Day of the dead, etc.

All souls day is one of the most important holidays in the country. If holidays are ranked according to travel iteniraries and religious significance, the day of the dead would rank third next to Christmas and lent.

Being a non-catholic and raised in a prortestant family which rejects anything "unscriptural", we do not observe the religious significance of the holidays but we do enjoy the break the non-working holidays provide.

But of course being tolerant and even accepting of other religious beliefs (I'm a religious pluralist), I find nothing wrong with traditions considering that before the Canon of the Bible was collated, Christianity survived it's first few centuries on traditions.

Filipinos especially the Catholics believe that the souls of their departed loved ones visits them at this time of the year. Niches are cleaned and repainted and some even have reunions in the cemetery with plates of food offered for the dead. 

Lighted candles by the doorsteps are common sight. The number of candles lit correspond to the number of the departed loved ones. According to beliefs, the candle light guides the wandering souls to their homes and back to the afterlife.

The tradition that have disappeared, at least in the urban areas, is the pangangaluwa or the serenades for the dead. During the 90's I have played guitar accompaniment for a group of elderly ladies still practicing this traditions in our neighborhood. 

Many of the ladies are already gonein the after life, and some of them I don't see anymore, maybe they have moved to the provinces.

I have forgotten the words and the chords but I have never forgotten how it was going round the neighborhood (not that dense then) flash lights on hand, guitar strap on my shoulder, angry barking dogs, a teenager surrounded by singing elderly ladies and though it was not Christmas, the charity of the Filipinos was very evident.

A wonderful memory that many have never had the chance of experiencing.

Note: all photos are not mine, credits to the unknown owners.

After the sem break, it's still sembreak

Last week was the school's semestral break for the pupils fortunately for us teachers we only had a day for our in service training and two days show up at the provincial meet held at the Marikina Sports Complex.

Today is the official start of the second semester. 

One thing about the second semester is the number of holidays and this signals the slowing down, I hope, of activities. 

But it seems that my pupils want to stretch the vacation, only a third showed up. 

Maybe the storm signal 1 declared by the weather service is one reasons why they didn't go to school.

Anyway, I was looking down at the school ground and saw my pupil's and others still doing their morning chores, sweeping the ground and cleaning the classrooms.

Since it's all souls day  (or is it all saints day) on November's 1 I expect the attendance to remain as low as it is now.

All saints day is one of the most important holidays in the country. If I am going to rank holidays in importance, I think the day for the dead is third in importance next to Christmas and lent. 

I guess the Filipinos love for the family extends beyond the grave.

How to kill a mosquito

The mosquito is the most bad ass of all the animals in the world. According to the World Health Organization, the tiny insect kills about 1 million people in the world every year. 

These deaths are due to the diseases mosquito transmit mostly malaria and dengue fever and the other lesser known blood borne diseases like yellow fever, West Nile fever, chikungunia, etc. 

The pest is a biological weapon.

The mosquito's weapon is it's proboscis. It's a hollow spear, a syringe, that pierces the skin and allows the mosquitoes to suck blood.

Mosquito bites are painful and very irritating. Aside from biting, these insect also loves annoying people by buzzing the ear.

One of the common ways to kill a mosquito is by whacking it. 

Sometimes implements like newspaper, a book or anything on hand is used as a whacker therefore multiplying the amount of force that hits the insect that it obliterates the mosquito into splatters of blood.  

The more annoyed the victim is the more forceful the whacking.

Guess what that does?

Yes, the force of the slap that hits the mosquito embeds its proboscis deeper into the skin and at the same time squeezes its body causing all the disease causing microrganisms residing in it's stomach to be released into the blood stream.

This is like injecting yourself with a virus.

The correct way to kill a mosquito requires skill and patient.

First, wait. When a mosquito lands on the skin, take time. As long as the mosquito is sucking the blood out, there's negative pressure. 

Wait till the mosquito is about to get full, but don't let it get full because once it got full  the negative pressure would drop and that is when backflow would occur letting the infected blood flow back to the blood stream.

Another advantage of waiting till the mosquito is almost full is that it slows down the mosquito's reaction.

This is all about patience and timing, remember that this is the most dangerous animal in the world.

Once the time is right, slowly flip the mosquito off your skin with your fingers. 

The force will squash the mosquito and send it flying off with its proboscis still intact. 

Of course, by the time you have accomplished this, you have already been bitten by thousands of mosquitoes. 

So be careful.

Lotto uto

When the Lotto prize reached the 1 billion peso mark, like most impoverished Filipino, I was dumbfounded at the amount of money. 

It's 1000 million and in my current salary as a teacher, I would have to work for 50,000 months or around 4,166 years to raise that amount.

I couldn't help but fantasize about winning the jackpot. I was already thinking of ways to spend a billion peso.

After giving lagesses to my family, top of my list would be buying small well forested  island with beautiful beaches or a small farm. 

I would be living off the grid away from the stressful life of everyday grind. I would just enjoy life doing things I love, bonsai, gardening, guitar, etc.

I would not invest. With that amount of money, why would I stress myself into going to business

Why want more when the life I dream of will not exhaust that stock pile of pesos?  

This is a fantasy, of course, but that fantasy could not be possible if I don't have lottery tickets.

The odds of winning the 6/58 lotto is around 1=40,000,000. Statistically, you are more likely to be hit by lightning or meteorites than getting the winning combinations.

At that probability, buying a thousand peso worth of tickets is like buying one ticket. The odds hardly changes. But still that's way better than not buying a ticket.

I bought a ticket before going to Baguio for my mother's birthday and forgot about it.

I found out that there were two winners.

Of course, I was not one of them. 

But if I had won, after thinking about it: 

With that money, I would be as paranoid as hell.  Would I be able to get out of the PCSO without being kidnapped? I mean, I could be sold to a kidnap for ransom gang by an employee. 

I would look at my neighbors the same way, threat to my safety and my money. 

How about my family? My wife, daughter. They would also be possible targets of kidnppers.

Even in my own island, I would not be safe. It would be a stressful life. 

Anyway, enough of this silliness. 

Instead of buying lotto tickets it is better to save the money in a piggy bank. It may not amount to millions but it does come handy in times of needs.

. 

Ayungins and Electric Fans

   

I saw a vendor selling ayungins. It's been a long time since I have tasted them. I remember my late father loved eating them especially cooked in guava soup, sinigang sa bayabas.  

I had a way of eating this fish, which my father taught me. The technique was for beginners, I guess, and it's main objective was to prevent the fish bone from getting stuck in the throat. 

The dorsal fin was removed. The stomach was gouged out and then the flesh was scraped off the back bone. This was a wasteful method and was meant for ayungin  beginners.

The advanced, or the masters', technique was to swallow the whole fish, suck, and spit out the bones clean.

Up to now, I an still wondering how my father and aunts could do that.

Anyway, next time I will buy a kilo, but first I have to ask my mother how to prepare the fish.

_____________________________

Our two electric fans gave up. I brought them to Pablo's shop and had it repaired. 

When I asked what's wrong with them, I was told that #$&;*$;&#&#-!?#.... 

I couldn't understand the technical blah, blah, blah. So I just told him to repair them.

When I was younger I could repair minor mechanical EF problems and I even tried tinkering with electrical parts under the supervision of my electrician friend, of course. So, I got little lectures from him about how electric motor works. 

Since the EF is the most abused appliance in the home because of prolonged non-stop use, it only  follows that the most common cause of failure is a blown fuse. 

A fuse is a safety feature to prevent overheating. It's a piece of wire (or other material) that melts at a certain temperature cutting the electrical circuit and stopping the motor.  

Common folks, like me, do not know how to replace it so they bring their EF to the repairman. Most of the time, the repairman simply by-passes the fuses by jumping or by using jumper wire thus removing the protection from overheating.

Many sleep with the fan on. Even I cannot sleep without an EF blowing the mosquitoes and the heat away. It is indispensable specially to homes that have no air conditioning.  

Most EFs are made of plastic and when a fuseless motor overheats and melts the plastic material, you have instant combustion.

It's a death trap.

The thought of waking up in flames gives me nightmare especially since I and my family live in an old wood house. 

Anyway, once an electric fan is repaired, I make sure that they are not used at night, during sleep.

Transformer the last knight

I watched Transformers the Last Knight on my cellphone yesterday. The movie was released last year and from what I have read, the movie sucked. 

Saw the last four movies in the series and to tell the truth I can not remember much about the stories except Megan Fox. Sorry about that.

Maybe viewing the movie on a 5.99" screen does not give me the right to criticize the cinematography but even at that screen size the CGIs do not blend with the environment and the human actors.

They are cartoonish and  they stick out. Even the lighting do not interact with them realistically. Enlarge that to a giant screen and you could see the details.

Anyway, my main gripe is the story line. It started in a dystopian sci-fi fashion, then morphed into an Indiana Jones story with humor a-la-Marvel franchise interspered here and there, then it tries to forced the Arthurian legend into the cybertronian resurrection story.

The thing is the transformers are giant robots. Why in the hell did the writers choose the chivalric King Arthur to prop up the story, the bacground myth? The central theme in King Arthur story is the search for the holy Grail. It would be more convincing or smoother to use myths that contain references to beings that correspond to the transformers size and powers. 

King Arthur and the transformers, unfortunately for me, don't mix.

An artists renedition of a Greek Titan.

Greek mythology for one. There are titans and Giants in the hellenic saga that could do well to give justice to size and power of the cybertronians. Primitive people would treat them as gods.

Norse and even biblical myths could do as well. 

But I guess the writers saw that these are overused too. 

I think the writers had stonehenge at the center of the story.

Also, the humor did not work. 

The movie is boring even with all the explosions and the robots. I quit after one hour of watching. 

Maybe, I'll continue when I'm in the mood 

Pure joy, enjoy it until it lasts

VI-Garcia GSP. I cherish every moment with then because once they hit puberty, some of them will treat me as if they have never known me. I guess it's the awkwardness of the stage in their lives.

I was observing my pupils during their scouting activities and their faces were all radiating with happiness. This is evident in the photo above.

One thing I have observed with my female pupils (I have second thoughts on using "my girls" because it sounded predatory) is that they are too familiar with me. They baby talk to me, rib me, even prank me at times. How dare they?

I don't know if it's because they look at me more like a father figure (or a grandfather) first before a teacher or because I allow them to get away with it. More latter than the first, I guess. I try to be hard on them but I cannot. Everytime I get angry I end up apologizing to them not for their benefit but for mine. I have regretted a lot of sermons I said to my past pupils.

Of course I am not saying that this is a unique experience. Most if not all teachers have different degrees of relationships with their class for teachers cannot detached themselves emotionally from their pupils. They are loco parentis in the school.  

This is  because teaching in general is not just all about pedagogy, it is in reality all about relationship building. 

Though the doctrine of objectivity...(another post)

Co-teachers who had fun during the activities 

A teacher is one of the most influential person in a child's life, and a year of the child's life is entrusted to her. In that year, a relationship is formed that will become an indelible part of the pupil's life experiences. 

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VI-Garcia scouts with their adviser 

I guess it saddens me to see them grow up and become strangers.

Whenever I look at my FB history and saw pictures of my former pupil's in their childhood innocence, I am tempted to share them but I am always stopped by the thought that the pictures could embarrass them.

Being a part of my pupil's life is something I have not thought much about. Most of the time, teaching is focused on the pedagogy and the administrative tasks.

Thinking about it, that one year do make a difference in a child's life. It could make them or break them and reducing these children's potentials to numbers is something that I have reservations about.

Yesterday, during the checking of the periodical exams, a pupil got the lowest score and was teased by his classmates.I told the pupil and the class not to worry and get streased about tests because I had a lot of idiot classmates that flunked exams all the time but who are doing well now, and I also had a lot of intelligent classmates that aced their exams but who are doing otherwise.

It is not just about grades and rankings. These pupils need to learn that in life, there are a lot of choices and possibilities that are not necessarily determined by their performance in the school.

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. 

Stressed teacher=stressed pupil. Abused teacher = abused pupil?

I was watching the news last night and I saw a video of an irate teacher throwing curses at a group of boy scouts.

I am a teacher and every teacher are aware that this act violates provisions on the department's child protection policy as well as laws against child abuse.

It is only proper that the teacher be sanctioned in proportion to the act that she committed. It is inexcusable.

But before judging and condemning the teacher and her person remember that this is just an episode and it does not show the whole personality or character of the teacher:

Any parents who have sired children know how difficult it is to keep them in order and many (not all) may have said negative words to their children out of frustration.

In the teacher's case, multiply that frustration and stress by ten fold or more and the stress is multiplied exponentially with that number.

That is just the work related stress. There are also the personal challenges that compounds an already enervating work related pressures.

Now in the poor lady's case she had to shepherd a troop of boy scouts and keep them with in sight. 

It is not all about keeping them in order, it must also be stressed that the teacher is liable for the safety of her wards.

I also heard that the teacher was pregnant. This might be a mitigating circumstance but I could only ask why she was allowed to take charge of the boy scouts. Isn't the school head violating any provisions on women's protection especially pregnant ones when the teacher was given that assignment knowing her condition?

I have been teaching for almost a decade and one, if not, the most stressful task of the teacher is to keep discipline in class. Most if not all teachers, at one point in their teaching profession, have lost it. Teachers are not superhuman who can not feel frustrations, pressure and stress.

We don't want  apathetic, numbed teachers who go in and out of the classroom teaching lecturing but emotionally and socially detached from their learner's, but this is the only alternative I could see.

Now how does the department deal with this problem of teachers losing it?

The academic way: 

low salary=financial management seminar

Stressful and frustrating working conditions, long hours, lost weekend, extra paper works etc. = Stress management seminars (can help). 

And the punitive ways: suspensions and termination.

And to think there are already work related suicides.

And I say....the four letter word.

Note: Changes are already being put in place but as to their implementation, something to look forward to. Our school head has already been doing her best to adhere to the instructions of the RD about teachers ' welfare starting with the cutting of hours a teacher stay in the school and a seminar on stress management is on schedule.

Hole on the floor

My pupils were sweeping the floor when one of them stepped on termite eaten wood floor panel of my classroom. 

The floor is what carpenters call the "tongue and groove wood flooring". I do not know if that's what it's really called. The interior of the wood were hollowed out by termites and sooner or later the hole would grow to be big enough to swallow a pupil's foot. 

The Rodriguez Building is the oldest building in the school. It was built in 1969 and has been renovated a couple of years ago, maybe five years. 

I and many of my co-teachers had horrible experiences during the renovations. Many things in our classrooms were stolen by the workers from calculators to spoons and forks. 

Our janitor even complained that many light bulbs in the school's hallways disappeared. 

We complained to the principal and the principal complained to the contractor and nothing happened. The contractor was a local politician.

Anyway, when the floor was being repaired, I observed that the workers did not replace all of the floor panels, instead they pulled out the damaged ones and replaced them with new ones. They then sanded the old panels to make them look new.

Personally, there's nothing wrong with recycling the panels but at least they should have checked if the panels they were reusing were not infested with termites.

The sad thing though was when an inspector came and I complained about the sloppy job. She simply smiled and told me that this was a government job, which she expected to explain it all to me.

 I did get it: sloppy=government.

_________________________

I learned that Atty. Gadon has filed his certificate of candidacy at the comelec office a couple of days ago. If things work out right, he would be one of the alternative candidates in the Senate midterm elections. 

He became well known when he filed the first impeachment case against the then Chief Justice Sereno, which according to the quo warranto ruling Sereno had never been in the first place.

Gadon also grabbed the limelight, albeit infamously, for calling demonstrating Sereno supporters stupid and children of whores.

Would I vote for him?

Definitely! The Senate needs an anti-bobo advocate. 

We have had comedians, action stars, basketball players, and a boxer in the senate. Another weirdo would complement an already eclectic collection of personalities in the upper chamber.  

Ops, I forgot. I have not reactivated my voter registration, maybe next elections.

Mapeh event/ New Phone/Phone blogging

Our school participated in the Municipal Mapeh quiz bee and on the spot drawing. 

I was the school Mapeh coordinator so I thought I was not going to have to do anything but coordinating with the event facilitators, checking on my co-teachers and participants, shooting the breeze, in short.

TES Mapeh participants

I was also the coach for Daniel, our school's participant for the grade six quizbee. 

I was not expecting to be pulled into the adjacent room from the grade 6 quiz bee to the grade 5 quiz bee room.

I was asked by the quiz master where were the other members of the grade 5 quiz bee officials. 

Apparently, she was not really the quiz master because the real quizmaster did not show up, also the timer, one of the judges, and a tabulator were all missing

. 

To cut the story short, since they lacked manpower, I was conscripted to be one of the members of the panel of judges, and the timer too. Well, shocks happens.

I was complaining to the district coordinator, in jest of course, that this was not part of the plan, but she just smiled and told me that there were no volunteers.

Daniel, third from right with the other winners and coaches and the Mapeh consultants

Anyway, out of sixteen participants from different schools, Daniel won the first place in grade six quiz bee and that means he will be advancing to the division quiz bee on October 30, 2018.

Since, I am Daniel's coach, I will be going with him.

Daniel is a driven pupil who hates losing. I am amazed at his ability to remember things and he practically won the quiz bee by himself with minimal help from me. 

For coaching, I just provided him with some reading materials, text books, and a few minutes of q and a.

Anyway, heres looking forward to the next level. 

_______________________________

I have a new phone thanks to my sister who allowed me to hitch hike on her credit card.

This is my new unit an Asus Zenfone Maxpro M1. I have been trying to figure out it's advanced features and controls which have some differences with my old unit, an Oppo Neo 5, both are android phones, but i get frustrated easily 

I noticed that as I grow older I have less patience and focus, even less energy to explore things. 

Before, I could spend hours figuring how cps work, discovering short cuts, features, etc. But now, I'm more content with just using the basic functions. I guess, my laziness is getting worse. 

I am not writing a review since I am not really a techie. I am contented with a unit that could take good pictures and with lots of memory space but this phone is definitely an improvement from my last one.

I am happy with it.

Anyway...I think I'm getting the hang of mobile phone blogging.