Getting Started

I created this blog sometime November or December 2007 in my desperate effort to put back into picture my recollection of the community I have come to grow up with. It has been more than 20 years since we left that community and during the 3 separate occasions I visited the place, the picture of a lively, wonderful community seem to gradually vanish. I wanna go back more often but lest I forget the picture I have come to vividly keep in my mental album, I decided to refrain from coming back. It's just like a lesson in grade school history wherein you memorize capital cities of countries from South and North America to Africa, from Europe to Asia and Australia and when you grow up these countries change their name and you don't know anymore that Beijing is still Peking which is the capital city of China. See, my point is, things change and memories may vanish. As much as you want to keep everything but you really can't rely on the deteriorating mental album due to old age......Hahahhaahha!!!! I'm not saying I am getting that old, but in the long run I will be. And losing the picture means losing the sentiments, experiences, good things which have been a great part in shaping your person.

It was a baranggay in a secluded town far way south of Bacolod City in Negros Occidental. By then, it takes 6 hours to travel from Bacolod to that town several stop-over to either eat or pee, or to take a little relief from the nerve-wracking, torturing long and winding trip. But what a surprise that while the towns and cities you pass by before you get to the place are impoverished and under-developed, our community has it's own hospital, airport nestled on a vast hectare of ricefields.

While my childhood friends in Cadiz City brag everytime a helicopter lands on the field of Philippine Normal University (PNU) between the 4th Quarter of 1985 to the 1st Quarter of 1986 where political turmoil in the Philippines was on its peak, I take pride in saying I grew up in a community wherein we are always being chased by an airport guard at 12:00 noon for crossing over the runway because a charter is about to land in a couple of minutes. What can we do? We have to have a shortcut. The food that we bring inside a prembrera might be spoiled any minute. Besides, we have to bring it to our dads before the next horn is blown. The company horn is blown every 30 minutes. Another horn blown means ILCOPhil workers are going back to work. My dad always spanks us everytime I or my brothers get late in bringing him his lunch.

We take turns with that daily chore. But most of the time it's always the one who comes home early who gets assigned with the chore. At first it would be great coz of the thought of saving the 50 cents fare from home to ILCO by walking in the heat of the sun. What I do when I get to be assigned is I go with my classmates from the ILCO Housing like Rommel Barbon, Ainnie Artajo, Jumvey Cuñejo, Ruby Carpeña among others. We'll pass by several houses from OLSA to the last house before the 4 no-railing (non-railed) bridges, all sprawled on a vast pond situated where the marine and fresh water meets. Then at the end of the 4th bridge, you'll see a guard house both to the left and right of the road. Then, what I had to do is to decide whether to go left or to the right. Going to the right means cutting short of the distance but that also means you have to ask permission from the airstrip attendant to cross the creek behind the hangar on which other end was where my dad was working. If the guard on duty is strict I won't be allowed at all to go right so I have to go left with my classmates and mount up the 5 feet cyclonede wire fence across the runway. Wheh. The recollection is so excruciating as the dismounting from the fence.

I have to stop here for now, I'll go on storytelling tomorrow, but getting started with this blog feels so great that I can free around 1 gigabyte of my internal memory drive. See you all next time.


(Wishing-Well sa likod sang Grade 5 room ni Ma'am Meder sang una)


(Visitors from Sagay City in line with their Educational Trip)


(Sa likod ni sang Grade 4 building huh?)