Dakulang Kalugihan

Or How Memories Are Lost Or Stolen Because They Aren't Made in the First Place

Dakul an kalugihán kan mga estudyante nin huli kan pandemyang ini.

Bakò tà dikit o mayo sindang nanonòdan sa mga module na itinatao o sa Google Classroom na pinapagibo.

An pagkanood ngonyan gamit an module o internet yaon sa sadiri nindang panghingowa na intindihon an mga leksyon kan saindang mga maestro sagkod maestra.

Mayo ini sa saindang magurang, mayo sa maestra. Pwedeng makanood an siisay man sainda kawasa pipilion gugustuhon gigibohon ninda ini.

Alagad an mamondo ngonyan ta—an mismong social life ninda an nagsasapò.

Si kadakuldakul na oportunidad kuta na nindang mabisto an mga kaklase o kagurubay, o maintindihan an pagkatawo sagkod pagkanood kan saindang mga maestro sagkod maestra—na iyo man sana nanggad an matatada mawawalat maroromdoman pag-agi kan panahon—an mga ini dai na ninda makukua.

Dawa idtong haralìpot na panahon o pagkakataon na iyo an mabilog kan saindang mga alaala kan saindang elementarya, sekondarya—dai na mangyayari.

Máyò na.

Idtong darakupan daralaganan sa may pahurusan o sa likod kan daan nang Marcos Type—o si arambagan rulutuan karakanan sa Home Economics kan Gabaldon Building.

O idtong pagkahiling pagkatagalpo paglikaw sa hinahangaan na kaklase na uto’doy—uminagi sa Wooden Building?

Si hirilingan surubahan hurulnakan sa Hernandez Hall; si koropyahan hiringhingan purusngakan sa O’Brien Library?

Ano an saindang babalikan bubuweltahan maroromdoman pag sinda na gururang?


#BikolBeautiful

THEN AND NOW, YOU

A Gen Xer, you feel fortunate to have witnessed the evolution of digital media all these years.

In the 1990s, you began learning how to operate a computer and begin typing into the green screens using WordStar, WordPerfect, and Fox Database.

You used large floppy diskettes to input—encode—process and print your thesis using the Dot Matrix printer in your school paper’s office.

In the 2000s, you began e-mailing your friends and families a lot and watching trailers and movies on YouTube until the wee hours. You also began blogging, finding so much fun in embedding images and photos onto your essays and blogs that you published on multiply.com or blogger.com.

In the 2010s, you sent videos, too, via your e-mails and shared news, photos, and videos with your friends on social media. You also looked forward to how the videos would stream into your news feed on Facebook and Twitter accounts.

You also joined LinkedIn, Instagram, and Vimeo, among many others, now being so overwhelmed by so much information just using your handheld gadget. You also joined and maintained accounts on Goodreads and Tumblr. For you, the sleek layout of photos and Tumblr was indispensable.

In the 1990s, you went to computer laboratories to encode your academic projects—and the dreaded senior thesis in your university. In the 2000s, you needed to contact your internet service provider so they could fix your company’s troublesome internet modem.

And in the 2010s, you would have to be hooked on a good Wi-Fi if you were to video-stream and witness Pope Francis’s visit to the Philippines outside the country’s capital of Manila in real-time.

All these multi-modal conveniences, through the years, have reinforced any information that you consumed. They have leveled up your interaction and you have become a more learned person owing to these affordances—but most importantly, they have also allowed you to produce knowledge that you can now share with the rest of the world.

#DigitalEvolution
#GenerationXer
#ThenAndNow

Anthems of Our Youth, Now Rare

With the Internet, I could just randomly easily find the rare songs of my youth. 

Recently I found that Spotify has the album “Dreams” by Fra Lippo Lippi, which came out in 1992—thirty years ago.

 

FLL is that Norwegian new wave duo whose songs played on local FM stations were just easy to listen to. 

 

At the time, we, members of the graduating class of Ateneo de Naga High School, were all excited about graduating. 

 

Sometime in March of 1992, in spending the last days of our high school, having our clearances signed by our teachers and the offices where we spent four wonderful years of learning, waiting for awards announcements, or having our autographs signed by each other in our classic long manila folders, I remember how we also sang to “Stitches and Burns”.

 

The “Dreams” album provided such unforgettable anthems of our youth—“Stitches and Burns” and “Thief in Paradise”, among others. It was a hit in those days—enjoying ample airplay on the local FM stations, that we just found ourselves singing: 

 

“Now I don't want to see you anymore/ Don't wanna be the one to play your game/ Not even if you smile your sweetest smile/ Not even if you beg me, darling, please.”—as if we knew them for a long time. 

 

When my classmate Gerry Brizuela bought a copy and brought it to class, many of us wanted to borrow it. Eventually, I was lent the copy and listened to my heart’s content on my brother’s cassette player. 

 

While “Stitches and Burns” and “Thief and Paradise” were the easy favorites because they were the ones first played over the radio and shown on MTV, and probably because of their upbeat tunes, I got to like “One World”, and particularly “Dreams,” the titular single, which is one of the many tearful cuts in this rather dolorous album.

 

Some years earlier—beginning school in 1988, I grew up listening to FLL’s early hits like “Light and Shade” and “Angel” being played from our cousin Glen’s room next to ours.

 

I grew up listening to and eventually mouthing the lyrics of “Every time I See You”, “Shouldn’t Have to Be Like That,” or “Some People”, among others—while reviewing for the Algebra exam of Mr. Rey Joy Bajo or reading the Gospel Komiks for Miss Cedo’s Religion class or making the Social Studies project under Mrs. Luz Vibar.

 

But during my senior year in high school, the songs in Fra Lippo Lippi’s “Dreams” album sounded different but I liked them all so much. 

 

I wonder why I felt so good listening to these songs. I wonder why my heart seems to sing, too, when the songs of any singer all seem to be crying. Why have I, all this time, always taken delight in these lyrics: “How many rivers to cross—/ Tell me how many times must we count the loss/ Did you see the face of the broken man, head in his hands?”

 

Why have such sad songs thrilled me so much—that I cannot get enough of them; or that I would rather choose to listen to them than the others: “Open your eyes to the world/ Light the light for the ones who are left behind/ Love is in need of a helping hand/ Show us the way?”

 

“Once in a while, you feel like you’re on your own/ And nothing can keep you from taking a fall/ Like there’s no way out/ Hold on to your dream...”

 

“It’s all I’m thinking of/ It’s all that I dream about/ It’s right here with you and me/ and still it's so hard to see/ still finding my way... still finding my way…my way.”

#FraLippoLippi 

#HighSchool 

#HardToFind  

#NewWave  

#Rare

 

Madonna of the Chair

CALAUAG, NAGA CITY—Of all the photos taken at my cousin Maita Cristina’s daughter’s birthday celebration last night, this one makes me take a second look. The way my cousin holds Celestine Faith in her arms reminds me of Raphael’s Madonna of the Chair which I first saw in my Grade 6 class in the late 1980s, which I have not forgotten since.
An iconic High Italian Renaissance art from the 1500s, Raphael’s masterpiece portrays the Blessed Virgin cuddling a cherub-like baby Jesus, as his cousin John, son of Elizabeth, watches adoringly.

But more than anything, this last night’s photo shows a poignant image of how a mother could still cuddle and comfort her child after she had a very long day. In the midst of the crowd, it is the serenity from within the mother that hushes the child. At the end of the day, what is simply pure and true is the warmth: the strength and assurance only a mother could give not only to her child but really to herself.

‘Don’t English Me, I’m Panic’

Iníng mga nagpaparapansúpog o nan-iinsúlto sa mga tarataong mag-irEnglish—na ngonyan inaapod sa social mediang “English shaming”, “smart-shaming”, o kabáli na sa mas dakúlang terminong ‘anti-intellectualism’—daí man daw sinda an enot na pinasurúpog kan mga aki pas'na?

Tibaad kadto, sinda nag-iskusar man na mag-inEnglish sa klase ninda sa elementarya o dawà gayod sa sekondarya. Alagad kawásà si maestro o si maestra—in vez na si potential na makanuod nin tamà—mas nahíling, pigparatuyaw dangan pigparadudúan si mga salà ninda. Kayà nagin self-fulfilling prophecy logod ini sa mga buhay ninda. Dai na sinda naka-“move on” sa trauma.

Kayà pag-agi kan panahon, poon kadto pag-abot sa high school, college asta ngonyan na gurúrang na sa trabaho ninda—sa pabrika magin sa opisina—  “sourgraping” na s’na an gibo ninda.

Kawásà dai matukdol kan layas na ayam si nagkakaralay alagad haralangkawon na úbas, sinabi na saná kaining maaalsóm sinda. Kawásà súboót dai niya na maipadágos o mapaáyo an kakayahán sa English—dawa ngáni pwede niya man pag-adalán saná ini—sinasabi niya na sana sa katrabahong Inglesero o Inglesera, “Uy, spokening dollar’!” 

“Ano na 'yan—haypalúting ka baga!”

Nakanood ka sanang mag-English, very another ka na.

Abaana.

Mayo man naginibo idtong balisngág na English policy sa klase kaidtong mga 1980s—ásta ngonyan igwá pa—na mabáyad ka sa class treasurer kun mádakop daáng nagtatarám nin Bikol sa laog kan classroom.

Kun mádangog na dai nag-Eenglish, matao nin fine; kun dai man madakop, marhay sana. Kayà si iba ta nganing dai magbáyad, nagparáhiringhingan na s’na. Dai pigparápadángog si totóong dílà ninda. Ginibong aswang si sadiring tataramon ninda. Tiniklop sa cartolina. Iniripit, Alagad nag-uruldot si iba. Itinágo sa paldá. Linuom. Nagmayòmò. Pagsangáw, maparàton na. Si English, iyo na ngonyan si kontrabida. 

Kan sinisingil na kan tesorerang si Malyn si Pablo ta mga dies pesos na daá an babayádan niya, simbág saiya kan taga-Bigáas na matibáyon magbasábas, “Recess baga ko ka’to nagtarám—hay’paluting ka! Dai mo daw ‘ko. Don't me!”

Knowledge Production before the Age of Internet

In the 1990s, I attended high school and college classes where we would be periodically asked to “research” on some of the topics covered in the syllabi. This was before the age of Google and Wikipedia. 

Based on project-based learning, our subjects covered topics that would now and then require us to research from knowledge coming from the local community—interviews with the local people and yes, folk wisdom and social history.

In other words, not all the things we tackled in class come from the top-down knowledge flow led by the teacher. This was because these teachers—primarily those in the social sciences—did not rely on the textbook. In more senses, I have been a participant and witness to the rather lateral knowledge flow in the classroom. 

When classmates reported on legends culled from the local folks; or when we submitted interviews with overseas Filipino workers on economic diaspora; or when we asked our parents to become parts of answering questions related to family, we were being active components of the knowledge production. 

Once in our junior high school Practical Arts class which covered “Retail Merchandising”, I was asked to profile our local electric cooperative two rides away from our school campus. So I spent several afternoons rummaging through their archives and learning the dynamics of power distribution, and losses owing to jumpers and all other forms of pilferage, etc. 

I was fortunate to learn about the power supply in the process. It was participatory learning galore. 

For that project alone, I could say, I was not only assessed by my teacher but also appraised for efforts that rendered my output originality and authenticity inasmuch as it had come from the invaluable knowledge supplied by our local community.

Writing: Then and Now

In the 1990s, I would write letters to family and friends on paper and send them through the post office. But in the 2000s, when the internet and cellphones became the norm, I began texting and e-mailing them. 

Back then, I would crumple papers to rewrite my letters from the very beginning because of my erasures—I wanted them to be neatly written. I also once tried typing my letters and signed them with my name in the end but it was laborious. 

But using the keyboard or keypad now, I am amazed how I can articulate my expression with precision. I can delete wrong words if I need to or just want to. I can also compose my sentences more neatly than before because of the “Delete” function of any computer or mobile phone. 

Any gadget’s “Delete” function has gotten rid of the scratch papers I would have otherwise needed so I could rewrite my words and sentences and finish a clearer letter or article. 

When I thought of changing a word I just wrote, I crossed them out—but since I knew I didn’t have the luxury of paper, I would first carefully think of the right word to use before I wrote them. 

Meanwhile, the word processing machine—I mean, the computer—has given me more options. With it, I could now write more freely—or more aptly, faster—I can now type whatever comes to mind because I know that I can delete and edit these words anytime later if I need to.

When I began using computers in writing, I was also amazed how my spelling can be corrected by the machine. The Spell-check feature of the computer informed me of more words than I knew. I also became aware of which better words to use using the Shift F7 or to get alternative words I can use for what I wrote. I used to do previously by referring to a thesaurus. 

The formatting feature of these gadgets also adds to the clarity—and beauty—of my expression. As an image, for example, a carefully chosen font can add to the tone of my message.

With the personal computer, laptop or Smartphone nowadays—writing for me has leveled up dramatically. I became more efficient in writing letters and sending messages. Now I could write better than I did before.

I have also been blogging since the 2000s. In blogging a post, from then until now, I have posted my articles, but also have them rewritten later. 

Sometimes, when someone reacts to my post on social media, they virtually become my “reviewers” if not co-authors—pointing out a typographical error in one or correcting my words or facts in another. When this happens, I promptly correct such and other errors so that my writing would be clearer and better to them. I even revise the piece altogether based on any comments of the readers online. 

Furthermore, the “Edit” feature online does not only help me correct a written blog—it also allows me to add more ideas that enriches the original article. 

In sum, the more open writing space afforded by the social media and internet allows my ideas to be expressed freely—with the added incentive of being corrected and even enriched by those who read my articles. 

Finally now, in posting this article, the Grammarly app installed as extension on my browser suggested to me the tone of my own article, saying that it sounds not only formal and confident but also optimistic. 

It also asked me whether these said adjectives are just right; and I just clicked on the three checks to agree!