Rico J. Puno vs. The Mahogany Gang

Our shool's molave tree. I christened thee
"Rico J. Puno"

Since becoming a bonsai hobbyist for about three years now, I have learned bits of the taxonomy of our local trees. I also dabbled into horticulture and a bit of tree surgery, which is really important in bonsai. Of course the meditative art and philosophy is there too.

Because of bonsai, I have develop a deep fascination with trees.

Dendrophilia or love of trees is what it is called, not to be mistaken with paraphilia which is the sexual attraction to a tree, kinda painful to imagine if you ask me.

Trees are fascinating because aside from providing shades, the air we breathe, and the timber we need, and gazilion other stuffs, they also have this incredible ability to convert energy into matter. 

Trees have been demonstrating Eienstinian physics way before Einstein even wrote his famous E=mc2. I don't know how the formula works but basically it means that matter can be converted to energy and vice versa. Ok, I'll leave it at that and not get into the physics, which is hieroglyphics to me.

The beauty of this tree is its gnarled trunk and the tree holes.
In bonsai this is called uro. I was reminded of the game played
by Scout and Boo in Harper Lee's novel "To kill a mockingbird"

I have planted trees into pots and watched their roots break their pots and then mature into trees yet they have not consumed the pot and the surrounding soil around them. 

Far from it, when their roots grow and ramifies into networks of secondary and tertiary roots, they push the earth surrounding them up thus creating the illusion of creating more earth.

Being a consumer and an organism that belongs to the second and third level of the food chain, I find it hard to imagine that something could grow and develop without devouring anything to fuel its growth proportional to its size. 

The donated mahogany seedlings growing rapidly.

Anyway, enough with the law of conservation of matter. 

About five years ago an organization donated mahogany seedlings to the school which was planted in the school campus. Now the mahogany seedlings have developed into fifteen foot young trees. 

The growth rate is amazingly fast and that's why mahogany became a popular timber crop trees in the Philippines. It is said that one ten-fifteen year old mahogany tree could give a return on investment rate of hundreds of thousand pesos per tree. 

Large amount of money considering they are maintenance free and the seedling are cheap and even given away. Profit is one of the reasons why many farmers and farm owners planted this tree on their lands.

But money always cost something.

It may have been economically profitable but ecologically it's a different thing. Mahoganies are alien species and invasive at that.  It is displacing our native trees.

Most of our native fungi, algae, and insects are not familiar with the foreign species hence they do not inter act with the tree. One case is what happened in Bohol's Bilar Manmade forest. Mahogany was planted in the reforestation program in Bohol and the trees developed  rapidly to become a beautiful forest. But there's one chilling discovery, there were no fungi and algae that grew on the trees, no fungi and algae means no insects, no insects means no birds-- biodiversity destroyed.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

“Molave, as a native species, has a relationship to the land, water, and other organisms that has developed over a million years. Certain fungi live with the roots, certain insects feed on the plant parts, while others pollinate the flower. Birds and mammals live along the branches and feed on the seeds. No such relationship exists for the newcomer. The result is ten hectares of mahogany in a biodiversity-dead zone. There are no birds, no insects, only a nearly dead soil due to the lethal chemicals that leak from the rotting leaves (emphasis mine). Native species are rarely found as seedlings beneath the canopy, and so, most significantly, there is no future for ten hectares of mahogany.”

Our school's narra trees.

The department should learn from this and instead give away or require schools to plant, aside from narras, threatened native hardwood trees. This will educate our pupils on the diversity of our tree species, awaken concern for the threatened species and the importance of diversity in our ecology.

Gaway, Gaway and why I'm better off chopping wood

I have not seen folk dance this fast and lively.  I  thought the boys are doing an exhibition on Filipino martial arts because aside from the graceful flowing arm swipes and snake like fist movement, they are also shouting like karate-ninjitsu-sayonatsi masters.

The girls are not to be left behind. The demure hand twirling moves are replaced with swift moving hands and arms holding flower laden bilaos as if they are going to throw bladed Frisbee into the air. I am reminded of Michelle Yeoh in Crouching Tiger.

Not content with the fast and martial arts likemoves, the group run and merge into circular formation with their arms alternately raising up and going down fluidly in sync with their shouts, karate chops and flying kicks.

Na, no karate chops and flying kicks but it's the next development in the climax, I mean...

I am intrigued so I asked a co-teacher what is the folk dance and I am told it is Gaway-Gaway. This is the first time I saw this dance that's why I'm a bit surprised. I am used to see our pupils performing demure folk dances like Carinosa, Subli, etc.

I don't know if our folk dance is evolving or maybe it's because i don't know our folk dance except what I see on YouTube. 

But judging from the speed and the complexity of Gaway-Gaway, it seems the dance steps are moving towards modernity, which our PE coordinator also agrees with. He observed that the steps have become complex, faster, intense and powerful. He attended the district folkdance workshop, which, unfortunately I am too unfit to attend. He complained of body aches from the three day sessions.

I guess even folk dance needs an upgrade and so do the teachers.

_______________________

I am consolidating the 1st Quarter test results for MAPEH, and again, as usual, grade six is lagging behind performance wise. It's kind of frustrating because I and my co-teacher have been burning our fats trying to improve the MAPEH performance. 

Music is what the pupils find most difficult among the four components of MAPEH. I guess it's because learning music is like learning a new language. It's full of symbols. Add to the myriads of symbols that must be memorized, there's also the arithmetic involved. 

Another is that music theory is not something pupils use everyday, it's not relevant to their everyday life so, naturally, it does not interest them so they lose what they learn easily.

Filipinos are gifted when it comes to music. Proof of that is the world class talents our country has produced. Our musicians perform from the most prestigious stages, to cruise ships and in the streets. Many of them have no theoretical background in music except by learning and copying music by ear, or through ouido. 

Music is one those things anyone can do without any idea of the theories behind it. like I always say to those who ask me how to learn an instrument: its easy to learn but difficult to teach. In the end, the only teacher you'll need is interest.

Back to the test result, I don't know...but...I'm ...just read the second part of the title of this post (to avoid redundancy).

Death by Cable TV Wire. Anyone?

I don't know if I'm the only one who notice these disconnected cable TV wires dangling from electric posts. This is dangerous to pedestrians, bicycle and motorcycle riders especially at night when they are invisible. The copper and aluminum wires that protrude from its insulators are sharp and can cause cuts or gouging.

My forehead was gashed by one these things. I was able to evade the wire because I was in low gear. Had I been travelling at high speed, which I seldom do, the velocity of the motorcycle and the swaying action of the wire could have gouge one of my eyes out of its socket.

I don't know who should be doing something about this, but I hope the authorities or the utilities will act before someone gets injured or die because of these hanging cables.

The electric post ain't what they used to be. I seldom look up so I guess it took me a while to notice that they have become monstrously ugly. They have accumulated loads of wires that seem to bend them with exhaustion, to think that we are in the wireless communication age.  

Another thing is that they have become shorter because roads are periodically repaved and the accumulated layers of asphalt and concrete has elevated the road a few meters in decades while these posts have not been replaced since they were put up there by MERALCO. That's why death by electrocution among construction workers have increased in the past years.

How about this protruding water pipe? This thing deprives pedestrians of precious walking space. I'm trying to figure out what happened here.

I could only guess that the water utility company was not informed of the on-going rehabilitation of Taytay Bridge or they simply did not think that they need to relocate the pipe for reasons. But the bridge's drain is atop a water line and the excavation necessitates moving the pipe, unfortunately concrete was already poured and dried when they found this out. Which ever, lack of foresight and miscommunication was the problem.

Anyway, the solution is pure simian genius. Obviously, they do not want to dig up concrete and put the coupling under ground,so they settled to put it above the pavement. A car or jeepney wheel rolling over this pipe, which is highly probable given the density of traffic here, could create a geyser pumping out thousands of liters of potable water into the thirsty concrete pavement.

Pure Simian Genius. my apologies to the apes.

The Taytay Drainage Systematic Observation and Scientific Analysis of the Projected Hydrological Functionality and Gravitational Flow of the on-going Upgrade of the Municipality's Flood Control System in lieu of the Excessive Athmospheric Monsoon Precipitations as a direct effect of Climate Change

The old Taytay Bridge. It was raised by about four meters. 

The first floor of the former Gacula Clinic is now completely
 covered by the arc of newly rehabilitated bridge.

(The kilometric gibberish, pseudo-academic sounding title conveys the state of mind of the blogger and it also provides the gist of the post.Hope it did not stump you. But if it did, do try do read on...)

The traffic in Taytay is terrible. As usual, the culprit is the government's public work projects that began with the rehabilitation of Taytay Bridge. I thought that was it but when the project was done, I was surprised to see tracked vehicles armed with jackhammers ripping  apart the main road in downtown Taytay.

Of course, like me, many of the ordinary Taytayenos are aghast at the idea of breaking up and digging what is a relatively good road. A lot of FB posts are ranting mad about the seemingly in flagrante derelicto's waste of the citizen's tax money. But nothing can be done about it, mere mortals are not privy to the council of government.

Jack-hammered and ready for destruction! 

It's a good thing Taytay has a lot of secondary and tertiary streets where vehicles can find alternate ways but these streets are small and with the volume of traffic that passes through downtown Taytay, it's a nightmare.

The mystery is revealed when tarpaulins sprouted informing the towns people that the Department of Public Works is rehabilitating and raising the road by a meter and upgrading/enlarging the drainage system.

Anyway...'ll start with a caveat: I am not saying I am more intelligent than the Public Works engineers nor do I think that these engineers do not know their stuffs, I believe otherwise. But just the same, I am inclined to give these engineers the following observation, and questions.

1. An improved drainage is useless unless it is connected to a working municipal drainage system and the neighboring towns to ensure that floodwater will drain to Laguna Lake and then ultimately in to the sea.In a nut shell, you don't improve a drainage only to connect it to a bottle neck and route it to a dead end.
2. What I fear here is that the improved drainage covers only a few kilometers and when that few kilometers is done, the improved drainage will be connected to an old, unimproved drainage system, voila, the bottle neck. Of course, the connecting old drainage system will be improved in the next years or decade and by that time the improved drainage in Taytay is silted and clogged that it needs to be re-piped, again.3. Elevation. Downtown Taytay is flood prone because of its low elevation. It's the catch basin of rain waters coming down from the surrounding hills of the municipality as well rainwater cascading from the mountains of neighboring Antipolo City. 
Even if  the improved drainage is raised by a meter, will it be enough to allow the water to flow downward to the Manggahan Floodway? What if the meter raised is not enough to elevate it higher than the connecting drain pipes en route to the flood way. 

To illustrate, look at the aerial picture in the right. This is the Ortigas-Cainta junction traffic bottle neck. Ortigas Avenue was improved, it was widened to a six lane road but it was connected to a two lane road.Flood water, unlike vehicles, do not have drivers and they do not obey traffic laws and ordinances, not that I'm saying my countrymen always do. Floodwater follows only one law: the law of gravity.Logically, the floodwater will flow back to the secondary and tertiary road/street drains thus aggravating the town's flood problem. Instead of draining, the improved drainage could end up acting more like a reservoir that once full will back flow flood water into the tributary drains submerging the entire downtown in the process except the newly elevated bridge and road. Now, that is something out of a joke book.

Where's the haunted house? Taytay's fast disappearing old houses.

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Motorcycling to the old Taytay market to buy stuffs for lunch, out of nowhere I was hit by nostalgia when I saw this ruins. Here once stood one of the beautiful houses in downtown Taytay. It used to have large trees and palms in the yard and the gargoyles standing guard on top of every column of the iron wrought fences gave it a Gothic aura, "Transylvanian" or "Dracula-ish".

The place is now abandoned and the old house torn down and what remains are some walls and the fence. Although I don't know who owned the place and I had never seen the people living in it, which added to its mystery, I felt a certain amount of affinity for the place.  As a child, I often pass by the house and was amazed and a bit scared by the gargoyles. The mosses growing on its adobe walls completed the appearance of a haunted house. I thought it was one.

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I don't know what happened but a few years back, the place was turned into a flea market and then when it did not make money, it was abandoned altogether. Maybe it was sold, or was taken over by the local government because of tax delinquency, etc.  I don't know if the house is historical but the fact that it is a unique house should have aroused people with artistic and cultural inclination in the municipality and local government to save the place because it would have done well if it was converted into the town museum or an art gallery or both. 

M any may not know this but  Taytay, Rizal is famous for its woodworkers skills hence it is known as the sash capital of the country. It's carpentry and sash works is  well known for its quality, but I don't know if this is still true today considering that many woodworking shops have died and few survived and i could only wonder if the manual skills have been passed on. Another things is, with the depletion of hardwood tree in the forests of Rizal and the resulting log ban made lumber scarce and expensive.

What is the best showcase for the woodworking skills of Taytayenos? It's in their old houses. Unfortunately, with age and no maintenance most of these houses are in disrepair while many are torn down to be replaced by concrete houses.

Some of these old houses should be saved for cultural reasons, to showcase the town's woodworking skills, i.e. if there are still houses to be saved. But I guess it all depends on the owners if they are willing to donate to the local government for heritage reasons. But the thing is, every town should have an old house, a haunted one if possible. 

Where is Taytay's?

Classroom Research and EV the evil voice

I try to enjoy my weekend and in this case it's a three day weekend but at the back of my head there's this nagging and intrusive tiny voice that keeps whispering evil stuffs in my head, which, if I do not suppress ruins the short, short vacation. No, I'm not a schizophrenic, well, on self diagnosis at least, bipolar? I don't know, But I guess most, if not all, teachers experience the same kind of phenomenon.

Here's how the conversation usually progresses.  

Evil Voice  (which from now I would call EV): Have you updated your LIS.

Me: Oh my God, I promised to do it last week but I need to have a break! I promise I'll do it tomorrow. 

EV: There you go again making up excuses!

Me:   Don't I deserve a break, The stress of teaching is killing me.

EV: All jobs are stressful you dimwit. Here are other stuffs that you should not forget. DLL, Form 137, Form 8, Action Plan, Physical fitness report, grade level and school wide test result consolidation, 16 pieces of rating sheets, and remember classroom research, sf's. Don't forget the collectibles: pta collection, another pta collection, bsp, gsp, anti tb...drowning already? More will be coming! The God of Education is still not done with you sinners!

This conversation usually occurs at the end of the quarter. I guess the voice will never stop until the paper works are accomplished. 

Anyway, all these stuffs are routine except for classroom research which was added to our mountainous paper works about a year ago. I know the objective behind research is to discover classroom problems and how they can be solved in the classroom setting using the teacher/researcher's observations and the solutions that arise from the study, the scientific method thing.

Well, I'm not blaming or insulting any teacher. I guess with the amount of work teacher's do, the thinking would be to meet the research requirements with the minimal effort. The reason behind this theory is not because teachers are lazy or incompetent, its just research takes a backseat behind the classroom and school records keeping, it's prioritization.

I read some of the research titles done in the school and they are good but many are redundant and the topic is so obvious that research seemed superfluous. The thing is, there will come a time when teachers run out of problems or challenges to study, at least in the learner and the classroom setting. And since research is another requirement included in the RPMS, the teacher may end killing themselves racking up their brains to come up with titles. Also most teachers are trained to teach, to facilitate learning, to captain the classroom. research which requires another set of skills from writing to stats, is something most are not trained to do. Another is inclination, speaking for myself, I do not have the inclination to conduct research for reasons one being it's tedious and boring as hell. Of course, this is me, but I also get the impression from most teachers that research is one thine they do not enjoy doing. That's just my impression, the truth could very well be the opposite, they love doing research.

I have this very simple but not original idea about education and work. It's all about interest and motivation, the intrinsic and extrinsic thing. There should an equilibrium between the two. If the work is done on the motivation of promotion and demotion, the project will be accomplished but not enjoyed and expect shitty titles worthy of being used as a toilet paper. But if the motivation is done out of interest and the aim of helping out, expect quality research, expect rarity.

Thinking and conceptualizing requires a creative mind. Creative minds requires room for exploration of ideas. Think of a computer with a powerful processor and a large memory. But like anything and everything, cramped those memories with stuffs and the processor slows down. Another analogy is the stomach, eat small meals at the correct intervals and you get good poop but if you cram the stomach with stuffs edible and inedible, potable and not potable, it will produce...well...do the science. So goes with the mind.

What am I saying? Less is more. Why? Do the the Superior, minor and demi Gods' in the department read and evaluate the research? With the amount of research being submitted, do they really study them and apply the recommendations. Or the papers are  just stacked up in cabinets and storage to be used as mediums for molds and fungi culture. Less is more because it will be difficult to find a manuscript lost in the tons of scratch papers. One, two, or three well done research is better than... 

Free DLL for aliens

No freebie here,.Gotta write your own. I attended the district's MAPEH school coordinator's meeting a couple of days ago and a lot of stuff were discussed, activities and coming events which our corresponding schools need to be aware of.



Meetings, I guess like my colleagues, as shown in the photo, bores the hell out of me. Anyway, one of things discussed in the meeting was the fact that many teachers are downloading test materials, reports, teaching aids etc. from blogsites.


Personally I do not have problem with blogsites that share teaching materials. With the titanic paperwork a teacher has to accomplish, anything that would lessen the load is, for me, very welcome. But I found out that these material being offered by blogsites are not the original works of the blog administrator. The materials are collected works of teacher taken from, I could only guess, DepEd seminars and training because most of them are K-12 prototypes especially the lesson plans.




The FB account of the blogsite is also flooded with complaints from teachers who are surprised that their constructed teaching materials are being offered for download for a fee. Aside from the download fee, the administrator is also earning money from ads. The teachers are crying exploitation.


My guess is these blogs are run by someone in the Department who has access to all these materials and prototypes submitted by demo teachers to their seminar or workshop facilitators or trainers. 


Anyway...


In 2010 I attended the national ICT seminar and one of the things discussed there was the Learning Resource Management and Development System or LRMDS. The program was a portal where teachers can share their original teaching and learning materials and share them to DepEd teachers especially to teachers who have no access to materials in their area. So, technically, or in spirit, these blog sites are doing what LRMDS was designed for except they did not inform the constructors of the materials that their projects will be shared and that they will be earning from them. This is an ethical issue that needs to be addressed by the owners of the blogsites.  

Final bit: unless LRMDS is connected to social media like FB, it will continue to collect cyber dusts and spider webs somewhere out there in outer space, In short, it will continue to be invisible and useless to most teachers.

It ain't heavy, it's really heavy

The old days when teachers are human and not report
generating zombies.

When I started out teaching in the public schools, about six years ago, I was expecting an eight hour job. I imagine myself reporting to work an hour earlier at six in the morning and then checking out at four in the afternoon. Preparing lesson plans and then teaching for six hours add the paper works and record keeping, I knew the job would be tedious but manageable for an asthmatic, rheumatic hypertensive person like me. At least I don't get to dig up trenches or lift heavy objects.


Another plus for public teachers is they have this two months paid summer vacation, which I found out is technically not a vacation because we do report to the school on rotation and on call. But just the same, the lull from the classroom stress provided teachers the chance to recharge.

Damn.

I noticed things started to change when former President Noynoy Aquino introduced the Result-Based Performance Management System or RPMS as it is known to us teachers aside from the already progressing K-12 program. The paper works started to get heavy and seminar schedules started coming down from the top usually scheduled on weekends. The aim, according to rumors, was to provide teachers with the necessary certificates to meet the required points in the RPMS. 


Good, I thought but then taking away the weekend from teachers is robbing them of their time for their family. Also, weekends are meant for housekeeping since most teachers are too busy on workdays hence their housekeeping chores accumulate and the weekends are their only time to tend to them.  


I rejoiced when the daily lesson plan was replaced by the daily lesson log. The daily lesson log, unlike the daily lesson plan, required teachers to list their lesson objective/s, references, methods and percentage of pupils that achieved the 75% mark, four fields to fill up.


But today a new  fifteen part daily lesson log was introduced to us. I was looking at it and I almost wept because it was being mean to us teachers. It is not only not teacher friendly, it is teacher hostile. Imagine filling out those blank spaces with God knows what phrases and infinitives. What am I going to write? I was tempted to beg our school head to give us back the daily lesson plan because at least teachers are familiar to it and even with eyes closed teachers can write one, but like us the school head is just an employee, a cog in the ever growing DepEd paper mill. 

I pray that this new administration and the new secretary will return the four part DLL.

Teaching is an eight hour job its just that you cannot separate it from the teacher's personal and family life. I guess that makes it a not an eight hour job. Anyway...

Pak Ganern and the pusher is a lady

Keep them busy with the TV.

Pak Ganern is a clapping game invented by Vice Ganda in the noontime show "It's Showtime". It's so popular that it drives me nuts to see my pupils playing the game during lunch break. I have nothing against the game it's just that the clapping and the laughing disturb my nap. So, lately I gave up stopping my pupils from playing Vice Ganda's invention that I just turn on the TV to keep them busy. If the TV doesn't work, I ask my pupils to play in  the hall.

The game became popular especially among children, a testimony to Vice Ganda's popularity.

crazy as satan

What is Pak Ganern? Lately there's this FB post going around explaining that "Pak Ganern" is two Latin word "Paccracius" and "Ganri" which means "you are inviting satan to be with you eternally.  I'm curious so I googled what "paccrassius" and I'm not surprised to see that it means broom. So, this Latin etymology theory is nothing but a hoax perpetrated by people who, according to Ethel Booba, is possessed by Satan.  

It's obvious that this paccrassius thing was started by some homophobic fundamentalist church people who always find satanic meaning in everything. A few years back there's this backward masking phenomenon where it says that rock and heavy metal songs contain satanic incantations when played backwards. This was a big thing then that pulpits used backward masking to attack rock and metal songs. Of course this is already debunked because what they are really doing is putting meaning in gibberish and not taking out meaning from it.

Anyway...

I am a passionate supporter of Pres. Digong's drug war. The reason is that in our neighborhood shabu is openly sold and used. To live with neighbors who sold drugs is unsettling especially when strangers on motorcycle come and go in the middle of the night and disturb the peace of the neighborhood. What is infuriating is that they do this with impunity because they know the community cannot do anything.  Fear or pakikisama is what they count on.

OA

With the onset of operation tukhang here in Taytay, it's comforting to see policemen knocking on drug pushers and users doors to ask them to surrender. I am not using the word "suspected" here because everyone in the community knew these people are pushers and addicts. They are guilty as hell because many members of the community actually see them sell, buy and use shabu. They look the part, haggard, broken teeth, malnourished, teeth gnashing.

Of course there's this legal doctrine which states that a man is innocent until proven guilty by the court. This is crap for non lawyers like me because this very doctrine is used by criminals to evade and even escape the law. Even when criminals are caught red handed, with the entrails and the bile dripping from their hands, they could always invoke this doctrine and employ lawyers to defend them. The law is full of technicalities that good lawyers are defined not by what they know about laws but what holes they can find in laws. It's not unusual to see criminals walk off because of some unmet requirements in the  police and court process like not informing the accused of his rights, the miranda thing.

The foreign media is portraying the war on drug as if SS Gestapos are knocking on doors and then shooting people on mere suspicion. They are comparing our campaign to what happened in Indonesia where the country's drug campaign was used by the people in power to eliminate political foes as well as to settle personal vendetta.

It's still a long way to go but the important thing, the one that is felt by the community, is that my drug pusher neighbor's midnight visitors has stopped. Yes, the pusher is a lady.

I am still waiting for her to get arrested.

Former pupils and former teachers and memory problem

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I admit, it feels nice to be visited by my former pupils. It means a lot to be remembered.


I recall a few months back, I was riding on my way to work when a motorcycle appeared on my left side with a lanky teenager rider on it. The boy (or maybe the guy because its obvious he's already advanced into puberty) said "good morning sir." "Good morning, " I greeted back and he smiled at me and told me that his mother had just died and that he still could not believe his mother was gone. I was a little taken aback when he told me this because I did not really knew him that well. He was not even in my advisory class.


A lot was going on inside my head then. First, I was trying to recall his name! I knew his face, that's for sure because he's one of my difficult pupils, a teacher does not forget the face of a "pasaway" pupil, but I just couldn't remember him. I have a nasty memory and pupils especially girls used to play tricks on me by lining up in front of me covering their name tags and then asking me to name them none by one, which of course, was not only difficult but almost impossible. Second, I was also trying to figure out what year he graduated. His face is clear but the name, not even fuzzy, it's zero.


He kept on talking though most of his words were drowned out by the booming sound of his motorcycle's open exhaust pipe. I glanced at his face and I could feel his sadness. I said my condolences and told that everything will be ok. I inquired if he's still studying and I was relieved to hear that he was enrolled. I think the conversation lasted a minute or maybe even less, when he said goodbye and sped off.

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Anyway, when I arrived in my classroom and sat behind my table, I though about what happened and I also thought about my past teachers. I still remember my teachers from kindergarten to grade six. Most of my high schools teachers, sadly I have forgotten. There's Ms. Calderon, Mrs. Gonzaga, Mrs. Gatchalian, Mrs. Santiago, Mrs. Gozum, Mrs. De Jesus, and Mrs. Pinon, I still remember them.


Thinking about my former pupil, I guess the teacher - pupil relationship is still there. Maybe he thinks that I could still remember him the way he remembers me and judging from the way he spoke to me, maybe he felt he was still talking to his funny and crazy music teacher who likes to joke and made fun of his pupil's surnames. But from my perspective, it's a different thing, I am now speaking with a teenager on his way to adulthood and not a ten year old--a lot has changed.


And this is one of those things that frustrates me, my poor memory. Just yesterday, I was on my way to the bank to withdraw my salary when I heard my name being shouted. I stopped my motorcycle and there's this high school student running towards me with a wide smile on his face. "Sir George!" He shouted. He was one of my last year's pupils and I couldn't even remember his name! He talked as if we were in class the afternoon before. He asked for a ride which I gladly obliged and along the way we met some of his classmates and also my former pupils and I couldn't also remember most of their names.


Anyway...


I have come to realize that I am quite popular. Hundreds of children and many who are already on their way to adulthood knew me because I have taught them. No one pupil graduates from the school without passing through me because I taught the school hymns and other graduation songs, so even if they did not attend my classes, they learn the graduation ceremony songs from me.


So, riding in jeep, walking down a street, riding on my motorcycle, I get greetings, smiles, hellos, and if not greetings, at least I get that "I know you" look from some of people and I just smile back because chances are, they are my former pupils.