Bapa's Notes

  In the summer of 1990, I left school for a vacation and leaving behind my unfinished requirements on my subject in Freshman Sociology. During those days, it would take ten hours of travel from Marawi City to Tagum.    I was fortunate to get an aircon bus with a Betamax video player on board. It was an extra convenience offered by the bus company to their passengers while enduring eight grueling hours of  travel along the coastal roads of Northern Mindanao then. Inside the bus, we were treated with a historical movie  entitled Mississippi Burning. Starred by Gene Hackman, the movie depicts the hard life of the newly-emancipated black people under the brutal of  dealings of White Supremacists group, the Ku Klux Klan. Set in the old Southern states, the movie was a sort of social awareness for me at that time. The woeful living conditions of former African slaves at the hands of their former plantation masters, the white folks who were unwilling to heed the ...

  Our buds were tamed at that time. Within the stretch of five months, we were served with similar dishes throughout the duration of the seminar. Those dishes were widely popular among local executive hotels, and the pride offerings of well-informed restaurateurs in the city. From breakfasts, lunches and suppers, we were served with the same dishes prepared by their in-house chef. I was with a developmental works among our banana farmers during those days. I was designated as documentation staff for all those equipping and retooling exercise among our farmers. Our group rhetorically termed those efforts as capability building for our grassroot banana farmers. Such advocacy and extension works were already applied and tested in Latin American countries were banana farming was also prevalent.   My boss never complained for the first three weeks of continuous serving of the same dishes. Our capability building seminar lasted Five months among the eight hundred lowland banana f...

  We were young then, and we had unbelievable endurance against body-beating restless travels across Mindanao. During those days, I was keeping a 3x5 inches notebook, jotting my thoughts, describing the details and experiences of those endless travels. My skills in driving were just a mediocre then, so I thought I could harness both skills in writing at the same time improve my driving also.  On those relentless travels, books were my priceless companions to cure boredom and sleepiness. Hours of travel by land took its toll on our minds and bodies. We were just two in the vehicle, alternately taking possession of the drive wheel, to give each other the needed rest, but for me, I devoted those times on my obsession of reading good books on varied topics. Books acquired at cheaper prices, during occasional stop-over on cities like Cagayan De Oro, Iligan and Zamboanga. Book sales were still unusual during those days, second-hand literatures but purely original works. I was conspi...