not also look at him?" (As I was typing this blogstory I just don't know why I immediately used the word look and not stare. I immediately felt indifferent when I was about to type the word stare, of me as one of those being described. This means then that I don't accept that I'm like a monkey and that I didn't come from the monkey because I don't possess the characteristic... lol!) People I know all over the world whatever race they maybe have this typical activity tough. During an idle part of the day it is always refreshing to stay on the porch of the house with any of the family member, visitor or anyone from the neighborhood for a chat. And if the house happens to be beside a road then these people having a chat on the porch cannot avoid to look at those passers-by. This is why the phrase "porch monkey" had to grope its way to Ryan's vocabulary.

Then I recalled my first days at the residence hall where I now stay. Some of the older residents used to gather on the benches in front of it just to let time pass by especially during blackouts. "I may had been one of the topics when I happened to pass by these people before because I was a new face by then! I should have called them porch monkeys have I heard of it and you were one of them," I told Ryan.

Then I remembered my friend who always mused about the word busy, so that I always got careful in using it. He said that there's an opposite meaning of the word. "It is what monkeys do everyday!" he always laughingly told me before. Again the real monkeys are accused without their knowledge of it at all! Monkeys are compared to individuals who say that they are so busy even if they are just sitting down and chatting making noise and even hop from one workplace to another but at the end of the day nothing new is accomplished! If not, a work was done but an an illegal one! It is well known that this was how the famous "monkey business" was coined and had even harbored numerous stories.

Poor monkeys who are always the center of man's foolishness and stupid stories! But are they really the ones stupid? Obviously their "world" is not the human world! Monkeys cannot only think and talk rationally like humans so that they cannot write to tell their stories about their despiser's, cannot post on blogs, cannot send messages in YM's, e-mails and friendsters...! lol!

May Ilog!

Whew! I just finished my late lunch after I woke up! My legs ache and I feel as if I was paddled all over.

I slept just after two of my dorm mates and Irene from the Biological Sciences Department and I came down from a morning walk to the steep and winding roads around the National Arts Center of the Philippines found within the town of Los Baños in Laguna. This Center was built during the reign of the Marcoses in 1976 and is still standing proud amidst the blue sky and rainforest at the eastern foot of the mythical Mt. Makiling. The center is still alive although it is very obvious that the government is doing its best to maintain the now dilapidated facilities. NACP was established purposely as a learning center for the young and aspiring Filipino artists. This place also is where the Philippine High School for the Arts, a government run secondary institute for gifted young artists is located.

I could just then imagine this 13.5 hectare a place to be foggy, mossy and with running clear, fresh water at some points when it was still newly established. And it may have been cold when global warming was not yet a popular phrase during it's neophyte years. This imagination of how it could have looked like was once upon a time part of its life and that it rapidly waned and is still now keeping on to wane.

As we were hiking back home thirsty and drenched with sweat because of the alarming high temperature that had been pushing the mercury up since early this month, a wind slowly blew its lazy whisper ontop of the trees where we were and it made a sound like that of a lazy flowing water down a brook or creek. But the sound led one of my companions to believe that it was a flowing water on a river (ilog in Tagalog) so he shouted' "May ilog!" He longed to see water in the area because he was thirsty!

As we trodded further down, we really saw a creek but not a river and guess what? A waterless creek! It was a creek where a crystal clear water may had flowed down many years ago but it had to be as it is today.

Time Zone

I ended this day as usual like the past week when I was supposed to do my comprehensive review for my general exam come May 29, 2007 - nothing real however got into my memory! hhhmmmm...!

I just got disturbed of all the magazines, atlases, dailies and books all around me at the cozy IRRI library where I am doing my review with a Laos classmate, also a Plant Breeding major student. I entered the library around 2:30 in the afternoon and sat beside my classmate who was in his seat since earlier of the day. But instead of opening my review material, I grabbed one of the dailies instead for an update of the Julia Campbell story and the Virginia Tech shooting/massacre that had been revolving around the dailies and e-posts since last Tuesday, April 17th.

Julia Campbell, a known American journalist in her 40 and who had been working with the New York Times for quite a number of years left her career and headed to the Philippines as a Peace Corps volunteer. She had been staying in several places of the country since two years ago like Los Baños in Laguna, Sorsogon and Albay. She found a new home in Legazpi City where she became a teacher and trainer at the Divine Word College until her disappearance.

To while away her busy schedule from the school as it was a Lenten Season in the Catholic church and the school year has just ended she headed to some places in the Cordillera Region to find solace and visit some friends like in Sagada before her trek alone on a late afternoon of April 8, 2007 to the cold, serene and wonderful rice terraces of Batad in Banaue, Ifugao. There she met her death with a cause still unsolved as of this writing.

As I lifted and traced all the pages of one of the Philippine dailies bearing her death story by the Associated Press and some by Reuters, I came across one page citing her humorous stories that were archived from her blog describing how a person from an advanced country with all the comforts of life can cope up and live in countries like the Philippines. (Please understand that she is referring to the ordinary Filipino life and not that of the life of the few comfortable elites or elite pretenders). One funny thing that caught my attention is the Philippines' famous "Filipino Time" which she went on to say that even if this is the attitude of the Filipino people they can still manage to laugh and make more humors about it. She finally concluded that this attitude might be one of the reasons why the Philippines lag behind her other South East Asian neighbors!

Julia Campbell wondered how do Filipinos live in a very different time zone! I am a Filipino and also wonder how because a universal time zone that I know is any of the 24 longitudinal divisions of the Earth's surface in which a standard time is kept, the primary division being that bisected by the Greenwich meridian. Kaya nga tayo mga Pinoy eh! because we can adapt to any situation anytime, anywhere and can even make impossible things (to other people) possible! (laughs).