Baguio Landmark: Aguinaldo Museum

A life-size statue of Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo is found at the upper end of Gen. Luna Road in Happy Glen Loop at Jungletown. It has a small park and a museum, which focuses on the General’s photographs, uniforms, and other memorabilia.

He was the first elected president of the Provisional Philippine Republic on the proclamation of Philippine independence on 12^th of June at Kawit, Cavite.

The facility has an interactive museum that is dedicated to revolutionaries of various eras who helped bring about true independence for the country. Statues of various heroes stand in the gallery including  Andres Bonifacio,  Apolinario Mabini, Emilio Jacinto, Antonio Luna, Gregorio del Pilar and Gabriela Silang also stand in the gallery.

Visitors are treated to a diorama tour starting with the Battle of Zapote Bridge in Cavite in 1897, where Aguinaldo defeated the Spanish Army and freed the Cavite towns. Accompanying sound effects feature gunfire, exploding cannons and the war cries of revolutionaries as they charge the Spanish soldiers.  They then cross a hanging wood-and-rope bridge which leads to a display of Gregorio del Pilar’s flag and another war flag used by Aguinaldo. The tour ends in a room lit only by a skylight, overlooked by the gallery of heroes’ statues.

On the 28^th of May, Aguinaldo’s great grandson Emilio Aguinaldo Suntay III, urged Filipinos to be inspired by the heroism and struggles of our ancestors to show patriotism and unity in this modern time.  He was accompanied by Baguio city local government officials, and led a wreath laying ceremony at the Aguinaldo Shine in celebration of National Flag Day.

In his message, Suntay related the importance of such a commemoration when, 114 years ago, Filipino revolutionaries headed by his great grandfather, Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo, won the Battle of Alapan in Imus, Cavite against the Spaniards.

Various sources, including:
http://www.pia.gov.ph/news/index.php?article=61338339773

Wow, what can I say...

In the Fifties and Sixties...

No doubt you had headaches, colds and flu caused by weather changes, upcoming stress of exams, or other internal or external ailments.  Aspirin then, was a popular recourse to such ailments, now supplanted by other types of drugs.  It was not so unusual to find students buying aspirin at the local boticas, or having them handy in their pockets or purses. The came in mats or in small metal tins.

Spring, Beijing's Great Wall

Here is a photo of Delma and her friend, at the Great Wall of China.  All bundled up and ready to walk on those cold stone paths!  (You can view more of these, from Delma's Facebook page)

How to translate: "Laughter is the best medicine"?

Ethnic humor can be taken in so many ways, one of which is a positive and pleasurable light: however, it can also be taken in an unproductive and negative way, a means to disparage a group or community.  We have grown up with mostly-harmless snides about Ilocanos, Visayans, Tagalogs, Pangasinenses (just who coined the word “Pangalatot”?)  And elsewhere: the Italians ("wops"), Chinese ("Chiinks") , Irish ("Micks") , Latinos ("Spics"), Filipinos {"Flips")  - just about everyone on this earth: are subject to such ribbing.

Here are excerpts from an article on humor about Igorot and Igorot sub-groups.  Having grown up in Baguio, we can appreciate the energizing effects of such humor, and to translate or interpret this to others takes away the crispness and flavor of the humor!

btw, how do you say in Ilocano or Tagalog, ,  "Laughter is the best medicine"?

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A POPULAR aphorism in the Cordillera about three hungry tribal folk who got lost and wanted to eat in a lone hinterland house goes like this:

The Ibaloi stood from a distance but left after his shyness overcame him. The Kalinga did not eat as water was not offered to him. But the Kankanaey made himself at home. He went straight to the kitchen, served himself with food, proceeded to sit on the host's favorite armchair, and crossed his legs with a cup of steaming hot coffee in his hand. 

Notions about Cordillera folk, right or wrong, still persist to this day. Tourists or lowlanders who visit the region may find themselves in situations or cultures they may find strange but actually mirror a tribe's peculiar traits.

In the tourist town of Banaue in Ifugao, site of the famed rice terraces, a sign in a roadside comfort room goes like this: ''He or She But Not Together.''

The Ifugaos, particularly from Kiangan town, are popular in the region for their irreverent jokes and humor.  If one is traveling in Kalinga, the first thing he should ask for is a glass of water if he does not want to be harmed, according to Gus Saboy, a Kalinga native and former director of the Cordillera Executive Board.  ''This signifies that the host family has accepted the responsibility of protecting the visitor who drank the water while he is still in his place. This means, he won't be harmed by tribesmen,'' Saboy said.

For the Kankanaeys and Applais of Sagada, Mt. Province, old-timers say it is considered a good trait if a visitor does not wait for the host to serve him. They say if the visitor finds out that food hasn't been cooked yet, then he should do it himself. He should also wash the dishes. Residents, however, said this cultural trait is not being practiced much by educated folk. They don't just barge inside a house and eat a family's food. They also now serve their visitors like lowlanders do.

Former Mt. Province Rep. Alfredo Lam-en took the Igorot's cause against discrimination in style to the shame of his detractors.  The flamboyant and good-looking Lam-en delivered a privilege speech in Congress while wearing a g-string. He berated former Foreign Minister Carlos P. Romulo for saying that ''Igorots are not Filipinos.'' ''The only difference between me and Romulo is that he wears his tie on his neck while I wear mine below,'' he said. His peers and admirers have nicknamed him ''John Wayne of the Cordillera'' for his similarity to the hero of western movies.

Some anthropologists like Scott went on to debunk some biased notions against Igorots. But according to government officials like those of the Cordillera Regional Assembly and the Cordillera Regional Board, discrimination and ignorance about the Igorots, their customs and traditions were responsible for the misinformation against them. Sagada old-timers still recount with glee the story in the 1960s of a Manila lady who asked a male resident in the town to show him his tail. In perfect English, the young man deadpanned: ''Pardon me lady, but I cannot show you my front tail unless you marry me.''

Benguet is home to the Ibalois. They are the butt of jokes among the more aggressive tribes for their perceived timidity and shyness, according to observers. Some Ibalois dispute these attributions and some stabbings and maulings have resulted in pub drinking bouts even in Baguio City due to taunting.  Ibalois like Ceferino Willy, Baguio station manager of PTV 4, who is half Kankanaey and half Ibaloi, say the Ibalois' timidity is apparent in weddings or wakes.  ''The one who is usually at the background is an Ibaloi and you may quote me on this,'' he said.

 

http://www.travelsmart.net/ph/inquirer/issues/jan99/jan12/features/fea_2.htm  Who is an Igorot?  By Alfred Dizon

Reunions, reunions! -A belated postscript

Reunions, reunions!  (A most belated postscript, one year later, of a Class 61 member)

Our 50^th high school reunion. Fifty years (or half of a century) out of high school is a very long time: If we are not exactly old, we are quickly approaching being so. No exceptions.  It’s a case of repeating over and over, “I can’t believe I’m going to my 50th high school reunion!” expecting that by repeating this enough times you’ll discover that you probably made a mistake. You will hear your flatterers exclaim, “Well, and how could you possibly be going to your 50th high school reunion? What is your secret? You look so darned young!" — a response you get less often than you’d think, even though it seems the logical, polite thing to say.
I think we all looked forward to our own 50^th reunion. Why, is a big mystery.  Did we like high school?  Did high school like us?  In the early sixties, we had many blights, given that the adolescent mind had not yet matured.  We did crazy and rebellious things, such as moderately-harmful pranks on our classmates, our juniors, on the school.   
But looking back on these, we dismiss them and relegated these to the back burner of our memory bank.  Eating green mangoes and bagoong and missed out on a class and was discovered by a teacher.  Copious tears when our candidate for an office was defeated.  Learning a folk dance in our bare feet on the auditorium floor.  Trading Munar noodles or Vienna sausages at lunchtime. Big surprises on scores gained during the grading periods ("wasay-wasay", a code for 77; "cheenta" for 80, "beenta" for 90 and so on).  Cheering on Pete as he clears the 100 m dash.  Yet they come alive, in reminiscing these stories, falling short on the negative side and puffing up the selective memory side.  The reunions are a catalog of such stories.

A bunch of us have been in touch in one way or another:  visits to Baguio, Facebook, Yahoo groups,  email, phone, dinners at  Manila restaurants.  Half-hearted or full-hearted efforts were made to track down more. The majority in our class had simply fallen off the radar.

As the day approached, our collective anticipation increased. We look through our wardrobe and try out something suitable to wear. We calculate the many complex factors  that go into what to wear to a 50th high school reunion. We want to wear something that evokes our high school selves while making it clear that we are no longer the absurd persons we once were. We wanted youth but also wanted grownup poise. That is so much messaging to pack into a dress and requires much trying on and taking off of various ensembles and accessories. The dressing up angst.  Timing hair coloring so that the roots will be definitively out of sight is in our calendars: a   difficult task, given how quickly roots have a tendency to assert themselves.

As we all know about things we look forward to: first they are a very vague idea, then a closer and more anticipated prospect, and then finally, they’re upon us. That’s how time works most of the time. No matter how far away something may be for a while, soon it’s a lot closer, and before you know it has come and gone.  This is about the reunion but it could well be the fifty years since high school, or, for that matter, life itself,  which is why a reunion carries such weight. If 50 years can go by so fast, you have to figure that you’ll be dead in the space of a second.  Morbid thought.

My class reunion (2011, Class 61) was like my child’s coloring book, finding pages and  coloring the hidden things in a scene:   vaguely familiar faces emerging from double chins, once-known eyes and noses obtruding from white whiskers. Recollections, flattery, conquests, sour grapes, parading spouses and an indescribable uneasiness associated with high school – went flying by as we greeted each other. We talk to people we never said a word to in high school. “So and so is no more”- but their child-selves are still vivid in our memories. 

When the big event was over, our classmates agree that it had been a big, grand and repeatable success. We had had a good time talking, dancing, and posing for photos. Everyone is relatively much nicer than they’d been in high school, which makes sense, since everyone realized that being nice was the least you could do, given that life is hard and we’ve all been trampled on by it to some degree. 

The days following puts us in a funk, a kind of sadness in reliving memories, and a hint of we could do it over and get it right.  But the feeling remains, that the reunion is a marker for the end of our childhoods.  To touch those classmates was to get as close as we could get to remove that space  between then and our opening into adulthood with its responsibilities and strains.  We have turned out fine.  We yearn to do better.  We still are afforded that window of opportunity.  Til the next reunion.  It is going to happen.

Mr. Hipolito Calica

Mr.  Hipolito and Mrs. Aida Calica.  Taken in 1969 with Elaida and May.  Perhaps Nora might be able to give us more details about this photo? (Photo taken from Facebook , 100 years of UCCP).

General Yamashita in Baguio

Baguio in the Sixties

Mary Ann! !!!

From Mary Ann Zarza-Floresca
May 12, 2012
Subject: Guessing game no. 28 April 23, 2012

(For our friends who have not viewed the comments from Mary Ann, please see her note below).

Hi friends, Has anyone else guess who that little girl was? If it was not for  the picture of my late beloved Dad Amadeo Quero Zarza I would not know that it was me. How exciting to even know how you got this picture. How can I get a copy  of this picture? I'll surely appreciate it very much. Thank you so much for  whoever found and posted the beautiful picture especially of my Dad when he was  a young Pastor at the UCCP church in Baguio and I was around three years old.  God bless you all. Your former classmate, Mary Ann Zarza Floresca 

Rudy, I tried to send it to bchs61tambayan.blogspot.com but says no server, so I  am sending it to you and can you do something about it. Thank you so much and I  really appreciate it. Thank you and God bless you. Mary Ann
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Hello Mary Ann, thanks to Rudy who forwarded your comments, I would like to respond to some of your queries.  First of all, someone else guessed, but no id, and could be anyone who read the entry.  When I saw that photo some months ago while crawling the Web, it really moved me to have it “announced” through our blog: I found it so appealing!  Yes, I will confess I “found” the photo some months ago. Just now I tried to retrieve it from what I thought was the source: the UCCP website in their photo gallery, or the Facebook’s 100 years of UCCP.  However, I could not find it once more: perhaps it needs more digging time which I will do when I get some of my chores out of the way.  

 Here are the links, just in case you wish to view some of the other photos of people whom I think you would recognize.

Website:  http://www.uccpbaguio.org/index.php

Facebook:  100 years of UCCP-Baguio

Thanks so much for getting in touch: this is the purpose of our blog, to facilitate and help find out about the doings of our dear BCHS Class 61 classmates!  Hope our readers will also be enjoined to participate, through comments, photo contributions, stories long or short, anything, anything at all that will connect and bond us in this very short lifetime that the Good Lord has granted us.

Hope we can organize our own gathering for the next Triennial in San Francisco!  More Power to Class 61!!

Cheers, Evelyn.

MVP was delisted as a park...

 

Mines View multipurpose building done after 8 years

by Dexter A. See

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The city government has completed the construction of the  P51 million-worth four-storey multipurpose building in Mines View Park eight years after the project began.

The building will accommodate 200 vendors who currently sell within the vicinity of the park.

The vendors who surround the park made the Department of Tourism delist Mines View as one of the must see destinations of Baguio.

Other portions of the building meanwhile will be used by Barangay Mines View Park for its day care center, health center, barangay hall, and multipurpose center in order to decongest the crowded way leading to the view deck.

Mayor Mauricio Domogan said the transfer of the vendors to their new home will surely help in bringing back the grandeur of Mines view Park, especially if the DOT will see that the local government has already complied with its obligation of clearing the pathway leading to the view deck.

For his part, Vice mayor Daniel Fariñas appealed for cooperation among barangay officials.

Rep. Bernardo Vergara, meanwhile, said the city government is doing its best to help the vendors transfer to a decent location, thus, he said those affected should replicate by adhering to the rules and regulations to be imposed in the operation of the multipurpose building.

Engr. Oscar Flores, city building official, said the new Mines View multipurpose structure is a product of a redesign after cancellation of the earlier contract entered into by the Office of the City Architect and Parks Superintendent before it was abolished in 2005.

In 2004, the city government allocated around P33M for the construction of the building but because of the escalation of prices and the concerns of the barangay and the vendors, the building had to be redesigned bringing the overall construction cost at over P51M.

Flores said the building will have shops that sell souvenir items. 

About four years ago, the DOT delisted the Mines View Park as a park and reclassified it as a shopping center because it allegedly failed to meet the definition of a park.

 

http://www.baguiomidlandcourier.com.ph/business.asp?mode=archives/2011/october/10-30-2011/bus1.txt