Ernie Yu's Play of Words
Mon, 2 Mar 1998 08:20:45 EST

Dr. Ernesto Yu's play of words is impressive.  His mastery of the English language has been common knowledge around as he is a good help when it comes to solving crossword puzzles. He is an excellent doctor and an entertaining speaker in conferences and in our yearly corporate parties, but I didn't realize that he is also a first-rate writer.  I have never been to the Philippines yet but reading about your teachers and students and knowing one of your alumni, I bet yours is one of the top schools in the country.

Jean Blair, RN, Buffalo General Hospital, Buffalo, N.Y., U.S.A.
JeanBlair2@aol.com

Congrats!
Wed, 4 Mar 1998 15:33:35 +800

Thank you for continuously sending me copies of the LCHS Spectrum.  I've enjoyed reading them, so that I can also be updated of news and events.  My PC can also capture its 'high-tech' color effects.  Congrats.  By the way, I have stopped for a while being a columnist of our magazine, NSCNews.  Hence, I have to sharpen again my literary capers. May God bless you all.

Lucille O. Lee, National Steel Corp., Iligan, Philippines
lolee@natsteel.com.ph
 

Dateline Buffalo

By Ernesto L. Yu, M.D., Batch 1965 Ernstyu49@aol.com

Charles Sy's witty classics about his mindless twitch games of Black Jack and his Chesterfield's finger-ballet experiments behind the old LCHS Science Center rejuvenated engaging chronicles of titillating personal tales that were woven under that very ambience of historical echoes and shadows during ostensibly enlightened, adolescent years of rapacious roaring and hysteria.

Once, I found it emotionally exhilarating to be encamped (enshrined is an alternate adjective) in this minefield of factual theories and innovative principles for teens who were at a drooling stage for start-up data on microbes and atoms, the basics of the birds and the bees.  Isaac Newton's signature obsession to brand his surname as a unit of Force and the cellular junkyard of pickled livers and kidneys that crouched in the many closets in that building portrayed trivial roles in my compulsive attachment to this scholarly milieu.  Perhaps, it must be the wild promise of all the mysteries and wallops of the shockingly sinister myths, buoyed by my subliminal inquisitiveness, of the ghostly lady in white who, as legend has it, diluted the warm breeze wafting around easily terrified souls with an aromatic potpourri of flowery and bewitching scents.  Of course, being one of the minors with "white gonads" (vernacular translation is optional) and a flaccidity that wilted under ordinary strain, I choked on the periodic asphyxiation of these bone-chilling whiffs.  For months, her distinctive musk taunted my olfactory nerve endings, injecting spine-tingling pricks that were transcribed into nauseating discomfort.  Being a kid with a low threshold for paranormal teases, I succumbed to two disgraceful chemistry marks of 65% (Ok, six! But leave me alone!) secondary to this bombastic silliness.

One edgy moment, while tinkering with the acid-base reagents that structured the positive spins to the evolution of litmus paper, my cranial sinuses were again jarred by this perfumy assault. Amid the grinding struggle to sample psychic peace, I  recouped and ground the requisite courage and emotional range to blast this mind-boggling aberration, once and for all.  I sniffed  the traces of her signals with the tenacity of a rabid canine in a drug combat.  Fretful, jumpy, the Sherlock Holmes in me concluded in a button-busting discovery: our part-time lab assistant was the spooky phantom who had been charring my neural synapses to misfire.  "Ma'am, what cologne do you wear?" I queried in a bashful tone.  "I don't splash artificial mixes," she snapped.  "How come you smell so good?" I punched back in absolute ease.  "Because I'm sweating, my son," she grated my bewildered mind with a wisp of an incandescent smile playing across her amused face; without realizing how her natural juice-punch line cauterized astutely the gaping wounds of my spirit and freed a psyche that has been gravely crippled by the sordid and comic drama.

Ever since that frame of reality checks and balances,  my liberated imagination glided fluidly with the smatterings of Einstein's Relativities and poked those formalin-marinated frogs with wholesome learning outlook and undivided concentration.  This lurid chapter gave  birth to my high school's whoopee! and yee-ha! season in that academic site, where I mastered  the intricacies of Adam's and Eve's plastic-molded anatomical components and the bottled vertebrates' mental anguish (animal activists will sob at the inconceivable barbarism).  And, around one of the secluded vicinities of this edifice, I refined the art of blowing perfect, scientific circles out of Lucky Strike's addictive euphoria, even in the eerie half light of dust, until the moon kissed and caressed all with quiet beauty ... behind the nicotine fog, cackling laughter and wicked glee of St. Charles and his rambunctious cardiologist-pistoleros.
 

Sentimental Journey

By Henry L. Yu, M.D., Batch 1969

Not just a Reunion, but a Grand Convention
The LCHS Grand Alumni Homecoming 2000 should be held around summer vacation, between April and May.  So that our alumni, who are parents, will be free of their children's school chores.  Other alumni who are still studying in colleges can also join and help in the affair.

I suggest that the homecoming be conducted like a convention, lasting for at least three days, giving alumni from abroad optimum use of their resources/expenses in coming home for the affair.  A three-day affair can give ample time for alumni to rekindle old memories and reacquaint old ties. The affair should include tours, sport fests and fellowship dinners.

The first day will be for registration and payment of reunion fee in the morning.  Aircon tourist buses may be hired for the affair to give the participants a tour of the highlights in Iligan.  In the evening of the first day, a welcome party in one of the fine places in Iligan, probably an outdoor party, as this is summer time--no rain.  At this gathering each one introduces each other, giving some background of what they are doing now and the year they graduated, story telling time of their LCHS memories.  Second day, probably a tour in the neighboring city of Cagayan de Oro with overnight stay.  We can have a ball at either Dynasty Court Hotel or Grand Caprice Convention Center.  Entertainment can be arranged like guest singers from CdeO Chinese schools, Kong Hua High School and the Oro Grace Christian School choral groups.  Probably we can have fellowship with CdeO Kong Hua School alumni, a joint affair.  On the third day, after breakfast, depart for Iligan.  In the afternoon, sport fest like golf tournament.  Everything will culminate in the evening with Grand Auld-Lang-Syne Party at the LCHS school gym...with fireworks and band music, see you again in the year 2005?

We can have three schemes for the registration: 1) Gold: Whole package with meals and overnight stay in CdeO. 2) Silver: Whole package except overnight stay at CdeO. 3) Bronze: Attending the first night's Welcome Party and the third night's Farewell Party only.

Why include Cagayan de Oro in the affair?  Well, CdeO is a safer place, with more places to visit, and we can party all night long without security problem, specially if everyone will stay and party at the same hotel, like The Dynasty Court Chinese Restaurant and Hotel.  Cagayan de Oro is the convention city of the south and the facility is excellent.

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

Jokes from the Internet: Pinoyisms
1. Use Tenacious in a sentence.
   I went to the shoe store to buy a pair of Tenacious.
2. Use Deduct, Defence, Defeat and Detail in a sentence.
   Deduct jumped over Defence, first Defeat and then Detail.
3. Use Deposit in a sentence.
   I hear dripping in the sink.  I think Deposit is leaking.
4. Use Persuading in a sentence.
   After a year, Jack and Jill are going to celebrate their Persuading anniversary.
--Contributed by Alex Handumon, M.D. (Batch '68), Burnham, Illinois, U.S.A.
 

New Campus.  In 1951, the student population increased tremendously.  The two-storey structure downtown could no longer accommodate the students.  So the directors of Lanao Chinese Chamber, together with principal Tan Lian Hon, initiated a fund-raising campaign to build a new school building at a new campus on B. Labao Extension in uptown Iligan.  From there on, English and Chinese high schools were offered.  The system for Chinese elementary up to high school adopted Taiwan's educational system.  It emphasized good character & conduct, family relations and the art of living.  Class hours for the Chinese department were considerably long.  The emphasis for Chinese kindergarten was on conversational Chinese.  The rest of the subjects were music, drawing, arithmetic, reading and writing.

On the elementary level, the focus was on phonetics, conversational Chinese, reading and writing. After graduating from elementary, most of the students could understand and speak fluent Chinese, use the dictionary, read Chinese newspapers and magazines, communicate in written Chinese, and even write Chinese calligraphy (moh-pit di) as well.

High School Education. The subjects in high school emphasized character development and the pursuits of science, to become useful and well-rounded citizens.  Subjects were literature, citizen conduct, history, geography, and biology. Typing, accounting and home economics were also offered.  The students were taught to respect and love their parents, and to be patriotic as well.  They had to compose a literary piece each week.  Moreover, a convocation was held every week known as Sun Yat Sen Memorial Meeting.  Each class was made in charge of the weekly convocations on rotation basis.  Basically, the program would start with the singing of the Chinese national anthem.  This was followed by the reading of the preamble of Sun Yat Sen.  The program proper consisted of speeches, singing, drama, debate and some forms of contests.

Every day 15 minutes before the start of classes, there was the flag ceremony, exercise, and a brief lecture on proper conduct.  Faculty members alternated with each other in giving the talks. The lectures dealt on the value of patriotism.

LCHS under Tan Lian Hon. In those days, high school graduates could understand Chinese spoken by the older folks and they were conversant in Chinese as well. They could even write and read Chinese magazines and newspaper.  They could also edit bulletin boards.  Ever since the administration of the school under Tan Lian Hon, only top-caliber teachers were hired, while the students were likewise highly motivated in their studies.  Among the alumni, there have been over twenty who grew up to become doctors, engineers, accountants, lawyers, nurses, and teachers. Today, there are LCHS alumni all over the world: USA, Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan. Evidently, the quality of Chinese education in those days was indeed superior. (Continued next issue)