Do most Filipinos Believe in Miracles ?

    Most predominantly Catholic countries are poor. One reason could be its residents believe in fate or miracles. They strive less since for them the future could not be determined. They put their lives on fate. "Que sera, sera," as the phrase runs " What will be, will be."

    In the Philippines, there are many who believe in miracles .In the past, the archdiocese of Manila was ranked No. 3 as the most richest in the Catholic world. It  ranked  next  to Chicago and Mexico.According to a friend-priest the biggest archdiocese in the country collected an average of a million pesos almost daily. This was in the 1980s when the country had a strong currency.

    As a national shrine the Quiapo cathedral houses the image of the Black Nazarene, which was believed  the most miraculous icon in the country. Binondo based Chinese businesses donate hundreds of thousand of pesos on Sundays as thanksgiving to the image that originated from Mexico. Others hope for miracles to happen on their family members and ventures. Here the church holds daily masses almost every hour. It is open 24 hours a day.

    Another mecca  for devotees is the Padre Pio shrine in Santo Tomas, Batangas. During the mid-1990s, there was only one main church. The road was narrow and with a limited parking area. Today, the shrine has two main churches and minor chapels . It has a very  big parking area for vehicles on the side part of the complex.Regular and healing massses are held every hour starting from  6 am up to 6 pm every day. The saint is considered a source of miracles and hope for the sick with terminal illnesses.

    Another source of  miracles is the icon of child Jesus housed in the minor basilica in Cebu City. The  Shrine of the Santo Nino de Cebu  near the old Spanish fort San Pedro is the center of devotees from Visayas and Mindanao in mid-January. The icon was believed to be the same image brought by Juan Miguel de Legaspi that survived a conflagration in the distant past.

       When I was a child, my aunt named Teofila occasionally brought me in this  basillica. She lighted votive candles. He held me up in front of the Nino while dancing the Sinulog ( in cadence with the beating of drums) near the entrance to the cathedral. The word originated from the Sugbuhanon language "sulog-sulog" , a form of  appeasement to elicit miracles from the child Jesus for my continuous good health.

    Aside from these, Filipinos adore all kinds of saints to include recently beautified Saints Ruiz and Calungsod, both Filipinos.Devotees also  try to appease the saints to provide them the luck to win the daily lotto draws and hit the jackpots. Even sabungeros want to elicit some miracles from the saints for their cocks to win in the weekly sultadas, legal or otherwise.

    Many Filipinos believe that miracles do happen. If not today, maybe tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or the next.

Canlubang: A Barrio Deprived of Benefits for a City

     Canlubang was earlier known as home of the iconic Blu Boys, the homegrown softball club that competed  internationally. Every boy in this idyllic cool barrio used to  wear a glove on one hand, to  throw a curved  ball and to  hold a wooden bat. But not anymore.

    After the Yulo-owned American vintage sugar processing plant was mothballed due to lack of raw materials and obsolescence the club lost its benefactor.. No more batters and kid sluggers. The barrio is now known as an industrial hub.It hosts the Carmeltown park, factories and warehouses.It is where the Don Bosco College is situated. and the double course Canlubang Golf and Country Club.

    Many outsiders thought Canlubang is a town or city. It has all the qualifications to be converted into a first class city or town. It has an income comparable to that of any big city in the Philippines. It hosts supermarkets, schools, colleges,a driving range, golf course, banks, tertiary hospitals, restaurants and industrial zones. Its voting population is even bigger than all the barrios combined to include the poblacion.

     Local officials tried to file resolutions and bills attempting to make the place a town. But they failed. City government officials  and of the province of Laguna railroaded all attempts to separate it from Calamba. It was always a no deal.

    The result of the depravation to develop itself, Canlubang's progress is direction less. The only road system owned by the local government is inside the socialized housing project named Kapayapaanville, a sitio of Canlubang. Its road system was turned over to the local government in the 1990s.

    The rest is  owned by the Yulo sugar estate corporation. Its access entrance is manned by . security guards who collect toll fees.This access road is not cemented nor properly maintained. From SLEX through Silangan interchange, you have to pay toll fees and another toll at the entrance going to the industrial parks. If you are working within the parks or regularly doing business inside you have to pay yearly for a  sticker worth P700 or more   for your car or motorcycle. Delivery vehicles and riders have to pay more.. If you want to enter the barrio without paying entrance fee, you may take a detour through barrio Sirang Lupa, which is adjaceent to Canlubang.

    There is no unified wet  market there. Stalls and sidewalk along the major thoroughfare serves as wet market. Beef, pork, chicken meat  are sold on open tables not inside freezers on  almost every corner. Sanitation laws are not implemented. An INC church, future wet market building, a school and commercial stalls near the campus are located in a single block. There is no zoning law and ordinances on illegal parking not implemented.

    Parking lots are not provided by most establishments. With a strick local governance the future of the area is bright. But today, its a mess. 

Yamashita Gold Squirrelled out of Dipolog ?

     When I was an instructor  in Dipolog,Zamboanga del Norte I met the director of OISCA. I knew him as Ikeda. Later I found out that we were neighbors on Katipunan Street, which was a walking distance from the campus. Ikeda taught students on organic farming, which was trendish in the mid-1970s.

        I was wondering then why, a Japanese volunteered to share his technical knowledge to a small class of agriculture students at the Andres Bonifacio College, my alma mater. One of the reasons could be the presence of an abandoned cemetery in barrio Lugdungan  where a few  soldiers was buried during WW II.. It was made into a Shinto war memorial shrine.Another reason could be the airport, which was the scene of a bloody battle in the 1940s, which was historical both for Dipolognons and Japanese war veterans. A third reason could be the sea port in Pulauan, near Dipolog.

     I forgot about Ikeda and about OISCA, which means Overseas International Students Cooperation  Association, a private movement  funded by the Nihongo people from donations

    The second occasion I met Ikeda was in early 1980s, when I worked briefly at the office of the city mayor.  It was there in  a remote  barrio of  Diwan  where the LGU established a nursery and a tree planting area for government  employees and residents.  Here Ikeda planted giant squash, which is known abroad as pumpkins. It was so big a single squash weighs more than 10 kilos. 

    When our ABC high school class of 1969 celebrated our 50th anniversary, I visited again Dipolog for a grand reunion in 2019. When I passed by Ikeda's house I was told that he was dead. His house was for rent or for sale.Then the past events came back to me. I went to Diwan to visit a small waterfall called Sungkilaw falls, from the words " sinugba ug  kinilaw," the local delicacy of picnickers upstream of the falls. On my way back I met an old resident. who told me about strange diggings near Ikeda's garden. It  was a deep excavation hidden from view.

     Then he told me that the pumpkins were hollowed out keeping the veggie tip intact. Workers then put the gold and gems, which are part of the fabled  Yamashita treasure, inside. Then they refitted the topmost part of the pumpkin. In the evening the pumpkins were shipped via the sea port loaded on a ship bound to Manila then to Japan.

    It was an open secret that the lateMr. Ikeda was a colonel of the Japanese Imperial Navy during the war. But his secret followed him to his grave. Up to this day, the Yamashita treasure remains a myth or could be somewhere only the colonel knew.

    

 Affordable accommodation at UPLB in Los Banos, Laguna

          I was in Los Banos to attend a 3-day convention at the Boy Scouts of the Philippines (BSP) international hotel last first week of June. I have no reservation so I walked in to the hotel. As expected there were no more vacant rooms.The ladies at the information counter suggested  possible available rooms at the UPLB campus a few minutes drive from the convention site. She mentioned government-owned accommodation facilities  used by trainee-students on  campus.

             The nearest was located at the entrance to the Mount Makiling forest reserve, the Trainimg Center for Tropical  Resources and Ecosystems  Sustainability (TREES) . Its main building has five air-conditioned rooms. Nearby is a 22-room hostel. Adjacent are guest houses for those who want to cook own meals. The 4,244-hectare forest serves as recreation area for guests for camping, hiking, birthwatching or photograpy sessions.

            Another lodging facility is located on Jose Juliano street. It is  formerly called the Continuing Education Center (CEC) . Today it is called the Obdulia F Sison Hall. It has triple occupancy and double occupancy rooms. Luckily there were vacant rooms at affordable  prices.Its prices range from P1,100, P1,250 up to P2,400 a day, for a de  luxe room. An extra  bed costs P145 a night.

         Check in time is 2 p.m. and check out is 12 noon. Pets, smoking, appliances are prohibited inside the rooms. For groups it has a conference room, multipurpose halls and classrooms. The halls accommodate from 30 up to 80 persons for conferences. Breakfast is not included. But meals are available at fast food outlets, supermarkets and restaurants on the main road going to the city proper from the UP gate.

          

Antequera: A quaint town known for native crafts

The first time I was in Antequera, some 20 kms from Tagbilaran, the capital of Bohol, was in the 1960s. I accompanied my mother to attend the burial of the town's first mayor, an uncle of my mother, a Rebosura patriarch. It was an isolated town then.

After a 7.6 magnitude  earthquake that hit the town and nearby places almost a decade ago, such as Loon  and Maribojoc, I returned to the place as tourist and met a relative in a far flung barrio named San Isidro.

I met the local executive who guided me to a secluded new lake formed when boulders and soil created a dam stopping the flow of a creek during the big tremor. The new body of water was featured in a local paper, the Bohol Chronicle, as something  good brought by the quake. I even went fishing with the kids. No catch.

The locals widened the trail going to the lake and installed shacks for picnickers  who want to enjoy the phenomena of an instant attraction.

The tremor also destroyed the ancient parish church. Although it was standing with cracks on its walls, the  local government prohibited the parishioners getting inside for safety reasons.The 1800- vintage church of Maribojoc was flattened by the same tremor. 

The breakwater was damaged and sunk a few inches. Meanwhile, the shoreline of barrio Punta Cruz, where the iconic watchtower was situated. advanced farther out to sea. A new piece of land was created by the earthquake, not to mention the big chunk of soil eroded from the slope.

Today the churches in the twin towns were rebuilt and life goes on as if the tremor did not occur.

Maribojoc: My old hometown revisited after 50 years

My sister Gie  booked an Air Asia flight for me   to Tagbilaran City  for May 4, 2016, the eve of the town fiesta of Maribojoc, a fifth class municipality in Bohol and the place where I was born in 1952. It was also the year  when the whole commercial area of the old Spanish town  was razed to the ground. Since the town had the only safe port of the island in the 1950s, it had San Miguel beer and Coca Cola drinks warehouses. Shipping companies of Compania Maritima and Escano Lines used to have its booking offices in the poblacion. Tourist ships docked off the port, which was known during the  Spanish time as Dung-guan, the Sugbuhanon equivalent of port. My mother, once befriended an Australian tourist named Ms Thames, whom she brought home and introduced to us kids. My father had also the only furniture shop in town. What's memorable was that the conflagration inspired  the movie Lagablab ng Maribojoc.
Records bared that during the 1800s, or during the building of the old  St. Vincent de Ferrer parish church, which was flattened by the 6.2 tremor that hit the town in 2013, it had a population of 18,000 souls. In short it was the commercial center of the island then.After 50 years, the town has almost the same number of residents. Which means people were moving away to find livelihood elsewhere. Or it has zero population growth based on records during  the Spanish occupation.It is still a fifth class town.A retired teacher told me that Maribojoc has a "dead port."But I may disagree. Maribojoc Bay could be a safer place typhoons. Even the remnants of the Magellan expidition used the bay as shelter after they retreated from Mactan island. It was in the bay where the survivors in the Battle of Mactan  of the troops burned and sunk the wooden ships except two they used for the return trip to Spain.

Pearl of the Pacific Resort Boracay

I stayed at the Pearl of the Pacific Resort on Station 1 Boracay Island, Philippines for one night and two days last November. It is supposed to be a triple A resort but for me it lacks the necessary facilities for that classification. The swimming pool near the reception area is so small that I classified it as a wading pool. But a consolation was that the staff members -- from the gardener, room boys , receptionists to the guards at the restaurant and at the lobby -- are very friendly and helpful. In short they are hospitable that you may recommend this place to your friends.
For instance, after I checked out and I need a change for a P1,000 bill, the staffers tried their best to get a change for that bill. I need loose change for my motor cab fares and terminal fees in the ports of Boracay and Caticlan. For this I recommend the resort.My problem,however, was the lack of thick drapery or curtains in my room that overlooks the ocean. My room on the fourth floor of the highest villa on the top of the hill has a great panorama from the balcony. I woke up earlier than my usual time because the bright light from the balcony entered into my room due to lack of drapery. The glass panels were only covered by light local materials that allow light to enter into the room. But aside from this, my whole stay at the resort was worth the price.
Also I would like to mention the welcome drink given me by the receptionist. Also, they allowed my luggage to be left at the desk since I came in earlier than the 12 noon check-in time. So I went directly to the beach to swim even though my room was not yet available due to the late checkout of a guest. My room was readied around 1 p.m. after I enjoyed the clean white powdery and cool sands of Boracay.
The beach front is a few meters from the reception area. Because of this, I am recommending Pearl of the Pacific Resort to guests with children. You can easily watch over the kids while you are sipping your juice in the beachfront restaurant. But I have not seen a lifeguard, however, there are always people on the beach.That particular Sunday morning, I saw boys doing skim boarding on the foreshore area. The following day, I witnessed the construction of sand castles few meters from the restaurant.
Locals told me I can have a sandcastle built to my specification. But, a caveat, you have to pay between P1,000 and P8,000 for a sandcastle that lasts until the tide comes in.Building sandcastles on the beaches of Boracay is easier than in other areas, like Lingayen.In Lingayen they used clay as binder. In Boracay, you don't need any binder for the sand. All you have to do is to keep the castles moist all day so the wind would not blow them away.