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27ABAKADA, SPRING 2011
FILIPINIANA
Dama de NocheLegend of the
Many years ago...There was a rich maharlika or nobleman, who spent his early bachelor days wining and dining in the company of nobility. He drank the finest wines, ate the most delicious food and enjoyed the company of the beautiful and bejew-eled women of the noble class.
After spending this kind of life for many years, he de-cided to settle down and get married to a woman of his choice. “But whom to marry?” he asked himself, “All the women I know are gorgeous and charming, but I am tired of the glitter of their jewels and the mel-lowness of their clothes!”. Finally, he found himself a simple charming girl whose name was Dama.
They got married and lived happily. She loved and
pampered him with the most delectable dishes and kept his home and clothes in order. But soon he got bored and began to long for his friend’s company. He looked at his wife and thought, she is not beautiful, doesn’t have the air of nobility and wisdom in her. And so, he returned to his world of glitter and pleasure. He started to spend his evenings sitting around with his friends, drinking and talking till the next morning.
Seeing this, Dama felt that she was los-ing her husband. She wept and prayed, “Oh God! Help me. Give me a magic charm that would make my husband come home again and would never leave my side, forever!”.
At midnight he came home, opened the door of their bedroom and called for Dama to tell her to prepare his night-clothes. He shouted all around the bedroom and searched the whole house. But could not find his wife. Finally he returned to their bedroom, and when he opened the door, he stopped. A sweet and fragrant scent that he had never smelled before drifted to him. He went straight to the window from where it seemed to be coming. He was amazed
to see a strange bush growing outside his window. The bush had thousands of tiny star-like white flowers, from which the heavenly and enchanting scent was coming.
He stood there, completely enthralled by the glorious smell. “Dama...” he whispered softly, wondering, could this be Dama? The noble man sat by the window and waited for his loving simple wife to return. But she did not come back, only the fragrance of the flowers stayed with him, casting a spell over his entire life.
In the moonlight, Dama of the night, or Dama de Noche would be in full bloom, capturing the rich maharlika and making him never want to leave her side, forever... n
Night Blooming Cestrum from Philippine Legends
ABAKADA, SPRING 2011 28
The Soldier and the Nun A soldier came to a fork in the road and saw a nun standing there.
Out of breath he asked, “Please Sister, may I hide under your skirts for a few minutes. I’ll explain WHY later.” The nun agreed. Just a moment later two Military Police came running along and asked, “Sister, have you seen a soldier running by here??” The nun replied, “He went that way.” After the MP’s disappeared, the soldier crawled out from under her skirt and said, “I can’t thank you enough Sister, but you see I don’t want to go to Iraq.” The nun said, “I think I can fully understand your fear.” The soldier added, “I hope you don’t think me rude or im-pertinent, but you have a great pair of legs!” The nun replied, “If you had looked a little higher, you would have seen a great pair of balls....I don’t want to go to Iraq either.”
SUCCESS A successful man is one who makes more money than •his wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find such a man. •
BATHROOMS A man has six items in his bathroom: toothbrush and •toothpaste, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, and a towel The average number of items in the typical woman’s •bathroom is 337. A man would not be able to identify more than 20 of these items.
ARGUMENTS A woman has the last word in any argument.•Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a •new argument.
A good one...A 70 year old man asks his wife, “Do you feel sad when you see me running after young girls?” Wife replied, “No, not at all, even dogs chase cars they can’t drive.
Women Are Evil By Nature.... A woman went up to the bar in a quiet rural pub.
She gestured alluringly to the bartender who approached her immediately.
She seductively signaled that he should bring his face closer to hers.
As he did, she gently caressed his full beard. “Are you the manager?” she asked, softly stroking his face with both hands.
At least they understand each other on Wednesday
“Actually, no,” he replied. “Can you get him for me? I need to speak to him,” she said, running her hands beyond his beard and into his hair. “I’m afraid I can’t,” breathed the bartender.. “Is there anything I can do?” “Yes. I need you to give him a message,” she continued, run-ning her forefinger across the bartender’s lip and slyly popping a couple of her fingers into his mouth and allowing him to suck them and lick them gently. “What should I tell him?” the bartender barely managed to say.
“Tell him,” she whispered, “there’s no toilet paper, hand soap, or paper towels in the ladies room.”
Typing Errors A daughter sent a telegram to her father on passing her B.Ed exams,
Which the father received as “Father, your daughter has been successful in BED.”-------------
A husband, while on a business trip to a hill station sent a telegram to his wife
“I wish you were here.”
The message received by the wife was “I wish you were her...-------------
A man wanted to celebrate his wife’s Birthday by throwing a party.
So he ordered a birthday cake. The salesman asked him what message he wanted put on the cake. He thought for a moment and said, put “Getting older but you are getting better”.
The salesman asked “How do you want me to put it?”
The man said ‘Well...put “You are getting older” at the top and “But you are getting better” at the bottom.’
When the cake was unveiled at the party all the guests were aghast at the message on the cake.
It reads “You are getting older at the top, but you are getting better at the bottom” n
ENTERTAINMENT
Compiled by Judy Jover
ABAKADA, SPRING 2011 29
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WOMEN
JURGENNE H. PRIMAVERA, Ph.D. is a Filipino scien-tist. She is well-known for her research in mangrove ecosystem preservation, for which she earned recognition as one of Time Magazine’s Heroes of the Environment for 2008. Dr. Primavera was born and raised in the province of Agusan del Norte in Mindanao, where her exposure to nature and envi-ronment began. She took up Zoology under a National Science Development Board scholarship at the University of the Phil-ippines in Diliman, where she graduated cum laude in 1966. After college she went back to Mindanao to teach Biology and Zoology courses at Mindanao State University.
Filipino-American writer-photographer YEN BAET won the grand prize of the National Geographic Exceptional Experience photo contest for her photo “Rainy Night in Hallstatt.” Baet was born and raised in the Philippines and eventually immigrated to the US. She lived in Japan and Germany before moving to Eng-land, where she is now based. She is the only Filipino to make it to the finals of the National Geographic photo contest.
National Geographic had a worldwide circulation and translated into 33 different languages, with nearly 9 million circulations and 50 million subscribers. It is indeed another achievement to the Filipino people not only in America but also in the Philippines and in other parts of the world.
MARIA RESSA was born in October 1963 in the Philip-pines and lived in Manila as a young girl. When she was nine, her family moved to Toms River, New Jersey, where she at-tended public schools. In 1982, Ressa graduated from Toms River High School North. She had been active in student gov-ernment, the school’s orchestra, theater, and basketball. She went to Princeton University, studying biology and Eng-lish, and graduated in 1986. Upon graduation, Ressa returned to Manila on a Fulbright scholarship to study theater, but soon turned to journalism.
Ressa announced her resignation as head of the ABS-CBN News and Current Affairs department last 11 October 2010 af-ter serving the network for six years.
DANICA FLORES MAGPANTAY won the Supermodel of the World title in New York City—the first time a Filipina has bagged the title. Danica is only 17 years old. She is a UP Fine Arts stu-dent who stands 5’9″ and weighs 109 lbs. She gets a US$250,000 (P11.12 million) modeling contract from Ford Models. Models from over 50 countries joined the international modeling contest held in New York City. The prestigious Ford Supermodel of the World was established by Eileen Ford in 1980, and was called “Face of the 80s” back then. In October last year, Danica bagged the Ford Supermodel of the World-Philippines title, the same title her mom Lala Flores had won 21 years before.CAPT. CATHERINE MARIE CASTILLO holds the current record of being the first Filpina Jet Aircraft Pilot as well as the first Filipina airbus instructor. She finished the aviation course together with 19 others who were screened from thousands of applicants at the Philippine Airlines Aviation School. She graduated the Course BS Business Administration, Cum Laude at UP. In her youth, she was a member of the Philippine Youth Basketball Team, Philippine Junior Bowlers and the Philip-pine Taekwondo Team. She plays classical music on the piano. On July 9, 2004 at 1 PM, from San Juan, Capt Castillo, 34, who stands 5’-7” piloted the Cebu Pacific maiden flight with an all-female crew complete with 3 flight attendants and a flight engineer from Manila to Cebu, carrying 80 passengers on board a 118-seater DC-9. n
KARLA PAULA GINTEROY HENRY, born May 23, 1986 in Limay, Bataan, Philippines, is a Filipino-Canadian beauty pag-eant titleholder. She was crowned Miss Earth 2008 in her home country, the headquarters of Miss Earth organization becoming the first Philippine representative and the first in the Asian region to be crowned as Miss Earth. A beauty queen and model, Karla beat over eighty beauties from around the world, succeeding Canada’s Jessica Trisko. She also won the Miss Earth Designer’s Award and Miss Photogenic special award.
Compiled by Judy Jover
WOMENEWS
ABAKADA, SPRING 2011 30
GENDER EQUALITY
MANILA—On the ground, Brooke Castillo is a classical pianist, a rock band manager, an elite sportswoman and a teacher, but it is high in the sky where she truly excels.
Castillo is the Philippines’ first female commercial jet captain, and from the cockpit of Cebu Pacific airline’s Airbus A319s and A320s she says she has the best job in the world.
“I think I was destined to be here,” the tall and eloquent 41-year-old told AFP in an interview, explaining that she realized her many other talents would take a back seat immediately after she got into aviation school.
“I just took up the challenge and I real-ized it was something that I would love to do, and that was it.”
Castillo grew up in a wealthy Manila household -- her father was a banker and her mother managed a casino -- alongside three brothers who helped instill in her a love for sports and competition.
Many hours of her childhood were spent with her family in ten-pin bowling alleys, and she ended up representing the country’s junior team in the sport.She was also a member of the Philip-pines’ youth basketball team, and won a silver medal for her country as an adult at the Southeast Asian taekwon-do championships.
Among her other hobbies and talents, Castillo plays classical piano, man-ages a local alternative rock band and has a business administration degree from the elite University of the Philip-pines.
Castillo said she never aspired to be a pilot, but fell into the aviation industry
soon after her college days when she accompanied a friend to a testing session for a pilot’s scholar-ship with national carrier Philippines Airlines.
Castillo took the tests as well and, while her friend failed, she aced them.“When I went to aviation school, I realized everything that I learned from music, from my other endeavors in school and from sports -- all of it -- I was able to apply more than in my col-lege subjects,” she said.
Her love of flying and her skills saw her become the first woman in the country to fly a commercial jet in 1996, with Philippine Airlines.
After crossing to rival Cebu Pacific, Castillo in 2003 became the first wom-an in the Philippines to captain a jet.Throughout her career she has blazed a trail for other women in the industry, with Cebu Pacific now boasting 14 other female pilots.
“Hopefully there will be more,” she said. Castillo, who is now also an instructor for Cebu Pacific’s younger pilots, said she had earned her suc-cess on her merits, pointing out airline chiefs could not compromise when choosing captains for their jets.“In our profession there are no double standards because you cannot afford to put anyone’s life in danger,” she said.
Castillo suggested women had an advantage because they tended to pay closer attention to the smallest details. A pilot needs to check more than 200 items before an actual flight.
They say that women are more meticulous and more into multi-tasking. Probably that’s true. In some instances I see it,” she said.
Be they Piper Tomahawk trainers or Airbus jets, Castillo said the hardest aspect of flying was deciding when to take off and land or abort, because the tiniest hesitation could swiftly lead to life or death situations.
Her most dangerous moment was as a DC-9 co-pilot nine years ago, when the cabin lost compression in mid-flight. She said her professional training took over and the plane landed safely.
“The thing that I learned from that was that you don’t feel the fear until it’s over,” she said. “After you land and everything, that’s when you catch the fear.”
Castillo’s remaining professional ambi-tion is to captain larger, wide-bodied Airbus aircraft, a dream she will likely fulfil as her employers, now the coun-try’s biggest airline, push aggressively into international markets.
She said also she wanted to marry and have a child someday. But she has had trouble finding the time for such personal matters and sees herself flying and instructing until she turns 65, Cebu Pacific’s retirement age for pilots.
“I hope, I wish, but I really can’t see how,” she said when asked about mar-riage and a family.
“Honestly I’m enjoying my flying career and I am enjoying teaching. Being an instructor, in a way, is fulfilling to me, and in a way it’s making me think, ‘Should I give it up for anything else?”n
By Cecil MorellaAgence France-Presse INQUIRER Global Nation
Philippine pilot soars above gender barrier
WOMEN HEROES
31ABAKADA, SPRING 2011
Heroes of the Environment from the Philippines
Jurgenne PrimaveraBy Hannah BeechTIME MAGAZINE
Jurgenne Primavera, whose groundbreaking studies on the life cycles of tiger prawns in her native Philippines helped galvanize an aquaculture revolution, doesn’t want to impose a global ban on shrimp tempura. But the former senior scientist at the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center on the Filipino island of Panay is campaigning for sustainable fish-farming in order to protect the mangrove forests that act as a crucial buffer zone between land and sea.
Aquaculture has transformed the way we eat. In the mid-’70s, when Primavera began researching the vital
ecological role played by mangrove forests, such farm-ing made up less than 10% of aquatic food bounty. Today, more than a third of the fish and shrimp we ingest is har-vested from aqua-farms. While aquaculture has provided livelihoods for millions of people, it has also ravaged the world’s mangroves. Roughly 20% of mangrove forests have disappeared since 1980, and aqua-farming is one of the main culprits of deforestation.
Mangroves, of course, aren’t as beguiling an oceanic victim as, say, coral reefs. While atolls burst with color, these intertidal forests are distinguished by exposed roots, mucky water and clouds of mosquitoes. But when aquaculturists clear mangroves to make way for shrimp or fish farms, they are contributing to land erosion, remov-ing a crucial nursery for wild fish, and destroying a plant network that acts both as a giant sponge (by absorbing nasty effluents) and as a barricade (by blocking the wrath of typhoons and tsunamis). The propensity to introduce exotic seafood species into local habitats — as opposed to farming native species — can also badly damage delicate ecosystems.
So what’s a shrimp lover to do?Primavera recommends a simple strategy: save some mangroves so that aquaculture flourishes sustainably. Since mangroves naturally filter water, their forests eradi-cate farm waste far more efficiently than expensive equip-ment can. By keeping a four-to-one ratio of mangroves to farm ponds, Primavera believes we can protect nature and enjoy an occasional prawn cocktail, too. n
Love shrimp cocktail? So do lots of others — and that’s the problem.
“People might think the mangroves are just wet trees,” says Primavera, “but they give us so much. All we have to do is use them.”
32ABAKADA, SPRING 2011
BABAYLAN UPDATES
ARTS & MEDIA
Prepared by:Judy Jover (Chairperson)Hilda Gudmundsson (Treasurer)Lemy Gaddi (Auditor)
Babaylan-Denmark graphic artist, MUIR JOVER designed the now official logo for the annual celebration of Babaylan’s Pista sa Mayo/SantaCruzan. She incorporated the organisa-tion’s regal 3-headed logo with the Sagalas showcasing the beautiful Filipinas during the May Flower Festival.
A poster design to campaign for kids to eat healthy and ecological foods.
Vector Art illustration of a polar bear affected by the global warming.
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SUMMER SPORTS TOURNAMENTAUGUST 06, 2011, 10AM-4PM
BELLEVUE STRAND, Klampenborg
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