Wednesday, November 13, 2024

Tag: No. 6

Young Thomasian in a hurry

BEFORE boarding the Ilocos-bound bus at Dapitan station, the then four-year-old Teddy Diza Quizado would marvel at the ancient-looking UST Main Building, which would then prompt his grandmother to discourage him:

“That is the University of Santo Tomas. Don’t pause to imagine what is inside though; we can never afford to send you there.”

Quizado would then just stare at the campus dejectedly, but not hopelessly, as it turned out.

At 26, this B.S. Economics alumnus of the College of Commerce now plays multiple roles at the University of Asia and the Pacific (UA&P) as an executive assistant, a faculty in the school’s apprenticeship program, and a student finishing his Master’s Degree in Applied Business Economics. Juggling these stints is no big deal to him, thanks to his self-helped Thomasian upbringing.

‘Sweet’ homecoming

LITTLE does the public know that celebrity talk show host and comedian John Lapus is also a director.

Now, Lapus returns to his theater and Thomasian roots in order to contribute to Teatro Tomasino’s 30th anniversary. He directs “Twosome,” a twin-bill production featuring Welcome to Intelstar and Wanted: Chaperon.

IntelStar is a contemporary drama by Chris Martinez about young people who work in the financially rewarding but rote-and-rut world of call centers. Wanted: Chaperon is written by National Artist for Literature Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero and translated into Tagalog by Jose Villa Panganiban, the founder of the Varsitarian. It is a domestic comedy on how parents try to ensure the moral welfare of their teenage children growing into adulthood.

To some extent, Lapus grew up into adulthood through the Teatro Tomasino (Teatro).

Rethinking law school

“The problem with journalists is that they don’t know what they don’t know.” -Bob Woodward

 

JUST a few weeks back my thesis mates took the UP Law Aptitude Exam with no hopes of passing. They took the exam just for the sake of taking it, to experience the thrill of a law aptitude exam.

True enough, they found the test extremely difficult to the point that it made them feel stupid. For the first time they encountered words that they never knew existed and felt frustrated because of their failure to comprehend and solve a simple algebra problem.

But in spite of it all, I still admire them. Entering law school is also one of my options once I graduate, but I am not inclined to pursue it since I believe I am not determined enough. Besides law school is not for the undecided or the half-hearted.

The great escape

I’VE BEEN hearing a lot of good things about La Mesa Ecological Park (Eco-park) so a few weeks back, when my family decided to go, I was excited to finally get the chance to see the park for myself.

On our way there, as we drove through the polluted streets of Quezon City, my excitement waned and I started having doubts. In 2005, research conducted by the World Health Organization revealed that the air in Metro Manila is one of the top five dirtiest in the world. How can a park as beautiful as people say it is, survive in such a polluted place?

The park is hidden in the East Fairview Subdivision in Novaliches, Quezon City, adjacent to the La Mesa Dam Watershed, the primary source of Metro Manila’s water supply. My doubts were immediately put to rest as we entered the park and were surrounded by an abundance of huge trees and lush vegetation.

Reading Nick

I WAS first introduced to Nick Joaquin when I was still in third-year high school. We were asked to write a book report on The Woman Who Had Two Navels.

Though I painstakingly managed to pull it off, it was only two years later that I learned to appreciate the book, when I re-read it for my English class in college. Joaquin’s poetic use of language mesmerized me, even if I could not claim I understood half of what the book really wanted to say.

From then on, reading the National Artist’s short stories became one of my favorite pastimes, leaving me enveloped in mysticism long after I have finished reading them.

Joaquin, though famous for his stories like “Summer Solstice,” which was converted to the film, “Tatarin,” was also responsible for raising the bar of excellence in journalism through his reportage and columns under the pen name Quijano de Manila.

The Great Unwashed and social injustice

WHAT do you think could stir a boulevard leper, a shanty resident and a gutter plebian to unrest and resistance these days?

Perhaps Ninoy Aquino, in one of his many sorties in the impoverished barrios of Tarlac, may have figured out the best answer when he was the province’s youngest governor back then.

The columnist-biographer Manuel F. Martinez, whom I met two years ago when I repackaged the cover of the Divine Mercy comic book, quoted Ninoy in his 1987 opus, The Grand Collision: Aquino vs. Marcos, as saying, “The Filipino is not afraid of poverty. What he is afraid of is social injustice.”

Ninoy, the firebrand orator and popular martyr, has every reason to gloat from Up There. Branded during his time as a “communist coddler” by President Ferdinand Marcos, he may be witnessing a repeat of social injustice in disturbing proportions nowadays.

The tragedy of Mariannet Amper

CHILDREN are very dependent by nature and because of their fragility, the simplest problems that a normal adult can handle and survive will readily overwhelm their innocent minds. Therefore, children need the steadfast support of their family and friends. But what happens when the family fails to provide that support?

A tragic headline was the alleged suicide of Mariannet Amper, a sixth-grader from Davao City who reportedly hanged herself last November. Basing from her alleged journal entries and a letter addressed to a public service television program, Amper seriously lamented her family’s poverty, underscored when her father told her he could not give her the P100 she needed for a school project. The 12-year-old girl was found a day later inside their makeshift house hanging by a thin nylon rope wrapped around her neck.

Upholding freedom

THE MANILA Peninsula incident last November 29 has exposed again not only the problematic state of Philippine constitutional democracy, but also the problematic relations between the state and the press.

The fact that Sen. Antonio Trillanes and Gen. Danilo Lim, both facing charges in connection with the Oakwood incident in 2003, were able to walk out of the court that was hearing the charges against them and march to the five-star hotel unchallenged should show that there might be some strong sympathy yet for military adventurism not only among soldiers and officers themselves but also among the civilian sector whose authority is exactly challenged and undermined by military messianism.

CFAD tries to heal music through visual arts

A RECENT EXHIBIT by 24 College of Fine Arts and Design (CFAD) Advertising seniors recently deplored the endangered art of musical lyric-writing.

MuSick (which stands for “sickness in music”) ran November 9 to 29 at the Fashion Art Gallery in Quezon City. It consisted of paintings, installations and photographs evoking the power of traditional music lyrics.

“We want to campaign for the revival of the lost beauty of most songs today,” Jorelli Griffin San Juan said.

Conrad Lachica’s painting, “Inharmonious Tune,” depicts an antique radio playing a song that irks listeners. Lachica’s work is critical of the cacophony of contemporary music.

Idiotic TV on Music Box, also by Lachica’s, shows people becoming dim-witted while listening to senseless lyrics.

Beatified UST martyrs honored in Mass

LAST October 28, the biggest beatification ceremony in the Church’s history was celebrated at St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican.

That day, 498 martyrs from the religious persecution during the Spanish Civil War (1933-1937) were beatified in a ceremony presided by Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of the Saints. Among the new martyrs were eight Dominicans who had worked or studied in the Philippines; six of them had worked in the University of Santo Tomas.

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