Scouting reminiscing

My pupils JM, Elgerald and Steve.

I learned a lot of things from the scouting movement during my elementary school days and up to now in my middle age I am still using the skills I learned from my former scout master Romeo Gonzaga, now retired.

One of the most useful scout skills is knot tying. I can tell if a person has a background in scouting by the way he uses the different kind of knots for different purposes. 

Bowline, regarded as the safest knot in the world, is also a scout's trademark. Aside from knots there are the lashes and hitches.

On our base with Maams Elsa and Cathy. Male teachers are still rare species in the elementary grades.

There are no more tent pitching contests today. Back in our days, tent pitching was one of the main events in scouting meets.

I still remember the hitches used in erecting this tent: tautline-hitch and two half-hitches.

We used the heavy canvass tents that required two tent poles, six pegs and ropes. It took two persons to erect one. Our scoutmaster trained us to raise a tent in under two minutes. We were timed and our performances were repeated until we get the best result. 

Living inside these tents was a challenge. It had a low headroom due to it's triangular shape and it had no mosquito net like the dome tents used by scouts today. But it we had fun sleeping in them during overnight camps.

I also learned the basics of compass reading in scouting and I wonder why they are not taught today. I guess the advent of GPS deemed compass reading an obsolete skill.

Girls scouts meeting before the activities.

But the fondest memory I have was that of cooking. First was firebuilding and then cooking fried egg on paper and roasting an egg pierced with a bamboo stick.

Sardines. There were no instant noodles, tuna, or coffee in sachets so the scouts staple food was canned sardines and kapeng barako or cocoa.

All the food had to be cooked that's why every patrol had to bring their own cooking and eating utensils, the real thing not the disposable plastics used today.

Anyway, I guess it is inevitable to compare my scouting experiences from today's scouting activities but my experience will not be different from what they are experiencing now. Like me, in the future, they will be telling stories, they will be reminiscing about their scouting days. 

Tomatoes and thoughts on decompressing

Gardening for me is the best anti stress activity.

Firstly, it's cheap. The materials are easily available and there are few things to buy except maybe for the seeds or a sack of organic soil as additive to regular soil, this optional of course. Regular soil is OK as long as it is cultivated properly. 

You don't even need a lot of space. Urban gardening, if done properly, can accommodate a lot of plants in small spaces.

The beginning has started.

Secondly, it gives back. Drinking, partying, or eating out cost money.  I am not saying these things are bad, occasionally they are good but done regularly, the accumulated cost would be significant especially for income earners. 

On the other hand, gardens provides food on the table, and even ornamental plant gardening gives a lot in return, clean air, beautiful surroundings, water retention, etc. 

I am now re-starting my urban garden since the rainy season has ended. I have been bringing home  empty water bottles 

brought to the school by pupils for the school's recycling campaign. I have planted in them with tomatoes, okras (lady fingers),  basil, eggplant, and string beans. 

 Thirdly,  the activity diverts the mind from anxieties real or imagined. Most of the times, I am so focused on what I am doing from snipping off unnecessary branches from a bonsai tree to removing weeds from a pot that I could feel my mind uncluttered. 

Of course, this is an unconscious effect of letting the hand and mind work together because once I think that I am doing this to fight off stress, it becomes an effort. 

Okras and tomatoes. These are staples. Last year I have planted them into the ground but since space is  and sunlight is becoming scarce due to competition, I have decided to plant them on recycled bottle so that I could move them once in while where there's more sunlight.They need at least six hours of direct sunlight.

I guess this where the eastern philosopher Lao Tzu got it right when he said that "to the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders" or "usefulness of a pot comes from its emptiness." 

Our life is cluttered with busyness, with work, with the desire to be the best, to be ahead. But at what cost? Disconnection. People are disconnected with their inner self. Too occupied with impressing other people, with ambition, that they miss other human experiences.

Eggplants and basil seedlings. The basil was given to me by my sister from Baguio and I don't know anything about basil except what I have read about it. This is my first time growing them.

We believe that having and doing more is the solution to the choking clutter of anxieties.

Mobile off line for two days

It's carelessness.

I put my cellphone on the table and went on to do something else. I am often like this, absentmindedly putting things on places which, of course, I often forget. So, its not unusual to find plant shears on top of the ref, remote control in the shoe rack, or keys inside the bathroom, etc. I keep losing things which I often find in the most unusual places which to my wife has become so predictable that she could tell where to find them before my blood pressure shoots up to seizure level from searching.

Not my CP. Mine is an Oppo Neo 5. Picture is just hmmm...an illustration, I guess.

What happened was, I put the cell phone on the table without checking the surface that was wet from from the accumulated droplets of the iced cold water dripping from the water pitcher. My unit was an Oppo Neo 5 which has a built in battery which I could not remove. I tried turning it off, but I couldn't. So, the phone was on all the time the water was seeping in thus short circuiting the electronics inside.

Not our table. Ours is not as nice as this one.

It's been two days and I am starting to feel the effect of being offline. I am worried that I am missing communications from work, family, friends: disconnected. I am stressed, I keep reaching for my dead phone trying to turn it on. This compounded by the fact that my wife and daughter are busy with their mobile social media while I.. It'a driving me crazy. Anyway, it's a good thing I have a desktop, which I have not used for social media (except for blogging) for a long time, to check my FB and Messenger accounts.  

I cannot imagine how the lost of an implement could have this effect on me and I guess this is true to most people. 

To the millennial or the digital natives, I can understand the impact of the loss of a cell phone since they have been with the technology from the very beginning, but for someone like me who have seen the last phase vacuum tube era, lived through the transition from transistors to digital computers and have been with the online world for only about a decade, I mean...

I guess the technology has been so imbued in my systems for it is with me most of the time. It has become an appendage, another organ that allows me to connect to people, have access to information, and allows me to channel a lot of things thoughts both positive and negative to the world with the freedom I have not experienced before.

Note: Been talking to an Indian national on borrowing some cash to buy a new Cell Phone. We're still negotiating.

Firecracker names and what they say...

The year 2016 is about to end and I'm thinking about something to blog about. It's been a long time since I have blogged about something (or nothing) and I don't how to start the ball rolling again.

Anyway, I have noticed that yearly the amount of firecrackers are decreasing. I remember about two decades ago when my friends and I would start the new year revelry early by firing off firecrackers as early as September but compared to now, it's only a few hours before new year's eve when the intermittent explosion could be heard. Of course, I'm talking about our neighborhood and the case may be the opposite with others. 

But on the other hand, the size and the power of today's firecrackers has evolved to the weapon's grade level, which according to some police officers, is comparable to improvised explosive devices (IED) used by terrorists. Legally,  firecrackers should not exceed the 0.2 grams gunpowder limit allowed by RA 7183 and firecrackers that exceed this limit is illegal and should be confiscated by the Police but judging from the size and power of the new generation of firecrackers, it's obvious that they contain more than the 1.3 tablespoon limit. 

Anyway, the branding of these super-firecrackers is something to think about. It's sick, funny kind of sick, really, because most of these brands are named after the hottest issues of the day from supertayhpoons, sports, to local and international politics. When Bin Laden was the most wanted man by the US, a firecracker was named after him, then there's Manny Pacquiao to pay tribute to the pambansang kamao; Yolanda after the supertyphoon, Napoles and now Goodbye Delima. There was even a "Crying Bading" which smacks of homophobia.


What do these brand say? (to justify the title of the post). Nothing. I guess the manufacturers of these firecrackers think that the best way to end the year is to blast these issues into smithereens, with the exception of Manny Pacquiao, of course. Or they think they are just being funny.

When I was teenager, I used to love firecrackers and the noise of new years eve. Heck, we used to fire my father's 5 inch GI pipe "kalburo" (smelled like rotten eggs) powered canon which used to knock out our neighbor's fluorescent lamp because of the vibrations it created. It also used to knock off the roosting chickens in our talisay trees. My friends and I loved that cannon and we used to fantasize that we were firing a 150 mm howitzer by putting cans and coconut on its nuzzles as projectiles, unfortunately it got rusted and I had it sold to the junk shop.

But now I'm older, I guess my eardrums got sensitive because of age hehehehe. God, how I wish that we celebrate the changing of the year in total silence, in reflection.

Miriam Defensor and my Alta Presyon

I was nineteen years old when Miriam Defensor Santiago first run for the presidential race. My friends and I volunteered as poll watchers for her for free. We even spent our own money for our snacks and lunch which was unusual because watchers, though called volunteers, were normally given cash for allowances and packed snacks and lunch through out the election and the counting, which was manual then. 

But since we were enamored by Defensor's no nonsense, fierce image, especially when dealing with death threats, we were attracted towards her. We were amazed at the way she talked to the press especially when she confronted illegal aliens who tried to answer back to her. Her vocabulary was also something, she used unusual words to insult her enemies eliciting laughter and thought at the same time. 

I guess, to our young mind then, she was the opposite of president Cory Aquino who was soft spoken and politically correct.

She ran for the second time but Erap got my imagination which in retrospect was a waste of my vote. The third time, I was rooting for her but her deteriorating health was already showing. I voted for Digong.

She had her faults when in a brief moment of  illogicality she sided with Erap Estrada. But other than that, she is one the brightest and the funniest senator I have seen and heard.

She will sorely be missed especially now when the senate and congress is being filled up by people who could only be described as below average mediocre.

_________________________________

I thought I was about to have an asthma episode because I am getting short of breath untilI  checked my blood pressure. I admit I was eating a lot lately and have not been walking in weeks due to the weather and also from the exhaustion of teaching. I guess I need to get back to my routine and stop being a sloth.

I avoid our school office. One of the reasons is that I always associate that office with paper works and memos. I have this belief that if I avoided that office, I would be spared being one of the subjects of the memos. This is not actually a belief but it is based on the premise that if the boss do not see me, he/she will not know that I exist, And if I do not exist, at least with in his/her field of vision, chances are my name would not be brought up for a task or an assignment. I have survived under the radar for so long that being called to a meeting  in the office rattles me. I guess once in a while my butt sticks out. 

I always feel safe under the radar, and I'm not the only one who feels this way.