Merry Christmas to one and all, and Happy New Year too. If your year were good this year, there’d be no reason why it won’t be so much better next year. It would be, I am sure.

This greeting goes to all my blogger friends and to all my blog readers out there. Holiday greetings to one and all.

This would also serve as some sort of apology as to why I have not been blogging as frequent as I should be. I’ve been so busy with my new vocation as a University lecturer. While I thought at first—since I would be just a new entry into the teaching staff—that I wouldn’t be immersed into more demanding tasks and work schedule, I was a bit mistaken. Teaching is not like many other occupation where the initial phases would be more on orientation processes, taking on light tasks and schedules, saying hi’s and hello’s to everyone in the office. In many ways, the initial phases of teaching is one of the most critical point in the overall approach to the job, sizing up the classes in terms of number and in terms of the amount of preparation needed, where too much becomes ultimately unviable (as learning would not be fulfilled to the hilt) and too little of it would mean lackluster instruction. It’s like walking on a tightrope I felt sometimes there.

It was of note how “academic freedom” meant that a teacher virtually has total control of what he or she has to feed the students, in relation to the title and scope of the subject course, and by this, I had to scramble for materials, doing intensive and extensive research in such a short window of time and opportunity. It was of much luck that despite I am just a newbie in this profession; I was able to collate and compile much of the needed materials and information that I needed to fulfill my lecturing tasks.

It was I think of good opportune that my short but very memorable stint as guest lecturer in the past, particularly in the Alternative Class program of my other alma mater, Ateneo de Zamboanga, had somehow helped me in giving important prior perspective on the business of teaching, providing me insights and helpful experience for such. That at times, I felt like I have just slid from one phase to another, that I am in my own water and have always been there, and have just gone for awhile and then returned in the end.

And in the short period that I have been in this job, I am been exalted that it becomes somehow a wonderful experience for me to become part of a student’s education and growth, and ultimately in his or her future success. It is a wonderful experience altogether. I have the most gratitude to my colleagues in the workplace for being so welcoming to my presence and have provided me great support in the time that I am just learning the main tasks of teaching like an infant, still walking unsteadily, still striving and struggling somehow. I thank our dean Prof. Eddie Ladja for this, King Sali, Sir Perry, Sir Saymaran, Sir Kams, Sir Al, Dams, Choy, Ka Dayyang, Ustadz Bulkhari and Ustadz Tanjilul for treating me with all kindness and friendship that there could be had.

Merry Christmas again to one and all. I’d be back to regular blogging once this “adjustment” period is done and over with. More power to you all.

Well, I hope so. For certain, any wide agreement to curb global carbon emission is the welcomest treaty at this time, when hints of a destabilizing global environment are ever persistent. Super-typhoons, receding forest, melting polar ice, increased earth temperature, and smog in every major city in the world—these are signs and symptoms that could not easily be rebuffed. Perhaps, even America could not stay blind to the impending environmental catastrophe that now, it becomes a very active propeller of this most recent climate deal being sponsored by the United Nation, as the Kyoto Protocol is about to expire on 2012 (without fulfilling the desired).

In 1997, the united States have dissuaded from signing the Kyoto Protocol having been not in agreement with the amount of emission reduction that it had prescribed. This time around, the deadline is set further towards 2050, farther and longer in period, but the emission reduction rate would be far more substantial, somewhere around 40 to 50 percent of the current level.

Would this ever be possible? Having about 40% lesser carbon in the air than we have now? Would this be possible without sacrificing the need for industrial growth and wider transportation use that would be attendant at that future time?

The only manner that this could be possible is if technological advancement in power sourcing would be had in great strides right now and in such a short period of time thence, like the sustainable institution of such alternative renewable energy source like wind and solar energy systems, and hydrogen cells in most transport vehicle by then. Simply put, in order that such amount of reduction could ever be attained 40 years from now, world’s use of fossil fuel or petroleum should be radically curbed. (I can almost sense how OPEC would react on this turgid aim to agree on carbon reduction by most participants in the Bali climate meet).

Be as it may seem, any agreement to curb carbon emissions would be the most positive thing that could result. And with the active participation of the United States around—hopefully with more commitment than ever before—then the climate deal would be on the right track. It is hoped that other highly-industrialized nations like Japan, China and EU could follow America’s interest on this.

Even without the prodding of a dear blog friend in Schumey, I would have notice it just the same. Last night, the issue on the plight of the Sumilao marchers were all over the news and with the involvement of important entities like Ateneo de Manila University, this protest march becomes not just another protest from farmer-beneficiaries supposedly qualified to be privileged under the government’s agrarian reform.

The Sumilao Marchers’ case contains a very painful circumstance where lands that have already been previously distributed were taken away by virtue of a reversal of judgment by none other than the Supreme Court of this nation, and involving such finality after the Department of Agriculture, the main agency who is supposed to protect and bolster the interest of farmer-beneficiaries under CARP, have failed and have been neglectful in motioning for a consideration, thus resulting to the cancellation of certificates of ownership that were already previously issued. It’s a painful situation we got here. Taking away what already have been given. Losing what was already gained.

The land involved here is the 144-hectare property owned by certain Norberto Quisumbing, which in 1994 was distributed to 165 Sumalio farmers in Bukidnon after then DAR Secretary Ernesteo Garilao denied the conversion application by Quisumbing.

This DAR distruibution order was then challenged before the Office of The President and thereon it was decided that conversion was allowed and when DAR lapsed in challenging this decision by Malañang, the Supreme Court ruled with finality that the certificates issued to the Sumilao farmers be revoked, making way for conversion.

11 years hence, no conversion had occurred and in fact, the land in question was sold to San Miguel Corporation in 2002—in clear violation of the conversion plan approved by the Office of The President. With this very clear and blatant violation of the conversion plan in question, hopes now arises for the Sumilao farmers, citing such failure of the condition for the exemption from CARP coverage of the Quisumbing property, and without the realization of the conversion plan, the farmers may bring this up with the appropriate legal venue, along with a new issue, separate from the one or ones decided with finality by the Supreme Court, this time bringing to issue such failure of condition precedent.

With this, I hope the Sumilao farmers would get proper and sufficient legal representation in bringing up this issue. And may they succeed.

Read more of the Sumilao Farmers’ case at Gary Lazaro’s blog.

I’ve been too busy these days that there’s some slack in my blogging. But these sort of days may not be forever, and for certain there comes a time when normalcy would begin again.

Here it goes, I hope it would gain some form of critical triumph from my blog friends who would come and read this poem, and then criticize it. I hope they’d be so generous with their words.

BLACK

Black as the night,
Dark like the moon on this August evening,
While the sea heaves a silent sigh,
I can see black as the color of the night.

Black is the heart that yearns so mightily,
A sudden scream, like thunder and lightning,
And in the midst of the ocean by which once I claim,
Lies the blackest of all sentiments.

Black is the elixir of love
That heals the cut that you made,
And dances away the sorrow
Of a forgotten kingdom where no one lives.

So dark is the sky
That bore your wounds,
With lies and masquerades, so malevolent
Like the edges of a cliff.

Black is the color of dreams,
That once was had been laid on my shoulders, as Atlas once did–
That now, dark is the road
That once had led me to you.