First hand experience with doomsday

December 21, 2012 has come and gone. And we are still around. The Mayans, if they were that great at predictions, should be the dominant race by now.

In the early 70's I was teaching fisheries and general science in the Dinagat Fishery High School. I was 19 when I first taught and left after two years. See here for the reason I quit.

I was living with Mano Boning and Nang Tolang and their twin children; an older son was studying in college somewhere I cannot remember now but probably Cebu City. Manong Boning was a utility man of the school while the wife was an elementary school principal.

One evening the couple asked me to go with them and the twins to the big house of Mayor Ecleo. They said that a big earthquake would happen that night and the only safe place would be the home of   the Mayor which was then newly finished and located on a ridge of a hill which had a good view of the Dinagat harbor.

Out of courtesy to my hosts, who treated me like a son, I went. At any rate, I was also curious to see the interior of the mansion. I found assembled there the top aides of the Mayor and other government officials including the DepEd school supervisor. I asked him, in amusement,  what the heck the two of us were doing there as we were not members of the sect founded by the Mayor. And, by all means, we did not believe that doomsday was indeed coming.

After midnight we were told that it was already safe to go home. Somehow the calamity was abated.

Surmising now, I think the supervisor was just there to show his support for the Mayor as I was just for Mano Boning and family. But I was pretty sure then that there was no great calamity coming because  it was still to be in 1975 as taught by Herbert W. Armstrong, the leader of the Worldwide Church of God to which I belonged.

Armstrong had this booklet 1975 in Prophecy which shaped the thinking of church members about doomsday. It was the reason that in 1968 I chose to study fisheries in Zamboanga City instead of accepting the offer of my father to send me to FEATI (then one of the better technological schools) to take up electronics engineering. 1975 was coming and the world - society, not the earth - was coming to its end. I took the two and half year fishery curriculum which would give me ample time to prepare before 1975 came. All members of the Worldwide Church of God were supposed to become rulers in the world tomorrow after the crisis of 1975 and should be prepared to be leaders. Whew!

The Armstrong church has since split into many branches. I left the church, a few years after the death of Armstrong, having learned of its cultic nature first here and in many other places. This site is highly recommended for an in-depth knowledge of the cultic practices of the original Armstrong group.

I forsook religion altogether and its many doomsday predictions. And what a relief it has been ever since. Alas, the 1975 booklet is still reproduced here. This is one of the typical illustrations from the booklet:

Been there, done that!

This reminds me of great company

I was reading the column Viewpoint of Juan L. Mercado and was struck by the familiar ring in this paragraph:

“Then and now, it is still the poor who bear the brunt.” One recalls a Grade One teacher who checked why a child was crouching below her desk. She didn’t want us to see her eat her breakfast of green papaya soaked in salt and vinegar.

After two years of teaching high school in Dinagat Island I decided to go back to Cebu to find another job nearer my mother and siblings. We lost our father two years before in a political murder in Zamboanga del Sur where we were living at the time. We were settled with our grandfather in Cebu when I found the teaching job in Surigao.

When one year passed and me still jobless I enrolled in an electronics course at the former Cebu School of Arts and Trades. I had to scrimp on everything because for my expenses I relied on my mother, a public school teacher, and my grandfather who was a small-town councilor.

During lunchtime I would seek out a vacant room. I would go to a corner, arrange an armchair to face the wall, and proceed to arrange my food on the arm of the chair. The food which I prepared was almost always corn, fried sayote, and soup from the morning's inun-unan.

The first time I did that ritual I heard, halfway through my poor baon, noises from behind. When I turned to find out, I saw three other poor students arranging their food on the armchairs. Each was facing the other corners of the classroom. Great company!

I presume they are now better off than I am since I had a little hard time getting a good job after leaving CSAT while many of my classmates immediately made it to the big companies which were then sprouting up in the new Mactan Export Processing Zone.

Why Nations Fail

The new blog I am following and recommends: Why Nations Fail. I hope to have some spare money after buying law books and buy the book.

Surface Deja Vu

I have been following the Surface tablet since it surfaced on my favorite sites for tablet news. My iPad 1 is already an orphan. It doesn't have camera, cannot run the newest iOS, and inking is terrible even with a stylus. I have on it NotesPlus, NoteTaker, and Noteshelf which I thought would replace my need for pen and notebook as touted. Not really.

GoodReader has been more useful. I did not have the need to bring bulky books anymore. Black's Law Dictionary was also a very good help. But something was still missing. I missed Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. The Pages I have on the iPad has been left unused. I wasted $9 on it. I still have to do my word processing on my home desktop and my daughter's notebook.

I was looking for a tablet that could run MS Office at a price comparable to iPad. I think the Surface RT is a viable candidate. But I also need a pdf reader for my books. I found PDF Exchange Viewer as the best in its price range: free. But I understand it is not possible to install on the Surface RT any apps you wish. It's possible on the Surface Pro but the price is a little stiffer.  However, if for that price MS Office is also pre-loaded, then I'll go for it.

Now comes this ad on the Surface which brought back not-so-pleasant memories.





The place where the ad was shot is the former HQ of the Worldwide Church of God where I wasted 30 years of my life. The church splintered into many small groups after the death of its founder. The lucky guys who managed to get hold of the headquarters offices sold the place to another church afterwards and moved to a cheaper location. Most probably because they did not have enough tithes and offerings from their dwindling membership to maintain the Ambassador College campus and the Ambassador Auditorium which the original group boasted as among the best in the world. About the college, it is mostly church hype to encourage members to donate more. As regards the auditorium, there is some truth to it. See here.

The auditorium and the administration building, which is in the background of the guy in the above video, are now owned by another church which, I understand, asked its member to pledge  a lot of money each in order to buy the place. Deja vu.

WCG ministers used to tell the members that they have not given enough if the giving does not hurt.  Sadly, the splinter groups are still at it. See here. Shame, shame, shame!

What a relief, I am past that. I am now here. Just kidding!  But it sure is a better alternative for WCG exiters and other former religionists who needed release! To know what I believe now, see here, here, or here.

And, oh, I am definitely replacing my iPad. Not sure yet if it will be a Surface, though.

And before I forget, how much did Microsoft pay the new owner of  the WCG HQ for the shoot? Eat your heart out former WCG members. LOL.

Peace in Mindanao, finally?

About four years ago I blogged about the Mindanao conflict. I am not sure now what events in Mindanao happened at around that time that caused me to write that blog. In fact I only called it a draft and hoped I had the time to finish it.

Right now my thoughts about Mindanao is about the recently-signed GPH-MILF Framework Agreement.

Could this mean I might be able in my lifetime to bring my children to Dimataling and show them the place where I spent my childhood?

Altho I am a non-believer, but for lasting peace in Mindanao; for the blood of my father, uncles, and cousins who died violently as a result of the decade-long conflict; for my Muslim and non-Muslim friends and their families who have suffered more than enough already; I am almost about to shout Alahu Akbar!

Religious extremism?

The Islamic world is up in arms over the video "The Innocence of Muslims." I've seen it and my reaction is simply that if the same kind of video would be made about my father I would be up in arms too. But  I would not take arms.

Above all, because I live in a democratic society where I am not supposed to take matters into my own hand. I can always resort to the courts to avenge my honor. Or failing that, I can make a video of my own.

Now what if somebody makes a video "The Innocence of Christians" with Jesus doing what Mohamed was shown doing in the anti-Muslim video? Will Christians riot and kill over it?

Christians in Western countries will not. But Christians in countries where the rule of law is not as pronounced, they might just. And who will be the most likely targets? Whoever be the non-Christian minority would be. Such as non-theists like me. Oops!

But even in the Philippines some Christians would wish death upon non-theists or other Christians just for supporting the RH bill.

Farewell My Friend

I first met Jessup when we were both 18 years old. It was in an out-of-the-way place called Kiara in Don Carlos, Bukidnon.

We were attending what we called then as the Feast of Tabernacles, a yearly church convention of the Worldwide Church of God. I think it was still then known as the Radio Church of God. The two of us were baptized together along with an older man. To be baptized at 18 was a rarity in those days as maturity was a strict requisite. Somehow Jessup and I showed enough age to get dunked in the cold baptismal pool of the church tabernacle in the middle of nowhere in Mindanao.

I never thought I'd be baptized that day or I would have brought a change of clothes. So there I was in my brief and Jessup in his shorts pushed under the water by the minister in a ceremony that was believed as the burial of our old, decadent selves. Touching moments indeed but a source of amusement for me in later years.

Jessup came with his father and family for the feast from Sibulan, Negros Oriental.  He was already skillful in the art of aircraft repair and working his way towards becoming a pilot. I was finishing my technical inland fishery  course in Zamboanga City but my residence was Dimataling, Zamboanga del Sur after I moved back to Mindanao, to rejoin my parents and siblings, from Cebu where I grew up with my maternal grandparents.

Our next meetings would be in Cebu City since my mother and the rest of the family transferred to Cebu after the death of my father.

Jessup helped me get into Philcox Phil. which had a contract with the airport authority to maintain the avionics equipment of airports. He was one of the check pilots; I was one of the ground avionics techs. (I had just finished a technical electronics course from the Cebu School of Arts and Trades.) I did not stay long in the company and moved on to other jobs and rejoined government service and eventually finished a degree in Commerce. In the meantime Jessup was hired as fulltime minister of the church and assigned in Cagayan de Oro. It was where he would show his mettle as a servant-leader in the fullest sense.

There were many things we did together but what I would most remember is when he helped dig and poured concrete for the foundation and piled hollow blocks for the walls of my small home. I reciprocated in a small way when he was building his bigger home (compared to mine). By this time he was back in Cebu as a volunteer church elder which meant he could engage in non-church business. This would become the Aviatour while I struggled along as a lowly government employee.

With the demise of the founder of the Worldwide Church of God in the mid 80's the membership splintered into many small churches often espousing variants of the teachings of the original group; others wandered off to other mainstream Christian churches. I took a step further in the  early 90s when the internet was beginning to pick up. Through my association with the internet pioneers in Cebu, I was given access to information not theretofore available to others in the church. These information led me to humanist groups, freethinker sites, and cult-watch centers which in turn led me to the writings of Carl Sagan, Stephen Gould, Ernst Myer, and Richard Dawkins in that order. It is easy to follow the logical conclusion from there.

And that's how Jessup and I drifted apart as church buddies (my wife and I served under him for some time as deacon and deaconess) although his family and mine remained friends.

When my family and I went to his wake we thought it was the Feast of Tabernacles all over again. There were our friends from the different flavors of the Worldwide Church of God and other churches from as far as Davao and other parts of the Visayas. It was the biggest wake I'd ever attended what with all the friends Jessup made aside from the church members.

Farewell my good friend, Capt. Jessup Magallanes Bahinting. Long after now, I will still be talking to my children and their children about our adventures together. Thanks for the memories.

Surface Right: Paras vs De Leon

In discussing "surface right" of a land owner (Art. 437, New Civil Code) Paras has this to say:

           "If ownership does not extend ad coelom — indefinitely upwards to the sky,  it should not also extend usque ad internos — indefinitely downwards."

De Leon, on the other hand says this:

             "If the ownership does not extend ad column, neither should it go down usque ad inferos."

Who is correct?

 

At first glance I thought that Paras had it right because from the little Spanish I learned from my Grandpa (who was "de habla Española") I know that coelom is related to cielo which is Spanish for sky. But then inferos, as mentioned by De Leon,  sounds like infierno (Spanish for hell).

 

Turned out that both are partially right. Or should it be "half wrong"?

Wikipedia says that the complete phrase is "Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos". It means "whoever owns [the] soil, [it] is theirs all the way [up] to Heaven and [down] to Hell". 

 BTW,  the book of De Leon on Property (2011 Ed.) was pulled out when I went back to Rex on the second week of class to buy one. They said there were errors in the book. I've seen a lot of typos and confusing references to objects or persons in Paras' and De Leon's books which you can sort out by reading the context. This one must be big enough to warrant a complete pull out.

Confession on Rizal

I said in my previous blog that I was going to read Rizal in Spanish this summer break from law school.

But then I read that Prof. Krugman saw The Hunger Games. So did my other favorite economist Greg Mankiw.

And when I saw this from the collection of my daughters Mamay and Honi:

I have to lay aside Rizal in Spanish.

Anyway, I have read already two editions in English. The latest being the translation by Soledad Lacson-Locsin:

Rizal's novel in Spanish

Wow! That was a long break from updating my blog. Altho I was always reading other people's blog. Every now and then I still check up on Dean Jorge. I miss Manolo's erudite essays. I assume he is still busy helping P-Noy. (Update April 14, 2012: Manolo is still around, I found out. It is only his column in the Inquirer that is not there anymore.)

The past year was study, study, study of troubles between other people. I refer to jurisprudence that were assigned by my professors. That will be a subject of another blog, if I can have the time.

For now let me turn to Rizal. I told my classmates, via Facebook of course, that let's forget lawbooks for a while; get a life; balance our worldview by reading other books. One commented, why not the Bible since it is Easter season. Well, been there, done that. I am past the Bible, thankfully.

Why not Rizal in the original Spanish? And I found the e-pub here.

Thanks to Jellby for converting into e-pub Rizal's two novels. And I share his sentiment when he said: "It is sad that most Filipinos today can't read this novel in the original Spanish."


So this summer, before another semester of law school is upon me, I'm gonna read these in the original Spanish. If only to put to good use my iPad. And yes, I should do an assessment of the iPad after 2 semesters of using it in law school.  This was my first impression of the iPad.