Classes Suspended in SLU Until July 19
-
It’s so good to be home!
I was in Manila for two whole months — the longest I have ever been away from Baguio City in the past 12 years. Couldn’t help it — there were lease contracts to negotiate and building construction/renovation to supervise (yup I’m such a GUY when it comes to these things), there were UP Law get-togethers to attend, and there was some pseudo “change politics” things I almost went into deeply but thank God I got out of it just in time (long story, lemme tell you about it some time), and also it was the first time in my life I felt I needed a break from the City of Pines.
For we manage to have the same problem with garbage over and over (commenter MasterBlaster calls Peter Rey Bautista “Mayor Basura”), the same problem with shanties and illegal vendors, the same problems with environmental degradation, the same problems with poor aesthethic taste going around — in epidemic proportions, in my opinion.
With the weather being so erratic with extreme heat and rainshowers taking turns several times within one day I also got sick in Manila. That happened several weeks ago just when there were talks of the Influenza A (H1N1) virus reaching our shores, coming from the United States and Nothern Europe and I surprised everyone with the way I insisted on using food and healthy beverages as my medicine. There was never a time I ate sooo much!
Instinctively I knew that I would get much stronger if I stuffed myself with fruits and soup and Japanese food (ooh, wasabe can clear the most clogged of noses) and Korean food (boy, does Kimchi tend to clean up your system), and drink liters of my ph-balanced, optimized, magnetic water (yup, I have the Nikken water system that purifies and oxidizes). I denied myself nothing, basically relying on my cravings and my body to tell me what was good for me (funny how in all that time, my body never craved for sweets).
Just last week my brother checked into Asian Hospital for his executive checkup and was told that Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was to also check in the next day ostensibly to “get quarantined” but now news has it that she underwent breast augmentation and some other procedures in private parts that are at the very least cosmetic and at most curative (is she really with cancer as the Philippine rumor mills have been churning in the past months?) so that there is a question now as to whether or not the Filipino people should know every little detail of the President’s health.
And just like what happened years ago when I was involved in a vicious vehicular accident one November day a few years back and I was greeted with “do not go to any Baguio hospital because there is Meninggococcemia going around” (so I never got x-rayed for that bump in my head), today the first news that greets me upon arrival is “Classes is SLU will be suspended from tomorrow till July 19 for there’s AH1N1 going around.”
SLU Suspends Classes, Will Other Baguio Schools Follow Suit?
Hey students, don’t just take my word for it — find out for yourselves what’s what in your school, ok? And before jumping up and down for joy at this unexpected “blessing” just think — while school is suspended you are not learning anything unless you spend the time studying at home.
I am hoping of course that SLU teachers will not waste the student’s valuable time and money but not assigning them any homework or papers to accomplish while classes are suspended.
And of course my fear is that Baguio City will turn this news into pandemic proportions like the way the local government mishandled the meninggococcemia scare so that the city will once again get calamity funds. The same government officials in position then are still in power now and their track record, in my opinion, does not show any great love for the City of Pines.
Well, I guess this would happen in a city that allows 20,000 students to be stuffed into each crowded, tree-less “campus” so that they will breathe each 19,999’s carbon dioxide everyday at close quarters.
With Saint Louis University being the largest in terms of school grounds area, I am wondering if the University of Baguio which is really cramped will not follow suit very soon.
We just...
the tree-student proportion is actually worse. there are 26,700 students in SLU, and that is excluding of the highshool and elementary departments.
Yeah, I hate them for making another Meningo Thingy,,, I do not even believe in the existence of AH1Ewan here in BAguio, I hate it kc uupo na lang,,, nakakamiss mag-aral, but then anyways i have other things to process so there is time, which i am thankful… hey, i wnt to get to know you better coz i am headingt his Magazine to be circulated in the Cordillera and i want to get you as a writer… please do email me at john_rae2007@yahoo.com. Thanks, and gotta hear from you soon
Hi SLU 100,
That many!!! Wow, big business huh? And that number, I suppose does not include the academic and administrative staff, or the auxiliary services (canteens, supply shops, etc.).
Wouldn’t it be nice if SLU actually had a plant-a-tree program in school? Like removing some cement and having each student leave a tree behind so something of them remains within the complex for future generations to enjoy?
Hi JohnRae,
Good luck with your magazine (but honestly, I really cannot write when I am assigned to write) and I can maybe hook you up with some really terrific feature writers in Baguio City instead.
10 days of pure boredom. Despite the fact that others call it a blessing, I’d rather consider the suspension of class curse. Just when we are entering the prelim exam…saya naman ng timing oo. And all the other students are so grateful because of this but in my opinion, I think they wont be grateful if they knew what would happen when classes resume. Mabilisan ang pagbigay ng Assignments, groupwork etc. pag may klase na. I hahabol lahat ng topics that’s for sure.
Anyways; I lieu of what is happening in Baguio, I was wondering why the city officials did not quarantine the whole Benguet. Since, basing from news about the AH1N1, most people who are infected with AH1N1 are lowlanders who came from abroad and when they had the time to go to Benguet, it also traveled with them. (Correct me if I’m wrong with this assumption and I am NOT implying that lowlanders are ’sakitin’). Reminds of one commercial in the radio saying: “Kung malakas ang Turismo, maraming trabaho!” makes me think how people failed to look at the disadvantages of Tourism like garbage (as depicted by the “Baguio garbage crisis”), contagious diseases (Like meninggo and the all popular AH1N1) and population (as seen here in Baguio in which, most people here are not really from Baguio).
Wonder what happens when classes resume and another case or two of H1N1 crop up.
Hi Acid Rayne,
I can guarantee you that when tourism was the main industry in Baguio, no one was poor or starving.
Now that it’s diploma mill city, masses are unemployed and only school owners are rich, and Baguio has been suffering from the “jologism of the carinderias.”
It has been my assertion that garbage non-collection is deliberately timed for tourist season and to think Baguio is more populous when the 30,000-50,000 college students are here from out of town. Don’t tell me it’s JUST the tourists who bring the AH1N1 and besides, I did quote in the article that there are only 14 cases spanning the WHOLE Cordillera region, which is massive.
The rainy season always brings flu with it, we simply love to panic and make it a big deal. Because this disease is CURABLE. I would tend to agree with the Baguio oldtimer who once told me (cannot name him) “You know how it is… small town, small minds”
Too bad your school did not plan and assign you homework BEFORE classes were suspended. Other more progressive schools have websites where students can log on for assignments, too.
And I agree with your woes that this unplanned vacation will just put a strain on the students when classes resume.
Hiya Resty,
Then we can panic further and the DOH can ask for a bigger budget which it is doing now. What was the figure I heard, another 17 million or is this amount trivial?
Guys,
This whole thing would not be such a problem if folks would not allow themselves to be cooped up in such close quarters like overpopulated schools, crowded dormitories, tiny homes, would it? The point is, while we enjoy breathing everyone else’s carbon dioxide up close and personal, we also get their germs.