lol. HAHA I always say whateves instead of whatever! hilarious. I don't know it's cause people now a days like to shorten the words or start a new trend. lol i just found out a close friend of mine wrote the same thing of how people shorten their words now a days! Soo lazy but it sounds so funny! Whatever sounds so harsh compared to whateves...maybe thats why I like saying whateves haha idk?!? But YEAH anyways now a lot of people around my school say whateves instead of whatever now! It's pretty cool...I know I might not have started the word whateves but it feels like I did! It's weird how when you grow older and become seniors and you think that our english should be sharp and grammatically correct but really we just like to say things our own way...just around our friends! haha WHATEVES!
You see my dad would hate listening to how I talk with my friends because he's such a perfectionist! Like no joke. He'd be all like that's not the proper way to talk! omg you talk like you've never learned English in your life! and I would just be laughing and say you ohh and you have! LOL soo mean but whateves...I let him criticize me all the time because I know if I say something back at him he'll make me do something that would make me feel miserable.
...............I don't know what else to talk about now soo I'm going to leave off with whateves stop reading now!
Monday, November 30, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
My Phone is My Life
Not really...well kinda...in a way that it's the only way where I can contact my friends and family to chill out or just talk. I see all these kids with their iPhones and Blackberries on a telus or rogers contract but I don't have any of those I've got the Lg flip shine baby...haha koodos the way to go! Even though koodos the best...I hate the lg phones! They break so easily...like mine is only like 6-8 months old and the screen in the front is already broken just because I dropped it once! So dumb! Well anyways the texting in my phone is free. I text like non-stop everyday talking about random things with my friends! My phone is not my life but its definitely an important item in my life! Honestly I lose my phone every time I go out with my friends.......I'M NOT EVEN KIDDING! it's like a hobby that I lose my phone! My buddies always say to me, "You always lose your phone man!" then I end up finding it somewhere I don't even remember putting but it's always somewhere in my brother's car, the bottom of my bag, or the inside pocket of my jacket......errrr! I feel so lucky to have a phone because not many kids get to have a cellphone. Luckily my parents aren't as strict as other parents but I still have responsibilities for my phone.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Tricks are for kids
It's soo true that tricks are for kids...but for some reason I still like doing tricks just because its so fun! Like this one time in halloween when my buddies were coming over to watch movies instead of going trick or treating...me and my brother put a lot of that yellow tape that you see in CSI right! Then my dad dressed up as a cop and I told my dad to tell my friends that something happened at the house...My friends came and they totally freaked! Trying to text and call me but I turned off my phone just to make it seem something did happen...Next thing you know me and my brother come out with knives and started slapping it against the stairs! Omgosh they were screaming soo loud...some of my neighbors came out to see what happened:$$ So embarrassing! My dad, brother and I explained to my friends that it was all just a trick for them before we see SAW II! I know that was long time ago....I can never forget when they were soo mad and said to my dad, brother and I that we were such kids for doing it to them!
Sunday, November 15, 2009
My Short Story- His Road to Freedom
Knowing a person who considers himself a self-made man makes me wonder, “What is he talking about?” It was one summer after my 6th grade at St Patrick Elementary School when my dad began telling me and my brother about his family and how he got out of his family’s poverty from a poor rural countryside in the Philippines. There were moments when he was feeling so sad at one stage of his life, times when he was more elated to narrate the good times, and periods when tears came out from his eyes as he was telling his story. My Writing 12 class homework has triggered me to ask my dad for the details of his experiences including those challenging life as a student in the USA and as an immigrant in Canada.
My father was born in Talikud Island within the gulf of Davao, Philippines 5 years after the end of World War II. He was the 16th of 17 children of parents who had not finished the basic elementary education. When he told me about this size of his family, I couldn’t believe my ears and said, “Are you kidding, dad?’ And I muttered, “Oh, my God, you really have a very BIG family.” But when he was growing up, there were only ten of them left. Five of his older brothers died during their struggle against Japanese occupation in the Philippines. The other two adults were his sisters who died of dog bites and natural causes, respectively. On top of it all, he learned to live a family life without grandpas and grandmas as all died before he even knew he had one. “How was life then, dad?” “Well,” he said, “I have to remind you and Mark that however poor a person is, he/she will be free from the bondage of poverty and hard life if he/she values the importance and significance of hard work, sacrifice, and strong will and determination in life as they were and still are my guiding lights in the pursuit of good quality education and success in life.”
His life seems to have been covered with a thick wall of fog. He couldn’t see what lies ahead of him. What he always saw everyday were men, women, and children tilling their farms, going to the seashore to harvest a variety of edible marine life from seashells to sea urchins, from crabs to small fish. Fishing is one major source of livelihood of the people. Where the catch is plentiful, half of it is sold to the market for cash and the rest for family’s consumption. The ocean was and still is a source of livelihood for the residents of the island. “I experienced all that, Paul,” he said. The irony of it all was that the people close to his heart did not want him to learn more. Only his mother had the desire for him to finish something in the future. He could feel the hardships that people went through as he himself experienced those. He wanted to end that part of his life. “I wanted to become a teacher, too. That was my dream at that moment,” he said. His struggle to uplift his life and that of his family was already ingrained in his brain even when he was only in his elementary years. He dreamed to be free from poverty. But he pretty knew that it could be a roller coaster ride.
The family owned just a little more than 2 hectares of farm land. It’s located on top of a hill overlooking the only elementary school at the center of the island that is home to four barrios. His family lived in the largest barrio of the entire municipality of Kaputian, Davao. This town is located in the larger island more or less 500 meters from Talikud Island. His married brothers lived in the same piece of land while his married sisters went with their husbands who also dwelt in the same barrio. This was where my dad started to learn what hardship in life was all about and wonder how he could get out of it. Indeed, he thought it was a long shot for him to dream a good life in the future. He would think, “Will I be like my older brothers and sisters who also followed the footsteps of our parents with little education?” With parents who could only afford to feed their children three meals a day, he also thought, “Will I be able to become a teacher?” Why a teacher, dad? I asked. He said that that’s the only profession he knew when he went for his elementary education. “I did not know anything about lawyers, engineers, agriculturists, biologists, nurses, you name it,” he remarked. Practically, his growing up life revolved around his family, the school, the farm, and the ocean.
As one of the youngest children, he was given the task of taking care of their family’s water buffalo known domestically as “carabao” if not used to do some farm works. He would bring the animal to drink water in a pond or from an artesian well. After which, he would let the carabao dip in a mud to cool off its body. While the buffalo was having a good time in the mud, he fetched water from the well and brought it home for household use. Then he would come back to get the happy buffalo and tied it to a trunk of a big tree to graze and sleep for the rest of the night. On some occasions, he’d be asked to help in the farm like planting, weeding, and harvesting. There were also times in his life when he would go with his brothers and sisters to do crabbing and/or fishing in the evening when the weather and season were right. Of course, his school life was always there everyday from Monday to Friday. These activities were his daily routine in the island, full of hard life indeed. I couldn’t believe that this was how he lived his young adult life in the Philippines. Although my older brother grew up in Davao City, my dad’s family residence while he was an Assistant Professor in Statistics and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in one of the state universities in the country, until he left the place with our mom to join our dad in Vancouver before he reached nine years old in December 1991, he really did not know anything about him. In fact, he was only almost four years old when dad went alone to the USA to further his education. My bother too was touched, really touched by the partial accounts of our father’s life experiences.
When I was in the elementary, my father kept on reminding me to work hard and aim to top any tests so that if I failed to reach it, at least, I would fall to a point in which I’d still be getting very good marks in all my subjects. Those words really helped me a lot in my studies since then. His advice to finish all assignments right after school was hard in the beginning. Deep in my head, I resented it as I saw most of my classmates were just happy-go-lucky kids enjoying as kids. But as time went on, I developed the habit of doing them before I’d play my X-box or watch television. The practice of doing it regularly allows me to have time to perform other activities, make lots of friends at school and enjoy as a kid. Since then, I have been involving myself in the school’s sports and other extra-curricular activities as possible to balance my student activities as dad himself was a very active student leader as well as athletic-minded during his elementary to university years. I knew it even if he did not tell about his leadership skills because I saw his university graduation certificate award hanging on the wall at our house in the Philippines during my first family visit to my parents’ country of origin in 2007. It states, among others, “College Leadership Award.”
During my father’s generation, only seven years old or older could enter grade 1. There were no nursery and kindergarten classes then. So, basically, the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic were taught in this grade. But my dad was lucky one day when the only Grade 1 teacher in the barrio passed by the house where my dad was playing in the front yard. The teacher asked his mom, my grandma I didn’t have the chance to meet, if she could bring him to school. Of course, mommy wanted her son to learn. So, dad was in school as what they called then as “visitor pupil.” He was only 6 years old and it was already 2 months after school classes started in 1956. At the end of the school year, however, he was given a report card that said promoted to Grade 2 even if he was not officially registered at school in the first place. In addition, he also missed the last one and half months of the school year as he was sent to another town in the mainland to help harvest a cousin’s huge rice fields. But he made it to Grade 2. I asked him, “What did you do at school, papa? Why did the teacher let you pass when you only attended school for less than 7 months?” His only reply was, “I didn’t know but what I remember was the teacher always asked me to answer math questions on the board and displayed all my school works on the bulletin board.”
Life at school was my father’s bridge to fulfilling his dream of becoming a teacher. Aside from being active in both the school’s scouting programs and athletic activities, he too was representing the school in academic competitions within the school district. But the annual rice harvesting help his family was providing his cousin in the mainland always kept him not able to finish the school year. Nevertheless, he finished his elementary education at age 12 in 1962 with no single awards due to his long absences. The good news was that he got a full scholarship to pursue high school at the Assumption Academy in another island after passing its scholarship exam. He was the first from the island to pass the school’s scholarship test. The bad news was that his father and his older siblings did not want him to go to high school as they wanted just an elementary education for him. But he was persistent. He talked to his dad about his plans and his desire to finish a profession as he did not want to live a hard life like what his brothers and sisters were experiencing. He finally convinced him when he said, “Tatay, if I stay here, I still eat my share of the food on the table. How about bringing my share of the food to the school? I know that the school has a house reserved for students who come from far flung places and where students can cook their food. Besides, you don’t have to worry about my travel expenses as boat transportation is free as the school will provide its own transportation to pick up students on Sunday afternoon and bring them back to their respective barrios after classes on Friday afternoon.” With his convincing statements and his strong determination to continue his education, his tatay couldn’t do anything but agreed to his request. The approval came with a condition that once dad was found not really studying, the support would be cut off. For dad, it was the happiest moment of his life as he could see already the beginning of a brighter future.
The school required each student who would stay in the campus house to bring a mat, blankets, pillows, dinner plates, bowl, drinking cup/glass, fork and spoon, and firewood as school administration would not furnish the house with those stuff. So, when the school boat came to pick dad and the other students from his barrio for the first time of the school year, he got very excited but feeling sad because he would be alone for the first time in his life. Inside the boat, he found out that he was the youngest of all the students. He was very proud to say, “At 12 years old, I was already away from home making decisions on my own.” To my amazement, I said, “Oh, my Lord, you really were already independent at very young age, dad!”
The living quarters in the school campus house were totally bare. There were no bunk beds. Everybody slept on the floor. He and four other boys stayed in one large bedroom while the six girls were in the other large bedroom. Outside the house stood a large dirty kitchen where students cooked their own food. For dad, he’d just cook a pot of rice and buy viands in the public market. On few occasions though, he’d cook scrambled egg. His rice would last for 2 or 3 days, so he had more time doing his homework and studying.
All freshmen students were divided into three sections. Forty students coming from the town’s central school were in one section. Another forty but all coming from the different barrios’ elementary schools were assigned to another section. Then the third section, St. Agnes class, was a mixture of students from the barrios and from the central school. Dad was in this third group of students. And then during the first day of classes, the classroom teacher-adviser asked each student to introduce himself/herself to the class by stating his/her name, graduation honors received, and name of elementary school. As the introduction went on, majority of his classmates graduated with honors such as valedictorians, salutatorians, first/second/or third honorable mentions. When it was his turn to introduce, he only mentioned his name and the school where he finished his elementary grade. His teacher made some remarks and said, “You’re so humble, Bonifacio. You graduated valedictorian, right?” The teacher thought that he was because all those who obtained full scholarship grant from the school were valedictorians. Honest as he was, he replied, “Sir, I did not have any honors at all. Our class valedictorian, salutatorian, first and third honorable mentions did not go to school anymore. Only the second honorable mention student is here. The rest of us from Sta. Cruz Elementary School were just ordinary graduates.” His teacher might have some doubts about him getting a full scholarship grant without any awards on his graduation. But he proved his teacher wrong about him for he always topped the tests in all subjects in all freshmen classes. He ended up representing his section and the entire freshman students in the school’s academic competitions in math, spelling, history, science, and religion during the school’s celebration of the Assumption Day. He competed against the sophomores, juniors, and seniors’ class representatives. Although he did not win any first place finishes except in spelling, he wound up the second runner-up in overall ranking for winning second in the four other subject areas. At the end of the school year, he maintained his full scholarship grant as he received the top award of all freshmen the first honors certificate for obtaining the highest percentage point grade.
His sophomore year ended in disaster as dad’s father, 63 years old, died of heart attack after having a hair cut. This resulted to not finishing his second year high school studies. Good thing though the school reserved his scholarship grant for the following year after learning his family’s adjustment period. He continued the next year, became the class mayor, and finished the year as second overall in the honor roll. This put his scholarship to 50% discount on all school fees and his studies in the private school in jeopardy. The family could not afford to pay for partial tuition fees with only his mother earning a living for the family. When his former grade four teacher knew about his predicament, the teacher came to dad’s family home and gave suggestions as to where he could continue his studies. Dad went to Davao City High School for his junior year instead of going back his old school as public school tuition fee was very low. At the end of the year, he obtained more than 91% grade point average and became one of the members of the special science and mathematics class in his senior year. Coupled with that reward was a grant of free tuition. Eventually, he graduated high school at age 17 and, again, passed a number of scholarship grants from different universities in the country.
But his glorious moments in the public school came with lots of sacrifices. While in the city, he lived with his much older cousin’s family where he was treated like a slave. Although he brought with him his weekly provisions and paid a share of the house rent, he was still asked to do lots of household chores while members of the family would watch television. He would only study his lessons late in the evening outside the house so as not to disturb everybody who already went to sleep. Sometimes, he’d study inside in candle light when the weather was bad. He didn’t bother telling his mom and siblings about his living conditions with relatives in the city. I could just imagine the sufferings he underwent just so he could do well at school. I really admire dad for his strong determination and the will to succeed in life.
Four or so years from then on, Dad’s ambition to becoming a professional would be realized. His dream of becoming a teacher, however, was changed to finishing an engineering degree. A change he made when he discovered other fields of studies while in high school. So, the adventure for higher education had just begun. Although dad would be very far away from his family, his mother consented to his decision on accepting the full scholarship grant offered by the Mindanao State University in which a recipient got free tuition and all other school fees, free board in the university cafeteria, free lodging in the dormitory, and free back and forth transportation expenses. But she cautioned his son, saying, “Son, don’t trust any Muslims. They are traitors.” “Don’t you worry, mother, I’ll remember your advice,” he said. The other scholarship grants only provided free tuition fees.
A week before the first semester of classes began in June 1967, he traveled by plane for the first time in his life to Iligan City domestic airport where students were picked up and transported by school bus to the campus in Marawi City, the capital city of Lanao del Sur, home of the university. The entire province and the city were and still are populated with Maranao Muslims. But dad was not that apprehensive as he had a number of his high school classmates studying in the same university. His focus was to take advantage of the university’s free of charge education and finish a degree in engineering.
More than 20 minutes from the airport, the bus driver made an announcement that they were approaching the campus. As the bus went uphill, he could see buildings clustered on top of a hill. Then as the bus reached the hill, he was amazed viewing the campus overlooking Lake Lanao, the largest lake in the country, and downtown Marawi City. The weather was very cold and foggy as the university campus was situated 2,800 feet above sea level. That was his first exposure to such a cool environment. His not so thick jacket didn’t help him that much from the coldness of the atmosphere, but he had to make do with it as he did not have the budget to buy a thicker one. “Life must go on,” he said.
Inside the dorm were student-volunteers helping dorm manager bring freshmen to their room assignments. Dad was assigned to Room No. 33 with five other scholars from different provinces and cities of the country. Three double-decker beds, three study tables with each table assigned to two students, and three very tall lockers good for 6 students occupied the room. Three of his roommates were Muslims. He was not worried as he was there to fulfill the main purpose of the creation of the university; that is, Christian-Muslim integration.
Then here came the most dreaded part for all freshmen, the physical examination portion. This was required of us before registering for the academic courses as the university did not want to enroll anybody who was sick, pregnant, or carrier of contagious diseases. They would, however, be allowed to take a leave of absence for a semester without losing their scholarship. “As we prepare for the exam, we got separated from the women and grouped into 10. And the ten of us entered one small room where we were asked to undress ourselves. But all of us did not remove our underwear due to the presence of a female nurse in the room. When we came in the exam room, the doctor told us to line up on the wall and raised this question: ‘What are you here for?’ After we responded that we came for the physical exam, he ordered all of us to remove our underwear. With the female nurse, this was the most terrible thing that happened to each one of us in that room as we never had experienced being naked in front of anybody in our lives, more so with a woman. Since we came to study and finish a degree from the university, we obliged and became subject to humiliation in the presence of 10 men (including the doctor) and a woman who recorded what the doctor found during the exam. We did not care anymore since it happened to all of us alike,” he elaborated. As I listened to my dad, I could feel the embarrassment he experienced during that physical exam.
As dad continued relating to me his university life, I could sense that he was having a very good time learning to become a carnivorous. As a vegetarian and seafood person since he was little, meat was a no-no to him. He could not stand the taste and smell of whatever cooked meat was on the table. In the university, however, he had no choice but eat whatever was on the tray. Otherwise, he would starve everyday. “What I did was chew the meat a little and drink some orange juice or coke to help me swallow the food,” he said. But he had to buy the juice or bottle of coke as the cafeteria only served water for lunch and dinner. Getting used to the taste and smell of the meat freed him from spending his money for coke or orange juice.
Also, I found his daily cafeteria visit a little funny. You can just imagine soldiers eating in a military bunk house. That’s the life he experienced in the university cafeteria. The only difference was that he had to provide his own fork and spoon every time he would eat his meal and cup for coffee during breakfast daily. To make sure he wouldn’t forget his eating paraphernalia, he had to keep them in his back pockets like what most students did especially when he had classes until noon time or 6:45 PM. Going to the cafeteria after the regular scheduled meal time means that one had to suffer the consequence of eating whatever leftovers were available. “I did not want to go to the dormitory to get them and then ran to the cafeteria to eat,” he said. Most often, when students did that, they would end up eating just rice. Normally, he had to line up and pick up a tray that already contained the portions of the menu for that meal time. Everybody ate the same food every meal.
His university experience was his most enjoyable and memorable life as a student. He didn’t have to worry about food and rent as they were all free. “My only concern was to study hard to maintain my full scholarship grant. Of course, I had to get involved in all sports and other extra-curricular activities to balance my university life,” he said. “Likewise, I’d to spend my free time during semester break at my dorm mate’s town so I could see other places in the Philippines,” he added. But during the last year of his five year program, graduation year, a Muslim rebel group attacked and captured the entire campus early in the morning of October 21, 1972 – one month after Marcos declared Martial Law in the Philippines. Three days after the rebel occupation, a convoy from the Philippine military marine made a surprise attacked on the Muslim rebels occupying the campus. The rebels were driven to the mountains near the campus, and all the Christians in the university were transferred to another city, Iligan City – capital city of Lanao del Norte province. It was not an easy move to another city as the military took the mothers and children first, followed by the women. The men waited for another day before their turn to move out of the campus. “I thought we would all die that night as the rebels came down and attacked the campus again. We all dropped to the floor just listening to the music of fires and bombings. Although we couldn’t sleep that night, we were glad to learn that the day came without anyone from the university and the military getting hurt,” he said. Finally, all the men got their chance to get evacuated. In Iligan, they were housed in public elementary schools before they got sent home to their respective cities or towns.
Dad was very happy that he eventually graduated with a bachelor’s degree in agricultural engineering without an honor as his last year’s grades put his overall weighted average grade to 1.751, 0.001 more than the upper limit for CUM LAUDE honor. He instead received the College of Agriculture Leadership Award. But he was lonely because his mother couldn’t afford to pay for her travel to the university as her savings were spent for my graduation. As the top graduate of the college, he was immediately hired to teach in the university the following school year. He signed a probationary teaching contract with the university before going home after graduation. With only a bachelor’s degree, he was only assigned to teach technical courses under the university’s 1 year or 2 years technology programs. His dream of becoming a teacher was indeed realized.
Another honor was given to my dad. He was made the graduation speaker for the island’s five years old public high school in April 1973. He said, “As the first product of the island who finished a degree, the school principal made me a role model for the entire island. Thus, I simply told them not to lose hope as there’s always success lurking in everyone’s back so long as he/she would work hard, sacrifice a bit, and have the will and determination to finish a technical course or bachelor’s degree, and that poverty should not be made a hindrance to one’s success.” “I was really happy for the honor the school had given me and for my mother who was also honored the Island’s Mother of the Decade,” he added.
On his third year of teaching, the year he was scheduled to go to Israel to take a master’s degree program in irrigation and drainage engineering, an unfortunate event in his life had occurred. At noon time in September 11, two young Moslems appeared at the doorsteps of the open back door of a housing cottage and asked my dad, “Ilaga ka o hindi (asking if I were a member of an organization with acronym ILAGA - Ilongo LAnd Grabbing Association or not)?” Since he was and never was a member of this Association, of course, his reply was NO. “The only thing I remember was a sound ‘BANG’, and when I opened my eyes and released my right hand from my right breast, blood spurted from it and I began to feel some pain in my right nipple where I was hit by a single .45 caliber gun shot. Then rebels ran away,” he stated with sadness in his eyes. When he saw them running towards the mountain, dad covered his gunshot wound with his own shirt, got out of the cottage, and shouted for help while running towards the agricultural engineering shop, 200 meters away from his cottage. As he approached the shop, he felt darkness in his eyes as he was about to faint. When his students saw and recognized him leaning on the fence of the shop, they came down and talked to him. They believed that he was dying so they carried him to the shop and put him on one side of the tractor. One of his students cranked the tractor and drove him to the university infirmary. But dad complained of some terrible pain in his chest and wanted to be carried instead. He still complained of some chest pain while he was being carried by four of his male students. Fortunately, a Land Rover service car of the College of Agriculture arrived and picked him up. Thanks to one of his students who reported the shooting incident to the staff in the College.
Inside the infirmary, the doctor closed his wound by stitching it without the benefit of an anesthesia. As there was no more supply of bottles of dextrose for another patient, a half-full bottle was removed from another patient and gave it to my dad. Then he was driven to one of the private hospitals in Iligan City, 41 kilometers away from the university campus. On the way, he was blindfolded for complaining about the bottle that he saw no longer flowing droplets of the dextrose and that he believed that he’d die. Immediately after arriving at the hospital’s emergency room still blindfolded and putting on a stretcher, a nurse put a hose in his right nostril while another person was trying to obtain anti-mortem statements from him. Actually, it was oxygen to aid his breathing believing that his right lung was damaged. But he removed the hose complaining, “I couldn’t breathe with that thing as I am trying to answer someone questioning me. I can breathe much better without it.” Perplexed, the nurse called a doctor and rushed him to the radiology room. X-rays were taken to determine what’s going on. As soon as the X-ray photos were ready for examination, his attending physician told him that he was so very lucky that no vital organ was hit as the bullet was just roaming around before it landed one-fourth of an inch from his spinal column. A very simple surgery was done in the X-ray room by simply making a small slit at the site where the bullet lodged and scooped it. A gallon of blood resulting from internal bleeding was also drained. University officials visited him in the evening while he was already resting in a private room and declared him as the only person who survived a shooting incident in the university campus. One evening on his second day in the hospital, however, he ended up sitting up straight as he was trying to gasp for air to breathe. “I felt I would die because I couldn’t breathe. So, I pushed the red emergency button on the side of my bed, and an attending physician and a nurse came. I told them about my breathing difficulty,” he said. Then the doctor inserted a needle in his back and sucked water from his right lung. The presence of the water in his right lung was caused by continuous lying on his back while having blood transfusion and intravenous food support. That saved his life again. I could really feel his traumatic experiences. 911 is really a very bad day!
On the day of the shooting incident in the campus, news quickly spread within the entire university community that he died in the evening. After that bad news, the funny thing was that a group of his students and friends came down to Iligan and tried to look for the funeral home where the wake was held. Going to the hospital did not help them at all as his name was not in the front desk information list of patients. This was part of the university strategy, indeed. Couldn’t find his body, they went back to the university believing that his ‘dead body’ was brought to his home town. “I learned it from one of my students who was watching me in the hospital as I did not have a single next of kin with me. He went up to the university to get his belongings and heard that news. I was told that it was a tactic made by the officials in the university so that whoever committed that crime wouldn’t run after me anymore. It was indeed a wise move on the part of the administration,” he said.
After one full week of recuperation in the hospital, he was transferred to a hotel hiding him again from the criminals and giving him more time to rest while his transfer to teach in another branch of the university was being worked out by the university officials. “Every time I would go out to exercise and visit a church, I’d take a cab. In the church, I thanked God for giving me a second life and asked Him to lead me the way to whatever mission He wanted me to fulfill in life,” he narrated. I had teary eyes listening to his very sad and terrible experience. Again, he showed me the scar on his nipple where the bullet entered and on his back very close to his spinal column resulting from an incision where the bullet was removed.
One and half months after the incidence, he flew to where he was originally from - Davao - to teach in the newly established branch of the university. Although he lived very close to his mother and siblings, he did not visit them as he should have. He was still mad and angry why not one of them came to see him in the hospital in Iligan City. But one day, he finally visited his family during the feast day of the island in May 1977 and told them the story. His mother, brothers, and sisters were surprised that they did not know about it. They never received any kind of communication from the university about the entire story of the shooting incident. “I was crying as I told them my second life story and they were crying too. From then on, life was good to me.”
At his new work place, he was not only a faculty member teaching math and statistics but also the President of the Faculty and Staff Club of the university. He led the fight to end corruption in the university. That’s the main reason why he would not be sent for a master’s degree program. Determined, he secretly applied for another scholarship test offered by the National Science Development Board (NSDB)-University of the Philippines (UP) Graduate Scholarship program in which no recommendation from the head of office was required. Former faculty members of the applicant would be the best people to give the recommendations as to his academic capabilities and abilities to pursue a master’s program in science. Qualified, he took this 4-day test in math, statistics, physics, and essay writing/interview and passed with flying colors. “It’s another milestone in my life. This scholarship grant made me save money for my wedding as I not only received a monthly stipend from NSDB-UP but also my salary from the university while on study leave. I felt the Lord Jesus was always on my side,” he proudly stated. He finished his Master of Science in Statistics in March 1982 and got married in April of the same year. “Although my plan of having a family of my own at age 30 was not realized in exchange of a graduate studies, I felt it was another happy chapter of my life as I eventually married my former elementary schoolmate and became dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the largest college in the university,” he said with a smiling face.
But his fight for corruption in the university continued. He dared to lead a university-wide demonstration even during martial law period in the country in 1983. He mentioned, “My passion for a clean governance of the entire university from hiring qualified teachers to purchasing of supplies and equipment was the main reason for leading the demonstration. I was very happy that this resulted to the ouster of the corrupt president of the university and his cohorts, and a duly selected new and qualified president was inducted to run the academic and administrative affairs of the university. Although the president and his close associates were no longer there, I was not totally happy with the result as there were still corrupt little fish who escaped from getting fired.” Two years after, the same corruption practice continued and the new president didn’t bother about it. That created a friction between dad and the president. My dad resigned as dean of the college after one of his clerks was taken away from his college and moved to the president’s office. The president begged for his retention of the deanship and promised to provide him with two new clerks. Dad explained, “With the infighting in the university, I again secretly applied for scholarship as I wanted to get out of the corrupt administration. This time, it was for a doctoral program in the USA. Luckily, I found one that only required a recommendation from my former professors. Then in May 1986, I received a letter from the Department of Statistics at George Washington University in Washington, DC granting me a teaching fellowship.”
My father had a mixed feeling when he departed for the USA on 14 December 1986. With financial problem to buy plane tickets for three, he alone left the country. He was very happy for the opportunity to pursue a PhD in Statistics program in the USA. On December 14, 1986, he left home while mom brought little Mark to his nursery school. He said, “I did that because I did not want to see them crying as I board the plane. I wanted a happy moment with them and disappear without them witnessing the saddest moment of my life; that is, leaving them behind for quite some time. This was the worst sacrifice that I did in my life.” With only US$125 in his pocket, he was worried that his first monthly stipend wouldn’t be released as he expected it. But with the help of his countryman who picked him up at the Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC, he was able to survive his first winter experience and made it to school without any hitch. Then little by little, he started to feel culture shock and homesick. “Silently, I cried thinking of your mom and Mark in Davao City. I wanted to go home. With daily saying of the Holy Rosary, I was able to overcome my homesickness.”
Then another problem surfaced. His employment in the Philippines was terminated. He remarked, “This bad news saddened me a lot because your mom was totally dependent on my salary there. This made me terribly mad.” So to be able to remit money to his family in the Philippines, he also worked on the sideline during his free time and weekends. “Immersed in a situation like that in a foreign country where I didn’t know of a single relative, life was like a stone, it’s hard. But I had to focus my head on what I was there for – to study and finish my PhD,” he said.
With determined heart and mind, he did finish his program but did not go home. He instead applied to immigrate to Canada in 1990. Then in September of the following year, he received their independent immigrant visas. He bought open plane tickets for my mom and Mark and mailed them together with their visas to the Philippines. From Washington, DC, dad flew to Vancouver on 2 November 1991. Knowing nobody in the Canada, he took a cab and booked for 3 days at Days Inn Hotel at West Pender Street. “Wasting no time, I immediately started my search for an apartment. A hotel clerk advised me to go to Saint Patrick’s Church as she always saw lots of Filipinos coming out from the church on Sundays. Indeed, I got help from an elderly Filipino woman and recommended me to her apartment manager. With the cash money I was able to save for this event to happen in my life, I took the 1-BR apartment for $625 rent a month. I furnished the apartment and made ready for the arrival of my family,” he elaborated. Six weeks later, Mom and Mark arrived in Vancouver from the Philippines. “The reunion was very memorable to all of us as we missed each other so much for full five years. I promised to them that wherever I’d go they would always be with me all the time,” he said.
“The thought of not finding a job in my area of specialization was far from my mind. But as days went by and the reality of not getting one started to sink in, I began to panic. My savings got depleted everyday. And everywhere I applied for a job, everybody asked me for some Canadian experience,” he wearily said. At one interview, he answered, “I am a new professionally skilled immigrant and what can you expect of that if you won’t give me a chance to have one.” In another interview for an adult education teaching job at Burnaby’s Continuing Education Program, this one experience he’d never forget in his life. It was because the Program director told him of this discriminatory remark, “It’s regrettable that Canada doesn’t have a system recognizing degrees from people coming from other countries, especially those from third world countries.” In his mind, he silently said, “Oh, my God! Is this Canada?” Telling himself to play cool, he answered back saying, “Do you know these authors in Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Statistics – Potter and Murray, White and Manning, Vance, etc, etc? They are all American and British authors. Besides, most of my science teachers were Americans, British, Australians, New Zealanders, and Polish . . . and never a Canadian. In fact, you hired lots of teachers from the Philippines to help educate your kids here. And by the way, what’s your one plus one? Thank you for your time, sir. Bye.” That sad, very sad experience made him think twice of going back to the Philippines and enjoy life teaching in the university. But the idea of coming here for the best interest of his children especially so that mom was pregnant of me in 1992 finally focused his mind again to settle for good here.
From the Burnaby experience, he proceeded to the Immigration and Employment Office at East 10th Avenue and complained, “Why did you approve my application to come here when there’s no job for me?” The officer said, “Did you apply at UBC, SFU, and the Colleges in the area?” He replied, “I did apply for a research assistant job at UBC but I was asked if I have an internationally published research paper in any known international journals which I do not have.” That ended the interview. Then again, he said, “I also applied for a teaching job in math and statistics at Langara College and I was asked about BC teaching certificate, which I did not understand and did not have.” His final advice was for me to proceed to the BC College of Teachers and apply for a BC teaching certificate. He did but his application was refused for reason that he did not have any teaching experience dealing with kids. But he explained that most, if not all, first and second year university students in the Philippines are 16, 17, & 18 years old as we only have ten years elementary and secondary education. Still, he was not considered because he did not have a single credit in education. He was instead advised to take a one-year Professional Development Program (PDP) at SFU or some education programs at UBC and University of Victoria. Victoria is far for him and UBC is a longer program. So, the choice was SFU. He went to the orientation program at SFU in May 1993. He applied and got admitted into the program. He went to study full-time from January to December 1994. “I discovered that there were only 16 of us for high school and another 16 for the elementary group. I was so fortunate to have been selected out of more than hundreds of applicants,” he was proud to say. “You know how much this study cost me,” he asked. “It was seventeen thousand one hundred dollars! It’s like I loaned a new car with this amount,” he commented.
After his meeting with the immigration & employment officer and before he entered SFU, he took some odd jobs from a fast food restaurant at Oakridge Mall to 7-Eleven at Granville and West 70th Avenue and from Canada Post Corporation to Canada Revenue Agency so he could take care of the new member of his family – me, Paul. Of course, he badly needed to work to help sustain his family’s daily needs. It’s another sacrifice that he did for his family.
Although he successfully finished his PDP at SFU, he did not really take full advantage of it as he left this on-call teaching career at Vancouver Technical Secondary and Killarney Secondary Schools in exchange for a permanent job at Canada Post. He really felt, “I’d die early of heart attack if I would continue getting stressed preparing lesson plans and having really disrespectful and disturbed young adults in my classes. My father and my eldest brother died of heart attacks. I did not want to follow them as I still have my two young boys to take care of. What was $64,000 per annum salary if my kids are left orphaned at very young age?” At Canada Post, he doesn’t have to work at home preparing lesson plans and marking papers ‘til 1:30 AM. It’s more relaxing . . .
After carefully taking into considerations all possible scenarios and discussing the matters with mom, he finally decided to stick with Canada Post for a lesser pay but more time with his family. Now, he feels very happy and hopes to retire after my high school graduation. At last, I am very happy to learn that my father is enjoying his life with his family here and in the Philippines.
Dad, thank you for sharing with me and Mark the value of hard work, sacrifice, and strong will and determination in your fight to free yourself from the bondage of poverty. Your road to freedom was like the path of roller coaster ride. It was full of ups and downs, and, in the end you have prevailed and fulfilled all your dreams. You really made yourself who you are, a man of your own making.
My father was born in Talikud Island within the gulf of Davao, Philippines 5 years after the end of World War II. He was the 16th of 17 children of parents who had not finished the basic elementary education. When he told me about this size of his family, I couldn’t believe my ears and said, “Are you kidding, dad?’ And I muttered, “Oh, my God, you really have a very BIG family.” But when he was growing up, there were only ten of them left. Five of his older brothers died during their struggle against Japanese occupation in the Philippines. The other two adults were his sisters who died of dog bites and natural causes, respectively. On top of it all, he learned to live a family life without grandpas and grandmas as all died before he even knew he had one. “How was life then, dad?” “Well,” he said, “I have to remind you and Mark that however poor a person is, he/she will be free from the bondage of poverty and hard life if he/she values the importance and significance of hard work, sacrifice, and strong will and determination in life as they were and still are my guiding lights in the pursuit of good quality education and success in life.”
His life seems to have been covered with a thick wall of fog. He couldn’t see what lies ahead of him. What he always saw everyday were men, women, and children tilling their farms, going to the seashore to harvest a variety of edible marine life from seashells to sea urchins, from crabs to small fish. Fishing is one major source of livelihood of the people. Where the catch is plentiful, half of it is sold to the market for cash and the rest for family’s consumption. The ocean was and still is a source of livelihood for the residents of the island. “I experienced all that, Paul,” he said. The irony of it all was that the people close to his heart did not want him to learn more. Only his mother had the desire for him to finish something in the future. He could feel the hardships that people went through as he himself experienced those. He wanted to end that part of his life. “I wanted to become a teacher, too. That was my dream at that moment,” he said. His struggle to uplift his life and that of his family was already ingrained in his brain even when he was only in his elementary years. He dreamed to be free from poverty. But he pretty knew that it could be a roller coaster ride.
The family owned just a little more than 2 hectares of farm land. It’s located on top of a hill overlooking the only elementary school at the center of the island that is home to four barrios. His family lived in the largest barrio of the entire municipality of Kaputian, Davao. This town is located in the larger island more or less 500 meters from Talikud Island. His married brothers lived in the same piece of land while his married sisters went with their husbands who also dwelt in the same barrio. This was where my dad started to learn what hardship in life was all about and wonder how he could get out of it. Indeed, he thought it was a long shot for him to dream a good life in the future. He would think, “Will I be like my older brothers and sisters who also followed the footsteps of our parents with little education?” With parents who could only afford to feed their children three meals a day, he also thought, “Will I be able to become a teacher?” Why a teacher, dad? I asked. He said that that’s the only profession he knew when he went for his elementary education. “I did not know anything about lawyers, engineers, agriculturists, biologists, nurses, you name it,” he remarked. Practically, his growing up life revolved around his family, the school, the farm, and the ocean.
As one of the youngest children, he was given the task of taking care of their family’s water buffalo known domestically as “carabao” if not used to do some farm works. He would bring the animal to drink water in a pond or from an artesian well. After which, he would let the carabao dip in a mud to cool off its body. While the buffalo was having a good time in the mud, he fetched water from the well and brought it home for household use. Then he would come back to get the happy buffalo and tied it to a trunk of a big tree to graze and sleep for the rest of the night. On some occasions, he’d be asked to help in the farm like planting, weeding, and harvesting. There were also times in his life when he would go with his brothers and sisters to do crabbing and/or fishing in the evening when the weather and season were right. Of course, his school life was always there everyday from Monday to Friday. These activities were his daily routine in the island, full of hard life indeed. I couldn’t believe that this was how he lived his young adult life in the Philippines. Although my older brother grew up in Davao City, my dad’s family residence while he was an Assistant Professor in Statistics and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in one of the state universities in the country, until he left the place with our mom to join our dad in Vancouver before he reached nine years old in December 1991, he really did not know anything about him. In fact, he was only almost four years old when dad went alone to the USA to further his education. My bother too was touched, really touched by the partial accounts of our father’s life experiences.
When I was in the elementary, my father kept on reminding me to work hard and aim to top any tests so that if I failed to reach it, at least, I would fall to a point in which I’d still be getting very good marks in all my subjects. Those words really helped me a lot in my studies since then. His advice to finish all assignments right after school was hard in the beginning. Deep in my head, I resented it as I saw most of my classmates were just happy-go-lucky kids enjoying as kids. But as time went on, I developed the habit of doing them before I’d play my X-box or watch television. The practice of doing it regularly allows me to have time to perform other activities, make lots of friends at school and enjoy as a kid. Since then, I have been involving myself in the school’s sports and other extra-curricular activities as possible to balance my student activities as dad himself was a very active student leader as well as athletic-minded during his elementary to university years. I knew it even if he did not tell about his leadership skills because I saw his university graduation certificate award hanging on the wall at our house in the Philippines during my first family visit to my parents’ country of origin in 2007. It states, among others, “College Leadership Award.”
During my father’s generation, only seven years old or older could enter grade 1. There were no nursery and kindergarten classes then. So, basically, the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic were taught in this grade. But my dad was lucky one day when the only Grade 1 teacher in the barrio passed by the house where my dad was playing in the front yard. The teacher asked his mom, my grandma I didn’t have the chance to meet, if she could bring him to school. Of course, mommy wanted her son to learn. So, dad was in school as what they called then as “visitor pupil.” He was only 6 years old and it was already 2 months after school classes started in 1956. At the end of the school year, however, he was given a report card that said promoted to Grade 2 even if he was not officially registered at school in the first place. In addition, he also missed the last one and half months of the school year as he was sent to another town in the mainland to help harvest a cousin’s huge rice fields. But he made it to Grade 2. I asked him, “What did you do at school, papa? Why did the teacher let you pass when you only attended school for less than 7 months?” His only reply was, “I didn’t know but what I remember was the teacher always asked me to answer math questions on the board and displayed all my school works on the bulletin board.”
Life at school was my father’s bridge to fulfilling his dream of becoming a teacher. Aside from being active in both the school’s scouting programs and athletic activities, he too was representing the school in academic competitions within the school district. But the annual rice harvesting help his family was providing his cousin in the mainland always kept him not able to finish the school year. Nevertheless, he finished his elementary education at age 12 in 1962 with no single awards due to his long absences. The good news was that he got a full scholarship to pursue high school at the Assumption Academy in another island after passing its scholarship exam. He was the first from the island to pass the school’s scholarship test. The bad news was that his father and his older siblings did not want him to go to high school as they wanted just an elementary education for him. But he was persistent. He talked to his dad about his plans and his desire to finish a profession as he did not want to live a hard life like what his brothers and sisters were experiencing. He finally convinced him when he said, “Tatay, if I stay here, I still eat my share of the food on the table. How about bringing my share of the food to the school? I know that the school has a house reserved for students who come from far flung places and where students can cook their food. Besides, you don’t have to worry about my travel expenses as boat transportation is free as the school will provide its own transportation to pick up students on Sunday afternoon and bring them back to their respective barrios after classes on Friday afternoon.” With his convincing statements and his strong determination to continue his education, his tatay couldn’t do anything but agreed to his request. The approval came with a condition that once dad was found not really studying, the support would be cut off. For dad, it was the happiest moment of his life as he could see already the beginning of a brighter future.
The school required each student who would stay in the campus house to bring a mat, blankets, pillows, dinner plates, bowl, drinking cup/glass, fork and spoon, and firewood as school administration would not furnish the house with those stuff. So, when the school boat came to pick dad and the other students from his barrio for the first time of the school year, he got very excited but feeling sad because he would be alone for the first time in his life. Inside the boat, he found out that he was the youngest of all the students. He was very proud to say, “At 12 years old, I was already away from home making decisions on my own.” To my amazement, I said, “Oh, my Lord, you really were already independent at very young age, dad!”
The living quarters in the school campus house were totally bare. There were no bunk beds. Everybody slept on the floor. He and four other boys stayed in one large bedroom while the six girls were in the other large bedroom. Outside the house stood a large dirty kitchen where students cooked their own food. For dad, he’d just cook a pot of rice and buy viands in the public market. On few occasions though, he’d cook scrambled egg. His rice would last for 2 or 3 days, so he had more time doing his homework and studying.
All freshmen students were divided into three sections. Forty students coming from the town’s central school were in one section. Another forty but all coming from the different barrios’ elementary schools were assigned to another section. Then the third section, St. Agnes class, was a mixture of students from the barrios and from the central school. Dad was in this third group of students. And then during the first day of classes, the classroom teacher-adviser asked each student to introduce himself/herself to the class by stating his/her name, graduation honors received, and name of elementary school. As the introduction went on, majority of his classmates graduated with honors such as valedictorians, salutatorians, first/second/or third honorable mentions. When it was his turn to introduce, he only mentioned his name and the school where he finished his elementary grade. His teacher made some remarks and said, “You’re so humble, Bonifacio. You graduated valedictorian, right?” The teacher thought that he was because all those who obtained full scholarship grant from the school were valedictorians. Honest as he was, he replied, “Sir, I did not have any honors at all. Our class valedictorian, salutatorian, first and third honorable mentions did not go to school anymore. Only the second honorable mention student is here. The rest of us from Sta. Cruz Elementary School were just ordinary graduates.” His teacher might have some doubts about him getting a full scholarship grant without any awards on his graduation. But he proved his teacher wrong about him for he always topped the tests in all subjects in all freshmen classes. He ended up representing his section and the entire freshman students in the school’s academic competitions in math, spelling, history, science, and religion during the school’s celebration of the Assumption Day. He competed against the sophomores, juniors, and seniors’ class representatives. Although he did not win any first place finishes except in spelling, he wound up the second runner-up in overall ranking for winning second in the four other subject areas. At the end of the school year, he maintained his full scholarship grant as he received the top award of all freshmen the first honors certificate for obtaining the highest percentage point grade.
His sophomore year ended in disaster as dad’s father, 63 years old, died of heart attack after having a hair cut. This resulted to not finishing his second year high school studies. Good thing though the school reserved his scholarship grant for the following year after learning his family’s adjustment period. He continued the next year, became the class mayor, and finished the year as second overall in the honor roll. This put his scholarship to 50% discount on all school fees and his studies in the private school in jeopardy. The family could not afford to pay for partial tuition fees with only his mother earning a living for the family. When his former grade four teacher knew about his predicament, the teacher came to dad’s family home and gave suggestions as to where he could continue his studies. Dad went to Davao City High School for his junior year instead of going back his old school as public school tuition fee was very low. At the end of the year, he obtained more than 91% grade point average and became one of the members of the special science and mathematics class in his senior year. Coupled with that reward was a grant of free tuition. Eventually, he graduated high school at age 17 and, again, passed a number of scholarship grants from different universities in the country.
But his glorious moments in the public school came with lots of sacrifices. While in the city, he lived with his much older cousin’s family where he was treated like a slave. Although he brought with him his weekly provisions and paid a share of the house rent, he was still asked to do lots of household chores while members of the family would watch television. He would only study his lessons late in the evening outside the house so as not to disturb everybody who already went to sleep. Sometimes, he’d study inside in candle light when the weather was bad. He didn’t bother telling his mom and siblings about his living conditions with relatives in the city. I could just imagine the sufferings he underwent just so he could do well at school. I really admire dad for his strong determination and the will to succeed in life.
Four or so years from then on, Dad’s ambition to becoming a professional would be realized. His dream of becoming a teacher, however, was changed to finishing an engineering degree. A change he made when he discovered other fields of studies while in high school. So, the adventure for higher education had just begun. Although dad would be very far away from his family, his mother consented to his decision on accepting the full scholarship grant offered by the Mindanao State University in which a recipient got free tuition and all other school fees, free board in the university cafeteria, free lodging in the dormitory, and free back and forth transportation expenses. But she cautioned his son, saying, “Son, don’t trust any Muslims. They are traitors.” “Don’t you worry, mother, I’ll remember your advice,” he said. The other scholarship grants only provided free tuition fees.
A week before the first semester of classes began in June 1967, he traveled by plane for the first time in his life to Iligan City domestic airport where students were picked up and transported by school bus to the campus in Marawi City, the capital city of Lanao del Sur, home of the university. The entire province and the city were and still are populated with Maranao Muslims. But dad was not that apprehensive as he had a number of his high school classmates studying in the same university. His focus was to take advantage of the university’s free of charge education and finish a degree in engineering.
More than 20 minutes from the airport, the bus driver made an announcement that they were approaching the campus. As the bus went uphill, he could see buildings clustered on top of a hill. Then as the bus reached the hill, he was amazed viewing the campus overlooking Lake Lanao, the largest lake in the country, and downtown Marawi City. The weather was very cold and foggy as the university campus was situated 2,800 feet above sea level. That was his first exposure to such a cool environment. His not so thick jacket didn’t help him that much from the coldness of the atmosphere, but he had to make do with it as he did not have the budget to buy a thicker one. “Life must go on,” he said.
Inside the dorm were student-volunteers helping dorm manager bring freshmen to their room assignments. Dad was assigned to Room No. 33 with five other scholars from different provinces and cities of the country. Three double-decker beds, three study tables with each table assigned to two students, and three very tall lockers good for 6 students occupied the room. Three of his roommates were Muslims. He was not worried as he was there to fulfill the main purpose of the creation of the university; that is, Christian-Muslim integration.
Then here came the most dreaded part for all freshmen, the physical examination portion. This was required of us before registering for the academic courses as the university did not want to enroll anybody who was sick, pregnant, or carrier of contagious diseases. They would, however, be allowed to take a leave of absence for a semester without losing their scholarship. “As we prepare for the exam, we got separated from the women and grouped into 10. And the ten of us entered one small room where we were asked to undress ourselves. But all of us did not remove our underwear due to the presence of a female nurse in the room. When we came in the exam room, the doctor told us to line up on the wall and raised this question: ‘What are you here for?’ After we responded that we came for the physical exam, he ordered all of us to remove our underwear. With the female nurse, this was the most terrible thing that happened to each one of us in that room as we never had experienced being naked in front of anybody in our lives, more so with a woman. Since we came to study and finish a degree from the university, we obliged and became subject to humiliation in the presence of 10 men (including the doctor) and a woman who recorded what the doctor found during the exam. We did not care anymore since it happened to all of us alike,” he elaborated. As I listened to my dad, I could feel the embarrassment he experienced during that physical exam.
As dad continued relating to me his university life, I could sense that he was having a very good time learning to become a carnivorous. As a vegetarian and seafood person since he was little, meat was a no-no to him. He could not stand the taste and smell of whatever cooked meat was on the table. In the university, however, he had no choice but eat whatever was on the tray. Otherwise, he would starve everyday. “What I did was chew the meat a little and drink some orange juice or coke to help me swallow the food,” he said. But he had to buy the juice or bottle of coke as the cafeteria only served water for lunch and dinner. Getting used to the taste and smell of the meat freed him from spending his money for coke or orange juice.
Also, I found his daily cafeteria visit a little funny. You can just imagine soldiers eating in a military bunk house. That’s the life he experienced in the university cafeteria. The only difference was that he had to provide his own fork and spoon every time he would eat his meal and cup for coffee during breakfast daily. To make sure he wouldn’t forget his eating paraphernalia, he had to keep them in his back pockets like what most students did especially when he had classes until noon time or 6:45 PM. Going to the cafeteria after the regular scheduled meal time means that one had to suffer the consequence of eating whatever leftovers were available. “I did not want to go to the dormitory to get them and then ran to the cafeteria to eat,” he said. Most often, when students did that, they would end up eating just rice. Normally, he had to line up and pick up a tray that already contained the portions of the menu for that meal time. Everybody ate the same food every meal.
His university experience was his most enjoyable and memorable life as a student. He didn’t have to worry about food and rent as they were all free. “My only concern was to study hard to maintain my full scholarship grant. Of course, I had to get involved in all sports and other extra-curricular activities to balance my university life,” he said. “Likewise, I’d to spend my free time during semester break at my dorm mate’s town so I could see other places in the Philippines,” he added. But during the last year of his five year program, graduation year, a Muslim rebel group attacked and captured the entire campus early in the morning of October 21, 1972 – one month after Marcos declared Martial Law in the Philippines. Three days after the rebel occupation, a convoy from the Philippine military marine made a surprise attacked on the Muslim rebels occupying the campus. The rebels were driven to the mountains near the campus, and all the Christians in the university were transferred to another city, Iligan City – capital city of Lanao del Norte province. It was not an easy move to another city as the military took the mothers and children first, followed by the women. The men waited for another day before their turn to move out of the campus. “I thought we would all die that night as the rebels came down and attacked the campus again. We all dropped to the floor just listening to the music of fires and bombings. Although we couldn’t sleep that night, we were glad to learn that the day came without anyone from the university and the military getting hurt,” he said. Finally, all the men got their chance to get evacuated. In Iligan, they were housed in public elementary schools before they got sent home to their respective cities or towns.
Dad was very happy that he eventually graduated with a bachelor’s degree in agricultural engineering without an honor as his last year’s grades put his overall weighted average grade to 1.751, 0.001 more than the upper limit for CUM LAUDE honor. He instead received the College of Agriculture Leadership Award. But he was lonely because his mother couldn’t afford to pay for her travel to the university as her savings were spent for my graduation. As the top graduate of the college, he was immediately hired to teach in the university the following school year. He signed a probationary teaching contract with the university before going home after graduation. With only a bachelor’s degree, he was only assigned to teach technical courses under the university’s 1 year or 2 years technology programs. His dream of becoming a teacher was indeed realized.
Another honor was given to my dad. He was made the graduation speaker for the island’s five years old public high school in April 1973. He said, “As the first product of the island who finished a degree, the school principal made me a role model for the entire island. Thus, I simply told them not to lose hope as there’s always success lurking in everyone’s back so long as he/she would work hard, sacrifice a bit, and have the will and determination to finish a technical course or bachelor’s degree, and that poverty should not be made a hindrance to one’s success.” “I was really happy for the honor the school had given me and for my mother who was also honored the Island’s Mother of the Decade,” he added.
On his third year of teaching, the year he was scheduled to go to Israel to take a master’s degree program in irrigation and drainage engineering, an unfortunate event in his life had occurred. At noon time in September 11, two young Moslems appeared at the doorsteps of the open back door of a housing cottage and asked my dad, “Ilaga ka o hindi (asking if I were a member of an organization with acronym ILAGA - Ilongo LAnd Grabbing Association or not)?” Since he was and never was a member of this Association, of course, his reply was NO. “The only thing I remember was a sound ‘BANG’, and when I opened my eyes and released my right hand from my right breast, blood spurted from it and I began to feel some pain in my right nipple where I was hit by a single .45 caliber gun shot. Then rebels ran away,” he stated with sadness in his eyes. When he saw them running towards the mountain, dad covered his gunshot wound with his own shirt, got out of the cottage, and shouted for help while running towards the agricultural engineering shop, 200 meters away from his cottage. As he approached the shop, he felt darkness in his eyes as he was about to faint. When his students saw and recognized him leaning on the fence of the shop, they came down and talked to him. They believed that he was dying so they carried him to the shop and put him on one side of the tractor. One of his students cranked the tractor and drove him to the university infirmary. But dad complained of some terrible pain in his chest and wanted to be carried instead. He still complained of some chest pain while he was being carried by four of his male students. Fortunately, a Land Rover service car of the College of Agriculture arrived and picked him up. Thanks to one of his students who reported the shooting incident to the staff in the College.
Inside the infirmary, the doctor closed his wound by stitching it without the benefit of an anesthesia. As there was no more supply of bottles of dextrose for another patient, a half-full bottle was removed from another patient and gave it to my dad. Then he was driven to one of the private hospitals in Iligan City, 41 kilometers away from the university campus. On the way, he was blindfolded for complaining about the bottle that he saw no longer flowing droplets of the dextrose and that he believed that he’d die. Immediately after arriving at the hospital’s emergency room still blindfolded and putting on a stretcher, a nurse put a hose in his right nostril while another person was trying to obtain anti-mortem statements from him. Actually, it was oxygen to aid his breathing believing that his right lung was damaged. But he removed the hose complaining, “I couldn’t breathe with that thing as I am trying to answer someone questioning me. I can breathe much better without it.” Perplexed, the nurse called a doctor and rushed him to the radiology room. X-rays were taken to determine what’s going on. As soon as the X-ray photos were ready for examination, his attending physician told him that he was so very lucky that no vital organ was hit as the bullet was just roaming around before it landed one-fourth of an inch from his spinal column. A very simple surgery was done in the X-ray room by simply making a small slit at the site where the bullet lodged and scooped it. A gallon of blood resulting from internal bleeding was also drained. University officials visited him in the evening while he was already resting in a private room and declared him as the only person who survived a shooting incident in the university campus. One evening on his second day in the hospital, however, he ended up sitting up straight as he was trying to gasp for air to breathe. “I felt I would die because I couldn’t breathe. So, I pushed the red emergency button on the side of my bed, and an attending physician and a nurse came. I told them about my breathing difficulty,” he said. Then the doctor inserted a needle in his back and sucked water from his right lung. The presence of the water in his right lung was caused by continuous lying on his back while having blood transfusion and intravenous food support. That saved his life again. I could really feel his traumatic experiences. 911 is really a very bad day!
On the day of the shooting incident in the campus, news quickly spread within the entire university community that he died in the evening. After that bad news, the funny thing was that a group of his students and friends came down to Iligan and tried to look for the funeral home where the wake was held. Going to the hospital did not help them at all as his name was not in the front desk information list of patients. This was part of the university strategy, indeed. Couldn’t find his body, they went back to the university believing that his ‘dead body’ was brought to his home town. “I learned it from one of my students who was watching me in the hospital as I did not have a single next of kin with me. He went up to the university to get his belongings and heard that news. I was told that it was a tactic made by the officials in the university so that whoever committed that crime wouldn’t run after me anymore. It was indeed a wise move on the part of the administration,” he said.
After one full week of recuperation in the hospital, he was transferred to a hotel hiding him again from the criminals and giving him more time to rest while his transfer to teach in another branch of the university was being worked out by the university officials. “Every time I would go out to exercise and visit a church, I’d take a cab. In the church, I thanked God for giving me a second life and asked Him to lead me the way to whatever mission He wanted me to fulfill in life,” he narrated. I had teary eyes listening to his very sad and terrible experience. Again, he showed me the scar on his nipple where the bullet entered and on his back very close to his spinal column resulting from an incision where the bullet was removed.
One and half months after the incidence, he flew to where he was originally from - Davao - to teach in the newly established branch of the university. Although he lived very close to his mother and siblings, he did not visit them as he should have. He was still mad and angry why not one of them came to see him in the hospital in Iligan City. But one day, he finally visited his family during the feast day of the island in May 1977 and told them the story. His mother, brothers, and sisters were surprised that they did not know about it. They never received any kind of communication from the university about the entire story of the shooting incident. “I was crying as I told them my second life story and they were crying too. From then on, life was good to me.”
At his new work place, he was not only a faculty member teaching math and statistics but also the President of the Faculty and Staff Club of the university. He led the fight to end corruption in the university. That’s the main reason why he would not be sent for a master’s degree program. Determined, he secretly applied for another scholarship test offered by the National Science Development Board (NSDB)-University of the Philippines (UP) Graduate Scholarship program in which no recommendation from the head of office was required. Former faculty members of the applicant would be the best people to give the recommendations as to his academic capabilities and abilities to pursue a master’s program in science. Qualified, he took this 4-day test in math, statistics, physics, and essay writing/interview and passed with flying colors. “It’s another milestone in my life. This scholarship grant made me save money for my wedding as I not only received a monthly stipend from NSDB-UP but also my salary from the university while on study leave. I felt the Lord Jesus was always on my side,” he proudly stated. He finished his Master of Science in Statistics in March 1982 and got married in April of the same year. “Although my plan of having a family of my own at age 30 was not realized in exchange of a graduate studies, I felt it was another happy chapter of my life as I eventually married my former elementary schoolmate and became dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the largest college in the university,” he said with a smiling face.
But his fight for corruption in the university continued. He dared to lead a university-wide demonstration even during martial law period in the country in 1983. He mentioned, “My passion for a clean governance of the entire university from hiring qualified teachers to purchasing of supplies and equipment was the main reason for leading the demonstration. I was very happy that this resulted to the ouster of the corrupt president of the university and his cohorts, and a duly selected new and qualified president was inducted to run the academic and administrative affairs of the university. Although the president and his close associates were no longer there, I was not totally happy with the result as there were still corrupt little fish who escaped from getting fired.” Two years after, the same corruption practice continued and the new president didn’t bother about it. That created a friction between dad and the president. My dad resigned as dean of the college after one of his clerks was taken away from his college and moved to the president’s office. The president begged for his retention of the deanship and promised to provide him with two new clerks. Dad explained, “With the infighting in the university, I again secretly applied for scholarship as I wanted to get out of the corrupt administration. This time, it was for a doctoral program in the USA. Luckily, I found one that only required a recommendation from my former professors. Then in May 1986, I received a letter from the Department of Statistics at George Washington University in Washington, DC granting me a teaching fellowship.”
My father had a mixed feeling when he departed for the USA on 14 December 1986. With financial problem to buy plane tickets for three, he alone left the country. He was very happy for the opportunity to pursue a PhD in Statistics program in the USA. On December 14, 1986, he left home while mom brought little Mark to his nursery school. He said, “I did that because I did not want to see them crying as I board the plane. I wanted a happy moment with them and disappear without them witnessing the saddest moment of my life; that is, leaving them behind for quite some time. This was the worst sacrifice that I did in my life.” With only US$125 in his pocket, he was worried that his first monthly stipend wouldn’t be released as he expected it. But with the help of his countryman who picked him up at the Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC, he was able to survive his first winter experience and made it to school without any hitch. Then little by little, he started to feel culture shock and homesick. “Silently, I cried thinking of your mom and Mark in Davao City. I wanted to go home. With daily saying of the Holy Rosary, I was able to overcome my homesickness.”
Then another problem surfaced. His employment in the Philippines was terminated. He remarked, “This bad news saddened me a lot because your mom was totally dependent on my salary there. This made me terribly mad.” So to be able to remit money to his family in the Philippines, he also worked on the sideline during his free time and weekends. “Immersed in a situation like that in a foreign country where I didn’t know of a single relative, life was like a stone, it’s hard. But I had to focus my head on what I was there for – to study and finish my PhD,” he said.
With determined heart and mind, he did finish his program but did not go home. He instead applied to immigrate to Canada in 1990. Then in September of the following year, he received their independent immigrant visas. He bought open plane tickets for my mom and Mark and mailed them together with their visas to the Philippines. From Washington, DC, dad flew to Vancouver on 2 November 1991. Knowing nobody in the Canada, he took a cab and booked for 3 days at Days Inn Hotel at West Pender Street. “Wasting no time, I immediately started my search for an apartment. A hotel clerk advised me to go to Saint Patrick’s Church as she always saw lots of Filipinos coming out from the church on Sundays. Indeed, I got help from an elderly Filipino woman and recommended me to her apartment manager. With the cash money I was able to save for this event to happen in my life, I took the 1-BR apartment for $625 rent a month. I furnished the apartment and made ready for the arrival of my family,” he elaborated. Six weeks later, Mom and Mark arrived in Vancouver from the Philippines. “The reunion was very memorable to all of us as we missed each other so much for full five years. I promised to them that wherever I’d go they would always be with me all the time,” he said.
“The thought of not finding a job in my area of specialization was far from my mind. But as days went by and the reality of not getting one started to sink in, I began to panic. My savings got depleted everyday. And everywhere I applied for a job, everybody asked me for some Canadian experience,” he wearily said. At one interview, he answered, “I am a new professionally skilled immigrant and what can you expect of that if you won’t give me a chance to have one.” In another interview for an adult education teaching job at Burnaby’s Continuing Education Program, this one experience he’d never forget in his life. It was because the Program director told him of this discriminatory remark, “It’s regrettable that Canada doesn’t have a system recognizing degrees from people coming from other countries, especially those from third world countries.” In his mind, he silently said, “Oh, my God! Is this Canada?” Telling himself to play cool, he answered back saying, “Do you know these authors in Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Statistics – Potter and Murray, White and Manning, Vance, etc, etc? They are all American and British authors. Besides, most of my science teachers were Americans, British, Australians, New Zealanders, and Polish . . . and never a Canadian. In fact, you hired lots of teachers from the Philippines to help educate your kids here. And by the way, what’s your one plus one? Thank you for your time, sir. Bye.” That sad, very sad experience made him think twice of going back to the Philippines and enjoy life teaching in the university. But the idea of coming here for the best interest of his children especially so that mom was pregnant of me in 1992 finally focused his mind again to settle for good here.
From the Burnaby experience, he proceeded to the Immigration and Employment Office at East 10th Avenue and complained, “Why did you approve my application to come here when there’s no job for me?” The officer said, “Did you apply at UBC, SFU, and the Colleges in the area?” He replied, “I did apply for a research assistant job at UBC but I was asked if I have an internationally published research paper in any known international journals which I do not have.” That ended the interview. Then again, he said, “I also applied for a teaching job in math and statistics at Langara College and I was asked about BC teaching certificate, which I did not understand and did not have.” His final advice was for me to proceed to the BC College of Teachers and apply for a BC teaching certificate. He did but his application was refused for reason that he did not have any teaching experience dealing with kids. But he explained that most, if not all, first and second year university students in the Philippines are 16, 17, & 18 years old as we only have ten years elementary and secondary education. Still, he was not considered because he did not have a single credit in education. He was instead advised to take a one-year Professional Development Program (PDP) at SFU or some education programs at UBC and University of Victoria. Victoria is far for him and UBC is a longer program. So, the choice was SFU. He went to the orientation program at SFU in May 1993. He applied and got admitted into the program. He went to study full-time from January to December 1994. “I discovered that there were only 16 of us for high school and another 16 for the elementary group. I was so fortunate to have been selected out of more than hundreds of applicants,” he was proud to say. “You know how much this study cost me,” he asked. “It was seventeen thousand one hundred dollars! It’s like I loaned a new car with this amount,” he commented.
After his meeting with the immigration & employment officer and before he entered SFU, he took some odd jobs from a fast food restaurant at Oakridge Mall to 7-Eleven at Granville and West 70th Avenue and from Canada Post Corporation to Canada Revenue Agency so he could take care of the new member of his family – me, Paul. Of course, he badly needed to work to help sustain his family’s daily needs. It’s another sacrifice that he did for his family.
Although he successfully finished his PDP at SFU, he did not really take full advantage of it as he left this on-call teaching career at Vancouver Technical Secondary and Killarney Secondary Schools in exchange for a permanent job at Canada Post. He really felt, “I’d die early of heart attack if I would continue getting stressed preparing lesson plans and having really disrespectful and disturbed young adults in my classes. My father and my eldest brother died of heart attacks. I did not want to follow them as I still have my two young boys to take care of. What was $64,000 per annum salary if my kids are left orphaned at very young age?” At Canada Post, he doesn’t have to work at home preparing lesson plans and marking papers ‘til 1:30 AM. It’s more relaxing . . .
After carefully taking into considerations all possible scenarios and discussing the matters with mom, he finally decided to stick with Canada Post for a lesser pay but more time with his family. Now, he feels very happy and hopes to retire after my high school graduation. At last, I am very happy to learn that my father is enjoying his life with his family here and in the Philippines.
Dad, thank you for sharing with me and Mark the value of hard work, sacrifice, and strong will and determination in your fight to free yourself from the bondage of poverty. Your road to freedom was like the path of roller coaster ride. It was full of ups and downs, and, in the end you have prevailed and fulfilled all your dreams. You really made yourself who you are, a man of your own making.
Monday, November 9, 2009
It was a dark and stormy night...
What comes to mind in a dark and stormy night...hmmm...SCOOBY DOO! I miss the old scooby doo shows on ch.25 (YTV) or ch.50 (teletoon) haha those were the good times! It always starts as like scooby or shaggy lookin for something to eat...then something spooky always turns up! Whether it would be "Scoob! Did you hear that?" or "Waggy, look behind you!" They hate being at places where its haunted or looks creepy in the night. I remember one of the episodes of when they we're looking for someone who went missing at a lab which was suppose to be hidden...not really! So....theres always a scene when they're in the MYSTERY MACHINE! which was the best cartoon SUV i've seen ever! kk back to the story...uhmm...yeah it was totally a dark and stormny night! and OBVIOUSLY Scooby and Shaggy were freaking out! They arrived at the lab which was in the middle of the forest..
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Colourless green ideas sleep furiously
HAHAHAHAHAHA! Colourless green ideas sleep furiously?!?! Ideas can sleep furiously?!?! I don't get it.........can someone tell me what this means! PLEASE! I think this has got to be one of the hardest topics to blog about in the whole year because I have no idea what to write. There's probably a lot of depth into the meaning of this topic.....but seriously WTH "Colourless green..." makes no sense! Does that mean there's no green at all? and.......how do ideas sleep furiously! OMG it's first block and I have to think so hard because of this confusing topic! I'm guessing the meaning of this topic is that people don't realize their true potential into contributing their service in life and that when they sleep........their dreams and ideas in life come to mind! That's why when they wake up their so frustrated because they forget what they really want to do and live of other people's dreams! Instead of being bossed around they can be their own boss! You know what I mean.....wow! See all that hard thinking I had to go through just because of this! Errr.......geez Ms.I where do you get these topics from!?!? Whatever I like it anyways because this class is awesome! I'm so tired right now and my whole body is aching from last nights senior ball practice:( Dammnit im going out of topic......
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
WTF
Wow WTF! haha have you seen the commercials on much music channel 24? "double u, tee, eff!" x 2 It doesn't stand for what the f%$@! It stands for....Watch This Friday! LOL I watch Vampire Diaries, One Tree Hill, and Gossip Girl! Soo you better W-T-F new episodes of my favorite shows! Just kidding! All I can think about is this commercial...and the bad phrase of “What the fuck!” I hear that so much in downtown. It’s like that's all we need to say when we're pissed off! Not that I do that but I hear it way too much which is why I say it sometimes...my bad!
Double WTF! What the heck am I suppose to write about?! DAMMNIT! haha have you ever had a double WTF? For example when you find out that someone didn't tell you everything and then you feel like you got slapped in the face because of it. Well, I’ve had that happen to me many times but now-a-days I just don’t care unless it’s a really close friend of mine. I hope that one day kids would start watching their language because it really doesn’t help it just causes negative energy around others.
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