Alphabet Memories
Mon, 19 Jan 1998 14:16:50 +0800

My congratulations to Henry Yu for the wonderful idea of neatly enumerating his memories in alphabetical order. Wow, I have my own list, too.  Everybody does! Nevertheless, Henry's list is definitely in mine and I cannot help but smile all the way, while slowly absorbing and putting myself in those times, reading. But Henry's details of dates and names are difficult to follow ... such a venerable memory bank! I wonder how many megabytes is the storage capacity! Where can I buy one for my use?

Rene Tio (Batch '70), Cagayan de Oro, Philippines
fishers@cdo.weblinq.com
 

What is the raw deal of inheriting a two-letter last name?  Apart from being an infrequent recipient of corny humor ("Who's giving the anesthesia?", "Yu", "Why me?"), an abbreviated surname is a clump of gratifying pluses.  My hereditary pool was once grouped with Albert Einstein's hybrids because my guys were the only ones in Pre-K who could spit out their family marker with startling proficiency (their classmates registered as Rutkowski, Rodenberg, Goodnough).  Compound this charming radiance with the uncontested premise that the shorter your clan tag the more pulsatile are your brain waves (Dad should have just elected "U"!). Among diverse ethnic groups, Asians persistently exude visceral, emotional intelligence and a distinct aura in scholarly ventures and work ethics.  They are perceived, genuinely they are, as exceedingly motivated, goal-oriented dream-chasers and a vault of untapped talents.

Must be our daily scoops of miracle rice and monosodium glutamate.

Way to go, Councilor.

Like gamblers, we will just infuse godly faith in our sunny horoscopes and fortune-cookie sentiments.

For now, I'll just replay some delicious morsel of native treats in my fantasy world until I'm willing to pedal in a low gear and discover the Zen of lumpia wrapping.
 

Embarrassing Moments
"Embarrassment comes to us without our consent.  Just like a thief, it comes unexpectedly.  You don't know when, you don't know how, and much more, you don't know where.  But when it does, you know you will be hampered by your shame."  -Wilson D. Lim, Batch '66, from the LCHS Scholastic Gazette, Jan. 15, 1965
 

 Writing in school was never my cup of tea.  Back in LCHS, I derived more pleasure from writing love letters than theme compositions.  Somehow, it didn't occur to me that as I later moved on to other schools, much of the fundamentals that I needed to pursue a writing interest had their incubation in LCHS.

I was a high school sophomore at LCHS and our English teacher was Caridad Collantes.  An articulate teacher with impeccable diction.  She taught English Grammar and Phonetics.  Like the rest of my classmates, I was impressed by the way she distinctively enunciated her consonants whenever she spoke.  I had never seen anybody in school who spoke such flawless English before her.  Collantes set a high standard in the use of the language.  And this she demanded of her students in no uncertain term, particularly in theme writing.

I had difficulty coping with such rigor.  Most of my classmates who scored high in writing were those who excelled academically as well, the likes of Lucio Choa Tan, Fena Choa Tan, Lalita Uy, Marcy Sy, Jocelyn Ang, and Teresita Racines.  In contrast, the ratings I received in theme writing were invariably so-so, and they often came with terse annotations like "Redundant" and "Your writing style is archaic!"  Redundant? Archaic?  I didn't even know what those words meant!  It was evident that to learn to write, I had to brush up on my vocabulary.

When we were in third year high school, we were again fortunate to have another fine English teacher.  Chona Serrato was her name.  She had flawless command of the English language which she accentuated with unmistakable flair.  Her forte was Literature.  From her I learned to appreciate great epics of famous writers.  So much so that even in Pilipino and Algebra classes I was surreptitiously browsing English novels and was often caught doing so.  I was admonished not so much for reading unrelated materials in class.  In most cases it was because I was reading sexually-explicit books like D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita".

As we picked up more lessons in literature, my fascination with great literary works also heightened.  And during the school's Double Ten celebration in 1965, where we had the campus-wide literary and musical contests, I chose to take part in the essay writing contest.  The theme was "The Significance of October 10 and Dr. Sun Yat Sen". The announcement of winners and awarding took place during the flag ceremony a day after the festivities.  I got the biggest surprise of my life.  I won first place in the writing contest!  My classmates couldn't believe it.  Neither could I.

I lived through the days basking in the limelight of my new-found glory.  Until I learned later that I was the only one who submitted an entry.
 

Do you know that the famous Philippine "hanging rice" locally called pusu originated from the Chinese delicacy, bachang?  Folklore has it that when the first generation of Chinese migrants came to the Philippines, they introduced bachang to their Filipino friends.  The Filipinos found the delicacy delicious and proceeded to copy it.  Their version, however, contained rice only without the standard ingredients like pork, mushroom, etc.  When they showed their version to the Chinese to see if they got it right, the Chinese told them they got it wrong by saying in Mandarin, "Pu-sheh! Pu-sheh!"