#10: Los Indios Bobos.

Being Jose Rizal, Pinoys &

The University Of The Philippines

One Vision Indivisible. Pinoys, we modern Filipinos ignore that as requisite for countrywide development, because we are all Los Indios Bobos. Exactly like Jose Rizal, our National Hero, in 1889. No wonder we can’t progress from Third World to First World, even to a Tiger Economy.

Bobos is plural for bobo, which is part of the vocabulary of the Filipino, a legacy of Spanish colonialism; the word is Spanish for foolish (SDL International, FreeTranslation.com). Los Indios Bobos, Those Foolish Indians, primitive thinkers.

And where in all this is UP, the University of the Philippines, the State University, the premier university, my beloved alma mater? Bobo!

UP is 99 years old; it is celebrating its centenary next year, 2008. I get that data on the history of the University of the Philippines as part of the history book on UP Los Baños just written by a well-known science manager, Fernando A Bernardo; his book is UPLB: A Century Of Challenges And Achievements, 2007, Los Baños: UPLB Alumni Association, 249 pages, in press), which includes as background the status of the Filipinos when the Spaniards came to the islands to subjugate them in the name of Felipe, King of Spain, and called them Indios (Indians, implying primeval, implying second-rate humans).

If I understand him right, Bernardo submits that one of the lessons learned from that century of schooling is that UP Los Baños is also bobo for being subservient to the System – UP. Change the System!

First, we much change the Indios. We must change ourselves.

In Rizal’s subversive first book, Noli Me Tangere (1887), history told as fiction, the Spanish friars describe the Indio variously as ‘indolent,’ ‘vicious,’ ‘ungrateful,’ ‘uncouth’ (Ma Soledad Lacson-Locsin translation, 1996: 9). Barbarians.

The Spaniards, Nathan Gilbert Quimpo says, regarded the Indios as belonging to the ‘primitive’ and ‘inferior races’ and thus were ‘as fit to be enslaved or subjugated’ (2003, ‘Colonial name, colonial mentality and ethnocentrism,’ Part One, Kasama 17(3), 2003 July-September, cpcabrisbane.org). Quimpo cites Manuel Duldulao’s ‘hierarchy of inferiority’ that goes like this: Peninsulares > Criollos > Mestizos > Indios. The Indios are the lowest form of citizens in their own country. Dregs even.

Even the intellectual Jose Rizal was oppressed by the label of Indio on the Filipinos, that is to say, including himself. He was ashamed to be a Filipino! He didn’t actually say he disliked being referred to as Indio, but he felt the stigma. He was the leader of a gang who called themselves the Kidlat Club (Lightning Club), the name signifying its real as well as its ephemeral nature. The Kidlat Clubbers included the brothers Antonio & Juan Luna, Lauro Dimayuga, Baldomero Roxas, Gregorio Aguilera, Fernando Canon, Gregorio Pautu and Julio Llorente. Sometime between May and October 1889, they were sightseeing in the Paris International Exposition; that was when Rizal noticed that the American Indians were carrying themselves with dignity despite the pejorative label Indios, that is to say, uncivilized. They were showing they were more civilized than their namecallers. That was when Rizal had a flash of genius and told his gangmates: ‘Why should we resent being called Indios by the Spaniards? Look at the American Indians. They are not ashamed of their race. Let us be like them. Let us be proud of the name Indio and make the Spaniards revise their conception of the term. We shall become Indios Bravos!’ (Source, Gregorio Zaide 2003: 138; Jose Rizal: Life, Works and Writings. Mandaluyong City: National Book Store). And so they did.

Los Indios Bravos – The Indian Braves. That was good for the 19^th century, to prevail over the stigma of inferiority, over the alleged lack of culture.

Today, I think we Filipinos have too much culture – we are too American for our own good. We don’t have enough education for our own good. UP was designed by the Americans almost 100 years ago to match the times; times have changed, but we haven’t.

So, for the 21^st century, instead of Indios Bravos, I’m thinking Indios Bravados, where ‘bravado’ means ‘a real or pretended display of courage or boldness’ (Encarta 2007 Dictionaries). We need both senses to put some sense back into our heads.

Like Rizal and the Kidlat Gang, before they transformed themselves into Los Indios Bravos, our thinking shows we are backward Indios even in UP.

In these trying and crying times, if we don’t have bravado (true boldness), what we need is bravado (assumed boldness) that will assuredly grow into bravado (real boldness). Boldness for what? Boldness for growth, for progress. For the family, for the community, for the country. Boldness for moving on despite the problems, despite the corruption, despite the despair of many, despite the naysayers, despite the coup plotters, despite the destabilizers, despite ourselves.

To pursue the good life, the collective good life, we Filipinos need bravado. Now, while I’m the first to say that, I just found out that Bravado is the name of a magazine in New Zealand; and the Editorial Collective that works behind the issues has defined the word in this manner: ‘Bravado, n, a bold and defiant demonstration of courage; any public show of skills and talents to encourage admiration’ (bravado.co.nz). I like that, ‘to encourage admiration’ and not ‘to encourage submission.’ Modeling, not behavioral modification.

By bravado I mean daring but not bluster, I mean being proud but not boasting, I mean showing but not show-off, I mean display but not swagger. I’m thinking of politicians, soldiers, businessmen, teachers, academicians, analysts, columnists, media people, activists, reformers, oppositionists.

From where the Philippines is right now, if we want to get there from here, we should not think First World or Tiger Economy – it is too much to expect; instead, we should think Ten Steps Forward. The first step should be to separate master from slave, as in UP from UPLB. All we need is bravado.

Let’s be creative. Instead of being Los Indios Bobos, or Los Indios Bravos, we must be Los Indios Bravados.

Also published by American Chronicle in a slightly different version.

 

 

#9: 1907 In Confusion.

We Had A Cow College

Before We Had A University?

1907 was a great year. Maybe. The recliner was invented, and so was popcorn. And so was our beloved Cow College. A creative year.

As to the recliner, it made Edwin J Shoemaker’s La-Z-Boy furniture company one of the most successful companies in the US (britannica.com).

As to the popcorn, Orville Redenbacher co-created a hybrid called ‘Snowflake,’ because it was lighter and fluffier than the competition. Did it make this scientist rich? Britannica doesn’t say. It certainly made watching movies more enjoyable.

As to our Cow College, it’s the UPCA, the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture. According to Dr. Fernando A. Bernardo’s book (UPLB: A Century of Challenges and Achievements, Los Baños: UPLBAA, 250 pages, in press), 1907 is the year this Cow College was born.

That is all very clear, right? Now, I’ll ask you a question:

As an institution, do you celebrate your birth the day a higher power creates you or the day you open to the public, the greater power?

Historically, UP, the University of the Philippines has a confusion of answers:

1) Date first opened to public: UP College of Medicine, celebrating centenary on 2007 June 10

2) Date conceived by Department of Public Instruction: UPCA, celebrating centenary on 2007 (August 9 maybe)

3) Date created by Philippine Commission: UP PGH, the Philippine General Hospital celebrating centenary on 2007 August 17 (Act 1688)

4) Date created by Philippine Commission: UP itself, celebrating centenary on 2008 June 18 (Act 1870).

5) Date created by UP Board of Regents: School of Fine Arts and College of Agriculture, celebrating centenary on 2009 March 6.

Why do I want to confuse you? Harry S. Truman says, ‘If you can’t convince them, confuse them.’ More to the point, I want you to pay attention. Tom Peters says, ‘If you’re not confused, you’re not paying attention.’

UPCM. UP College of Medicine celebrated its centenary 2007 June 10, June 10 being the date in 1907 when the Philippine Medical School (first incarnation) opened to the public (upm.edu.ph). Earlier, UPCM was created 1905 December 1 by the Second Philippine Commission (Act 1415).

UPCA. In 1907, the Department of Public Instruction adopted a plan ‘for the establishment of a large insular agricultural school in the vicinity of Manila’ with a huge P100,000 budget available’ (Bernardo as cited, page 24).

UP PGH. The Philippine General Hospital was created by the Philippine Commission (Act 1688) on 1907 August 17 and opened to the public on 1910 September 1 with 300 beds (pgh.gov.ph). So the celebration was this year, August 13-17.

UP Manila. This Ermita-Padre Faura UP campus claims that perhaps no other constituent university of the UP System is the history of UP more closely bound than in UP Manila, being its birthplace in June 1908 (upm.edu.ph).

UP itself. On 1908 June 18, the Governor General signed into law Act 1870 creating the ‘University of the Philippines’ (Bernardo, 25). But in fact, there were no schools to compose UP at that time. It was only on 1909 March 6 that the Board of Regents ‘unanimously decided the immediate establishment’ of the School of Fine Arts and the College of Agriculture, during the 1^st meeting of the BOR (Bernardo, 25).

Hah! Don’t get me wrong; I’m UP and I admire UP. Now then, Blaise Pascal reminds me, ‘You always admire what you really don’t understand.’

Will UP people admit to confusing a date with another date weeks or months apart? Daniel Boone admits, ‘I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks.’ And Jane Haddam says, ‘People always seem to know half of history, and to get it confused with the other half.’

1907 was really a confusing year.

1907 was a merry-mix-up year. The Nacionalista Party was founded April 29; one of its leaders was Manuel L Quezon (controversial genius); Ramon Magsaysay (convivial leader) was born on August 31, Gregorio Zaide (controversial historian) May 25.

1907 was a hanging year. Macario Sakay, anti-American, was hanged by the enemy September 13.

1907 was an earth-shaking year. Arrhenius proposed that life on earth originated from interstellar microorganisms. The idea of space-time continuum was established in Minkowski’s Raum und Zeit (Space and Time). Joseph John Thompson published his Corpuscular Theory of Matter (chronita.com).

1907 was a religion-laden year. Syrian archbishop Athanasius Yeshu Samuel first brought the Dead Sea Scrolls to our attention (britannica.com). In the Philippines, the Union Theological Seminary was established in Dasmariñas, Cavite.

1907 was a school-founding year. The Americans established the Central Luzon Agricultural School (Gina Mission, gina.ph/CyberDyaryo). Librada Avelino and Carmen de Luna founded the Centro Escolar University.

1907 was a color-coded year. It was the year the Lumiere brothers developed color photography. It was also the year of black and white – you’re black and I’m white – an imperialist year. It was the beginning of the American Occupation of the Philippines. It was the year Rudyard Kipling won the Nobel Prize for Literature; he is ‘chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism’ – his convictions being ‘bound up with a genuine sense of a civilizing mission that required every Englishman, or more broadly, every white man, to bring European culture to the heathen natives of the uncivilized world’ (britannica.com). A genuine imperialist!

But if you think imperialist thoughts, then you will never celebrate any of those anniversaries, because it was the Americans and not the Filipinos who first thought of UP and its component parts. Certainly, UP itself is of imperialist design – the Americans came as imperialists, didn’t they?

If you ask me, I will celebrate all those anniversaries. Lewis Carroll tells me, ‘Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.’

I find I have 3 birthdates: 1939 November 11, as school records show. 1940 September 17, as my father wrote on the hidden side of a post in our house long ago. 1940 September 22, as records of the Catholic Church in Asingan, Pangasinan show. I celebrate them all. Why? It’s all very simple, really:

I celebrate life!

Also published by American Chronicle in a slightly different version.

 

 

#8: American Minds.

Another 100 Years Of Solicitude

In The Philippines? Duh!

American minds? They don’t necessarily agree with each other, and that’s the beauty of it all – with an open mind, you can make sense upon nonsense of all that chaos and confusion upon the waters of democracy. The Yankees are the greatest act in history, but that doesn’t mean they’re perfect. Many an American is bone-headed; that doesn’t mean the Yankees can’t teach us something.

I’m a Filipino celebrating a century of American minds in the Philippines. The Yankees have been teaching us Filipinos for the last century; we don’t like everything they deliver, including lectures, but hey, you can also learn from bad examples. You just have to be creative!

Filipino to American, I give credit to whom credit is due: The state-sponsored American education of the Filipinos began almost 100 years ago when William Howard Taft, later to become President of the United States, as Governor General and head of the Philippine Commission, the colonial government in the islands, signed Act 1870 creating UP, the University of the Philippines, on 1908 June 18 (UPLB: A Century of Challenges and Achievements, a book by science manager-historian-author-poet Fernando A Bernardo, in press). UP was the Filipinos’ first institutional great lesson in thinking: Think big and think country and think international. But we were not paying attention, except to the Stateside goodies. Beloved, Uncle Sam was great!

Today, American thought is almost anathema to the University of the Philippines, at least to the nationalists who reject English as the dominant medium of instruction in school and the language of communication media, except print. Not me. To teach, to communicate, to learn I prefer the English language as I, too, am a victim of colonial education. (I’ve been saying that for at least 40 years.)

UP, the University of the Philippines is the institution that has shaped my mind, this BSA ‘65; it is an institution I cannot reject for being colonial-minded or subservient to the American mind. It is only subservient to itself. You are what you think. You serve your own master. UP can learn from Ateneo, as the younger can learn from the older, as indeed the State can learn from the Church: There are no masters where there are no slaves.

In fact, the Earth is now a borderless world – so, likewise, must be our thinking. So, American minds keep knocking on our doors? My door is always open, come in!

American minds come in all guises, or disguises. Like today, Thursday, August 2, as I start writing this, I sit admiring even as I use our brand new desktop PC with all the power that my money can buy. Money can’t buy everything, but this time, it’s everything to me, a writer, editor, publisher, nerd in need of a high-powered PC.

Yes, this PC is American minds, plural. (And yes, the personal computer is the only place in the world where protocol dictates that you have master / slave, and such relationship is real, not virtual.) The PC itself started as American, that of Steve Jobs (the idea) and Steve Wozniak (the thing). The innovation, art & science that went into the making of the components, the technologies – consider the processor, motherboard, hard disk, CPU case, monitor, keyboard, mouse – are all Yankee in origin, if manufactured in China. As American as apple pie, if coming from Taiwan.

What do we have here? ‘Truly the world’s best.’ Intel claims that on her Core 2 Duo desktop processor. I’m looking at the Hilarios’ Core 2 Duo 1.86 GHz processor with 2 GB of DDRAM housed in a PowerLogic tower case with a Conroe1333-D667 motherboard by ASRock, a Radeon X1550 graphics card, a 320 GB hard disk, and a 17-inch LG Flatron LCD monitor to boot. An all-black ensemble. My children and I have been using it for a week; I have been using many a PC in many an office since 1985, and I find this one truly a merry mix of the best minds. Definitely American.

I’ll tell you more about it in a parallel way:

(1) I’m happy with that desktop PC now ours (Intel Inside) – it’s above standard.

(2) I’m unhappy with Intel’s grammar – it’s below standard.

Happy with Intel’s Core 2 Duo

July 27, a Friday, I pick up the Hilarios’ PC order, which I have already described above; add to the assembly an internal Asus DVD Writer optical drive, an A4Tech Anti-RSI keyboard, and an ekes optical 3D mouse to make it work. Ah, and it’s good-looking! And the monitor: the colors of LG’s Flatron are gorgeous; never mind the fonts but the images are perfect.

An Intel Core 2 Duo PC! I’ve been dreaming of such a desktop for exactly a year. It was on July 27 last year when Intel launched the Core 2 brand of CPUs. The website says (intel.com) ‘… The Intel Core 2 Duo processor family is designed to provide powerful energy-efficient performance so you can do more at once without slowing down.’

I like the sound of that: ‘So you can do more at once without slowing down.’ Being a multi-tasker, always opening many Microsoft Windows, I have always had problems with memory-hungry Microsoft Word, from Word 97 to Word 2000 to Word XP (2002) to Word 2003 – I have yet to learn to like Word 2007 along with Windows Vista. Word has always crashed on me, for want of physical memory. No more. Oh, and how fast is our Core 2 Duo? It can copy 1 GB in 120 seconds. Lightning speed without the lightning. Today, the past is epilogue.

Unhappy with Intel’s Core 2 Duo grammar

I bought my Intel’s Core 2 Duo from Prologue Computers (based in Los Baños) and there picked up a copy of the Intel brochure on the processor itself (printed in Hong Kong). The headline:

Up to 40% more performance
and 40% more energy efficient.

That’s the new Intel Core 2 Duo desktop processor according to the Intel brochure. That is incorrect. I mean, it has incorrect grammar. Also bad euphony.

I remember a very old Reader’s Digest joke (I’ve been reading this magazine for 50 years), and it goes like this:
Question: Why do the Americans have to be taught English in class?
Answer: Because they have to learn a language other than their own.

You see, ‘performance’ is a noun and ‘energy efficient’ is an adjective. In marketing, that’s poor performance. This is good marketing:

Up to 40% higher performance
and 40% higher energy efficiency.

Even that performance can be improved upon. I know because I worked as a copywriter in a Makati advertising agency (Pacifica Publicity Bureau) with EVP Telly Bernardo and Creative Director Nonoy Gallardo in the mid-1970s and learned something from them.

This is better copy:

Works for you 40% more
and saves you 40% more.

And this is even better copy:

Runs your software the fastest
and saves you energy the most.

See? I don’t mind the best American mind knocking on my door or sitting on my desktop. I have my own.

 

Also published by American Chronicle in a slightly different version.

 

#7: and i love her

up in my head, she walks in beauty

‘She walks in beauty, like the day’

She walks in beauty, and I love her.
She is beautiful to me, now.
For all that may be said, love is a matter of the inner being.
I love her for her books where I found what I had been looking for – and what I had not been looking for – and both had enriched my mind.
I love her for her companionship, her bright face in the morning, her umbrella of energy.
I love her for a reason, and for no reason at all.
She inspires me to creativity.

She has known many masters over the years: American, Japanese, Filipino, and she has imbibed their good and bad habits. While she insists that she is Filipina, I love her for her beautiful mind.
I love her if she were just being her.
I love her after all is said and done.

She was always with me in and out of my classes.
I love her for welcoming me back after a string of bad grades in one semester – 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, all of 15 units. First love does that to you.
After that, she rejected me for all of my bad years, but I love her anyway.

I love her for what she was and what she has become.
I love her for allowing me to become what I am today.
I love her forever.

This love of mine leaves me no choice – she will always be a part of me. She was my intellectual introducer, nourisher, enricher.
She colored my world green and gold and red. She colored my words.
I would not show my love by etching her name and mine on the bark of a tree or on a colored, tiled sidewalk. I would show my love in subtle ways.
My love was not because I got something in return but because I could give back something – my talent, my works, my sacrifices, my challenges.

Once I betrayed her; it’s very late, but now I’m very sorry.
Once, I didn’t see her point of view, and I rejected her in public and for what seemed like for all time.
Once, I declared her action as loyalty to a wrong cause, but she was very right and I was very wrong.
Once, I believed too much in my logic and reasoned out that her reasoning was clouded by a misplaced ideal. It was my ideal that was misplaced.

I left her. But no, I never really left her. I hung around her. I couldn’t get her out of my system. I went South, North, Center, and to the Big City, but she was always in my heart.
I lost my faith in myself and almost lost my mind, but I survived also because of her.
I found back my faith in people, in God, in me also because of her.

She nourished my nocturnal soul.
She taught me Spanish, even when I didn’t like it and could not see what relevance did that make in my life.
She taught me Western Thought and Eastern Thought and I got a 1 in the first and a 3 in the second. I always inclined to the West in my way of thinking rather than to the East. She would always point to both.
She tried to teach me to love the life and works of our national hero, José Rizal, but I didn’t really give it much thought. Two years ago I learned that lesson of love.

When I first knew her, she accepted me as an innocent country boy of 19, wide-eyed, naïve.
When I became a writer in her presence and with her promptings, she cultivated the seeds I sowed in the minds of my readers.
When I thought I saw in her Maria Makiling, she thought she saw in me her Oblation. Love makes you very imaginative.
When I saw her, it was love at first sight, and I didn’t regret falling in love with her even when I found out she was highly politicized. I was stubborn myself.
When I deserted her for another love, she called me back and accepted me with open arms.

I love her despite everything.
I love her although she has insisted in talking to me in Tagalog and I had insisted in talking to her in English, and now I understand her.
I love her for being of a free mind and wanting me to be free.
I love her for defining for me what is freedom, which is that I am free to swing my arm short of her nose.
She has her faults, but I have learned to forgive, and instantly, such sweet pleasure!
She is not perfect, but I love her so.
I love her enough to wait forever to get connected via wireless Internet in an optic fiber network.
She can throw a tantrum, but I can watch her now and love her still.
She will be 100 next year, but what the hell! I love her anyway.
I love my alma mater, the University of the Philippines.
My beloved.
UP in my head, she walks in beauty.
Bow.

#6: Every Body Counts.

War As A Measure Of Worth

Maria Makiling must have wept as she watched the carnage below

Dr Fernando Bernardo has just written the first scholarly history of my alma mater: University of the Philippines Los Baños: A Century Of Challenges And Achievements, published by the UPLB Alumni Association Inc – it’s about to go to press; I’m in my fifth reading-to-edit-the-text – and it was his Three Tales Of War (my coinage) that struck me first: the Filipino-American War, World War I, and World War II. It’s from Dr B’s book that I can give you some details. You will be surprised to learn that WWI came to Los Baños in a mighty way. As we go the way of warriors, we shall learn to measure war in a way that every body counts, beloved.

First, World War I – Dr B writes that ‘the Filipino-American War (1899-1902) was more violent and lasted longer than the Filipino revolution against Spain (1896-1898), with more loss of human life and destruction of agriculture.’ Rough estimate of Filipino lives lost: 400,000 men, women and children. Mostly men, and mostly farmers. In nine provinces, those who engaged the enemy – Batangas, Rizal, Zambales, Iloilo, Nueva Ecija, Laguna, Bulacan, Bataan, Ilocos Sur – there were large decreases in human population, a total of 224,358 (the 1887 census compared to the 1903 census). War always devours her own children. This was reflected in the decrease of cultivated rice land by about 300,000 hectares. Governor General Robert Taft reported soaring prices for rice because there were few farmers left. War always devours. There were soaring prices for carabaos too because there were few carabaos left. War is not kind to animals either.

Second, World War I – In Europe, war was raging between Germany as aggressor and the Allies as aggrieved. Manila was 10,000 km away from London, so why should that war bother Filipinos? Simple: The Americans brought the war to the Philippines. We were under American tutelage (or vassalage, depending on how you look at it) in 1918 when in early October, the government called for volunteers to serve in the National Guard and be trained to be shipped to and fight in Europe. The Two Hundred faculty and students from my Cow College volunteered and began training in Manila to fight for democracy wherever it was. That’s why we have Loyalty Day today. When that war came to Los Baños, we were not afraid. It was the right move – get to the frontline. You cannot avoid war even if you wanted to. If war has done it unto the least of your brethren, it has done it unto you.

Third, World War II – On Christmas Day 1941, at about one in the afternoon, Japanese planes bombed the campus and made a direct hit on Molawin Mess Hall, completely destroying it. The bombing was timed to coincide with the mess hour of the ROTC cadets; fortunately, the sermon of the Roman Catholic priest had been too long no one was yet there when the bomb fell. That’s one Sermon on the Mount (Makiling) that literally saved souls!

1945. At dawn on February 23, Filipino and American forces liberated Allied prisoners at the College: Americans, British, Australians, Dutch – in the process killing many Japanese soldiers. On the night of February 26, the Japanese soldiers retaliated – on the campus residents. They burned St Therese Chapel where many had sought sanctuary; they bayoneted those attempting to escape – hundreds of them. Your religion cannot save you if the enemy has no religion.

At the end of it, what did the havoc of World War II leave at the College of Agriculture? Debris of science, ashes of lives – no Phoenix rising. Gone were the botanical and insect collections, scientific equipment, 26,000 volumes of books and pamphlets, hundreds of thesis manuscripts and science journals, improved seeds, improved breeds of livestock (like the Berkjala pig) and poultry (Los Baños Cantonese chicken). War conquers all.

Now then: War as a measure of man’s worth? The value is negative. War itself is a weapon of mass destruction. Every body counts if we engage in peace, in creativity, a weapon of mass construction.

#5: Your Mind Opens Windows

When What You Remember Is Sweet

‘The pause that refreshes’ (That’s not me sitting but that’s my bike, at the new
CEAT building, UPLB, with Mt Makiling in the distance, 2007 February 14)

Yes, I have registered at http://www.iskulmeyts.com/ which is Web-managed by Ms Bernardita ‘Bernie’ Quimpo (writer, editor, publisher) who is a UP Diehard (the husband is Norman, Ateneo math-head, Director of Graduate Services). And yes, thereby, my head has opened windows on the past, UP and not UP. When fate closes a door, your mind opens windows if you’re paying attention. Beloved, God opens more windows if you believe.

Believe me, if Bernie is a UP Diehard, I remember I’m a UP You Only Live Twice. If you register at iskulmeyts.com, I hope the memories you remember or will soon be reminded to remember are sweet, or sweeter. Of course, the memories depend not on the memories but the one remembering.

At 67, married, with a dozen children from one wife, what memories do I have, cherish? All kinds, but none of them bitter. And better, I know I’m better because of them, in spite of them. Like, I’m listening to the Beatles at 1530 hours this Thursday, July 26; they must be the most creative band of all time. This is the CD where they have all of their albums in one package and on our desktop personal computer (PC), the album covers are shown and the lyrics display themselves and shift from song to song as the Fab Four segue from title to title, from mood to mood, from insinuation to insinuation:

A Hard Day’s Night
I Saw Her Standing There
I Wanna Hold Your Hand
I’ll Follow The Sun
I’m A Loser
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
Norwegian Wood
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Paperback Writer
Revolution
Rocky Raccoon
Sea Of Monsters
Taxman
When I’m 64
With A Little Help From My Friends
Yellow Submarine
You Can’t Do That
You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away.

The Beatles! I didn’t like them when they first arrived on the shores of these islands, my beloved pearls of the Orient Seas. I ignored them. I was teaching high school at the Asingan High School in my hometown, Asingan, Pangasinan, where my nephew, Santy Llamas, was a student who had a combo gang of four who loved the Beatles.

I told my students that high school was the best years of a student’s life, and that they should enjoy it. (I myself hadn’t. In our town at RJC, Rizal Junior College, I was a book-head and contented myself ogling at girls and having crushes.)

I taught at Asingan High subjects like World History and Trigonometry, and I loved what I was doing. I loved my students even more, boys and girls, but more the girls, especially the brightest and best-looking. I loved them all, that’s all. Why shouldn’t a teacher love his students?

My teaching was twice bittersweet because at that time UP had not finished with me, or, which is the same, I had not finished with UP for my BS Agriculture major in Ag Education. But I was finished with my first girlfriend – I broke up with her when, in a dance that night in the town fiesta an incident slapped my face, in a manner of speaking, and sternly said that a poor boy like me didn’t belong in her world. That love affair lasted perhaps 3 years. I’m glad I survived the heart I myself broke. UP and I? Why, we had a love affair that lasted longer than that, five-and-a-half years to be exact – and I’m glad I survived the extra one-and-a-half!

In fact, that second love affair went to extreme, would you believe? I got Extremed is what happened. What else would you get from a 5, 5, 5, 4, 4 (15 units)? After that, the world almost collapsed on me. Prof Dolores Barile was my adviser; Prof Tito Contado also advised me, bless his soul – he could look into my tortured spirit.

My UP years can be described in only one word: Passion. First, it was a passion for knowledge; then it became a passion for knowledge of love; then it became a desperate passion for mending a broken heart, mine; also a broken spirit, also mine. Help! In the end, UP won, thanks to some kind hearts at my Cow College, and I graduated from worrying about repeating Entom 1 and memorizing the scientific names of the muscles of an insect as well as the mouth parts.

After that, a great many years later, the Roman Catholic Church won, and I also graduated from worrying about repeating to worry, thank God.

#4: The Sword, The Word, The Food

What’s The Shortest Distance

To A Man’s Heart, Love?

Fresh lumpia at AgriPark, UPLB College of Agriculture, served at Zonta International meeting, 2007 April 14

Beloved, what’s the shortest distance to a man’s heart? To the brave man, it’s the sword. To the coward, it’s the word. To the hungry, it’s the food. Be creative! To me, it was the food – and then it was love at first sight.

I always loved girls, I mean since high school when I began to have crushes – and I had many – I always loved to be with any number of girls. No, I didn’t court them or anything like that, I just loved to be with them. High school time, in the 50s, at home, I preferred the company of my mother than my father, who was aloof. My mother was always solicitous of me, his son who had apnea – this is the medical opinion of my wife, not a doctor – and so I learned from her (my mother, not my wife) how to sew and many other such things a mother could do with her own hands. She was good at all of them, and I loved to watch her doing them. Excellence is excellence, even it happens to be your mother.

Don’t tell me I didn’t have boy feelings. Of course, I loved to play hide and seek with the boys and the girls, but especially the girls. One of my crushes was a distant cousin, Manang Iling, a little older than me, across the street from us. To look at her and sometimes to touch her hand, no matter how fleeting, was heaven. That’s crush.

Fast forward to my Cow College, UPCA, the UP College of Agriculture. At this time, after so much struggle, I had finally graduated and I was already an Instructor (Substitute) in the Department of Agronomy, through the good graces of my namesake Francisco ‘Kiko’ Hilario, Upsilonian (from Bulacan) – I was a barbarian, but Nestor Pestelos, who was (and still is) like a brother to me, an Upsilonian himself (from Quezon), must have spoken in my behalf. Kiko must have talked to Dr Ramon Valmayor, Department Chairman, into accepting me, a BSA ’65, major in Ag Education. I was a Lab Instructor. I remember two of my brightest lab students – I gave them both a 1.0 – who went on to become leaders and/or famous in their own right, girl and boy: Candida Adalla, who is now in her second term as elected Dean of the College of Agriculture, UP Los Baños, the first and the only lady Dean of this College; Vic Ladlad, who became, last I heard, one of the brightest commanders of the NPA (Nice People Around). Vic? Well, you can’t win them all!

Food was what I was saying before I interrupted myself. One of my barkadas at that time, 1966, was composed of Mila and Carmen and Loly (all UP of course, and all smart librarians in their own right – meaning I was probably at the library when you couldn’t see me around); they were staying at the Women’s Dorm right across the St Therese Chapel – oh, I was religious at visiting the girls but not at visiting the church. When those three girls moved to the house of the Avanzados (Ilocano) at Santa Fe within walking distance from the main road at Grove, of course I visited them there. That’s where I saw this girl, Tencie, from the North, Ilocana. Black is beautiful. My kind of beauty. Like attracts like. She was taking Home Tech; she must have been intelligent – otherwise, she couldn’t have appreciated my Reader’s Digest stories and jokes. And of course, she was very good at cooking – and, if you knew me, I was very good at eating. So, when I was visiting, and of course it was often, I was visiting both her and her kind of Home Tech.

Cooking aside, the boy-girl attraction was strong, mutual. I had no doubt about my feelings, I had no doubt about hers. And I can assure you, no untoward incident happened of any kind. So why didn’t I marry her? Beloved, all I can tell you is that it was me – it wasn’t her, it wasn’t the food.

#3: You Can Lead A Horse To The Water

But Not Anywhere Near Ours, Please!

The software of the 1990s were an embarrassment. Also to me. The user had always been right, but in those times the software wasn’t always right for the user. To illustrate, Dr O likes to tell this anecdote, and I know it’s true because I happen to be the villain in the story. It happened more than 10 years ago. The opening line is very simple:

Dinadael ni Frank ti dua wenno tallo nga computer idiay PhilRice idi.

Before I translate, let me give you some background:

For more than a year starting in 1993, if I remember right, Dr O hired me as a Consultant reporting to him directly as the Executive Director of PhilRice at the headquarters in Maligaya, Muñoz, Nueva Ecija. Already, Dr O had made PhilRice what it was – a multi-award-winning, internationally respected institution. Already the JICA-funded buildings and facilities had been built and established, all world-class. I was delighted being one of those who had the privilege of enjoying the amenities too. You just walked into any of the washrooms and you knew everything was world-class. Inside the rooms, the equipment and facilities were up to international standards, that is to say, much, much better than you expected.

But the desktop personal computers (PCs) were out-of-class, not up to world standards. I know because they were not even up to my standards. Already, I was writer and editor and publisher using the computer and I demanded from every PC the best they could deliver. I was already adept at word processing, having graduated from WordStar 1 to WordStar 4, from WordPerfect to Microsoft Word. The primordial MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System), not yet Windows, was the dominant operating system, with which you couldn’t do much unless you memorized all those DOS commands – which I did. I knew all those commands: ren (rename), md (make directory), del (delete), deldir (delete directory), dir /w (show directory wide, that is, in columns), attrib +r (make the file read only so that cannot be deleted with the command del) – and many more.

Even then, I was a taskmaster; I tell the PC, ‘Do this – or else what good are you?’ In those times, some PCs with their MS-DOS would not be able to do what I wanted them to do – work faster, or work better – and they would quit on me. That is to say, they would crash.

In fact, a fatal crash happened 3 times with 3 different PCs in 3 different divisions of PhilRice with the same person – that was me.

Not funny.

So when the PhilRice divisions realized what happened with the PCs I had been using, they told Dr O:

Sir, take Frank wherever he wants to go with you, but please don’t let him go anywhere near our computers!

Not funny at all.

So now I translate this:

Dinadael ni Frank ti dua wenno tallo nga computer idiay PhilRice idi.

Into this:

Frank destroyed 2 or 3 computers in PhilRice that time.

‘Destroyed’ makes it sound like it’s murder, or that which is intentional. ‘Destroyed’ is inaccurate because you cannot destroy a computer you’re using unless you strike it with a hammer. Not any one of your bad commands can destroy a computer – it can only embarrass you. And no wrong command can destroy a computer – it can only freeze it and, having frozen the hardware & software, the computer freezes you with fright.

Frank destroyed 2 or 3 computers in PhilRice that time.

I would attribute such a negative achievement of mine to my irrational conviction on the genius of man in the form of hardware and software, that such genius was limitless. ‘Frank crashed 2 or 3 PhilRice computers that time’ is more accurate; anyway, what happened is that the man had expected too much of the machine, or the machine had promised too much to the man.

In those times, Tails you lost, Heads you lost. You couldn’t win. Not funny, not funny at all.

Beloved, today, in the same sense, I haven’t changed a bit. I haven’t learned from my unintended PhilRice crash course on desktop PCs. Today when I use a PC, I am a multi-tasker – ‘Do this, and this, and this, and this,’ 4, 5, 6 windows opened at the same time. Today, these PCs have learned from those crash courses in the 1990s. While PCs still crash, they can now un-crash themselves, the genius of Microsoft Windows. I’ll say creative.

I’m a winner now. I can’t destroy anybody’s computer anymore even if I wanted to. Now then, I would expect that I will never ever again hear someone say to Dr O these words:

Sir, take Frank wherever he wants to go with you, but please don’t let him go anywhere near our computers!

If today someone persists in saying that, I say he’s the one who needs a crash course in desktop personal computers. Windows XP has restored my faith in the machine.

PS (July 25, 0517 hours): I do remember to give thanks and say, ‘Lord, thank you that I lived in the time of the desktop computer! It’s a fantastic help to me, a writer, editor, publisher. I couldn’t live without it, leave home without it.’

#2: 1967 October 10

I, The Clown Who Cried Wolf

1967 October 10, Loyalty Day at the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture in Los Baños, Laguna, south of Manila. The phenomenal Ilocano Ferdinand Edralin Marcos was in his third year as a would-be long-running President of his country while I was already behind my long-running fourth year as student of UPCA. A most-decorated War Hero was in Malacañang and I was one of the barbarians at the gate of this Cow College, the old carabaos staring at my back. I wasn’t alone but I was alone; I had always been alone in the midst of plenty of people. Let a hundred flowers bloom, a thousand thoughts contend, and I had other ideas. I had always been a rebel – and I never ran out of causes, beloved. I had always been creative.

In those days I was one of the campus figures, scholars and writers who dared our readers to think differently, that is to say, intelligently. Our readers were on one hand the students who by default had to pay for their copies of the Aggie Green & Gold and later The Forum when we lost control of the AGG to some other lesser mortals, and on the other hand the faculty who read us anyway. I’m sure we made good reading even then: Nestor Mn Pestelos (writer and editor par excellence), Aniceto O Llaneta (a lover’s poet), and I, Frank A Hilario (columnist and short story writer). One member of Our Gang of Four, Remigio D Torres didn’t write; he was the straight man, the friend to the three clowns that we were. These clowns helped him write his BS thesis and it was adjudged the Best that year. In UP, clowns don’t settle for less than the crown.

40 years ago, Loyalty Day! I, this barbarian at the gate, was distributing mimeographed copies of an open letter in English to the drivers, passengers, walk-on-bys, to the browns, blacks, whites – Los Baños has always been a multi-cultural City of Learning, if not of Enlightenment. Celebrating Loyalty Day in the customary way, the rainbow of people entering through the UPCA gate between the carabao heads standing at attention must have worn smiles on their faces; cerebrating Loyalty Day in an extraordinary way, I must have worn a blank face. A smile was farthest from my mind. My mission that day was serious, risky. I was unafraid, but I was wary.

I had helped with my own hands to mimeograph at the student office at Baker Hall the very open letter I was distributing which was from my gray matter; I had titled it ‘What Did You Do In The War, Daddy?’ Little did I know that it was Charles Fuller Baker, botanist and entomologist and American of excellent mind, who was Dean in that time of history I was going to challenge academically that day. I have lost my copy of it forever, but I remember it was a public letter to a very private being, my unborn son, who turned out to be a daughter, born the next year on Valentine’s Day – we didn’t have the child’s sex then and not even a name, but the baby in the womb was inspiration enough for me to do what I did best: write. When an excellent scientist becomes Dean of the College, he inspires you; when a writer writes, he doesn’t watch out – you have to.

My open letter wasn’t at all about the War Hero, Big Daddy Ferdinand of World War II; it was about The Two Hundred (students and faculty members) at the UP College of Agriculture who in 1918 October 10 volunteered to serve in the National Guard to help fight World War I which was raging in Europe. The American-led Philippine Government had called for volunteer warriors. Bravely and knowingly, The Two Hundred went on training in Manila; the next month, November, Allied Forces and Germany signed the armistice and the National Guard was disbanded. But old soldiers never die; neither do young volunteers. Here are details from a forthcoming book on 100 years of UP Los Baños written by UPCA-bred science manager-poet-painter-author-historian Dr Fernando A Bernardo: Three years later, in July of 1921, the Student Body of UPCA respectfully requested the UP Board of Regents to set aside October 10 as Loyalty Day, and this was granted. Loyalty Day is now a moveable feast of the College of Agriculture, my dear Cow College.

In my open letter, I pointed out that the UPCA loyalists volunteered to fight a war not of their own country’s making and not at all endangering their motherland. I didn’t use the term then, but it was a proxy war they were going to fight in. Courageous as they were, their bravery was misplaced because they volunteered to engage in the wrong war and in the wrong place. I was thoroughly convinced of the reasoning of that position, and I’m sure my open letter did give that distinct impression. I meant it to, and I knew I wrote well.

I was anti-tradition, an iconoclast. I was against the celebration of Loyalty Day because I saw that it was not loyalty to the College that was being celebrated; neither that it was loyalty to the country of one’s birth. Rather, it was loyalty to the Americans who were running these islands, and to the Cow College, which was the same thing. Loyalty indeed, but it was misplaced. I was the clown who cried that the mind was warped who proposed that October 10 be declared Loyalty Day for the UP College of Agriculture.

I had written, typed the draft, edited, retyped and corrected with my very first portable typewriter (probably an ABC). At Baker Hall, I had cut the stencil myself on a bigger desktop manual typewriter (probably an Underwood), and signed on the stencil with my own full name using a stylus – not a pseudonym. I was sure I was doing right, so what reason was there to hide behind an alias? I didn’t consult anyone; nobody told me; I had come to those conclusions myself. The whole letter was me. The writing was passionate, the reasoning internalized, the intention heartfelt. It reflected up-to-date knowledge of what was going on in the rest of the world.

I have always been a wide reader. At that time I was also reading the magazine Ramparts as well as I.F. Stone’s Weekly, both being intelligent if anti-American imperialist publications. Ramparts or no Ramparts, I was against the Vietnam War of the Americans. In 1967 January, Ramparts published photographs of Vietnamese children burned by napalm, a weapon of choice of the invaders. This tugged at the heart of Martin Luther King Jr who publicly denounced the war in a speech in New York in April of the same year (pbs.org). Opposition to the Vietnam War of the Americans was in the air as I wrote my letter. I was anti-establishment in October 1967 as the Genuine Opposition has been in May 2007.

1967 October 10 was my ninth Loyalty Day since I was First Year in my BSA (Honors Curriculum) in June 1959. So I had observed Dr Silverio Cendaña as the happiest celebrant of the volunteers; I can still imagine him marching at the head of his group, acknowledging the admiration of the crowd who wished them all well. During each Loyalty Day, the spirit of volunteerism that I equated with the Los Baños Spirit was palpable; it was one of the nicest feelings you could have in the entire year. That was priceless.

With my one open letter, I broke the spell of that spirit; I destroyed the magic of that one moment in 1967 October 10. I made Dr Cendaña and the others mad. I didn’t care. In the words of Dr O the other day, I had ‘the arrogance of youth.’ Oh, I had the arrogance of knowledge. I was young and I believed I knew more than the old fogies did; I believed I had all the answers. I was certainly a damn good debater – I did not always win but I was always arguing. The delight was in the act, not in the victory.

In that open letter, in effect, I decried the subservience of the Loyalty Day volunteers and to the wrong master yet! While I had written a love letter to my unborn child, I had written a hate letter to everybody else.

That love-hate letter was the beginning of my loved affair with the Cow College. I lost my job as an Instructor – they simply did not renew my appointment the next year. Nobody would touch me with a 10-foot pole. In fact, all of the Los Baños Science Community never forgave me; they wouldn’t even talk to me. There was one kind person, God bless his soul, Dr Eduvigis Pantastico, Director of the Crops Division of the Philippine Council for Agriculture and Resources Research and Development (PCARRD), who never lost his faith in me, but even he could not get me into PCARRD pass the desks of prejudices, perhaps even of fear and loathing. I had done it unto myself. I had always been a one-man band. (I’m now a blogging OMB, and I take my own photographs.)

Because I wasn’t cowed by the imposition of Loyalty Day upon an unsuspecting public, I lost whatever milk of kindness that this Cow College made mine before, parting the Red Sea for me to graduate – ask Dr Emiliana N Bernardo (my last Instructor in Entomology I; I failed with 2 others) and Prof Dolores Barile (my Adviser), and they should know. And not only them: It was Dr Filomena Campos who had readmitted me.

After all, in the early 1960s, I had been extremed – I had a semester of 5, 5, 5, 4, 4 (where 5 was Failed and 4 Conditional). Before, I had been a College Scholar (semestral average 1.5), then I fell in love hard, so hard that I went Class AWOL twice: one, Absent Without Leave; two, Absent With His One Love. I wasn’t going to classes anymore; I was going to her, to wherever she was: there waiting for her to come out of her class at UST in España; there visiting her in the house of her parents in Lucena City; there at the Girl Scouts Headquarters in Los Baños with the other girls in training. When love walks in, all reason flies out the window.

When you’re extremed in UP, it’s a terrible stigma even your friends are ashamed of you – even more so, you are ashamed of yourself. I didn’t tell my parents or anyone; I suffered in silence. I didn’t know it but it was heavy silence.

That was me: Extremed out three times over. First, I extremed out as a boy in school; that was in the early 60s. Then I extremed out as a boy in love; that was in the middle 60s. Then I extremed out as Instructor of my Cow College; that was in the late 60s. I was the Sixties’ Self-Made Loser.

There was one evening at fiesta time when I was extremely dismayed with her that I broke up with my first love and succeeded in breaking my own heart. Imperceptibly, my own thoughts became my own enemy. One or two years later, something in my mind almost snapped – if it did, I would have been totalled. (I have a longer version of this part of the story of my life; email me if you want to read an electronic copy: frankahilario@gmail.com.)

My first two extremes happened before 1967; in 1965, already a graduate, I returned to my hometown Asingan, Pangasinan; I was in friendly territory. But you have no friends if the enemy happens to be you.

My third extreme happened in Loyalty Day of 1967. In my open letter I myself distributed October 10, was I psychotic exposing myself? In the first place, I was crazy writing that letter, but I also knew only I could write it. ‘What did you do in the war, Daddy?’ I had gleefully written it in the American idiom – it was an intellectual insult.

I broke many a heart from that day onwards; I incensed many a mind henceforth. I broke the link I had with my Cow College whose milk I had grown in and out of my student life. BS Agriculture, major in Ag Education; I was First Year in 1959, a graduate in 1965; I finished in five and a half years what others finished in four.

I was extremed, and you took me back in. I was sick, and you visited me. I was hungry, and you gave me to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink. With the charm of my namesake and benefactor Francisco ‘Kiko’ Hilario (Floriculture), this College welcomed me in 1966, hiring me as a Lab Instructor in Horticulture, a field I did not major in – it was an acknowledgment as well as a risk that if I was not intellectually equipped for the job, I knew exactly what to do to make me one. I did not reciprocate; instead, ignorantly, I bit the hand that fed me. He never told me but I must have broken Kiko’s heart. In any case, in late 1967, after that open letter, the whole University Town shunned me, and this clown couldn’t even make himself laugh anymore.

If at all a consolation, the Cow College officials must have reflected on the logic of my letter, unofficially accepted my main contention of loyalty to the wrong master, and began declaring that commemorating October 10 was more as loyalty to the Los Baños Spirit and less to big-picture volunteerism, or words to that effect. As Dean Cledualdo B Perez put it 10 years later in 1977 in his response when UPCA won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, the Los Baños Spirit is one of ‘tenacity, innovativeness and camaraderie’ in hacking out of the wilderness a center of learning (maf.org). The Cow College had begun classes in 1909 on top of a grassy hill at the foot of Mount Makiling with 12 students without tables, without chairs, without blackboard and chalk, without a classroom – all they had was the blue of the open sky and the green of hope. That was the spirit!

I was the boy who single-handedly changed the history of UP Los Baños, burning down with an inflammatory piece of paper the House of the Los Baños Spirit from significant to insignificant. An intellectual David taking on a Goliath.

I’m sorry. I apologize from the bottom of my heart.

I was the clown who cried the wrong wolf 40 years ago and I’m ashamed of myself. The clown believed too much in the clown he didn’t see what his audience was laughing at. Loyalty Day was perfect as I was imperfect. I can see now that the real Los Baños Spirit is Big-Picture Volunteerism. This was the paradigm this clown rejected both out of ignorance and arrogance.

And I did not learn that lesson until 40 years later. Three days ago, Friday the 20th, Dr O, Frank Cornejo, Bernie Quimpo and I, UP diehards all, met at Bahay Alumni in UP Diliman and talked about books and such in relation to the UP Centennial. I was supposed to be engaged by Class 58 in writing their celebratory centennial stories into a book, to come out in 2008. I was editing the text version of a two-volume history book of 100 years of UP Los Baños both authored by Dr Fernando Bernardo, while he was busy editing himself in the coffee-table version. It just so happened that in the name of the UP Los Baños Alumni Association, Frank and Bernie were going to market the books starting Loyalty Day 2007, barely 3 months away, and they hadn’t seen the likes of either. Not to worry; they were going to sell the history, not the book. At one point in the long conversation, lasting a good 6 hours happening in two offices with free-flowing brewed coffee, no sugar and no biscuits, the idea came up that I create a website. Your word is my command. Back in Los Baños, I did exactly that the next day, yesterday, wrote a piece to introduce it, and at once texted Bernie of the upload. She texted back to say she had read my ‘first salvo’ (her exact words) – she made me realize I was once more coming in with intellectual guns ablaze. (Read if you will my ‘On The State University’s 100 Years Of Solitude’ which is #1 – but I’m not going to rewrite it now or ever; let it be a monument to itself, a challenge to all of UP and all of myself). She also suggested I write a piece of nostalgia. Consider it done.

Remembrances of things past. That was when UP Los Baños history came back to haunt me. Not unlike Ulysses, in Los Baños, for years I became a part of all that I had met. Then I made a paradigm shift; then I wanted them all to remove that part of me that was part of them.

As a joker I had come in too strong on Loyalty Day 40 years ago that nobody laughed. My paradigm was warped, clowned. I had seen only the piece of the jigsaw puzzle and yet I declared that that was all there was to that, and I didn’t try to fit it into the Big Picture. I hadn’t learned the lesson that it must always be the Big Picture. World War I didn’t happen only in Europe; it happened even where it didn’t happen. The whole world was involved in that war; it was right to volunteer to fight in it, wherever it was, wherever one was. The polar caps aren’t melting in this country; we don’t even have snow – but global warming covers all.

Now you get the picture I did not. I’m sorry I forgot to reflect even on my favorite quote of John Donne (from Meditation XVII, online-literature.com):

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main … Any man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee.

#1: UP Being A Centenarian

On The State University’s

100 Years Of Solitude

UP is preparing to celebrate being a centenarian. 100 years! By the way UP has lived her life, those are 100 years of solitude, that is to say, 100 years of academic freedom. When you focus on freedom, you focus on the individual and ignore the social, you concentrate on the singular and disregard the plural, you image in the person and image out the community, you remember the piece of the jigsaw puzzle and forget the big picture. Freedom, how many frailties are submitted in thy name! Freedom should only be for creativity, not frailty.

The UP Centennial is too serious a matter to be left to UP officials only. I must participate. I must participate in the very many ways I can – and this is one of them. I’m a ’65 graduate – no, not undergraduate – either you graduate or you don’t; certainly, I was extremed but I was readmitted, thanks to the kindness of the one and only Dr Filomena Campos. I took the very first Teacher’s Exam in December 1965 and passed with playing colors; I got a grade of 80.6%, not bad for a first-timer – and no review classes, and no leakage. Oh, and by the way, beloved, I’m from the Cow College.

100 years: UP is preparing to celebrate its being old. It should also be preparing to celebrate its being young once again. UP should be preparing to cerebrate too. To celebrate is to rejoice, to cerebrate is to re-juice. To simplify: To celebrate is to think of the chronological or consequential, to be critical; to cerebrate is to think of the non-chronological or inconsequential, to be creative. UP has never been known to be creative, only critical – an institutional neglect of the creative juice. Which explains the individual neglect of the creative genius – If your columnist is critical of the national government, he is probably from UP. Thank God GMA is from UP!

UP is old. She must now give up her ‘la triste, mustia vida’ – half a line from the most famous Atenean of them all, Jose Rizal’s Adios, Patria Adorada (my title) – ‘my life shrunk and forsaken’ (my translation); click here to read the full and very different English translation in my blog Adios! Patria! Adorada!) – what is academic freedom if it is only for the academic? Welcome, UP Beloved. Adios, Beloved Country!

The world is astir with global warming while UP is hardly astir – Rip Van Winkle 5 times over. Or, to say it differently, UP looked at the problem and called it tuition, and she saw that it was bad, and she made the logical decision of increasing it a thousand times over and above the objection of the people, the masses that she loves to love and in the name of whom she demonstrates at Mendiola over and above the objections of GMA. Logical – Is that all the cerebral competency that UP can show the world?

Look at the logo of the UP Centennial again (the first one). It reflects ancient, static art. Why can’t it be at least like the second, or the third? Hasn’t UP heard of Photoshop?

I’m old chronologically; I’m 67; I didn’t learn creative writing from UP; I learned my blogging and uploading and all that modern jazz all by myself. UP is old academically, having lived all her life with the old logic. Think Socrates. Why can’t UP learn something new by itself? Modern logic may have originated from the Peripatetic tradition going back to Aristotle (answers.com), who is ancient (born 384 BC), almost prehistoric, certainly static. Your logic is good, but we need cash.