May 30, 2007. Just before crossing the Golden Gate, we drove up to the highest vista point from where we could get a view of the bridge from the northern side. It was terribly windy and freezing up there. It felt a little gloomy because it was quite cloudy too.
It would have been the last time I would witness the UAAP Cheerdance Competition as a resident UP student, but I missed it. After a miserable campaign in the much celebrated men’s basketball competitions, this victory was quite a refreshing douse of pride.
Let me appropriate two things in this post. One is the picture that accompanies this entry, which was taken by Teresa Barrozo (here’s her multiply account). Such a beautiful shot. I didn’t realize how the cheer dancers did this oblation figure from the way I watched it on television.
The next is a text message I got from a friend. Sana raw hindi lang sa laban ng cheerdance tayo nagwawagi. Sana magtagumpay rin tayo sa laban kontra sa tuition increase, at iba pang suliranin ng mga estudyante at kabataan. Indeed.
May 30, 2007. On the way back south to the southern bay area, we passed by Tiburon, a small and picturesque seaside town along San Francisco Bay. We had lunch at this fancy restaurant at the town’s docks where tens of yachts where docked. It had a nice view of San Francisco from across the bay. After the late lunch, we also drove through Sausalito, another picturesque seaside town north of San Francisco before re-entering the highway back to San Francisco.
September 13, 2007. It was a day after former President Joseph Estrada was convicted of plunder. Groups of students from different schools in Metro Manila marched from Espana to Morayta and near Mendiola under the scorching heat of the sun to demand for greater state subsidy for education.
Prior to the collective march, students from the University of the Philippines gathered at the lobby of Palma Hall in Diliman and held discussions and a program to continue calling for the junking of the Tuition and Other Fee Increases policy and to protest against the demolition of residential communities in UP, among other issues. After the program, the bulk of students held a snake rally through the halls of the building to invite students to join the march.
May 30, 2007. After dropping by our second vista point of the Golden Gate Bridge, we continued driving north of San Francisco to Muir Woods National Monument in Marin County. It’s apparently one of the last ancient coastal redwood forests in the San Francisco Bay area.
Together with my friends in a Broad Comm 130 class, we finally finished shooting Lloyd of all Trades last Wednesday afternoon. This is the same production I mentioned here. Boy, was that an awkward and odd experience.
Lloyd is a Architecture freshman who’s on the verge of dropping out of school and being kicked out of his boarding house because of financial difficulties primarily due to the tuition and other fee increases imposed on their batch in UP. Fortunately (or not) for him, after almost being run over by a jeepney, he overhears two Fine Arts students talking about job opening as a nude model. Despite all his inhibitions, he gives it a thought but immediately calls it off. By some twisted comedic turn of events, his last fifty peso bill flies off from his wallet and he ends up in the nude modeling audition as he chases his bill off.
[Continued from here]. August 26, 2007. After the trip to Itogon, we went back to have lunch at UP Baguio. After which was a whole afternoon of writing resolutions and passing them through sessions. It got a little tedious towards the end but interesting and enlightening nonetheless, as it affirmed our solidarity with student councils of other UP System colleges and units.
[Continued from here]. August 26, 2007. The morning of the second day of the KASAMA sa UP assembly was spent with some indigenous peoples’ rights advocates in one of Benguet province’s open pit gold mines. It took three packed jeepneys almost an hour to transport all of us delegates to Itogon, Benguet from Baguio City.
The open pit mine is operated by one of the oldest and most infamous mining corporations in the Philippines, Benguet Corporation, set up by occupying Americans more than a century ago. You know, it’s really disturbing how we’ve all been lead to believe that mining will help our economy and our people, but all they’ve done for the past century is to plunder our mineral riches out of the country. Of course, to sugarcoat and compensate for these companies’ exploitation of the local’s resources, destruction of its ecology and the plundering of its riches, they build schools, a few houses and roads which in reality only reinforce hegemonic status quo and make the people dependent on foreign aid, foreign goods and foreign intervention. We were told that despite the relatively recent enactment of laws that protect and promote the rights of indigenous peoples in the Philippines, it serves little use to the people of Itogon because of Benguet Corporation’s insistence on their immunity due to their incorporation in 1903.
