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.