Bombarded With Mixed Scenarios in Life

Profundity of a Nine-Year Old

The other night, my sis-in-law, Ruby, texted Jegs and related a very brief incident between her and daughter, Danyelle, while they were in bed watching the news and waiting to go to sleep.  Ruby was commenting on the tsunami scenes in Japan being flashed on television when she asked rhetorically, “Is this now the end of the world?”

In a few seconds, from the corner of her eye, she saw her daughter, Nyelle, unobstrusively wiping tears from her eyes.  She asked her, “Bakit, Nyelle?  Do you have a problem?”  Nyelle didn’t say a word.  She just continued looking at the TV screen.  Then, after a few moments, her Mommy said, “Sige, hindi ako matutulog ngayong gabi kung mayroon kang secret na hindi sinasabi sa akin.”

Whereupon, Nyelle looked at her Mom and said, “natatakot ako sa end of the world.”

When Jegs read me the text from Ruby, I simply couldn’t comment for a few seconds.  Then I managed to say, “Wow, what profundity.” 

What crossed my mind was that when she said she was afraid of the end of the world, she probably was thinking that when the “end of the world” happens, as in zero hour, she’d only be nine years old, alone, probably looking around and seeing everybody and everything gone.  And that she would be alone in the middle of a vast nowhere, not knowing what to do or where to go.  Most of all, she would have lost her Mom and everybody else she loves that’s why she was all alone.  The ultimate clincher will be in the mind of this nine-year old: how would she survive being alone in a world that has ended? 

                                     Below, Nyelle with her Mom, Ruby (left), and Lola Lita (right).

One might ask another profound question: “Is this the kind of world that I shall be leaving my child behind in?”  Look at what we’re all doing to our only planet.  When we’re done, what’s going to be left of it for our children?  When your child who’s just born today shall be in her prime, she’ll most likely be living in a vastly different planet.  Will she survive?  Nine years from now, will she whisper to your ears, “natatakot ako sa end of the world?”  By then, the “end of the world” would probably be much closer to home than it now is.  What would be your response to your nine-year old?  How do you think would you feel?

Or has not the rhetoric hit you yet?

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Calling UPLB Alumni

Have you visited the UPLB Alumni Center lately?  I know Dr. Mimi Ocampo, UPLB’s hyper alumni head, has told me a couple of weeks ago that I should visit the Alumni Center as it was being renovated.  The Alumni center was UPOU’s headquarters during its first two years of existence and I used to frequent the place, but when the UPOU transferred to its current Headquarters I haven’t been able to visit the place again.

Anyway, Doc Mimi is right.  The Alumni Center looks beautiful these days.  It’s sporting a new look, it even has a new, automatically pressurized 1,000-gallon water tank.  On the ground floor, which is what’s on the level of the road, it has two halls and the offices of the Alumni Center.  On the lower level floor are additional offices which could be rented out, Mimi tells me.  College-based alumni organizations at UPLB could hold their offices there. 

                                              Picture below shows new facade of the Alumni Center.

For a long time now, the UPLB Alumni and different college-based alumni organizations at UPLB have had no Center to be proud of.  Well, the UPLB Alumni Center is one we can proudly call our Center.  Do visit it one of these days.  It sits right across from the UPLB Health Services Hospital, along the road to the College of Forestry.  It’s being landscaped now, but by the time you are able to visit it shall be an adorable place for souvenir photo-ops for Alumni.

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Watch Out for the UPOU Podcasters

Last Saturday, UPOU’s Multimedia Center headed by Dr. Dinah Nadera, organized a seminar-workshop on audio podcasting.  The resource person was Ms. Elyss Punsalan, one of very few podcasters  who are sort of specializing in fiction in the Philippines today.  The seminar-workshop introduced us to another approach in delivering our course content at UPOU.  Now, we’ve got a good idea as to how we could, for example, provide some audio component to our course guides or even perhaps course content.

We’re not yet into video podcasting, but some were already asking if we could go on-cam.  Fine idea, indeed.  For me at the moment, though, audio podcasting is just fine.  I think that I might be a bit more effective being heard than seen.  Not that I have no confidence in how I look, it’s just that a viedo of myself might be distracting.  Tsk tsk tsk.

                                  Participants in the Audio Podcasting Seminar-Workshop at NCC.

Anyway, there’ll be another session at the UPOU Headquarters.  When?  Still don’t know.  Depends on the schedules at the HQ, I guess.  There are so many things going on that it has become difficult to schedule events on short notice.  We’ll get you informed, though.

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